German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she will not attend the Opening of the Beijing Olympics. Presidential hopeful Hilary Rodham Clinton also said she will not be present. Clinton persuaded current President George W Bush also to avoid the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics because of China's human rights record. Frightening thing is that both women's petty boycott of the Olympics is nothing compared to the hundreds of major corporations who do business in the world's fast growing economy and the world's biggest police state. The scary thing is that today's China is just preview of what the new century is going to be like, and it is going to be the Century where freedom and democracy died.

Merkel also fails to grasp that her own European Union is also highly undemocratic, and in the future will be another militaristic police state in the style of modern China and Nazi Germany.

....my very thoughts.........

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I am in a serious relationship....with med school.This semester I am sleeping with Physiology.......books

I was watching CNN and MSNBC about this, but I was too clouded by American Airlines cancelation of a BILLION flights to pay attention.....Can someone give me a briefing on the controversy?

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much noise about nothing. Lite news days.

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Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

Huh they must be waiting for the next primaries to start again lol

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The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God can not protect you!

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today"
-Malcom X

so should we bomb china and force democracy down their throats?? if the people want democracy, they will have to fight for it - not wait for america to fly to the rescue. i think we have done enough damage in the world for that. in addition, china owns all our debt, so we best be careful with them!

however i totally agree with all the protests and with the no-shows. the olympics have always been the perfect political vehicle - this one should be awesome to watch. maybe we will see another tommie smith and john carlos on the medal stand... which would be so much more powerful than all the protests so far...

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The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be.

unfortunately boycotts of this nature accomplish little. if the world is truly outraged at china's record then more decisive action needs to be taken than not showing up.

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AUC 5th Semester
Undergrad: UC Riverside

Are you kidding, we can't bomb China, they have nukes. And also they are the country we borrow money from to finance our lifestyles. You say huh?? China runs massive trade surpluses with the US and buys US treasuries with those extra dollars, so that allows the Fed to print more money and keep the economy running. The Saudis do the same thing, thats why the Saudis are our "Allies", the petrodollar is another source of endless liquidity for the US, it also one of the real reasons Saddam was taken out because the Petroeuro would have thrown a wrench in the whole system.

Both Obama and Clinton have been asking Bush to avoid the Opening Ceremonies but it looks to fall on deaf ears, Bush will just make a comment condemning the violence in Tibet and that will be it. After all Bush's main man Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary has been going back and forth to China to have some high level meetings regarding China's continued financing of US debt.

Anyway if you really want to stick it to the Chinese, don't go to Walmart, Kmart, Target, your local drugstore, shopping mall, and don't pretty much buy anything, of course doing so would stick it to our own economy since consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity and this has been the case for over three decades. The Chinese have us between a rock and a hard place. Those stodgy Europeans who were once the butt of jokes, were smart to be cheapskates and they avoided having their economic strings being handed to the Chinese.

The economies of Europe, China, and the US are so entwined that these protests mean nothing.

It doesn't matter how many of its own citizens China abuses, we (the rest of the world, not just the US) will always accept their bribe of cheap consumer products.

Reminds me of the old adage "The love of money is the root of ALL evil".......

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AUC May '08


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Wil they boycott just the ceremonies or the games?

I lived through 2 boycotts, US boycotted the Olympics in Moscow, then the Soviets boycotted the US games in L.A. . What was accomplished? NOTHING other than not having the best atheletes compete against each other, having the dreams of many athletes truncated and contaminating sports with politics. Let the athletes do the talk by competing and politicans stay the heck away from it.

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...."Beyond jealosy and betrayal; beyond hate and desire; beyond pain and death; lies the ultimate revelation; the final choice; the end; because the fate of destruction is also the joy of rebirth" Neon Genesis Evangelion