We didn’t stop the fire!

If you’ve been living in a cave, or in your school books, the Olympic torch is making its way to key cities worldwide in the lead up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

Usually, star athletes from respective nations run the torch around one of their cities in tribute to the games in celebration of peace.

I won’t bore you with all the history, but the Olympics started as a 9th-century Greek sporting event where blood-hungry phalanx dropped their spears and picked up a throwing disk. People could travel freely across Greece without fear of violence during the games.

If you know anything about Greek history, that’s pretty damn impressive. Too bad the Chinese government can’t find a minute to put down their guns, batons or whips.

Yes, I’m talking about the 57-year occupation, and repression, in Tibet, the sweatshop conditions of Chinese factories (though its getting better), the Great Firewall of China and the military support of the genocidal Sudanese government.

I could go on, but these are a few examples of what symbolizes China today, politically. It’s no surprise that tens-of-thousands of angry people took to the streets worldwide in protest of China hosting the Olympic games.

Concerns over the safety of the torch began in London, on April 6, when police and protesters clashed. By protesters, I mean both the pro-China, supporters of the games, and the pro-Tibet, boycott cheerleaders.

Several times. those against the games almost seized the torch from the hands of athletes before being beaten back by Chinese security and horse-mounted English police.
Then the torch moved to Paris, where the torch lost its flame several times. French police say it was a technical malfunction, even though CNN reported that the flame went out twice during fights between police and protesters.

All the while officials in San Francisco, the torches next step, grew concerned about what chaos would erupt there. Chaos was an understatement.

Rather than a traditional torch run by athletes, officials gave the torch a grand tour of the city’s waterfront during a nice bus ride. The route changed multiple times, much to the sadness of protester and supporter alike.

So devious was the move by Mayor Gavin Newsom that San Francisco County Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin compared him to the premier of China, with his “secrecy, lies, misinformation, lack of transparency and manipulating (of) the populace.”

This is a travesty for all sides. In the name of not repeating the melee images between protesters and police, the mayor of San Francisco denied every person the right to cheer and jeer the torch. Most of the time, people were chasing the torch around the city. At least it was a nice day in the Bay that day.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the reason why Beijing got the games. By having China – a country with an atrocious human rights record – host the games, it could force Chinese leaders to clean up their act…maybe even their environment (even the International Olympic Committee warns of the high level of air pollution there).

Yet even with the spotlight focused on the country, you have the violent repression of protesters in Tibet weeks earlier. Have labor conditions been improving? There have been strides in that direction. Yet you can’t forget about the flood of investment by multinationals eager to sponsor the games, and even after the repression of Tibetan protesters, still back the country.

And that’s what it really comes down to isn’t it. Multinationals rallied to China during the Olympic selection process in 2001. In fact, that same year China joined the World Trade Organization, forcing it to adopt economic policies to open up its market more – that’s 1.3 billion people mind you in what was one of the last communist countries in the world.

I think the question that should be asked in this Olympic-games debacle is how much of the support for these games being hosted in Beijing have to do with further “freeing” the markets of China, cause certainly doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how the country treats its own citizens, or those they occupy for that matter.

~ by Ozzy on April 10, 2008.