Apparently the Chinese aren’t reacting at all well to Western expressions of human rights concerns in these months before the Beijing Olympics.
Demonstrations in Europe that disrupted the international Olympic torch relay fanned the flames: The torch is seen here as a symbol of the summer Olympic Games, which are a source of intense national pride.
And did you know that the modern torch relay owes it origins not to the Greeks, but to the Nazis?
Yeah, I knew.
It's great stuff. Two excellent renderings of the five interconnected Olympic rings have been invented to demonstrate the farcical oxymoron of a Beijing Olympics that supposedly honors the human spirit. One was used at a protest in France, I believe. It showed the Olympic rings redrawn as handcuffs. Another was in a cartoon. It showed the Olympic rings as wheels in a tank, facing a lone demonstrator (a la Tienanmen Square, 1989).