This & That, Ceci et Cela

Nothing like being the hottest whore at the bordello: the dictatorship that has China, Russia, & the US courting it:
It was as repellent as it was unsurprising that Beijing lavished honors the other day on Uzbekistan’s blood-stained tyrant, Islam Karimov. Less than two weeks earlier, Karimov’s troops had fired into crowds of demonstrators, killing well over 100, including many unarmed civilians. China’s leaders would not have had a big problem with that, since they are products of a system that behaved much the same way in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
But China likes more than Karimov’s methods of crowd control. It likes the sweeping way he has branded all political opponents Muslim terrorists, the same approach China applies to its restive Uighur minority in Xinjiang Province, near Uzbekistan’s borders. Perhaps most important, it views Uzbekistan as a vital corridor for funneling oil and natural gas to Chinese industries.
China isn’t the only country romancing Karimov. Russia courts him, too. And, at least until the latest massacre, the United States has been wooing him as well, despite Karimov’s lengthy record of gruesome human rights abuses and his unrelenting hostility to the democratic values that President George W. Bush insists are at the center of American foreign policy.