Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

Disclaimer - I have never visited China and don’t know the traditions and customs. I am commenting from a very western perspective but I do welcome other views and discussion! 

I wonder if they’re allowed to watch in a Beijing prison?

 The Chinese authorities say they will now not free Ye Guozhu when his four-year prison sentence expires on 26 July. Instead he will remain imprisoned until at least 1 October, after the end of the 2008 Olympic Games.

"Ye Guozhu is being kept in prison to prevent him from speaking out about the people, like himself, who were forcibly evicted from their homes in Beijing to make room for the Olympics," said Amnesty International.

Evicted? And then arrested and detained for daring to say something?  He’ll not be alone in there and it kinda taints this spectacular opening ceremony that I’m sitting here watching. Dissidents, those who disagree and speak out are placed under house arrest or imprisoned for the duration of the games.

Job ads for bank clerks and office workers specify sex, age, height, and good looks. A lawsuit a few years ago against height discrimination in job hiring was dismissed by a local court for lack of jurisdiction. A case on discrimination on account of looks was settled out of court with no precedential effect for other cases. The 380 hostesses guiding the athletes through the Olympic awards ceremonies will all be about the same age, height, and weight, and they have been trained to walk and gesture in standard ways.

Fit the box or don’t work. Become a robot, become standard or be nothing. 

"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls," Mrs. Clinton said, or "when women and girls are sold into slavery or prostitution for human greed.

"It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small" she continued, or "when thousands of women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war."

It’s hideous, isn’t it?  But because of the Olympics we say nothing? We don’t use it as a platform to get people heard.

the Administration has muted its public criticism of human rights abuses and is struggling to patch up frayed political relations.

Why mute it? The eyes of the world are on China, why not shout out even louder. You know that boat? I reckon we need a fleet of arks…..