How To Tame a Dragon

The Olympic Games are just a season away and within the next couple of weeks athletes from around the world will be competing for places on their national teams. For years, many of these young people will have been preparing themselves to physically and mentally peak during this summer. They will have lofty ambitions and seek to gain international reputations by the winning coveted medals for their countries.

They will represent the best of humanity’s strongest, fastest and most competitive people. They are the elite athletes of the world. Throughout the summer, the hype, publicity, and commercial exploitation of the Games will take place in practically every nation on earth. Theoretically, it will be a time to lay down our arms and pick up our running shoes. It is a quadrennial event when we aspire as a species to live at peace with one another and joyfully compete. The Games symbolize the greatness, grandeur, and godliness of humankind.

But there is a shadow over this year’s Games. The host nation, China, is an unworthy venue for the Olympics. China’s human rights abuses, religious persecutions, and contempt for democracy and liberty makes it the 21st century’s equivalent of Nazi Germany. Despite giving assurances that they would do something about these internal problems eight years ago, the Chinese authorities have instead increased their inhumane practices of political executions, religious intolerance, and tyrannical policing of their nation.

In a civilized world, the evil excesses of China should not be condoned by presenting the Games in the heart of an oppressive regime. The dictatorship of Communist China dishonors the heart, spirit, and majesty of the Olympics. They are abusing the privilege of hosting the World. They should be held accountable for their human rights atrocities and boycotted for their abuse of religious minorities.

I will not watch the Olympics, nor will I esteem any new sporting records or applaud any athletes who accomplish their goals. I will not buy into the “let’s keep politics out of sports’ mentality that passes for civilized sophistry amongst sports commentators, newspapers, and television channels. China, under its present totalitarian leadership, is a bloody stain upon human rights and freedom. I will not make myself a hypocrite by watching an oppressive nation use the Olympics as propaganda to deceive its own people.

In the 20th century, the whole world made terrible mistakes by allowing Nazi Germany to host the Olympics. It seems that in the dawn of this new century, we are about to embark on a course that will see us make the same mistakes. If there is no boycott of the Games by our leaders, then we had better prepare ourselves for war in the next decade, because the Beijing will treat our acquiescence as decadent weakness, just as Hitler did in the 1930s.

Remember this: after the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games, the tyrannical Soviet Union collapsed within a decade; but three years after the participation of all nations at the 1936 Berlin Games, the World was involved in total war.

If we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat history.

No Communist left Behind: China reinforces one-child stance

Hundreds of people in central China have been expelled from the Communist Party for violating the one-child policy, state media has reported.

More than 90,000 people in Hubei province defied the policy in 2007, Xinhua news agency said.
These included 1,678 officials and party members, the agency said. Of these, 500 had been expelled from the party and 395 stripped of their posts.

China implemented the policy, to curb population growth, in the late 1970s.
Urban couples are limited to one child, while rural couples may have two if the first is a girl.
But as China has grown wealthier, couples who can afford to pay the fines are choosing to ignore the policy and have bigger families.

"More party members, celebrities and well-off people are violating the policies in recent years, which has undermined social equality," said Yang Youwang, director of the provincial family planning commission.

A number of cases involving celebrities and officials were still being investigated, he said.
The report did not say whether all the 90,000 people who defied the policy in the province had been punished.

China credits the one-child policy with bringing its soaring population under control.
But the controversial restrictions have also led to a serious gender imbalance, as some couples choose to abort female fetuses in order to make sure their only child is a boy.

…as reported from BBC World News: Religion