PR viagra cannot revive the limp Olympic Torch

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 sacred torch, the cross and the earthquake

First, Catherine and I want to make it clear that we are not gloating over the suffering caused by the earthquake in China.   We will ask our local Catholic Priest to offer a special prayer for the earthquake victims at mass next Sunday.

But that throws all the recent babble about the “sacred” Olympic torch and Jin Jing the “angel” into clearer perspective, doesn’t it.

For all of the Chinese PR babble about the “sacred” torch and Jin Jing the “angel”, how many victims of the earthquake are now taking the slightest bit of comfort, consolation or spiritual sustenance from contemplating the Olympic Torch?

All it takes is a reminder of the essential human conditions of vulernability, suffering and death, for false idols like the Olympic Torch to be revealed as deaf, dumb, mute and impotent gods, powerless to inspire faith, hope or charity.

Meanwhile the truly sacred symbols of the Buddha, the Koran and the Cross of Christ continue to inspire those three “great things that last” – faith, hope, and charity – among the Chinese believers in those true faiths, in ways the Communist Party is revealed, once again, to be impotent to do.

True, neither the Buddha nor the Koran nor the Cross of Christ could prevent the earthquake.    But the spiritual power in those truly sacred symbols is the power to inspire transcendence of suffering and death, a power which does not reside in the “sacred” torch or in its corporate sponsors.    Call the Christian eucharist (the consecrated bread and wine, the “body and blood” of Christ) a superstition if you will, but those who believe in it are sustained mentally, spiritually – and thereby even medically, to some extent – by its symbolism of transcendence of suffering and mortality.    The same will never be true of Coca Cola, and Lenovo’s computers will never inspire righteous moral struggle in the way the Holy Koran does.

 

The Visitors

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

Amnesty International ad on “Torch-ure”

Thanks to Tom Legg for finding this.  We are unable to embed the cartoon.  But you can visit Tom’s blog and watch it there.   And please spread it around.

More from Amnesty’s own site, about the inspiration behind the cartoon:

Amnesty is campaigning for Ye Guozhu, imprisoned and reportedly tortured with electro-shock batons after he protested at forced evictions in Beijing. Ye Guozhu’s home and family restaurant had been bulldozed to make way for Olympics construction.

 Will “China Law Blog” link to this video?   I mean it does raise concerns about “China Law”, doesn’t it?

 

Beijing’s neo-pagans, please learn your Runelore

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?

Lenovo exploits a racist smear. Whose yak is gored?

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.

Serving China’s PR organs = loss of US citizenship, part two

Just in case this needs an illustration,

Dramatis Personae:

Ren (the penetrator)  = the PLA

Stimpy (the penetrated) = American PR whores in Beijing

Serving China’s PR organs = loss of US citizenship, part one

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. 

Unintended Consequences 102

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

Unintended Consequences 101: An Australian Response to China’s Arrogant Display of Nationalism at the Canberra Torch Relay

Update

Since this story was published, I received another tip-off from a reader who alerted me to some personal accounts of three Canberra residents who were present at the Canberra torch relay.  Their unpleasant encounters with the pro-China thugs were published on 26 April 2008 in The Canberra Times.

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The arrogant display of nationalism by visiting Chinese during the Canberra Torch Relay may have invoked some unintended consequences that will yield perverse effects contrary to what China originally intended.   The propaganda exercise orchestrated by the Chinese Embassy in Canberra showed little respect for Australia’s social values and national integrity.  The damage they have inflicted on Australia-China relations is nearly catastrophic.

The extent of the damage can be seen from the following comments to the latest Crikey Report about the Canberra Torch Relay: