Liberté, égalité, fraternité (updated)
The Olympic torch and relay have been extinguished in Paris:
… thousands of people from around Europe, many with Tibetan flags, massed [in Paris] to protest the passage of the flame, forcing police officers to bring the torch onto a bus to try to protect it and causing the torch to be extinguished at least once. A police spokeswoman… said the torch went out “for technical reasons”… CNN reported that the torch was extinguished at least twice amid the melee, and The Associated Press said officials were forced to extinguish the flame three times amid security concerns. [Link]
The Beijing torch relay is turning into a huge black eye, a daily PR hit against China for its repression in Tibet. And it’s put the drapeau tibétain’s sun, stripes and snow lions in the public eye. With all the domestic propaganda being pumped out by the Chinese government about how the Dalai Lama is ’splittist’ (he isn’t), the average Chinese must feel rejected and defiant.
The world just doesn’t understand. The prayer wheel must make way for cheap hotels. What we are witnessing in Tibet and in Xinjiang is like the takeover of the American West, with higher-powered weaponry.
Update: The relay has largely been canceled over the very Parisian theatrics (thanks, chick pea):
At least five people, including a local politician wielding a fire extinguisher, were arrested along the route. Some activists managed to evade security measures to climb up inside the Eiffel Tower and unfurl a flag with the five Olympic rings turned into handcuffs. They then chained themselves to the monument, 75 metres off the ground. [Link]
Riot police squirted tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by about 300 demonstrators who blocked the torch route… Security officials snuffed out the torch and rushed it onto a bus at least five times because of the raucous protests against China’s human rights record. A police spokeswoman says a vehicle now will carry the torch for the entire last part of the route, to a sports stadium in the south of Paris…
… the Olympic flame itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights… The torch relay also is expected to face demonstrations in San Francisco, New Delhi and possibly elsewhere… [Link]
Leave the murderball stallions alone:
After the torch was put on a bus, protesters threw plastic bottles, cups and pieces of bread at the vehicle and at a male wheelchair-bound athlete. [Link]
on Monday, April 7th, 2008, 11:06 am in Photographs, Politics › 
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I spent 5 days in Tibet this summer.. and the only english tv channel (CCTV 9) which is full of China propganda and shiny happy people with documentaries about the Yangtzee River and how amazing and how awesome the Olympics are going to be (despite the yellow air and pollution poor athletes and their lungs will face) made me want to vomit.
I saw some of the opression.. hell I felt oppressed myself when I couldn’t log in to view any blogs, when BBC.COM was blocked, along with feeling ‘watched’ by the police at every corner..
I had the opportunity to go horsebacking in the Tibetan Valley, and one of the guides told me her partner was in jail since the police raided his home and found the book ‘7 years in Tibet’… found out also that as a Tibetan, you can only get a passport if you marry a Chinese, and that the Tibetan language was being washed out from school curriculum… a slow death of their culture… sad..
I do not know why the Olympic committee chose Beijing.. there are so many other amazing cities with better facilities, air quality and who don’t have the human rights controversy over their heads…
Ugh.
update: relay in paris is cancelled. hope china gets the point.
Wow !!! This is shocking. This is an attempt of demographic ethnic cleansing.
Bravo. Now if only India can grow back the cajones it first showed on the Tibet issue in the 50s. I believe in India following the realpolitick but it miscalculates the benefit of placating China
How I wish President Bush would boycott the opening ceremonies or whatever fol-de-rol he’s supposed to be involved in. Remember how you used to be all unilateral, sir? Please do so in this instance. It would be the correct thing to do.
He won’t, though. Sigh.
*If he did, would he just stir the already highly-energized sense of nationalism in the younger Chinese (I stole this line from the Newsweek article). Hmmm.
Can’t wait to see what happens in SF on Wednesday.
I hope to be there in person and watch the relay .Will update on any events that occur
He’s a sports fan, not a human rights fan.
Thanks Runa.
It would be interesting to get the honest opinions of ABCs v/s CBCs on this issue - SF probably has a decent mix of both.
bush likely doesn’t even know where tibet is..
heck he likley doesn’t know where america is located.
From here -
“The Olympic games were awarded to Beijing, People’s Republic of China after an exhaustive ballot of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on July 13, 2001.”
And from here -
“In recent years, the contest for the right to host the games has grown increasingly fierce. Allegations were levelled after the 1996 Olympics that Atlanta Commmittee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) organizers bribed members of the IOC to obtain the Olympic Games. However, ACOG documents were destroyed prior to a formal inquiry and the allegations remain unproven. In his defense, ACOG Chairman Billy Payne said “Atlanta’s bidding effort included excessive actions, even thought processes, that today seem inappropriate but, at the time, reflected the prevailing practices in the selection process and an extremely competitive environment.” In 2002, Salt Lake City was involved in a bribery scandal but earlier stories, reported by British journalists Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings,[5] date back decades. Corruption in the IOC has been documented by numerous investigations. After the Salt Lake City scandal in which a number of IOC members were expelled following an extensive investigation, efforts were made to clamp down on abuses of the bid city process. More stringent rules were introduced and an advisory board of recently retired former athletes was set up. Critics of the organisation believe more fundamental reform is required, for instance replacing the self-perpetuating system of delegate selection with a more democratic process.
Even legal attempts to sway the IOC to accept a city’s bid can spark controversy, such as Beijing’s successful bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. Several human rights organizations spoke out against the deplorable human rights condition of China, in conflict with the Olympic Charter of the IOC.”
Somewhere, Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl are having a good laugh.
for some prayer wheel pics, and of tibet in general, here you go.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickpeas/collections/72157604426335234/
Wow chick pea - that was, uh, totally lame. Seriously, if you are a day over, say, 12, I would be embarrassed by that comment.
update…
trio scaling GG bridge
Since Toronto was the runner-up, I feel that statement with a paining paining that is unbearable. I actually swim and bike in some of the -le sigh- proposed venues.
That said…
- if it werent for the olympics, most of the world would be tuning out tibet. it is in tibet’s advantage that the olympics occupy the world stage.
- i am sympathetic to china. i’ve argued this in some local fora that up through the nineteenth century, China was THE worldpower and a leader in technology, art, commerce. The Industrial revolution in Europe was the turning point. China got reamed between 1857 and 1950 . The sense of national umbrage and the introversion is a result of that. The last time they opened their borders, it didnt turn out vell. So I wish the generally clueless pot collective would find better pursuits than pelting wheelchair athletes. -what asses- . and the leaders would engage constructively with China rather than wag fingers. what China has done is breathtaking when you consider that it has been only 60odd years since its re-conception. And the China of Mao and Deng is far far remove from that of Hu.
- on a somewhat UB specific note - desisindes have much the same argument for Kashmir and the Eastern states - If China were to acced to Tibetan demands, it would fragment in a beijing minute.
ps. Canada’s harper did the one thing that is going to cost the cons my vote. He is not going to the opening ceremony. what a dumbass. Sarkozy goes to china and comes back with a deal worth a couple of billion$ for his nuclear power sector. Our man ambles amiably into the mist. What a turnip-mooli.
Update from SFO: They are putting up barricades at the venue of the torch ceremony. I chatted briefly on a lunchtime stroll with one of the many, many security guards there .The powers that be are taking the security of this very ,very seriously .Lot of MIBs around. Can’t wait to see what happens Wednesday
While I cannot condone snatching the torch from wheelchair athletes, I fully support the idea of slogan shouting, holding banners etc .What publicity for the Tibetan cause!
I can, ever see Dr. Strangelove ?
thanks MD, you must be 13 by this point.
Tendulkar is gonna run the relay in India… what a shame.
Absolutely INCORRECT !!!!
In Kashmir and Meghalaya (or other eastern states) people from inland are NOT ALLOWED to buy property, by constitution of India.
If you want to just visit Meghalaya from inland India, you will be required to produce details of who you are going to meet and where you are going to stay and how long will you be staying.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO similarities whatsoever between Tibet situation and NE Indian states. China on the other hand is forcibly resettling ‘Hun’ chinese people in Tibet to essentially ethnically cleanse them.
I say, old chapati! my point was not quite what you’re making it out to be.
There is a genuine fear among Chinese that the far flung provinces will secede. this is not different from what i’ve heard from desis on the subject of kashmir and the eastern states like arunachal pradesh.
Khoofia,
You didnt say that in your original post. If you now say that than that’s fine.
India has more seccessionist movements going on at any given time than China ever has. Still Indian policy is not the one of resettling the trouble parts forcibly. If you dont see the difference than either you are unable to comprehend obvious things or inherently biased against India (not unlike many people supporting Pakistani-military-point-of-view, who rely very little on evidence when talking about “Kashmir”)
haha… i mock your logic dear Padmore. As they say back home in the pind, a ball in Euclidean space can be doubled using only the operations of partioning into subsets, replacing a set with a congruent set, and reassembly. what is evidence in the real world, but a rendering by Banach’s monkey(s).
khoofia, you are the pioneer of a new genre marrying pot-fueled absurdm with Banach-Tarski and measure theory! Can I join your secessionist paradox movement?
According to CNN, Bush (and White House) is weighing on the option of skipping Olympics Opening.
All right - I hereby apologize to chick pea. What was I thinking? My itch to disagree with everyone in a comments section gets me into funny places. All politicians should be ridiculed at some point - it’s our job as citizens and all to do this, I’m pretty sure.
Sorry, cp.
#25,
What a pathetic attempt at sounding smart (or coherent).
SF update:
This morning the plaza where the closing ceremonies are held is full of people carrying the red Chinese and red white and blue American flags. Busloads of people being brought in .The PR machine is in full force - these are the images you will see on TV
Meanwhile, a block away , a teenage Tibetan boy stands holding a Tibetan flag,.His T-shirt reads “Free Tibet” .Across teh street more Tibetan flags By chance - or more likeley design - the Tibetan protestors are a bloack away from the TV cameras,
More later.
the city switched the torch route at the last minute - but I saw plenty of supporters and protestors .The discourse /arguments were civil at least …
It’s a lot of fun watching western leaders who lose no opportunity to mouth off about human rights, squirm on this one. Solution: do a bit of song and dance about human rights, skip the opening ceremony and make other token gestures…do everything you can to “embarrass” China without really changing anything.
PS: On the other hand, there was not even fake outrage when the games were held in Sydney, because Australia is a paradise for all its people, of course. I know, not the same thing, never is. I’m sure Sydney’s reputation as a clean city clinched it.
Damn I feel more outrage comin out…can’t help wondering though, if the good people of Britain will protest against the London games if Britain is still in Iraq at that point…given that they were thoroughly outraged when Blair was taking them there. But of course, you can’t mix up domestic and foreign policy issues.