London's 2012 Olympic Mascots - Destined for Mockery for All Time

I... Uh... Oh, my. Um.... I'll let this one be commented upon by our readers. Suffice to say, this is a BAD IDEA.

Priorities

From here

Cuban kicks referee for disqualification

He is now disqualified for life from all future Tae Kwon Do events. I am hoping the Quiz Team I coach doesn't get any ideas the next time I am Quizmaster.

Should the USA boycott the Beijing Olympics?

The news is out that China is cracking down on Tibet, and there are reports that between 30 and "hundreds of people" have been arrested and killed as protesters and dissidents. Now, protesters around the world are calling upon nations to boycott the Olympics being held in Beijing. The USA is caught between a policy of engagement - and the fact that China has a significant trade surplus - and the desire to support the peaceful protests in Tibet.

In Sydney, protesters scaled a wall surrounding China's consulate and removed the Chinese national flag and tried to replace it with a Tibetan flag. Four people were arrested when police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd after a plain clothes officer had been attacked.

Tibet's government-in-exile urged the United Nations to intervene to end what it called "urgent human rights violations" by China in the region.

What do our readers think? Should America boycott the games over these violations of human rights? Or would such a move be counterproductive... or simply none of our business?

The Burma question

I've been thinking about posting on the protests in Burma (also known as Myanmar) for several days now, but I haven't been able to come up with a good angle. My wife and I support several missionaries in Thailand that work just over the Burmese border with the Internally Displaced People (IDP), people that have been chased out of their villages by gun point only to have the villages burned to the ground, but only after the army has their way with them. There are millions of IDP within Burma that are in need of some sort of support, but I digress. The thing about Burma is that it is so impoverished already that it seems sanctions are not actually helping to bring about any change - hence why the people are now protesting in large numbers. Repression always leads to rebellion - eventually. So, the question then becomes, what can be done to affect change in this nation. Many people have pointed out that China is the key to change within Burma, but I wonder how much of a moral compass China could actually have when it comes to human rights violations, freedom of religion and peacefully stopping rebellions. The Chinese think that the protests in Burma are an 'internal matter' for the Burmese generals to deal with on their own. This is clearly their way of making that point that we won't interfere with others if they don't interfere with us. This is a positive from the Chinese point of view - they have many things they want to keep internal without having to deal with external pressures to resolve them. So, given that China doesn't want to intervene - though they have made a statement - how can the west and those concerned with the situation in Burma cause China to move more decisively?

One member of the EU thinks that he has a solution: an EU boycott the Beijing Olympics. This would be an interesting development since the one thing China wants more than to be left alone by the west is to be accepted by the west as a modern country. If the EU countries were to pull out of the Olympics then a good percentage of the best athletes in the world would not attend them and in tern they would become a joke or at least not taken seriously. But more serious than that, China would lose out on billions of dollars in tourism revenue from the event and from those who don't go as a result of not getting the word of mouth about the beauty of the country from those who attended. It's an interesting concept that should be considered IF the Chinese don't move more decisively within the next couple of weeks OR before serious bloodshed happens.