Talk politics.

which is not that wild and only really a conspiracy in the strictest definition.

First I want to draw your attention to an event that happened long ago, before anyone remembers. Way back in last week (hey its ancient as far as the news cycle) the Western World got involved in an uprising in Libya.

For a while now, democracy has been spreading through the middle east and Africa. The biggest success so far was Egypt. Next was Libya, but Gadaffi, not one to play soft ball decided the easiest option was to go a killin'. Plenty of predictions were made on the survival of this democratic storm hinging on Libya. If Gadaffi could stop the tide of popular uprising with something as simple as massacring his citizens and get away with it, well heck. Other despots would start going "hey I can do that too!"

So us in the uh.. US, and in Europe decided we needed to do something. We needed to send a strong message that there was consequences for this naughty behavior. In the blink of an eye (by UN standards) we all reached a resolution and got our war military intervention on.

The minimum goal, and stated goal, and fairly easy to declare success if need be goal was punishment for being a Very Bad Boy by breaking his toys. Well that went swimmingly. Things today are, shall we say... optimistic. The forces of Darth Gadaffi are on the retreat and the Rebel Alliance is claiming many victories. NATO has taken over command of the break toys campaign.

Things are going so swimmingly that NATO has talked about taking things a step further and moving from "We are very glad that our stomping Gadaffi's military is working out for you Rebels, but that is completely incidental"-- to possibly arming the rebels.

Now, talk aside about the track record of arming rebel uprisings, lots of people having been asking why we are intervening here and not other places. They see this idea of doing a good deed and they say "Pshaw! Humans don't do those things! We are bitter and greedy and cynical and bitter! Twice bitter! There must be another reason!"

Now, I do believe that ideology can have that sort of power. It can make people do things that aren't directly selfishly motivated, crazy idea. Get some powerful people together in a room with a really persuasive idea and sometimes they do crazy things. Things that might be considered unprofitable! For instance, I've heard the board of Microsoft has been trying to get Bill Gates institutionalized for some sort of altruistic mental disorder which they accuse him of trying to purposely spread.

But I digress. Or go off on a wild tangent, or something. Anyways, I have your goal. China. That's it. What you want more? Ok, fine.

Again, its the power of ideology, but this time as a tool. Communism had its time, but it's turned in to a raisin now. Even ol' Castro has been letting it slip. Capitalism is so universal that how are you going to use it against anybody? But democracy. That's still pretty unheard of in a lot of places.

Well, right now we have a democratic storm. Woah! And its been spreading! Its a good thing with a capital G-- for the western world. Imagine if most of the countries of Africa and the Middle East ended up with people's elected democratic governments from successful uprisings.

Iran? You think you're going to be in good with them? Sure you have the pretense of elections, but you sort of *squashed* your people's uprising. How do you think Egypt feels about that eh? Hows that Islamic Nationalist block looking at Iran now eh?

And China? One party China?

Sure, this isn't going to be *the* tool against China or any other country we're giving the stinkeye but it is *a* tool. In these times of economic competition, we can't just care package them some bombs c/o the US military, we have to play these political games, each of them is vital to the big picture of competition.

If we stick Iran in a corner, and stop a major oil deal with China from Africa, that's Kind of a Big Deal.

So there you have it. China. Cynical enough? Need more greed and maybe some nutmeg? China knows it too. But that doesn't help them. China has made it a policy to try to stay out of meddling directly in countries outside of their sphere of influence, but even if they wanted to, it would look very bad for them if they had actually opposed action in Libya, even worse if they actively tried to prop up these dictators. Because of their methods, they're not going to suffer hugely from this either. They deal with some dictators, they'll deal with some democracies. Probably ultimately better than our methods have served us in the region, though ours make us feel good that we're actively Doing Something*. So anyways, they'll let this one go, they have no choice. But I bet they're watching, and I bet they're going to be looking, economically, as they do, for means to tip that area back towards them even more so.