Now, I haven’t really followed the ding-dong between Marko Attila Hoare and my esteemed comrade and fellow Trots blogger Peter Ryley along with a few others but I would say that on catching the tail end of this, it isn’t difficult to decide whose side you are on:

“While I indeed appreciate and respect several of these contributors, the overall tone of the blog is defined by the hatred, poison and negativity spewed copiously by the lumpen, semi-literate ’Will’ and by one or two others.”

I take great offence at the word ‘lumpen’ being used as a term of abuse. Not personally, you understand - I’m more downwardly-mobile middle-class white trash myself. But in my unrelenting downward trajectory, amongst the most intelligent, gorgeous, freedom-loving people I have ever met have belonged to that class dismissed as ‘lumpen’, ‘underclass’, ‘unemployable’ - and other Victorian shit of that nature. If I’m ever foolish enough to get married again, I’ll be having a member of this small but resilient social group as my best man. If I can put it like that, you might just be able to catch the music of what I’m saying - you fucking snob.

And it is Whiggish, Victorian bullshit we have to contend with from ‘comrade’ Marko. Those who declare the old divisions of left and right to be redundant are invariably former leftists and liberals who can’t quite bring themselves to acknowledge that they’ve lost the faith of their youth and have moved to the right. He takes it further and produces a dichotomy that puts Pro-Western and Anti-Western as the principal ideological division of this age. One of my friends at DSTPFW rightly identified more than a whiff of Fukuyama in what he was saying. Accurate and appropriate, yet in some ways too generous in imputing to our protagonist subtlety of thought he does not possess. For he strikes me as one who belongs to that ancient tribe: those who thought change via humanistic improvement was impossible; then it came along and they accepted it, all the while pretending that they hadn’t and simultaneously insisting that no significant future progress was either possible or desirable. A Tory, in other words. And a sensitive Tory at that:

“Not to mention the unending stream of vulgarity and abuse which any civilised person must find disgusting…”

Oh, sweetie! I feel so badly for you - to be introduced to how people in places like Glasgow and Newcastle actually talk. You know, like real people, majority people, common people, unwashed, uneducated and uncouth people. The kind of people who, if you were honest with yourself, you’d admit you despise. How traumatic and ghastly this must be for you. ‘Burkes’ at home? Unkind, unfair, unjust - to Burke, that is…

We would like to invite you this Sunday 20th April to ‘Labour: The Womens Champion’ a womens-only public meeting […]

The aim of the meeting is two-fold, firstly to gain female support for the local Labour candidate, Mr Muhammed Rasib, and secondly, to encourage membership from non-member supporters as well as for existing members to get more involved with the work of the Labour Party around Birmingham and surrounding areas.

The program will include Cllr Anita Ward, Chief Whip for the Labour Party, Muhammed Rasib, Labour Candidate for Washwood Heath, local female community champions, as well as members of the ‘Women Take Part’ steering group that Harriet Harman MP has set up, and local councillors.

Please do try to come along to benefit from the program, as well as ask any questions you may have and support this city-wide initiative. There will be many opportunities across the city for female councillors in 2010, especially for black and ethnic minority communities, so if it is something you are thinking about, you really need to be at this meeting.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend this meeting due to my chromosomal make-up (something I had little control of), but I have to question the validity of a women-only meeting called ‘Labour: The Womens Champion’, given its primary purpose is to garner support for a male candidate.

Car crash blogging is far from unusual (oh, for the services of a diligent and wise editor!), and I’ve published a few posts that now make me cringe with embarrassment. But Marko Attila Hoare’s latest defence of neo-Burkeism is a particularly fine example of the genre.

Take the following, which has been flagged this morning by Paulie…

“There are plenty of things wrong with the existing order here in the UK, and plenty of worthwhile fights left to fight. We need, for example, to free people from the oppression and misery of living on sink estates; break the hold of crime and violence over our young people; restore their belief in the value of education and self-improvement; provide child-care for single mothers to enable them to work; provide homes for all our citizens and residents; integrate all our ethnic and religious minorities into our citizenry; and so on. My personal belief is that the UK’s social problems are caused more by lack of education and opportunity for those lower down the social ladder, and by deficiencies in popular culture among the population at large, than they are by poverty or inequalities in wealth. I view, for example, the fact that our Labour government is committed to the target of half of all school-leavers going to university as more inspiring than any number of radicals writing about public ownership of the means of production. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush…”

“… deficiencies in popular culture among the population at large”? Very telling, that, as is “lower down the social ladder”. Given the social and cultural biases displayed in Hoare’s latest post and elsewhere in his writing, surely it’s a bit rich for the man to complain about the “Burkean” epithet.

Much of Hoare’s latest post is a diatribe against this blog written in a style very similar to that of the ultra-leftists he damns with an almost aristocratic haughtiness. One or two of us are, it seems, worthy of the great man’s attention, but the rest of us are far too common; no different from the Spartacist League or the Workers Revolutionary Party. That’s an interesting if unoriginal use of demonising rhetorical devices. Now say what you will about Daniel Davies, but that part of his criticism of certain Euston Manifesto signatories is highly accurate.

Other drink-soaked ones can speak for themselves. I may not be the sort of person one invites for tea at Claridges, but I’m entirely happy with that, and find Hoare’s little rant today mildly amusing. Maybe he finds it difficult to cope emotionally with being called a bore.

But hang on a second! The funny thing is, I could swear that Hoare had this forum for “sectarian hatred, frustration and bitterness” on his blogroll until very recently. If I’m right on this and wasn’t hallucinating, what does it say about Hoare’s latest tantrum?

And apparently I am correct on this matter at least, according to the Oracle of Edinburgh. We were once listed in Hoare’s roll of honour, but then he took us off. Then we went back on when one of us said something kind about the Squire of Greater Surbiton. And now we’re off again.

Call me a shit-stirrer, but I’m beginning to have fun with this.

By, umm, bombing a bus full of women and children. Yes, here’s that resistance that Terry Jones mentioned.

At least 53 died and another 90 were injured when explosives packed in a bus detonated outside a restaurant near a court in Baquba, north of the capital.
[…]
The bomb there exploded just before noon in a crowded area.

Most of the dead were women and children and many of the bodies are said to be too badly burned to be identified.

Presumably this collateral damage is acceptable when it is a result of the resistance’s actions. Terry Jones, who admittedly has been consistent since 2001, should be justifiably proud of the resistance’s glorious assault on the invaders.

The first of five — look them up yersell

E’s the b’y.

Hip your partner Sally Tibbo, Hip your partner Sally Brown;
Fogo, Twillingate, Morton’s Harbour, All around the circle.

Actually no, I cannot be bothered to write a proper obit for the movement that never was. But it appears that our good friend Daniel Davies has done so, albeit for a forum that doesn’t particularly appreciate such weighty matters.

So, if you have the stomach for it, do check out “Next stop Euston. This manifesto terminates here” (Subed, you’re fired! Ed.). And if you’re a real glutton for punishment peruse the comments, including a certain Prof. A Johnson’s defence of the project he struggled so hard to turn into a mass revolutionary movement.

This machine shampoo kills fascists

All here.

Also — newly available — a book review

You really couldn’t make this stuff up. There’ll be wailing and gnashing of teeth among BBC execs over this one. And a few junior management heads will no doubt roll.

Interesting stuff about Basra, via Mudville Gazette via Instapundit.

After the Iraqi Army set up checkpoints and the militia disappeared from the streets, I decided to start selling alcohol,” Luay Hanna, a 46-year-old liquor store owner, said. His shop was burnt down by fundamentalist militiamen three years ago, and many of his colleagues were butchered.
“Many of the alcohol sellers reopened their shops. We always sell near the Iraqi army checkpoints to be safe - not like before when the militia killed and kidnapped people right in front of the police’s eyes.”
Qaldoon Nuri, who runs a CD shop, was forced to stop selling pop songs for fear of the zealous gunmen four years ago. One of his friends was murdered for refusing to heed the ban. He was forced to sell religious songs, many of them praising al-Sadr, as well as lectures on tenets of the Shiite faith.
“The militia forced us to follow a fanatic Islamic code. They forced us to put up pictures of the imams,” he said. “Now after the militias have been defeated by government forces, we started to put some songs on CD and are looking for what’s new in the arts - what people actually like.”
One of his neighbors, Saleh Muhammad, has been badgered in his phone shop by customers demanding new pop ringtones and pictures of female singers to download. “I think it’s freedom from the fear,” he said.

In an email to The Independent on Sunday, the commentator wrote:

“Don’t know what came over me: the dear boy did suddenly seem extremely sapphic, yet I think my intuitions must have been scrambled all the same, since what I was actually thinking was: ‘Andrew really wants to have Barack Obama’s fucking child’. Clearly some confusion of categories on my part.”

That’s right…”lesbian furore” - fuck-ing-hell. The whole debate linked to here already.

Those of you have who have read Terry Jones’ insightful columns at The Guardian may have wondered where he obtains his up-to-the minute information and informed opinions from. Thanks to the BBC iPM programme, we now know. The intertubes. My favourite part of this interview is where he states he has rather given up listening to mainstream media, like the BBC, because it is so biased in its vocabulary. His example is the way it talks about insurgents in Iraq: “Now if this was the second world war you wouldn’t be talking about the insurgents, you’d be talking about the resistance fighters, but it’s insurgents now and that’s become the way you talk about the people who are objecting and fighting against the occupying forces, which is what the Americans and British are.”

Nice.

Listen to Terry Jones impart his wisdom.

Good lad

Monday April 7: national and international press in Trafalgar Square

All journalists ask the same questions. They ask why you have the strange shoes and shields, about blood, about lions. In Trafalgar Square, they asked: “What do you think about the bronze lion over there?” But what can I say? It’s not a real lion. I don’t mind because we are interesting to them but I am not here to be a show, an exhibition.

Plenty nuff other good observations includerated

. . .the connection between capitalism’s tendency to crisis and the current wave of food riots around the world:

“The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis — by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources. The rapid industrialization of China and India over the past two decades — and the resultant growth of a new middle class fast approaching the size of America’s — has driven demand for oil toward the limits of global supply capacity. That has pushed oil prices to levels five times what they were in the mid 1990s, which has also raised pressure on food prices by driving up agricultural costs and by prompting the substitution of biofuel crops for edible ones on scarce farmland. . . the food crisis, and its attendant political risks, are not likely to be resolved or contained by the laissez-faire operation of capitalism’s market forces.”

Proximate causes: “A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous.”

Meanwhile, just a few hours ago: About 20,000 workers rioted over high food prices and low wages on Saturday close to the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, police said, amid spreading global unrest over soaring grocery costs.

We will be talking about the events of this week a decade from now.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. I seem to have invented a sound bite that has stuck and started an argument. Marco Hoare has now responded to comments at Fatman and over at Bob’s place. Bob has got excited and is posting away with gay abandon (calm down mate). I will just stick to Hoare’s reply.

There is a lot that I could argue with in it. His reading of Burke is different from mine, for example, though I am happy for him to be a Whig if he chooses to be. I once had a taxi driver give me a lecture over a mercifully short journey about how it all went wrong when the Whigs gave way to the Liberals – strange place Hull – so he is not alone. However, it was only supposed to be a metaphor and not a precise description. So a debate trying to match people’s opinions against 18^th/19^th Century philosophers misses the point.

I certainly have reservation about his description of the process of the founding of the welfare state. Universal suffrage was preceded by instruments of working-class self-help – trade unions, co-operatives, self-improvement societies, friendly societies and the like – which were eventually replaced by the welfare state. They are interesting in themselves and they also raise issues about ownership and control that might just question the type of welfare state we want.

However, it has all got a bit convoluted so I really want to concentrate on three points.

First, and most importantly, Hoare argues that democracy is a necessary precursor to the establishment of social justice through the introduction of a welfare state. Fine, but it isn’t a sufficient condition. There has to be a left party prepared and able to take power to implement measures and that has to be built, it won’t just emerge because of the existence of liberal democracy. And, even if a left party gets into power, it can be constrained by the power of other institutions, such as big business, and by international politics and economics. When democratisation has produced left victories in the developing world recently, they have been undone by debt, trade and ‘structural adjustment’.

Thus a newly emerging left has to tackle these vital questions. It needs a political economy, which is missing from his list. It needs to think about what kind of globalism it supports, what kind of welfare, and, above all, it needs to think about equality and liberty. It needs to consider issues of power and autonomy. All of this is an integral part of a process of democratisation and helps shape it. Building a new, and global, left consensus, requires more than democracy and universal human rights, though they are essential. We need to think about economics – talking about ownership and control, as well as distribution – and to challenge the prevailing consensus.

Second, there is that diagram. I know Bob likes it, but I find things like this reductionist as they start us off trying to quantify ideas (like a is more left wing than b), which are not really quantifiable. I think they can obscure really interesting differences. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but, in discussing other left traditions, he wrote, “In fact, the radical leftists of this kind appear on my diagram in the far left, equidistant between the pro-Western and anti-Western camps“. I think that this illustrates my point and helps me make a bigger one. The lumping of Anarchism, for example, together with other schools of thought in some form of ‘third perspective’ conflates a wealth of different ideas – communists, individualists, mutualists, feminists, ecologists, pacifists, christians, free thinkers, revolutionaries, egoists and hybrid figures like Patrick Geddes. Trying to fit Geddes on a diagram is impossible. (However, I have to admit that he was very fond of drawing them himself and they are mainly bewilderingly complex and well nigh incomprehensible).

The left has a wonderful and rich history. Some of it is crazy, some impractical, some dangerous, but much is also full of insight, pertinent and surprisingly modern. Let’s rediscover and develop it instead of banging on about Stalin, the bloody Webbs and how socialism died with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of the Soviet Union finally interred the embalmed corpse of Stalinism. Libertarian left ideas, both Marxist and non-Marxist variants, remained unaffected; they detested Stalinism (and didn’t think much of the Webbs either). This is a living tradition with fascinating, and alive, thinkers and writers, not a relic from the age of the gramophone. And it is relevant - we are not quite as ‘modern’ as we like to think we are.

Finally, I have to mention this esteemed blog, one of those “obsessed with their own ‘radical left’ identity, with ideological purity and with loyalty to the anachronistic ‘revolutionary’ principles of yesteryear”. Hang on a second. When reading my own blog, he hadn’t noticed that I am the Big Fat Gadgie here. And what a diverse bunch we all are. As well as bog standard bloggers like myself, there are distinguished authors and journalists from both sides of the Atlantic, and even a fine, prize wining poet. And though we have a common commitment to universal human emancipation, we love to quarrel about how it should take place. I am proud to contribute and even more proud that many of these wonderful writers have become my friends.

What has happened in the aftermath of 9/11 is that a section of the left woke up, and spotted that another section had drifted into an accommodation with Islamism and anti-Semitism, a trend that had been going on since the 60’s and 70’s. They promptly mounted a challenge. They haven’t comprehensively won, but now every egregious excrescence is met with reasoned argument and passionate scorn. It is hugely to everyone’s credit. This fostered a new internationalism, countering pessimistic ‘realism’ with a wholehearted belief in human possibilities across the world.

All of this is excellent. However, my concern, expressed in recent posts, is that, after our exertions, we too begin to doze off. We get so comfortable attacking the left that we forget that we are left as well. We relax and, in doing so, we forget the grotesque injustices and inequities in even those societies that are liberal capitalist democracies. We forget the shantytowns and favellas, we forget environmental devastation and we forget that, if the current food crisis gets worse, millions of poor people will starve to death whilst I poke fun at government obesity strategies. Only connect.

So it is time to progress and I approach this as an optimist. I would argue that Socialism, in the broadest sense of the word (even Benjamin Tucker described himself as a socialist), has not died and we need to turn to our history to understand how diverse and rich a tradition it is. It is also a history that developed in a critical relationship with capitalism. Some wanted to tame it, others to replace it. With Stalinism firmly in the ground, let’s build on that critique; let’s support economic, as well as political and social, rights; let’s fight complacency at home as well as oppression abroad; and, above all, let’s not sleepwalk into the cul-de-sac that is “the end of history”.

THE MESOPOTAMIAN — New Notes

Food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Friday. Despite a forecast 2.6 percent hike in global cereal output this year, record prices are unlikely to fall, forcing poorer countries’ food import bills up 56 percent and hungry people on to the streets, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said.

The reality is that people are dying already in the riots,” Diouf told a news conference. “They are dying because of their reaction to the situation and if we don’t take the necessary action there is certainly the possibility that they might die of starvation. Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react.”

The FAO said food riots had broken out in several African countries, Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti. Thirty-seven countries face food crises, it said in its latest World Food Situation report.

Say what you like about Johann Hari, and I do from time to time, here’s an issue he’s right about and he’s one of the few journalists I’ve read who seems to understand the nature of the problem. Comprehensive education has failed? How is it possible to make such an assessment when we don’t have a comprehensive system? What we have, as Johann points out - although doesn’t use this phrase - is a system of neighbourhood schools.

Please be under no illusions: advocates of bring-back-grammars (including the self-styled iconoclast ‘left’), ‘faith schools’, city academies, private education (inexplicably called ‘public schools’ in England), and ‘voucher systems’ like to pretend they’re in favour of ‘excellence’ and making a stand against ‘dumbing down’ or what ever the fuck… Perhaps they’re not pretending and they are sincere but what they really favour is a system that gives plentiful escape hatches for the middle classes - or what is closer to their experience, so that their offspring don’t have to mix with the great unwashed.

This despite the evidence that mixing is good. Faith schools get better results? Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes true. Where’s the evidence? What there is evidence of is that ‘faith schools’ in England are selecting their intake. In Scotland, the picture is slightly different. Faith schools (i.e. RC schools) do slightly better than average - because they have to draw on a wider catchment and are therefore more genuinely comprehensive. But they don’t top the league table - it’s neighbourhood schools that do.

But why consider this when you can cleave to the myth that a return to the notion that a child’s future can be, and should be, determined by a test they do when they’re eleven years old is what is needed to help “bright working-class kids escape the hell of inner-city comps”? Yes, give your Daily Mail prejudices a prolier-than-thou veneer if you can. But before you do so, consider this question: can you explain to me why, exactly, a child has to be ‘bright’ to qualify for escape from a situation you consider to be ‘hell’?

[Top part of this post - in italics - added onto this post by Will]

Pictured: a user of clever sounding words that don’t actually say anything of substance; purely verbal; he has his own iconography (or otherwise known as silly little scrawls) - the earnest look, the bookish appearance and that is what his picture intends to cultivate. It embraces the elitism of the academy and one who is really good at artificial earnestness and displays of his ‘weighty’ nature. Whatever — carry on… utter, utter fuckwit.

I appear to have wasted a considerable amount of time yesterday arguing the toss with centrists over at Bob from Brockley’s gaff. The subject of debate was Marko Attila Hoare’s silly diagram and various responses to it, including those of the Fat Man and myself.

Not only are Hoare’s arguments and the rhetorical devices he employs absurd, he is such a humourless bore.

One thing that stands out in Hoare’s post is his use of the term “homogenous citizenship”, when defending his vision of an egalitarian society. Homogenous? Hoare’s support for an “ultra-liberal immigration policy” aside, this reeks of the aculturalism that I associate with Burkean liberal-conservatism. The last thing I want to see is a homogeneous society. It would be the social equivalent of thermodynamic heat death.

There are other issues I have with Hoare’s post, including the display of what is for an historian a shocking ignorance of the struggle for enfranchisement of the working class in western societies. But I suspect that others in the house will have something to say on such matters. I shall conclude with a comment on Hoare’s frankly laughable characterisation of the diverse community of writers that is the Drink-Soaked Trots.

Pretty much the only things we have in common apart from a commitment to human emancipation, and in some cases at least a fondness for the water of life, are a certain robustness of approach and an unwillingness to suffer fools gladly. I define my comrades by their possession of such human qualities, and not, within reason, their professed political ideology.

Sunny Hundal has a post up titled Hapless Neocons. Strangely, his article is concerned with bigoted and mindless critics like Steyn, Wilders, and Philips. His definition of neocon appears to be someone who bashes Muslims, rather than any actual understanding of what neoconservatism actually is. For good measure he makes sure that leftwing critics of Islamist terrorism, so-called muscular liberals, are lumped in with the “neocons” et al.

This is the possibly the worst piece of analysis I have every read in the past two or three years:

Its evidence that the neocons are running out of steam. There are two directions they have tried to take their arguments, albeit unsuccessfully.

One is a point over demographics; that regardless of whether they’re all terrorists or not, European Muslims have a higher birthrate than white Europeans and hence in about [insert scary time] from now there will be sharia everywhere. It’s time to go forth and multiply, brave soldiers!

This is sometimes combined with the view that what Europe actually needs is a resurgence of good old-fashioned “Judaeo-Christian values” to act as a bulwark against Islamism. Ignoring the fact that traditional European Christian fundamentalism involved healthy doses of anti-semitism, even the estimable Melanie Phillips has been pushing this line.

The problem for Steyn, Phillips and their core supporters is that at this juncture they lose the interest of their “muscular liberal” atheist fans.

Let’s leave aside the neocons, muscular liberals, Fitna and the rest for now. This debate isn’t necessarily about re-interpreting, reforming or revolutionising Islamic texts for a modern world either. This is more about political maturity.

There is an immense vacuum between the ears of Sunny Hundal, which he fills with random associations and glib assertions.

Yes, Sunny Hundal is the Melanie Phillips of the liberals.

Truth is, Comment is Worthless is a godsend to the blogger. Short of something to vent your spleen about? Simply follow the link above and within about forty-five seconds you’re sure to find something. But a reassessment is in order because here’s Ruth Fowler having a pop at “puritan bourgeois liberals”:

“[M]isinformed and bigoted hatred is also a trait peculiar to the humourless bourgeois liberal. By singling out people, including themselves, on the basis of race, class and economics - traits that they simultaneously and hollowly decry as utterly unimportant - they perform a spectacular feat of unintentional postmodern irony, or what can be more commonly termed wankerism.”

I have to say, living and working in Glasgow I never come across the sort of puritan liberals she describes.

There are two possible explanations for this:

1) They exist but have already wisely decided that talking to me is a complete waste of time and potentially a traumatic experience.

2) The few that existed have all been killed.

Perhaps they live in Edinburgh, in which case Will can take care of them.

Anyway, how fabulous is Ruth Fowler? Pretty goddam fabulous, in my view. Here’s some info:

“Ruth Fowler was born in 1979 and grew up in the mountains of North Wales. She received a first class BA (Hons) in English Literature from Cambridge University in 2000. She is sure they let her in as the token comprehensive school northerner.”

Hmmm - 1979? Bit of an age difference here, but not insurmountable… Did I mention my grandfather was Welsh? First class honours? Hey, I’ve got one of those too. (Is there no end to the things we have in common?) Means slightly less than fuck all - but you knew that already because you’re just so gorgeously intelligent. Tokenism? No, no, no - apart from the usual mundane shit you need to get into the university of your choice, this was because you are an angel, a veritable goddess.

What an improvement to Comment is Bullshit! Why, her very presence even induced that rarest of things - a funny comment on a CiF thread:

“Julie Burchill and Christopher Hitchens had a baby.

It was a girl.”

Funny - yet disturbing: while I enjoy both of these writers from time to time, frankly the idea of them doing the deed that leads to procreation puts images in my mind that I don’t want to be there. Furthermore, while I intend no disrespect to either of them, I doubt very much whether the fruit of their loins would end up looking like this:

What - you find all this vulgar, un-PC and altogether too laddish for your taste? Ah, but herein lies the point, comrade sister, comrade brother: if so, her article’s about you.

The ‘Sacred Flame’ (NSDAP™ 1936) had a truncated journey today, well away from the public eye, surrounded by hundreds of police with batons drawn, reportedly finishing with an ad hoc ceremony on a motorway overpass.

News 24 is reporting that Gordy will not attend the opening rally–for what that is worth.

The saga of the Chinese olympic torch continues, in fine style.

The San Francisco leg of the Olympic torch relay descended into farce last night after the authorities cut the route in half and hustled the torch away from waiting protesters and supporters of the Beijing games by driving it a mile inland.

At the opening ceremony preceding the afternoon’s relay, the first torchbearer took the flame from a lantern brought to the stage and held it aloft before quickly departing again, running behind the scenes and into a warehouse. It was unclear exactly what had happened to the torch, with even the news channel helicopters unable to find it.

After a 40-minute hiatus, during which rumour spread among the waiting crowd of thousands gathered along the waterfront route, the flame reappeared about a mile inland, away from the crowds. Authorities, apparently in a last-minute decision to avoid the protests that had plagued the torch on its parade through London and Paris, reduced the six-mile route to three miles. A closing ceremony for the torch rally was also suddenly relocated away from the waterfront area.

I have come to the conclusion that the Olympic committee awarded the games to the Chinese in the full knowledge that the Chinese government would attempt to stage-manage the torch run around the world, like they can at home, and during the process would be humiliated. While the olympics have increased oppression within China, rather than the opposite, every day draws yet more attention to their failings. The Chinese Gauleiter of Tibet has said of the torch’s progression in Tibet.

“During the torch relay in Tibet and in climbing Mount Everest, if anyone should attempt to disrupt or undermine the torch relay, then they will be dealt with severely according to the law,”

Way to go with those PR skills!