Thursday, November 05, 2015 

Supping with a long spoon, interrupted again.

The poor old government isn't having much luck when it comes to inviting round tyrants for a bit of the old supping with a long spoon.  Xi Jinping turned up just as the British steel industry was collapsing, no thanks to the dumping of the Chinese variety on the world market, and now here comes Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egyptian usurper, just as it seems to be emerging that the Russian jet crash in the Sinai last Saturday was likely the result of a bomb.  Al-Sisi, bless him, insisted that the Egyptian government had complete control of the Sinai peninsula, and the crash couldn't possibly have been a result of terrorism.  Like with the Chinese, to suggest otherwise was to insult their good work and name.

Say what you like about Jinping and China's refusal to grant the most basic of human rights, at least he's not been directly responsible for the massacring of hundreds if not thousands of protesters.  Nor did he come to power in a coup, since given a fig leaf of a mandate via a blatantly rigged poll in which he won 96% of the vote.  Of all the world leaders David Cameron has invited to Downing Street in recent years, al-Sisi is without question one of the most illegitimate, and yet unlike with China there doesn't seem to be as much of a hint of human rights being mentioned.  In the government's book, anything's better than the Muslim Brotherhood, regardless of whether or not Mohammed Morsi was elected in relatively free and fair elections.  Reports that further action will be taken against the Brothers, apparently in yet another sop to both al-Sisi and the Saudis are to be expected.

It's a shame then that the government's decision to suspend all flights temporarily to Sharm el-Sheikh in light of the still undetermined cause of the downing of the Metrojet plane have rather put a dampener on it all.  Just like the decision in the aftermath of the attack in Sousse in Tunisia to get any Britishers who wanted to come home out as soon as possible, it's not clear precisely why there is such urgency.  Unless the intelligence is that another attack is imminent, and if there is we are not being told about it, this is an example of once again giving the terrorists what they want and acting after the fact.

If the jet was indeed brought down by a bomb, presumably planted by the affiliates of Islamic State in the Sinai, then the attack was almost certainly an opportunistic one, aimed specifically at the Russians after their intervention in Syria.  If security was or is as lax at Sharm el-Sheikh as has been suggested, then surely the realisation that this was not an accident but terrorism should lead to an immediate review, with any and all staff that could have been involved brought in for questioning and review.  It's extremely rare for jihadists to use the exact same tactics and target twice when it comes to attacks on Westerners, and it's also dubious whether the Sinai affiliate would have the resources to produce two bombs powerful enough to bring down planes in such a short period of time, unless they are being helped directly by Islamic State.  That Islamic State itself has not yet made a fuss about its role isn't necessarily a reason to doubt their involvement: it could be as Charlie Winter from the Quill.i.am Foundation suggests that a propaganda video detailing exactly how they pulled the attack off might yet emerge.

Nor if it does turn out to be the work of IS is it time to once again panic and ramp up security measures at airports in general yet further.  This wouldn't be the first time Russian jets have been brought down by jihadists: two planes were destroyed in 2004 by Chechen suicide bombers.  Of the numerous attempts by al-Qaida and its franchises since 9/11 to blow up aircraft, all have failed.  The success in this instance will likely be due to that lack of security, and will send a signal to airports and airlines operating in the most vulnerable areas to step up their checks and level of vigilance accordingly.  Ruining the holidays of people for little to no reason out of a misplaced sense of better safe than sorry helps no one.  There are many other issues we should be disagreeing with Sisi and Egypt on; this isn't one of them.

Update: Worth a read, as ever, is the War Nerd.  Especially this part:

So at the moment, it’s hard to say which theory works better, bomb or simple sloppiness. And what makes it even harder to guess is the fact that this crash happened after a relentless, sometimes ridiculous, propaganda campaign in the NATO press claiming that Russia would suffer terrible retribution for daring to intervene in Syria.

It wasn't so long ago that suggesting terrorism on British streets could in any way be connected to foreign policy was enough to bring every person on the decent left down directly on your head.  When it's the Russkies getting blowback however...

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11/05/2015 03:41:00 pm | |

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 

Appeasing the Saudis.

In a way, you can almost understand the apparent consternation of our good friends the Saudis at what they see as the sudden downgrading of our "strong alliance".  Following the decision to cancel a memorandum of understanding on the supply of training to Saudi prison officers, as well as adverse coverage about floggings and beheadings, they just can't be sure where it is they stand.  What's more, as voiced by the Saudi ambassador Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz (crazy name, crazy guy?!), this "alarming change" has come at the same time as the red carpet has been rolled out for our new best pals the Chinese.

This must be all the more confusing because China and the Saudi Arabia, while very different nations, have often shared the same diplomatic strategy.  They affect to be incredibly thin-skinned, to the point where mentioning human rights within 10 miles of their embassies is the equivalent of suggesting their collective mother wasn't just a woman of ill morals, but also inclined towards the farmyard.  David Cameron merely meeting the Dalai Lama, a man deemed a terrorist by Beijing, was enough for relations to be downgraded at a stroke.  When the Commons foreign affairs committee declared it was to hold an inquiry into a couple of Gulf states, including Saudi, the government had to an order a report into the Muslim Brotherhood and its involvement in the UK to placate them.

Xi Jinping being invited round to hobnob with Queenie, Kate and all the rest must then have been all the more bewildering.  China might not be quite as repressive as Saudi, especially for women, nor do the Chinese go in for flogging, but both are liberal when it comes to the use of capital punishment.  If there was any discussion of human rights with Xi, then precisely in what way it was it was addressed and how it was responded to we simply don't know.  Despite the BBC putting the best possible gloss on Xi's answer to the only allowed question from Laura Kuenssberg, his point was fairly clear: everyone had lessons they could learn on human rights.  From China, presumably.

There are nonetheless subtler ways of making clear your displeasure than the way bin Abdulaziz chose.  Rare is it that a supposed diplomat decides to directly channel the Krays, rarer still that a newspaper like the Telegraph would choose to publish the resulting column and present it as though it was anything other an outright attempt to intimidate.  Abdulaziz's message is, as David Allen Green has pointed out, nice country you've got here, would be a shame if anything was to happen to it.  It really is that crass, that tone deaf.  Flogging, public executions, treating women as chattel, all these things are mere local traditions and customs, and just as the Saudis respect our traditions and customs, they expect us to respect theirs.  If our extensive trade links are to be subject to "certain political ideologies", i,e. Jeremy Corbyn daring to suggest we shouldn't be training torturers or the jailers of human rights dissidents, then everything is on the table, including intelligence cooperation.  Why, David Cameron says Saudi intelligence has saved hundreds of lives, or rather according to the ambassador, "thousands".

This is hardly the first time the Saudis have threatened to withdraw intelligence cooperation.  Indeed, it's their rhetorical weapon of choice: just when the Serious Fraud Office was about to break open their probe into corruption in the Al-Yamamah weapon deal, the Saudis informed the British ambassador if the inquiry was not stopped that "British lives on British streets" would be at risk.  The message was that blunt.  To make such a threat over the potential uncovering of precisely what the Saudi royals are so often accused of is one thing; to do the same over a paltry £6m memorandum of understanding, which had not yet so much as been committed to is something else.

Such are the deep links within various government departments to the Saudis, not to mention inside the arms firms which the British state often acts as salesman extraordinaire for, it's all but impossible to know precisely where direct Saudi influence ends and the curious devotion to some of the most unpleasant people on the planet begins.  There is however clearly more than meets the eye to foreign secretary Philip Hammond's unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia than merely to announce that Karl Andree, imprisoned for over a year for the heinous offence of having homemade wine, will be released shortly.  That ever reliable conduit for the intelligence agencies, Frank Gardner, says the visit was meant to "smooth ruffled feathers", and yet it also looks remarkably like being part of an agreed stick and then carrot PR exercise, with the ambassador wielding the stick and Hammond then coming away with a prize regardless.

Perhaps the true reason for the trip is to soothe Saudi nerves over the possibility that we won't be able to carry on supplying planes, bombs and spare parts to their airforce, currently involved in reducing Yemen to rubble as part of the second on-going proxy war between the Sauds and Iran in the region.  Perhaps it was also to reassure them that Iran being invited to the talks over Syria is not about anything other than a extremely belated attempt to reach a peace settlement.  It still though highlights just how deep in the Saudi pocket government ministers are.  Very few other nations could get away with making such blatant threats, in our very own media no less, and not as a result be told where to go.

The truth is we are scared of the Saudis, just as it seems the Americans are also.  Not because they can turn off the oil taps as they once did and could, but at what potentially they could do if we finally called their bluff on their wider role in the region and in the spreading of the Wahhabi creed worldwide.  British lives on British streets, or American lives on American streets, and not merely as a result of stopping the sharing of intelligence.  The threat seems far more implicit than that, a message backed up by how regardless of their protests, it's a fact that the Saudis have been funding jihadist groups in Syria, if not necessarily either Islamic State or the al-Nusra Front.  As David Allan Green again writes, there's a name for our response to this open intimidation: appeasement.  Just don't expect those usually first in line to decry Western "weakness" to be in the vanguard on this occasion.

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10/28/2015 11:31:00 pm | |

Wednesday, October 21, 2015 

Aenema.

This might just be me, but there are days when such is the weight of general arsebaggery and overall cuntitude, you pray to the empty sky for a cataclysm.  Our great country has after all played host to many shows of depravity down the years, some in recent memory.  Few though have been quite as revolting or nauseating as the transformation of central London into little Beijing for the duration of Xi Jinping's state visit, the Chinese premier treated in a way usually reserved only for US presidents, and even then it feels embarrassingly over the top.  Generally, the criteria for addressing both houses of parliament if you've not been elected yourself is to be the monarch; such niceties can however be suspended if you're about to sink massive amounts of cash into nuclear plants.

It's not just that Jinping has been welcomed in a style so sycophantic that it makes our usual shows of pageantry look restrained, it's the way in which our representatives and then those reporting it have gone about doing so also.  For John Bercow and Prince Charles to be the heroes of the day, for respectively introducing Jinping while making reference to Aung San Suu Kyi, flawed as she is, and finding something else to be doing rather than attending the banquet, is something in itself.  Not his old man's mutterings for Wills however, who bravely brought to the attention of Jinping the suffering of China's wildlife.  Kate meanwhile wowed the tabloids by wearing red, clearly demonstrating her dedication to Marxist-Leninism, topped off with a tiara that the Chinese first lady, Peng Liyuan, probably thought a bit proletarian.  Queenie for her part was given two whole albums worth of Liyuan's popular folk warblings, to be filed alongside her Slayer CDs.  And while Cameron and Jinping discussed their mutual passion for keeping the workers down, being served up for their delectation was roasted loin of Balmoral venison, most likely shot by Philip himself.

This was all happening as Tata laid off workers at three of their steel plants, in part down to China dumping its own excess onto the world market at rock bottom prices.  One union representative appeared on the news to state that he and the company's representatives had calculated that even if they worked for nothing, they still wouldn't be able to compete.  Having boasted at the beginning of the year of the success of the steel industry thanks to the strength of the rest of the economy, any help beyond commiserations from the government has been solely lacking.  Sajid Javid stood up in the Commons and stated this wasn't something governments could do much about, rather than it being something that governments have made the choice to leave to the market.  In the words of Simon Crutchley, at the Scunthorpe plant collecting a delivery, "he's ruining fucking everything, Cameron".

Not that he could give a stuff.  Unfortunate as it is that the nation's steel industry is collapsing just as the leader of the country principally responsible arrives to be fawned over, and bad as it looks, Dave can rest safe in the knowledge that those workers, their families and all the other people the plants will have supported are not likely to have voted Tory.  It makes something of a mockery of George Osborne's beloved Northern Powerhouse™ also, but really, what's more important, Chinese investment in nukes or laughable claims about revitalising a whole area of the country?  We couldn't possibly borrow the money at still historically low rates rather than put something as vital as new nukes under the control of the Chinese, and besides, doesn't it make perfect sense to ask the Chinese and French states to build power plants rather than doing so ourselves?

Our politics has become so deranged on the fiscal front that keeping on the lights has been put in the hands of a French company majority owned by the French state which has not yet completed any of the plants of the European pressurised reactor design mooted for Hinckley Point (the Chinese plants of the same design are also yet to come online).  Moreover, once it is up and running, which will be 10 years time at the earliest, we'll be paying the Chinese and the French twice what the market rate was in 2012, not including inflation.  This could only make sense to politicians who have made a fetish out of the deficit at the expense of everything else.  The Conservatives claim to be acting in the interests of the country's economic security, and yet have concluded a deal that will see future taxpayers' money going straight into the coffers of an authoritarian state that can be trusted about as far as it can be thrown.

Like the cancelling of the contract for a training programme for guards in Saudi Arabian prisons, which led to Michael Gove being feted for his role when surely the idea ought to have been so demonstrably wrong that not helping one of the most repressive governments on the planet torture its citizens is the bare minimum we expect, so too the Chinese have promised in return for handing over vast wads of cash to not steal any British company's intellectual property.  Chinese cyber-attacks are more than likely exaggerated by those with an interest in doing so, but if we're equals why on earth is such an understanding so much as required?   As others have pointed out, there has been next to no debate about this sudden decision to place our faith and our infrastructure in the hands of a state that so many of our traditional allies are suspicious of, rightly or wrongly.  It wouldn't be as bad if this was being done because we genuinely could not do it any other way; instead, this is a choice by politicians who are determined at the same time to renegotiate our relationship with Europe.

Forgive me then if the attention paid to reaching an arbitrary date in a film and still not having a fucking hoverboard does smack a bit of well, decadence.  Just as it's a reflection on us as a people that the politicians we produce regret not their inability to stop the government of the day passing things like the bedroom tax, but instead not projecting our strength as a nation by launching a military attack that would have achieved precisely nothing.  As the Roman empire collapsed, so the distractions, the circuses, became ever more exotic.  This tends to be how these things end.

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10/21/2015 11:35:00 pm | |

Monday, June 27, 2011 

Another unfunny short post.

David Cameron has insisted human rights issues are not "off limits" with China after holding talks with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao.

"On the contrary", Cameron said, "we had a long and fruitful discussion on the very subject. In line with Wen's insistence on treating each other as equals, he gave me a very helpful insight into how his government deals with unruly trade unionists, advice which I've passed on to Michael Gove. He isn't certain of the legality of arresting all the striking teachers, but it's an improvement on his parents breaching picket lines wheeze."

"In return, I was happy to explain to Wen how we're managing to maintain the moral high ground in Libya, even when increasingly all we're doing is bombing empty buildings, or 'command and control centres' as the NATO spin doctor insists on calling them. He was especially intrigued with how we're demanding one vicious autocrat in Libya leave power immediately, while in Bahrain we think nothing of inviting round the very people in charge of the repression there and shaking their hand. He told me he was thinking of carrying out a similar exercise in North Korea and Tibet, although I may have got the two mixed up."

Wen said: "We should not be addressing each other on these issues in such a lecturing way. That's why we've agreed to just not talk about it in the future at all. Look, pandas!"

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6/27/2011 09:45:00 pm | |

Monday, August 25, 2008 

A portent of things to come.


At times, this moniker I've chosen doesn't seem quite right. For someone who apparently thinks of this isle as septic, I seem remarkably unconcerned about its current state. After all, I repeatedly argue that despite the claims of the Conservatives and the tabloids that our society, for all its faults and deficiencies, is not broken. I never fail to marvel that those predisposed to empty, shallow patriotism actually seem to hate this country far more than those constantly accused of betraying it and bringing it to where it is now. My own pointless, self-serving, delusional rage is directed at other targets, for better or worse.

The Olympics ought to have been everything I've been institutionally designed to loathe. Orwell effortlessly exposed the essential pointlessness of the ranking of one person better than another at some insufferable activity in his Sporting Spirit essay. What he would have made of the obscenity which is the Premier League - where one player who can kick a ball into a net slightly more accurately than another and is in return paid more than some people will ever earn in a lifetime for less than two hours' work - is difficult to imagine. 16 days of this garbage, at immense, unimaginable cost, courtesy of one of the most despicable regimes on the planet - and that's just the IOC, never mind China - should have been over two weeks to forget.

And yet, you couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the show which the Chinese put on at both the opening and closing ceremonies. Yes, this was undoubtedly something which only the most vile dictatorship could both organise and justify, where a slightly less attractive child was elbowed aside lest anyone be horrified by her slightly not straight teeth, where the "Great Leap Forward" was strangely absent from the presented version of Chinese history, and where the contemptible idea of "protest zones" actually resulted in two old women being sentenced to re-education through labour, but you could simply not object to the Chinese having the right to put on such a show. It would have been great to have seen some more protests, especially from athletes themselves, putting further to shame those who criticised those who attempted to stop the torch relay, but when they were such onerous potential punishments for those who did, you can't blame them either for not doing so.

For those of us who went against the grain and wanted the Olympics here as much as we'd like to spend the rest of our lives in the company of Tessa Jowell, it sets a challenge, as does the success of our athletes. Somehow, whether we like it or not, or want to or not, we have to at least put on something which if not equal to the last couple of weeks, at least doesn't embarrass us by comparison.

The problem therefore is that we have such complete incompetents, morons and nonentities in charge at the moment. Behold our 8 minutes yesterday at the closing ceremony. It was never going to be great, let's face it, but it would have been nice if it hadn't been the unmitigated disaster that it was. Uncomfortably, it also has to be admitted that this is not the result of the aforementioned individuals in charge. This was British "culture" writ large, or at least the popular side of it: a double-decker bus, which for some unfathomable reason unfolded itself; a winner of a fucking talent contest; an old man playing a song from the 70s, badly; the most overrated and unaccountably famous man to have ever walked on a pair of legs, kicking a football to no one or to nowhere in particular; a dance troupe performing the worst routine the world has seen since the Black and White Minstrel Show was cancelled; oh, and who could possibly forget the smug, rotund twat that couldn't even wave a flag properly?

This, world, is our island nation. In fairness, Marina Hyde says that she watched the last few handovers and that they were no better than our meagre effort. The funniest thing though is that Boris Johnson and Downing Street were so flabbergasted by the "mistake" of the video which accompanied our 8 minutes of madness featuring Marcus Harvey's child hand-print painting of Myra Hindley. Out of the entirety of our show, that could quite easily be classified as the finest moment, a genuine work of art, going against public opinion which annoyed all the right people.

That ought to be what we base our own games' ceremonies around. Not puerile, semi-ironic stereotypical nonsense which just shows the West as a whole to be completely out of ideas and beholden only to the cult of worthless celebrity, but genuinely innovatory and potentially avant-garde politicking which ignores the advice of those who have already brought us so low. This is where those in charge will fail us; would any other country on the planet put in charge of the games a woman who can't remember little things like whether her husband was taking out a new mortgage, or a man who could rival Tory Boy himself for wit and intellect? A taster for what's to come, apart from in China itself, was presented outside Buckingham Palace. This was the "Visa 2012 handover party", just to prove that the curse of sponsorship will not just be confined to the games themselves. And what a line-up they put on! Not content with just one unspeakably awful band being involved, they chose three just to be sure: The Feeling, Scouting for Girls and McFly. You know that something has gone terribly, horrifically, child-murderingly wrong when the best artist on the bill is Katherine Jenkins; and one opera performer wasn't enough either, as she just had to be joined by Il Divo. And all around, that 2012 logo, so brilliantly conceived at immense cost by Wolff Olins, set to haunt our nightmares for the next four years and beyond.

If you think that things are bad now, it's worth remembering that within 2 years it'll be the new Blairite Conservative party that'll be in charge. David Cameron, in his past life spent his time defending the shit on a stick served up by Carlton, so at least he'll be handy when it comes to the abortion to follow. As for his taste in music, he informed Dylan Jones that he had purchased albums by both Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse and couldn't choose between them. Alongside him will be the snot-nosed cocaine-hoovering Gideon Osborne, with a face so punchable that by then the entire country would choose to have him become Team GB's newest and least trained boxing sensation. You can imagine it already, can't you? The countries parading to the strains of "She's so Lovely", followed by the main event, where the corpse of Winehouse is re-animated for her last ever gig. Septic isle indeed.

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8/25/2008 09:24:00 pm | |

Tuesday, April 08, 2008 

Scum-watch: Defending China by proxy.

As periodically occurs, mostly on special occasions or holidays, the Sun's slightly altered its logo. This one however is especially intriguing:

Looks like someone's decided that the Olympic torch relay needs defending. I wonder who that could possibly be?

The tone for this defence of the ancient right to run a flaming stick through capital cities is set by the Sun's report on the protests yesterday in Paris:

THE Olympic torch was snuffed out four times yesterday as it was relayed through Paris – before eventually being put on a BUS to shield it from anti-Chinese mobs.

Anti-Chinese mobs. Not human rights protesters or Free Tibet campaigners, but anti-Chinese mobs.

In a futile effort to keep some semblance of balance, there is a column at the side dealing with the accusations against China, but perhaps there's something in the fact that it leads with how China executes 22 a day. This is after all the newspaper that recently declared that 99% of its readers wanted the death penalty brought back. It's nearly 300 words in before the Sun finally suggests why the protests have been so vociferous:

Protesters are furious at China’s brutal crushing of opponents in Tibet, which has sparked outrage in neighbouring countries including Nepal.

But wait! Aren't the protests themselves incompatible with the values of the Olympics?

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge blasted the protests as “not compatible with the values of the torch relay or the Olympic Games”.

He insisted of China’s human rights record: “The International Olympic Committee has expressed its serious concern and calls for a rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet.”


What values exactly does the torch relay represent? The values of public relations, of self-promotion, for both China and the celebrities/athletes that have carried it, of being completely impervious to criticism? It must be, because it certainly doesn't stand for peace, friendship or unity like the Sun claimed yesterday. It instead stands this time round for imperial arrogance, both on the part of the International Olympic Committee for awarding China the games in the first place and then condemning protesters despite China making no effort whatsoever to improve its rights record as it was supposed to do; and also China's own, in attempting to milk the Olympics for all its short-term worth, completely out of line with the supposed values of the games that it is meant to be espousing. Rather than just expressing vague calls for "a rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet", it should be demanding at the very least that China meets with the Dalai Lama, puts a stop to its ridiculous claims that he's somehow masterminding the protests, and release those that have been taken into custody since the outbreak of the uprisings last month. For those who call for a separation of sport and politics, the moment the IOC gave China the Olympics it was a vote of confidence for its leadership; the two are so intertwined as to be impossible to break apart.

To further labour the point, the Sun's printed a cut out Olympic flame for everyone!

NO matter how many times protesters put out the real Olympic torch, they won't be able to extinguish our special cut-out-and-keep Olympic torch. Click HERE for your very own flame.

The leader column provides for two opportunities: to bash the French and to show the Chinese that Murdoch is firmly behind them and their two-week long sports extravaganza.

IF France fielded as many troops in Afghanistan as cops deployed on the streets of Paris yesterday, the Taliban could be defeated overnight.

If they were prepared to fight.


I realise this is a throw-away jibe, but the idea that somehow an extra 3,000 troops would "defeat the Taliban" is about as much of a fantasy as, oh, this very editorial.

Coachloads of club-carrying police were drafted in to protect the Olympic torch and keep unarmed civilian protesters at bay.

And they still couldn’t keep this iconic symbol alight.

Well, what do you expect? They're French, they're too busy eating snails, riding bicycles and going on strike as to do something as simple as keep an "iconic symbol" alight.

The flame was snuffed out FOUR times as it made its faltering way to Beijing — not by demonstrators but by city officials.

Finally, it was put on a bus for “safety reasons” — even though there was no more violence in Paris than in London, where the flame survived without a flicker.


Err, could this possibly be because, like in London, demonstrators were at certain sections blocking the flame's path? No, it's all the fault of those swarthy French policemen.

There is widespread sympathy for the Free Tibet campaigners dogging the flame’s journey — at huge loss of face to China’s Communist regime.

But this is supposed to be the Eternal Flame, an international symbol of the sporting ideal.


Not to break Godwin's law or anything, but as others have noted (The Times itself won't be repeating Jenkins's arguments, that's for sure), it was the Nazis that came up with the idea for a torch relay. The Eternal Flame - the Eternal Jew, anyone? Even if it was this imaginary symbol of a sporting ideal as some appear to be arguing, China's appropriation of it has snuffed them.

The countries through which it passes owe a duty to the Olympic legacy to keep it burning.

The French should have guarded it properly or had nothing to do with it at all.


Surely by "Olympic legacy" the Sun really means "the Chinese", or as they're known to Mr Murdoch, some of my closest business associates? As for the perfidious French, it should be interesting to see if the Sun condemns the Americans so noisily and angrily if the protesters there continue to succeed as their counterparts have here and in France. Somehow I think they might just be treated to a different standard.

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4/08/2008 06:11:00 pm | |

Monday, April 07, 2008 

A celebration of the Olympic spirit.

There's nothing quite like a protest against a vicious kleptocracy to bring out the best in everyone.

The official view of yesterday's relay, expressed by government ministers and torchbearers alike, seems to be that the halting passage through London was a "triumph for democracy", a kind of demonstration to the world of how free speech should be allowed. What nonsense. I was reporting yesterday's protests for the Guardian and, from the outset, police identified anti-Chinese protesters and subjected them to different rules to red-flag waving spectators.

Before the relay had even properly begun, my colleague witnessed police removing T-shirts and flags from demonstrators. At Ladbroke Grove, spectators carrying Tibetan flags were relegated to a pavement across the road, kept apart from a carnival-style reception.

It was the same story at Bloomsbury Square, which, along with Whitehall, was the most heated part of the relay. Several protesters were dragged away. I saw one woman asked to place her anti-Chinese posters in plastic bags. She told me she had been told by two officers that her materials, which complained about China's treatment of animals, were "inflammatory".

Demonstrators who did not obey police requests to stand in designated areas were repeatedly threatened with anti-terrorist legislation. On what grounds?

Police were also restrictive towards the press. I was threatened with arrest several times - for indiscretions such as having one foot on pavement and another, dreadful as it sounds, on the road. Jim Jameson, a freelance photographer, told me he was "thrown to the ground" while photographing an arrest near Whitehall.


If you wanted to be slightly glib, you could draw parallels with a protest that the police decided not to interfere with, where similarly inflammatory slogans were shouted and on clear display:

Then though it was just the whole country and freedom of speech which was being abused, whereas yesterday it was the Chinese, who are notoriously easily offended.

Then via Justin we have the athletes themselves:

Duncan Goodhew, the former Olympic swimmer who ran with the torch, said: "It shows how extreme things can get in this country and it's a great shame. It's such a bad example for children.

Quite so. Children seeing adults protesting against a PR operation by a tyrannical human rights abuser? Might give them ideas above their station, what?

We also have the pleasure of the Murdoch press having to tie itself in knots, not able to be too critical because of News Corporation's business interests in the country, which leads to the publication of garbage such as today's Sun leader, hilariously titled Freedom wins:

THE Olympic torch’s troubled journey across London was a triumph for democracy.

We are lucky to live in a country that values its citizens’ right to hold lawful, peaceful public protests.


Or at least in a country where the police abitrarily decide the definition of what a lawful, peaceful protest is. Or where the Sun decides what a lawful, peaceful protest is.

And police must be congratulated for their skill in allowing that to happen while preventing those with unlawful intentions from putting the flame out or injuring torch bearers.

Yes, congratulations to the Plod. You've set a wonderful precedent for protecting all other countries that want to run a glorified relay through the streets of London, regardless of their internal politics.

 As holders of the next Games in 2012, Britain was right to show solidarity with the Olympic movement by allowing the flame to be paraded on our soil.

By "Olympic movement" the Sun presumably means the Chinese government, which allows its glorious proprietor to beam his wonderful satellite television service into millions of homes. Not to mention MySpace China, ran by the gorgeous pouting Wendi Deng, who just happens to be, err, Murdoch's wife.

Protesters claim it gave China a propaganda victory.

But our Prime Minister repeatedly warns China about its human rights record. Only yesterday Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell publicly condemned it as “reprehensible”.


Golly! Repeatedly warned! That's socking it to them. I bet they're quivering in their jackboots in Tibet now that Brown has "warned" them. No more shooting into crowds now lads, Gordon 'n' Tessa will give us a stern ticking off if we do!

 What’s more, Gordon Brown will show his personal support for Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, by meeting him when he visits Britain next month.

Only after he was pressured into doing so by David Cameron raising it as an issue at Prime Minister's Questions. He won't however, unlike some on the continent, boycott the opening ceremony, which would hurt and embarrass China far more than anything else.

The flame is not a symbol of China. It’s an Olympic symbol.

Of course. The Chinese bodyguards that surrounded it were also obviously an Olympic symbol.

It represents peace, friendship and unity. Which makes it all the more poignant that the protesters could not extinguish it.

This leader represents obfuscation, sycophancy and not rocking the boat. Which makes it all the more poignant that the protesters for once cut through the layers of bullshit that often surround every political issue, and have continued to do so today.

Tygerland has a slightly more nuanced view.

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4/07/2008 09:35:00 pm | |

Thursday, March 27, 2008 

Tibet petition.

Via Justin:

After decades of repression, Tibetans are crying out to the world for change. China's leaders are right now making a crucial choice between escalating brutality or dialogue that could determine the future of Tibet, and China.

We can affect this historic choice -- China does care about its international reputation. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get the government's attention. The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has called for restraint and dialogue: he needs the world's people to support him. Fill out the form below to sign the petition--and spread the word.

Personally I feel China should never have been given the Olympics in the first place, and that a full boycott is now the right way forward, if only because they'll probably respond in kind, meaning we might not have to spend £9 billion (and the rest) on a two-week long glorified sports day in four years' time.

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3/27/2008 09:05:00 pm | |

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