AP reports:
"BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentine runners relayed the Olympic torch past fenced-off protesters on Friday, as hundreds of China supporters in red windbreakers tried to reverse weeks of bad publicity for the host of the Summer Games. . . A sea of about 500 China supporters in red windbreakers handed out by organizers waved banners and denounced what they called political interference in the ceremony."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080411/ap_on_sp_ol/olympic_torchWhen you've got $1.68 trillion in foreign curency reserves, you can afford to hire as many pro-China supporters and PR flacks as you need to re-brand your crappy human rights image. And, of course, paramilitary "men in blue," who, according to an AP story, were accused of "aggressive behavior, including agents yelling orders and snatching Tibetan flags from runners" in London. . . Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Olympics,
also had a run-in with the paramilitary troops" said "They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English. They were thugs."
Hitler would have been gratified.
The Cincinati Enquirer reported recently:
"The torch relay that culminates in the ceremonial lighting of the flame at Olympic stadium was ordered by Adolf Hitler, who tried to turn the 1936 Berlin Games into a celebration of the Third Reich. And it was Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine that popularized the five interlocking rings as the symbol of the Games. Today, both are universally recognized icons of the Olympics. But historians say neither had much, if anything, to do with the Games born centuries ago in Ancient Olympia."
http://www.infowars.com/print/misc/rings_torch.htm
The Chinese are in good company, it looks like.