Remembering the 228 Incident Sixty years ago, on Feb. 28, 1947, began what would lead to the slaughter of between 20,000 and 30,000 Taiwanes...

Signs of failure Despite US President George W. Bush’s constant declarations to the effect that al-Qaeda has been weakened by the “war on te...

How not to win Amid rising fears — as it does every year around this time — of a new Taliban “spring offensive” against NATO troops in Afgha...

A sound signal, with a caveat The ruling last week by the Supreme Court of Canada that the antiterrorism provision allowing the authorities ...

The Middle Eastern Arms Race As if the bloody Iraq civil war, continuing flare-ups in Palestine and the occasional bombing in Lebanon were n...

The human comedy As an editor at a newspaper, many stories come across my desk that seem like they’ve been pulled from a comedy script. Thos...

A reminder from China Two days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was to officially release its much-expected repor...

A democracy health check Let me first open with an apology to my readers for the irregularity of my postings. A few months ago, my literary ...

Blindly forward in Iraq By any yardstick imaginable, 2006 did not end well for Iraq and its people. Even the execution, in extremis, of Sadd...

Turning up the notch on fear, again Now that the holidays are over and that people have returned to their normal lives, the time has come to...

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...