The Olympics begin in that polluted crap hole, Beijing.

I don't think that it was due to the smog why the US women's football [soccer] team (group plays started already today) lost 2:0 vs Norway :wink:

Oh well, the HS class of 2010 will supply the US Women's team with enough talent to win the next four Olympic gold medals.

Re: The Olympics begin in that polluted crap hole, Beijing.
Just wear a mask whilst watching tv kicky, you'll be all right.

Where are you going to find a country that
does not have a "scum government"?

Good point, Wandeljw.

Ah, but all scum are not equal.

Another good point. And here's some proof of that.

China revokes visa of gold medalist, Darfur activist Cheek

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Chi?urn=oly,98718

SCUM!!!

As someone said, there's scum and then there's scum. The Chinese govt IS repressive, not to mention backwards. I boycott Chinese-produced items on principle. And I would not only NOT have apologized for wearing a face mask, I'd have continued to wear it. My health is more important to me than the pride/ego of the Chinese govt. They deserve it - that pollution is disgusting. But the real culprits are the IOC who allowed them to host the games despite their record of inhumanities.

DAMN RIGHT! And their blatant disregard for the truth in an effort to make themselves look good goes from the government all the way down.

I have a friend who is teaching ESL in China--has been for the past few years, actually. In his e-mails he very frequently talks about the unbridled corruption of the administrators in his own school, and how nobody there seems to think anything of cover-ups and lies in order to serve the bullshit appearance of competence and quality that they are trying to portray.

China can eat my freedom-loving shorts!

It's the money, honeys.

Why are you being hard on wandeljw, Mame. He makes sense. I wish I had thought of that.

Snort.


Excuse me, I mean, snort?

I really don't understand why everyone just doesn't tell them to f*ck themselves and come home.

The Chinese recently hosted an international farming conference with a focus on organics. I know a few people who went as speakers and participants. The American farmers decided anything called "Chinese Organic" was a joke. The land is so saturated with industrial pollution that you can't grow food organically in the soil. Even the air and water in the countryside is contaminated with residue from coal fired power plants, sewage and manufacturing waste products. The American speakers all came back with rather severe coughs that took weeks to subside due to the pollution they were exposed to. Literally spitting out pollution is normal procedure for people, and the streets are filled with gray spit piles - despite signs in numerous languages forbidding the act of spitting.

70% of garlic sold in America is now from China. Almost all apple juice is made from Chinese apples. The Chinese are also starting to dominate the markets for nuts, honey and dried fruits. Most of these foods are not labeled as Chinese in origin. The US gov't has decided if China certifies their produce as "organic" it can be sold in the US as organic.

Sadly, the Chinese seem to be combining the worst of capitalism and the worst of fascism to mold their new superpower. Buyer beware.

China's not fooling anyone.

Good ole nationalistic hubris... big mouths and little brains.



You guys are missing these:

I know you are going to have fun with this question, but suppose we are all a bunch of hypocrites. Does that necessairly mean we are wrong?

I see it as wrongheaded, yes.

China will improve as its contagion with the rest of the world becomes greater, and boycotting them and getting hypocritical isn't going to help anyone. They would fixate on the xenophobia and hypocrisy and become too defensive to hear the legitimate criticism. Even Bush had that right.

And the hypocrisy is pretty thick! Do you think the average person in this thread contributes less pollution to the environment than the average Chinese person? How much of China's pollution goes toward your consumerism? What nation is the biggest polluter on the planet? What do these ignorant words do toward improving the situation that your consumerism doesn't undo many times over?

China is progressing, and the jingoism and idiocy of hypocrites gets in the way. The Olympics has helped China improve on the very issue of pollution, and they learned a lot about air quality doing experiments on a scale that were never done before. The Olympics has forced change in China in the way they deal with dissent. It's not nearly enough but they took a huge fundamental step through the Olympics in legitimizing protest and even if they didn't exactly permit real examples of protest they accepted its legitimacy by distinguishing between "legal" and "illegal" protests and creating a (sham) process to establish what is legitimate dissent.

If you actually care about the pollution, stop being one of the big polluters. If you care about China's human rights then be happy that hosting the Olympics put them a baby step closer.

The hypocrisy does matter, because it will end up being all that someone sees in the criticism and doesn't tend to advance the very issues that are being blustered about.

Increased trade with the world and a growing economy and middle class will bring Human Rights progress to China. Want to reduce pollution? Then address your consumerism and the US rejection of pollution treaties because those are far bigger challenges to the environment than Beijing smog.

After all, when they made that smog how much of it was made for you?

I agree with Robert here in the long run and even in the short run, but I do worry about some chinese exports (what was it, a glycerine substitute in toothpaste?) and after reading an article by Jonathan Franzen, fear for birds on the flight route. But I'm hopeful. Did read some article about their bring leaves back to trees in Beijing with some ecologically smart practices with the recovery, if I remember, within the last year. Learning is happening. And, yes, we in the US have much to learn ourselves.