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Why America Won't Boycott the Olympics


Horrifically violent and totally chaotic, China has become impossible for the world to ignore.

Of course, that won't stop American athletes and tourists from attending the Olympic games, nor American advertisers from leaching millions of dollars from the international gathering of irregularly muscular pole vaulters and aquatic overachievers.

Americans possess the appropriate amount of outrage for the China crisis, but hoping for immediate results, they turn to the wrong change agents: politicians.

Politicians won't stop the 2008 Olympics.

Barack Obama has only managed to skillfully avoid mentioning anything regarding the Chinese.

And though she surprisingly called for President Bush to boycott the Olympics, Hillary's other half privately urged Steven Spielberg not to resign as the "Overseas Artistic Director" only last year. I like to call this kind of "say-one-thing-do-the-opposite" activism the Murdoch Strategy, named after Conservative blood-sucking tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and his daughter Elisabeth, who hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama at her London home. It's an easy way to commit to no one, while committing to everyone, and successfully covering all of one's bases just in case there's an outbreak of genocide in China, or "that black fellow" becomes President of the United States.

In other politician news, donning a red (for outrage!) neck scarf, Ms. Pelosi encouraged San Francisco residents to protest the torch's journey through their city.

But the key to successfully boycotting the Olympics doesn't rest with our ruffled American politicians.

The only way to clearly denounce the corrupt behavior of the Chinese government is to withdraw corporate sponsorship from the Olympics.

You see, though American citizens and politicians are dutifully outraged by the Chinese government's repression and abuse of its own people, corporations can't commit fast enough to spending millions for advertising in Beijing.

So if you're interested in really affecting the Olympics, first you have to stop the steady cash flow, and you can stop the cash by asking (pretty, pretty please) corporations to withdraw their ads from the Olympics.

Click here to see the full list of 2008 Beijing corporate sponsors.

The list includes: McDonalds, Coca-Cola, GE, Adidas, Samsung, VISA, UPS, Staples, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, and Volkswagen.

If you feel morally outraged by the humanitarian crisis in China, contact these corporations and tell them they'll lose you as a customer if they don't definitively denounce (and reject) their support of China's repressive government.

CEOs understand the language of dollars very clearly, and if they begin to lose monetary support from their customers, they'll do anything to stop the bleeding, up to and including withdrawing their sponsorship of the games.

If you feel outraged enough to frown disapprovingly at politicians when they don't talk about Tibet enough, but you continue to buy Kodak film, or drink Coke anyway, then don't be surprised when the 2008 Beijing Olympics goes off without a hitch.

4 Comments

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China hates freedom. It's time for a regime change over there. Let's roll!! Freedom is on the march!!

Clinton has shown a good start on this by calling on Bush to skip the opening ceremonies, like many other leaders around the world are also doing. This first step is not enough. I think that everyone should boycott the games and they should be cancelled or relocated.

I was surprised to see that Obama has failed miserably to address this. Asked about it earlier today he instead responded with an incomprehensible answer that did not answer the question, nor even mention the Olympics: "It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong," Obama said, after talking about the need to restore America's stance in the world, "And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China."

For those of you at TPM who support Obama, I would like to hear how you justify or support Obama's failure to address China and the 2008 Olympics?

Matthew
http://www.TheProblemWithObama.com

I'm really torn over this one.

I see the "Free Tibet" signs and my heart aches. I see the protests and the beatings and I wish that any other place had been picked but China for the next Olympics.

I want to cheer on the protesters. God knows, I love a movement.

But I also see athletes who have been training for years, waiting for four years for these Olympics and I don't want to see their achievements get overshadowed by protests. I want to see these athletes get the chance that they've been working for.

Sometimes there ARE two sides to a story.

Obama's answer to the Olympics question really shows a clear understanding of our current standing in the world.

His recommendation that Bush put the OPTION of not attending the opening ceremonies on the table is the only one that makes sense. He gave clear reasons for it: Darfur and Tibet. That puts direct pressure, and his call that the option be called closer to the date of the opening would keep the Chinese on their toes.

Unfortunately, that's as much leverage as we have on the Chinese right now. The US has very little international clout left. It needs to be spent wisely.

And China actually OWNS us right now. So it would be a bad idea to go up against the banker. All they'd have to do is dump 10% of the US bonds they own on the market at a reduced cost, and the US economy would go in a tailspin for the next 50 years.

That's another reason why I would seriously object to Clinton as a chief negotiator - she seems oblivious to the reality in this case. We have little negotiation capital with China, many thanks to Bush, and trade deals are a whole lot more relevant short term to the US than Tibet right now.

Sad but true. The US reputation is in the gutter. It will be hard work to bring it back

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Allison Kilkenny

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Allison Kilkenny co-hosts Drunken Politics, the alternative political radio show alongside her partner, comic Jamie Kilstein. She is a contributing writer to Huffington Post, Alternet.org, The Nation, the Beast, Counterpunch.org, and 236.com. She is also a regular guest on SIRIUS radio. She doesn’t care if you’re offended by anything she has written.

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