Protesting the Olympic torch relay

If the mayhem during the London Olympic torch relay was any indication, it’s gonna be a long journey before the torch gets to Beijing for the Summer Games.

The photo above is of a protester during the relay Sunday in London.

An unnamed official quoted by the state Xinhua news agency slammed the protests.

“Today a tiny number of Tibet independence elements sought to disrupt the relay of the Olympic Games sacred flame through London,” said an unnamed spokesperson of the Beijing Olympic Games torch relay office.

“We strongly condemn this vile behaviour.”

And guess where that torch goes after Paris? You bet, San Francisco. Let the Games begin! Could “Pin the Demonstrator Down” become a new Olympic sport?

Comments

[bemis]

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG CAPTION! Fallen bloke ACTUALLY was pedestrian knocked down by bicyclist! (Both jobless persons, unable to afford bus fares in these recessionary times. Sigh.)

[george]

Bemis, you are wrong too: fallen man was BICYCLE THIEF. Nabbed by cops.

[tim J]

Just for the record, in case anyone is inclined not to enjoy Bemis's attempt at humor, here is the caption that AP submitted with that photo: "Police tackle a demonstrator to the ground during Konnie Huq's leg of the Beijing Olympics torch relay, heading towards Blenheim Cresent in London Sunday April 6, 2008. Police scuffled with protesters as Olympians and dignitaries carried the torch Sunday during a chaotic relay through snowy London."

[Y]

I think this was the best way to draw attention in old days in elementry school --- making trouble.

Breaking news by APF writter: UK police crackdown peaceful protestors.

Let's boycott 2012 London Olympics! (or perhaps just the openning ceremony).

[Y]

From the video, I figure that the guy who used the fire distinguisher did really want to make it work --- the only purpose is to have creat a chance for him to make the statement. (To be honest, I like the show!)

[Y]

I will also give my thumbs up to Konnie Huq. What a brave girl to face and fight, well, pseudo-terrorism behaviors. Way to go!

[Y]

When I was a kid, I was taught that people in the west are all decent, polite, and graceful. ( And after so many years, my conclusion is that the majority of them are.) I believe kids in China are still being told so.

School teachers however may have a hard time to convince their srudents next year, thanks to the Olympics and to this drama that comes with it.

[Paul Carr]

You write, "And guess where that torch goes after Paris? You bet, San Francisco. Let the Games begin! Could “Pin the Demonstrator Down” become a new Olympic sport?"

Nah. The San Francisco set will be too busy protesting the Iraq war. You know, Tim, the protests the US media doesn't bother report on.

[Bill]

"Could “Pin the Demonstrator Down” become a new Olympic sport?"

Wrestling has been an Olympic sport forever, since the Greek days.

[Bill]

Good News !! They figured out a way to protect the flame in Paris: Douse it.

And that "tiny number" of protesters in Paris required over 2000 French police help protect that doused flame. That sounds totally overkill for a "tiny number" of anything.

[A B]

Paris.... there might be concerns that blacks and Muslims will disrupt the event to protest racism in France.

Better safe then sorry.

[Allen]

Notes to those who try to disrupt the torch relay:

1) if China doesn't deserve to hold the olympics, which country does? US for killing hundreds and thousands of Iraqis and called it collateral damage?

2) your action will only alienate the majority of Chinese. You should thank the Chinese government for blocking most of these images. Otherwise you can imagine how indignant most Chinese will be against Tibetans, as well as France and Britain for allowing these mobesters to ge so close. can't they do what they did to the mobsters in the surburb of Paris?

[allen]

I live in China and have feee access to all western media. quite honestly I'm so fed up with all those reporting. you can almost hear the laughter that there so many of people getting a kick out of the whole thing

I say screw them. why do the Chinese care anyways? boycott olympics, go ahead. or better still stop using anything made in China. If people in China kows the full extent of all those negativity, you will turn them into 1.3 billion enemies. Scorzy wants to boycott Olympics? who the fxxx cares about him? he's such a joke!!!

[RY]

There will be hell to pay in Tibet afte the games. Get ready India, the refuge camp will just bigger. Get rid them all, there is nothing to lose.

[Yao]

I have to say that it was not China's torch and those protesters or rioters or terrorists whatever you'd like to call them, they just don't understand that the games are really for people all around the world,not only for the Chinese. Even if the torch was grabbed or distinguished, so what? Big deal. They think that would be some sort of humiliation for the Chinese, well don't make me laugh but they got it damn wrong.

They just made a fool of themselves, except for those who were hired to disrupt the relay, while at least they got some pocket money to make.

[Yao]

And when I watched the relay in Paris, I laughed so hard because the French police officers were a bunch of pussies who couldn't even protect a torch from "peaceful" protesters! What a fiasco for doing such a bad job.

[Y]

Good post, Yao. I can explain why French police officers are so week --- check how many minutes France lasted before they totally gave up when Nazi Germany invaded their motherland.

[Marvin Foushee]

Maybe the Chinese should make "Club the Assassins" and "Club the Saboteurs" an Olympic sport. If police set up a security cordon around an event, and activists breach its security and try to use a fire extingisher to put out the Olympic torch or try to grab the Olympic torch, you are dealing with some psychopathic characters who aren't going to be deterred by "Kiss the Protestors" promoted by Tim Johnson and the alien and seditious press.

[Y]

Here is a picture in which a french pro-tibet protestor was attacking a wheelchair athlete:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7335043.stm

Just wondering what the basic starndard of moral conduct the French have. I know they think they are romantic?

[vince]

Stirring up the Olympic Torch event is a media diversion to take the heat off the US invasion of Irag and Afghanistan. I suppose the journalists has lost their abilty to discern the difference between a political event and a non-political event, i.e. comparing apples and oranges. The Olympic game is not a Chinese game. It is everybody's game.

[LaoLiao]

The problem is most western media and politics still think that 1.3 billion Chinese are pigs. They don't think Chinese people (not goverment)have right to hold olympic. They have never mentioned and thought about what was majority Chinese people's (including oversee Chinese) feeling about this. and no one experess the sympathy of innocent people died during riot.
One thing should be remembered is these touch events will increase the conflict between Tibet and Han people in China.

[Marvin Foushee]

The "kiss the protestor" picture that Tim Johnson planted in his blog is a picture of the person who tried to take away the torch from Olympic torch runner Connie Hug. The police did not do a very good job of protecting Connie Hug from these types of attacks because the saboteur did manage to get his hands on the torch. (Tim Johnson was aiming for her neck in this blog post.)

CNN News:

Some demonstrators threw themselves at the torch, and at least *one tried to snatch it away*. Another tried to put out the flame with a fire extinguisher. They were quickly pushed back and cuffed by Metropolitan Police, which said its officers made 36 arrests on a variety of charges.

[Marvin Foushee]

On another note, The Daily Princetonian, the liberal student newspaper of Princeton University, shut down the "Post a Comment" section of its newspaper today. Actually, the newspaper said that you have to register to post a comment, but that is what they said at Columbia's student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, and registering is a futile gesture at Columbia. Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and University of Florida at Gainsville have all turned off the free speech "comment" sections of their press of late.

Will the Stalinist revisionists of history take over China next. The online version of The People's Daily used to have a "Comment Section" in its newspaper, but George W Bush must have convinced the CPC that the light bouncing off of Paris Hilton's underwear was the light of democracy and the light/torch of freedom, so the CPC decided to shut down their comment section as well when their People's Daily edition changed into a Hollywood format for the upcoming Olympics.

Good Grief, Charley Communist Brown!

[A B]

Let's suppose someone takes a dislike to the Boston Marathon.

Let's pretend that the competitors to the Boston Marathon excluded a religious minority from the event.

Suppose the organizers had to do so because the practitioners of this religion had in the past tried to win the race by tactics like spraying pepper spray at the front runners.

Or, if you like, the runners competed in veils where people who claimed to be abc competitor were actually someone else.

Or, try this: the religious group had previously arranged to have a suicide bomber detonate themselves in a mass of runners to disrupt the race.

So for all these reasons, they were excluded from the race but for practical reasons, it is impossible to exclude them from watching the race.

Suppose demonstrators were to put up trip wires, spread banana peels, pelt the runners with rocks and eggs, or try to block tackle the front runners?

Would these be political protesters fighting against religious intolerance ?

What would you do?

How would you maintain order?

This scenario has not happened yet, but suppose the kind of suicide bomber that routinely blows themselves up in Israel makes its way to the USA and Western Europe, how would you feel if such 'sports' events like the Tour de France, the Boston marathon, etc. all have to be terminated because it is no longer possible to provide security?

There is a good reason not to mix sports with politics.

It is similar to the reason why the western world decided to not mix religion with the state.

For those who don't remember, in 1984:

"The USSR announced its intention not to participate on May 8, 1984, citing security concerns and stating, that "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States"

Many can play at this game.

Everyone loses.

[nanheyangrouchuan]

"There is a good reason not to mix sports with politics."

And yet that is very origin of the Olympics, a politically negotiated cease fire between the Greek city states. I guess that's another miss for Chinese education.

I can't wait to see lots of PSB agents freeze to death in a Himalayan storm.

Burn China burn!