LIVE: Olympic Relay Protests (1 PM)

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 4/9/2007 | Me

[Smogger]

Get your popcorn boys and girls this is going to be good.

China has lined up 1000's of supporters, while protestors range from Tibetan monks and their supporters, Burmese Monks, other critics of China, and your usual rabble rousers.

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Live Video Here

[Tijeras_Slim]

they would have to kill me.

They would.

They're good at it.

They've had lots of practice.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Very fitting that the Nazis came up with the Olympic torch relay for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and today we have the Communist Dictatorship of Communist China trying to get favorable world press by again exploiting the Olympics.

[Hexenhammer]

I hope ICE is there to detain and inspect residency status of those so-called chinese supporters. I wonder how many are spies.

[Truthsearcher]

The left may not oppose China for the same reasons you do, but in this case, we should be united. The CCP is one of the great murderous regime in the history of mankind, its atrocities almost innumerable. Nazi Germany had nothing on these guys.

[se_ohio_young_conservative]

if only their own people rallied against their thug government and threw Hu Jing Tao into a trash bin.

but as we have seen in Iraq. fear takes a long time to get over.

[Smogger]

11:00 a.m.: A carvan of Vietnamese-Americans from Orange County drove overnight to join the protests today.

The tired bunch arrived at about 4 a.m. in a chartered van, but by 10:30 they enthausitically joined the throngs - supporting China or denouncing the country’s treatment of Tibetians, Burmese or policies in Darfur - lining the Embarcadero.

The Orange County group came, according to 26-year-old Tue-Anh Cao, not only to lend their voices to others denouncing Chinese policy, but to lodge their own complaint with China’s claim over the Spratly Islands. The islands in the South China Sea number about 100, made up of rocks and reefs. Many countries claim the chain as their terrority in order to also claim rights to fishing and minerals there.

“Our government in Vietnam isn’t doing anything about it,” Cao said. In the United States, he said, he and his friends were able to speak their displeasure.

As the group made its way down the road they carried the yellow and red flags of the former South Vietnam.

[jmc813]

I am torn because so much of China-bashing (especially from the left) is just protectionism (of unions) with a thin veil of the human rights issues.

This is a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type situation if I've ever seen one. I actually think it's kinda nice to have an issue the left and right both agree on.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

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.

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

[Allegra]

I wouldnt last 3 seconds living in a communist country. they would have to kill me.

I went to China on business for about ten days in early 2001. (Shanghai and Zhangjiagang.) I wanted to kiss the ground when I got back to the US after having to watch every little thing I said for all that time.

[Tijeras_Slim]

You really need to get a new travel agent... :)

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Live helicopter shot at this link,

http://cbs2.com/kcal/

[keat]

But ... the effeminate Gavin Newsome specifically forbid any interference. How can this be?

[Milwaukee_Guy]

Foxnews.com live feed,

http://www.foxnews.com/

[TheThirdRuffian]

It is exactly this “One World” crap that makes me luke warm.

I think maybe my problem was that Hillary’s call to skip the Olympics -— then just opening ceremonies -— just reminded me of Jimmy Carter thinking.

How about we instead go over there and humiliate all their athletes?

[Allegra]

You really need to get a new travel agent... :)

ROFL!!

[Milwaukee_Guy]

One hour until start of the relay. One arrest already. IMHO this will be very interesting ........

[Hoffer Rand]

Never underestimate the ability of an oppressed people to lie flatter.

[Truthsearcher]

“One World, One Dream” is the CCP’s official slogan for the Olympics, if you go to Beijing that sentence is everywhere on billboards, etc. The demonstrators are using it to show the hypocrisy of that slogan.

[gitmogrunt]

Sorry, to see that the Olympics are being thrown into the political cesspool, once again.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

The myth of the Olympic Rings, created in 1916 by a Frenchman and inscribed at Delphi by Leni Riefenstahl for the 1936 Berlin Olympics,

---

“An especially beguiling myth is that the five interlocked Olympic rings—among the world’s best-known logos—were an ancient Greek symbol for the games. Several recent books include a photograph of a stone block from Delphi with the five rings inscribed on it. The books identify it as ancient and say that the five rings “later adopted as the symbol of the modern Olympics” create “a link between the ancient and modern Olympics” and are “considered by experts to be 3,000 years old.” More nonsense. The five rings were invented in 1913 by Pierre de Coubertin, president of the International Olympic Committee. There had been five modern Olympiads by that time, and Coubertin’s writings suggest each ring was intended to represent a completed Olympiad, the first five host countries united in “Olympism” and peace. Apparently he expected to add a sixth ring after Olympiad VI, to be held in Berlin in 1916, and so on, until there was a flagful of rings and “universal peace.” But Olympiad VI was preempted by World War I, so Coubertin gave the symbol a different official meaning: each ring represented one of the five continents of the world, united in Olympism (to Europeans, the “continents” number only five). Thus the logo froze at five and stays there today, a fossil of pre-World War I Europe, when hopes of world peace briefly flowered. How did the inscription of the five-ring logo come to be at Delphi? The infamous 1936 Nazi Olympics of Berlin provide the answer. Leni Riefenstahl filmed the 1936 Olympic torch relay as the flame moved from ancient Olympia toward Berlin for her acclaimed movie Olympia. For a scene where a torch runner circles the photogenic stadium at Delphi, a crude stone block was inscribed with the symbol of the five rings, and placed in the stadium. Years later American authors Lynn and Gray Poole observed the old movie prop in the stadium, mistook it for an ancient inscription, and published their error, which soon spread to other books, where it continues to mislead the unwary.”

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/olympics/games.html