After disembarking from the ferry this morning the first thing I noticed, as I approached the plaza, was all the crowd-control barriers up. Oh, bother, I thought. The barriers lined much of The Embarcadero. As we left the ferry gate at pier 2 they blocked our usual jay-walking routes across the Embarcadero to Justin Hermann plaza and Market street. Then I noticed the parked vehicles were mostly news trucks rather than delivery vans and I thought, oh, right, it’s the Olympic torch.
As I navigated across the Embarcadero I approached the plaza and saw the scattered groups of people — a lot of news cameras and people with flags, commuters hustling by, and tourists watching and waiting for anything momentous to happen that might spice up their vacations. There were scattered clusters of flags, too, American, of course, and then I noticed there were no Tibetan flags.
I’ve gotten used to Tibetan flags at the Civic Center. With City, State, and Federal buildings in the area we get all kinds of protests, and there have been frequent processions of Buddhists and friends in the neighborhood, marching along with drums and other instruments, flying the warm, bright colors of the Tibetan flag and chanting slogans to free Tibet.
But not down at Justin Hermann plaza this morning. I saw a few earthy-looking types who could have been savvy, better-dressed street people or grunge-prepared Buddhists, boh types looking for their own opportunities. But not many. Otherwise, it was very mediagenic, with this unusual note — alongside the American flag was a banner with the hammer and sickle.
It was the red and yellow, the same colors as the Chinese flag. Yellow stars, on rippling fields of red, each with semicircles of yellow stars. The flag of the People’s Republic of China. I hustled on by and down Market street, with new images crowding out the morning’s prior musings as I walked to work.
I don’t see the hammer and sickle often in the U.S. I mean, you see it in pictures or on TV, but out on the street? Not so much. That little Marxist logo somehow seems obsolete, like nuclear bomb shelters, or LP records and album covers, or 50’s cars with shiny, streamlined fins. But that’s right — China is the most populous country on earth, and they do fly the hammer and sickle. It made parts of Justin Hermann plaza look like a Clash album cover.
It used to be an anti-establishment thing, like Che Guevara posters in college dorms. Now it’s the symbol of an establishment that makes our establishment look benevolent (well, viewed through the right lens) and it’s revolutionary significance has been replaced … by the Tibetan flag.
I do like the Tibetan flag. It is bright and warm, and has a cheeriness that stands in such upbeat defiance to what has happened in Tibet. And I completely sympathize with the Tibetan people. China seems bent on making all of William F. Buckley’s worst warnings about communism come true.
The 21st century is a semiotically topsy-turvy place so far. Symbols take on new meanings. I hope this century is kinder to the Tibetan flag than the last one was.
And the Chinese hammer & sickle now seems about as revolutionary as 50s rock’n’roll dancing on American Bandstand.
OmbudsBen 
Olympic Torch is symbol of peace for all the world
PS: I want to share information with you that we have project to recovery forest in Indonesia, so i hope you would visit this site, support us and tell your friends.
http://www.addmorethree.com/?page_id=6
Regards
This kind of makes me think of how the ancient hindu/buddhist swastika symbol was co-opted and then corrupted by the Nazis, to the point where it is no longer even remotely acceptable in western culture, despite its positive origins.
There were big pro-China demonstrations here in Australia over the weekend, people shouting about how what we’re told about Tibet is “all lies”.
Talk about believing the propaganda… Communist regimes still have long arms.
Truce, what’s amazing to me is that, after all this time, and how much energy has been spent on recognizing that symbols are just that, only symbols, we can still get so worked up over the symbol and forget the realities behind them. Maybe it’s just easier for people this way.
Yes, the amnesia of the pro-China crowd is rather amazing — and you’re right about the propaganda machinery of the regimes.
Last Wednesday I almost arranged to take BART home rather than go through the Embaracadero again — but then I figured that by the time I got there the crowds would have disappeared. And they mostly had.
There was one fellow carrying a sign calling on people to boycott “the communist olympics”. There was also a woman dressed as a clown, all very bright primary colors, who seems to have shown up for the party. I thik she was passing out coupons or some such.
But mostly it was a lot of journalists and news trucks, still out with their cameras, filing their stories. I noticed one truck from “KTLA” so they had come from as far away as Los An-gah-lees for the story.
Other than that, just commuters and tourists, passing through.
The Dept. of Public Works trucks were already out hosing down the streets. When I crossed the Embaracadero many of the barriers were down, and mostly what was left, about 5:15 pm, was a lot of wet trash. Food and beverage containers, leaflets, etc., damp pages stuck to the street and flapping in the wind like the wings of injured birds, no longer able to fly.
I sometimes wonder if news crews arrange to film each other when there’s nothing much going on and they have to file a story… “The news is that the protesters have gone home, but a huge bunch of journos have turned up in expectation of a riot”
And clowns are just creepy.
🙂
Clowns are scary. I concur.
Truce, given the number of times I’ve seen exactly that — reporters from one station interviewing impromptu “experts” from another, I think you’re spot on.
What had foiled them here was the SF Mayor’s diversion tactics. Coincidentally, they moved the Olympic torch’s route to Van Ness Ave. — a few blocks from my office. (And I had no idea it was in the neighborhood. Nor a chance to offer it a cuppa — err, a lit match?) So the torch hadn’t followed the planned route. Yet the journalists, of course, stil had a story to file.
The scariness of clowns seems to be a recurring theme of late.
Oddly, recently I found songs from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album running through my head. First “She’s Leaving Home.” No idea why — but once it was there I consciously ran it all through my mind. A day or so later I had “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” going through my head.
Carni music.
The first time I heard it, it was surreal; off-putting. I “got” the album, but getting it was in part how very different it was. I didn’t think of the eerie organ music and the calliope of “Mr. Kite” as scary — but way back then I was well schooled in the American Schoolyard lesson of never showing fear, too.
Now I listen to the carni music of Mr. Kite:
with its palpable sense of trapeze artists, strong men, bearded ladies, flame-eaters, and yes, clowns, and you know what? It’s a scary song.
Check it out, and tell me if you think I’m wrong.
Ben: Is it propaganda or belief?
You can call it propaganda, that’s what it is to non-Chinese ears. The Chinese people believe, and have for centuries, about Tibet.
You have millions of university students believing they know what’s best from Tibet, with no thought about the history or culture behind the quagmire. The Chinese see this as propaganda.
One person’s propaganda is another’s belief. There’s no middle ground, no room for discussion. It’s a vicious circle of name-calling.
I wish the Tibetan people could speak for themselves. (That will never happen, and international protests are an utter waste of time.) Any movement with a charismatic figurehead frightens me. The man’s beliefs on indentured servitude make me disregard anything he says.
Stevo, thank for writing, I appreciate hearing from you, as you are there, now.
When you write:
I think one of the first tests is how much dissent is allowed. I have access here to divergent opinions (including the debate I overheard at the BART station two nights ago, with a young white man hollering that China had liberated the Tibetan people).
I do have access to information that Tibet was invaded by the Mongols, and adminstered by them as they also ruled China.
Do the Chinese who claim a centuries old right to control the Tibetan people also recognize the same right of Mongols to control them?
Like you, I wish we had more of a chance to hear from the Tibetans themselves. The coverage I’ve seen here is mostly BBC and German DW news, interviewing whispering monks about how their protests are brutally suppressed.
I’d like to hear more about what you hear / see (and think) on this.
Also, re this:
There is an interesting parallel to Lincoln and the American Civil War. Despite the fact that all 13 former British colonies and new American states voluntarily signed the Articles of Confederation (forming the US), I can see a valid argument for allowing states to secede.
For instance, I liked that the Czechs let the Slovaks go.
Stripping away the issue of slavery, what right had the north to invade the south? Federalists cite the Articles of Confederation, but it makes me uneasy.
Of course, there was also slavery.
China’s claim of soverignty seems achieved more through military might than freely forming a union, from what I understand.
By “the man” I assume you mean the Dalai Llama. What have you heard about the Dalai LLama and indentured servitude?
Ben: I have no answers. China? Tibet? I really have no opinion over lines on a map. Are the Chinese in Tibet any different than the British in Hong Kong, or any other colonial power during the nineteenth century? You can argue atrocities, but all the information is biased. Why aren’t people protesting their own countries and the treatment of indigenous peoples? It’s easy to forget about the genocide of Native North Americans and point fingers at other nations. What’s that saying? Yeah, we did it, but we’ll ridicule and revile you for the same behavior?
The Dalai Lama cries Free Tibet, is that what the Tibetans want? He hasn’t been in the country for 50 years, and when he was he was so removed from his subjects that he had little idea of their lives.
It’s easy lead people to beliefs. A great many once believed in WMDs and supported the invasion of a sovereign nation because of those beliefs. I don’t believe what I’m told by the media, and certainly won’t believe governments (of any stripe) or NGOs with chips on their collective shoulders.
I will stay completely out of this debate because I don’t have enough facts to form an intelligent opinion and argue it. I can only ask questions and sort through the self-serving and biased answers.
I’d like to respond to this quote directly:
First by pointing out that I assume you didn’t mean me, necessarily (let me know if you did) and then say that there isn’t a whole lot any living Americans can do to bring back to life those killed in the 19th or early 20th century, just as World War 2 Japanese soldiers cannot bring Manchurians back to life and Attila the Hun cannot bring his victims back to life and Nazi Germans cannot bring Jews back to life.
But here in North America the indigenous peoples, or Natives, are being given opportunities the rest of us are not given, and much as I do not support gambling and think it, generally, a tax on the poor (a “tax on stupidity”, investor Warren Buffett called it) we allow Native Americans to build casinos and amass fortunes. I’m okay with that, solely because it does something to rebuild the fortunes of Native American communities, and for no other reason – as I agree with Buffett. If it means prosperity for the tribes, okay.
I don’t think it’s right to draw parallels between Tibetans, and how they are treated by the government ruling them, to Native Americans without recognizing that current contemporary governments here are doing what they can, indeed, bending over backward and giving Natives chances that the rest of us do not have (I cannot open a gambling business for profit, but a Native American can if he can establish tribal sovereignty—and they do).
In fact, I’d like to talk very directly to any Chinese who want to make this point. A lot of Native Americans are prospering right now. No one is prohibiting them from their religious beliefs or from gathering to worship as they choose.
Are Tibetans prospering in China the same way Native Americans are able to in the USA?
The hammer and sickle represents freedom from the oppressing masses, not something to be scoffed at.
[Ombud’s note: It’s been a while since this site got a message of truly monumental chauvinistic ignorance. I decided to leave this one up, but have expunged the silliest attempts to be offensive with bracketed comments. If anyone cares to spend the time pointing out to him that Tibet and China had political ties going back centuries, be my guest.]
All of you people are apparently uneducated [right-wing inanity omitted]. The hammer and sickle was and still is a symbol of despotic dictatorial governments, who in the past physically exterminated over a hundred million people and spiritually exterminated billions more. China is carrying on this tradition today.
Tibet is culturally very different from all of China. It is not and never has been culturally a part of China anymore than the countries of southeast asia. It is much less chinese [sic] than the two Koreas.
Stop your new age [ignorance omitted] and get a real education while learning to think. [Hopefully, with less need to resort to offensive public behavior than John Q needs to make his point.] You may not lack intelligence, but you are historical and logic-lacking [arrogant, elitist name-calling omitted]!
Adaon: it’s hard to know whether I disagree more with your grammar or your analysis.
“Freedom from the oppressing masses”?
Isn’t that why people in big cities head for the countryside?
Personally, I would never scoff at the need to get away from massive oppression — if that’s what you mean.
John Q.: we might agree on the following: a democracy relies on an educated electorate.
We probably disagree on this: Beginning in 1980, elements of the American electorate made ill-informed choices and began voting into power politicians who ignored the voters’ needs.
To wit: if the GOP were serious about outlawing abortion, they had the power to enact such legislation. (They sure took those voters for granted.)
They retain power now by hornswoggling voters with claptrap on how people in the middle east “hate us for our freedom.”
Middle easterners don’t give a damn about our “freedom.” Al Qaeda simply wants us to get off what they feel is sacred Saudi soil.
Tell me, John Q., if a Taliban army occupied your corner of the USA, would you welcome them in with open arms?
They feel the same way about the US Army being in their backyard.
Now, if you want to reply to any of this, see if you can do it without resorting to the simplistic name-calling you spewed on your last visit. It’s the kind of thing right-wing talk radio has fostered, I know — so maybe you take your John Cue from them and their deliberate distortions. It would be easy enough for me to characterize your lot as crypto-nazis in reply — and to be sure that I am more accurate than you are, too — but what does that get us?
There is going to come a time when you on the right have to begin practicing the analysis you believe you exercise. Less name-calling. More thoughtfulness.
Or, if that’s too scary for you, just keep name-calling. I can expunge your silliness as often as you care to display it.