Over at The Crossed Pond, Rojas gets on the bandwagon:
After some reflection, I think I’m now ready to fully endorse a boycott of the 2008 Summer Olympics. I don’t do so lightly. For one thing, I like sports. For another thing, I don’t like the corruption of non-governmental enterprises by political concerns.
The bottom line, however, is that there’s no point in pretending at this stage that these Olympics are apolitical. The Chinese regime views them entirely as a means of establishing its international credibility and prestige. And based on various reports, they have proven willing to do anything and everything awful to maintain that prestige–from the forcible relocation of thousands of citizens to a vehement crackdown on any possibility of dissent. There is simply no case to be made anymore that the Olympics exert a moderating effort on Chinese policy; they are clearly and demonstrably having the opposite effect.
China wants these Olympics for the same reason that Moscow wanted them in 1980 and Nazi Germany wanted them back in 1936 — to give an aura of international legitimacy to a dictatorship that has no intention of reforming.
We shouldn’t give it to them.
