The more things change, the more they stay the same.
In the run up to the scheduled Olympics to be held in Bei-jing Britain's Olympic Committee has decided to to force the UK's olympic athletes to to sign a 32 page contract banning them from any criticism or comment on China's politics, violations of human rights or issues like the occupation of Tibet - or stay home.
Not only will public comments be banned, but remarks inprivate conversations, on blogs, and in correspondence. Violators will be shipped backed to the UK forthwith.
This isn't the first time British athletes have been forced to bow down to dictators, but it's the first time it's actually been made official and binding policy and a make or break criterion to decide who goes to the Olympics and who doesn't.
The above photo is from 1938, and it shows the British football team obeying orders and giving the Nazi salute in Berlin to `show respect' for Hitler and their hosts. This despicable action, of course, was after kristallnacht and at a time when Hitler's intentions toward the Jews was no longer in doubt.
One of the few things I respect Jimmy Carter for - and believe me, it's a tiny list - was his decision to have the US boycott the Soviet Olympics in Moscow in 1980 after its brutal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
Apparently the British Olympic Association is prepared to repeat 1938 all over again. If so, then it says a great deal about how much freedom is truly valued in Great Britain these days.
was his decision to have the US boycott the Soviet Olympics in Moscow in 1980 after its brutal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
ReplyDelete.....kind of makes one wonder why the planes flew into the WTC and not the kremlin?
while some argue back/forth about what would have happened had that suitcase bomb been closer to hitler.
i've wondered of late what detente' would have looked like had the US helped the USSR in their southern excursion.
Louie old pal,I don't think you want to conflate what the Russians did in Afghanistan with the fact that Osama was one of the people fighting them.
ReplyDeleteThe Russians massacred thousands of men, women and children,sowed the country with unmarked mine fields,and blatantly raped and tortured people to keep their puppet regime in power.
Their brutality is the huge reason they ultimately were defeated, because it united the various Afghan factions against them.
Do the research and then tell me if you would really have wanted the US to be apart of that.
All Best,
ff
Their brutality is the huge reason they ultimately were defeated, because it united the various Afghan factions against them.
ReplyDelete....and i thought it was just the US satellite imagery of russian troop movements, the funding/smuggling/suppling of arms by the CIA/DOD that did that. you know, the arms they said were twenty years old and the afghans couldn't use them against the US. the stinger missiles and such. maybe, had the US thrown in with the USSR some of that raping and pillaging might, might, not have occured....leaving the marines to look for little mohammed atta. putin after all publicly pledged the USSR to be an ally of the US on 9/12/2001. was that before or after they started building the iranian reactor? i digress.
i never said it was the right thing to have done, only a mental excercise.