One of the highlights of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was the flag ceremony -- and the five rings being carried in by a truly impressive group; among them Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, Cathy Freeman -- and Steven Spielberg. So one can imagine the annoyance of many when Spielberg was invited to be an artistic coordinator for the opening and closing ceremonies for this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Spielberg has now announced he's pulling out. The reason: Beijing's refusal to do anything about the situation in Darfur. Mainland China gets a lot of its oil from Sudan so many feel that it is uniquely positioned to put influence on Khartoum to do something.
It was the right thing for Spielberg to do, and he should be congratulated for it. A lot of the suffering in that part of the world is due to China's indifference or cooperation and it should be called out for it.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
1 comment:
China has a foreign policy of no involvment in another countries internal affairs, as bad as it is in darfur, we have a different foreign policy, to get involved in other countries internal affairs, (us I mean the western countries), now correct me if I am wrong but, our policy produces just as many deaths as chinas policy...neither works.... both are destructive...Even if we take your argument, that china non involvment is about oil, our side gets involved for oil....either way, no one wins....an independent policy, through the U.N. general assembly is needed, without interference like at the useless one sided security counsel. Something new...
Post a Comment