The International Olympic Committee deserves some kind of award for gross and sensational stupidity, giving the Summer Games to the ChiComs. This is going to be a major fiasco. Big enough to bring down the whole commie regime? I doubt it, but we can dream.Indeed we can.
I couldn't have said it better myself!Apparently, continued Chinese repression in Tibet is no big deal for the International Olympic Committee:
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (AP) - International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge poured cold water Saturday on calls for a boycott of the Summer Games in Beijing over China’s crackdown in Tibet, saying it would only hurt athletes.
“We believe that the boycott doesn’t solve anything,” Rogge told reporters on this Caribbean island. “On the contrary, it is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing.”
Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet on Friday—the most violent riots there in nearly two decades—left at least 30 protesters dead, according to a Tibetan exile group.
China ordered tourists out of Tibet’s capital and troops patrolled the streets on Saturday.
On a six-day tour of the Caribbean, Rogge expressed condolences for the victims and said he hopes calm will be restored immediately. He declined to say whether the committee would change its stance if violence continues or more people are killed.
“The International Olympic Committee has consistently resisted calls for a boycott of the Olympic games,” Rogge said. He declined to comment further on Tibet during a brief news conference.
IOC Vice President Thomas Bach said the committee will speak with China about human rights and condemned the crackdown, saying “every use of violence is a step backwards.
That’s what happens when you award the Olympics to a Communist dictatorship.
. . . the US relationship with China has long been one of "give and take" -- the US gives, and China takes. Each time the US makes an accommodation, Beijing sees only weakness and becomes more aggressive -- which in turn prompts the US State Department to offer yet more concessions.
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And for all of this pandering, what has the Bush administration gained? Half-hearted Chinese cooperation in the "Six Party Talks," Chinese obstruction in the human tragedy unfolding in Sudan, renewed Chinese threats of military action against Taiwan, and now the brazen and public humiliation of the US in barring the USS Kitty Hawk from Hong Kong's harbor.
And China, certainly no help in encouraging transparency in Tehran's nuclear ambitions, is now using the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as a rationale for pressuring the US, the Europeans and the International Atomic Energy Agency to ease off on demands for access to what is still a very troubling ongoing uranium enrichment program.
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The US relationship with Taiwan isn't the only thing that has suffered as a result of our hopeless policy of appeasement vis-a-vis China. It highlights a glaring hypocrisy in US foreign policy, undermines our international image, emboldens our enemies and enhances the credibility of our detractors like China.
The Bush administration's practice of trying to limit Taiwan's democratic development and diplomatic space in return for China's illusory "cooperation" on North Korea, Myanmar, Iran or Sudan sends the message that the US is ceding Asia to China's hegemony.
The referendum will - just the process of having the referendum - will make it harder for a new president of Taiwan to develop better relations across the Taiwan Strait.
"'Almost all enemies' of U.S. 'are China's friends'" says the report from East-Asia-Intel.com:
An official of the Chinese government last week confirmed that Beijing is supporting U.S. enemies around the world.
Yuan Peng, director of the Institute of American Studies, part of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said that "in the world, almost all enemies of the United States are China's friends."
The rare admission confirms the view of some critics who say China's arms sales to
rogue states like Iran, Syria and North Korea are based on a deliberate strategy of indirectly confronting the United States.Peng's institute, the CICIR, is an entity of the Ministry of State Security, China's main intelligence service. His remarks were included in a state-run media report.
Peng said long-term strategic stability between the U.S. and China "still remain[s] doubtful."
I went to Beijing in 1995 and stood up to the Chinese government on human rights and women’s rights.Words fail me.
China is making "incremental progress" in human rights and is likely to continue making "steady forward movement" in the future, according to a confidential report by Canadian diplomats in Beijing.
The report, obtained by The Globe and Mail, suggests that Canada's diplomats have a much rosier view of China than those expressed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet ministers, who have been highly critical of China's human-rights record.
The confidential report by the Canadian embassy in Beijing, obtained under access-to-information law, is filled with praise for many aspects of China's human-rights record, although it also has negative assessments of many issues. It suggests a far more nuanced and cautious view of China than the sharply critical views often expressed by Conservative politicians in recent
years.The report argues, for example, that China's dissidents are getting better treatment these days, because their prison sentences are often less than five years, which is "a marked contrast" to the jail terms of 15 or 20 years in the past.
The report also maintains that Chinese scholars "continue to enjoy increasing intellectual freedom." It praises the "steady increase in personal freedoms of the average person." And it argues that the Chinese authorities "may be losing the battle to control the Internet."
The pace and success of China’s military modernization continue to exceed U.S. government estimates. Indeed, on occasion the U.S. defense and intelligence communities have been taken by surprise, as in the case of the launching of the Jin class submarine by the navy of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s defense industry is producing new generations of weapon platforms with impressive speed and quality, and these advancements are due in part to the highly effective manner in which Chinese defense companies are integrating commercial technologies into military systems. Additionally, industrial espionage provides Chinese companies an added source of new technology without the necessity of investing time or money to perform research. Chinese espionage in the United States, which now comprises the single greatest threat to U.S. technology, is straining the U.S. counterintelligence establishment. This illicit activity significantly contributes to China’s military modernization and acquisition of new capabilities.Who's "engagement" is this?
The CBC has recently come under fire for rescheduling and retooling a Falun Gong documentary at the 11th hour. The state-funded broadcaster admitted to reacting to requests by the Chinese government to pull the doc and provide 'balance' . . .Said "balance" went further than that - even to the point of the CBC conveniently forgetting the Communists' history of poison exports.
Canada is therefore starting to engage in more frank and more public diplomacy with China on our human rights concerns. The prime minister's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama was mostly about sending a message to the regime in Beijing, which is that we respect the Tibetan cultural identity and oppose Chinese government measures designed to suppress it.Once again, Canada can be proud of its leaders, and of the choice it made to elect Stephen Harper nearly two years ago.
The good news is that China is becoming much more a part of the mainstream. In its economic development and even in giving greater liberties to its people.
China's accession to the WTO is a vital step in its incorporation into the rules-based multilateral trading system. This move will strengthen the rule of law and accelerate domestic reforms in China. The long-term political and social impacts of China's accession may even exceed the commercial benefits.
President Bush did in fact adopt the Democrats’ North Korea policy. And now, within a year, that Democratic policy has failed. Almost immediately after North Korea’s nuclear test on October 9, 2006, President Bush warned that “the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and we would hold North Korea fully accountable.” Having deployed the stick, at the behest of conservative hawks, the president then offered the carrot of economic aid and promises of security in return for disarmament . . . The problem is that a combination of carrots and sticks has not stopped Kim Jong Il from handing Syria extensive nuclear technology, and perhaps even fissile material.
The answer, says Allison, is a direct and unambiguous warning to Kim Jong Il modeled on President Kennedy’s statements during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As Kennedy warned Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union, President Bush needs to unambiguously promise retaliation for any nuclear explosion of North Korean origin on American soil. According to Allison, America will only be safe if Kim feels “in his gut” that North Korea will be held directly responsible for nuclear terror — even if the blast results from material passed through a chain of rogue states and only eventually into terrorist hands. On the other hand, if Kim feels as though he can escape detection as the ultimate source of a terrorist nuclear weapon, or if Kim believes that he will not be held directly responsible for his place in a long and complex chain of nuclear proliferation, the path is open to likely nuclear terror on American soil within the next decade.
. . . let me tell you, Chris, what is missing from this economy: 1.8 million jobs that have moved to communist China from the United States . . . what I would do is pass the Hunter-Ryan bill which would put countervailing duties on the Chinese when they cheat. They are cheating on trade right now . . . when Communist China devalues their currency by 40 percent, they undercut American products around the world . . .That said - and remember, I say this as a Hunter guy - I would have preferred he focus a little more on the national security threat of the Communist regime. As it was, that issue was taken up by two other candidates, Tom Tancredo . . .
But if they wanted to buy something else that would have, in this case, certainly, more of an impact on our national security interests, I'd say, no, we'd have to think about that in a totally different way. It is exactly the same with regard to China. There are things that we should have thought of in the first place, when we passed the PNTR, which I voted against, along with Duncan Hunter. And I absolutely agree that trade is a great idea in many respects. But when you trade with people who are your potential enemy, and they have shown a willingness to use that economic opportunity to actually increase their threats to the United States, I'm not for trading with them at all.. . . and Fred Thompson:
I was one of the strictest advocates of imposing restrictions on the Chinese for their behavior in terms of exporting dangerous materials to other countries and tying some of trade policies to what they did in that regard. They have still not done enough. They have devalued their currency which puts them in a favored position as far as our manufacturers are concerned.FYI and for the record, Fred Thompson did indeed push hard for those curbs, but he still voted for PNTR with Communist China after the curbs were voted down. As for Tancredo, again, but for the presence of Hunter in the race, he'd be my favorite.
We're a country that should think about all these people that are coming out of poverty in China and India and elsewhere -- we should think of them as newThis is utterly wrong on so many levels that I can't get into all of them, but I can remind everyone that "China and India" is just about the most ignorant geopolitical pairing imaginable. No one who falls into that trap can be expected to steer the ship of state thoughtfully enough, in my humble opinion.
customers . . . What are China and India trying to do? China and India are trying to develop themselves to be like us, which is why we got a heck of a lot we can sell to them . . .
