The violence in Tibet piles on yet another to boycott the Beijing Olympics (a few months ago, we noted the gag order being placed on Olympic athletes forbidding them from criticizing China and its totalitarian policies).<\/p>\n
And there’s finally some talk of doing…well, something<\/em>:<\/p>\n Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.<\/p>\n Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.<\/p>\n France’s outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea “is interesting.”<\/p>\n Kouchner said he wants to discuss it with other foreign ministers from the 27-nation European Union next week. His comments opened a crack in what until now had been solid opposition to a full boycott, a stance that Kouchner said remains the official government position.<\/p>\n The idea of skipping the Aug. 8 opening ceremony “is less negative than a general boycott,” Kouchner said. “We are considering it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m all for negative, but it’s a start.<\/p>\n The violence in Tibet piles on yet another to boycott the Beijing Olympics (a few months ago, we noted the gag order being placed on Olympic athletes forbidding them from criticizing China and its totalitarian policies). And there’s finally some talk of doing…well, something: Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"