Last night on TV there was a very interesting debate about the Olympic games and Tibet, with the Chinese Ambassador Qu Xing, Rama Yade, secretary of state to human rights (that would be the translation from the french) Alain Duhamel, a well-known political commentator, Laurent Fabius, socialist heavyweight and former PM, the editor of Libération, a eft-leaning newspaper, and another guy whose name i've forgotten.
Qu Xing compared the incidents in Tibet to riots in Villiers-Le-Bel a few months back, where after an accident between a police car and one of those stupid mini motorbikes the two kids on the motorbike died (how they both managed to fit on the thing is behond my understanding), which started riots in which kids from the suburbs stoned, shot at, and basically attacked policemen.
Now, this comparison isn't really relevant; as I recall Villiers-Le-Bel has something like 26000 inhabitants and it was a bunch of angry kids who were doing the attacking.
I guess that's how Qu Xing saw it; citizens disobeying the law, nothing more. Thing is, those kids weren't asking for autonomy, and apart from those two poor kinds on the bike and a cop i think, no-one died.
Anyway, they went on about boycott for a while; today there's a meeting between european ministers of Foreign Affairs, and Rama Yade was lambasted because she refused to say clearly whether Bernard Kouchner, our minister, was going to propose boycott if the situation didn't sort itself out. She actually is one of the most useless people in government because she's never allowed to do anything;when Sarkozy went to China, he didn't even let her come. Probably afraid she'd create tensions, she's suposed to be outspoken and frank. Which doesn't stop her from evading questions she doesn't want to answer, like all politicians.
And it's been said that Angela Merkel, the german chancellor, won't be attending the opening ceremony of the Games.
All in all, a very interesting program.