Torch of indignation won't be aflame for long SIDELINE CUT

Boycotting the opening or closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics over Tibet would be a cheap, futile exercise

IT MUST HAVE been a like a beautiful trip to the protest days of the late 1960s for the hippies and the Easy Riderdrop-outs still clinging to the dream out in San Francisco. Just when it seemed that the Internet generation were permanently tapped into cyberspace, the major cities of the world have became the focus of good old-fashioned popular protests.

Spark a reefer and dust down those Dead albums, man. If the kids are on the streets and facing down the batons, then peace and love can't be too far around the corner. I suppose it was in some way restorative to see that mankind still cares enough about the plight of the oppressed to take to the cities with their placards and idealism.

But, as we watched the crowds gather in Athens, Paris, London and San Francisco in righteous indignation at the treatment of the people of Tibet, I kept wondering: what the hell has happened to Darfur? At the beginning of the year, the genocide of anything between 200,000 and 400,000 people in the Darfur region of Sudan was supposed to be the big stain on China's reputation. Mia Farrow was among the first of the Hollywood high-brow thespians to begin complaining about the Republic's role in supplying arms to the Sudanese military faction and as the voices of concern grew more loud and insistent, Stephen Spielberg decided to quit his role as artistic director for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games.

Now, Gordon Brown has led the chorus of world leaders suggesting China's gala night should be boycotted, not because of all those people who have perished in Darfur but because of the renewed focus on the cause for liberation or at least equality in Tibet. There is only one fundamentally sound reason for boycotting the opening ceremony of the Games: it is likely to be an insufferable bloody bore.

Host countries like to use these extravaganzas to treat their worldwide audience to the various flavours and quirks of their country while offering a sweeping version of their history through interpretative dance routines and at least one giant caterpillar costume. When the Australians hosted the splendid 2000 Olympics in Sydney, they took about five hours to take us through their 150 years or so of history. The Chinese culture has about 6,000 years to its credit. The mind boggles as to how long this show could take. Bring a sleeping bag, is what I say.

But the idea of being sniffy and choosy about the pageantry yet still competing for the medals is just plain phoney and hypocritical. More locally, David Norris's suggestion the Irish should march their flag around the stadium but not our athletes is equally wide of the mark. Nobody would get the message: the world would just presume we had no qualifiers. With the Olympics, you are either in or you are out.

The threat of a boycott always acts as a distant thundercloud on any Olympic horizon.

But as the outrage over Tibet grows, a serious boycott could become a reality this August. The Empire can open its doors but it can't force the righteous Westerners to show up. There is no doubt it is a genuine shame and outrage that a reported 130 Tibetans were killed during clashes with Chinese authorities following the protests in Lashi in March. (Just as it was an outrage that about one million Tibetan people were killed when the Chinese (re)claimed Tibet in 1950. Two years later, the Chinese showed up at the Helsinki games and all was fine and dandy.

The Germans were readmitted that year, having spent an Olympiad in exile to think about the sins of the second World War. But it was also a terrible wrong that at least 10 Chinese labourers were crushed or smashed to death in the building of the Beijing stadium, dead forever so that we tourists could enjoy this engineering masterwork and take photographs of the millionaire NBA basketballers, the shimmering swimming gods and the fastest men in the world.

It is probably wrong too that around 100,000 Chinese people die in work-related accidents every year - better not to think about that next time you come across a "Made in China" emblem. When you flick on the television at tea-time and see that harrowing wateraid advertisement telling you that somewhere - including Darfur - a child dies every 17 seconds for want of clean drinking water, then that too is sick and it is a shame. But you still eat tea, watch Eastenders, cut the lawn and do whatever. We live with it.

If it has been a good week for the Dalai Lama; it has been a lousy week for the Olympic Torch. For years, the eternal flame has enjoyed ambassadorial receptions around the world. The omens were bad when it materialised that the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would not be officially "meeting" the torch, which suggested the image of the taciturn Scot sitting across the coffee table in Downing Street and offering tea and crumpets to the most famous flame of them all. But that small snub was just the beginning of a horrible week for the Torch, which by Thursday found itself being branded a Nazi. Time to call Max - Clifford, not Mosley.

It is surely significant Buenos Aires was the next city to receive the globe-trotting Flame. After all, was there ever a more sinister sporting event than the 1978 World Cup? That strange and uneasy soccer festival played out under the paranoid gaze of the Argentine Generals and the whispered rumours of the "disappeared", the frightening word used to describe the estimated 30,000 Argentinian young people interrogated and murdered by the regime during those years.

The old cliché that politics and sport should be kept separate is about as useful as saying men and women should be kept separate. Maybe they should but it just ain't practical. We could list the old Olympic black book here - the hundreds of students slaughtered in Mexico on the eve of the 1968 Games, the Munich atrocities in 1972, the Big Freeze of Moscow in 1980, the small bomb in Atlanta in 1996 that was a portent of the bigger explosions that would terrorise America in the coming years, the uncomfortable backdrop of the Aboriginal protests in Sydney, the ruinously negative publicity that ruined the Athens Games.

And now the protests spinning around the most famous monk on earth, the religious man who can run with stars like Brad Pitt and command regular references in the Simpsons. Tibet and the Dalai Lama is an appealing cause. It is a plight that is easy to become outraged about. Perhaps that is partly because somewhere in the back of our capitalist souls is a nagging feeling the Buddhists might be right, that they may have it all figured out.

Even the most driven Gordon Gekko type of westerner has at least one moment of introspection (or weakness) when he finds himself lighting up the josh stick, mellowing out and wondering if he had perhaps been a butterfly or Stan Laurel in a previous life. Richard Gere hangs out with the Dalai Lama. If it works for the American Gigolo, then it should work for the likes of you and me.

And this is not to disparage the Tibetan culture or history, which is rightly claimed as one of the most precious and unspoiled by a western culture that listens to the same tunes, talks in the same MTV slang, dawg and bows down before the same omnipotent logos (you can see 'em all for yourself at the Beijing Stadium).

But what if the western world piously extends an index finger at the Beijing Games because of the policies of the Party? What does that say to the 1.3 billion Chinese, many of whom whose lives, you can bet, have not been a barrel of laughs under the same administration? And when the Torch goes to wherever it goes when it isn't being paraded around the world, for just how long will the privileged nations of the world burn with indignation for poor Tibet? About as long as it takes to blow out a match, would be my guess.

The Olympics are grotesque and blatantly commercial and, occasionally, moving and wonderful and if they have any political value, it is to highlight, every four years, just how shabbily the haves treat the have-nots.

But it is not the Olympics Games that is a disgrace. It is the world in general that is a disgrace. If not showing up for the fireworks on August 8th makes the world leaders sleep better, then so be it. In reality, it's just a cheap gesture in a cheap time, a cynical attempt to show the people they are on the side of the holy guys. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama prays and despairs and injustices rage around the world. Sometimes, the Buddhist leader must wonder. As Homer - Simpson, I'm afraid, not the Greek - fretted, "But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion. Each week we just make God madder and madder."