Photo by: http2007

Closing comments:

Those who advocate a boycott frequently claim a moral higher ground or such. Those that argue and rail against that point to Western abuses of human rights with regard to the Native Americans, African Americans, and Europe’s colonial past.

I’d like to make two points here:
1) The fact that the West has committed human rights abuses is irrelevant when judging whether China’s actions were right or wrong.
2) The fact that Western human rights abuses happened means that protesters cannot claim a moral high ground.

A typical response by nationalistic (and possibly hormonal) teenage Chinese-American/Canadian youths to Tibet is “well you don’t see us supporting native american independence!!11! biatch!”:
1) That has nothing to do with whether China is right or wrong in Tibet
2) Read around, facts are not that hard to come by
3) Responding to uninformed/misinformed comments about China with equal nonsense definitely does not help.

Joining on the boycott bandwagon is just a way for people to try to “get involved”. Unfortunately, there are far better ways to further those causes (whether right or wrong), and boycotts and suggestions of boycotts saddens and probably infuriates many other people.
“But there is so much publicity…it’s the perfect chance!”

Yes, there is going to be a lot of publicity, and perhaps it is the perfect chance to be an attention whore. If otherwise the media does not care about the issue, it is neither the group’s fault nor China’s fault. It probably is the media’s fault. Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.