All is not lost, however. One of the group has gone solo, and come out from under the cover of anonymity. You can read about his adventures here.

We’ve all seen the footage. Demonstrators decked out in Tibetan flags being man-handled by the toughs in the blue tracksuits. A microcosm, you might say, of the Chinese attitude to human rights: the weak, seeking only a platform for free expression, beating beaten down by the faceless strong. Silly arguments about sovereignty and trite comparisons with Israel aside, few could disagree that the Chinese have done many bad things in Tibet, for which they should rightly be condemned.

But in this way, and at this time? The Olympics have been effectively politicised before – remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s epoch-defining statement for black power on the podium in Mexico in 1968 – but they have also been ruined, and their purpose debased, by extensions of power-politicking into a realm where it does not belong. Did the American boycott of Moscow 1980, and the Soviet reprisal in Los Angeles in 1984, really make either side anymore morally pure? It entrenched antagonisms, exacerbated differences, and sunk into the muddied waters of everyday pettiness perhaps the only world forum that seeks, for a brief few weeks, to set common humanity apart from ideology.

This is not a romanticisation of the Olympics. Done well, it has an undeniable magic. This is because the modern Olympics was never intended to be just about sport. Its goal was “to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Whether we bear this consciously in mind or not, it imbues the event. That’s why, for every sprinter, winning the Olympic Gold will always be a greater prize than winning at the World Athletics Championship. Thanks to its higher aims, the Olympic Games are special. And we all know it.

The Chinese regime can be cruel and repressive. But that does not mean all China is bad. There are many platforms in which to protest the wrong actions of the Chinese government, and these should be vigorously pursued. But can we not leave just one, this special one, to portray China’s goodness and the goodness of its people? And that goodness is there: in China’s incredible economic transformation, the hundreds of millions it has brought out of poverty, its social progress, its hard work, its creativity.

And don’t say to me, Berlin 1936. The Beijing Olympics is not just about showcasing a regime, but about celebrating a nation. All reports suggest feverish excitement within China for these games. This is the opportunity, long-awaited, for the Chinese people to have their moment in the sun, to show what a great and historic country they are. Let’s let them have it, put differences aside for a short month, and encourage the positive they have achieved.

This does not mean a whitewash. The Dalai Lama, no acolyte of China, makes the case powerfully: “the hosting of the Olympic games this year is a matter of great pride to the 1.2 billion Chinese people …we should never cause misunderstanding or do something that will hurt the Chinese people … it will be futile and not helpful to anyone if we do something that will create hatred in [their] minds.” This does not mean ignoring the crimes committed in Tibet, or by the Chinese government against its own people. It means leaving these disputes to another realm, and letting the Olympics be about something bigger.

I know some argue that China’s sensitivity to their global image at this time represents a unique opportunity the extract concessions from China on Tibet and other human rights issues. I disagree. This argument doesn’t seem to consider a world after Beijing 2008. When the closing ceremony wraps up, we still have to deal with China, and the importance of this relationship will only increase in the future. Any concessions secured from China today under duress will be made with resentment, leaving us with an angry and embarrassed partner, and concessions that are not built to last.

Social psychologists have long shown the difference in quality between an action made under fear of reprisal, and one made spontaneously. The former is weak and unreliable, the latter powerful. Threatening to spoil China’s coming out party, which it has spent years and billions preparing, will only produce the first kind of action. Showing China respect for its endeavour and achievements could create enough cooperation and gratitude to produce the second; a more genuine, more long-standing advancement in its domestic human rights.

If this sounds like pie in the sky, remember the effect of the boldly conciliatory attitude adopted by JFK in his speech to the American Univeristy in June 1963.

Let us reexamine our attitude towards the Soviet Union … and not see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side … As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.

By August, the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed, unthinkable before Kennedy uttered these words. Khrushchev called it the “best speech by any American President since Roosevelt”.

Conciliation is often depicted as the policy of cowards and appeasers, and at times it is. But as Kennedy proved, in the right spirit and at the right time, it can be a more powerful tool than threats. Faced with a China desperate to show its best side to an ignorant world, I believe that now is one of these times.

Apparently putting “marry” in inverted commas allows it to stand for “came up with a perfectly sensible solution that does not, in fact, involve marriage in any way”.

19%? Almost one in five? Sounds far too high to me…

Word reaches me that Prospect magazine are inviting submissions from prominent types for their second Global Intellectuals Poll. The last one, in 2005, had Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco and Richard Dawkins in the medal positions.

Not being one of the prominent types in question, I haven’t been asked to give my recommendations. Were I to be though, I would only have one man in mind. Our most important living public intellectual is clearly Arsene Wenger.

Think about it – he’s got it all:
- As thoughtful as Sen.
- As witty as Hitchens.
- As iconoclastic as Dawkins.
- The broad appeal of Chomsky.
- The patriotism of Havel.
- The ability to stir up a shit load of fuss of Rowan Williams.
He’s got that turns-out-he-was-right-after-all thing the best intellectuals always have. And he’s probably given more to public life than the rest of them put together.

ps. This is not – heaven forbid – an Arsenal thing. I say this as a Spurs fan. We can afford to be magnanimous these days.

Some people see the world divided up into two teams. On one side, there’s the dictatorships and their tyrannical leaders (sturdy Kim Jong Il in goal); on the other there’s the democracies (George Bush marooned on the right flank).

Internally, the division makes sense. So calling China a dictatorship gets at the brutal way the Chinese regime treats its own people. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the black-and-white view can only be misleading.

Democracies make cruel and nasty foreign policy just as effectively as dictatorships. The history of American colonialism in Latin America show this all too clearly. So does the behaviour of Britain and France after WWI, as Pankaj Mishra said recently in the LRB: “in Paris, Lloyd George and Clemenceau demonstrated that leaders of democracies could be just as brazenly imperialistic as military dictators”.

China’s human rights record is related to its foreign policy – but the link is not nearly as important as some people (alright, Nick Cohen) would have you think.

In this case, as so often, black-and-white thinking is simply muddle-headed. For all the wrong reasons, China is already on our team.

++++

West Wing reference: Series 7, “Internal Displacement”; after a dinner date with Danny, C. J. decides to sort out Darfur.

The terrible suffering unleashed by the recent elections in Kenya poses searching questions for democrats everywhere. How can this process of democracy that we laud so highly, that is supposed to insure us against the vagaries of power, have seemingly unleashed such terrible, visceral forces?

It’s a question that I haven’t yet fully understood, but I suggest a couple of opening thoughts. Firstly, that democracy is not a value. Democracy is a selection process; the liberal values of tolerance, fairness, and respect for rights that we associate with it are incidental. These are complex, organic creations, born of deeper social and intellectual forces, and whilst they complement democracies extremely well, they are neither necessary nor exclusive to them. Witness the emergence of democratic authoritarianism in Russia, and authoritarian liberalism in China, to see the disintegration of this connection. That the democratic process in Kenya could unleash intolerance, tribalism and extreme violations of rights, is no surprise if liberal values are not sustained within Kenyan political culture; instead, democracy merely exposes the societal fissures that authoritarian rule papers over.

Secondly, that democracy depends on nationalism. In a mature democracy, the losing side in an election, however viciously fought, accepts defeat in the belief that its fundamental interests are protected, whoever sits in power. Certainly, the loser knows that sinecures will be rewarded to the victor’s acolytes, but he is assured of his essential position in society, because he knows that both he and his victor believe in the same thing: the health of the nation. All sides trust that this core shared goal will be prioritised. It is this belief that ties the political community together, and mitigates the costs of defeat for losing parties. Thus elections pass without incident, and the defeated lick their wounds until their next legal opportunity to vie for power.

In a country like Kenya where nationalism is weak, and the idea of the nation ill-developed, the losers of the democratic process do not have this security. As events have shown, the primary loyalty of many Kenyans is to tribe. The whole tone of the election campaign was “now we eat”: the rewards of power will be directed to our tribe, not theirs. In this climate, why should the losers accept the result passively? What functions does this government fulfil for them that they could not fulfil themselves? A lack of underpinning nationalism increases the risks and rewards of democracy exponentially – and therefore increases the lengths to which people will go not to be the losers of the process.  

A thought:

We live in a historically unprecedented age. In the past, sovereignty and wealth were synonymous. Sovereign control over territory meant control over productive resources, control over resources meant wealth, and wealth, in symbiosis with power, secured sovereignty.

This is no longer so; we live in an age where, for the first time, economic gain can be pursued independently of sovereignty. The key dynamics of this change are the increasing integration of states into global economic structures, and their reliance on the gains from these structures for their legitimacy.

Take the case of the South East Asian Tigers. They depend heavily on external investment, over which they have no control, and the North American market, over which they have no influence, for their economic growth, and depend on this growth for their domestic legitimacy. They are therefore takers, not makers, of the rules that most fundamentally define their political standing. This is not, by any definition, sovereignty.

And yet, they thrive. Wealth accrues whilst sovereignty wanes. This gives lie to the oft spouted claim that globalisation is undermining the position of states in the international economy. In fact, many are richer, happier and more confident than ever before; but in a Faustian twist, they may be selling their political souls to be so. 

Steven Stark of the not-particularly-reputable Boston Phoenix has written a piece that (mostly) hits the target on something that’s been concerning me for a while now: internet punditry in relation to the 2008 US presidential elections. Frankly, many of Stark’s points could apply equally to the print and broadcast media (particularly in the UK, where coverage is for the most part just plain offensive to anyone with even a little in-depth knowledge of the candidates, issues and processes), but Stark is right – the sheer volume, novelty and speed of internet commentators makes them worthy of special comment.

The problem seems to be two-fold. Firstly, there simply isn’t enough ‘news’ going on (and there aren’t enough astute commentators either). Secondly, the constant need to report something drives the pundits to fixate about deeply unimportant events in an effort to sustain public interest. They may commission a new poll or sponsor a debate just so as to be able to report it. In the worst cases they simply make things up.

(a typical online pundit at work)

Take the debates as one example. I can’t find a reliable figure as to how many there have been so far – my guess is upwards of 15. As Stark notes, in real terms these debates have been watched by ‘virtually no-one but those directly involved in the process’. I count myself in the 99th percentile of US politics nerds and I have so far watched 3. But after each debate the pundits complusively evaluate and comment on the candidates’ performances – despite the fact that statements of substance are few and far between.

Perhaps it’s a one-off ? This campaign is unusually long and unusually crowded with candidates. Perhaps next time, with an incumbent president running, the commentariat will be much more circumspect.

Or perhaps it’s actually a good thing? Despite any problems, the internet is allowing more people the freedom to express and to read about a wider variety of opinions. In time, as the medium becomes more established, the quality of comment will rise.

Maybe.

Stark concludes, ‘Smug, snide, and self-congratulatory to a fault, the vast Internet “mediacracy” have created a largely imaginary political world that has made the quality of our civic discourse not better but worse.’ Commenting on ‘real time’ events is often speculative and sensationalist – and because all the other journalists read the blogs, the herd mentality of political reporting has actually worsened. Uninformed opionion becomes conventional wisdom in minutes rather than days inside the new electronic echo chamber (to borrow Stark’s metaphor).

But what of this particular doorstep? I’d like to think we take a slightly more detached view (cooler heads have often prevailed by the time we get round to writing), but in terms of valuable and insightful comment I realise our grade so far is probably along the lines of ‘must try harder’.

The government’s own environmental advisors launched a scathing attack yesterday on the Labour’s decision to give the go-ahead to a next generation of nuclear power stations. Their objection is essentially three-pronged:

1. The costs in terms of construction, decommissioning, waste, public funding, and missed opportunity for investment in other renewables, far outweigh the benefits in terms of clean energy
2. In making this decision, the government has shown a dispiriting lack of environmental leadership – “a blatant failure in moral vision”, in the SDC chief economist’s words. Given the opportunity to take a strong position in favour of a progressive, low-carbon economy, it has instead stepped backwards, succumbing to pressure form big energy companies and political expediency
3. It is using the technological “metafix” of nuclear as a fig-leaf to cover its embarrassing lack of progress on the root cause of the environmental crisis, the attitude of Western societies towards consumption

This critique makes a powerful case against the project. But behind these arguments lie deeper tendencies and failings of government which are at the core of much the current environmental inertia.

Firstly, in taking a light touch with regulation and supporting a ‘portfolio’ of approaches, the British government is perpetuating the ‘bottom up’ approach to environmental problem solving. That is, the faith that from the interplay of market forces and CSR initiatives will emerge a decentralised tapestry of private environmental governance without anyone in power having to take the lead or pick winners.

Portrayed as caution, this is cowardice. Few would deny that CSR and the market are critical to effective solutions. Yet the example of Germany, which has been unashamedly ‘top-down’ in its environmental strategy, shows the importance of politically defining the direction in which these forces work. Regulatory incentives and pressures create commercial interests which markets exploit; the threat of a level environmental playing field gives CSR strategic impetus. Certainly, left to its own devices the market may eventually arrive at the same, or even better, solutions. But we don’t have ‘eventually’ to tackle this problem. Germany is doing it now; it is only a lack of political will that prevents us from doing the same.

Secondly, the continued focus by governments on climate change as a supply-side problem promotes the naïve belief that climate change can be mitigated through technology alone. But whichever way you cut it, avoiding the worst effects of climate change must involve concomitant demand-side change. Supply and demand are partners. Environmental treaties like the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Layer Depletion which focused only on the supply of CFCs have been undermined by a burgeoning black market trade responding to continued demand. And in this case managing legal supply only involved persuading five major companies to cease production.

In energy production, supply is much more decentralised, and demand much greater. This leads the following conclusion. Any attempts at supply-side management will suffer from worse rule-breaking and black market problems than Montreal, given the greater difficulty of controlling energy supply and greater demand for energy products. As a result, what can be achieved on the supply-side is inherently limited, and effective climate change abatement will have to prioritise demand-side issues. As demand comes down, so can supply, allowing a smooth switch to renewable energy Attempting to switch away from fossil fuels at a time of increasing energy use, on the other hand, is close to impossible. As long as governments keep feeding us their voodoo ideas about sustainable development, where technology meets growth in a perfect environmental union, we’re merely putting our heads in the sand and delaying the day until we engage with this essential debate.

The capitulation to the nuclear lobby, in short, does not just reflect failure on a single issue. It represents an endemic cowardice within government to tackle the environmental problem head on, and a victory for political short-termism over responsible leadership.

Benedict Brogan has managed to draw some juice out of it, calling it “thoughtful and uncharacteristically personal”, a declaration of political independence from Number 10. I guess seasoned political observers can spot this kind of thing.

So far as I could tell, it was just the usual ideas: economic growth as a way of achieving social ends; building an entrepreneurial culture; fostering aspiration; the challenge of globalisation and climate change. We got one titbit – “in a few weeks time sustainability will be at the heart of the budget”. It was fine.

The real star of the show was Peter Riddell, who made a response. Reflecting on his 30+ years covering the Treasury, he compared Darling to Dennis Healey, his Labour predecessor as Chancellor as one. The aspirations were the same, he said, but the way of going about things had changed completely.

In the 1970s, the Treasury was solely a macroeconomic department – it didn’t even have a housing policy, let alone a child poverty one. Now, it is primarily a microeconomic department – and, through the tax credit system, a large public spender to boot.

Apparently the key turning points in this transformation were a report by Jeremy Heywood after Black Wednesday, and of course the Chancellorship of a certain G. Brown, notorious for poking his nose into everyone else’s business.

The last few years have seen a huge increase in the tendency to economise everything – education as a functional method of economic advancement; the fact that we need the Stern Report to wake us up to climate change.

I’ve always tended to attribute that to widespread social and cultural forces. Riddell gave an insight into its high political beginnings.

UPDATE: Peter Riddell’s political briefing in The Times today.