I haven’t seen this on the major wire services yet but it’s prominent on the front page of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post http://www.scmp.com/toppage/ZZZN7LYXSSC.html Bush was only supposed to only disrupt life here on Sat and Sun, but looks like he’s here today.
Well, that’s really going to mess things up for me. If you didn’t know, the Chinese government has essentially shut down the city of Shanghai. Schools and almost all businesses are closed from Wed to Sun, most of the grade A office buildings have their central air systems shut off, you need a special one time event ID to get in the general vicinity of where the APEC meetings are being held, several subway stops are shut, all of the elevated roads are closed except for APEC cars, something like 10 square MILES of Shanghai have been closed to vehicular traffic, streets to the US embassy are completely closed, estimates that 100,000 police and soldiers have been deployed, I’ve never seent his many police on the streets (not even right after June 1989). Not sure what they are doing about the planes but probably just lock the cockpit but maybe armed guards as well.
Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi has taken over the entire Garden Hotel, about 500 rooms. Bush has taken over the Portman Ritz Carlton, again about 500 rooms. Clinton was here 3 years ago. I think the American contingent has overflowed into several neighboring hotels.
The Ritz Carlton is in a big complex and houses the Long Bar, which is the “Cheers” bar here in Shanghai and the only regular bar I’ve hung out at in over 10 years. Now here’s the rub, every time that Bush decides he might want to leave or enter the hotel, the entire area for hundreds and hundreds of yards gets shut down for hours. It will make it difficult at times to get into the Long Bar. While completely mundane and pointless, I think that makes Bush a jerk.
I’m a non-partisan player here, Clinton prevented me from making it to that same bar for happy hour 3 years ago, so I think he’s a jerk too.