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Anti-Doping the International Olympic Committee
A Call to Boycott the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing

Printable Version

by Jason Roth

In Olympian terminology, "anti-doping" is the organized effort to prevent and eliminate drug use in Olympic competition. In my terminology, anti-doping is what should be done to the dopes in the International Olympic Committee.

(If there's a urine test for anti-doping, please let me know. I would have felt a lot cleaner examining the IOC's urine than I do now having evaluated their ideas.)

Now, after careful thought and consideration about the IOC's policies, I am announcing my refusal to exhibit my ping-pong talents at the 2008 Summer Olympics. And no, it's not just because I would get my ass kicked by Chinese catering personnel, let alone by actual Olympic competitors. My literal and spiritual absence from the 2008 Olympics will be due to the International Olympic Committee's decision to hold the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Herewith, I announce the following:

I, Jason Roth, do hereby rescind my support for the 2008 Olympic Games.

I, Jason Roth, officially declare my objection to the IOC's choice for the site of the 2008 Olympics, and will stage an official protest against the Games in the summer of 2008.

My protest will be non-violent in nature. It will be comprised of separate and distinct counter-demonstrations such as swimming, playing tennis, going to the movies, drinking beer, and watching even less Olympics on TV than I usually do during an average Olympic summer. Furthermore, I will continue to shun Chinese cuisine in favor of what I find to be the more flavorful Asian cuisines, such as Japanese, Thai, Korean, and Malaysian. Above all, I will continue to fund the Hollywood exploitation of Jackie Chan, except in the circumstance that I get bored of seeing the same plot for the 18th time or in the case that Mr. Chan accidentally falls through a mulching machine while performing one of his own stunts. Finally, I will continue to add the words "in bed" after reading fortune cookie messages, as my own little way of demeaning and ridiculing high-ranking officials in the Chinese government.

Why am I taking such drastic measures?

Because according to the International Olympic Committee, a nation's human rights record is irrelevant to its qualification as a candidate for hosting an Olympic Games. (Didn't expect this to finally get serious, did you?) That's right, the IOC finds attributes other than human rights advocacy to be more significant and worthy of mention. For example...

I.
Ranked fourth in the IOC's Beijing candidate evaluation report is "Environmental Protection and Meteorology". Evidently, the Committee members were more concerned with Beijing's claim to make the 2008 Olympics "the greatest Olympic Games environmental legacy ever" than how many Chinese women are getting forced abortions or how many organs are being "donated" by Chinese political prisoners or how many people are getting beat up, shot, and imprisoned for uttering something politically incorrect. I can understand that we don't want our international kayak teams paddling through flaming rivers of raw sewage, but let's try to see the forest for the trees, or more accurately, the dictatorship for the victims.

II.
When the Committee analyzed Beijing's proposed budget ($14.256 billion alone just for venue, airport, road and other development work), I'm taking a guess that they didn't talk to any rat-eating factory workers who helped produce this blood money with their wonderfully exportable shower curtain rings and portable radios.

III.
The location of the beach volleyball matches is purely pragmatic. First of all, the idea of seeing a beach volleyball tournament in China is worse than hearing Robin Williams say Good Morning Auschwitz in Jakob the Liar. But even though Beijing's Bid Committee recommended it, "The [IOC] Commission took the view that the Tian'anmen Square site was inappropriate" for beach volleyball. I'm not sure why they thought that; they didn't say. Perhaps it's the "potential traffic and transport difficulties" for the athletes, as they insinuated. Or maybe the blood stains on the pavement will be too distracting to the barefooted Iranian chick going up for the spike.

IV.
According to the Committee, "There appeared to be no terrorist risk in Beijing" and "There are no significant security risks anticipated." Are they effing kidding me? We're talking about a country that, according to the C.I.A., is pointing long-range nuclear missiles at over a dozen American cities. What evidence of possible terrorism do you need, if not a nuclear missile pointing at you? Do you actually need to have a piece of plutonium hanging out of your ass, with Jiang Zemin's hand on the end of it? Does the IOC think that it's only "terrorism" when the terrorism isn't completely sanctioned and performed by an actual government? I have to wonder what Beijing's Olympic Bid Committee put in the IOC's egg rolls.

Speaking of egg rolls, I should note that the IOC was truthful enough to admit in their Beijing report that "There are difficulties in providing proper equine quarantine measures [for the] re-exporting of horses." Even if Beijing does solve their horse health problems, though, I still wouldn't recommend that members of the equestrian team bring along any other bestial buddies. The phrase "a dog's life" has a very distinct meaning behind the Great Wall, and Rusty ain't quite as lucky as Secretariat Jr. when the dinner bell rings.

But in the final analysis, must we really care about any of these little national quirks? Yes, we should, if we give any credence to the guiding principles of the official Olympic Charter:

"Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

Hmm... Somehow the principle seems a bit at odds with a February 2001 Amnesty International Report:

"When officials from a township birth control office got a hold of Zhou Jiangxiong in May 1998, they hung him upside down, repeatedly whipped and beat him with wooden clubs, burned him with cigarette butts, branded him with soldering irons, and ripped his genitals off.

The 30-year-old farmer from Hunan province was tortured to death because the officials were trying to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, suspected of being pregnant without permission."

How can an image like this be resolved with such high-minded Olympic principles as the one above? It can't. But one can feign the existence of the principle in order to blank-out the existence of the image. In other words, if the IOC declares, through the act of choosing Beijing, that the Chinese government has "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles", that must mean China just couldn't be oppressing its own citizens. Right?

The true meaning of allowing Beijing to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, though expressed vaguely and euphemistically, is stated in the final sentence of the IOC Beijing evaluation report:

"There is significant public support for the prospect of organising the Olympic Games and a feeling that a successful bid would bring recognition to the nation."

Most of the world's population knows of the existence of China. This fact needs no recognition. The kind of "recognition" China wants is a worldwide self-induced blindness to human rights violations like that described above. What China wants is a moral sanction.

I'm not giving it to them.

And neither should any country with a respect for life, human rights, and "universal fundamental ethical principles."

I call on all free nations to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games.

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