Olympic Torch

Thousands cheered the Olympic torch in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the last stop on the international leg of the flame's relay. The torch now will be taken to the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao and then the mainland, including restive Tibet and the summit of Mt. Everest, and finally to the Games themselves in Beijing in August. Vietnam had assured its communist ally and giant northern neighbor that it would not allow demonstrators to disrupt the event, but several demonstrators were detained earlier in Hanoi, the capital.

The real revelation in recent footage of protests over the Beijing Olympics was not the image of a Reporters Without Borders demonstrator being dragged away by Greek security guards dressed like stewards on the Hindenburg. It was that during his protest, at the Athens torch-lighting ceremony, the sole camera feed cut first to a long shot making it difficult to see what was happening, then cut away entirely -- to stock footage.

The Olympic torch relay for the Beijing 2008 Games is set to make its only North American appearance here next week, but this politically charged city is still squabbling over whether to roll out or roll up the red carpet. One supervisor accused Mayor Gavin Newsom of trying to keep the relay route a secret to stymie critics of China's human rights record.

The Olympic torch made its way under heavy police guard through 31 miles of raucous protests across London on Sunday, amid mounting calls for European leaders to boycott the opening ceremonies in Beijing to protest China's human rights record. With shouts of "Free Tibet!" and "Shame on China!" from the crowds, the torch occasionally had to be sheltered on a bus, while police scuffled with demonstrators who leaped in to try to halt the parade.

The Olympic torch relay was invented by the Nazis. According to historians, Adolf Hitler wanted to promote his belief in an Aryan master race by symbolically linking the 1936 Berlin Games to the ancient Greek gods and rituals, hence the carrying of the flame from Olympia to Germany. The first relay was chronicled on film by Hitler's propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

It was supposed to be on a "Journey of Harmony," but the Olympic torch celebrating the Beijing Summer Games slinked into the city before dawn Tuesday, dogged by controversy both here and abroad. As activists and police readied for a chaotic torch relay expected to produce mass demonstrations and arrests this afternoon, China stood defiant in the face of growing criticism of its human rights policies.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu said Tuesday he supported international protests surrounding the Olympic torch and urged world leaders to boycott the games' opening ceremony in Beijing over China's human rights record. The retired Anglican archbishop from South Africa also called on China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is seeking autonomy for Tibet.

Samsung probably thought it was a slam-dunk marketing scheme: As the Olympic torch made its way around the world, people could send text messages to the company with the word "torch" and win a new cellphone. As scores of demonstrators crowded the streets of downtown San Francisco on Wednesday to protest China's occupation of Tibet, forcing a re-routing of the relay and the deployment of the city's entire police force, it might not have looked like such a good idea.

From the start of its planning effort for this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, China has used architectural imagery to powerful effect. In hiring the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to design the main Olympic Stadium and London's Norman Foster to handle the international airport -- among other bold and expensive projects that will be unveiled this year -- leaders wagered that photographs of the new buildings would promote the notion of a modern, cosmopolitan China.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya said Thursday that she would not run as planned in the Olympic torch relay in Tanzania this weekend, to protest abuses of human rights and destruction of the environment in China. Maathai, who was awarded the Nobel in 2004 for her environmental and political activism, said she had notified organizers of the torch run that she would give up her spot in the relay Sunday, joining in the growing international protest against China.