Olympic torch extinguished during Paris leg

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- The Olympic torch relay was disrupted Monday by protesters in Paris demonstrating against the Chinese government, causing authorities to extinguish the flame three times and put the torch on a bus, according to The Associated Press.

The torch was being carried by a wheelchair athlete when it was halted and extinguished for a second time due to demonstrators shouting, according to AP. The procession was interrupted for a third time when police spotted a crowd of demonstrators waiting for the torch on a bridge as they approached.

Backup flames, also lit from the birthplace of the ancient games in Olympia, Greece, are with the relay at all times to relight the torch.

Earlier protesters close to the River Seine forced authorities to put the torch out and take to a bus so they could continue the relay.

Agencies report that the relay has now resumed but that there have confrontations between the authorities and demonstrators. Police have taken numerous protesters away, AP said, also using tear gas to remove demonstrators who lay in the road and tried to block the relay route.

The incidents came one day after human-rights activist demonstrators made the torch's journey through London more like running the gauntlet than a journey of celebration, as UK police made more than two dozen arrests....

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/07/oly.torchrelay/index.html

[Wednesdays]

1. Interesting that you have to read 9-10 paragraphs into the article

to get to what the protesting was all about. :shrug:

[Zynx]

4. Some journalists pretend they are writing a novel instead of an article and wait forever before

giving you the climax.

[Wednesdays]

5. Since it's been shown that most people glance at headlines

And maybe the first 1-2 paragraphs, you'd think they'd know about that. :banghead:

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Oh, they know that.

The 'why' doesn't suit their agenda. It's the outrageous actions of the protesters that is the story they want to promote. How DARE they interfere with this symbol of peace and international cooperation! Carried by a wheelchair athlete, no less! Those protesters are so WRONG! (Is that enought outrage? Can we say 'why' yet? Just for the sake of journalistic integrity - whatever that is.)

[The Stranger]

9. You have it exactly right. They obscure or denigrate the protest's cause for reactionary purposes.

Protesting more and more -- even here on DU -- is criticized. Recently, someone protested the war at a Church function, and they were shouted down here.

I say the people at the Church should have fucking joined in the protest and locked arms with the protesters. Start singing peace songs and let their voices be heard.

Instead, sadly, divided, they turn on one another. The toadies, so misled, turn on their own who are only trying to awaken them from their slumber.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Apart from "against the Chinese government" in the very first sentence, of course

Sometimes, DUers really look hard for something to be outraged about.

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. C'mon. Try a little critical reading, here.

"...against the Chinese government..." does not say 'why' they were protesting, or how the protest is connected to the Olympic torch. The visual image is restricted solely to the anarchistic rioters trying to grab the torch from the hands of a man in a wheelchair.

Once that image is firmly in place, it mentions the 'why' of the protests at the end of the article. The result is "protests = bad".

It happens that I AM bothered by the protests getting physical, and trying to grab the torch from the wheelchair athlete is unconscionable, but that just makes the editorial slant that much more effective.

A more effective, and honest, lead might be: Protests against the Chinese government over its policies in Tibet took a violent turn today when protesters stopped the running of the Olympic Torch in Paris.

Who, what, where, when and why. Don't they teach that in journalism school anymore?

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. Strange, you're claiming the protest became violent, when the story doesn't say that

The CNN article has been updated now, but the excerpt given in the OP when the thread started says nothing about the protests 'taking a violent turn'. It says protesters were 'shouting', were 'spotted waiting', 'lay in the road' and there were 'confrontations' (but not specified as 'violent'). It seems to me your reporting would make the protesters look at fault for what happened. The actual violence, reported in the CNN story, was "a small punch-up between some supporters of Tibet and some supporters of the Olympics", but that doesn't seem to have been what stopped the torch run (you might say the police using tear gas was violence, too, I suppose).

At no time does CNN claim someone tried to grab the torch from the wheelchair athlete. The grab was from the first carrier, a 400 meter runner; the wheelchair athlete was the second time the run was stopped. You've built your own visual image, which appears to be wrong. I think "how the protest is connected to the Olympic torch" is pretty well known - that this year's Olympics are in China is very common knowledge. The treatment of Tibet isn't the only thing that people protest against the Chinese government about, of course, though the large majority of protesters in London and Paris have been about that. It's possible they've led with the general 'anti-Chinese' description because they can't be sure what each group of protesters at the time was protesting.

[RaleighNCDUer]

33. And that is pretty much my point.

Skim-reading, certain things jump out, just the way the article is designed. Protesters. Grabbed the torch. Wheelchair athlete. Tear gas. Punch up.

And obviously the protest DID become violent - with the police pushing back the protesters, repeated attempts to grab away the torch, the use of tear gas.

I think the article was designed to create an emotional reaction rather than to inform. It's all about what some protesters did, rather than on what most protesters were protesting about.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. So you're objecting that a news story was about what happened

rather than being the background, and that you misread it, with "an emotional reaction"? :shrug: I don't find it strange that today's news story, written in Paris, was about what happened today, in Paris, rather than events in Tibet leading up to today (which have been reported extensively by CNN and others). How your misunderstanding was 'their agenda', I can't tell.

[xioaping]

42. Objective journalism long since lost art

Sometime in the late 80's it started the switch to advocacy journalism and it has not seen objective since. Who, what, where, when and why are reported pnly when convenient.

[bean fidhleir]

30. Bingo! We have a winner here (nt)

[raebrek]

49. Some people do the exact same thing here

The read the headline of the Post and then run to the bottom to comment. I sometimes wonder if following a link it to difficult for some people. Now, I should say that I am also guilty of doing that. However, If I am going to comment I make sure I read the entire article. If I'm just browsing then...not so much.

Raebrek!!!

edited change to make it some people instead of people.

[TCJ70]

2. Aw, come on...

...leave the torch alone. Find some other way to protest. I think the torch tradition is cool...heh

[natrat]

8. yea and its real cool accepting olympics in a country that murders it's own-fuck that

[TCJ70]

11. I didn't say they shouldn't protest. n/t

[ConcernedCanuk]

20. guess that leaves the USA out of the equation for a while

.
.
.

Between jails and the military

The USA is pretty high on the list of "murdering it's own"

Then there's lack of health-care

Housing - - (think Katrina)

It's murder by design

[natrat]

27. still there is a difference-soldiers sweeping houses at gunpoint for religous persecution

we are not there yet, not disagreeing just a matter of degree

[Xithras]

19. You know it was started by the Nazis, right?

The traditional Olympic games simply had the Olympic flame burning above the stadium. Goebbels wanted the 1936 games in Germany, and limited the German entries to those who he thought met the Aryan ideal. He came up with the whole torch relay idea himself to symbolically tie the concept of the super-athlete to the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus bringing fire from the gods. Since only the "good Aryans" were allowed to carry it in Germany, the propaganda films, and the people in the towns along the path, were only exposed to the idea that the ARYANS were the ones delivering the good fire.

The IOC kept the tradition because they thought it looked cool, not because it had any historical meaning.

The thing is, the flame tradition has long since abandoned the idea of running the torch around the world, so even the "cool" part is just marketing glitz. Once, long ago, the flame was lit in Greece and then run to wherever the games were being held. Once the games moved beyond Europe, however, it became impractical to actually run the torch anywhere. Nowadays it gets lit in Greece, they run it straight to the airport, and then stop in a handful of cities around the world for a quick photo-op run before heading back to the airport. The old ideal of the local athlete waiting alongside the darkened road at 3AM for his turn at bearing is long dead. The last actual torch run was held in 1980. All of the runs since, and quite a few before that, use aircraft instead of runners for most of the journey.

So its a marketing-oriented Nazi-era relic. Pardon me for being uninspired.

I'll be in SF with my fire extinguisher.

[TCJ70]

22. So?

Honestly, this is the least harmful thing they did and it obviously hasn't retained any of the original idea behind it. While it is lame that it isn't actually "run" anymore, I still think it's cool.

[Xithras]

26. My point is that it's a symbol, and therefore fair game to attack.

Personally, I hope someone wrenches it away from the runner and hurls it into the Bay. They're running along the Embarcadero, so there will be plenty of opportunities for that.

By the way, it's rather funny how badly they've had to scale back the SF run. It was originally supposed to cross the Golden Gate, wind through the city, run through Chinatown, and then run down along the Bay. That's been scaled down to the point where it's just going to be a short 6 mile straight line run down the Embarcadero with SWAT team protection. That says a lot about the fury these games are generating.

China out of Tibet!

[fshrink]

40. And a quite ambiguous symbol at that.

Mix of ubermensch and nostalgia of an idealized Greek, "pure", apolitical society and culture turned into a monumental cash-cow.

[RaleighNCDUer]

35. I was unaware that the torch run was not traditional.

But it IS still done. The torch ran through my town (on my birthday, no less) on its way to the Atlanta games.

[tama]

29. Aw, the coolnes of that tradition

just died. Good riddens. When common people stop respecting common symbols and especially the most powerfull symbol of global circus games - bread and circus games remember! And as the global elite has not been up to its promises when speaking about bread, disrespect of their holy circus games should make the elites very worried...

[Tesha]

52. Every avenue should be explored. Neither the torch nor the church should be exempt. (NT)

[madrchsod]

3. get ready San Francisco!

http://www.sftorch2008.org/
sftorch2008.org

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080407/ts_alt_afp/chinaunresttibetrightsusolytorch2008_080407130452
San Francisco readies security blanket for Olympic torch - Yahoo! News

[ronnykmarshall]

23. Gotta story to tell.

In 2002 the torch came through West Hollywood (this was for the winter games in SLC). The man that was runing with it was a big poopy for Von's Grocery stores. Michael and I stood at the courner of Santa Monica and LaCieniga where the Vons guy (good LOOKING) was handing it off to the next runner. They had all these people from different Vons store cheering the guy on. After they put of the torch he got right between Michael and I, put his arm on my shoulder and rasied the torch thingy. They took pictures for the Vons newsletter. I guess we thought we worked at the store!!

[Spiffarino]

6. Cracks continue to form in China's carefully constructed facade

The Olympics are considered a huge political and propaganda success by the totalitarian Chinese government. Anything that disrupts the pageantry or that calls negative attention to China through the trappings of the Games causes the government great consternation.

This sort of protest needs to continue and intensify all the way to the 2008 Games. Then perhaps China will realize that the whole world is indeed watching, and we don't like what we see.

[GodlessBiker]

10. I am loving these protests. Hopefully, they will continue into China this summer.

[liberal N proud]

12. It could be a bloody Olympic season

[Zachstar]

37. It already is!

[Karenina]

14. . .

[WhiteTara]

15. Protests halt Paris torch relay early

Source: AP

PARIS - Police say the last section of the Olympic torch relay through Paris will not be run because of chaotic protests.

snip
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

PARIS (AP) — Security officials snuffed out the Olympic torch and carried it through Paris in the safety of a bus at least five times Monday as chaotic protests against China's human rights record turned the relay 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. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was taken away. Officers tackled numerous protesters and carried some away.

At the start of the relay, on the Eiffel Tower's first floor, Green Party activist Sylvain Garel lunged for the first torchbearer, former hurdler Stephane Diagana, shouting "Freedom for the Chinese!" Security officials pulled Garel back.

"It is inadmissible that the games are taking place in the world's biggest prison," Garel said later.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080407/ap_on_sp_ol/olympic_torch

[GodlessBiker]

16. Yeehaa!

[bdamomma]

17. Europe is kicking a$$, they take no crap.

[DeepModem Mom]

18. Thanks for this update, BNL! nt

[ronnykmarshall]

21. They've now called it off in France.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080407/ts_nm/olympics_torch_france_dc_7

[peabody71]

25. Can you say John Titor?

http://www.johntitor.com

Holy shit.

[Pachamama]

31. Protesters on the Golden Gate Bridge have climbed it and hung signs!!!

:applause:

Breaking news on our local stations right now!!!! Flying Tibet Flags and Free Tibet!!!!

Right on!!!!

[Zachstar]

38. China is getting egg in its face big time.

These massive protests would not have happened if they did not shoot those people. Now the protests are getting MASSIVE attention around the world and China is REALLY feeling the effects of it's madness.

[spoony]

41. That was awesome

What a bold, brave act.

[Parche]

32. Good

The Olympics are a waste of time and money....:grr: :grr: :grr:
:hi:

[fedsron2us]

34. A four month 40 country rolling demo

is probably not what the Chinese government were expecting when they bid for the Olympics. The fact that the Olympic flame required a phalanx of police plus a quota of CCP OLympic Association goons to get it any distance through the streets of London yesterday and Paris today shows that there a lot on people not buying the modern Olympic myth. As someone has pointed out elsewhere in this thread it might just be a sign that this particular circus designed to distract the masses no longer works. Everyone can see it is just a celebration of ego, power and money

[Endangered Specie]

39. ironic how usually protestors try to *start* fires, as opposed to putting them out.

[Matilda]

43. In Australia, the torch parade will be cut short.

And instead of Chinese officials accompanying it, we will have the Australian Federal Police. As
the AFP are detested by all thinking Australians as bullies with more brawn than brain, that's
going to put a damper on things, which is all to the good, IMO.

Kevin Gosper, a generally disliked Australian IOC flunkey, has attacked the protesters as being
fuelled by a hatred of China.

"They just take their hate out on whatever the issues are at the time, and that hate against the host country is being taken out on our torch."

Gosper's such a prat - the human rights issues would never have occurred to him when the IOC was
choosing the 2008 host city, and he truly wouldn't understand them now.

I'm glad that people are protesting - the IOC made the wrong choice, and we can't count on our
politicians to take a stand, so it's up to the people to shine a light on Chinese abuses - not only
on Tibet, but on their own citizens as well.

[JCMach1]

44. Put it out for good... Everyone should boycott this fascist dog and pony show

[jman0]

45. Politics and Sport should NOT be mixed

Look it folks, today you'll boycott the Olympics because of human rights, tomorrow you'll be doing it for another reason.
The fact is, you've athletes whom have trained very hard to compete and if THEY decide to boycott then let them.

I think it's crazy to try to bring up demands like China should speak with Dali Lama because what country in their RIGHT MIND would give a disgruntled and unelected ex-pat a place on any bargaining table?
Forgetabout it.
You people are trying to put politics into the Olympics and it's just plain wrong.
And it will probably BACKFIRE, ie: China will become more insecure, more introverted and pursue more censorship and less freedom.

Keep the Olympics politics free!

[JCMach1]

50. Several points Berlin, Mexico City, Munich, Moscow

The Olympics in China is precisely the issue... A repressive regime will do anything to spread its propaganda and PR around the world.

Is that political? Hell yes! The Chinese made it so!

[Flagg]

46. It was the Chinese who turned off the flame not the French.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSHKG307383

“The Chinese security guards — who in Paris nervously turned the flame off several times on Monday and retreated with the torch to a bus when protesters advanced


So to all the 'comedians' who made surrender jokes yesterday. Fuck you!

[gear_head]

47. was the Chinese goon squad protecting the torch ...

when the torch was in Paris?

what about (upcoming) San Francisco?

[Flagg]

48. The Chinese goon squad surround the flame at all times

They own the fucking thing for now. It's their call what to do with it.

[JCMach1]

51. I have big issues with Chinese security agents operating on US soil

[Nihil]

53. (Sounds of ironic laughter from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Cuba, Colombia, ...)

:patriot:

[JCMach1]

55. We didn't invade Iraq to let Chinese agents into the US now did WE!

:patriot: much :sarcasm:

[suffragette]

54. The Paris mayor's view and other news agencies descriptions are interesting

From the CNN article:
The Paris mayor had ordered a banner to be hung from city hall that reads "Paris City of Human Rights."

From France24 - great quote from the mayor
:
http://www.france24.com/en/20080408-china-condemns-olympic-torch-disruption-2008-beijing-olympics&navi=MONDE
A planned ceremony at the city’s grand City Hall was cancelled at the request of Chinese authorities organising the relay, according to the office of the Paris mayor. "The Chinese officials decided they would not stop here because they were upset by Parisian citizens expressing their support for human rights. It is their responsibility," Paris Mayor Bernard Delanoë told reporters.


From AFP, note AFP's description of "pro-Tibetan demonstrators" rather than CNN's "anti-China protesters."

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iMdGo6D3u46uQnXA6jRAXEP55KDw

Paris city hall cancels Olympic torch ceremony

PARIS (AFP) — The Paris mayor on Monday cancelled a ceremony to mark the passage of the Beijing Olympic torch as officials draped a Tibetan flag over the city hall's facade.
Mayor Bertrand Delanoe announced the cancellation just after Green party members of the city council hung out the Tibetan flag along with a black banner with the Olympic rings turned into handcuffs.
Hundreds of pro-Tibetan demonstrators disrupted the torch relay through Paris, forcing officials to repeatedly extinguish the flame and take refuge on a bus.