The Olympic flame arrived in London today for the European leg of its worldwide relay in the leadup to the Beijing Olympics. The Chinese, in true propaganda style, have dubbed the relay "the journey of harmony", but its already turning out to be anything but. The London leg began at 10:30am UK time. Within an hour, someone had grabbed it, others had tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher, and ten people had been arrested.
Looking at the video, the torch has so many police and Chinese bodyguards (the people in blue) around it that I'm surprised anyone can see it at all. This is what Beijing's oppression has reduced the Olympics to: a staged propaganda run, with security so thick that it might as well not be happening, while the people boo from the sidelines.
And this is just the beginning. The torch will go to Paris tomorrow, where the city government will be telling them to stick it, then to San Francisco on Wednesday, where it will also be greeted with protests. This is going to happen everywhere the torch goes (or at least everywhere where people are remotely free to protest), from now until the torch returns to China in May. The Chinese media censors are going to have their work cut out for them if they want to spin this as a journey of harmony...
