There aren't a lot of people out there who have been paying attention to the Beijing Olympics for as long as I have. I mean outside of China, of course. And in the process of covering all the weird novelty craziness that China will have during the Games, you also learn a few somewhat disturbing things as well.

Like that China has a habit of torturing people, executing people, waterboarding people, and crushing any kind of dissent.

But then again, didn't we know all of this before they won the right to host the Olympic Games? I mean, if people are suddenly learning that China isn't so great in the human rights department, they have to have been living under a rock for the past 10 years.

Of course China made the argument in order to get the Games that "Hey, we're changing!" which sounded good until they started beating monks to death in Tibet earlier this year.

Naturally though, because the IOC was stupid enough to award China the Games, we're now going to be bludgeoned with ads telling us what a horrible country China is. And who's first in line for that? Amnesty International, of course.

Personally I find the ad alerting us to the fact that China leads the world in executions (above) to be a bit much. And I was pretty sure I already knew that anyway.

See, the thing to me is that if you're an intelligent person, then you already know what the deal is. The IOC made a monumental error by awarding China the Games. The country isn't anywhere close to being where it promised it would be by the time the Games came to town.

So what do you do? Take the Games away? Well, that isn't going to happen, seeing as the IOC has no spine whatsoever and got us into this mess in the first place, so they have to see it through. Boycott them then? I've never liked the idea of enforced Olympic boycotts, as it melds athletics and politics together into an unsettling mix and essentially ignores the work of athletes who trained for years to have their one moment in the sun. Plus, it's pretty much too late to do anyway.

And I'm sure China knew this all along, which is why they never did anything asked of them before these Games - except build enormous stadiums.

I'm not really sure what the answer is to this question of what to do about the Olympics, in all honesty. I think if anything, we should cheer for our athletes in the upcoming Games, but be well aware that China has a long way to go before they'll turn the corner in the human rights department. And we should definitely remember that dangling carrots - like the Olympic Games - in front of them isn't going to be successful if there's no penalty.

In the end, it's going to take a lot more work to achieve human rights in China, and a lot more than just a disturbing poster.

[Pic courtesy of Copyranter]