Who are the Chinese goons in blue?

Nobody seems prepared to say who the guys in blue are who "protect" the Olympic torch. The word is that they are Chinese secret service personnel. The IOC has become dumbstruck, the Foreign Office won't say, and the British Government has gone mute. Only the Metropolitan Police gave an oblique reference to their status, by saying they had "no executive authority" whilst in London. But why are these blue-suited thugs running with the torch in the first place?

Swedish IOC member Gunilla Lindberg has said, "using the torch this way is almost a crime. This is the property of the IOC, it is not a Chinese torch." No it is not. And this marathon torch running thing is not even an Olympic tradition, as has been touted. It was started by Adolf Hitler as a wheeze to promote the 1936 Berlin games. He got the runners to skip through his Germanic possessions to show off what he thought was Arian athletic prowess!

Now the IOC is debating whether to hold further torch relays. If they do, I suggest they just keep them to involving athletes only, and keep celebrities out of it, politicians well away from it, and secret service types should not be involved at all!

This from Reuters shows the boys in blue competing with some other boys in blue!