China and world attention

It is a delight to see China embarrassed on a planetary scale.

In London, a man with a fire extinguisher hurled himself at a torchbearer using what a friend gleefully describes as a "rugby tackle." In Paris, the torch's omnipresent security guards—members of the Sacred Flame Protection Unit of the Chinese People's Armed Police, the same paramilitaries who put down riots in Tibet—had to extinguish the flame themselves to prevent protesters from doing so first. In San Francisco, the torch disappeared, reappeared, changed routes, and then vanished altogether. City officials explained that they had moved their "farewell to the torch" ceremony to a "private" location in order to avoid demonstrations.

In other words, the ceremony was canceled...

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