Foreign nationals threatened In a short opinion piece published today in the Taipei Times , I argue that China's insistence that health-...

The turn of the screw The Israeli government (readers will notice that I do not refer to Jerusalem to designate the state, as one would use ...

KMT shows its true allegiance If anyone had doubts about the true allegiance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), those should have been ...

A parade not for all Last week on Oct. 10, the Republic of China (ROC) celebrated its National Day with the biggest military parade in 16 ye...

Whose parliament is it? Anyone who, against all reason, had managed to retain a strand of belief that the UN Security Council — and the UN i...

Ahmadinejad at Columbia Like him or hate him, there is no denying the fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a master at making ...

Slanted Time reporting on Taiwan's UN bid Kathleen Kingsbury’s piece “Taiwan’s War of Words with the U.S.” published in the Sept. 17 is...

Letter to the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations Readers who agree with the contents of the following letter, sent today to t...

For once, Tehran's response to the US may be right In an article published today in the Taipei Times , I turn to a US court decision las...

Bias and mythmaking in the news Though accusations of bias in the news, or of government censorship, since Washington launched its campaign ...

It won’t be spooks, but it’s coming As the presidential election in Taiwan approaches, the US will likely increase pressure on the Democrati...

Authoritarianism with a friendly face Usually reviled for the harsh and overt manner in which it represses dissidents at home, the Chinese g...

Canada’s Achilles’ heel Private Simon Longtin, Master Warrant Officer Mario Mercier and Master Corporal Christian Duchesne, the last three C...

A flash The sudden flash of light occurred in mid-flight on the China Airlines flight from Vancouver to Taipei, just as the main character i...

On the road This entry is being composed from back home, in Canada, on my first visit there since I relocated to Taiwan two years ago. Havin...

Beijing caught in a lie A little while ago I wrote about Beijing’s increasingly aggressive intelligence-collection program in preparation fo...

Olympic games for the hollow men As it prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the Chinese government has launched an unprecedented inte...

Fixed in time Whether history is taught well or not, its use never fails to determine the kind of world we live in. In places like Serbia, t...

A dirge for our time Not since my review of David Kaplan's excellent Fires of the Dragon more than a year ago have I chosen to write ab...

The shame of democracies (Readers should note that a slightly different version of this posting appeared in the July 11, 2007, editition of ...