Selling your people's intelligence out

The French government got down real low last week, and all because of a few rabid nationalist loonies kicking up a stink about the Paris olympic torch protests.

I don't support the torch protests at all, and i also happen to think Jin Jing is pretty worthy as far as media-hyped heroes go (see link below) but this is just ridiculous.

The President of the French Senate, a Mr Poncelet, was despatched to China to meet with Jin Jing, the one-legged fencer who heroically clutched the torch to her body as a protester tried to snatch/wrestle it from her. The personal apology he delivered was from Presidente Sarkozy, who said: "I was shocked to see what happened during the torch relay. It is understandable that the Chinese people feel hurt ... I hereby strongly condemn what they did."

If he's apologising because the security was inadequate to guard Ms Jin, that doesn't warrant a presidential apology. But i fail to see how it's really the French people or the French government's fault that a mad Tibetan guy got through the security cordons. What it's really about is the rabies-infected Chinese nationalist movement that's been holding protests outside the French supermarket Carrefour. If i was French i'd be genuinely pissed - it's like he was saying "we all learned a lesson that day...", as though all French people supported the Tibetan independence extremists. Selling out the French people's intelligence, apparently for the sake of a handful of French corporations worried about their image in China.

Fair enough, condemn the Parisian government for recklessly provoking China with the Dalai Lama's honorary citizenship (really did it absolutely have to be now?) and the huge banner on city hall that embarassed the Chinese organisers. Even express your disagreement with French participation in the protests, which i think are a bad idea - a case, i think, of people seeing things in black and white getting involved with murky shit they don't understand. Explain that the protests don't represent either the government's position, or French public opinion. But it's France's fault that there were angry ethnic Tibetans present at the torch relay? I'd prefer that to the alternative they enacted in India, which was a torch relay no-one could see.

The irony is the Chinese government has been discouraging the Carrefour boycott, it stands no chance of makin a lasting impact, and the tiny lunatic fringe of the population represented by the Carrefour protesters were already condemning Jin Jing for not supporting their direct actions - they're only going to see this as evidence of collusion between a "national traitor" and an insulter of the motherland!

Given most Chinese support neither the Carrefour boycotts or the condemning of Jin Jing, it was totally unnecessary.