Dictatorships and the Olympics: 1936 and 2008 那夫罗佐夫转载我给布什的信

www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语： Kai Chen's Words:

I recently reprinted some articles of Lev Navrozov from World Tribune on my blog. But I have not known he had already reprinted my letter to President Bush back in 2007. It looks like we are always together in spirit. I am very thankful for that. --- Kai Chen

我最近在我的博客里转载了那夫罗佐夫的一些文章。 但我刚刚得知他在2007年就已在世界焦点导报转载了我给布什总统的信。 这好像我们一直在精神上就有沟通，尽管我们那时还没有认识。 对此我深表惊诧与感恩。 --- 陈凯

http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2077/59/
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Monday, October 15, 2007

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/lev10_26.asp

Dictatorships and the Olympics: 1936 and 2008 那夫罗佐夫转载我给布什的信

(Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.)

The Olympics of 1936 took place in Germany. In 1938, Hitler was generally regarded in the West as a cofounder of the Munich “peace in our time” agreement. So in 1936, the peaceful Munich high hopes connected with him still lay ahead. The 1936 Olympics were to bring about warmer social ties between him and the victims of his forthcoming attacks. No wonder President Roosevelt attended the Games.

Three years later Hitler was waging a world war for world domination. To prevent, after his debacle near Moscow, his subordinates’ betrayal of him to the English-speaking countries, he secretly ordered them to begin the extermination of Jews so that his subordinates, not him, looked in the U.S.–British eyes as the heinous criminals, while he as having known nothing about the “final solution.” Fortunately for his enemies, he ran out of resources to continue his development of nuclear weapons, the key to global domination.

Such was the post-history of the 1936 Olympics.

As for the Olympics of 2008 in China (Aug. 08-24), the Human Rights Watch began its section of Aug. 2, 2007, in Yahoo! (see http://chinahrw.org) with the following utopia in big type:

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are a historic opportunity for the Chinese Government to show the world that it has the confidence to make tangible and sustainable progress in ensuring basic human rights for its 1.3 billion citizens.

I feel that this utopia is so utopian that any sarcastic remarks of mine in the past decades concerning the march of China’s dictatorship toward “basic human rights” would be anticlimactic.

The dictatorship of China holds Olympics for the same purposes Hitler held them in 1936.

On October 11, 2007, at a special conference of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, Bob Dietz, the Asia Program Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, spoke about the persecution of China’s journalists in China. He gave no statistics concerning the journalists tortured by the dictatorship of China. But he said that China had been leading the world since 1999 “in the number of jailed journalists.” Yet despite this “world record” (by no means Olympic), “in 2001, the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games to China.”

The public communications in China are not created by journalists themselves. Certainly, Zhao Yan did not create either the New York Times, or its Beijing bureau, or his job as a researcher in that bureau. Yet he was imprisoned in 2004 for a New York Times (correct) prediction that Jiang Zemin would retire as the head of the military commission.

Chen Kai, a former Chinese national basketball-team player, now in Washington D.C. (correction: I live in Los Angeles), published on Sept. 28, 2007, in Chinaview and The Epoch Times (both “dissident publications”) his letter to President Bush, calling him to “join our Olympic Freedom Run,” to “clarify your moral standing and solidarity with freedom-loving people in China”:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500



Dear President Bush:

As the 2008 Beijing Olympics fast approach, we as freedom-loving people realize as that time comes, we are standing at the threshold between human freedom in our future and human despotism from our past. Having learned that you had accepted an invitation from Mr. Hu Jintao to attend the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I like to extend my invitation to you to join our “Olympic Freedom Run” in Washington D.C. on September 30, 2007 from the Memorial of Communism Victims to the Lincoln Memorial.

As a former Chinese National Basketball Team player, I feel compelled by my conscience to speak out — not just to speak out against oppression, slavery and human degradation, but to speak out for human freedom, for hope, for a better tomorrow. I am speaking out not just for those innocent lives perished under the communist regime, not just for those who still suffer under the same oppressive regime of the Chinese communist government, but also for those who are suffering under all kinds of despotism, old and new, in the world.

Chen Kai recalls the 1936 Berlin Olympics:

History should not repeat itself, and we as free people will make sure that Olympic spirit is nothing but the spirit of human freedom, Not opium to induce illusions for despotism and tyranny. Any government that wants to use the Olympics for its own oppressive and reactionary policies against human freedom should be put into the spotlight and have its evil exposed. The 2008 Beijing Olympics should be an example of how the cause of human freedom is pushed forward by the Olympic movement, not pulled backward.

As an athlete with a conscience, I call upon all athletes, all coaches, all people in the athletic establishment in the world, all sports fans and all tourists who will participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympics to awaken your conscience, pluck up your courage and listen to the call from the deepest recess of your soul to join our “Olympic Freedom T Shirt” global movement.

Chen Kai correctly assumes that President Bush will not be tortured or even just imprisoned for “x” years, for wearing an “Olympic Freedom T Shirt.” Certainly not now — not yet.

When you stroll on the Tiananmen Square, under the stare of the giant portrait of Mao — the biggest mass murderer in human history, when you remember those who died in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, wear our “Olympic Freedom T Shirt.”

Mr. President, we do not advocate boycotting the Beijing Summer Olympics. We hope that you use your presence in the 2008 Beijing Olympics to spread the message of Truth, Justice, Liberty and Dignity to all human beings on the planet earth. We want to see that you use your moral conviction, your appreciation of the human yearning for the eternal values of mankind to spread the message of hope and human freedom.

I, as a Chinese athlete with a conscience, call upon the voice in your conscience; call upon your moral courage, your action and your prayer for freedom for the Chinese people, for freedom for all the people in the world: In wearing our “Olympic Freedom T Shirt” and joining our “Olympic Freedom Run,” you are expressing your solidarity and your support for the freedom-loving people in China. You are indeed building a better tomorrow for the world.

Hereby I cordially extend my invitation to you to join our Washington DC “Olympic Freedom Run.”

Sincerely,
Chen Kai