Check out the sticks and the uniforms. Katmandu is in Nepal.
French TV athletics commentator to boycott Olympics
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 18:35:00 04/04/2008
PARIS – Bernard Faure, a veteran athletics commentator for public French television, has refused to travel to the Beijing Olympics in protest at Chinese government policy in Tibet.
“Everyone, in their conscience, must decide on their stance,” Faure, himself a former athlete and a television commentator for France Televisions over the last 19 years, told L’Equipe newspaper.
“Personally, I will not go,” he said, adding, however, that athletes should not be stopped from participating in the August 8-24 Games.
From The Sunday Times
April 6, 2008
Stand up, for today you can force China through a tunnel of shame
The London torch procession shows how craven Britain has become: ignore it or protest
Simon Jenkins
Today’s London publicity stunt for the Chinese regime should be ignored by the public and any reputable athlete or politician, unless to register a fierce protest. The four-month “journey of harmony” of the Olympic torch (or many cloned torches) through 21 nations is an exercise in political laundering. It is appalling that the prime minister is to “greet” his torch in Downing Street.
This tour has nothing to do with sport. It has been staged by the Chinese government, not the International Olympic Committee, with “celebrity runners” in each country approved by the commercial sponsors, Coca-Cola, Lenovo and Samsung. In Britain those conned into joining include Tim Henman, Sir Trevor McDonald, Vanessa-Mae, the Sugababes, Ken Livingstone and Gordon Brown. It shows how craven Britain has become to its membership of the so-called Olympic family and its Chinese parents.
The idea of carrying a lit torch from the Temple of Hera in Greece was invented by Hitler in 1936 to suggest a link between the German people and fellow Aryans in southern Europe. It was revived as a political act by Sydney in 2000 with a regional tour symbolising Australia’s links with the Pacific rim of Asia. Athens staged a world tour in 2004 in honour of the Games returning to their original home.
Nothing has equalled the present shenanigans. China’s ruling politburo knows that these Games carry heavy political baggage. Everything is image. The regime wants value for money from its $30 billion and that would never accrue from a mere fortnight’s track and field events.
That is why today’s London run, which began in Athens last month, will return to China by touching down in Lhasa, Tibet. There it will meet a torch from the summit of Everest. The centrality of Lhasa to the tour is to emphasise that Everest is in China by virtue of being in Tibet. It is not the protesting Tibetans who are polluting sport with politics, but their Chinese overlords.
Participants in today’s display are thus endorsing an event the climax of which is to celebrate a dictator’s conquest of a neighbour. When Saddam Hussein did that to Kuwait, Britain went to war. The least Britain owes the Tibetans is not to add to their humiliation. Playing sport is one thing, political cheerleading is another.
I normally dislike boycotts, embargoes and sendings to Coventry. They tend to hurt the wrong people and only boost the self-importance of those at whom they are directed. That particularly applies in areas such as sport, where non-political contact between young people in conflict-ridden parts of the world should be promoted rather than suppressed.
For that reason it is right, as the Dalai Lama has said, for athletes to participate in the Beijing Olympics, as in Hitler’s in 1936 and Moscow’s in 1980. But the athletes and their political and media hangers-on should recognise that the Games have never been politics-free, not since their revival in 1896. The ambition of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, their promoter, was emphatically political, hoping that big nations would “fight each other at the Games” instead of rushing into wars of national prestige.
Since then a self-perpetuating mafia, the IOC, has relentlessly hyped the Games as festivals of national prestige to push their cost way beyond that of any other world championship and beyond the hopes of any poor city or nation.
It demands permanent stadiums, villages and massive security, most of it useless for any lasting purpose. The world is littered with vacant and derelict Olympics venues. London has caved in to the same pressure and is building unnecessary sites for athletics, swimming and cycling, as well as London facilities for horse riding and shooting that could have been staged in the home counties at Hickstead and Bisley.
The IOC knows that only by investing the Games in flatulent pretension can it hope for rich governments to keep it in the style to which it has become accustomed. Nothing but dictatorship could have drained Beijing of the $30 billion that its Games are costing. After Britain’s experience of IOC lifestyle requirements - such as “Zil lanes” in Mile End Road for its personal limousines - it may have to rely on other dictatorships in future.
The pretension is embodied in the torch, a 20th century invention, called “a symbol of peace, justice and brotherhood” that is “bringing people together on its journey of harmony”. Its “mother flame” is being transported about the world in a specially adapted Air China jet, with 10 “flame attendants”, like Greek acolytes. The torch requires its own motorcade and a nightly hotel room where it must be surrounded by unsleeping guards.
No sport does itself credit by associating with antics reminiscent of the crazed millionaire in Dr No. Yet even London has capitulated to this nonsense, with the British Museum, Downing Street, Canary Wharf and the Docklands Light Railway all cashing in. Taxpayers must spend £1m on eight hours of police overtime culminating in the lighting of an “Olympic cauldron” at the Millennium Dome. If this were not the Olympics it would be total nutcase country, with the Witches of the Sabbath and the Flat Earth Society demanding equal time.
Handling the politics of the Olympics will clearly be a matter of some delicacy. The Chinese ambassador in London may yet absent herself from today’s event. Gordon Brown and his cabinet should do likewise. The British, led by Tessa Jowell, the ensnared Olympics minister, periodically intone their “concern for civil rights in China” as if it were a Buddhist mantra. It makes no difference.
From the moment the Games were awarded to Beijing, all involved knew they risked becoming quislings to the Chinese cause.
Many athletes have protested that boycotting the Games because of Tibet or civil rights would be a “terrible blow to young people who have trained for years”. But most sporting championships are purely about sport, such as those devoted to cycling in Manchester last week. By contrast, athletes always knew that Beijing would be a seismic political event.
In Tibet 140 people are reported to have died, preliminary to the athletes’ enjoyment of their sport. Eight were reported shot last week for supporting the Dalai Lama. The Chinese have closed Lhasa to clamp down on further protest, as they had to close Tiananmen Square for the first receipt of the torch. They have arrested 70 Uighurs in the “autonomous” province of Xinjiang. Dissidents in Beijing are being arrested and condemned to who knows what fate. One writer, Hu Jai, has been imprisoned and tortured for doing what the IOC boss, Jacques Rogge, advocated, namely that the Olympics be used to publicise human rights abuses in China. What is Rogge doing now?
The Olympics are a festival of chauvinism, a farrago of anthems and flags and medal tables and prestige. Those participating in the Olympics are not individual players, as in most sporting occasions. They are Coubertin’s soldiers, defending their nation’s honour in a charged political climate. The Olympics are a United Nations general assembly by another name. China and the IOC are relying on the ceremonial flummery to validate the Games financially and politically.
There is now no way those participating can cut the Games down to sporting size. The IOC has long closed that option. But in this contest of political symbolisms, they can return like for like. The more odious the host regime, the more assiduous visitors can be in publicising the odium.
Politicians should go nowhere near these Games except in protest. Leave them to sport. Today and at every stop along the way, the torch and its bearers must suffer a tunnel of shame, parodying its protestations of peace, brotherhood and justice. This is an opportunity to publicise and protest against the world’s greatest dictatorship.
The BBC’s 400 Olympics staff are on the mother of all junkets, in contempt alike for China’s oppressed and Britain’s licence-fee payers. It will be shocking if such a media bonanza ignores its wretched political environs.
China last week welcomed the British government as a member of something called the Olympic family. If this is a family, I hope that for the next four months it is an intensely unhappy one.
PARIS, April 4, 2008 (AFP) - French Olympians on Friday said their desire to put ``Olympic values’’ back at the heart of the Olympics will be their objective when they wear a new badge to promote respect among nations at the Games.
Backed by the French National Olympic Commitee (CNOSF), the badge - on which is written ``Pour un monde meilleur’’ (For a better world) - was unveiled by double Olympic judo champion David Douillet.
French athletes will initially wear the badge, on which the Olympic rings also appear, Monday when the Olympic torch makes its way through the streets of Paris.
They also hope to wear it during the August 8-24 competition, although that could be subject to International Olympic Committee (IOC) approval.
``With this badge we want to put Olympic values back to the heart of the Olympic Games,’’ said pole vaulter Romain Mesnil, one of the founders of an athletes group whose aim is to promote human rights.
``The Olympic rings should be given back their true meaning.’’
The CNOSF athletes’ commission is presided by now-retired Olympic and four-time world champion Douillet.
He said the CNOSF had agreed that athletes could wear the badge on Monday, but he added that talks are ongoing with IOC to allow French athletes to wear the badge in Beijing.
Douillet said the athletes’ gesture on Monday would be the only occasion on which they would demonstrate ahead of the Games.
``Once they’ve done it, they’ll be asking you (media) to leave them in peace until they get to Beijing,’’ said Douillet.
France’s Olympic athletes appear to want their voices to be heard.
In a report Friday in Sport magazine, 43 percent of 126 athletes polled said they supported a recently mooted boycott of the opening ceremony by the country’s president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Former hurdles runner Stephane Diagana said Friday it was time to use the means within their power to promote the Olympic ideal.
``We’re taking back the rings,’’ said the former 400m hurdles world champion.
He said the use of the Olympic rings, which is normally subject to IOC approval, on the badge would likely escape the scrutiny of the IOC’s legal team.
On the badge the rings are stuck on to the word 'France' - under which is written the slogan For a better world’’ - which means that only the CNOSF’s agreement is required.’’
CNOSF president Henri Serandour is currently in Beijing for National Olympic Commitees (NOCs) meeting, and is said to be negotiating for the badge to be accepted by the IOC and its chief Jacques Rogge.
The Olympic charter normally forbids the wearing or use of political or religious garments on Olympic sites.
SAINT PETERSBURG, April 4, 2008 (AFP) - The Olympic flame reached Saint Petersburg on Friday for the Russian leg of a world tour ahead of this summer’s Beijing games, city authorities said, as rights activists called for a boycott.
On Saturday from 0830 GMT, 80 people are to take turns carrying the torch along a 20-kilometre (12-mile) route ending at the Hermitage museum and former imperial palace by the River Neva.
They will light a ceremonial Olympic goblet at the conclusion of the event, part of a 19-country tour that has been dogged by controversy over Beijing’s treatment of its Tibet region.
``Saint Petersburg is ready to welcome the Olympic flame relay,’’ Saint Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko said earlier.
Among those to run with the flame are artists and sports personalities, including Galina Zybina, an Olympic champion at the 1952 games in Helsinki, when the Soviet Union was led by Joseph Stalin.
Ahead of Saturday’s event the city administration was keeping the flame’s whereabouts secret, despite the lack of any obvious threat of disruption. China’s neighbour Russia is one of Beijing’s closest diplomatic allies.
But Russian human rights campaigners, who complain of abuses in their own country, called on athletes to protest against China’s rights record at the games.
Veteran campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva said that ideally a ``massive boycott’’ of the games should take place but failing that participants could protest by, for example, wearing T-shirts carrying the names of political prisoners.
``Even if five or 10 athletes decided to do that… it would be an event,’’ Alexeyeva, who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group, said at a Moscow news conference.
``Russia and China are the biggest countries where human rights are violated in the most brutal fashion,’’ she said in a reference to the organisation’s campaigns against torture in prisons and abuses in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region.
[b]``The Olympic games can’t take place in the current conditions,’’ said activist Lev Ponomaryov of the movement For Human Rights, who said China was defying the international community by failing to release political prisoners and instead arresting more.
On Thursday an envoy for the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama urged Beijing to cancel ``provocative’’ plans to run the Olympic torch relay through Tibet. China dismissed this as an attempt at sabotage. [/b]
Pro-Tibet activists and other groups are planning demonstrations at key locations on the flame’s route, including London on Sunday, Paris on Monday and San Francisco on Wednesday.
Demonstrations in support of Tibet planned in Saint Petersburg for Friday ahead of the torch’s arrival were cancelled at the behest of the authorities, organisers said last week.
They said the protests had not been strictly prohibited, but rather pushed back to April 20 to allow time for new permits to come through.
Protests in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 10 to mark a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule escalated into widespread rioting in the city, which then spread to neighbouring Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans.
Russia has said that China’s violent clamp-down is not an international diplomatic issue but rather an internal matter for the country to resolve.
LONDON, April 6, 2008 - The Olympic torch was to be carried through London’s snow-covered streets on Sunday in a relay expected to be marked by protests over China’s crackdown in Tibet.
The flame for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing arrived in the British capital Saturday amid controversy surrounding planned pro-Tibet demonstrations.
The flame, kept alive in a lantern amid blustery conditions, arrived at Heathrow Airport by plane from Saint Petersburg. It was greeted by a welcome party before being whisked off to spend the night a hotel in an undisclosed location.
Ahead of the relay’s start due at 10:30 am (0930 GMT), heavy snow fell across London and many parts of Britain overnight and Sunday morning.
Chinese ambassador Fu Ying and Britain’s Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell were among the dignitaries who greeted the flame’s arrival.
Tibetan exiles and rights groups are planning to demonstrate when the torch is paraded through London – and then in Paris on Monday and San Francisco two days later.
Beijing has faced international criticism over its crackdown on anti-Chinese protests in Tibet that began on March 10 in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, and which have spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations.
Tibetans have been protesting over what they say has been widespread repression under nearly six decades of Chinese rule.
London’s Metropolitan Police expects six organisations – including the Free Tibet movement, Falungong and the Burma Campaign – will send about 500 protestors to demonstrate in the Britain’s capital on Sunday.
Campaigners are hoping to breach a massive security operation, according to various British media reports. Some 2,000 police officers will be out in force to protect the torch procession.
``The relationship between China and Tibet will be very much the focus,’’ Jowell told BBC television at Heathrow.
``The pictures of lawful and peaceful protest by people on the route of the torch relay in London will be in marked contrast to some of the scenes that we’ve seen from China and makes a very clear statement about the importance of freedom in our country.’’
The Olympic flame was relayed across Saint Petersburg on Saturday as part of its 130-day global journey towards the August 8-24 Games in Beijing.
In London, an array of British sports and entertainment stars were to carry the torch from Wembley Stadium, via the site of the London 2012 Olympic Games, to finish at the O2, formerly known as the Millennium Dome.
[b]Steve Redgrave, Britain’s greatest Olympian, will start the relay of some 80 torch bearers.
``People have realised athletes are a cheap hit, a way to get publicity for whatever cause they’re trying to fight for,’’ the rower, who won gold medals at five successive Games, wrote in The Guardian newspaper Saturday.
``Sportspeople… should not be misused to make a point.’’[/b]
Among those due to carry the torch were sailor Ellen MacArthur, runner Kelly Holmes, tennis player Tim Henman, footballer Theo Walcott, rugby player Kenny Logan, rower Ed Coode, cricketer Kevin Pietersen, violinist Vanessa Mae, singers the Sugababes, rugby coach Clive Woodward and heptathlete Denise Lewis. Stand-up comedian Francesca Martinez withdrew Thursday in protest over the Chinese crackdown in Tibet.
It was unclear whether Fu would participate in the relay as planned.
Some 80,000 spectators are expected to greet the procession, which will also be met by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at his Downing Street residence.
``Meeting the torch is not in any way condoning the completely unacceptable … denial of democracy and freedoms in China,’’ Jowell said.
Brown has brushed aside criticism of his plans to attend Olympic ceremonies in Beijing, insisting it is the right thing to do as London will host the 2012 summer Games.
By Katherine Baldwin
LONDON, April 6 Reuters - Anti-China protesters tried to disrupt the Olympic torch relay when it began its London leg today.
Police officers scuffled with a small group of protesters outside Wembley Stadium as the flame was carried on to a red double-decker bus in front of flag-waving spectators. Three people were arrested.
Later, a protester tried to grab the torch but was wrestled to the ground by police.
The 2008 Games take place in Beijing from August 8 to 24. The next Summer Olympics are in London in 2012.
Five times gold medallist Steve Redgrave started the torch’s 31-mile (50-km) journey through the capital at Wembley.
About 80 athletes and celebrities will carry the torch by foot, bike, boat and bus across the capital for eight hours.
Police had been expecting up to 80,000 spectators to watch the relay but many may be deterred by unseasonal snow showers.
Campaigners protesting against China’s crackdown on pro-independence activists in Tibet plan to line the route and target Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Downing Street office.
``It is deeply sad that the Chinese through their brutality in Tibet have contaminated the Olympic ideal,’’ said parliamentarian Norman Baker, president of the Tibet Society, in a statement on the Free Tibet Campaign’s website.
Falun Gong and the Burma Campaign will also target the torch’s relay.
Brown will greet the flame in Downing Street, despite calls from campaigners and politicians for him to boycott the relay.
``It’s wholly inappropriate that Gordon Brown is participating in this torch-bearing ceremony today,’’ Nick Clegg, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, told BBC Television.
Brown has said he will not boycott the Games and says the Dalai Lama - Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader - has not called for a boycott.
China’s ambassador to London Fu Ying is expected to run a short distance with the torch near the Chinese embassy and could be another focus for protesters.
Several British celebrities dropped out of the torch ceremony in a show of unity with Tibetan independence activists or to take a stand against China’s human rights record.
Chinese security forces have locked down Tibet and neighbouring provinces to quell anti-Chinese protests and riots that started in mid-March.
Human rights groups say Chinese police have killed a number of protesters. Foreign journalists cannot travel to the troubled regions to verify the claims.
Protesters are particularly incensed that the torch will be carried through Tibet by Chinese officials in June. The Free Tibet Campaign accuses Beijing of using the torch for its own propaganda purposes.
The torch relay will end at Greenwich later today in the hands of Kelly Holmes, who won two gold middle-distance medals in the 2004 Games.
Things have stepped up a notch with the Sri lanka bombing. Now what?
I thought this was a new kind of stretching protocol…
Rupert
Yeah its a good quadratus lumborum stretch.
stick massage?
Officials Put Out Olympic Torch 3 Times
By JEROME PUGMIRE and ELAINE GANLEY – 38 minutes ago
PARIS (AP) — Security officials have extinguished the Olympic torch for the third time because of raucous protests at the relay in Paris.
Police escorted the flame onto a bus twice in attempts to move it away from protesters angry over China’s human rights record. Officers tackled some demonstrators and carried them away.
Police interrupted the procession the third time Monday as a precaution because they spotted a crowd of demonstrators on a bridge they were approaching.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
PARIS (AP) — Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch twice Monday as protests against China’s human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts.
Despite massive security, at least two activists got within almost an arm’s length of the flame before they were grabbed by police. Officers tackled numerous protesters to the ground and carried some away. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was also taken away.
At the start of the relay, a man identified as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for 1997 400-meter world champion Stephane Diagana, the president of France’s national athletics league, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The man was tackled before he got close to Diagana.
The procession continued but, soon after, a crowd of activists waving Tibetan flags interrupted it for the first time by confronting the torchbearer on a road along the Seine River. The demonstrators did not appear to get close to the torch, but its flame was put out by security officers and brought on board a bus to continue partway along the route.
Less than an hour later, the flame was being carried out of a Paris traffic tunnel by an athlete in a wheelchair when the procession was halted by activists who booed and chanted “Tibet.” Once again, the torch was temporarily extinguished and put on a bus despite protesters’ apparent failure to get close.
Some 3,000 officers were deployed on motorcycles, in jogging gear and using inline roller skates. Still, police barely stopped the second rush at the torch, and the attempt to extinguish it with water. Other demonstrators scaled the Eiffel Tower and hung a banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.
Police said they did not immediately have a count of the number of arrests. Mireille Ferri, a Green Party official, said she was held by police for two hours because she approached the Eiffel Tower area with a fire extinguisher. In various locations throughout the city, activists angry about China’s human rights record and repression Tibet carried Tibetan flags and waved signs reading “the flame of shame.”
Riot police squirted tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the torch route.
France’s former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch had been put out, the Olympic flame itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights.
“The torch has been extinguished but the flame is still there,” he told France Info radio.
Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists angry about China’s human rights record leading up to the Beijing Olympics Aug. 8-24. One protester tried to grab the torch; another tried to snuff out the flame with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher. Thirty-seven people were arrested.
In Paris, police had drawn up an elaborate plan to try to keep the torch in a safe “bubble.” Torchbearers were encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on skates or on foot. Boats patrolled the Seine River that slices through the French capital, and a helicopter flew overhead.
About 80 athletes had been slated to carry the torch over the 17.4-mile route that started at the Eiffel Tower, heading down the Champs-Elysees avenue toward City Hall, then crosses over the Seine before ending at the Charlety track and field stadium.
Across town, City Hall draped its building with a banner reading, “Paris defends human rights around the world.”
One torch bearer, two-time French judo gold medalist David Douillet, told RTL radio that he regretted the choice of China, “because it isn’t up to snuff on freedom of expression, on total liberty, and of course, on Olympic values.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that was still the case.
Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 85,000-mile journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to Beijing.
The torch’s round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and it is meant to shine a spotlight on China’s economic and political power. Activists have seized upon it as a backdrop for their causes, angering Beijing.
Beijing organizers criticized London’s protesters, saying their actions were a “disgusting” form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists.
“The act of defiance from this small group of people is not popular,” said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee. “It will definitely be criticized by people who love peace and adore the Olympic spirit. Their attempt is doomed to failure.”
The torch relay also is expected to face demonstrations in San Francisco, New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4.
Associated Press writer Angela Doland contributed to this report.
Do you think this torch is gonna make it? I can just picture the protesters running behind it all the way with a fire extinguisher so it never makes it lit to Bejing… 
If you think of the Torch as a metaphor for bringing light into darkness, there is a rich irony here…