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The chinese media don't show the protests so the chinese people won't know this the protests are happening.

Its a shame that the torch has to be surrounded by 3 rings of security guards.

Then again the olympics is simply a money making venture these days so should we really be all that concerned.
*Hopefully Australia will punch above its weight again and maintain its 4th place on the medal tally*

I´m glad all this stuff about the torch relay is happening. Perhaps next time they´ll not parade it around the world to enrich the pockets of a few bussinessmen (you know sponsorships, brand placement)and screw up with normal people schedules when they find out that half a mayor city has been blocked out so the stupid politicans can parade the thing around and appear on the local press.
Same with the G8 reunions, why don´t they go to an insolated tropical luxury resort instead of meeting on a big city so the police and the antisomething punks can have a big row an tear down half the city as collateral ddamages?.

M.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-torch9apr09,0,5454461.story

From the LA Times

The torch in San Francisco
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The city is the perfect forum for protests against China's policies during the relay for the Olympics.
April 9, 2008

The Olympic torch relay was invented by the Nazis. According to historians, Adolf Hitler wanted to promote his belief in an Aryan master race by symbolically linking the 1936 Berlin Games to the ancient Greek gods and rituals, hence the carrying of the flame from Olympia to Germany. The first relay was chronicled on film by Hitler's propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

We bring you this brief history lesson because, as the Olympic torch makes its only North American appearance today in San Francisco, it will be met by thousands of protesters decrying China's human rights record. In response to similar demonstrations Monday in Paris, the Chinese government complained that a "small group" of Tibetan activists was seeking to politicize an event that should have been a tribute to the love of sport.

Nonsense. From its very beginning, the torch relay has been deeply political, a promotional extravaganza for the Games' host country. Chinese officials are well aware of this, having designed the longest relay in Olympic history -- an 85,000-mile, six-continent tour, meant to highlight China's vast economic and political might. The protests are a welcome reminder to Beijing that it can't tailor public opinion in the rest of the world the way it can at home.

China has a great deal to answer for, including its brutal repression in Tibet and its support of a murderous regime in Sudan that without Chinese backing would have been brought to heel long ago. What better way for the world to show its contempt for such outlawry than by peaceably thumbing its nose at Beijing's international coming-out party?

U.S. Olympic organizers could hardly have picked a better place than San Francisco as the stage for a big protest. We trust demonstrators there will conduct themselves with more politesse than the Parisians, who pelted a torch carrier in a wheelchair with plastic bottles and cups during a relay that had to be cut short because of security concerns, but we urge them to show Beijing in no uncertain terms what people of conscience think about its behavior.

Party hearty!

Can someone tell me why San Francisco is the only N. American stop? I suppose China wanted just the 1 US stop and San Fran was decided upon, but curious why no Canada or elsewhere.

- Salvage

When they do come, be careful of those guards.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:The chinese media don't show the protests so the chinese people won't know this the protests are happening.

Its a shame that the torch has to be surrounded by 3 rings of security guards.

Then again the olympics is simply a money making venture these days so should we really be all that concerned.
*Hopefully Australia will punch above its weight again and maintain its 4th place on the medal tally*

For a great many reasons I should stay the @#$% away from this thread. One of them is I don't want Dakka blocked. So I will be avoiding certain key phrases at the very least.

But I will say that no.

Trust me when I say the Chinese media is NOT censoring the protests. They are however spinning them as the acts of Tibetan seperatists and people mislead by a certain red-robed guy they call a jackel in monk's robes, a devil with the heart of a beast.

More alarmingly they placed the blame for the torch being extingished on the French Goverment for being incompetant at protecting the sacred flame.

Which may or may not inspire Chinese patriots to target random white folks for revenge.

Already reporters are getting death threats for coverage (a south western Chinese province).

Needless to say I'm keeping an eye on CNN (which is censored from time to time) to see how San francisco goes.

Why are Chinese guards permitted in the first place?

That is the $64,000 question that we are awaiting an answer for from our current Overlords.

I for one can't wait to see what no doubt brilliantly thought out reason they'll give.

The chinese guards have been dumped from the Australian leg.

Its coming to Canberra, the capital where noone lives (250,000 in a country with 5 cities over 1 million of which 2 are over 3.5 million)
They have already decided to divert the route (noone knew where it was going already anyway)
The 'Protest at anything brigade' have told media they have organised some 'inventive and exciting' protest ideas.... Hopefully involving large numbers of greased up nudists (hard for the police to catch) sprinting for the torch, or people chaining themselves to the support truck.

posted by jfrazell
Party hearty!

....I miss Jester....where did he go?

on topic. I find the situation, somehow.....actually, I don't know what I should think of it. It seems obvious that the chinese ARE the bad guys in this scenario, but in our great globalized world, all we can do about it is protest against it. How the olympic comitee can just sit there and don't react to the Tibet-situation and other stuff. I mean, what is wrong with these people? There is obviously something wrong with olympic festivities this year and I'm afraidit won't end well. For any party.

Anung Un Rama wrote:

posted by jfrazell
Party hearty!

....I miss Jester....where did he go?

Undercover.

Jester missing, new Batman film featuring a new Joker, coincidence?

Anung Un Rama wrote:How the olympic comitee can just sit there and don't react to the Tibet-situation and other stuff. I mean, what is wrong with these people? There is obviously something wrong with olympic festivities this year and I'm afraidit won't end well. For any party.

On the one hand they keep refering to the [fanfarre]Olympic Spirit[/fanfarre] that should be above petty boycots, on the other the same people keep wondering how much their bank account would be affected if they showed up some spine... so far the bank accounts are wining.

M.

I am waiting to see Tibetan monks commit self immolation similar to those of the 60's. I really sincerely hope that does not happen, but I wonder how much of a wake up call it would send to the rest of the world and the Olympic committee.

I wonder how badly the sponsors are starting to worry.

Apparently the IOC warned China not to let the torch run go international and China went against their advice- with the current consequences.

Man I hope all the people at San Fran who showed up for the anti-china stuff don't purchase cheap chinese imported products or anything silly like that.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7339764.stm

Found this interesting, gave a further interesting perspective to Chinese attitudes to Tibet as well.

I've always just sort of accepted, like most people in the west, that the tibetians have a morally superior position here. I've thought about it, and I still think they probably have some real issues with the government. I mean, monks tend not to self immolate from being merely "dissatisfied" with the government. This one is actually something I'd like to ask some people about but I have reasons for not posting about this one at work.

For right now let me say that there are always two sides to every story.

Except in a love triangle surely ?

But you're essentially correct, but much as we may instinctively side with Tibet here, what I have found interesting is the views of the Chinese students at the University where I work. we've got about 12 or so Chinese students, all very pleasant, but if this issue ever comes up they totally clam up and refuse to even discuss it. They really just refuse to accept any other viewpoint than that given to them by their own government. Most peculiar.

I think propriety is still a large part of the Chinese ethos, or whatever that thing I'm trying to think of is called.

'Face' mayhaps?

No, but upon returning from class, I remembered that the word I was looking for was ideology not ethos. See skruul duz mak you smatter!

Thanks though Jfrazell, I should go find my face...somewhere

Wow, I never knew about the "Jackbooot Relay" circa 1936.

I wonder how many people protested THAT?