"Genocide Olympics"

Rick Reilly's column in this week's Sports Illustrated foreshadows what will become the biggest story in sports in 2008, when Beijing hosts the Summer Olympics. Reilly writes:

"According to the Council on Foreign Relations, China buys about two thirds of Sudan's oil. The Sudanese government then uses the majority of its oil profits to buy weapons and aircraft, most of them made by China. The arms are turned over to a proxy militia, the Janjaweed, which burns, dismembers, rapes and kills Darfur's villagers and destroys their land. China maintains that it doesn't interfere with the internal politics of other nations, and using that policy it has blocked U.N. efforts to send a peacekeeping force into Darfur by insisting that Sudan first invite the troops in."

...Not to get political, but these games represent a "coming out" opportunity for China -- a chance to show itself anew to a world whose memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre have largely faded. Despite continuing gross human rights abuses throughout China, and the brutal repression of Tibet, Beijing must take advantage of this event. Will they??