It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by rizla
Sorry, but I see the point as moot.
The Olympics won't be canceled and everyone will go. Why? Moolah. The Chinese are simply too big in the global economy. USA doesn't come to our Olympics? Okay, then we'll start seller our dollars...
Two protesters ran onto the field at Ancient Olympia while Liu Qi, president of the Games' organising committee, was giving a speech. Both were detained.
Lhadon Tethong, director of Students for a Free Tibet, said both men were taken to the local police station.
"One of our colleagues saw them being dragged by about 20 police through town," he said.
When the incident took place, China state TV cut away to a pre-recorded scene, preventing Chinese viewers from seeing what was taking place.
Commentators on Chinese TV never mentioned the incident.
Originally posted by yanchek
Using boycott for political purposes is IMO completely against Olympic spirit. Athletes are not politicians. They are ambassadors of goodwill, friendship and fair play and denying them the opportunity to bring that to Chinese is the lowest of the low.
Originally posted by West Coast
Then we stop buying your crap (which that is all it is), then when that happens the Chinese economy will simply collapse, as it is totally reliant on the EU and American economy.
The journey to Beijing is the longest ever planned, lasting 130 days and covering 137,000 kilometres (85,000 miles) worldwide. Most of it will be on Chinese soil however.
Aside from Athens, the flame will only stop in London and Paris among European capitals. It will only stop in San Francisco and Buenos Aires in the Americas and just Dar es Salaam in Africa.
Upon arrival in Beijing, one flame will be separated from the torch and kept in a special lantern to be taken to the peak of Mount Everest during early May and then return to Tibet.
The International Olympic Committee has asked China to promise not to delay transmissions of the Beijing games, after France raised concerns about Chinese television’s censoring of Tibet protests at the torch-lighting ceremony in Greece this week.
French TV executives have asked the European Broadcasting Union to extract guarantees from Beijing that transmissions will be live and uninterrupted even if protests take place.
Neither the IOC nor the EBU said they had any grounds to believe Beijing would renege on pledges for live transmission made two years ago and reaffirmed in January.
Broadcasts of the torch ceremony were suspended after a disruption by media rights protesters based in France. That led to calls for a French boycott of coverage of the games if transmissions were censored.
International rights-holders will receive radio and TV feeds from Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, a joint venture between the Beijing organising committee and Olympic Broadcasting Services, a subsidiary of the IOC.
China might bar live television broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Beijing Olympics, apparently unnerved by the recent outburst of unrest among Tibetans and fearful of protests in the heart of the Chinese capital.
A ban on live broadcasts would wreck the plans of NBC and other major international networks, who have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to broadcast the Aug. 8-24 games and are counting on eye-pleasing live shots from the iconic square.
The rethinking of Beijing's earlier promise to broadcasters comes as the government has poured troops into Tibetan areas wracked by anti- government protests this month and stepped up security in cities, airports and entertainment venues far from the unrest.
China Might Bar Tiananmen Broadcasts
The Chinese seem to be panicking about allowing free media access. They do not want the west or anyone else for that matter to know what they're doing.
I don't know if its a fear of their "national secrets" leaking out or their "bad behavior."
I suspect its both.
[edit on 3/27/2008 by biggie smalls]
WHEN senior members of the International Olympic Committee sat down with the Beijing Olympics organisers in 2003 to discuss issues that might arise in the months ahead of this year's Games, Tibet was one of a long list of potential controversies.
[..]
"There is a false impression in the public at large that a sporting organisation like the IOC has a decree over the political and social agendas of a country. But that is simply not a fact."
That said, once Games' time approaches and the Olympic family comes to town, the situation changes. Beijing organisers, for example, have given their word that the international media will be able to go about their business, reporting the Games with the same freedoms as they would in any other country. This will make life interesting if any groups decide to stage protests in Beijing during the Games.
The assurance by the Chinese allegedly includes free access to the internet, which Chinese authorities regularly monitor and block using sophisticated firewalls.
Under pressure from the news media and human rights groups, more leaders are now considering defying China and meeting the Dalai Lama, and while none have supported an outright boycott of the Olympic Games in August, the possibility of not attending the opening ceremony is no longer ruled out.
The president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, on Wednesday invited the Dalai Lama to speak to European Union legislators and questioned whether European leaders should attend the opening.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime critic of China's human rights policies, said Friday it would be wrong to boycott the Beijing Olympics.
She said in a statement that while the Chinese government has failed to live up to its commitments to improve human rights conditions in China and Tibet, "I believe a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would unfairly harm our athletes who have worked so hard to prepare for the competition."
She said the Olympics should provide an opportunity for free expression and that she supported the rights of individuals and groups to make their views on China known when the Olympic torch passes through San Francisco next month.
"As I said in India last week where I met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, if freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in Tibet, we have lost our moral authority to speak out on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," she said.
Britain and several other European Union countries have rejected calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August.
The decision comes despite appeals from human rights organisations that leaders send a strong signal to China over its suppression of protests in Tibet.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.
As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.
The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games' opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown's determination to attend the Olympics.
Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.
"The presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate," Tusk said. "I do not intend to take part."