• Boycott Beijing?
   
• The U.S. Should Boycott Beijing Olympics - Those of us with hope for China thought six years ago that putting it in the world spotlight with the award of the 2008 Summer Games would at least shame it into reform. The isolationists argued that China's human rights record should disqualify it from the prize of the world's quadrennial athletic carnival and that China would feel no obligation to alter its behavior if it was handed the event it so badly wanted.  We were wrong; they were right. China since has edited its résumé in blood.  - Read the rest of the article HERE
   
• "Doomed to Fail Say The Chinese" - China said on Wednesday that the attempts of some people to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games as a protest against its policy on the Darfur issue are doomed to fail. People who harbor such attempts are "either ignorant or ill-natured", Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun told a briefing Wednesday afternoon, a day after he concluded a four-day visit to Sudan as special envoy of the Chinese government. Read the rest of this article HERE.
   
• "Free Tibet" advocacy groups, such as Students for a Free Tibet, have initiated a campaign to protest the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.  More details HERE
   
• Olympic Dream for Darfur
   
• Paul McCarthy's Beijing Olympic Boycott
   
• 10 Reasons to Boycott the Beijing Olympics
   
• EU should boycott Beijing Olympics over Myanmar  - BRUSSELS (Reuters) September 27, 2007 - European Union countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics unless China intervenes in Myanmar, an EU lawmaker said on Thursday.  More details HERE
   
• Heritage Foundation - Beijing Olympics Boycott - A Wake Up Call - Given China’s objectionable behavior in recent years — in human rights, trade, nuclear proliferation, aid to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, support for genocidal regimes in Sudan and vicious dictatorships in Burma and North Korea — it is no wonder that dozens of frustrated members of the U.S. House of Representatives are calling for an American boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.  Read the rest of the article HERE
   
• Feels Like 1936 Again (Song and lyrics HERE)
   
• Storm Over Burma Could Spell Beijing Boycott - After Burma’s military junta yesterday shot dead eight pro-democracy protesters, including five unarmed monks, a growing chorus of Western voices is beginning to question whether the Chinese government’s failure to restrain its Burmese client state should result in a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. (More of article written by Nicholas Wapshott, Staff Reporter of the New York Sun, September 27, 2007 HERE)

"Hitler wanted to conquer the world with tanks -
while the Chinese do it with industrial revolution"

In the last days of the Weimar Republic, Berlin won the honor of hosting the 1936 Olympics. The fall of the republic, the Nazi rise to power, and the establishment of the Third Reich led to some hesitation regarding the participation of some countries and contributed to the debate over the matter, yet ultimately not one country chose to boycott Nazi Germany.

The Olympics went ahead and turned into a German display of propaganda. Germany’s power, the complete order that prevailed there, and the satisfaction of its citizens were widely publicized. The Nazi regime fully exploited the propaganda and displayed its power and popularity far from the concentration camps. Persecution of the Jews and the pressure exerted on churches were eased for several months and Germany enjoyed recognition and honor.

Sevent- two years following the mistake of holding the Olympics in a dictatorship such as the Third Reich, the world is again granting the recognition and honor of the Olympics to a dictatorship - this time around it’s China.

China is a country featuring a Stalinist political regime and an unrestrained market economy. The country openly represses its citizens’ human and civil rights, and exports cheap products of low quality produced by laborers who work for very low wages, while making a very thin layer rich and creating a capitalist oligarchy. China also pollutes water, air and land with no restraints in order to continue its economic development, it continues to use the death penalty while selling the body parts of those executed, and so forth.

Ranging from Tibet, which was occupied in the 1950s, to the industrial zones of Manchuria, the Chinese regime embodies the combination of totalitarianism and capitalism similar to the Third Reich, and now it hopes to display its strength and power in the Olympics, just like Hitler.

In the days of the Berlin Olympics, countries that monitored Germany with concern had many good reasons to turn a blind eye to what was going on in the Third Reich and legitimize the regime through the very participation in the Olympics. Democratic powers did not wish to infuriate Hitler and push him to extremism, while the non-democratic regimes viewed Germany as a model. Other countries maintained their neutrality and simply showed no interest in what was going on in Germany. 

Read the rest of this article HERE

Protests and potential boycotts

Boycotts and protests have occurred at past Olympic Games by groups of protesters, activists, and political groups who have had grievances against the host countries or another participating nations. In some cases, these activities have been sanctioned by member states, such as in the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics.

While no state has indicated a willingness to boycott the 2008 games, some groups are initiating independent campaigns to do so and other notable groups have called for protests. It has been reported that Chinese intelligence services were monitoring the activities of foreigners suspected of plotting demonstrations during the Olympics. In addition to monitoring NGOs that are concerned with domestic Chinese issues, the Chinese intelligence is also monitoring possible terrorism-related activities and anti-American demonstrations.^[49]

Pro-Tibetan independence groups, such as Students for a Free Tibet, have initiated a campaign to protest the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.  The group plans to protest for Tibetan independence and objects to the Chinese government's use of the Tibetan antelope (chiru) as one of its five mascots.   The Tibetan People's Movement has also demanded representation of Tibet with its own national flag. Hollywood actor Richard Gere in his position as the chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet called for the boycott of the games to put pressure of China to make Tibet independent.

The press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders has advocated a boycott expressing concerns over violations of free speech and human rights in China. It hopes that international pressure and petition can effect the release of prisoners of conscience, and hold China to promises made to the IOC, regarding improvements in human rights.

Activists working to address the ongoing violence in Darfur, Sudan, have called for pressure to be exerted on China because of their financial and diplomatic support for Omar al-Bashir, who is responsible for the Sudanese government's proxy militias. These advocates, which include actress Mia Farrow, NBA athlete Ira Newble, and Sudan researcher Eric Reeves, have organized a global advocacy campaign called Olympic Dream for Darfur. The campaign's goal, using a symbolic Torch Relay, grassroots advocacy, and media attention. Some activists in Taiwan have begun to refer to the Beijing Olympics as the "Genocide Olympics" in The China Post as a way of connecting Beijing's close political and economic ties to the Sudanese regime. The Chinese government, in turn, has criticized the activists for "politicizing" the Olympics and outlined its plans to help the Sudanese economy.

Calls for sustained pressure and possible boycotts of the Olympics have come from former French presidential candidate François Bayrou,^[57] actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative Ronan Farrow, author and Sudan scholar Eric Reeves and the The Washington Post editorial board.  Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, founder of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, sent a letter to Hu Jintao on April 2, 2007 to discuss and possibly end China's involvement in the conflict. 

Additionally, a group of 106 lawmakers in the United States have circulated a letter calling for the US to boycott the coming Olympics because of China's support of the Sudanese regime and the forced relocation of 300,000 Chinese poor to make room for the games. Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced a similar resolution in early August 2007. 

On September 28, 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu urged China to intervene in the ongoing protests in Myanmar. Tutu said that if China did not take a stance against the military rulers in Myanmar he would "join a campaign to boycott the Beijing Olympics".

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