> The Stupidity of a Fire Blowing "Olympic Host" -- Playing with fire
>
> -- Micky's humble opinion: The Chinese reaction during the past weeks
> have demonstrated the Chinese propensity of violence. Beijing Olympic is
> gradually unfolding as a tragic and costly mistake. --
>
> Financial Times FT.com
>
>
> COMMENT & ANALYSIS
> Editorial comment
>
> Playing with fire
>
> Published: April 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: April 8 2008 19:13
>
> China is feeling the heat. Instead of a smooth series of positive images
> ahead of the Beijing Games, the grand plans for a world tour by the
> Olympic torch have produced a new international sport: extinguishing the
> flame as a pro-Tibet protest.
>
> At the weekend there were damaging scenes of a squad of Chinese
> attendants jostling demonstrators in London. After the disruption of the
> torch’s progress through Paris comes the sight of protesters on the
> Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. These are not reasons to curtail
> the tour. On the contrary, the “journey of harmony” is a valuable chance
> to give Beijing vivid proof that significant swathes of international
> opinion deeply oppose the recent crackdown. The protests gain added
> power ahead of the torch’s trip through Tibet itself.
>
> The opportunity for political expression that comes from taking the
> torch around the globe is an innovation from 2004, when the games
> returned to Athens. But the modern Olympic movement has long had a
> complex relationship with politics. The first tour of the torch came in
> the run-up to the 1936 Olympiad, as part of the Nazi propaganda which
> made Berlin the most notorious games of recent times.
>
> The International Olympic Committee talks about sport practised without
> discrimination in mutual understanding amid friendship and fair play.
> National governments of host cities, however, see a powerful occasion to
> capture the world’s attention and promote pride in their country. More
> than any other sporting event, the wide range of participating countries
> and the claims made for the Olympic spirit give the games an
> irresistible cachet.
>
> These qualities also make the event a unique way to register
> international tensions. One hundred years ago, Irish athletes boycotted
> the London games over the British refusal to give independence to
> Ireland. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted a US-led boycott of
> the Moscow games in 1980, followed by a Soviet-led boycott of the 1984
> games in Los Angeles.
>
> Throughout the cold war, barely an Olympiad went by without some protest
> either about the policies of the host country or of other nations taking
> part. The run of relatively protest-free games dates only from Seoul and
> Barcelona. If the IOC did not see that the 2001 decision to award the
> games to Beijing was likely to end that run, it was extraordinarily naive.
>
> The 2008 games could