Wampum

deja glue (中国) Update (EU)

Li Zhaoxing was in Tehran today with Kamal Kharazi. He said all the obvious things. He added that he'd personally called Powell and Straw, and also Yoriko Kawaguchi, three, no four points he didn't have to make. Nobutaka Machimura is a conservative LDP politician. Yoriko Kawaguchi is non-partisan, and one of the rare women in Japan's ruling elite. The change in Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet a month ago, his 3rd, was not one for the better. At a joint press conference with Li Zhaoxing, Kamal Kharzi invited George W. Bush to change his attitude. He didn't have to talk about defense in depth or total war of attrition initiated by a major power while standing next to Jiang Zemin's ambassador to Washington.

The reason for the catchy little tittle is in the extended entry, and don't forget to read Blix on U23x in Iraq, as well as the two earlier items it links to.

Update: The Invade-Iran-Ijiots just got out smarted (again) by the EU. Look for the technical details in the next 72 hours.

[On November 10th, 2001] I spent a pleasent hour in O'Hare one morning after an over-night flight from Montevideo. My seat-mate was a civil servant in the diplomatic corps of the PRC, and we had time for breakfast before our flights, one east to Portland, one west to Beijing, departed in their respective directions. We talked at length about the change in how the US Consulate in Beijing treated PRC nationals seeking visas from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, and how the crash of a US intelligence aircraft and a PRC interceptor aircraft (the pilot was lost) had played out. He had to use his diplomatic passport, not his personal passport, to take classes in goverment and management and get a Master's. Chinese students pursuing degree programs without diplomatic status were simply left to find other programs to enter, or finish from, in Canada or Europe. The US was closed to China. We parted, amicably, as we had a common purpose in being in Montevideo that week, and in a few weeks I would return to Beijing, again as a guest of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Ministry of Communications, who share responsibility for the oversight of the China Network Information Center, CNNIC.

The next day the policy of provocation, daring-do, and all the high-minded rhetoric about reform and labor conditions and non-entry into the WTO were put on hold, when Jim Roux and many, many others were incinerated, asphixiated, or crushed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and the Bush administration went from attempting to start a pleasant little war, to being on the wrong end of someone else's pleasant little war. Jim was going to represent Jonah, my constant companion at all hours of the day, except when he is at theraputic nursery school, or I'm on very reluctant travel, in a toxic tort case -- lead.