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The torch is symbolic of the theft of fire from the Gods by Prometheus in Ancient Greece, the torch was kept lit throughout the ancient games.
It was reintroduced in 1928, the Nazis attempted to hijack it for propaganda purposes but failed.
The Olympic rings were designed in 1913 and made their debut in 1920. Again nothing to do with the Nazis.
Thanks, as I said I read it on another site.
No it has the chance to say the British public want to destroy the spirit of the Olympic games, if you're going to protest do it right like outside the Chinese embassy. Fire extuingishers and attempted grabbing of the torch, pfft.
So will you be protesting in London in 4 years time over Britains' involvement in Iraq?
I protested before the war, and if (god forbid) we are still there in four years then I may well. But Iraq is a different case, Tibet would be better off out of China, whether Iraq would be better without the troops there is a harder issue.
So you believe the old feudal system in Tibet will be the panacea of their problems? I believe Tibet should achieve independence, I just think this whole fiasco reflects badly on the British public.
I'm not saying whether we should or shouldn't do it or whether the cost is worth it. I'm saying that at the end of the day that's the only thing that will work...
No, they would be better of with things we take for granted like the fair rule of law, not being dragged off in the middle of the night for no reason, not being beaten etc.
How does this reflect badly on the UK?
As I said, if you done it properly like protested outside the Chinese embassey then it would look like you really cared. To me, it looked like a load of idiots who tried to spoil the Olympics.
See i think you should be protesting to the olympic comittee and no one else. They shouldn't be choosing odius governments. The idea is that giving them the olympics will maybe make them change when realy, they should be saying you can't have this thing until you do change.
But the olympic committee arent beating protesters, or having mass executions on UN drug free day to mark the occasion...
Neither does Konnie Huq for that matter.
Of course its too late, but unless we come up with a time machine we have to deal with Iraq now, not Iraq as it should have been.
Yeah, I wasnt so keen on that one, I thought the fire extinguisher was more inventive.
no but we sshouldn't of let them come here, or use their own heavies - or force people with 'i support peace and human rights' TShirts to have them removed forciblly by the police
The protest was on, so I decided to join it. Simple really.
Can I ask why you have a problem with George Bush, are you American?
Personally I don't see some people I'm allowed to protest against and some I can't. I'm not sure if I should only be able to protest human rights abuses within a certain area, or people speaking a certain language?
Oh course China doesn't allow lots of rich middle class college students to make protest videos and post them to youtube - so the situation must be better there.
As to why I think China is a country that deserves to have its human rights records held to account - here's a start grabbed from the wikipedia page -
A total of 68 crimes are punishable by death in China; capital offenses include non-violent white-collar crimes such as embezzlement and tax fraud. The inconsistent and sometimes corrupt nature of the legal system in mainland China bring into question the fair application of capital punishment there.
In March 2006, allegations were made in the Falun Gong mouthpiece, the Epoch Times, of organ harvesting on living Falun Gong practitioners at the China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center, a Chinese joint-venture company in Sujiatun, Shenyang co-owned by Country Heights Health Sanctuary of Malaysia, and subject to oversight in Liaoning province.
According to two witnesses, internal organs of living Falun Gong practitioners have been harvested and sold, and the bodies have been cremated in the hospital's boiler room. The witnesses allege that no prisoner comes out of the Centre alive, and that six thousand practitioners have been held captive at the hospital since 2001, two-thirds of whom have died to date.
Incidents of torture, forced confessions and forced labour are widely reported. Freedom of assembly and association is extremely limited. The most recent mass movement for political freedom was crushed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the estimated death toll of which ranges from about 200 to 10,000 depending on sources.
An article in The Washington Times, reported in 2000 that although migrants laborers play an important part in spreading wealth in Chinese villages, they are treated "like second-class citizens by a system so discriminatory that it has been likened to apartheid." Another author making similar comparison is Anita Chan, in which she furthers that China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation analogous to the passbook system in apartheid South Africa, which were designed to regulate the supply of cheap labor.
Seven distinct elements give rise to what is described as "the regime of spatial and social apartheid" which keeps rural Chinese in their subordinate status:
The repressive regime at the factory level;
the paramilitary forces at local level;
the ‘local protectionism’ of local governments;
the fiercely pro-business and pro-government attitude of the local press;
the fiercely pro-business and pro-government attitude of the branches of ACFTU;
pro-government local courts; and
the discriminatory hukou system.
Worker's rights and privacy are other contentious human rights issues in China. There have been several reports of core International Labor Organization conventions being denied to workers. One such report was released by the International Labor Rights Fund in October 2006 documenting minimum wage violations, long work hours, and inappropriate actions towards workers by management. Workers cannot form their own unions in the workplace, only being able to join State-sanctioned ones. The extent to which these organizations can fight for the rights of Chinese workers is disputed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
Fantastic, first I was middle class, now I'm upper middle, things are on the up for me!
More seriously though, no I dont think that the Communist Party is going to see this and change their ways straight away. But what I do hope is that it ruins their 'Isnt China Lovely' show, and highlights the problems in China to a wider audience.
:yes:
Most people know about China's HR record and those that don't I suspect don't care.
Those that don't know, can't care - because they don't know. This sort of thing keeps the issue in the spotlight and may help to spread the word a bit more.
By the way, I don't approve of attacking the flame. Noisy protest along the route is enough.
We're coming from the position as people who are interested in politics and this matters to us. Trust me, there are plenty of people who just don't care in politics and all the attention in the world won't matter no difference. My mates are like that, I try talking about politics and they just tell me to fuck off, if I persist they'll just walk away. Can be frustrating at times.
It didn't make any difference.
Call me disillusioned, but if that protest failed, why would a smaller protest against the actions of an obviously non-democratic regime on the other side of the world succeed? If our own democratic representatives ignore massive protests on our own streets, why would the Chinese government give a shit?
All due respect to budda for trying to make a difference, and I'm confident that you are as well informed on this issue as you are on others, but I have to sympathize with Rolly's viewpoint here. A lot of this mouthing off against China comes from a position of near total ignorance, comes across as extremely smug, and indicates obvious double-standards.
@ Flashman: You say that "boots on the ground" are the only way to influence Chinese government policy, which isn't suprising coming from a military man. But its obviously not the only option. China's economic growth is export driven and this is concentrated on the US and EU. Economic pressure could easily be used as leverage, if we were all to accept a short term cut in material living standards. Or, an academic boycott as has been placed on Israel, if our Universities were willing to accept the drop in revenue gained from inflated fees charged to Chinese students.
Of course, and thats a shame, but there are going to be some people who saw the protests who will be interested enough to learn a bit more about the situation.
The whole point of protesting is to get noticed, and I think the protesters at the torch relay did that pretty effectively.
I was there myself, and the failure of that was fairly gutting given there was a real mood in the crowd that we were doing something momentous.
As for economic sanctions, the situation between US/EU and China is pretty much self assured destruction, if one side cuts off the other then both would suffer a lot. The problem being that China has hundreds of billions of US dollars which it could play with and cause massive problems for the US.
Which suggests that whilst we may not be directly perpetrating much of the shit that goes on in China and Tibet, we are heavily complicit it it...
Which isn't to say your position is hypocritical, but most of the people feeling so good for "speaking out" against the Chinese government are. If it weren't for internal repression of grassroots political/social/labour/environmental movements, and subjugation of neighbouring minorities/strategic territories (e.g. Tibet), our economy wouldn't have prospered as it has done over the last 15 years. We owe our prosperity to the subjugation of labour in China and elsewhere. As Orwell said:
"The European peoples, and especially the British, have long owed their high standard of life to direct or indirect exploitation of the coloured peoples...mainly in Africa and Asia."