Freedom of the Press is Just Too Precious Readers of this site will have figured out by now that my perspective on Taiwanese politics and it...

The Babel of Fear Yesterday on one of the international pages I was working on at the Times I was asked to edit a wire story about the reac...

A Pivotal Moment for Iraq and the Region Amid calls for a change in US strategy in Iraq and the continuing trauma that its citizens are goin...

Mayoral elections and foamy snow Sitting outside a Starbucks coffee shop in mid-afternoon downtown Taipei, with fake foamy snow falling from...

The Quebec analogy is the wrong one for Taiwan The declaration by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper — which has since received the supp...

Briefs There are, in the Taipei Times where I work, sections called “Briefs” on the local and international pages. Consisting of a page-lon...

A Noisy Wakeup I don’t know if it is like this throughout the non-English-speaking world, but at least here in Taiwan, there is this assumpt...

North Korea’s Gift “It seems impossible to gain any worthwhile insights into the North Korean view of the [Korean] war, as long as Kim Il-su...

Night Out Saturday night, after we were done putting together Sunday’s edition of the Times , those of us who were up for it grabbed a cab a...

Titters in Beijing It seems that the campaign to oust Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is one of those things that just won’t go awa...

The Arar Commission Sets a Precedent The release on Monday of Dennis O’Connor’s public report on the events relating to Maher Arar demonstra...

Canada’s Fallen One of the drawbacks, if you can call it that, of having studied at a military college is that when soldiers are deployed on...

The Moral Slide We should be alarmed at the state of the world when the “good guys” in the battle that is currently going on inside the US a...

A Most Precious Democracy I am constantly surprised by the position that many Taiwanese people my age and younger have taken on the Taiwan S...

Five Years (and One Day) Later There probably were more articles, opinion pieces and editorials about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New ...

Japanese Drums and Day 1 at the Times My life as editor at a newspaper officially began yesterday at 3pm. Knowing that the job and learning ...

Colors Shown The level of personal involvement in politics in Taiwan is unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Not only are the news...

The Last Day, A Much Lighter Offering Today represents my last day working as an editor and writer for three English-language magazines in T...

"Shocking" and "Immoral" This is how the UN's humanitarian Chief, Jan Egelund, describes Israel's incomprehensib...