gentle_lover said:
I say it was the best Olympic opening ever in the history. 10 thumbs up for China!
Mission accomplished already I see. The bulk of this post below I cut and pasted from an interesting article I read. It does a good job to summarize how I feel about China hosting the 2008 Olympic games. I added my own thoughts and opinions to it as well...
I can’t help but find some similarities between the events surrounding the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the Beijing Olympic games.
The 1936 Olympics was meant to be a coming-out party for Germany.
Germany had rebuilt since the disastrous First World War and Adolph Hitler had declared that the games would not only be a showcase for the new Germany, but for the superiority of the Aryans…. the Master Race.
In preparations for the Olympics, Adolph Hitler oversaw a massive public relations campaign:
* Anti-Jewish signs were torn down
* Newspapers were ordered to tone down their attacks on all minorities, including Jews, Blacks and Gypsies.
* Berlin’s Gypsy population was rounded up and interred in a detention camp on the outskirts of the city.
* Berlin’s citizens were commanded to tone down their personal attacks on minorities or anyone who looked like a minority.
* Though many countries threatened to boycott the Olympics, every nation invited showed up.
* In the United States where there was strong opposition to the games, an Olympic Committee was sent to check things out. They came back with a report that news of Nazi oppression was overstated and that America’s athletes, including Jews and Blacks, would be warmly welcomed. As the head of the International Olympic Committee, years later, they would call for the continuation of the Munich Olympics following the massacre of Israeli athletes.
So, the games went on. No country boycotted. The Germans won more medals than any other nation.
Mission accomplished.
Three years later, they were marching on Poland.
Fast forward to 2008....
The Chinese propaganda machine is going full tilt.
Like 1936 Germany, China is using the Olympic stage as a coming out party. These games are designed to showcase China as a major and modern superpower.
Like 1936 Germany, China has had some issues with their minority groups. Like Germany, China is trying awfully hard to whitewash those issues for the Games.
* China has already displaced 1.5 million people as they have built facilities for the Olympic Games. Most were given little advanced notice and were sent away from family and friends to housing that was not on a par with what they had previously enjoyed.
* China has spent $40 billion on construction, while a large percentage of the population remains in abject poverty.
* Citizens are being re-educated to put a better face on the country. Public spitting and shoving, all common in China, have now been criminalized.
* To show that even the weather is perfect in China, the country has developed a massive “weather modification” program for the Olympic fortnight. Utilizing both aircraft and twenty artillery and rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the Chinese will shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds, thus keeping the skies rain free.
* Protesters in China have been silenced and incarcerated. Killed?
- Falun Gong members, whose faith has been banned in China, have been subject to torture and imprisonment.
- Pro-Tibet activists have been similarly jailed, beaten and tortured.
- Any mention of China’s role in the tragedy of Darfur is banned.
China seems to believe its own propaganda. They seem truly shocked that the procession of the Olympic Torch around the world was met with protests and violence. Virtually every country where the Olympic Torch had traveled to saw major protests over China’s civil rights violations.
Here’s the Chinese Foreign Ministry reaction:
“We express our strong condemnation to the deliberate disruption of the Olympic torch relay by ‘Tibetan independence’ separatist forces regardless of the Olympic spirit and the law of Britain and France. Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world.”
It’s not like the protests will change how they do business in China.
The games will go on. No country will boycott. China will win the most medals.
Mission accomplished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-lHJ_rPe2M&feature=related
