I understand that the Chinese auhorities have imposed this news blackout to avoid any embarrassment during a proposed ascent of Everest by climbers, relaying the Olympic flame.
I sincerely hope that no Western climbers or mountaineers will either participate in or support this exercise. Some rather dim D-list celebs and sportsmen supported the flame ceremony in London, thereby appearing to condone the actions of China's despicable regime. Let's not see a repetition of this mistake on Everest.
Whilst I agree about not condoning China in Tibet, their appalling human rights record and so on, I do feel that athletes are being treated very unfairly, when we expect them to boycott this/that as an expression of our national moral outrage.
How many of us on here have boycotted our fave brand of outdoor gear because it's made in China? I know I haven't gone that far - it would be a lot easier to give up a particular brand of goods, surely, than to boycott the olympics having trained for four years for it.
So let's all make some sacrifices, if we are going to ask others to do the same...
And just think of all that pollution being created in the name of western consumers (us!)having cheaper goods.
I think you have a point Mick in terms of people potentially criticising people for not taking action when they have taken none themselves. Of course neither of us know this about Jake and I realise you weren't directly saying that we did - his business really.
It seems that a common argument against any kind of protest or action of this kind is that if you do x (or, particularly, if you promote the doing of x) but don't do y then you are somehow being hypocritical and your argument for doing/promoting x is thereby invalid. I think this argument, and the closely related argument that doing x is futile and illogical when you don't do either a, b, c, d, e, are based on false logic though. It's hard to take action about all the things that you might care about to some extent. So, people do often just pick one or two things and try their best to have some influence over that one issue. That one set of actions isn't necessarily invalidated simply because they don't take every single other possible action they could take about that issue or any other issue.
My main point was that it seems unfair to ask other people to take action about sometheing, when we aren't prepared to do so ourselves.
I agree that we can't take action about every single issue that concerns us, but that's a different matter. I would guess that we all support various issues from the sidelines without lending any actual physical or financial support. But that's not the same as saying "YOU should do this about such-and-such an issue, but I personally can't be arsed".
However, saying "I support your stance on such-and-such an issue, but my money/time/energy is going towards a different cause" sounds fine to me.
My main point was that it seems unfair to ask other people to take action about sometheing, when we aren't prepared to do so ourselves.
Yes, I agree with that. It's interesting to me that that issue was raised though, as there didn't necessarily seem to be any evidence of that happening (people telling others to do what they weren't prepared to do I mean). I suppose there's also the issue, in general, of who might be best placed (or able) to take action. I can't really boycott the olympics myself really or the himalaya 'cos I didn't have any plans to be supporting/visiting either in the first place. I suppose you could also argue that if people with some prominence take action (or fail to) then that could have more impact - but that is still potentially slightly hypocritical in a way. I guess we also can't assume that people who don't do things to direct challenge the Chinese regime are apathetic; they might just have different politics. Hmmmmm.
I was/am mostly just generally pondering the issue of the way that we tend to think and debate about these kinds of things, because I find it interesting. I hope it didn't seem overly combative.
I've already stopped eating all chinese foods, in my own protest!
If I see a Made in China on goods now I don't buy too! Trouble is they do not always now seem to stipulate when a product is made in China, I've begun to notice. Some things I have seen have no markings or just say Product of Far East. And that covers lots of countries doesn't it.
I bought a couple of bags of those today too....didn't look that closely at first. Perhaps as Tibet isn't recognised by the Chinese as a state the stuff made there would still have 'made in China' branded on it. On the wider subject, I think Cath's algebraic explanation says it very well, in todays excessively complicated moral world with so many fingers in so many pies it is almost impossible to purely support a cause and its subsidaries without opening one's self up to a charge of contradiction at some point.
If I see a Made in China on goods now I don't buy too! Trouble is they do not always now seem to stipulate when a product is made in China, I've begun to notice. Some things I have seen have no markings or just say Product of Far East. And that covers lots of countries doesn't it.
