China’s human rights and environmental abuses seem to be accelerating as we approach August’s Summer Games in Beijing. If you are angry with their treatment of the Tibetans don’t boycott the games, boycott the sponsors who are seeking to build their brands on top of these issues. The presence of the Games is focusing the world’s attention to a greater degree on China which does not seem to understand how world opinion is reacting to their shut down of a free press, propaganda and the deaths of hundreds of Tibetans.

Update: Protesters worldwide are targeting the Olympic Torch Relay and focusing on sponsors.

Here’s a list of the top worldwide sponsors for the games:

The Coca-Cola Company

Atos Origin

The Eastman Kodak Company

GE

John Hancock

Johnson & Johnson

Lenovo

McDonald’s

Omega

Panasonic

Samsung

Visa

I’ve been following this story for a few weeks. A 160 square mile ice shelf has begun collapsing in Antarctica due to warming. It is theorized that warming waters melted floating ice that protected the shelf from large wave action, causing its connection to land to be broken.

No word on its affect on ocean levels but it is probably negligible. The real danger is that this is a harbinger of larger collapses to come.

Here is a video of the collapse. A much larger shelf may be in danger of breaking up as a result of this collapse.

Clarke’s Three Laws:

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

NYTimes Obit

The Chinese have been systematically destroying the environment (considered sacred by the Tibetans) and religion in Tibet for 57 years and bringing in huge numbers of Chinese to destroy the country’s culture. It is estimated that hundreds of Tibetans have been killed in the last week while the Chinese propaganda machine tells its own people that the Tibetans are killing Chinese shopkeepers.

In a move that is beyond cynicism, the Chinese government, based on atheism, has declared that only it may choose the reincarnations of Tibetan lamas including the Panchen lama, a situation where the child chosen as the incarnation by the Tibetan Buddhists has been jailed for years (a young child) and replaced by a Chinese choice.

The quote above is from Zhang Qingli, Secretary of the Communist Party for Tibet.

We must not support Western sponsors of the Summer Olympics in China. Support for these sponsors is support for state-sponsored human rights abuse and terrorism.