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Moved 2022 before its to late.


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4 minutes ago, FYI said:

Is that what that was?! And you claim that Quaker & I "fight" tooth & nail! :lol::P

oh my god you do.

i'm allowed to come on here every 3 years and make an argument, jeez. but my fights are not the lifeblood of the forum.

only my jokes are.

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1 hour ago, Sir Rols said:

I swallowed that argument in 2008, and look how well that worked. I believed, and argued here, that the Olympics were putting a spotlight on China that they’d be forced to confront, that a growing middle class in China would inevitably eventually have them embrace a more democratic path. I believed it was more useful to engage with them than isolate them. I gave China the benefit of the doubt and believed their promises that they would honour overseas media access and not censor their news. 

And since then, we’ve got the Great Firewall, Google kowtowing to the CCOP’s wish’s if they want to operate over there, a not-even-so gradual but overt and unapologetic tightening of their autocracy, and the knee-jerk Wolf Warrior reaction to any person or government that has the temerity to comment on them anything but favourably. For the first time since Mao was alive, Australia has NO correspondents on ground in China - our last ABC journalists had to literally flee abruptly when told they were about to be imminently arrested. And we’ve got frickin concentration camps!

So, yes, I’ve seen us play the “reasonable” strategy before, and seen the fruits that that bore. As Krow says, it’s a very clear moral stand now.

PS: if I’m editing these are lot, it’s mainly to correct typos. I HATE spellcheck and auto-correction on iPads.

No question it's a different situation now.  And a large part of that isn't just that China hosted an Olympics once before, but the age of media that we live in where information moves a lot more easily and quickly than it did 13 years ago.  Sure, we were duped into believing that the Olympics would change the face of China.  Like you said, we gave them the benefit of the doubt and sure, shame on all of us for buying into that.

So here we are with take #2.  There's no pretense here that hosting the Olympics will make China do anything other than spend about 3 weeks pretending there isn't a genocide going on in their country.  Again, that's why I think maybe the strategy is to go to China, shove a camera and a microphone in the faces of Chinese officials and ask them the tough questions.  Isolating them, as you allude to, will just make it easier for them to continue to do horrible things and have no accountability for it.

Like I said earlier, if I thought there could be a majority of nations out there to support a boycott, I'd certainly be behind that.  I'm not sure that's going to happen though.  A diplomatic boycott seems like a no-brainer, IMO.  Not sure withholding the athletes, unless it's a majority of athletes, is the way to go here though.

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2 minutes ago, krow said:

oh my god you do.

i'm allowed to come on here every 3 years and make an argument, jeez. but my fights are not the lifeblood of the forum.

only my jokes are.

Quaker & I agree on here around 80-90% of the time. It's every once in a while that we vehemently don't. And when we don't, the "good talk" is no different than yours & his right here. And that goes for a lot of people on here. They only stick their neck out when it's a topic that touches a chord with them. It's par for the course here on GB's.

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1 minute ago, krow said:

pls like this post before midnight i think i'm about to win the mf day in likes and i want it to be a good one. 

There, you got your like

3 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

No question it's a different situation now.  And a large part of that isn't just that China hosted an Olympics once before, but the age of media that we live in where information moves a lot more easily and quickly than it did 13 years ago.  Sure, we were duped into believing that the Olympics would change the face of China.  Like you said, we gave them the benefit of the doubt and sure, shame on all of us for buying into that.

So here we are with take #2.  There's no pretense here that hosting the Olympics will make China do anything other than spend about 3 weeks pretending there isn't a genocide going on in their country.  Again, that's why I think maybe the strategy is to go to China, shove a camera and a microphone in the faces of Chinese officials and ask them the tough questions.  Isolating them, as you allude to, will just make it easier for them to continue to do horrible things and have no accountability for it.

Like I said earlier, if I thought there could be a majority of nations out there to support a boycott, I'd certainly be behind that.  I'm not sure that's going to happen though.  A diplomatic boycott seems like a no-brainer, IMO.  Not sure withholding the athletes, unless it's a majority of athletes, is the way to go here though.

i’m not sure information is any speedier and easier than 13 years ago. If anything, I think it’s got harder to get things out of China - their firewall and surveillance of foreign journalists is even more sophisticated than it was then. Not to mention the foreign press corps on the ground has been decimated dramatically. As to shoving cameras in officials’ faces. Again we tried that in 2008 - asked lots of impertinent questions about Tibet. They were either stonewalled, dismissed as not about the Olympics or we were told everything was peachy in Tibet - everyone was happy except for those deranged radicals.

In truth, I also doubt a full athlete boycott will happen. It should, though, and I hope at least a few countries take such a stand - I’d applaud whoever did. If countries do send their athletes, I hope they have the grace have them compete behind the Olympic flag or their NOC flag instead of their national flag. Like a few countries (Australia included) did at Moscow. A diplomatic boycott should be the very bare minimum.

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16 minutes ago, Sir Rols said:

i’m not sure information is any speedier and easier than 13 years ago. If anything, I think it’s got harder to get things out of China - their firewall and surveillance of foreign journalists is even more sophisticated than it was then. Not to mention the foreign press corps on the ground has been decimated dramatically. As to shoving cameras in officials’ faces. Again we tried that in 2008 - asked lots of impertinent questions about Tibet. They were either stonewalled, dismissed as not about the Olympics or we were told everything was peachy in Tibet - everyone was happy except for those deranged radicals.

In truth, I also doubt a full athlete boycott will happen. It should, though, and I hope at least a few countries take such a stand - I’d applaud whoever did. If countries do send their athletes, I hope they have the grace have them compete behind the Olympic flag or their NOC flag instead of their national flag. Like a few countries (Australia included) did at Moscow. A diplomatic boycott should be the very bare minimum.

Social media was hardly the behemoth in 2008 that is in now (I'm talking more in general rather than specific to China).  In 2008, there were 100 million tweets sent per quarter.  Now, the number is more like 500 million.. per *day*.  And therein lies the problem, because information moves, but it's not always going to be accurate.

The obvious hindsight argument is that the IOC should have never awarded an Olympics to China.  Of course, we know that history here better than most that it wasn't a choice so much as a lack of option.  It's not like Beijing blew the IOC away with their bid.  They just scared off nearly everyone else, and let's not forget how close we were to having these Olympics in Kazakhstan.

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17 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Social media was hardly the behemoth in 2008 that is in now (I'm talking more in general rather than specific to China).  In 2008, there were 100 million tweets sent per quarter.  Now, the number is more like 500 million.. per *day*.  And therein lies the problem, because information moves, but it's not always going to be accurate.

Yet in 2021 it’s eerie how almost no first hand reportage is getting out of Sinkiang, but in 2008 we still were getting multiple eye-witness reports out of Tibet. And while we’re getting 5 times as many tweets, we’re getting 100 times as much conspiracy theories, election fraud hysteria and anti-van anti-mask propaganda. 10 years ago the promise of social media and digital communications seemed idealistic. Since then we’ve become more than well acquainted with its malevolent side.  

23 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

let's not forget how close we were to having these Olympics in Kazakhstan.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. Even at the time I thought it was a far better choice than Beijing. And that was before China went feral. Aesthetically, IMO, it was more suited as a winter sports location. I think too many opinions were coloured by Borat. As you say, it was extremely close - Rob Livingstone mused how it may likely have won if the IOC had still permitted member site visits. Yes, it is also authoritarian and Covid may well have forced its cancellation anyway. But at least they aren’t committing genocide, threatening their neighbours with nukes if they intervened in a Taiwan invasion, jailing and death sentencing foreign nationals from countries they have a beef with or unleashing economic carnage on countries that dare criticise their policies. 

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Sigh! It’s a sign of the times how much GamesBids has declined that we aren’t getting as much covert disinformation attention as a we used to get from China and Russia. I remember how we used to get the CCP plants lecturing us on the western lies before Beijing 2008, and the Russian disinformers pre-Sochi.

And I remember how we had one or two members from within China who used to covertly get past the Great Firewall, by using terms like Tee bet to evade the blocks.

i guess we’re not worth the effort anymore.

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10 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

I think you underestimate the effect that total sporting isolation had on the fight against Apartheid. From purely the US perspective, South Africa’s Olympic ban was likely your major exposure to it. But the Commonwealth was at the sharp end of the boycott debate, particularly in Rugby and Cricket, from the 1960s all through to the 1990s. All through those decades, particularly in the UK, Australia and NZ, boycotting South Africa on the sports fields was a red hot and controversial issue, to be point of provoking violent riots when Rugby diehards persisted with rebel tours. The Montreal boycott was all about NZ’s continuing Rugby contacts with SA. It may not have stooped Apartheid in its tracks then and there, but within a few years, by the early 1980s, NZ was obliged to end any of those remaining contacts. Sure, Commonwealth economic sanctions played a part too, but sport played a huge role in isolating SA. Nelson Mandela spoke of how hated Rugby, the Afrikaner passion, was amongst he and his fellow prisoners, and it’s telling how his blessing of SA’s 1995 World Cup was such a major factor in his efforts to build bridges and build reconciliation in the new SA,

I'm glad you responded re: cricket and Rugby. I was going to, but I think you put it better than I would've done. I'm too young to have any memories of any of that, but from what I've read the boycott did have significant impact.

I would add, boycotting one test nation is much easier for athletes than boycotting THE event they've been working years towards. And we're going to get much more of this with the other major global event in 2022, the Qatar World Cup which, again, is more similar to the Olympics in terms of the effect it'll have on footballers' careers than simply avoiding one nation in the case of South Africa. I also worked out the other day that some of England's team that'll be playing in Qatar were 9 or 10 year old boys when Qatar was awarded that tournament*, so in that sense why on earth should we burden them with this?

Commerical and diplomatic boycotts in these cases I'm all for, though.

* Jude Bellingham was 7 !

Edited by Rob.
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6 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

Sigh! It’s a sign of the times how much GamesBids has declined that we aren’t getting as much covert disinformation attention as a we used to get from China and Russia. I remember how we used to get the CCP plants lecturing us on the western lies before Beijing 2008, and the Russian disinformers pre-Sochi.

And I remember how we had one or two members from within China who used to covertly get past the Great Firewall, by using terms like Tee bet to evade the blocks.

i guess we’re not worth the effort anymore.

It's probably moreso cause they sense that there's nothing more to 'prove'. They already had their big coming out party in 2008. And 2022 is a winter Games anyway, probably not held as high regard compared to the Summer Olympics over there. Not to mention, there are so many other platforms nowadays than before, that it's hard to keep up with any of them. And come to think of it, that's probably also part of the problem here, too, in addition to not having as many bid cities to talk about anymore. Some have probably moved on to other sites. 

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8 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

Yet in 2021 it’s eerie how almost no first hand reportage is getting out of Sinkiang, but in 2008 we still were getting multiple eye-witness reports out of Tibet. And while we’re getting 5 times as many tweets, we’re getting 100 times as much conspiracy theories, election fraud hysteria and anti-van anti-mask propaganda. 10 years ago the promise of social media and digital communications seemed idealistic. Since then we’ve become more than well acquainted with its malevolent side.  

That's part of my point though.  In 2008, our news was filtered through legitimate journalistic sources who did actual reporting from the ground there.  These days, we get too much of our news filtered through social media, hidden behind all the inevitable rabble-rousing.  So it creates a situation where people think they're easily informed, but they're really not.  Everyone has an opinion on everything, mostly because on what their own personal echo chamber has told them about an issue.  As much as the situation in China is worse now than it was back then, the response to those atrocities is amplified by people who assume they know what's going on because someone at some point flashed them a retwee.

8 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

You say that like it’s a bad thing. Even at the time I thought it was a far better choice than Beijing. And that was before China went feral. Aesthetically, IMO, it was more suited as a winter sports location. I think too many opinions were coloured by Borat. As you say, it was extremely close - Rob Livingstone mused how it may likely have won if the IOC had still permitted member site visits. Yes, it is also authoritarian and Covid may well have forced its cancellation anyway. But at least they aren’t committing genocide, threatening their neighbours with nukes if they intervened in a Taiwan invasion, jailing and death sentencing foreign nationals from countries they have a beef with or unleashing economic carnage on countries that dare criticise their policies. 

I've said it for years here.. most of the non-GamesBids world probably remembers that vote as one that Beijing easily won because of the grandeur of China and the IOC's willingness to partner with them again.  The truth as we know is that it was a very split vote and if a couple of IOC members wake up on the other side of the bed that morning, perhaps we're not having this discussion and instead talking about the upcoming Olympics in Almaty.  From a pure sports standpoint, no question they were the better choice.  But it was still deciding between a giant douche and a turd sandwich after the IOC scared off every other suitor.  In an ideal world, it would have been the 2022 Olso Winter Olympics.  But that simply wasn't destined to be especially in the wake of Sochi.

Sure, Kazakhstan isn't without their own issues.  Simply based on their size, it obviously pales in comparison to what's going on in China.  And yea, it's somewhat unfortunate to think back and realize how much worse China has become in these last 7 years and if the IOC had the foresight to see what terrible things were coming, then maybe we would have seen 3 IOC members flip their votes and again, we're not having this discussion

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6 hours ago, REDWHITEBLUE24 said:

Don't think they're looking for your approval on this one

Maybe it's time to take off the beer goggles where you assume there will be major boycotts just because that's clearly what you want

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39 minutes ago, REDWHITEBLUE24 said:

There is now a fairly decent chance the PM of Canada by the times the games starts will be someone who has outright called for athletes to boycott the games. I can’t see Canada being at the games. 

Then go to an eye doctor and have your eyesight checked.  Clearly something's not working right there.

Or, alternatively.. just stop trolling

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