OT: Boycotting the Olympics
I tend to view political issues as largely relating to domestic politics. Apologies to the mods and readers if this is improper.
Given China's ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people and other human rights abuses, athletes from several countries are planning at least some form of boycott of these winter games.
On a personal note, I won't be giving the games any clicks or TV time. I hope you might consider the same.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:49 PM ^
1936. Jesse Owens.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:53 PM ^
You boycott them and organize an alternative event in a country that doesn't commit genocide. The Chinese government doesn't deserve to benefit from hosting. If I were an athlete, particularly one one on a college hockey team, I'd stand for something bigger than participating for a medal and boycott the games too.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:39 PM ^
But LeBron James said that China is a okay
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:40 PM ^
I will boycott eating Chinese Food while I watch the Winter Olympics.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:41 PM ^
Have a USA Olympics with our athletes only. Jets flying over and Kid Rock playing at the ceremony.
Fuck China!
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:45 PM ^
Kid Rock is an untalented turd.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:57 PM ^
And your a communist douche bag
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:15 PM ^
*You're
And hey -- be orginal, please. Don't pull a Madge Taylor Green and shout COMMUNIST! at anything and everything you don't like.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:26 PM ^
Commie, pinko, pinkfloyd2000....hmmmm.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:28 PM ^
Yeah, say original things like nazi or racist.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:36 PM ^
Whoa whoa whoa, that is completely uncalled for and not fair to turds.
February 4th, 2022 at 10:04 PM ^
Grow up
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:45 PM ^
Yeah, not gonna watch.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:46 PM ^
You would rather be a Uegar today than an American Indian a100 years ago.Be a grown up. The country you live In has uselessly killed millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Africa and countless other countries. The US continues to drone strike civilian weddings across the Middle East. We support apartheid countries in Asia.
we don’t offer basic humanitarian assistance to millions of our own citizens like healthcare and housing that even China offers and we disenfranchise the vote from a large percentage of our own citizens.
our CIA killed Kennedy, our FBI killed MLK. We supported death squads in a dozen central and South American countries.
It may burst your right-wing America first brand or your liberal view of American exceptionalism, but shit dude, we are literally the country that knocks.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:53 PM ^
This is a great reminder of our imperfections. I'll do my best not to support evil stuff in general.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:55 PM ^
Username checks out.
You must be really fun at parties. Given up on the handlebar mustache yet?
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:59 PM ^
Point out where I am lying, Dutch? I’m just saying it’s pretty dumb to throw stones in our massive glass house
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:38 PM ^
It's possible to disagree with the hypocritical bureaucracy that is the US Government and comment about the atrocities of another.
February 2nd, 2022 at 10:30 PM ^
Nope, the Chinese need to be called to task for their brutality. The genocide is happening this very minute.
If the Germans decided to start rounding up Jews, Gypsies, gay people and anyone else they deemed inferior (again), would you tell us we can't call them out for it? I hope not.
Sorry, but evil is evil and we are morally bound to not stand by and do nothing when we see it. Doesn't matter if that evil is halfway around the world or right here, we should act.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:57 PM ^
username yada yada yada
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:02 PM ^
Hey, I haven’t seen many people on this boated referring to PSU as Pedo-State or refer to the MSU scandal on this bored recently. It’s cause that shit came to UM. Well, same thing is true with international politics.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:33 PM ^
Bad comparison. True, all three institutions had predators. The difference was the reactions of the alumni/fanbase.
Those PSU losers are still claiming either Sandusky was innocent or Joe Pa had no clue and was railroaded.
Contrast that with near total condemnation of Bo for his role by people on this board.
That's just a lazy, not well thought through comment on your part.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:47 PM ^
Total condemnation, anything and everything short of taking down his statue and renaming Schembechler hall. Such sacrifices our alumni have made...
February 3rd, 2022 at 5:42 PM ^
I am both boated and bored.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:03 PM ^
Yeah, user name checks out. I heard the Global Times is looking for a few more writers. You should check it out.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:09 PM ^
“Username” dipshit comments.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:09 PM ^
Jeff Zucker, is that you?
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:12 PM ^
Another Commie High grad here, and ... not sure I agree. I know all the stuff to which you refer, but I push back against the idea that a recognition of our own historical failures means we have to give up entirely on pushing back against genocides committed by others.
Indeed, what, exactly, would you have us do now about our treatment of the natives here 200 years ago, or Iran in the 1950s, etc. etc.?
I mean ... would we have been allowed to object to the Nazis in the 1930s or 1940s? Stalin's treatment of the Ukrainians?
I'm really not meaning to challenge your description of American history. It's a pretty alarming reminder that, in human history, great power is often almost inevitably abused (as it was, for instance, by England, France, Belgium, Spain, etc. etc.).
But ... I'm still going to object to genocide, thank you very much.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:16 PM ^
You are likely the only person on this board that knows “Commie High” is a reference to Community High School and not “Communists Being High.”
im not supporting genocide. I agree with you. However, since America is currently supporting genocide in Yemen, Palestine and other places, it seems fairly arbitrary to just not watch figure skating because China. That’s a OANN/MSNBC take, not a grownup opinion.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:43 PM ^
It's a grown up thing to vote with your dollars and where one gives the value of their attention.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:20 PM ^
Yeah, the US government stinks and has done some horrible things. But they aren’t anywhere close to China. China’s government killed millions of its own citizens not too long ago.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:48 PM ^
literally the entire United States is built by slaves and on the remains of dead Natives. By comparison, Mao only killed landlords.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:51 PM ^
Pretty sure you’re maizen
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:52 PM ^
ok dweeb we get it
February 2nd, 2022 at 10:02 PM ^
Dweeb, I don’t think I’ve ever been called one of those before. I kind of like it.
Incidentally, you’re the one that made a deal out of being “maizen”. I’m just commenting.
February 4th, 2022 at 12:33 AM ^
Starting with the personal choice question comparing the US over 100 years ago and China under the CCP (deceptive at best), everything you said is either a lie, distortion, or gross exaggeration. Apparently your Leftist Theology not only allows you to see everything related to the US as evil but also everything the CP does as good.
But even more despicable is your beliefs requiring the complete dismissal of the immense evil of the CCP. You don't have any trouble with what they are doing to the people of Hong Kong despite their signed guarantee not to do so, or what happens to any group or individual suspected of disagreeing with or causing trouble for someone connected to the CCP (recent case of the female tennis player who accused a CCP connected male of rape, mysteriously disappeared for a week, and reappeared on social media saying she lied). Apparently, you've also forgotten what they did when the Chinese Spring movement demonstrated for basic human rights in China - 10,000 or more massacred in Tiananmen Square, hundreds of thousands more beaten, tortured and imprisoned in horrific conditions. Apparently, you've even forgotten the tens of millions, tortured and killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Very possibly a total of 100 million murdered.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:52 PM ^
they are running actual concentration camps in china. the chinese people are not to blame. the CCP and governing officials are.
and incidentally, taiwan should be very nervous about the closing ceremonies of the olympics. after the CCP has its propaganda pageant, taiwan is next in line.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:37 PM ^
Those assholes in the CCP counted Taiwan's medals as belonging to the CCP in the last Olympics when they did the medal total by country.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:55 PM ^
Not a chance. There's no reason to boycott the Olympics no matter where it's held. The US did the proper thing by not sending the government contingent over there. Let the athletes who have worked for years compete in peace.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:24 PM ^
Totally get what you're saying, though I think that an ongoing genocide is a good reason.
My hope would be to allow alternate countries to host in the short term and/or stricter site-selection criteria in the future.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:56 PM ^
This is a very non-impactful gesture. There is simply too much investment in China, making too much money for the ruling class in the US, for any real change to occur. We’ve effectively outsourced the dirty underbelly of unregulated capitalism to a country so far away that it is out of sight out of mind for the average American. As long as we keep getting cheap, decent quality products from China the child labor, the genocide, the censorship… none of it matters. Rich people getting richer, everybody else getting low priced products without having to see the work to produce them… nothing changing.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:58 PM ^
I was with you until you said "decent quality".
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:00 PM ^
Hard to argue with the larger structural issues, but I'm thinking that bad ratings mean lower broadcasting bids in the future that have a medium-term impact on the IOC site selection.
February 2nd, 2022 at 8:59 PM ^
>Given China's ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people and other human rights abuses
How about the Yemeni genocide by US backed Saudi Arabia? Or the genocide of Palestinians by Israeli military forces that directly receive your money via taxes? What about the thousands upon thousands of Central American children held up in camps along the US border? Or the countless Latin American countries destabilized by US intervention and regime change? What about the CIA literally funding ISIS by proxy through the Syrian rebel army? Let's get ugly, what about the centuries of racial violence in this country?
I'd take your concerns seriously if you did jack shit to address the atrocities perpetrated by the country you live and pay taxes in but nah, let's just push more military aggression and hawkishness across the pond against the world's largest countries. More armed Nazis in Ukraine, more disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico, more labor suppression at home....while I sit on my ass and don't press the on button on the TV remote because China evil.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:04 PM ^
You're right in that those are also terrible things. However, I've lwritten to my Congressmen about many of those issues.
And withholding viewership impacts the bottom line of those who invest in these games. As an individual, the impact is almost nothing--but if enough folks do it, it can send a message.
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:28 PM ^
I'm sorry, what exactly did OP do or fail to do that disqualifies them from recognizing that genocide is bad and then taking some small effort to oppose it? Being born in the US, is it?
As clearly a connoisseur of qualified injustice, please tell me which injustices am I allowed to protest, and after which actions taken to remedy historical wrongs am I allowed to be also opposed to genocide in china?
February 2nd, 2022 at 9:33 PM ^
Maybe protest the injustices happening in your own backyard, by actors your own tax dollars support before virtue signaling about China.
February 2nd, 2022 at 10:01 PM ^
Like what? Requiring an ID to vote? Horrifying.
February 3rd, 2022 at 12:24 AM ^
I still see no dependancy of one protest on the other, nevermind that you're assuming we haven't also objected to those. Simply put, why not both?
The CCP often invokes the provincial "glass houses" idiom when mildly criticized for genocide, and why wouldn't they when the scrutiny from within is already extinguished?
It's a disingenuous deflection: the argument that we ought to first affect the evil we are most responsible for is designed to sound like a reasonable division of labor. In reality, it requests a situation where the only people responsible for opposing the Uighur genocide are precisely the people that won't be allowed to.