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Containing China. Another setback for the Peoples’ Co-Prosperity Sphere: China issued a stiff protest Sunday over an updated U.S.-Japanese strategic agreement, saying its reference to Taiwan violates China’s national sovereignty and its criticism of China’s military buildup is “untenable.” The strategic importance of Japan is fairly obvious from this map. Note the extension of the Ryukyu Islands all the way to Taiwan, something most maps of Japan simply truncate. In actual fact, Japan fences off half of China from the...

Lebanon Rising?

This certainly looks like good news. Yes, Lebanon is a volatile place riven by religious and tribal factionalism, but it seems that nothing unites factions like a common enemy. The old canard of using Israel and the United States appears to have lost its appeal; Syria is the new object of popular enmity despite its best efforts to blame the usual scapegoats. Today, Beirut’s streets are filled with Christian, Muslim, and Druze protestors calling for Syrian withdrawal. Only Hezbollah supports...

110901322040396438

Containing China. Another setback for the Peoples’ Co-Prosperity Sphere: China issued a stiff protest Sunday over an updated U.S.-Japanese strategic agreement, saying its reference to Taiwan violates China’s national sovereignty and its criticism of China’s military buildup is “untenable.” The strategic importance of Japan is fairly obvious from this map. Note the extension of the Ryukyu Islands all the way to Taiwan, something most maps of Japan simply truncate. In actual fact, Japan fences off half of China from the...

Lebanon Rising?

This certainly looks like good news. Yes, Lebanon is a volatile place riven by religious and tribal factionalism, but it seems that nothing unites factions like a common enemy. The old canard of using Israel and the United States appears to have lost its appeal; Syria is the new object of popular enmity despite its best efforts to blame the usual scapegoats. Today, Beirut’s streets are filled with Christian, Muslim, and Druze protestors calling for Syrian withdrawal. Only Hezbollah supports...

OhMyNews Against Reunification

Remember reunification–the dream of all Koreans? That’s soooo last week. Have a look at what OhMyNews is printing now— Regime change in North Korea would mean the disappearance of the country itself. North Korean statehood as such would be finished, as South Korea could not possibly accept any new separate power in North Korea formed “on the local base”. Such a new power constellation is anyway highly unlikely, simply because there is no human potential for it in the North...

OhMyNews Against Reunification

Remember reunification–the dream of all Koreans? That’s soooo last week. Have a look at what OhMyNews is printing now— Regime change in North Korea would mean the disappearance of the country itself. North Korean statehood as such would be finished, as South Korea could not possibly accept any new separate power in North Korea formed “on the local base”. Such a new power constellation is anyway highly unlikely, simply because there is no human potential for it in the North...

Putinization Update

More bad news for press freedom in South Korea. The woman slated to become the new presidential secretary for public information apparently thinks one of the ways the government should advance its agenda is to favor sychophantic newspapers and try to destroy the critical ones: “So long as the Chosun Ilbo remains the most influential newspaper, no reforms of the government can succeed,” she asserted. She also proposed a drive to double the readership of the Hankyoreh, attributing the daily’s...