Buffalo Boy's Blog

It won't happen. Athletes will still show up because of the huge corporate sponsorship at stake, but if you want to peacefully protest the Chinese government and make a powerful statement towards their treatment of Tibet then nations around the world who are sending their athletes should stay home.

In addition to the Tibetan crisis, China has said that they do not intend to allow live broadcasts of the games because they don't want networks showing protesters so it would be their way of censoring what networks here in the US and around the world show. So everything you see from the games could be on a tape delay and censored before you see it. 

If I am an NBC executive or an executive from any of the big television stations that are going there to cover and they are told they can not carry live, I take my stuff home and say fine, we aren't covering it at all. Think of all the endorsement money and cooperate money that is lost if that happens.  

Same with the athletes. You show it live or we don't come. You leave Tibet alone or we stay home. The money China has riding on the Olympics is huge. They have invested in billions of dollars into the Olympics and everything that goes with them from green technology to reduce smog and the heavy pollution that clouds Bejing to getting the actual facilities in place to hold the actual events.

That leads me to believe that China has to back off Tibet and cut the macho censorship crap at some point because eventually if countries around the world have any balls what so ever, they stay home and say screw you China. That would make the biggest statement and would make the Dali Lama very proud. The only question is, do we have the guts to lead the way and stay home?