This picture, which shows protesters flying the flags of Tibet and the Republic of South Vietnam, should remind us of the tens of billions who suffered and died under Communism.
Posted on 04/07/2008 7:58:27 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Officials put out Olympic torch 3 times
By JEROME PUGMIRE and ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writers
1 hour, 12 minutes ago
Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times Monday as protests against China's human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts.
Despite massive security, at least two activists got within almost an arm's length of the flame before they were grabbed by police. Officers tackled many protesters and carried off some of them. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was also taken away.
At the start of the relay, a man identified as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for 1997 400-meter world champion Stephane Diagana, the president of France's national athletics league, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The man was tackled before he got close to Diagana.
The procession continued but, soon after, a crowd of activists waving Tibetan flags interrupted it for the first time by confronting the torchbearer on a road along the Seine River. The demonstrators did not appear to get close to the torch, but its flame was put out by security officers and brought on board a bus to continue along the route.
Less than an hour later, the flame was being carried out of a Paris traffic tunnel by an athlete in a wheelchair when the procession was halted by activists who booed and chanted "Tibet." Once again, the torch was temporarily extinguished and put on a bus despite protesters' apparent failure to get close.
Some 3,000 officers were deployed on motorcycles, in jogging gear and using inline roller skates. Still, police barely stopped the second rush at the torch, and the attempt to extinguish it with water. Other demonstrators scaled the Eiffel Tower and hung a banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.
The torch was extinguished for the third time when police interrupted the procession as a precaution because they spotted a crowd of demonstrators on a bridge they were approaching.
Police said they did not immediately have a count of the number of arrests. Mireille Ferri, a Green Party official, said she was held by police for two hours because she approached the Eiffel Tower area with a fire extinguisher. In various locations throughout the city, activists angry about China's human rights record and repression Tibet carried Tibetan flags and waved signs reading "the flame of shame."
Riot police squirted tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the torch route.
France's former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, said that though the torch had been put out, the Olympic flame itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights.
"The torch has been extinguished but the flame is still there," he told France Info radio.
Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists angry about China's human rights record leading up to the Beijing Olympics Aug. 8-24. One protester tried to grab the torch; another tried to snuff out the flame with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher. Thirty-seven people were arrested.
In Paris, police had drawn up an elaborate plan to try to keep the torch in a safe "bubble." Torchbearers were encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on skates or on foot. Boats patrolled the Seine River that slices through the French capital, and a helicopter flew overhead.
About 80 athletes had been slated to carry the torch over the 17.4-mile route that started at the Eiffel Tower, heading down the Champs-Elysees avenue toward City Hall, then crosses over the Seine before ending at the Charlety track and field stadium.
Across town, City Hall draped its building with a banner reading, "Paris defends human rights around the world."
One torch bearer, two-time French judo gold medalist David Douillet, told RTL radio that he regretted the choice of China, "because it isn't up to snuff on freedom of expression, on total liberty, and of course, on Olympic values."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that was still the case.
Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 85,000-mile journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to Beijing.
The torch's round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and it is meant to shine a spotlight on China's economic and political power. Activists have seized upon it as a backdrop for their causes, angering Beijing.
Beijing organizers criticized London's protesters, saying their actions were a "disgusting" form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists.
"The act of defiance from this small group of people is not popular," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee. "It will definitely be criticized by people who love peace and adore the Olympic spirit. Their attempt is doomed to failure."
The torch relay also is expected to face demonstrations in San Francisco, New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4.
_____
It is still turning the Olympics into a political event. Politics it seems can not be kept out of the Olympics. That is only a pipe-dream to think so.
At this point, there is no getting upset about that. The Olympics will be disrupted. The Olympic torch has already been extinquished three times.
The Olympics should be cancelled this year. All athletes should be told to stay home. The Chinese should put away the pride they felt at hosting the Olympics.
America should continue to be the worlds policeman and make sure all over the world is safe and free. The U.S. should be thanked for giving so much of its tax dollars to help all over the world.
This picture, which shows protesters flying the flags of Tibet and the Republic of South Vietnam, should remind us of the tens of billions who suffered and died under Communism.
If that were the case, I might agree with you. But unless you have forgotten your history, the 1936 Berlin Olympics was a success for the free world.
By contrast, the Moscow Olympics were a failure for the west. Absolutely nothing was gained. It still makes me sick to hear that quote from Carter (spit).
Your view is not a correct one. Looking back, history will show the same view as it does today of yesterday - that a boycott of the Olympics in Beijing will have accomplished nothing except to deprive athletes the chance to compete.
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Jesse Owens
Actually, it is diethylene glycol, something you were drinking in trace amounts in your orange juice in the 1980's before tanker truck washing procedures were tightened in the U.S.
Why don't you just try buying American instead of chasing all the jobs to China becuase you want cheaper prices. I mean, you don't need to travel to San Francisco to protest. Start with the shirt you are wearing. Go ahead, look at the label. Does it say made in U.S.A.?
Why would orange juice be in a tanker truck?
How do you think they get it to the bottling plant? You think it goes from the orange straight into the carton?!
You’re assuming I am holding out for a full boycott of the Beijing Olympics. I’m not at that point yet.
Nor do I think the boycott of the Moscow Olympics was a good idea.
However, neither of those things have very much to do with whether or not China gets its reprehensible conduct rubbed in its collective face by protesters during what they had hoped would be a smoothly showcased torch relay, OR, for that matter, whether we should make our contempt known by showing up for the opening ceremonies.
I don’t want to deny our athletes their chance to compete, but I also don’t want to miss the chance to make it very plain to the ChiComs that they are not nice people and no amount of temper tantrums on their part is going to convince anyone otherwise.
Anyone who thinks the Olympics are only about athletics is either naive or disingenuous.
If it was all about athletics, why have them compete in national teams?
Why the big deal about a country’s medal count?
Why would countries spend vast sums of money developing and training their athletes?
No the Olympics have always been political theater.
The Soviet Bloc, during the Cold War, and China today see the Olympics as the equivalent to war.
They see it as an affirmation of their political system.
They see Olympic medals and world records as a display of national power.
The 2008 Olympics was to be a venue for China to show that it is now a world power, but instead it’s turn out to be a huge embarrassment.
I was hoping that they took the oranges to the bottling plant(s). Upon reflection I can see that for a variety of reasons that wouldn’t work out. On the other hand on a lot of orange juice cartons it says that the juice has been reconstituted from frozen concentrate. I’m not sure how that is transported.
I’m sorry but I don’t believe that. The Olympics in my naive little worlds is for athletes to compete. Nothing wrong with feeling good about your country as you do it. That is not politics in my view.
But I’ve lost this debate here on FR so really now I am just giving up. The worlds has many problems and the Olympics can solve none of them even if that was its ideal.
I’m not sure how they do that one either. All I know is that during the 80’s there was a problem with tanker trucks not being washed out properly between runs and that trucks that were hauling - amoung other things - diethylene glycol were then picking up liquid foodstuffs like orange juice.
Only then it was not a China plot to poision Americans. It was just sloppy quality control. Come to think of it, just like what happened with the U.S. companies that bought toothpaste with dietheylene glycol in it and childrens toys containing lead.
Sorry, I just get so disgusted with the nonesense I see on here lately. I’ve watched for years as U.S. companies cut costs by letting their U.S. managers go and hiring a Chinese national to run their factory in China.
I predicted then it would be trouble. What I did not predict is that poeple would come to the rediculas conclusion that someone was purposely trying to poision people.
It really all comes down to people that do not understand the difference between diethylene glycol and propelyene glycol, the later by the way being a regular ingredient in many foods you consume.
Actually, my t-shirt was made in the US and my golf shirt was made in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory, so I guess that counts as a double yes. ;-)
I figured that would happen. So we have you as a loyal American on your T-shirt. Any other labels we should look at? Do they all show, Made in the U.S.A.?
Let’s go out on a limb here. What about your cars?
Aww poor little chicoms. Looking like a complete backwards fool in front of the civilized world. Loss of face lol!!! Now go bow to the homo mao and everyone in the communist party. Maybe they can make a state run face saving division hehe what tools.
The level of discourse on FR has sunk to new lows folks.
We finally agree on something.
Over the past ten years or so, my hometown has lost factories that produce t-shirts, fuses, rubber belts, and magnets to cheaper locations overseas (I think all of them went south of the border). Fortunately, some of the other factories have been expanding, plus we had one large and two medium-sized plants move into the area, so I think the town had a net loss of 10-15 jobs.
People are sick of the chicoms.
I second that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.