Scum-watch: Defending China by proxy.
Looks like someone's decided that the Olympic torch relay needs defending. I wonder who that could possibly be?The tone for this defence of the ancient right to run a flaming stick through capital cities is set by the Sun's report on the protests yesterday in Paris:
THE Olympic torch was snuffed out four times yesterday as it was relayed through Paris – before eventually being put on a BUS to shield it from anti-Chinese mobs.
Anti-Chinese mobs. Not human rights protesters or Free Tibet campaigners, but anti-Chinese mobs.
In a futile effort to keep some semblance of balance, there is a column at the side dealing with the accusations against China, but perhaps there's something in the fact that it leads with how China executes 22 a day. This is after all the newspaper that recently declared that 99% of its readers wanted the death penalty brought back. It's nearly 300 words in before the Sun finally suggests why the protests have been so vociferous:
Protesters are furious at China’s brutal crushing of opponents in Tibet, which has sparked outrage in neighbouring countries including Nepal.
But wait! Aren't the protests themselves incompatible with the values of the Olympics?
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge blasted the protests as “not compatible with the values of the torch relay or the Olympic Games”.
He insisted of China’s human rights record: “The International Olympic Committee has expressed its serious concern and calls for a rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet.”
What values exactly does the torch relay represent? The values of public relations, of self-promotion, for both China and the celebrities/athletes that have carried it, of being completely impervious to criticism? It must be, because it certainly doesn't stand for peace, friendship or unity like the Sun claimed yesterday. It instead stands this time round for imperial arrogance, both on the part of the International Olympic Committee for awarding China the games in the first place and then condemning protesters despite China making no effort whatsoever to improve its rights record as it was supposed to do; and also China's own, in attempting to milk the Olympics for all its short-term worth, completely out of line with the supposed values of the games that it is meant to be espousing. Rather than just expressing vague calls for "a rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet", it should be demanding at the very least that China meets with the Dalai Lama, puts a stop to its ridiculous claims that he's somehow masterminding the protests, and release those that have been taken into custody since the outbreak of the uprisings last month. For those who call for a separation of sport and politics, the moment the IOC gave China the Olympics it was a vote of confidence for its leadership; the two are so intertwined as to be impossible to break apart.
To further labour the point, the Sun's printed a cut out Olympic flame for everyone!
NO matter how many times protesters put out the real Olympic torch, they won't be able to extinguish our special cut-out-and-keep Olympic torch. Click HERE for your very own flame.
The leader column provides for two opportunities: to bash the French and to show the Chinese that Murdoch is firmly behind them and their two-week long sports extravaganza.
I realise this is a throw-away jibe, but the idea that somehow an extra 3,000 troops would "defeat the Taliban" is about as much of a fantasy as, oh, this very editorial.
Coachloads of club-carrying police were drafted in to protect the Olympic torch and keep unarmed civilian protesters at bay.
And they still couldn’t keep this iconic symbol alight.
Well, what do you expect? They're French, they're too busy eating snails, riding bicycles and going on strike as to do something as simple as keep an "iconic symbol" alight.
The flame was snuffed out FOUR times as it made its faltering way to Beijing — not by demonstrators but by city officials.
Finally, it was put on a bus for “safety reasons” — even though there was no more violence in Paris than in London, where the flame survived without a flicker.
Err, could this possibly be because, like in London, demonstrators were at certain sections blocking the flame's path? No, it's all the fault of those swarthy French policemen.
There is widespread sympathy for the Free Tibet campaigners dogging the flame’s journey — at huge loss of face to China’s Communist regime.
But this is supposed to be the Eternal Flame, an international symbol of the sporting ideal.
Not to break Godwin's law or anything, but as others have noted (The Times itself won't be repeating Jenkins's arguments, that's for sure), it was the Nazis that came up with the idea for a torch relay. The Eternal Flame - the Eternal Jew, anyone? Even if it was this imaginary symbol of a sporting ideal as some appear to be arguing, China's appropriation of it has snuffed them.
The countries through which it passes owe a duty to the Olympic legacy to keep it burning.
The French should have guarded it properly or had nothing to do with it at all.
Surely by "Olympic legacy" the Sun really means "the Chinese", or as they're known to Mr Murdoch, some of my closest business associates? As for the perfidious French, it should be interesting to see if the Sun condemns the Americans so noisily and angrily if the protesters there continue to succeed as their counterparts have here and in France. Somehow I think they might just be treated to a different standard.
Labels: China, Olympic flame protests, Olympics, Rupert Murdoch, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, Tibet
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