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The only sport-related event I've watched in years...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:28 / 06.04.08

Anyone else watching the Olympic torch relay? It's great. No chance of hiding the Free Tibet demonstrations this time, like they have been before. Everyone's watching this, there's constant live coverage...

A guy's been at it with a fire extinguisher, everywhere they go people keep jumping over the barriers and trying to grab it. And most importantly, as a result pretty much ALL the commentary is about the protests and about Tibet itself. I wish I wasn't on a fucking night shift this weekend.

Funnily enough none of this happened in that Doctor Who episode...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:37 / 06.04.08

A few years ago this would have been three pages by now...

...maybe Barbelith IS dying.

Char Aina

13:51 / 06.04.08

I'm reminded of Spike Milligan's epitaph.
Sorry i don't have any Tibetan Olympics chat, Stoatie. I don't have a telly.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:10 / 06.04.08

That was Spike Milligan's epitaph? I'm flattered.

...oh, right, I get you.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:16 / 06.04.08

The beauty of the whole thing is that is HAS to all be on telly- it's the fucking torch relay!

In terms of getting the message across, this is one of the most effective demonstrations I've seen in ages. Nobody's talking about the Olympics, they're all talking about Tibet.

Char Aina

14:38 / 06.04.08

I think we start referring to it as the Tibetan Olympics. China stole their country, lets steal the Olympics for them.

Fuck, man, I gotta get back on the chans and meme this shit up.

Fist Fun

14:38 / 06.04.08

Fuck. Sugababes have cancelled their appearance at Olympic event tonight. No one yet lined up to take their place. This is terrible.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:46 / 06.04.08

I think we start referring to it as the Tibetan Olympics. China stole their country, lets steal the Olympics for them.

Quoted for truth.

Triplets

16:10 / 06.04.08

That's an awesome idea. Filled with love and compassion, and hope, and love. And compassion.

Anna de Logardiere

16:21 / 06.04.08

Truly lovely to see a crowd completely dominated by Tibetan flags. Did anyone actually turn out to watch the torch get passed around the athletic morons (based on their reactions to the protests)? In Greenwich there seemed to be about five people who actually wanted to see the relay.

Anna de Logardiere

16:22 / 06.04.08

... I bet Paris is going to be fantastic. I'm expecting police brutality. Perhaps I could skip work and just go to France tomorrow.

Squirmelia

16:56 / 06.04.08

I didn't stay to watch the torch, but Canary Wharf was full of police and quite a lot of people standing around waiting for the torch to appear earlier today. I only saw a few people with "Free Tibet" banners unfortunately - most people had flags that were being given out to support the Olympics instead.

Anna de Logardiere

12:01 / 07.04.08

Officials twice extinguished the torch and put it on a bus for safety reasons.

I thought the torch wasn't meant to go out? Surely it's a different fire now?

Closed for Business Time

12:08 / 07.04.08

Cheating bastards.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:38 / 07.04.08

That's no fun. If they're gonna let it go out anyway, they may as well have let Fire Extinguisher Guy do it yesterday. It would have been way cooler.

Char Aina

13:03 / 07.04.08

I think it would be great if an athlete were to stand up on a podium(or whatever platform seems suitable) and say something to the effect of "Politics has already extinguished the Olympic flame figuratively. I now extinguish it literally", shortly before dunking it in a nearby bucket of water.

Of course, no athlete wants a liftime IOC ban, and most athletes will have grown up dreaming of the Olympics, so it is very unlikely to happen. That said, I wasn't aware it went out at all. I think the impact of the eternal flame being extinguished is somewhat diminished if 'eternal' is being used to mean 'occasional'. I don't know that that will make it any more likely a protest.

It would certainly create a media frenzy if it did.

Char Aina

13:08 / 07.04.08

I just remembered a comment(I forget where from) about the improvement of the USSR's behaviour after they hosted it... Some pundit seemed convinced that the 1980 Olmpics had improved things in that country, and that maybe these Tibetan Olympics would have a similar effect on China.

Could it? Could a watching world make the Beijing government up it's human rights game?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:10 / 07.04.08

So far it's made things worse, with China cracking down on dissent and locking up activists.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:29 / 07.04.08

Ooh, I forgot to mention my favourite bit of yesterday- the commentator said that occasionally there were "lulls in the demonstration". Guess what I heard?

I've heard that "global attention will make them sort their shit out" argument a few times, and it's a nice one. But as Mordant points out, it ain't working so far, and, well, the whole world was watching Tiananmen too. I know things were different back then, and China wasn't so keen for acceptance, but it's kind of a long shot nonetheless.

Char Aina

13:30 / 07.04.08

I think that the pundit was talking a long game, but I am woefully underinformed on the 28 year past Moscow games. Did they crack down at the time? If so did it pave the way for Glasnost at all? Does anyone have more of an idea about 1980 than I do?

It's fully plausible that the comment was a comment of shit from a pundit of ignorance. Was it, do you think?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:45 / 07.04.08

I'm not sure. It's kind of like the ongoing debate as to whether the sporting boycotts of South Africa actually helped the anti-Apartheid cause or were just symptomatic of it. Nobody agrees on that one.

grant

13:49 / 07.04.08

I imagine simultaneously with the crackdown there are some frightfully embarrassed people in some windowless room in Beijing trying to figure out what they can do differently to make public things like this less of a mess.

One of the things about Tiananmen that most folks forget is that it sort of started with a state funeral and was sort of encouraged by elements within the government who believed in democratic reforms as a way to strengthen China.

Evil Scientist

13:50 / 07.04.08

I heard some high up MP making comment about the protests and constantly mentioning that 19 people had been arrested, yet strangely enough there was no mention about the numbers of unarrested protesters.

What were the estimates in the end?

Char Aina

15:51 / 07.04.08

I read one report saying over nine thousand, but I don't know if I can trust the source.

Evil Scientist

15:53 / 07.04.08

Was from Metropolitan Police? %Their estimates are normally the ones to go for.%

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:56 / 07.04.08

If they specifically used the phrase "over nine thousand", well... you probably can't.

Char Aina

15:59 / 07.04.08

So true. I've heard that exact phrase used about ten thousand times, and it has been absolute lies 9,387 of those times.

grant

19:40 / 07.04.08

The Onion on the nose.

Alex's Grandma

23:17 / 07.04.08

I'm concerned the protests are going to backfire, though. At the moment, it seems to be a given that the Chinese government's behaviour in Tibet is dreadful, but it's not hard to see how the right wing (ie mainstream, so they have to be considered) press might get behind the idea that the Free Tibet groups are just being difficult, in the face of this feast of sport.

I hope the Free Tibet movement doesn't play a strong hand badly, basically.

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