There’s an old saying – actually it’s not really that old; that says: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It was originally published in the book, The Life of Reason, which was written by George Santayana between 1905 and 1906.
Santayana was born in Spain but moved to the United States when he was nine years old. He graduated from Harvard where he became a professor of philosophy, although his writings show many other interests as well. He lived mostly in the US until 1912, when he resigned his position at Harvard and moved to Europe, where he lived until his death in Rome in 1952.
In essence, I guess, the phrase in meant as a warning to humanity to learn from our mistakes and to avoid repeating them when prior examples of the same ideology or philosophy have turned out disastrously.
Santayana lived long enough to see his particular saying come to fruition, but luckily for him – and unluckily for the rest of us, he won’t be around to see history repeat itself this time around.
Take for example, the decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in July of 2001, to award the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to Beijing, China. At the time, the general consensus among IOC voting members was that by granting China the Olympics – and thereby welcoming them to the rest of humanity, they somehow might reverse their wicked ways and clean up their deplorable human rights record and their even more deplorable environmental record.
But don’t they have it backwards?
Should they not perhaps have offered China a more-distant Olympic Games on the promise that they clean up their act first?
Isn’t this a bit like giving the neighbour’s bratty 12 year-old boy a new bicycle after he tortured your cat to death?
Here’s a few examples of how the IOC, who apparently have never heard of George Santayana or the quote in question, may end up leaving the rest of mankind to deal with their own ill-conceived plan of bringing China into the modern world.
According to the World Bank, China has 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities including Linfen City which is located in the country’s Shanxi Province and according to several sources including the World Bank, is the dirtiest, most polluted. Others ranking at or near the bottom include Tianying, Huaxi and Lanzhou. In fact, in a recent survey of China’s 522 cities, almost 40 per cent were either moderately or severely polluted and that filthy air and water contribute directly to 300,000 premature deaths per year in China.
Even one of their own has spoken out about the contamination in China and tied it to their rampant corruption. “In some areas, corrupt officials protect local polluting industries to gain personal profit,” said Zhang Lijun, an administrative vice-director. “Without clean officials, there will be no clean water.”
This, of course, coming to light long after they promised to take a ‘greener’ approach to curbing their all-out assault on the environment.
Apparently, they’ve broken a few other promises too.
As part of the sweet plumb that the IOC dropped in their lap, China was strongly urged to curtail their aggression towards Taiwan and Tibet but if you’ve seen any of the footage on television news lately, you already know that they have absolutely no intention of following through on that one either.
Bent on cultural genocide, China is currently encouraging their citizens to flood into Tibet to basically establish themselves economically and politically in a bit of a covert operation whereby in a generation or two both societies will have melded into one – that being China of course.
Just last week in fact, Chinese authorities referred to the Dalai Lama – possibly the second most righteous and gentle person on the planet next to the Pope, as a, “wolf in monk’s clothing”.
This coming from a country that, according to Amnesty International, summarily executes thousands of citizens every year for crimes as petty as theft, embezzlement and forgery? In the mid-1990’s 77 per cent of all the executions worldwide were carried out in China including Jan. 9, 1993 when 356 death sentences were handed down in one day with 62 being carried out immediately, including several children under 16 years of age.
We’ve all seen the horrific footage of the chaos in the Darfur region of the Sudan where an estimated 200,000 have died and another 2.5 million are homeless during ethnic uprisings there over the past few years. You may or may not be surprised to know that as a consumer of two-thirds of the oil produced in the Sudan and its main weapons supplier, China is at the heart of a military conflict that is largely centered on billions of dollars worth of oil and resources.
And these people were awarded the Olympic Games?
Once again, space limits discussing more of China’s dirty laundry, including their deplorable treatment of women, their close alliance to Iran and the imposing threat that within days of the United States pulling out of Iraq – whenever that may occur – that China will immediately move in and take over Iraq’s oil industry, and their staunch opposition to any foreign media covering events such as those that are currently unfolding in Tibet, to name a few.
Over the next few weeks and months leading up to the opening of the Games on Aug. 8, the spotlight will be firmly on China and the millions oppressed by the regime know it and will take every opportunity to show the world the real side of China.
What will be interesting is seeing how their military government, and countries in opposition to their constant threats and strong-arm tactics react as there is already a growing number of nations threatening to boycott the Games entirely or at least the opening and closing ceremonies.
But what has all this got to do with the phrase made famous by George Santayana?
Because in 1931, in an effort to appease another rouge state, the IOC granted the 1936 Olympic Games to Berlin, Germany over Barcelona, Spain.
And look how that turned out for humanity.