Beijing 0

Since Los Angeles 1984 I recall watching a lot of Olympic Games every fourth summer (my oldest Olympic impression is the pole vault, not the rocketeers). My record was Sydney 2000: I watched an average of 8 hours per day, perhaps even more.

But this time I watched ZERO seconds of the Olympic Games. Nothing, absolute nothing, not even in YouTube or any other online videos. I just kept reading the usual newspapers which I always read.

I talked about boycotting the Games, and I did it. Because I don't either like the repressive government of China nor the attitude of Occident towards China: being "ecnonomically affraid" of them, but supporting them, and making them stronger. It's nonsense, a contradiction. Absurd. For example: compare these numbers: 14,901 residents were relocated to make way for Olympic venues, according to a Beijing municipal official. But a human-rights group says that 1,500,000 people evicted to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure. (Yes, unfortunately I don't know the source: I read it here, where you can read some other interesting numbers.)

It's stupid to get impressed because they are "so successful". At what cost? Athletes are preselected very soon, trained for years at the governement's expenses, so that they can achieve the most gold medals in order to impress us. And people do get impressed.

But suicide is top-5 in the death causes in that country. There are for instance one suicide and eight failed suicide attempts every two minutes in China. Obviously there are many reasons to attempt suicide, not only government's role.

Liu Xiang's story is a good hint to understand how things work. Or Cao Lei's (I really think that the Party put pressure on the father's decision of not telling her that her mother had passed away).

C'est ça!