And his reaction to the journey of the Olympic torch through London. While I will probably watch some of the coverage of the Beijing Olympics, I probably won't be able to stomach the the display of nationalism (and not just by the Chinese, either). And of course the attempt by the Gong Chaan Dong Dynasty to paint a pretty picture of a new modern China won't work with me either--it'll just make me more angry with their lack of leadership.
Why China is the REAL master of the universe
By ANTHONY BROWNE
One last one from Mr. Hitchens--
America, the UK and misleading myths
Even once the mountains are over, the sense of space is always there. And I think this is another of the main differences between our two cultures, the immense amount of room in which Americans find it easier to get along with each other by staying a safe distance from each other. It was also astonishing to pass through the gigantic steelworks that still fringe the southern edge of Lake Michigan, though I think they're much diminished from how they were 20 years back. . I wonder if they'll be there at all in 20 years, given the pace of globalisation, but they give you some idea of the colossal industrial and economic power which was unleashed in the USA by the Second World War - and they reminded me of what Sheffield and Rotherham used to look like when we still had a serious steel industry.
It doesn't matter how many times I'm told that it doesn't matter that we know longer make very much ourselves. I can't help thinking that it does matter, and also that a society which doesn't have jobs for men to do, such as steelmaking, coalmining and shipbuilding, has lost something very important. We've mechanized the land, and exported most of the hard manual work to the East. Is it, can it be right for us to live at such a distance from the making of real wealth, and the growing of real food?
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