If the Australian government can stop people from leaving Australia because of Covid, it can stop people from leaving the country to participate in the Communist Winter Olympics, because of Peng Shui and …. well … the Chinese totalitarian government. The 'diplomatic' boycott is pathetic: as if China cares whether or not a few political bludgers save the Australian taxpayers a few bob and stay home, as they should. But, allowing - not even discouraging - athletes from also boycotting the games - is feather in the Communist thugs' caps.

Tennis Australia is acting with 'Chinese characteristics' by setting police on people wearing Peng Shui t-shirts. One copper said that Tennis Australia makes the rules. Any reaction from our 'Liberal' government? We wouldn't expect anything from China-admirer Andrews.

Perhaps we are getting more like China - gradually being conditioned like the frog put into cold water, and gradually boiled?

Many Australians are hopelessly ignorant of important lessons from the totalitarian past. They remain entirely unaware that totalitarianism often emerges as a gradual process towards the consolidation of absolute power and control over society, which can easily spread without much of the population first noticing it and taking hold before it is too late.

Something people don't really think about is that independent International Governing bodies such as the IOC, are usually far more corrupt than supposed Sovereign Governments.

You will find these bodies call the shots over Governments, United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Health Organisation, World Bank etc etc and often, these groups are all run by the same crew.

Something to think about.

The IOC's Thomas Bach 'vindicated' the Communists' disappearance of Peng Shui. The Olympic hierarchy has never come across as anything more than a bunch of self-serving bureaucrats loaded down with big egos, ready to overlook anything that might interfere with their precious, but useless, games.

40 Australian athletes are set to compete.
Certainly there are many human rights issues in
China to address but on the whole it is better to
keep the sport and politics separate.

However the Prime Minister has made it quite clear
that Australia will NOT send officials to the Winter
Olympics in Beijing joining a US diplomatic boycott
of the event and risking a further souring of relations
with China.

New Zealand will also not send official to China.

China doesn't keep sport and politics separate. Xi has a personal interest in the games. He organised the last Olympics. This one is a huge political coup for him. He can threaten and bully the West, and they still flock to help him make it a great success. Everything about China and China's dealings with the rest of the world is pure politics, and about winning, and not just medals. By sending athletes to Beijing, the West has lost another round in the main game.

Very few ever ever want to become very good at anything. Even fewer stay the course to become anything like good enough at anything. The effort to become top of the tree in any country is very long & hard.

No one, government or private citizen who has not reached the height to actually gain Olympic selection has any right to try to deny those who have put in that effort & achieved selection for the right to compete.

Yes the IOC is a corrupt organisation, & China is not all kindness & light, but the Olympics is the top of the tree. Those who have devoted a huge part of their life to representing their country have to use the stage offered, & nothing is more important than letting them have the satisfaction, & yes, glory they have earned.

If anyone wants to say something to China, find another way of doing it, without destroying the dreams of others who have earned the right to compete.

No shots have been fired but we are at war with China, albeit a 'grey' war. In a war, sacrifices have to be made; some people inevitably sacrifice more than others for the good of their country and society. In this war, athletes are the ones who should be making the sacrifice. They are pampered, trained at public expense and hailed as heroes just because they are good sport. Sorry. But I see them as collaborating with an evil that is a threat to the free world.

Tennis Australia's action on Peng Shui Tshirts has been described this morning as a 'mealy-mouthed' disgrace brought on by Chinese sponsorship. Good call.

No shots have been fired but we are at war with China
ttbn,
Well, I tend to look at it as the silly Chihuahua annoying the crap out of the guard dog.

Yes, no one should willingly step into enemy territory other than military forces and secret agents who fully understand the risk (with a cyanide pill always ready to be bitten if they get caught).

Athletes, journalists, tradesmen, tourists, relatives or any other idiots should all be told unequivocally that if they do then they represent no one but themselves and nobody will vouch for their safety should they get arrested and tortured there.

Foxy,

Sport and politics are intertwined especially at the Olympics.

Naivety on the risks entailed in Westerners sending athletes to China is not universal. British athletes going to the Communist Games are being offered temporary mobile phones to use while they are there to reduce Chinese spying on their private details. It makes sense when business people visiting China routinely take throwaway laptops and burner phones.

It is amazing that people knowing the inhumanity, cheating and untrustworthiness of the Chinese Communist government can still deal with them and pretend they are not mixing with, and encouraging, the greatest threat to the Western world.

The athletes should at least wear black armbands.

Everything is connected to everything else. Sports and politics are entwined. Participating in Hitler's Olympics in 1936 supported the Nazis. Participating in China's current Olympics supports the Communists. We have no business being there.

Australian athletes have been training and competing
for this Olympic dream for 4 years and we should allow
them to succeed. Success would be the best revenge in
China.

As it was in the Nazi Olympics - the 1936 Berlin Games.
These games were more than just a worldwide sporting
event. They were a show of Nazi propaganda. Hitler's
attempt to see "Aryan" athletes triumph was not a complete
success most famously due to the medal sweep brought by
US black track star Jesse Owens. Germany did not walk
away with the most Olympic medals.

Allow our athletes to be equally successful in China.

Dear Foxy,

Jesse Owens triumphed in the 1936 Olympics. Huwever, he was not invited to the White House. His own country gave him no recognition. His triumph was meaningless. As a matter of he replaced a Jewish athlete who was left off the team possibly catering to Hitler who possibly found a black less offensive than a Jew. Nazi glitz appeared in the 1936 Olympics. The Olympic torch was an invention of Goebbels which was kept.

I was at the 1932 Olympics. There was no Olympic village. Athletes came and found local families or hotels to stay at. They were real amateurs. The local Stevens boys won the bobsled event and were back at work in their garage next day. As far as I am concerned the 1932 winter Olympics at Lake Placid were the last real Olympics. After that they became festivals of nationalism, commercialism and bad taste.

I speak from the position of once being a reasonably elite track cyclist. Not at a standard to going to the Olympics, but close.

If I was ever an Olympic athlete there is no way I would participate in an Olympics in a country where systematic abuses of human rights and power were the norm. I had opportunities in my heyday to compete in the Philippines, didn't do it, Marcos regime at the time. I said no.

There are current things I do not understand, when South Africa had the appalling system of apartheid they were put in the sporting gulag. So why, with China having an even more appalling record are they not treated the same?

I hold the corrupted IOC accountable for granting both the Summer and Winter Games to a despicable regime and country. Olympic athletes should not have to be placed in a moral dilemma to, or not to compete due to such IOC decisions.

The OLYMPICS went down hill once they did away with Jelly Wrestling, a truly cultured event.

Back in the day at the 428BC OLYMPICS held on an iceberg at the North Pole the athletes were made compete in the bollicky, bet a lot stood up in the bobsled event.

Dear Foxy,

I believe that Jesse Owens' triumphs in the Olympics were not celebrated in the US because they were an embarassment to Avery Brundage, head of the US Olympic Committee at that time and later head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/avery-brundage/

If Jesse Owens had been white and not Jewish he would have been a hero.

Dear David F.,

I was not aware of any negativity about Jesse Owens
and the 1936 Berlin Games. To me he is a legend.
Thank You for the information that you have provided.
Here is a link on what Britannica has to say:

http://britannica.com/biography/Jesse-Owens

Given the United States is the most racists nation on Earth, that should not surprise. The KKK would have lynched Owens given half a chance, can't have these upperty blacks.

VE,

"There are current things I do not understand, when South Africa had the appalling system of apartheid they were put in the sporting gulag. So why, with China having an even more appalling record are they not treated the same?"

I presume that's a rhetorical question and that you know full well that Communism is more acceptable to Australian leftists than any regime to the right if centre.

In spite of the bollocks, Pauliar is spouting China is far more racist than the US. But because China is communist Pauliar is happy to accept their genocide of minority groups.

The Beijing Olympics should be used to display the contempt the rest of the world holds for the murderous CCP.

shonky,

No I do not, China's behaviour towards minorities is terrible and should be called out at every opportunity. Although Australia's record towards it's indigenous minority is just as bad.

Being of such high principles would you support a total trade ban with China? Maybe you're content to put it on a bunch of sportspeople to do the job, and not cost Big Mining etc a cent.

The goldfish-memory collaboraters in the Communist games won't have remembered how the CCP bulldozed the homes of thousands of ordinary Chinese people to make way for the last Olympics in that benighted country. Even if they did, like the tyrants they are supporting, the Australian left are not interested in what their ideology does to ordinary people.

Pauliar,

Only an idiot or rabid ideologue would make such a stupid comment that the treatment of indigenous in Aus was the same as the internment of 1 000 000 Uighurs with forced labour, forced sterilizations and abortions.

Secondly, you are the only person calling for trade sanctions.

shonky,

Australia's human rights record and the generside of Aboriginal people since European occupation is appalling.

China's record on human rights is also shocking.

btw; You didn't say anything about a trade ban on China, as a matter of principle. We could send Morrison's glove puppet Simon Birdbrain to tell em' so.

"If Jesse Owens had been white and not Jewish he would have been a hero."

Owens was Jewish?

As soon as Paul 1405 starts ranting, all hope of sensible conversation is over.

Channel 7 has already started pandering to Australians' sport obsession (more of a spectator obsession for most of them) mainly showing the frantic 'sweeping' of the obscure 'sport' of curling. The network is salivating over the huge increase in advertising coming their way. Big bucks for them, and plenty of distraction from their increasing problems for the gullible; bread and circuses.

The big winners though will be the Chinese Communist Party, who will see the West’s willingness to legitimise the games as a diplomatic coup for China. A soft power bonus for Communism.

Shades of Hitler's pre war Olympics.

The real sport was had by the ABC and other lefties at the press conference where they (irrespective of your politics) made Morrison look like a real goose.

If Australia stopped our athletes from competing in the winter olympics because of politics
- Then we'd be the totalitarian government.

Divert your attention from what others are doing
and instead take a good look at what this country has been doing

Dear Critic,

«If Australia stopped our athletes from competing in the winter olympics because of politics
- Then we'd be the totalitarian government.»

Very true. Nobody, athlete or otherwise, should be stopped from going anywhere they want in the world.

However, there is nothing totalitarian about telling these athletes that if they travel to China then that would be their private affair and they will not be representing Australia there.

«and instead take a good look at what this country has been doing»

Why "instead", why not "both"?