Some of our readers might remember how, around this time a year ago, Catherine and I blogged voluminously about the bloody stupidity of China’s Olympic Torch relay.

Now here comes news that the IOC has decided, belatedly, to jettison the international Olympic Torch relay,  because the Torch relay of the 2008 Olympics turned out to be a Titanic f— up of “public relations”.

We are pleased to hear this news of how the IOC has belatedly come to its senses about the Torch.     We only regret that so many innocent people were wounded, tortured and murdered as a direct consequence of Lenovo’s Olympic Torch path through emotionally nuclear places such as Tibet, in 2008.

We can reasonably assume that the Chinese and Western organisers and “public relations” consultants who are responsible for the murderous debacle of the 2008 Olympic Torch relay, are now still sitting pretty, still earning good money and retiring to their own safe, warm beds every night, willfully oblivious to the roles they have personally played in the torture and deaths of innocents.

I can easily imagine that some of them, or at least the Westerners among them, are now fierce critics of the likes of AIG and other corporate criminals who have destroyed America’s economy and dragged the rest of the world down with them.

But either God, or the gods, or the natural law of the survival of Truth, will ultimately make them pay for the sufferings that their willful stupidities have inflicted upon others.    And their first installments of payback will be their loss of sleep, for the rest of their lives.    Because I believe that you can run, but you can’t hide, from God-given conscience.

Meanwhile, I dedicate the following video clip to China’s 2008 Olympic Torch relay, and especially to Lenovo’s American “public relations” consultants who made that torch relay what it was:

The international legs of the Olympic Torch relay are over.   What has the world learned about China and the Chinese, in the past few weeks?

Something like this.    An allegory from Monty Python’s, “The Visitors”:

Setting:     House = The Torch’s “host” countries of Britain, France, America, Australia, Japan, South Korea, et al

Dramatis Personae:    “The Visitors” = the embassies and mobs of students from the People’s Republic of China

Further evidence that the developed world, including Beijing, is on the threshold of a New Dark Age. From (Australian) ABC:

Anger in South Korea is growing over violence during Sunday’s torch relay, recorded on widely circulated video clips, in which Chinese students attacked Koreans staging protests against Beijing’s rights record.

“Some Chinese students came out to safeguard the dignity of the torch. I believe that’s natural,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said when asked to comment on the clashes.

The “dignity of the torch”? And they’ve also been calling it the “Sacred Torch”. So now the Communist Party has begun to worship fetishes and idols.

Here at the Jacaranda Tree we have posted several pieces regarding the neo-pagan Nazi origins of the Olympic Torch, and our friend MAJ has contributed several passages of ample and incisive commentary on the torch and the Olympics as “hyper-real” (or as I say, “hypo-real”) fetishes of vulgar commercialization – which is really another kind of paganism. Jesus was killed because he scourged the moneychangers in the Temple. Yet even the radical materialist, Marx, despised the fetishisation of material objects; how much more would he be outraged by China’s current fetishisation of Lenovo and Coca Cola?

Alright then. If the Chinese Communist Party really want everyone to regard the Torch as “sacred”, then they ought to learn a few things about what the Torch meant to the Nazis. The Nazi SS, whose mission was to re-paganise Germany, were instructed in Runelore. Runes, as you might know, were ancient Germanic glyphs, derived from the Greek and Roman alphabets circa 200 AD; the ancient barbarian Germans who came in contact with the Roman Empire were fascinated by this new thing called “writing”, which seemed magical to them. They adapted Roman letters to be used for magical inscriptions, generally on bones or stones. Gradually the barbarian German shamans began to attribute particular magical meanings to each rune, each “letter” of their barbarous “alphabet” which was used – let me emphasise – not for literature, science or history, but for magical scrawling upon fetishes.

Now, the rune named “kenaz”, with a phonetic value of “k”, was the magical symbol for “torch.” As one contemporary rune enthusiast writes,

Kenaz, or Ken, is seen as the shaman’s rune, or the rune of the shaman’s magic. It is the rune which both heals and brings sickness, and the Scandinavian shamans of old were known to do both according to what the spirits, and the people required. Kenaz is a ‘higher mystery’ rune, and it is a good rune to meditate on during thunder journeys. Historically, or mythologically, Kenaz represents Odin’s ordeal between the two fires in Grimnismal.

So that’s what the Chinese Communist Party is buying into. That’s what they want the world to respect as “sacred”: a symbol of the German god Odin’s ordeal between the two fires in Grimnismal.

I just wish that for the sake of integrity, China would authorize some German pagans to pray to Odin during the Olympics’ opening ceremony. Of course Chancellor Merkel won’t be there, but some neo-Nazis certainly would attend.

As for me, I think the best response of all civilized persons to China’s calling the torch “sacred” would be the words of the Muslim saint, Rumi:

“Come, come again, whoever you are, come!
Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come!
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.”

(Ned’s note:   The picture Catherine has added to this post is a drawing of Dervishes of the (Muslim) order of Rumi.)

Does anyone out there remember the infamous Willie Horton tv ad of George Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign?    Here it is again, to refresh your memory.    It’s only 28 seconds.

Now you might recall that rightly or wrongly, the American Left widely perceived the Willie Horton ad to have been a racist smear upon Black Americans, because Willie Horton was, after all, Black.

So now I wonder where are all those same self-described “liberal”, “multicultural”, “anti-racist” American voices now that the propaganda campaign surrounding Olympic Torch-bearer Jin Jing has relied just as cynically upon racial stereotyping as did the Bush campaign’s Willie Horton ad.    Or has anyone even noticed?   The grimacing face of her putative Tibetan “attacker” - whose name and nationality conveniently remain unidentified – has been published all over China, playing upon Han Chinese racial fears of Tibetans.

What, pray tell, is the difference between the employment of racial stereotyping in the Willie Horton ads versus the PR campaign portraying Jin Jing “attacked” by someone who merely appeared to be Tibetan?   At least Willie Horton really was Black, and really was a criminal.   But we still don’t know who the name or nationality of man in the Jin Jing photo.   Only that he appeared to be Tibetan, a fact which Beijing and its PR whores have played up to the hilt.

Now here comes Lenovo corporation – the torch designers – shamelessly escalating the Jin Jing propaganda campaign:

Seizing the moment, Lenovo’s chief marketing officer spent the week in Beijing laying out plans for final execution of Lenovo’s sponsorship activities from now through the end of the Games in late August. Near the top of Deepak Advani’s list: raising the visibility of Jin’s connection to the Lenovo brand.

Meanwhile the fact remains that the Jin Jing “brand” was created through employment of racial stereotyping and playing upon racial fears.    How many American “liberals” have noticed?   How many give a damn?   Evidently among the American Left, outrage over racism depends on whose yak is gored.

Just in case this needs an illustration,

Dramatis Personae:

Ren (the penetrator)  = the PLA

Stimpy (the penetrated) = American PR whores in Beijing

American PR whores serving China’s propaganda machine, beware.

US Code Title 8, Chapter 12….section 1481:

A person who is a national of the United States…shall lose his nationality by…entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if…such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States

China is an ally of North Korea.   To this day, the armed forces of North Korea are still engaged in hostilities against the United States.   (The cease-fire in 1953 did not end the Korean War; it merely suspended the fighting indefinitely.)    In this light, the armed forces of China are engaged in hostilities against the United States.   (And they are so engaged, de facto, in any case.)

China’s PR organs, most especially those who have organised the Torch Relay, directly serve the interests of the PLA.    The Torch Relay is an instrument of PLA intervention in other countries, most especially Nepal.

In light of the above, it seems reasonable to argue that for a US citizen to contract with a Chinese corporation to serve the Olympic Torch’s PR campaign, is a de facto act of service for the armed forces of China, resulting in loss of US citizenship. 

Now as a supplement to Catherine’s post about unintended consequences, here is an illustration.

They would have saved themselves and the world a lot of trouble if they had limited the entire international Olympic Torch relay to China’s number one ally, North Korea.   It will arrive there in a few days, to an unreservedly fanatical welcome, the kind that the torch’s American public relations firm of Ketchum must be creaming their jeans over.

As the spirit of the Torch is closer kindred of the spirit of North Korea than of any other nation, we urge the US State Department to revoke the passports of all US citizens who work for Ketchum in Beijing, to enable them more easily to immigrate to North Korea where their kind of work is most welcome.

Here’s a North Korean movie clip exemplary of the same “spirit” which has animated the PRC’s “sacred” torch relay throughout the world.   At last, it’s soon to arrive in a country where it is perfectly welcome, where its visit will be 100 percent untainted by any public relations problems.    Ketchum must be thanking God for this anticipated day of relief - or thanking God’s replacement, Kim Jong Il.

The Flying Dutchman’s hubris doomed him to wander the Earth, homeless, a man without a country, for eternity.

Today you can see many of his shadows in Beijing, most especially in the faces of some Westerners who sold their souls to work as “public relations” whores for China’s propaganda machine in this year of the Olympic Torch of Shame.

The fierce winds, gigantic waves and terrible lightening threatened to sink the Flying Dutchman, but the twisted and fearless captain had a threat of his own. There and then, Vanderdecken swore an oath to the Devil that he would round the Cape even if it took him until Doomsday (the day that the world will come to an end). This foolish act brought a terrible curse down upon the captain, his crew and his ship. From that moment forth they were forced to roam the mighty seas for all eternity as a ghost ship.

Such will be the long term fate of any Foreigners who, today, try to hustle the East as PR agents for an alien power which regards them and their kind as less than fungible.

Lenovo and Ketchum in Beijing, yes I’m looking at you.