This article has been corrected to reflect that General Electric has not taken a position on Georgia’s voting law and is not a current sponsor of the 2022 Olympic games.
“I never said that I hated the country,” third-place hammer thrower Gwen Berry told CNN after turning away from the United States flag as the national anthem played during this week’s Olympic trials. “All I said was I respect my people enough to not stand or acknowledge something that disrespects them.”
Berry’s statement echoes that of benched San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who told NFL.com that he refused to stand for the flag during the anthem because, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
Nike ended up giving Kaepernick millions of dollars for his refusal to show pride in the American flag. Berry’s Nike payday should be coming soon, too.
But while Nike loves to promote its brand by showing the utmost disrespect for America’s flag and anthem, it sure does know how to salute when the subject comes to China.
“Nike is a brand that is of China and for China,” Nike CEO John Donahoe recently said on a call with Wall Street analysts while discussing Nike’s latest earnings report. No word from Donahoe if Nike is a brand that is of the United States and for the United States, though.
Nike is not the only corporation that likes to market itself as woke here at home while tolerating the worst human rights abuses of the world’s largest tyrannical regimes abroad.
After President Joe Biden said he “would strongly support” efforts to punish the state of Georgia for passing a voting integrity law, dozens of American corporations also attacked the Peach State.
Of those American corporations that were so offended by Georgia’s efforts to make it easier for American citizens to vote, while making it harder to cheat, four are also sponsors of China’s scheduled 2022 Olympic Games. The four corporate hypocrites are Airbnb, Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Procter & Gamble.
The Olympics are the most prestigious, esteemed sporting event globally and it ought to be a privilege for a country to be selected as host. China will have scored a major propaganda victory if it is able to successfully host these games while actively violating the human rights of Uighurs in Xinjiang and dissidents in Hong Kong.
Ideally, the president of the United States would have a strong position on how our country should deal with the China 2022 Olympics. Unfortunately, Biden has been silent, offering no public leadership on the issue at all.
Instead of just wishing the problem would go away, Biden should be leading an international coalition to pressure the International Olympic Committee to postpone the 2022 Olympics for the purposes of selecting a new host city.
If the committee refuses to select a new host, then at minimum the Biden administration should organize a diplomatic boycott of the games by refusing to send any government officials beyond what is needed for the security of the athletes.
If Biden refuses to lead, companies that are sponsoring China’s Olympic Games should strongly reconsider their decision to normalize China’s genocide and cover-up of the COVID-19 virus.
Here is a list of other companies sponsoring China’s 2022 Olympic Games:
- Airbnb
- Alibaba
- Allianz
- Atos
- Bridgestone
- Coca-Cola
- Dow Chemical
- Intel
- Omega
- Panasonic
- Procter & Gamble
- Samsung
- Toyota
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