San Francisco, April 9th., 2008. Closing ceremony of Olympic Torch relay in city cancelled because of mobs.
In a typical show of sanctimony and hypocrisy, protesting Berkeley earth-mothers and blond-dreadlockers sabotaged the Olympic torch relay today, ruining or preventing nearly all of the planned festivities.
Oh, there were also some Burmese and Tibetans, who unlike the Berkeleyites do actually have a valid bone to pick and a legitimate point. Had it been merely the Burmese and Tibetans, this whole thing would not have affected traffic, nor cost so much.
Unlike the anti-everything cossacks from Berkeley, the Chinese who came out in droves to peacefully express their ethnic pride tried to avoid confrontation, and, remarkably, did not engage in any violence - though one would be hard put to figure out why, as they certainly had reason to be outraged.
Judging by snippets of conversation I overheard while down at Justin Herman Plaza, most of the Berkeleyite anger seemed to veer into racist territory.
I saw one sign that used the term 'Chink-Nazi', another that accused the Chinese of turning Tibet into a killing field - not the Chinese government, but 'the Chinese'. Besides being hyperbolic in the extreme, it was a clear expression of the anti-Chinese bigotry that is so important a part of the West-Coast social and cultural fabric. And quite unconsciously so - the poor deluded greenies carrying those signs were probably incapable of understanding how their message might offend.
Several signs implied that the Chinese were racists - not a few in terms that showed a mote and beam obliviousness. The general tone being one of self-satisfied priggishness from the mostly middle-class non-Chinese, keenly felt disappointment from the many Chinese-Americans.
The live band was rather un-interesting. It's a miracle nobody tried to burn the torch in effigy. Perhaps later tonight.
At one point, the police had to protect several lion and dragon dance troupes from the angry young white people and their Tibetan and Burmese friends. Seeing as lion and dragon dance troupes are usually kungfu associations, this may have prevented serious mayhem. Those who study martial arts will endure...... Until the first rock hits the first face.
Even though the martial-artists were much outnumbered, I would've put my money on them rather than the scragglies that surrounded them. Pity that their moment to shine was ruined by the unwashed unemployable intolerables.
What could have been a massive feel-good event (ethnic and cultural pride, a share in Olympian glory, inter-ethnic and international brotherhood, San Francisco prestige) was turned into just another exercise in Bay Area smugness. Not only the runners and the Chinese community, but all citizens of San Francisco lost today. Berkeley is a monumental burden.
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I'n surprised to find out that the anti-Israel brigade are also anti-Chinese in the US.
Here in the UK, I was not at all surprised to see that the usual anti-Israel (sorry, pro-Palestinian) 'humanitarians' have been as silent about China/Tibet, as they have been about Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma (among others). I doubt any of them would do anything as 'racist' as accuse a non-American or a non-Israeli of wrongdoing.
Ah, but you have to understand that China has become white.
They are a super power, they're an economic force to be reckoned with, and they do not respect the opinions of loud foreign intellectuals.
Can't really get more white than that.
The groups that are anti-Israel and the groups that are anti-Chinese do have considerable overlap, but maintain organizational distance. And both prefer to ignore the Darfur issue, as that, they have decided, is merely a Zionist plot to discredit the Arabs.
Burma and Tibet, however, feed into the anti-Chinese sentiments favoured by such luminaries as Mahathir Muhammad of Malaysia, the late and unlamented Sukarno of Indonesia, the ongoing anti-Chinese bigotry of Malays, Indonesians, Philippinos..... and Thais, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and last but not least the Burmese and the Tibetans.
With the exception of Tibet, all those countries have had anti-Chinese riots and violence.
The Indonesians of course are known for having slaughtered over a million Chinese between 1965 and 1967.
Besides, here in the Bay Area, the Chinese are 'the other white meat'.
They're a 'model minority', they own a real estate, they're industrious and academically succesfull. Heck, they're so white they put the old-style white to shame.
They're so white that they're practically Jewish. And so, they must be, naturally, utterly wrong.
Protesters aside, shouldn't legitimate issues with Chinese policy preclude their hosting the Olympics from being a "massive feel-good event"? Isn't there some middle ground between a mindless "Hooray! Olympics!" and "sanctimonious self-righteous hippie?"
I didn't protest, but I'm also not very happy about China using the Olympics as PR to sweep all its problems under the rug, and I'm not convinced that the mere fact that local Chinese folks are proud about their home team getting to host validates the practice.
I for one wouldn't mind if the Olympics were boycotted or protested.
Then again, I don't really like the Olympics in the first place.
I agree with you. And the Olympics normally slides right on by without me even blinking.
But in SF this was an opportunity for the Chinese American community to express pleasure/pride. As such, it was not the correct time and place for self-righteousness from a bunch of people who, one month ago, couldn't even find Tibet on a map of China if you hit it with a spit-wad.
Most of what I saw boiled down to the unwashed and the excentric deciding en-masse to be spoilers and have good time doing so.
In the same way that reservations about giving the Olympics to China are too late in the game, objecting to the visit of the torch at this time is rather stupid - China had a human rights issue long before this, and it would have been a valid and very strong objection to the games taking place in China from the very beginning. But China's record at that time was no hindrance.
China's record hasn't stopped us from becoming their biggest customer either.
But then, cargo containers landing at Long Beach are not accompanied by kvelling.
Especially not by minority kvelling.
Obviously, Chinese Americans should not kvell. It is wrong for that lot to kvell - they are not nearly as good as the good people of Berkeley. Who are very good indeed.
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Of course, the British and the French are in shallow moral waters when criticizing China also. Britain was the world's biggest and baddest empire (and believes itself to be civilization incarnate), France committed atrocities in their colonies that were dwarfed only by what Leopold did in the Congo.
Neither of these countries are entirely out of the imperial business - and neither relinquished holdings for ideological reasons. Those lands that they left, they left because they were pushed. And both have a history of having pushed the Chinese around - how remarkable that the modern Frenchman and Englishman think that it happened so long ago that surely the Chinese will have forgotten it by now.
But in SF this was an opportunity for the Chinese American community to express pleasure/pride. As such, it was not the correct time and place for self-righteousness from a bunch of people who, one month ago, couldn't even find Tibet on a map of China if you hit it with a spit-wad.
On that, we absolutely agree. And I think that an unfortunate by-product of the protesters failing to differentiate their problems with the Chinese government (which I have little sympathy for) from the Chinese people, both there and abroad, specifically in the US and SF, puts the Chinese-American community in the really unenviable position of either condemning their country or of adopting the govt. party line of pretending there are no problems in China at all- which is ridiculous, because no one knows all the problems with China than all the Chinese who left it to come to America. If the criticisms of China (and I agree, it's too little too late) were being made more intelligently and with less vitriol, they might even get support from some in the Chinese community. As it is now, they force people that normally would never defend the Communist government to either march in lock-step or stay mum.
As so often happens, what keeps me from protesting isn't so much that I disagree with the causes in question... it's the protesters themselves.
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Speaking of stupid protests, I was walking by SF State several days ago and saw a flier for a "protest meeting" in one of the rooms in the Student Union (I think it was Rosa Parks number 5) to declare solidarity with the Chinese government and condemn the "imperialist, counterrevolutionary forces" of the Tibetans and Dalai Lama. It was being sponsored by the Marxist Student Association. That was pretty entertaining; it takes some serious Marxism blinders to support China over the Tibetans (sort of reminded me of when the Yiddish Communists kept supporting Stalin even after stuff like this).
They're so white that they're
practically Jewish. And so, they must be, naturally, utterly wrong.
I think that is closer to the truth than the idea that China, as a superpower, has become 'white'. The UK does not have a particularly large and established Chinese community, and I suspect that is why it is not treated as a super-power by the left.
For example, Ken Livingstone, the resolutely left-wing Mayor of London and frequent critic of the US and Israel has defended the Chinese government's human rights record and the Tianenmen Square Massacre (he said it was like the UK poll tax riots of the 1980s!) saying "There is no such thing as one country with a perfect record."
I would again attribute that more to the need for far-left folk to defend governments and organizations that share, or are perceived to share, their ideology. Before the wall fell, it was defense of the USSR. Now that there's no Soviet Union, and Cuba has sort of fallen by the wayside in terms of Intl attention (and since its future post-Fidel seems murky), China remains the last "bastion" of supposed-Marxism in practice, thereby requiring people that designate themselves as good Marxists to defend it tooth and nail. I see this as basically like when RW Christians such as Pat Robertson defended Charles Taylor of Liberia under the grounds that at least he was a Christian and wasn't a dirty liberal.
Why is it that athletes and the Olympics always suffer in these things. What has been going on in China and other happens didn't JUST happen and will not end if a torch is extinguished or an opening ceremony boycotted. WE [all] have maybe one thing we try to do together internationally, so it is always the one target for peoples' grievances... and there sit the atletes paying the price for it!
People make me sick when they have nothing better to do but ruin things, get a job or a life. Become a president or an official of something and come up with solutions rather than trip an Olympec runner or douse a flame, get a life!
(biggest and baddest empire)
Oh really Blogmeester - "baddest"??
worst - possibly though I think the 3rd Reich was MUCH more nasty for a shorter period
wettest - absolutely
now you grab your "Websters" and find "baddest"
I do wonder what Jane Fonda thinks about Tibet -
We all love the Dalai Lama - don't we?
ttfn chuck!
Graham
BOTH has been (back) on these shores so long that his "English" has been corrupted. For the benefit of our British and British-educated correspondants, let me elucidate: "Baddest" is an Americanism, roughly meaning "most proficient" or "coolest", and is related to another Americanism, "bad-ass". See also: "TCB", a favorite phrase of both Elvis and the great Canadian band, Bachman Turner Overdrive (BTO).
My dears, the main anti-Israel group, ANSWER, and their cronies love China and hate Tibet. They praise China for saving Tibet from what they call feudalism and accuse the Dalai Lama of being in league with Nazis (when did that become a bad thing for ANSWER?).
They were out in force protesting in FAVOR of Chinese brutality and human rights violations.
IndyMedia is full of these nutcases.
In the meantime, my message to the Chinese:
FREE TIBET!
FREEDOM FOR BURMA!
END THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!
NO NUKES FOR IRAN!
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