The Olympic farce continues to unfold as the San Francscio leg of the torch relay was forced to go underground in order to avoid protests against Chinese occupation of Tibet. Authorities eschewed the published route and took the torch by an entirely different way instead.

Did that stop the protests? Not on your life. One brave New Yorker participating in the propaganda extravaganza for the Chinese, whipped out a small Tibetan flag and help it up as she was running with the torch.

Immediately, Chinese security pounced on her and took the torch from her grasp (she violated a signed contract that she would refrain from "propaganda" during her run).

As Allah points out, the Chinese security people had a little help:

Watch as one of the American cops shows her how they do it in Beijing, giving her a gratuitous shove into the crowd to keep her away from the communist propaganda pageant she was momentarily a part of. She’s wrong on the law, to be sure; her free speech rights don’t entitle her to violate the contract she signed before participating. But watching U.S. cops enforce Chinese policy is so disgusting, Newsom should have simply canceled the event lest he be forced to do it.

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.

He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay.

Mr Rogge’s call for Beijing to abide by its promise to address human rights was given short shrift by Beijing, which bluntly told him to keep politics out of the Games.