The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check:

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Beijing Olympics: Let Pestilence Ring! "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." - George W. Bush - Inaugural Speech 1/20/05 • James Campion

"'All who live in tyranny' would start with China, which this country openly trades with and the UN recognizes despite its historic and continued crimes against civil and human rights, forced abortions, execution and mass imprisoning of dissenting citizens, religious leaders, writers, artists etc. Oh, and that nastiness with Tibet. Oooh, that's bad, man. I can't wait for King George to spit in their face and demand to let their people go. My testicles tingle at the thought of it." - jc
In Bush we Trust 2/25/05

The above is a running joke the president and I have going. He spews what I've playfully called in print his "ragingly sanctimonious myopia" and I call him on it. It's fun. It's what presidents do, and how journalists are supposed to react. Who knows what the hell passes for journalism or dissent anymore. Perhaps if you can find one mainstream media outlet not owned by a multi-billion dollar corporation, then maybe someone would notice the spectacularly potent illustration of abject hypocrisy currently on display at the Beijing Olympics.

The United States of America, its government, its media, and by extension, its people, its spirit and what remains of its moral conscience is in the midst of celebrating a fascist state, which for more than half a century has been the home office for human misery, civil rights abuses, and less-than-discreet forms of genocide to rival that of any country on the planet. The very notion that our nation wages war around the globe to ostensibly spread democracy and herald the tenets of freedom and then vigorously trades with and borrows billions of dollars from a republic it openly embraces in an international sporting event is nothing short of a colossal travesty.

Forget the Olympics "not being about politics" -- despite the fact that it absolutely has been in recent history, as evidenced in our boycott of the Moscow games in 1980 and the Russians subsequent nose-thumbing four years later in Los Angeles -- lauding the self-righteous deceit of an oppressive regime on the world stage is at best pathetic and at worst evil.

This is what comes from being in debt to monsters. For the best manifestation of this please refer to either video of the president dancing like an imbecile at the Olympic opening ceremonies or the later chapters of Brett Easton Ellis' sophomoric novel, Less Than Zero, wherein the protagonist, an incorrigible dope fiend, is reduced to blowing closet queers to support his smack habit.

So how does it feel to see our Cowboy President sucking up to his nefarious benefactors this way? Makes your chest swell with pride to be the moral compass and beacon of liberty to the world. Proud to blather on about the wonders of democracy while the Chinese people have no right to freedom of religion, artistic or literary expression, speech, press, property, or even basic human rights demanded by the United Nations, of which China is a member.

But that shouldn't really shock those of us even remotely paying attention or on the network payroll over at the National Broadcasting Company, since this government under every president for decades has also willingly protected the interests of Saudi Arabia, which ranks in the top five with China for the systematic execution of its citizens. By conservative estimates, since obviously China does not share state secrets, its government annually puts to death 10,000 of its people for "crimes against the government", which include dissent in any form and the always-popular tax fraud.

The other fun fact about the daily human rights abuses in China is the forced-labor of minors making all the crap we buy from Walmart to Target to every supermarket across the fruited plains, not to mention ridiculously expensive shit like Nike sneakers and the such, which are being "manufactured" right now in sweat shops by children who were either abandoned or enslaved. Don't worry; it's only predominantly female children, because with the One-Child Policy instituted by the government in 1979, the atavistic patriarchy of China's culture has bred forced abortions of females and/or their sale into slavery or outright abandonment to allow for male heirs.

My favorite "controversy" to emerge from the Games' opening ceremonies surrounded a cute little girl's lip-synching of a less attractive girl's recording. Oh, the terrible injustice! The embarrassment of such a cold and calculating public-relations maneuver! This is tantamount to complaining that the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Germany had garish overtones of nationalism.

Then there is the minor annoyance of organ harvesting of live victims imprisoned for their belief in a spiritual practice called Falun Gong. Earlier this decade there were reports from several sources describing conditions at the Sujiatun Concetration Camp, one of 36 operating in country today, which describe hospitalized Falun Gong practitioners being kept alive in the basement where their organs are to be carved out for transplants of "normal" citizens. An alleged eyewitness detailed botched or "unworthy" victims of the practice being "thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt".
Detractors from inside China's spectacualrly corrupt governement, and specfically government-contriolled newspapers, have refuted these "camps and practices", but what would you expect? Assuming these are fabrications of Amnesty International or merely disgruntled revolutionaries, they still bare investigation, especially since the United States went to war on the flimsy evidence of WMD inside a foreign nation.

But that was all a load of bullshit anyway, like the freeing of the Iraqi people, which would have engendered less than mild enthusiasm had they not been sitting on billions of crude oil and threatening the sovereignty of our Saudi and Isreali allies. Selective global morality has been a favorite of this country for centuries.

Take another of King George's proclamations in May of 2005 (apparently a whiz-bang year for "tough-guy rhetoric") to the people of Georgia, who are right now being invaded by Russia: "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone. Americans respect your courageous choice for liberty. And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you."
Really?

How come Georgia's president makes appeals to John McCain to save his hide as Russia demands he abdicate his position or face total war, instead of engaging the sitting president? Could it be the Republican presidential candidate's lobbying to bring Georgia into NATO, which would have placed us in an unwanted and unwinnable war with its enemies?
I'm not begrudging a single athlete here nor NBC their ratings (or lack thereof) or do I wish to skunk your enjoyment in viewing this Olympics. But please don't wake up on the Monday after and scream about human rights abuses and terrible regimes abroad and expect to be considered anything but a jabbering dolt.
© James Campion
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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Fresh from his world tour as media darling, Barack Obama, Democratic nominee for president and political rock star extraordinaire, looks invincible. He is charismatic, youthful, and one of the most consummate orators this country has produced in decades.

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