DenisHorgan.com

Don’t you just hate it when a boycott goes wrong? With somewhat less precision than they applied when they were crushing Tibet, Chinese “protesters” made a botch of their boycott of French stores — a protest made necessary because the French were seen to be rather rude to the passing-by Olympic torch in response to Chinese actually killing Tibetans. Disrespected torch. Dead Tibetans.

Maybe they should have just banned French fries.

China had hoped to punish those pesky French because some Tibetans in France weren’t amused that their countrymen, already conquered, suppressed and oppressed, were again being ground to powder under the Chinese heel. But, people being people, the Chinese marched out, yipped and yapped a bit and then went shopping. At the French store.

It’d be pretty funny, and you’d want to give an attaboy to the shopper-protesters for having the priorities in order, except that the Tibet issue is an ugly reminder of a brutal government at grim work in a most bloody way. The shopping protest may not have worked, but the official suppression and blodshed did. The idea that anyone would protest their kicking the stuffing out of the Tibetans seems to amaze China.

Small wonder, though, when the world, the United States at the forefront, is so in hock to the Chinese and in such thrall of their low-priced products made by low-paid workers at the expense of American and other workers that no one dares say “boo” to them. They can prop up the Burmese dictators, keep the mess of Darfur going, kill their own democracy protesters, imprison the harmless exercisers of Falun Gong and the world nervously whistles and wheedles, making excuses for the Beijing government.

It may well be that the Chinese government will unleash the power on its people but it’s hard to imagine that they’ll be able to keep them down forever — not when there’s neat goodies inside the stores they’ve been sent out to boycott. As usual, people are better than governments.