US announces Beijing Winter Olympic diplomatic boycott, China balks at move

This is a joke and will accomplish nothing. By allowing our athletes to go, we're allowing another brutal dictatorship to have a propaganda victory. You'd think we'd have learned from 1936, but I guess not.

So there will be no diplomats competing in Downhill Skiing or Luge. Oh dear.

Yup, but it's better than doing nothing and leaving China with all the photo ops of the people trying to hold them to account on their human rights record.

I mean, it is the least possible thing to do. But it is something nonetheless.

Good comment from a caller to the radio earlier - what's so precious & special about our athletes that it becomes inconceivable for them to miss an Olympics, especially when sending an important message to a rotten dictatorship is far more morally important than the cheap nationalist thrills gained from winning medals? I get that they train hard for years but there's much more important factors involved here than catering to some niche sports that a few thousand people in our country even bother paying any attention at all to. Each and every Olympics in China, and in Russia too, should be automatically boycotted by every Western country. Not only would it slap Beijing and Moscow hard right across their murderous faces, it would also be a great kick in the ass to the corrupt monsters at the IOC who blatantly award the games based only on who can give them the biggest bribes.

The entire Olympic system is a scam. It's time to leave it altogether until it's either cleaned up from top to bottom, or replaced completely by something honest, clean, and credible.

It was fun listening to China on the radio too. They said 'we don't care about people not invited anyhow', then proceeded to chastise the US and say there will be retaliation. For something they didn't care about.

Good comment from a caller to the radio earlier - what's so precious & special about our athletes that it becomes inconceivable for them to miss an Olympics, especially when sending an important message to a rotten dictatorship is far more morally important than the cheap nationalist thrills gained from winning medals? I get that they train hard for years but there's much more important factors involved here than catering to some niche sports that a few thousand people in our country even bother paying any attention at all to. Each and every Olympics in China, and in Russia too, should be automatically boycotted by every Western country. Not only would it slap Beijing and Moscow hard right across their murderous faces, it would also be a great kick in the ass to the corrupt monsters at the IOC who blatantly award the games based only on who can give them the biggest bribes.

The entire Olympic system is a scam. It's time to leave it altogether until it's either cleaned up from top to bottom, or replaced completely by something honest, clean, and credible.

Let's add that there's nothing amateur about these amateur athletes. Most are financially supported so they can focus exclusively on their sport. There's a reason rich countries win the vast majority of medals and it's directly related to investment, government or private, into winning.

There will be and always has been fantastic heart-warming stories every Olympics, but it's just not enough to hold up the whole rotting edifice.

I can imagine that part of the reason you try to become a professional hockey player is the money, but I don't think it's the same for cross-country skiers.

Yeah and there’s no premier league for water polo.

Damn straight!



-J.

IMO it should be boycotted, not just by the political bigwigs, but by all.

Not to take anything away from the athletes, who I know work hard to make it there, but based on the sad facts of Chinese dictatorship and all the crap that relates to it.

The sad reality is that international events like this are becoming so prohibitively expensive which is why only horrible regimes who give a damn about their citizens can afford to put them on. China, Russia with the Sochi games. The next world cup in Qatar.

Not to mention all the gulf states staging Formula 1 races while they suppress the rights of their citizens.

While the average citizen can see the sport washing for the cynical attempt that is, in the end, money talks. And for systematically corrupt organizations like the IOC and FIFA, that's all they care about.

The UK, Australia and now Canada have also joined the diplomatic boycott.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudea ... -1.6277773

And China continues to say it's being politicized, and by saying there will be political ramifications, thereby politicizing it.