North, south, east and west

Alright, I have to respect confidentiality. This morning I had a brush with history and met a grandson of a grandson of Lin Tse-hsu (or Li...

Political science students, constitutional lawyers, human rights activists and politicians of emerging democracies often use "the rule ...

Belated Happy Valentine's Day. Bibi, her sister and I took my mother-in-law out for dinner to celebrate 2/14. Lots of food and drinks a...

Two politicians can claim to be the first. Deval Patrick became the first African-American governor of Massachusetts and Nancy Pelosi was ...

Lately I am reading 中國人史綱 by 柏楊 at a more leisurely pace. I borrowed it from the Richmond Hill Public Library. The book covers the histor...

You will notice that I posted no entries in autumn. Well, I was mesmerized by 金庸, Jin Jong's wuxia novels, 射鵰英雄傳, and 神鵰俠侶, in their la...

Congratulations to my sister-in-law, Clara, who picked a date to marry Tommy in August. Happy New Year and best wishes to them both. :-)

Ban Ki-Moon , Secretary-General of the United Nations, on his first day of work: " Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heino...

Thom Shanker comments on the diplomatic visits by U.S. Secretary of State Rice in northeastern Asia in " News Analysis: A fragile cons...

The Guardian (Friday 20 October, 2006) published an obituary of Wang Guangmei who died on 13 October at the age of 85. Wang's husband...

" Don't hold your breath for Sri Lanka " (Telegraph Blogs, Peter Foster, 21 Oct 06 13:31) " It is very hard to see wher...

" Schwarzenegger Story Gets Another Rewrite " by Peter Nicolas, Sat. 21 October, Los Angeles Times . .... From a nadir at which...

I attended two guest lectures recently by Gordon Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World (Random House, 2006), a...

Citizens can demostrate--like in Taiwan. Citizens can protest and occupy government offices--like in Hungary. Citizens are citizens after al...

Sir Richard Sykes is Rector of Imperial College London and the new Chairman of the Advisory Board of the independent think tank Reform . Si...

Telegraph editor Melissa Kite reports on 3 September in " We must cut tax as a matter of morality, senior Tories insist ". John ...

" The World According to China " by James Traub, New York Times Magazine , 3 September 2006. This interview reminds readers the c...

" Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy ," by Yoram Peri, United States Institute for Peace Press, ...

What El Al does for airline security. Israeli-Style Air Security, Costly and Intrusive, May Head West . (Aug. 25)

Interesting insights provided by Laura Blumenfeld, in the Washington Post article, In Israel, a Divisive Struggle Over Targeted Killing , fr...

A feature story , "Pakistanis Find U.S. an Easier Fit Than Britain" , with interviews of Americans of Pakistani heritage and cont...

Woods at this year's PGA Championship.

From a full-page ad in Los Angeles Times , Thursday, 17 August: "We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualtie...

We still have United Nations Security Council Resolution 1696 giving Iran until 31 August to suspend uranium enrichment and open its nucle...

The situation is worse around Israel; it pretty bad in other parts of the world, too. North, south and east of Israel are Lebanon, Gaza and...