And in todays news…
China says Dalai Lama is an Olympic saboteur
“BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s top official in Tibet on Friday accused the Himalayan region’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of seeking to sabotage the Beijing Olympics.”
To which HRH The Dali Lama replied:
“Heh…heh…heh…gunga, gunga - galunga”
The PRC keeping it safe for the Games:
China: Terrorists Targeted Olympics
[i]"BEIJING (AP) - Chinese police killed alleged terrorists plotting to attack the Beijing Olympics, while a flight crew managed to prevent an apparent attempt to crash a Chinese jetliner in a separate case just last week, officials said Sunday.
Wang Lequan, the top Communist Party official in the western region of Xinjiang, said materials seized in a January raid in the regional capital, Urumqi, had described a plot with a purpose “specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics.”
“Their goal was very clear,” Wang told reporters in Beijing.
"Chinese forces have for years been battling a low-intensity separatist movement among Xinjiang’s Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people culturally and ethnically distinct from China’s Han majority. Iron-fisted Chinese rule has largely suppressed the violence, however, and no major bombing or shooting incidents have been reported in almost a decade.
Wang said the group had been trained by and was following the orders of a Uighur separatist group based in Pakistan and Afghanistan called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM. The group has been labeled a terrorist organization by both the United Nations and the United States. East Turkestan is another name for Xinjiang."[/i]
And closer to the Games, we have this rather disturbing story. A bit graphic
[quote]Olympics clean-up Chinese style: Inside Beijing’s shocking death camp for cats
By SIMON PERRY - More by this author » Last updated at 16:23pm on 9th March 2008
Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.
Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.
Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.(story & pics at link)
Daily Mail[/quote]
Some Rescue attempts are being made. Quite overwhelming the sheer numbers of animals.
let’s not blame the Chinese for their shoddy human rights improvement record prior to the Olympics: they are being pragmatic, after all, and there is no place for idealism in the Olympics.
Not like the USA where there was an Olympic Bomber in Alanta…
NO, not like them at all.
[quote]China: Terrorists Targeted Olympics
"BEIJING (AP) - Chinese police killed alleged terrorists plotting to attack the Beijing Olympics. . .[/quote]
Actually, quite like the US.
THEM
[quote]China may be overstating the danger of the terrorism threat . . . experts said Monday, after authorities warned they had foiled a plan to attack the Olympics.
Chinese officials stoked the climate of fear over the weekend when they said a group of “terrorists” who were raided two months ago in the Xinjiang region. . .
While authorities spoke ominously about the threat in Xinjiang – describing it as the “frontline” in the nation’s fight against terrorism – few details were given about the intended attacks or who was involved.
Against this backdrop, foreign and some local analysts expressed doubt about the magnitude of the threat . . . journalists have few opportunities to report freely about the situation . . . making it difficult to test the veracity of official accounts of the apparent risk of terrorism.
“We don’t have any other real evidence that I have seen,” said James Millward of Georgetown University . . .[/quote]
afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iKJ … a9CNozfubw
AND U.S.
[quote]Truth or Terrorism? The Real Story Behind Five Years of High Alerts
A history of the Bush administration’s most dubious terror scares — and the headlines they buried
“Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. There were times when some people in the administration were really aggressive about raising the threat level, and we said, ‘For that?!’” — Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, May 2005
The Bush administration has never shied from playing the fear card to distract the American public from scandal or goad them into supporting a deeply flawed foreign policy. Here a history of the administration’s most-dubious terror alerts — including three consecutive Memorial Day scare-a-thons — all of which proved far less terrifying than the screamer headlines they inspired. . . [/quote]
link
[quote]The weekend’s news in the US was dominated by screaming headlines and sensationalist broadcast coverage of an alleged plot in New York to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport’s jet fuel tanks and supply lines. The attack would have been, according to many accounts, “more devastating than September 11.”
Four men were charged in an indictment unveiled Sunday . . .
There is every reason to believe that the succession of “terror” cases, each one weaker than the last and virtually all of them driven by “informants” who seem to play more the role of agents provocateur, are aimed at achieving precisely this effect. They serve as a means of intimidating public opinion with fear, justifying attacks on democratic rights and diverting attention from the ongoing debacle in Iraq.
The problem faced by the government is that the public is growing increasingly skeptical about these cases, with a sizeable portion of the population having concluded that they are trumped up for political purposes. . . [/quote]
link
From The strange case of the disappearing news story (the Telegraph):
[quote]Journalists here [in the PRC] are put into a bind by stories such as that yesterday about the various terror plots alleged by the authorities at the weekend.
While a few details leaked out from police about the “incident” on board an airliner from Urumqi to Beijing on Friday, they were hardly sufficient on their own to justify claims by politicians that it represented a clear attempt to hijack and crash the plane – a mass murder suicide attack, as it would have had to have been.
Nor was there any reason why it took two days to be reported.
As for the claim, also by a politician, that a terrorist cell broken up by police in Urumqi in January was targeting the Olympics, no evidence at all was adduced to support this.
It seems only right to inject a certain amount of scepticism, but how much? Some will say that all claims about terrorism, from whichever government, have to be taken on trust, and there is no reason to doubt the word of the Chinese authorities more than anyone else: in western systems there is normally some exposure to the media at court cases, where evidence is publicly weighed - but can’t this be fixed?
And if you dismiss the claims out of hand, you look pretty stupid if conclusive evidence is brought forward later.
On the other hand, if you report the government claims as fact, you deny the very real suspicions which clearly many journalists and diplomats here – to say nothing of representatives of Uighur and other minority groups – genuinely feel.
There is little way of garnering independent evidence, so you put in a balance.
But my story today was more difficult. I thought it was pretty weird that the claims about the Olympics terror attack just disappeared overnight. The China Daily version had the terror claims but nothing about the Olympics; the story that carried them originally – a Xinhua English-language report – was taken down from the website; and there was no mention in Beijing Chinese-language state media at all…[/quote]
OK, there are parallels, but not along the lines i was thinking of. Carry on.
[i]"Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
(Ill be watching you)
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
(Ill be watching you)
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night"[/i]
[quote]US Olympic tourists warned about monitoring in hotels
Mar 21 03:49 PM US/Eastern
Americans traveling to China for the Olympic Games in August can expect their hotel rooms there to be monitored, the State Department warned on its website.
“All visitors should be aware that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations,” according to the State Department site.
“All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times. Hotel rooms, residences and offices may be accessed at any time without the occupant’s consent or knowledge,” it said.
It added that many hotels and apartment buildings may be poorly built, lack emergency exits, fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide monitors and basic security like locks, alarms, and personnel.
It also said that the threat of terrorism appeared to be minimal, but urged caution nonetheless.
“The threat level for terrorism against Americans in China remains low. However, any large-scale public event like the upcoming Olympic Games could become the focus of terrorist acts or other forms of violence,” it said.
“There is no reason to believe that US citizens are being targeted at this time,” it said.
It also said crime rates were relatively low, with major metropolitan areas safer than similar sized cities in other developing countries.
But “while the overall crime threat is low, the number of criminal incidents, including those directed against Americans, continues to rise,” it added.
The Olympic Summer Games will take place from August 8-24, followed by the Beijing Paralympic Summer Games 2008 from September 6-17.
Breitbart.com[/quote]
Guns, pets on Olympic ‘no-go’ list
“Guns, drugs, explosives, and poisonous and radioactive materials will be banned from Beijing’s Olympic venues, a security official said yesterday.”
Kinda takes all the fun outta going.
The PRC response to the US State Dept warning of hotel room searches is that the US’s warning is uncalled for because unwarranted searches are illegal. Sorry I can’t find a link.
Muss-up at the torch lighting ceremony
[quote]Beijing Olympics flame lit
Mar 24 05:56 AM US/Eastern
The Beijing Olympics flame was lit in a tightly-guarded ceremony here on Monday at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics.
The ceremony launches the Olympic torch relay that marks the countdown for each Games, and the Beijing Games relay is the longest and most ambitious ever planned, lasting 130 days and covering 137,000 kilometres (85,000 miles) worldwide.
The Beijing Olympics, the first to be held in China, will open on August 8 and run until August 24.
Prior to the lighting of the flame, the ceremony was marred when three unidentified protestors tried to disrupt the speech of China organising committee chief Liu Qi.
The protesters tried to grab the microphone, and unfurled a banner reading “Boycott the Games in the country that tramples on human rights.”
The three men are believed to be part of the international rights group Reporters Without Borders.
“The Olympic flame will radiate light and happiness, peace and friendship, and hope and dreams to the people of China and the whole world,” Qi said in his speech.
Breitbart.com[/quote]
OK, everyone get out and cheer the flame as it parades around Asia, and don’t forget your fire extinguisher. he he.
The tradition of extinguishing the olympic flame on the way to its destination is actually as “ancient” as the torch relay itself. After the Nazis came upwith the kitchy torch lighting and relay ceremony in 1936, protesters repeatedly attacked the flame en route to Berlin and actually managed to extinguish it in Prague (German, Greek source). Nevertheless, the 1936 olympics were a huge success for the Nazis, potraying Germany as a “decent, friendly, peace-loving nation” despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
BTW, during today’s incident, “China state TV cut away to a prerecorded scene, preventing Chinese viewers from seeing the protest. TV commentators on Chinese TV never mentioned what took place.”
indeed, Oh megaglobal one.
what is new and a decided departure from tradition is splitting the Torch so that one branch of the flame gets to go mountain climbing, while the other gets to carry on regardless.
the idea of the torch is an unbroken connection between Olympus and the Games, not a fanning out and dilution of the flame for the home country’s political and propaganda advantage.
for the Sydney 2000 games, the torch was carried underwater for one leg of the relay on the great barrier reef. technically challenging, but it was not a diversion from the main route but THE route. Here the Tibet leg will be solely a diversion, because they won’t risk the egg on their face if it goes out (not much oxygen, high winds, remote area, etc), and because they can control the propaganda value that much more. (think masses of riot police just off camera, snarling police dog sound track, martial music amid the muffled crying of the locals.)
Chinese troops in Australia…Diggers…Guns UP!
[color=red]China wants its troops to guard Olympic torch in Australia[/color]
[i]"CHINA has told Australia its army should oversee the local leg of the Olympic torch relay amid mounting security concerns.
Chinese officials have asked Australian Federal Police to hand over security to its own forces to ensure protests do not mar the relay when it lands in Australia next month.
The move – which has been rebuffed by the AFP – comes as Beijing reels from an embarrassing relay launch in Greece when human rights activists hijacked the event.
China has responded by radically cutting back its relay legs in cities where it expects more trouble, police sources told The Advertiser."[/i](more at link)
Merkel to boycott opening ceremony
How funny would it be if the Chinese gave an olympics and nobody came?
I think the Olympic Committee should move the games to some other country.
Like, oh…Taiwan!
(Cue the Chinese propaganda equivalent of World War III)
Roll on Beijing!
The dissident run for your life Olympics. Live from the Lenovo/Mao Zedong Stadium.
HG