Canberra Swamped By Sea Of Communist China Flags

Chinese Embassy Helped Organise Pro-China Nationalism Psy-Op



There were a few moments when it looked like Australian Federal Police were considering hauling away the two Chinese paramilitary blue tracksuiters they allowed to escort the Olympic Torch through the streets, and past the monuments, of Canberra. The paramilitary eventually got the message and backed off, boxed in as they were for most of the 16 km run by police.

It didn't get too ugly in Canberra yesterday morning, unless you were a lone 'Free Tibet' protester, surrounded and swamped by dozens of yelling, shrieking Chinese students drowning you in huge Communist China flags.

Some 10,000 loud and proud pro-China supporters were bussed in, in a minutely co-ordinated exercise. More than 40 buses arrived from Melbourne. Even more buses journeyed down from Sydney.

The Chinese embassy in Australia were heavily involved in this very successful psy-op :

China helped to orchestrate the mass demonstration by thousands of Chinese students that turned Canberra into a sea of red for yesterday's torch relay.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope confirmed the Chinese Embassy in Canberra was closely involved in helping transport up to 10,000 Chinese students, ensuring pro-China demonstrators vastly outnumbered Tibetan activists.

The revelation of official Chinese involvement in the demonstrations could trigger a diplomatic row with Australia's largest trading partner.

It is understood Beijing's officials in Canberra were in constant contact with travel companies and student leaders who were recruiting China's red army of young activists

Jon Stanhope : "...the ambassador has indicated that he was in contact with representative Chinese organisational groups, (for the) most part in Sydney and Melbourne. "

Asked if he believed China had helped to supply the thousands of professionally made flags and bunting, Mr Stanhope said: "I believe it must have been provided by a central agency."

The Chinese demonstrators appeared highly organised, with leaders sporting walkie-talkies and colour-coded uniforms.

Dozens of Tibetan protesters were surrounded by mini-mobs of Chinese protesters, who screamed "Liar, liar" and "One China forever" at them.

At one stage, near the National Library, the pro-China activists hurled water bottles and fruit at nearby Tibetan supporters.

In many instances, police ordered outnumbered Tibetan activists to leave sections of the relay route for their own safety.

The Tibetans were also told to leave the final stage because of concerns mass violence might break out.

But most of the pro-China students didn't resort to violence. They didn't need to. They had the strength of numbers.

Lone or small groups of pro-Tibet supporters were quickly surrounded by dozens of Chinese students with their huge flags on long poles. Naturally, a few pro-Tibet supporters got whacked in the head by those poles during the pushing and shoving.

The slogan shouting from the Chinese students was loud and intimidating for not only other protesters, but many of the local families who walked to the nearest corner on the torch relay route to find themselves pushed and jostled as packs of students ran screaming through the crowds.

You will see the exact same methods of non-violent but extremely intimidating protest suppression in Beijing in August. For starters.


Surround, drown and shout down : Chinese students use flag poles to box in a pro-Tibet supporter.

Sydney Morning Herald ;

Pro-Tibet protesters have reported being heavied by groups of Chinese students who were bussed to Canberra in their thousands to support this morning's Olympic torch relay in Canberra.

One woman called Marie said she was mobbed by screaming Chinese students as she tried to watch the relay go past. She had to be rescued and escorted away by police.

Alistair Paterson, 52, from Lake George outside Canberra, said he was standing with his seven-year-old daughter on Limestone Avenue with an older couple, their teenage son and two other young women when they were attacked by a group of about 50 people draped in Chinese flags.

Mr Paterson said he was holding a "Free Tibet" banner and the older couple also had a pro-Tibet placard, which angered the group as it ran along the crowd side of the barrier.

"I got a flying kick in the leg, another bloke was hit in the head with a stick with a Chinese flag attached to it and our banners were torn down," Mr Paterson said.

"When I looked around there were three or four guys who I can only assume were Chinese who wanted to fight me.

"This gang of thugs rolled right through us and we had kids with us. My daughter was still shaking an hour later..."

"We were just a small group of people basically exercising our right, our responsibility to say 'We don't think this is correct'," he said.

Another pro-Tibet protester, Marion Vecourcay, said she felt frightened and threatened by the Chinese demonstrators.

"They mobbed the sign, they were really aggressive, insulting and swearing," she said.

"They said we have no right to be here but I live up the street.

"It was just a mob mentality."

Pro-China demonstrator Jeff Li...said pro-Tibet protesters were ill-informed.

"These people are idiots, they know nothing about China's history," Mr Li said.

We're presuming Mr Li learned of China's history in Australia, not back in China, where the official histories tend not to focus on the imprisonment and execution of dissenters and political activists.

As for the sea of Chinese flags, hundreds were unrolled and unfurled during the singing of the Chinese national anthem, much to the surprise of Olympic organisers, in Australia at least :

Pro-China demonstrators turned out in force in what relay organisers have said was a co-ordinated attempt to "carry the day". A sea of red flags emerged when the Chinese anthem was sung to officially end the relay ceremony.

The pro-China and a rival group of pro-Tibet demonstrators hurled abuse and taunts at each other throughout the entire relay after police forced them onto separate parts of the route. Scuffles broke out and a Chinese flag was burned.

Near the end of the relay, the groups clashed again. Witnesses said pro-Chinese used their flags to hit pro-Tibetans before police again

The Chinese students were mostly non-violent, as has been said, as were the pro-Tibet supporters, but the pro-Tibet supporters didn't have the financial support, psy-op knowledge and bureacracy of a Communist state behind them to help organise and co-ordinate their activities.

And their flags were much, much smaller.

Olympic Torch Anti-Freedom Farce Continues

Media Banned From Torch Relay Through Nation's Capital

Australia will get to see what the evening TV news is like in China during the Canberra leg of the fiasco-harassed Olympic torch relay on Thursday, after Beijing insisted on banning the general media from the event.

Channel Seven will have journalists there, Radio 2GB will have journalists there. But seeing as Channel Seven and Radio 2GB have exclusive broadcast rights for the 2008 Olympics, will we actually see any journalism?

If thousands of pro-China and pro-Tibet protesters come face to face in the streets of Canberra and get into it, how will it benefit either Channel Seven or Radio 2GB to give the violence the coverage it deserves? Will Channel Seven provide the rest of the media with Olympic Games-related rioting outside the nation's capital footage if they decide not to air it themselves? They are utterly compromised, and Beijing is insisting no other media be close enough to the actual torch relay to show what really happens.

Beijing can't stop the protests, but they can to, and apparently are being allowed, to limit the coverage :

Council for Civil Liberties national president Terry O'Gorman lammed the arrangements, saying there was a "clear conflict of interest" in allowing media companies with broadcast rights to the Games to produce most of the coverage.

"They've got an interest in promoting the Games and minimising any negative impact that the protests would have on the Games coverage," he said. A wider array of journalists, including from the print media, should be given access. "A picture in this case doesn't tell a thousand words; you need the words to tell the picture," he said.

How will the rest of Australia's corporate media respond to this crackdown on their freedom to cover history in their own country? Will they boycott the Olympics in protest? Not likely.


Another "wall of steel" and massive police deployment unfurls in an Australian city, with a promise from the prime minister himself of beatings from police for protesters who get out of line :

A great wall of steel has been erected along the entire Beijing Olympic torch relay route in Canberra, with the Prime Minister saying police would "come down like a ton of bricks" on protesters planning violent demonstrations.

Kevin Rudd's warning came as the cost of hosting Thursday's event doubled to almost $2 million.

"If any protesters, irrespective of their political point of view, engage in unruly, disorderly or violent behaviour, then the police will come down on them like a ton of bricks," Mr Rudd told the 7.30 Report last night.

A waist-high metal grille surrounded landmarks such as Parliament House, the National Art Gallery and the War Memorial.

"It's quite a blow to the innocence of our city but we must do it," the ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope.

The Australian torch relay organiser, Ted Quinlan, could not rule out smuggling the torch on to a bus if protests in Canberra got out of control. "The flame has to be mobile," he said. "Any major disruption could kill it."

The Olympic torch is like a shark now, is it? It has to keep moving or it will die?

There is clearly a concerted effort by Olympic organisers in Australia and Beijing to confuse the public over just how involved the infamous blue-tracksuit wearing Chinese paramilitary will be during the Olympic torch relay in Canberra.

China is sending 30 of these official "flame attendants" to Canberra, and we are told they will follow the torch, in a bus, with at least one riding directly behind the relay runners on an ACT police motorbike.

The story, for now, is that the Chinese paramilitary will only come off the bus when the torch is handed from one relay participant to another, there is a lot of re-lighting to be done. But the torch changes hands about every 200 metres. Right. So every two hundred or so metres on the sixteen kilometre route, the bus will stop, the paramilitary will file off, stand around, attend to the flame and then it's back on the bus again, for another few seconds of travel.

They're going to get on and off the bus around 70 or 80 times, are they?

Of course they're going to be running with the torch, when it's not being transported on the bus that is. There will also be a solid turn out of Chinese security agents and videographers amongst the pro-Tibet protesters. Every single one of them have their image and movements captured by Chinese intelligence and immediately databased in Beijing.

The ACT and federal police, at least, do sound like they won't be putting up with any of the scenes in London and other city tours of the torch where the Chinese paramilitary took a front line role in violently dealing with protesters.

Police claim they will charge any foreign security agent who lays a hand on a protester. That's their job.

But if only Channel Seven and a radio station are allowed to directly witness what is actually going on inside the moving flesh wall of security, how will we know our police are keeping their word?

Let's hope it all goes down peacefully.

China Sends 30 Paramilitary To Guard Olympic Torch In Canberra

Police Threaten To Arrest Any Paramilitary Who Lays A Hand On Australian Protesters

A country quietly, steadily installing police state apparatus will, they claim, be protecting its people from an advanced police state security team, whose Quest For Fire-like mission is to keep a flame lit, while pro-Communist Capitalism and pro-democracy activists shout support and abuse at the flame as it's passed from one running person to another in the recreation of a sports-related ritual popularised by the Nazi German government in 1936.

The Olympic Torch relay in Canberra later this week has the makings of an utterly surreal, but hopefully not violent, mega-spectacle of the most bizarre kind :

Chinese officials have been warned their paramilitary "flame attendants" will be arrested and hauled away if they touch one of our citizens during the Australian leg of the torch relay.

Police are still keen to ban the attendants from escorting the flame at all.

Instead, runners will be protected by six Australian Federal Police officers: two behind; two alongside and two in front.

"The federal police have told the Chinese Embassy that the flame attendants will not have a security role," a source close to the negotiations said.

"They can't touch any member of the Australian public and if they do they will be arrested and charged under Australian law."

So 30 highly trained Chinese paramilitary will supposedly ride in a vehicle near the flame, while six Australian Federal Police provide running security, but should any of the foreign paramilitary engage in thuggish behaviour with a pro-democracy protester, the police will cause a (positive) international incident by arresting the foreign government paramilitary, who will probably then claim diplomatic immunity.

2008 has already proven to be an extremely weird year, and it's only going to get weirder from here on in.

Wait until you see the 'One World/Same World' Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and the incandescent rage from Chinese officials at the numerous pro-Tibet protests from athletes, and media.

Australia Must Pull Out Of 2008 Olympics If Athletes Are Forced To Sign STFU Contracts By Chinese Government

By Darryl Mason

There are some things more important than sport. China is about to find out what that really means.

British athletes have been told they must sign contracts that will censor them from telling the truth about the China they see and experience during this year's Olympic Games.

No talk of human rights, or intolerably cruel training regimes inflicted on children, nor talk of the occupation of Tibet will be allowed by British athletes when they are in front of the media at Beijing in a few months time.

If they break the rule, if they use freedom of speech - the most basic human right of all - they will be propelled towards the next plane home. If enough of them speak out at once, as a group, there will probably be a special plane waiting to remove them from the country.

How can Australian athletes be subjected to the denial of freedom of speech, and freedom to publicly empathise, and still board a plane to Beijing?

You would expect that many Australian athletes, or all of them, will refuse to agree to this appalling demand by the Chinese government.

You would expect to hear our prime minister publicly state that unless the Chinese government withdraws its demands for Australians at the 2008 Olympics to not talk about their experiences in China, there will be no Australian Olympic team in Beijing.

You would expect the prime minister to back the side of human rights and freedom of speech and not agree with the Chinese government.

But will he?

The story :

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

Yesterday the British Olympic Association (BOA) confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that any athlete who refuses to sign the agreements will not be allowed to travel to Beijing.

The BOA took the decision even though other countries – including the United States, Canada, Finland, and Australia – have pledged that their athletes would be free to speak about any issue concerning China.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said: “What we will be saying to the athletes is that it's best to concentrate on your competitions.

“But they're entitled to have their opinions and express them. They're free to speak.”

So that means Australian athletes will not sign the STFU contracts, right?


Go Here To Read Darryl Mason's New Online Novel, ED Day, Telling Of The Lives Of 300 Survivors In Sydney After The Bird Flu Pandemic

The insertion of a clause that forbids Olympic athletes from making 'political comment' about the host is not just for China.

The STFU deal will also be in force when the 2012 Olympics roll around.

In London.

Update : The English language version of China's 'theme' for this year's Olympics is :

Only the one dream?

From the 'One World, One Dream' site :

"One World, One Dream" is simple in expressions, but profound in meaning.

It voices the aspirations of 1.3 billion Chinese people to contribute to the establishment of a peaceful and bright world.

In Chinese, the word "tongyi", which means "the same", is used for the English word "One". It highlights the theme of "the whole Mankind lives in the same world and seeks for the same dream and ideal".

One World. Same World.

The difference between those two descriptions of a united world could not be more immense. Or pronounced.

Do we all really 'seek for the same dream and ideal'?

Is that the kind of world we want to live in?

Sounds boring.

And more than a little creepy.