As the Olympic torch makes its way across the globe, protests aimed at China are becoming more strident, more violent. It’s rather ironic really given what the spirit of the Olympics is supposed to be about: peace wasn’t it? You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?

I realize that China’s human rights record is not that crash hot but, dare I say it, neither is the record of some other notable nations, ones that claim to believe fervently in freedom and democracy. Yet people from these nations seem to be lining up to protest at China’s crackdown in Tibet. I just saw some of them being arrested in Britain and being roughed up by the police during the process.

Yet, strangely, protesters, who come from all kind of races and minority groups, are often silent about many other hot spots in the world where other groups of people are being killed and injured and their rights are being trampled upon. Why the inconsistency? Why are some people worth protesting about while others aren’t? Who decides which lucky group gets the coverage?

One place where people’s rights have been abused for more than forty years is in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Israelis have carried out all manner of atrocities, genocide, human rights abuses and land stealing yet, relatively speaking, we see few protests in the rest of the world about that conflict. Then there’s Iraq. It is said that one million Iraqis have been killed since the American-British-Australian invasion yet where are the massive global protests? Daily more people are slaughtered and more bombs are dropped and more destruction occurs but the world just shrugs its shoulders and carries on with their business as usual.

Afghanistan is another place where people are still being killed by American and NATO Forces. I don’t know what the total number killed has been since the invasion and occupation by the Coalition of the Killing (who don’t keep records of civilian casualties) but surely it would be in the hundreds of thousands.

Then, in the African Continent, wars are continuous and widespread with mutilations and rape intermixed with genocide and general destruction. Where are the large scale protests about that? Well may you ask! Then there’s Iran which is in the nuclear bomb sights of some nations  (America and Israel). Have you been caught in a traffic jam caused by Anti-nuking-Iran protesters lately? I haven’t.

Then, if we move away from war zones, what about the use of torture, and rendition, and imprisonment without charge or trial that now occurs in many countries notable among which is America (although other countries like Britain are complicit in the disgusting practices)? No, mass protests about those issues are fairly sporadic, if at all.

And what about all those countries where people suffer mass starvation or where children die in their thousands from preventable diseases or where impoverished people are exploited by multi-national corporations and have their land poisoned and their resources taken…? The capitalist merry-go-round continues to go round and round and protests about these unjust things are non-existent.

I guess it would be fair to say that protesters are very selective about what they choose to protest about. It seems that, all too often, what is one country’s meat is another country’s poison. America can and does get away with large-scale murder while China’s smaller indiscretions get savaged by the MSM, the one-eyed Governments of many Western nations, and certain protest groups.

The bottom line is playing political protest games with the Olympics is hypocritical.The truth is that trampling all over another race and stealing their land is wrong the same as killing and torturing anyone is wrong, etc, etc. And it shouldn’t matter a damn which country does it, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong!

Down with all double-standards I say. What do you think?