Give It Up (News) (Commentary)

Wow - caving in on all of one's basic principals must not be hard for some folks to do. I can't believe that the International Olympic Committtee would ask member nations to give up their human rights in order to attend the Chinese Olympics this summer, but at least one prominent nation is going to do so anyway. If Bush and Company go along with this, I'm going to be more angry than usual.

From the Daily Mail...

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest. The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.