For those of you who got to watch overtime golf rather than my appearance on the Sunday edition of the CBS evening news (the extra holes in the golf tournament preempted the entire news broadcast in the East and Midwest), here’s a link to my interview with anchor Russ Mitchell.
http://tinyurl.com/552jvz
China called their Olympic Torch Run, planned as a 21-nation tour that was the the longest trip ever for the Olympic Flame, a “Journey of Harmony.” The Olympic Fire’s swing through Europe, however, was anything but harmonious. In fact, the International Olympic Committee is considering ending the international tour of the Beijing games’ flame and limiting the torch run to sites within China due to the aggressive demonstrations the event sparked in Europe. In London, protesters of China’s human right’s record, particularly in Tibet, attempted to extinguish the torch with water and fire extinguishers. Demonstrators scuffled with Chinese Olympic supporters and with police in what the Guardian called “A Day of Chaos.” News Photos and television coverage from the event showed protesters aggressively put down by British police. Lord Coe, who is in charge of the 2012 Olympic games in London, was manhandled by the Chinese security workers in track suits escorting the torch. He later referred to the security detail as “thugs.” In Paris, it was worse, as activists trying to put out the Olympic fire forced organizers of the event to extinguish the flame themselves at least four times and put the torch on a bus to complete the route (even if the fire is extinguished, the flame continues to burn in two lanterns used to light the torch). Keeping order around the Olympic torch has at times looked like a sporting event itself as police jogged, rode bikes, flew planes and even donned rollerblades to keep hold back the demonstrators. Throw in some stilts and a unicycle and you’ll have a circus. Those accessories aren’t completely out of the realm of possibility considering that Wednesday’s stop for the Olympic torch is San Francisco, where one team of protesters plans to run naked behind the torch. By the time the Paris fiasco was over, in fact, climbers in San Francisco had already scaled the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge to hang pro-Tibet banners. The protests in London and Paris probably wouldn’t have been nearly as volatile if China hadn’t planned to take the torch to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and mountaineers might not have been so interested in scaling a bridge in San Francisco if the China hadn’t planned to take the torch to the summit of Mount Everest. By promoting the Beijing games with a climb to the roof of the world, the Chinese turned the Tibetan mountain into a political stage. They shouldn’t be surprised that disenfranchised residents of Tibet are trying to take a stand on that platform to promote their desires of autonomy and independence, and to highlight the human rights abuses of the Chinese. China’s use of the torch run, and the rest of the Beijing games, as a public relations campaign begs for people angry with the country to hijack that effort. And as the world saw on Sunday and Monday, along the torch’s planned route there are plenty of people disdainful of China’s human rights record, their arming the Sudanese militias committing genocide in Darfur, their horrific environmental record, their sales of dangerous products to other nations, as well as their plan to plant their flag in Tibet by carrying the Olympic flame to the top of Mount Everest.China is reported to be shopping for an American or British public relations firm to help them put a positive spin on the Tibet mess. That in itself will be a task of Olympic proportions. But China has proven image making tool in the Olympic torch, which has always been a popular device for nationalistic public relations. The torch run, in fact, began as a PR stunt for a despotic regime. Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels came up with the Torch Run as a way to glorify the Third Reich in the lead up to the 1936 Berlin Games. Considering last month’s violence in Tibet, the Chinese Olympic motto, “One World, One Dream,” seems just as much an empty slogan as their description of the Olympic torch’s trip around the world as a “Journey of Harmony” when India is preparing armored vehicles, riot police, helicopters, and water cannons for the torch’s visit and Australia has announced that Chinese paramilitary torch protection team will not be allowed to escort the flame when it visits Canberra later this month. Whether the IOC decides to cancel the rest of the Beijing Games’ international torch run or not, the turmoil and oppression that has surrounded the tour show that China has already managed to export another of its best known products to the West.