César Maxit: A Real Olympic Hero

The Beijing Olympics will be remembered for people like Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and Nastia Liukin. But we should also remember César Maxit. Don't know César? He is a young Argentine-American architect living in Washington, DC. He is also a member of the protest group The Ruckus Society. That means that if scaling a wall with a banner or rapelling down the side of a building where the IMF was meeting was an Olympic sport, César would be in the contention for the gold (and if power walking is an Olympic sport, then why not?)

César made the trip to Beijing along with four Tibetan-Americans to make a statement--any statement--for a free Tibet while the world was watching China.

Before César could even plan his action, he was felled by unforeseen foes: air and water. Pollution in Beijing will smack you like a right cross. "I was laid up for days," he told me. "But then I thought, 'This is nothing compared to what they go through in Tibet.'" César staggered out for the opening ceremonies on 8-8-08 with his three compadres. You don't travel across the world for Pepto Bismol.

As the delegations from all the countries lined up to enter the bird's nest, they tore away their jackets and exposed t-shirts that simply read "Team Tibet". Police descended upon them and tried to whisk them out of sight. As César was carried away he yelled, "Free Tibet! Free Tibet!" An officer ran up and punched him in the face.

For the next several hours César and the others had black hoods put over their heads as they were interrogated, and occasionally kicked or smacked on the head. "I thought I'd be safe," he said, "until the black hoods."

The Chinese police, outfitted by General Electric with the latest in counter-insurgency fiberoptic intelligence, didnt have handcuffs and used César's own belt to tie back his hands.

They were then told to sign a piece of paper admitting guilt and were put on a plane and sent home.

César's story isn't one of gold medals and Bob Costas's drooling, but it is as much a part of these games as anything done by Phelps: it's the story of someone making the trip to Beijing, not for gold, but to be heard.

Comments (27)

1. if anything, it is terrible PR for them. Posted by Zero at 08/20/2008 @ 6:32pm

   Ain't that the truth. Look at the Los Angeles Police Department. They are still recovering from clubbing the wrong folks.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 08/20/2008 @ 7:15pm

2. Cesar is not a hero by the way. I'm tired of the over-use and for that matter completely wrong use of the word hero.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 08/20/2008 @ 7:21pm

3. Man Arrested For Holding "Impeach" Sign

   Jonas Phillips, a native of Asheville, North Carolina, sometimes stands at an Interstate overpass near his workplace and holds a sign that reads Impeach Bush-Cheney. Wednesday morning, he'd been standing there about ten minutes when he was approached by one Russell Crisp of the Asheville Police Department. Crisp asked Phillips how long he intended to stay in his spot, and Philips said not long--he had to be at work shortly. The officer then asked Phillips for his ID. Phillips asked if he had done anything wrong, and Crisp said only that a sergeant was on the way.

   Sergeant Randy Riddle then appeared, told Phillips to put his sign down and to place his hands behind his back. He then arrested and handcuffed Phillips, and--when asked--informed him that he was in violation of County Ordinance 16-2, and that he was obstructing the sidewalk. Phillips replied that Officer Crisp had witnessed a man walk by him and his sign and could therefore attest that the sidewalk had not been obstructed.

   According to Phillips, Riddle then yelled "You were obstructing the sidewalk!" "I'm sick of this shit!" and "Here's your fifteen minutes of fame, buddy." (Do you think Crisp has a working knowledge of Warhol?)

   Once at the jail, Phillips says he was repeatedly questioned about his memberships in particular groups--Veterans for Peace and the Southeast Convergence for Climate Action. He was then searched, photographed and given a court date.

   Phillips reports that in Asheville, it is legal to stage a protest on a city sidewalk without a permit. According to his wife, he has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union for help. Also, the police are considering changing the charge to a state violation of endangering motorists.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 8:16pm

4. The latest woman to get such help is Carol Fisher of Cleveland. Fisher is on the staff of Revolution Books, and on January 28, while she was putting Bush Step Down posters on telephone polls in Cleveland Heights, she was ordered by a police officer to take them down or face a fine. When she complied, she was asked for her ID, which she did not have on her. He then grabbed her by the arm, pushed her against a store window, and knocked her face down onto the sidewalk. He was joined by another officer, and they both pressed their feet against her back until she could not breathe. Her chin was pressed down into the concrete; Fisher has osteoradionecrosis in her jaw from radiation treatments for cancer.

   Fisher was handcuffed and shackled. During this time, Fisher yelled out to everyone who passed what the posters were about. One of the police officers then told her, Fisher says, to "Shut up or I will kill you! I am sick of this anti-Bush shit! You are definitely going to the psyche ward."

   She was then threatened some more and taken away in an EMS truck. At the hospital, Fisher was asked to undress in front of the police officers, which she refused to do. The officers refused to leave, so a nurse attempted to shield her while she undressed. Fisher says she was then cuffed to the bed, given an IV of some sort, and made to wait hours for a psychiatrist to interview her. By this time, members of her World Can't Wait group were in the emergency room having a confrontation with the police, who refused to let them see Fisher. Someone called the news media, who never made an appearance.

   Fisher was eventually released and sent home. On May 2, she went to court and was found guilty of two counts of felonious assault of two police officers. The prosecution's "witnesses" had not seen

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 8:24pm

5. BEIJING: When Gao Chuancai slipped into the capital last week hoping to stage a one-man rally against corruption in his village in northeast China, he knew his chances of success were slim.

   During his decade-long crusade, Gao, a 45-year-old farmer from Heilongjiang Province, had been jailed a dozen times. Two beatings by the police left him with broken bones and shattered his teeth, he said, but did little to temper his drive for justice.

   The government's recent announcement that pre-approved protests would be allowed at three sites during the Olympic Games gave him a wisp of hope. Two weeks ago he mailed in his application, and last week he came to Beijing to follow up.

   During a visit to the Public Security Bureau on Wednesday, the police interviewed him for an hour and then told him to return in five days for his answer. "They'll probably arrest me when I go back," he said afterward.

   Gao did not have to wait very long. A few hours later, he was picked up by the authorities and escorted back to Heilongjiang. On Monday, his son, Gao Jiaqing, in the family's village of Xingyi, said he had not heard from him.

   A man who picked up the phone at the Wanggang police station, near Xingyi, acknowledged that Gao Chuancai was being detained at a local hotel. "He's under our control now," said the officer, Wang Zhuang.

   Gao's ill-fated odyssey is not unlike to the journeys of several other would-be demonstrators who responded to the government's notice that protest zones would be set up duing the Games. At least three other applicants are in custody. Two, Ji Sizun and Tang Xuecheng, were seized during the interview process at the Public Security Bureau, according to human rights activists.

   Ten days into the Games, the government has yet to permit a single demonstration in any

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 8:30pm

6. Disclosure: I own GE stocks!

   Posted by 2HAPPY at 08/20/2008 @ 7:50pm

   Of the estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs dumped by GE, about 200,000 pounds remain in upper river sediments. Every day, through resuspension by currents, boats, bottom-dwelling animals, etc., the sediments release PCBs. About 500 pounds wash over the Troy dam annually.

   The EPA's peer-reviewed science has found that PCBs are not being widely buried by sediments. The peer reviewers included scientists from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; Lund University, Lund, Sweden; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.; and Trent University, Ontario, Canada.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 8:50pm

7. Disclosure: I own GE stocks!

   Posted by 2HAPPY at 08/20/2008 @ 7:50pm

   General Electric has a history of large-scale air and water pollution. Based on year 2000 data, researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute listed the corporation as the fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year of toxic chemicals released into the air. General Electric has also been implicated in the creation of toxic waste. According to EPA documents, only the United States Government and Honeywell are responsible for producing more Superfund toxic waste sites.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 8:58pm

8. Disclosure: I own GE stocks!

   Posted by 2HAPPY at 08/20/2008 @ 7:50pm

   In 1995, a Presidential Advisory Commission revealed details of GE's human experiments with nuclear radiation. GE ran the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington as part of the U.S. weapons program. Beginning in 1949, General Electric deliberately released radioactive material to see how far downwind it would travel. One cloud drifted 400 miles, all the way down to the California-Oregon border, carrying perhaps thousands of times more radiation than that emitted at Three Mile Island.

   In 1986, Representative Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, held hearings in which it was disclosed that the United States and General Electric had conducted experiments on hundreds of United States citizens who became "nuclear calibration devices for experimenters run amok." According to Markey: "Too many of these experiments used human subjects that were captive audiences or populations ... considered ‘expendable' ... the elderly, prisoners and hospital patients who might not have retained their full faculties for informed consent."

   One of GE's most gruesome experiments -- disclosed in the Markey hearings -- was performed on inmates at a prison in Walla Walla, Washington, near Hanford. Starting in 1963, 64 prisoners had their scrotums and testes irradiated to determine the effects of radiation on human reproductive organs. Although the inmates were warned about the possibility of sterility and radiation burns, the forms said nothing about the risk of testicular cancer. Markey's committee heard allegations that, at the time of the experiments, General Electric violated both civil and criminal laws.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 9:10pm

9. disclosure: i don't own ge stocks.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 9:11pm

10. The Chinese were two soft on the protesters who contributed nothing, nada, zip to international relations or the Olympics and were the poorest representative possible of our citizens.-----Posted by RedRiver_. at 08/20/2008 @ 10:40pm

    So how does an old "Nuke da Commies" hard-core right winger...

    find it in himself to support Communist Chinese oppression!?!?!?!?!???

    Posted by Maskdelta at 08/20/2008 @ 10:46pm

11. disclosure...

    i have nothing to disclose...

    the ruckus society? not the uncle ruckus society i guess...

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 08/20/2008 @ 10:47pm

12. disclosure: I wish I had bought GE stocks.

    Posted by JOMAMMA at 08/20/2008 @ 10:38pm

    you hate america:

    From 1990 to 2005, General Electric spent more than $122 million on public relations, lobbying and legal efforts, "to fight demands that it clean up three contaminated polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) sites," reports O'Dwyer's. The three sites are "a 200-mile stretch of the Hudson River (the nation's biggest Superfund site), Housatonic River (Pittsfield, MA) and a transformer facility (Rome, GA)."

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 10:51pm

13. disclosure: I wish I had bought GE stocks.

    Posted by JOMAMMA at 08/20/2008 @ 10:38pm

    you hate china:

    The nonprofit economic research organization, Policy Matters Ohio, interviewed workers in 2007 in one of GE's Chinese suppliers and published a report of their findings in 2008. Xiamen Topstar Lighting Co., a joint venture of GE and China's Topstar, employs 6,000 people in Fujian Province making compact (and energy efficient) florescent lightbulbs for GE. GE's own audit of the factory in late 2007, Policy Matters Ohio investigators found a range of unfair and unsafe labor practices, including 64-hour workweeks without overtime pay or worker access to their own paystubs. Most seriously, workers were being exposed to mercury without their knowledge.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 10:51pm

14. General Electric to close plants, cut 130 jobs

    05 Oct 2007 bbj.hu US General Electric said Thursday the Austintown Products Plant and Niles Glass Plant are to be shut down Nov. 1, 2008, with production shipped to foreign plants or outside suppliers like Mexico, Hungary.

    Last fall, GE said it intended to cut 425 jobs by closing plants in Cleveland, Euclid, Willoughby and ... 5. General Electric to lay off 75 as plant closes ...

    General Electric Co. May Close Plant in Carolinas, Move Jobs to Mexico.(Originated from The Charlotte Observer, NC) from Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News ...

    General Electric May Close Providence, RI, Plant. from Knight Ridder/Tribune

    The General Electric Company may shut a refrigerator plant in Louisville, Ky., and cut 1500 jobs,

    General Electric said Thursday it plans to close its Bloomington refrigeration plant by the fourth quarter of 2009 due to losses of about .

    Lights out for 1,400 GE workers October 05, 2007

    GE has been closing down production of incandescent light bulbs and parts, especially in Ohio in the United States, the long-time home of its lighting business and many of its factories. In October, it announced the closing of six plants employing 425 Ohio workers, as well as a plant in Brazil. It has argued that it cannot afford to produce the more energy-efficient CFLs in the United States.

    <<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>

    g.e. hates america.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 11:08pm

15. rio loves china,

    rio loves china!

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 11:09pm

16. i don't know why you find the fouling of the air amusing.

    personally, i would find owning g.e. stock to be a heavy weight on my karma:

    General Electric Company

    See Related Documents

    Superfund Site Status List of sites

    Number of sites linked to this company, and its subsidiaries, by status on the EPA's National Priorities List:

    Proposed for list: 1

    Currently on list: 97

    Deleted from list (cleaned up): 18

    Total sites: 116

    <<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>

    america, g.e.'s trash bin.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/20/2008 @ 11:54pm

17. Two Women Sentenced to ‘Re-education' in China

    By ANDREW JACOBS

    Published: August 20, 2008

    BEIJING -- In the annals of people who have struggled against Communist Party rule, Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying are unlikely to merit even a footnote.

    Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

    Seventy-nine-year-old Wu Dianyuan, right, and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77, waited to apply for a protest permit outside a public security bureau in Beijing on Monday. They were later sentenced to a year of "re-education through labor."

    The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China's authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and Ms. Wang is blind in one eye. Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country's long streak of fast economic growth.

    But the Beijing police still sentenced the two women to an extrajudicial term of "re-education through labor" this week for applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 12:50am

18. Zuǒ Zōngtáng, 1st Marquess Kejing of the Second Class (traditional Chinese: 左宗棠; Courtesy name: Jigao traditional Chinese: 季高) (November 10, 1812 - September 5, 1885), spelled Tso Tsung-t'ang in Wade-Giles and known simply as General Tso or General Tsuo to Western Europeans, was a Chinese statesman and military leader. He was born in Wenjialong, north of Changsha in Hunan province in the waning years of the Qing Dynasty. He served with distinction during China's most important (and the world's largest) civil war, the 14 year long Taiping Rebellion, in which it is estimated 20 million people died. The Tso in General Tso is sometimes misspelled "Cho" in English, probably due to Cantonese influence. The correct pronunciation of the name in Mandarin is [tsuɔ tsʊŋtʰɑŋ].

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 01:48am

19. zero,

    where i live there is a large population of recent chinese immigrants, some of whom have opened restaurants.

    i can assure you that chinese food is nothing like what you ate today.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 01:53am

20. hey zero,

    read mr. gorbachev on georgia:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/20gorbachev.html?em

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 01:54am

21. Yeahhh!!! The American right showing their proclivity for freedom of speech by suggesting a protester should have been beaten harder. I guess McCain got what he deserved then for dropping bombs on people. Jom what you suggested is against freedom of speech in OUR country at that. More steps toward an Orwellian government! Who needs freedom of speech?

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 08/21/2008 @ 04:06am

22. It would be intresting to read all the supporting statements the leftwing koolaide drinkers gave the so called palestenians for murdering 11 of Israels olympians back in 1972. I bet that was some celebration!---Posted by RedRiver_. at 08/20/2008 @ 11:01pm

    Find ONE and produce it, RIO.

    Or do you expect anybody to believe you about ...well, pretty much anything you say anymore?

    Posted by Maskdelta at 08/21/2008 @ 09:06am

23. redriver-At least,you finally posted something honest and showed your true totalitarian colors,but then followed that up with your usual ludicrous nonsense about the left and the 1972 Olympics,but I was around in 1972 and the left,very much,was as horrified by that act of terrorism as everyone else.

    Posted by i'm nobody at 08/21/2008 @ 10:34am

24. I, for one, am grtaefulo for evrything a company like GE has brought to life..so would Edison...and the thousands of pay checks GE generates each week.

    Posted by JOMAMMA at 08/21/2008 @ 08:17am

    so,

    you're happy that g.e. has dumped millions of pounds of pcbs into the hudson?

    and you like that they have abandoned america so they can poison their chinese workers real cheap?

    that, sir, is strange.

    of course giving people jobs is a wonderful thing. and so are light bulbs.

    but just how much are you willing to sweep under the rug?

    don't you love the planet you are made from?

    it seems love of promissory notes and the false illusions of security they deliver have usurped any hope of you understanding just how dangerous greed is.

    i'm glad you're grtaefulo.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 10:11pm

25. "and their life style choices."

    what a miserable cliché.

    you mean,

    "i must be able to waste at will with no consideration for my children or grandchildren."

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 10:13pm

26. Frosty hates life in the 19th,20th, and 21st century.

    Posted by JOMAMMA at 08/21/2008 @ 08:17am

    sir,

    i love life and life loves me.

    why do you think i try so hard to keep it alive?

    you're the one who likes pcbs.

    glass of milk, john?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/21/2008 @ 10:15pm

27. Cesar is a friend of mine and I am so proud of his courageous activism bringing attention to the plight of the people of Tibet.

    Remember the dream of making China more free like the US. Well, the reverse is happening. The US is on a fast decline into a total fascist police state. The system is broken. Live Free or Die.

    Posted by ROBinDALLAS at 08/23/2008 @ 2:53pm