Seven Tibet independence activists were detained this afternoon after three of them scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled a large protest banner reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 08.

Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times Monday as protests against China’s human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts.

Olympic torch relay protests force flame on board bus in French capital

This is amazing! Two cities at opposite ends of the Earth but both having to deal with at times violent and sensationalist protests that originally began as a “Tibetan only” outcry, in mainly Tibetan areas and communities against repression in Chinese policy. Now they’ve grown to include non-Tibetans and are taking place in Paris and San Francisco (not to mention Istanbul, Athens and London … it will be interesting when it passes through Lhasa as its current route will take it through on June 21st and 22nd). Definitely, not the what the Chinese government was expecting and shocking, at least to me, in how virulent they have become.

Update: [P]residential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony for this summer’s Beijing Olympics.

Clinton calls for partial boycott; torch protesters scale Golden Gate Bridge