China's (well-deserved) Tough Week
Steven Spielberg has gotten all the ink over yesterday's snub of Chinese leaders for their failure to confront Sudan's government on the Darfur crisis, but congressional wheels are turning on the issue as well.
As Beijing scrambles furiously to put on its best face for the 2008 Olympic Games, 120 House members sent a letter (pdf) yesterday to Chinese President Hu Jintao urging that he leverage China's considerable influence over Sudan to end the violence in Darfur. One-hundred Democrats signed the letter, and 20 Republicans.
It seems that China, which last summer helped create a new United Nations aid mission in Darfur, is also responsible for stripping language from the UN resolution that might have forced Sudan to comply with it. Instead of cooperating with that mission, aid groups say, Khartoum has obstructed it.
Not that U.S. efforts to end the genocide have gotten very far either, according to human rights groups. Meanwhile, the Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militias mowed down two more villages yesterday.
Why aren't we boycotting (pdf) those games again?
Comments:
Posted 02/14/2008 10:00am with
What I don’t get is how Spielberg thinks that it was okay to work on the Beijing Games even putting the Darfur issues aside. The massive media censorship, arbitrary arrests of journalists and lawyers, repression of ethnic minorities in Western China, and of course cultural genocide and occupation of Tibet… those weren’t enough to garner his concern (or Congress’ for that matter)?
Posted 02/14/2008 08:22pm with
This notion of boycotting the Olympics is heaping childishness upon imbecility and authoritarian abuse. Who cares for weeks of spectator sports most viewers will never practice, and the mere viewing of which is even more harmful to health. Why support a movement fueled by corporate endorsement of drugs-abusing spoiled, isolated monsters whose entire lives have revolved around celebrity and abuse of their own bodies? Why support a movement that allows governments to build worthless infrastructure with public money, and then forces tax-payers to alter their life’s for weeks to cater to foreigners for the governments’ benefit?
Stop this nonsense!