2008 Olympic Torch Run

Politics International Politics
1

Encircle by PLA thugs in blue track suits the Olympic flame will be trotted through San Francisco. Home to a very ‘diverse’ populace, many Tibetans as well as ‘Chinese-Americans’ and a lot of just plain Chinese, it is shaping up to be international spectacle.

[quote] Torch divides San Francisco’s Chinese community
By Adam Tanner Tue Apr 8, 7:58 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco’s large Chinese American community is divided about the Olympic torch’s passage through their city on Wednesday, with some saying protesting the symbol headed to their ancestral home could prove an embarrassing distraction.

“A majority of Chinese Americans are proud of China in the way they have raised the standard of living,” said Rolland Lowe, who practiced as a doctor in the city’s Chinatown for 43 years before retiring two years ago.

“China used to be called the sick man of Asia and for them to be hosting the Olympics is something they take pride in,” he continued. But then he mentioned the controversy over China’s control of Tibet. “They put more money in Tibet than they take out. It’s not like Tibet is full of oil.”

China’s crackdown on anti-government protests in Tibet last month has drawn sharp international criticism and clouded preparations for the Olympics.

San Francisco is the most Chinese of any large American city, with nearly 20 percent of its population of Chinese descent, and thus a logical choice to host the only U.S. torch stop en route to the Beijing Olympics which start in August.

Yet famously liberal San Francisco has long been a hotbed of political protest, from the Vietnam War in the 1960s to the Iraq War in recent years. Groups concerned about Tibet as well as those focused on Darfur, Africa, say the San Francisco torch run is perfect place to complain about Chinese policies.(more at link)
Yahoo[/quote]

and:

[quote]Tibetan community mobilizes for protests
Mercury News[Tuesday, April 08, 2008 15:01]
By Jessie Mangaliman

RALLIES SET AS OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY COMES TO S.F.

Usha Lama is expecting eight or nine people at her home in Fremont. Jamyang Nordup is ready for up to 50 people at his 3,500-square-foot home in Richmond and has been collecting bedding for months. Stanford University graduate Yangchen Lhamo is sharing her small one-bedroom in San Francisco’s Sunset district with four cousins from Portland and Seattle. Sunnyvale resident Tenzin Tethong is expecting a guest or two from New York.

An army of 2,000 exiled Tibetans from across the United States, bedrolls at the ready, began descending on the Bay Area on Monday to protest the running of the Beijing Olympic torch in San Francisco on Wednesday.

But instead of hotels, most of them will stay at no cost in the homes of the Bay Area’s 1,200 fellow Tibetans and their supporters. Some will stay at a Tibetan monastery in San Jose. The organization behind the housing of this impromptu protest army is a testament to the links that bind all Tibetans, a network-savvy diaspora of exiles who have been fighting China for statehood for a half-century. Many were exiled from Tibet more than 50 years ago, after China took over.

With the recent unrest and China’s crackdown in their ancestral homeland, they are hoping to steal the limelight away from the traveling torch that eventually will light the Olympic flame in Beijing in August, and turn the world’s attention instead toward what they call Chinese repression and human rights abuses in Tibet.(more at link)
Phayul.com[/quote]

Looks like a lot of Photo-ops!

2

Unmasked: Chinese guardians of Olympic torch
[i]"The guards protecting the Olympic flame had paramilitary training and were chosen by Beijing for their toughness and fitness.

China’s blue-clad flame attendants, whose aggressive methods of safeguarding the Olympic torch have provoked international outcry, are paramilitary police from a force spun off from the country’s army.

The squad of 30 young men from the police academy that turns out the cream of the paramilitary security force has the job at home of ensuring riot control, domestic stability and the protection of diplomats.

Questions are now being asked as to who authorised their presence as the torch was carried through London. The Conservatives demanded clarification from the Government last night.

The guards’ task for the torch relay is to ensure the flame is never extinguished – although it was put out three times in Paris – and now increasingly to prevent protesters demonstrating against Chinese rule in Tibet from interfering with it."[/i]

Good story about the PLA thugs in blue track suits at the link.

3

I think “China’s blue-clad flame attendants” is way too cumbersome, so in the spirit of the Chinese tendency to shorten things, can we just refer to them as simply “China’s blue flame attendants”?

HG

4

[quote]http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gEtQD-yS0Xp4_sizYjZ8SE7bG_1gD8VU0F880

“This is not about us battling the torchbearers,” Lhadom Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, told the crowd outside the consulate. “This is about the Chinese government using the torch for political purposes. And we’re going to use it right back.”[/quote]

Can this guy even afford to attend the Olympics?

I hate it when free loaders feel they are entitled to use public ceremonies as their personal soapbox.

Get a permit, hopefully you can afford that, and leave the para-Olympic torch bearers alone this time.

5

since when has that got anything at all to do with the price of fish?

protest is a right enshrined in the democratic ideal, along with things like a free press, freedom of movement and freedom of religion, among others. violence is not, though, and i don’t condone that at all, but the right to protest is something sorely lacking in China.

I have no interest in giving the Chinese economy any of my money, or giving the Chinese govt any of my respect, so I am not interested at all in attending these games. but not attending the games has no bearing at all on the right of myself or anyone else to protest China’s appalling human rights situation, in any country, and especially in France, Britain and the USA, the three principal bastions of modern democracy. democracy is truly the empowerment of the little person, not this socialist sham that China believes is good for the populace.

it’s not just the Chinese who have a wide variety of pithy sayings that fit this situation perfectly. a couple that spring to mind:

as ye sow, so shal ye reap.

and

you’ve made your bed, now you have to lie in it.

the Chinese have created this situation themselves. no action in the world is committed in isolation, although the Chinese would dearly love to have the old ‘bamboo curtain’ still raised high enough that no-one can see them sodomising their ‘countrymen’.

6

urodacus,

Although those ideals are nice. One still needs to pay for a permit in the US to demostrate in a public place. The IOC has to pay to run the torch through the city.

You think police work for free to keep everyone safe in a democracy?

Well I hope you enjoy living in whatever isolated economy that will prevent any of your money ending up in China.

7

watching ac squriming here is almost as fun as watching the torch travails.

8

[quote]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/08/ED2F100FMV.DTL&tsp=1

Many will scoff at this Olympic ideal and I understand why. As a longtime advocate of social justice, I’m familiar with the long list of failings attributed to the People’s Republic of China from the days of its founding in 1949, including the simmering tensions in Tibet - especially because I just spent five months in Shanghai as a Fulbright scholar conducting research on the mass exodus that took place at the time of the Communist revolution.

…

Up until I left China just before the uprisings in Tibet, the Chinese government was heavily promoting the Olympic spirit and teaching Olympic values of friendship, understanding and fair play in the schools. China is not a democracy, but its people - whether Han Chinese, Tibetans, Uighers or its other many minorities - are becoming more vocal because of its increasing openness to the world.

Unfortunately, the calls to boycott the Olympics and to label everything about China as evil can only serve to isolate China and the United States from each other. China is not a monolith, and blanket condemnations of China and its people are as simplistic as blaming all Americans for the U.S. human-rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Such rhetoric, however, is driving many Chinese bloggers into a nationalistic response.

…

Someday China will join the United States as a world superpower - but the American and Chinese people do not have to retreat back to those Cold War corners. The world will be safer if China, the United States and other countries can address human rights and other critical issues in the community of nations and peoples, not in isolation.

There is another vision: that a peaceful and better world is possible through friendly engagement and mutual understanding, not violent confrontation and polarization. It’s an Olympic message, a possible dream that our global civilization and everyone who is a part of it can aspire to - and for which I am proud to carry a torch.[/quote]
Helen Zia, lesbian, acclaimed author, and SF native. I think she is much more eloquent at expressing some of the key points I’ve been trying to convey on this topic.

9

…

sftorch2008.org/

China’s Tibetan frontiers rekindle tradition of defiance
[i]"HUONI, China (Reuters) - Across China’s mountainous west, armed troops watch over the Tibetan monasteries and towns that have emerged as hotbeds of protest kindled by traditions of defiance and newer economic grievances.
More than the Tibet Autonomous Region itself, where the upsurge of anti-Chinese protests and riots erupted last month, the historically Tibetan parts of neighbouring provinces have defied efforts to smother unrest with troop convoys, roadblocks and patrols, and warnings of harsh punishment to lawbreakers.

In Zhuoni, a county in the northwest province of Gansu, protesters in mid-March torched a school, set up their own roadblock and trashed officials’ cars, residents said.

A recent trip along its tightly guarded roads showed the protests had stopped. Smashed windows of the local police offices and Chinese-owned shops had been quickly repaired, and traders were returning to dusty streets.

But Tibetans here and across south Gansu spoke of anger with the government campaign against the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, and with economic shifts they said favored Han Chinese migrants and Hui Muslim merchants in nearby towns.

“There are more and more Han here, so we can’t develop,” said Tsairang, a herder and farmer. He rejected the government’s claim that the Dalai Lama’s supporters orchestrated the violence"[/i]…more at link.

and:

China: Eat My Lamb Kabob

10

Funny, oh so funny as I’ve never heard of the flame needing protection before. I had to go to Chinatown today to report on a story. Fellow reporter does hers on “will Chicago lose it’s chance if US boycotts”

Answer: The Chinese will blame the US for getting everyone else to gang up on China if they boycott and everyone else follows along [sic].

If I had the time I would love to read the PLA newspapers on the ‘actual’ story. :wink:

11

[quote=“ac_dropout”]
You think police work for free to keep everyone safe in a democracy?[/quote]

mostly. of course, i pay for it through taxation (gladly, i might add, for in most democracies the police DO actually work for the benefit of the law-abiding majority.)

Thanks. I am actually enjoying living in Taiwan (mostly), an isolated economy that prevents most of my money ending up in China. a small bit is inevitable, as the world is intimately conencted at all levels, as i have pointed out before, but a small bit of unintended and unavoidable money given to China I can deal with, as I am not without some pragmatism. in return for my money, i get to breathe an international smorgasbord of air pollution that is gifted to me by the hard-working denizens of the Great Mother China.

where do you live?

12

Taiwan is an isolated economy even without official Three Links is an interesting notion. I say interesting. lol…

13

Not as if history hasn’t shown that this couldn’t happen.

No you don’t. Public ceremonies are over-time duties for the police. That money usually comes from the fees that people participating in the ceremonies or demonstrations need to pay in most urban settings.

The belief the freedom of protest is actually free is a false assumption. So the next time you thinking of protesting in public without filing for the proper permits. Just remember your using someone elses money for the privilege.

That’s the reason why cops arrest most protestors, because they have not paid for the privilege of protesting in that particular city.

Most public protestor either forget to file or don’t file because they can’t afford that much. Which isn’t a lot.

That’s not what the grey market economy in Taiwan believes. Perhaps you should get off the island once and a while to see the four corners of the world, just to confirm whether your beliefs are true or just false assumptions.

I see that TI is no longer Taiwan Independence but Tibet Independence, with random sprinkles of China bashing. The next four years are going to be tough for you… :smiley:

14

Not really an approach open to me.

I never had the interest to give the Olympic €ame$ any of my money or respect to begin with, so I have been boycotting them already for years. Too much Olympic $pirTM if you know what I mean.

Feathers of a flock, China deserves the Olympic €ame$ … or is it vice versa? I think China should get them in 2012 again. Corrupt games for a corrupt government - that’s the spirit.

15

What the fuck are you crapping on about now? In New York for example, you only need to pay a few if you intend to use amplified sound ($45) or intend to use a city park ($25).

For a march on a public street, there is no fee. For less than 20 people, you don’t need a permit, 20-1000 you get the permit from the police precinct the march will be in, and for 1000+ you get them from Police HQ. They are all free, as in no money required.

nyclu.org/node/1047

16

cfimages,

Take your rude ass and file the papers. Didn’t I already mention that it is not a lot to file for a protest. It is not free if 1000 granola eating free cause of the month idiots show up in SF. And most of them granola eating protestors don’t even have $5 to their names.

Because if I’m not mistaken it’s not 20 people that are going to show up at the event (That’s like $100 between them at most)

But thank you for proving my point once again. It is not a lot (unless you’re a granola eater) and it is not free.

Now the cost of corporate sponsor event like is IOC torch relay is out the question for most granola eaters, so I have made my point. It is someone elses money you’re using when you show up at these public ceremony and disrupt them.

And ahem, the individual I was responding to is in Taiwan, so I have no idea what he is talking about his taxes. Many of these protestor are out of towners (some aren’t even US residents), so what taxes is he talking about. Once agian protesting using other people’s money that fund the police.

Need I go on. I don’t mind when protestor use their own money to fund ad campaigns or what not. But I do get annoyed when poor ass granola eaters think they are entitled when they are obviously using someone elses money for their privilege.

17

ac just doesn’t understand western culture.

when “granola eaters” want to protest, we don’t bitch and moan about how much it costs like some grandma. we let them do their thing and have their say.

and when they’re protesting against the fucking commies, we probably buy them a couple of drinks afterwards.

18

[quote=“ac_dropout”]cfimages,

Take your rude ass and file the papers. Didn’t I already mention that it is not a lot to file for a protest. It is not free if 1000 granola eating free cause of the month idiots show up in SF. And most of them granola eating protestors don’t even have $5 to their names.[/quote]

You’re right Tempo Gain, this is fun to watch ac flounder around.

Seems like you’re bitter about the protestors, AC. But why is it I doubt you’d feel the same way if the Tibetans had organized a legal protest and Chinese counterprotestors had showed up?

Apparently you didn’t read his post or the link. Many demonstrations ARE free, when in public spaces like parks. There are fees when roads need to be shut down, or large numbers of people are expected, etc., but cities invariably lose money. The fees don’t cover even one hour of OT for one cop, generally. Sometimes major roads are shut down, productivity is lost, etc. Ultimately the people fund demonstrations through taxes, whether they are part of them or not. It’s the cost of living in a democracy.

Spare us the false indignation. Counterprotestors are expected at these events (and yes, a politically charge event like this torch race counts). In a democracy that is.

19

Counter protestor? The people who went there to enjoy the torch relay are now called counter protestors.

That’s silly.

Nude runners are expected to follow the torch. I have no idea what they are even standing for.

There’s even a TI protestor in SF today. But they want Taiwan Independence… :laughing:

20

The torch is here in San Francisco today.