Officials Put Out Olympic Torch 3 Times

PARIS — Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times Monday as protests against China's human rights record turned a relay through Paris 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. Officers tackled many protesters and carried off some of them. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was also taken away.

At the start of the relay, a man identified as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for 1997 400-meter world champion Stephane Diagana, the president of France's national athletics league, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The man was tackled before he got close to Diagana.

Keep reading here.

Watch the turbulent protests in Paris:

Watch footage of earlier protests in London as the Olympic torch made its way through the UK:

Comments

[jesuswazasocialist]

Disrupt the Olympic Torch Relay.

Free Tibet.

Boycott all Chinese made goods.

Don't shop at WalMart.

[msmaggie]

This does not bode well for the Games. This could make Tiannamen (sp?) look like a day at the beach.

[edgemo]

I like how the protestors want to disrupt an event that truly brings the world together. Asking athletes to sacrifice their goals, and give up their opportunities, while they themselves will not for a second think about giving up their cheap, company forced by walmart to cut costs, made in China, goods. Yes. Yes. Yes! Make the athletes pay, but if my car or stereo costs so much as a dollar more....

The solution here isn't diplomatic. It isn't military. It's economic. If the US hadn't sold more than a 1/3rd of it's public debt to China, China could have been pressured to submit. But on any moral front, the US is not any better.

[julieeiluj]

It is the country hosting it my dear. Human rights violations, pollution out of control.

[dutchess2]

Yes....sto­p stooping to shop at Walmart.

Bush sold out our Constitution AND our prestige..­.

Where is an American leader that will stand up and say we should boycott the Olympics?

Where?

[Moarku]

One of the most reasonable responses yet.

I've got a lot of issues with the way the Olympics are run in general (including corporate domination and the demands the Olympic committee places on the host city which cost them a small fortune, so smaller cities/countries have more to lose than gain), but ultimately it's about the athletes getting to compete against the best in the world and challenge themselves. This is the same as people who win Oscars and make political speeches instead of actually thanking the people who gave them the ability to stand there and accept an award. The American boycott of the Russian Olympics, and the Russians returning the favor was a blight on both countries. Don't do it again.

[eugenegerard]

You think to much. The focus is on the Chinese totalitarian system that has subjugated billions to servitude.

[Igfee]

once upon a time the olympics were an apolitical way for countries to unite, show off their culture and play a few games and there were standards each host country needed to meet as exemplary
of the higher nature each country strives for in a better world. or not. but now we have an organization that will let anyone host for the right price or coercion tactic. good previous comment about throwing a party and not showing up. seems like the only thing one can do at this point. it's a shame since everyone loves a party.

[Caolas]

It is getting old seeing these Idiots making individual runs at the torch, and physically assaulting the carrier. I'd find it far more interesting (and entertaining) to see a "human chain" (people arm locked together), a couple layers thick, flank in and encircle the procession in non-violent protest (no going for the torch...in­stead, stand together and see what the procession does to you to get through).

[wadenelson1]

Vive le Protestors!

[popozuda]

Power to the people!!!

China will be a stain on the Olympic brand for years to come. At least until the winter games. Go Team Canada!!!!

[Warmglobe]

Like most other things..it has turned into a political circus. Whether the causes are worthy or not or whatever we can't seem to get anything done without 12,000 pains in the ass piling on.

[bajaboy]

An 85,000 mile route? Yeah, someone's gonna succeed in extinguishing that sucker before it gets to Beijing.

[FirstShirt]

Ah yes, our buddies in the Green Party. A pimple on the butt of humanity.

[wadenelson1]

What does the environmental movement have to do with Chinese human rights abuses First???

[msmaggie]

Read the article. One of the key players is identified as a Green Party activist.

It amazes me how frrequently people jump into the fray w posts without first having read the relevant article.

[MadeinAmericaProud]

what does that make us the Butt? We are the freedom fighter. We have to kill just a few people to free them. It might take a long time as a supper power but we will get there with our volunteer military.

[Fez]

I look forward with great anticipation to the arrival of the torch in San Francisco where the protests will even more rowdy. By the time the torch arrives in Beijing, I expect that a boycott will be in full swing and the foreign visitors will have cancelled by the thousands. And when they try to hold the marathon in Beijing's foul air, expect about half of the contestants to drop out with respiratory problems. Yessir, the next Olmpics is shaping up as a real love-fest. Peace. brotherhood, and murder on the Tibetan Plateau.

[nastyvirus]

That's better than the alternative: cancellation of the Bejing Olympics (because China will never negotiate with Tibet), followed by the Invasion of Tibet. After that, there will be no such a thing as Tibet to free.

[Clinton]

appeasement doesn't stop the inevitable, only postpones it.

[Fez]

China invaded Tibet in 1959 and has been occupying it ever since. I'm not advocating that the Olympics be cancelled but that no one watch any of the events or pay any attention to the opening and closing ceremonies. Allow the Olympics to become a local sporting event of minor importance as long as the countries hosting the games insist on violating human rights. And that would include the US, Russia, and any other thuggish regimes.

[faretheewell]

Vive le France! Anyone got a lighter?

If the Western Democracies had any stones, they would boycott the games completely.

If citizens of these Western Democracies had any sense of morality, they would not watch the games. Let the advertisers know that they pissed away their money.

Imagine if China threw an Olympics and nobody came.

[nastyvirus]

That's easy. China would just videotape, edit, and disseminate the event to the media whores who can't resist free footage. They'll get their way, because profit is more important than principles.

[Clinton]

Profit is more important than principles in the US as well.

[Not Blind]

To answer pakiman, I believe western governments should defend the legal, civil and human rights of all people, everywhere, including within their own borders before castigating another country about it's record. In the U.S., Habeas Corpus has been suspended, we're under illegal-warrantless surveillance so our privacy is extinct, our media has become but a propaganda tool for the administration's predatory agenda. Our right to free speech is eroding. Anyone can be labeled an enemy combatant, shipped to an overseas prison, tortured, raped, and even murdered at the behest of the government's war-time powers, which the administration declared supercedes international law and our own Constitution. We've been blindly supporting Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign, which has resulted in the imprisonment and virtual genocide of Palestinians, and enable them further with our aid.
Nazi war criminals were tried, convicted and sentenced for less abuses than what has happened in the past couple of decades, as a direct result of our own government's policies and actions. It's time to criticize and demonstrate against the abuses of our government, its willingness to finance the holocaust against Palestinians, and subversion of law within our nation.

[MadeinAmericaProud]

Get over it. We voted these people.

[WorkingClass]

Awwww. Rev Wright must have told you all that.

[CaptainHowdy]

Letting China host the Olympics is going to go down as one of the worst decision that the Olympic committee has ever, and will ever, have made.

[geobushono]

The Olympics (tm) is a multinational corporate marketing scheme.
The athletes are secondary.