AP reports about the San Francisco masquerade:
The Olympic torch was rerouted away from thousands of demonstrators and spectators who crowded the city’s waterfront Wednesday to witness the flame’s symbolic journey to the Beijing Games.
The planned closing ceremony at the San Francisco Bay waterfront was canceled and another one was planned at San Francisco International Airport. Massive crowds had gathered at the waterfront to support and protest the flame.
The last-minute changes were made amid security concerns following chaotic protests over the torch in Paris and London.
Mayor Gavin Newsom told The Associated Press that the well choreographed fake-out was prompted by the size and behavior of the crowds amassing outside AT&T Park, site of the relay’s opening ceremony.
There was “a disproportionate concentration of people in and around the start of the relay,” he said in a phone interview, while traveling in a caravan that accompanied the torch.
Less than an hour before the relay began, officials cut the original six-mile route nearly in half.
Then, at the opening ceremony, the first torchbearer took the flame from a lantern brought to the stage and held it aloft before running into a warehouse. A motorcycle escort departed, but the torchbearer was nowhere in sight.
Officials drove the Olympic torch about a mile inland and handed it off to two runners away from protesters and media, and they began jogging toward the Golden Gate Bridge, in the opposite direction of the crowds awaiting its passing. Further confusion followed, with the torch convoy apparently stopped near the bridge before heading southward to the airport, where a closing ceremony on the tarmac was planned.
As the flame traveled toward the airport, news slowly dribbled through the crowds of more than 10,000 spectators and protesters gathered at the waterfront that the torch would not be headed there.
Well, it looks like the San Francisco Mayor and police were following orders from China.
As the San Francisco Chronicle s says:
The bait-and-switch was immediately blasted by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, a vocal critic of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration.
“Gavin Newsom runs San Francisco the way the premier of China runs his country – secrecy, lies, misinformation, lack of transparency and manipulating the populace,” Peskin said.
“He misled supporters and opponents of the run.
People brought their families and their children, and (mayoral officials) hatched a cynical plan to please the Bush State Department and the Chinese government because of the incredible influence of money.
“He did it so China can report they had a great torch run,” Peskin said.“It’s the worst kind of government – government by deceit and misinformation.”
(Piocture by EPA/Sean Masterson)
Tags: Olympic Torch Relay, San Francisco