Note: I did not eventually publish this blog after the release of the 15 British soldiers because I wanted to finish writing the analysis first. Now the analysis is almost done and it will be posted shortly.
Notes written on April 4, 2007, with quite some editing:
I am relieved today to see that President Ahmadinejad has decided to free the 15 British soldiers as I had called on him to do in my letter.
With the tension reduced between Britain and Iran, I feel that I could safely publish the 3rd blog on Tony Blair in this series. As you shall see, a question arose naturally at the end of this blog about Mr. Blair's repeated association of the incident with my writings. And the answer was not that difficult for me to find. In all likelihood, the 15 British soldiers did enter Iranian waters and Mr. Blair knew it. Moreover, this incident was part of a larger ploy for U.S. and Britain to instigate a war with Iran.
I hesitated to publish this blog before the release of the 15 British soldiers because I could not be sure, even though what I wrote is true, how Mr. Blair would react to it, considering he had threatened to escalate the tension on two separate occasions during the course of this crisis.
The first time Mr. Blair threatened to escalate was on Tuesday, March 27, four days into the incident and around the same time when I posted my public letter to Mr. Ahmadinejad. (I did not know Mr. Blair's comments when I wrote my letter.) It appeared that he wanted to move to "a different phrase" as quickly as possible before I had the opportunity to write to Mr. Ahmadinejad. (It was obvious to everyone that both of President Ahmadinejad's public statement on March 16 and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's public statement on March 21 were directed at me.) Coincidentally on that same day, U.S. started a huge military exercise in the Persian Gulf.
The second time was on the day after I published the first two blogs (here and here) in this series (or hours after the publication due to time zone difference) on April 2nd. And it was apparent that Mr. Blair feared the information coming out from my next blog. His comment that "the next 48 hours would be fairly critical" reflected his estimation that it would take me two days to write my story and reveal what I knew. His vow to take "an increasingly tough position" signaled that he would escalate the crisis anyways if I did reveal what I knew. Specifically, his choice of the word increasingly was probably an unconscious reaction to my perceived incremental release of information. (To be fair, I should also note that the Mr. Ahmadinejad postponed his news conference – originally scheduled for April 3 rd – to the next day, in an apparent anticipation of my next blog.) However, I took Mr. Blair's threat seriously as I did not want to be blamed for the escalation and that's why I withheld the publication of this blog.
As I detailed in this blog, after I wrote my letter to Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Blair was quite irate with me and cracked the nut "disgust" – a word I used in my letter - a couple of times. Then, probably realizing that his nuts-cracking actually provided more evidence for me to back up my claim, he let his foreign secretary be the public face in handling the incident. Mrs. Margaret Beckett sounded a more conciliatory tone with me and called for a peaceful resolution with the Iranians "as soon as possible" -- in the same spirit of and even with the same words I used in, my letter to the Iranian president. Of course, I believe Mrs. Beckett knew, too, the real reason behind the capture of the 15 soldiers.
As is always the case with the development of my story, the punditry knew about the potential impact I could have on this dispute. Some of them spun the dispute in anticipation of my involvement. For example, Niall Ferguson's April 1 column on Sunday Telegraph was a master piece of propaganda. I do not need to point out that, from Iran's point of view, the weakest link in the U. N. Security Council is not necessarily U.K. (His mention of the UNSC in the title suggested that he knew the incident was manufactured by U.S. and U. K. to take advantage of the favorable international political environment to instigate a war with Iran.) I do not need to point out either his inflammable use of language, e.g., slavery of British hostage, and his general desire to see the situation escalating into a war: "If military action is going to be taken against Iran this year, it will not be initiated by Britain, but by the United States. And, to judge by Faye Turney's conspicuous absence from the front pages of the American papers, a British hostage crisis won't be the casus belli." I just need to point out his nuts-cracking such as "fundamentally a nice guy", "consciously", "kowtowing" and "too nice", etc. in his article.
I will provide my analysis of the incident itself in my next blog.
In the international ramifications of my story, I had always felt that Britain was one of the more benign governments toward my cause. Indeed, its consulate in Vancouver was one of the two places I attempted to seek consular protection from on January 11. However, I was quite puzzled by some of Mr. Blair's nuts-cracking with my writings lately.
January 7, 2007
Under pressure to break his silence on Saddam execution, Mr. Blair issued a statement to say he regarded events surrounding the execution as "completely wrong". His statement rang a bell with me. As I have always promoted, I think leadership is doing the right thing. And as I have always maintained, what my story is about is quite simple and it is about right and wrong.
Mr. Blair's statement came at the same time when the Bush administration was seen to accept that there was a "divine intervention" after all, after I published my blog 1.3 billion Chinese people is my divinity.
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Related link: Dick Cheney's way of denial: "We'll do what we think is right."
January 11 and 12, 2007
In a speech he gave from the bowels of a war ship, Mr. Blair compared Islamic terrorism to "revolutionary Communism". It reminded me of a quote by Mr. Bush that I had discussed before in my blog: "Islamo-fascism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure." As I mentioned before, these words were a veiled, clumsy ideological attempt by the Bush administration to try to lump China into their targets of the "war on terror", a war concept that is an easy sell to the American public because of 911. It was clumsy because anyone who calls today's China a communist state is either willfully blind, or has ulterior motive.
In another speech, Mr. Blair famously said: "The risk here - and in the US where the future danger is one of isolationism not adventurism - is that the politicians decide it's all too difficult and default to an unstated, passive disengagement, that doing the right thing slips almost unconsciously into doing the easy thing." There were several nuts in the above sentence and for brevity, I simply provide the hyperlinks to their respective sources in my blog.
If Mr. Blair's intent was to cast doubt on the true meanings of my writings, he certainly has not succeeded because (1) he has not shown any evidence that either of my two writings in question was intended to convey any meaning other than what I had already explained to convey; and (2) I had demonstrated again and again and again and again that before mid-March 2006, I had no idea of various (sensible) nuclear misinterpretations of my writings.
My guess is that, as a loyal "Yo-Blair" friend, he was simply lending a hand to Mr. Bush who looked increasingly isolated internationally as the Chinese government was, in retrospect, expected to bring my story to light on these dates.
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Related Link: Mr. Blair appeared to have known about my story for quite some time. In a major speech at Georgetown University in May 2006, Mr. Blair talked about taking "pre-emptive not simply reactive response", and about global politics being divided into "hard" and "soft".
March 4, 2007
The Sunday Observer published a wide-ranging interview with Mr. Tony Blair, in which he had the following to say:
There is always a debate about whether I was sensible to say I wouldn't fight a fourth election - though personally I think I'd have had a load of different problems if I hadn't.
It hasn't been easy, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been easier if I hadn't said it. Mrs Thatcher kept saying she was going on and on because people kept asking her, and in the end she got absolutely belted and chucked out.
I do not know how to make of Mr. Blair's use of the word easy in his interview. Events prior to his interview included:
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On February 20, I wrote to a couple of bloggers asking their help in writing my story and I used the word easy in my email. Although "it has not been easy for me" came naturally for me, maybe Mr. Blair thought I was getting back to him for his January 11/12 remarks.
I happened upon your blog today and enjoyed your writing. I am wondering if you would be interested in writing my story, if you are living in Vancouver area.
I have written quite a lot about my story (see here, here or here), but it has not been easy for me. And there is more I want to tell.
If you are interested, please let me know ASAP.
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On February 21, Mr. Blair announced withdrawal of some of the British troops from Iraq.
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On March 2, I finished, on my own, my Chinese article, The story behind China's ASAT missile test, in which I revealed, among other things, the inner workings of Chinese leadership succession. Note that the subject that Mr. Blair discussed in his interview with The Observer two days later was also about succession.
I wish to point out that the ambiguity inherent in my blog, I have stopped fasting, is appropriate because it conveyed my dilemma-ish, thus mixed, feeling at the time: On one hand, I wanted to carry on with my fast for Cecilia Zhang; on the other hand, with the tolls my fasting had taken on my body and the indifference Canadian elites had exhibited toward my efforts, I felt that to continue my fasting would be highly irresponsible.
Mr. Blair should know that just because some of my blogs have three meanings does not mean every one of them has three meanings. Again, if Mr. Blair wanted to cast doubt on my intention, he should provide facts and logic to back it up.
March 25, 2007
In making comments about the 15 soldiers captured by Iran, Mr Blair said: "It is simply not true that they went into Iranian territorial waters and I hope the Iranian Government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us." Mr. Blair's unusual choice of the word "fundamental" was widely reported and certainly caught my attention because of Ms. Rice's famous phrase "fundamental character " in her action-plan-for-Canadian-election article published on Washington Post in December 2005. It is noteworthy that barely two days into the incident and before I had written my letter to the Iranian president, Mr. Blair appeared to be drawing me in.
March 29 and 30, 2007
If I had any doubt on whether the word fundamental was a nut, the doubt disappeared after his remarks on the same subject on March 29 and 30. Mr. Blair repeatedly used the word "disgust" in his remarks, the same word I used in my March 27 letter to Mr. Ahmadinejad in describing the wildly oscillating interpretations of my writings by some politicians. It appeared that Mr. Blair was irate by my writing to Mr. Ahmadinejad, to say the least.
As a self-critical person, I re-examined my letter and did not find any evidence that I was biased against the British side on this on-going dispute. In fact, I urged Mr. Ahmadinejad to release the 15 soldiers "as soon as possible" even if they were detained in Iranian waters.
As a naturally curious person, I had to ask myself: Why did Mr. Blair repeatedly crack nuts when he made comments on the subject of captured British soldiers, even before I wrote my letter to the Iranian president? In other words, what do I have to do with the incident?
