To put it simply I had forgotten that this place was still here. Well I hope to get back to posting somewhat regularly here.  Say two or three times a week.  It isn't like I have much more to do at the moment.  Things here in beautiful Iraq are rather quite at the moment.  But then they have always been quite in this area. )

I hope that people actually see this, my focus here will still include anime, guns, cars, motorcycles but with probably a fair bit more posting on politics than as in the past.  Well rather more of a focus on domestic politics.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 10:33 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 115 words, total size 1 kb.

THis getting far too old, and far too common. Yet once again I am here apologizing for the lack of updates.  I really am going to try and get this bad boy up and running again on something resembling a regular basis.  Until then have some naughty pictures for your trouble.

More Ecchi goodness below the fold.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 08:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 59 words, total size 1 kb.

Many appolagies for the lack of posting.  I have yet to accquire an ISP here even though I have finally moved into my pemanent housing.  All that aside however I am looking forward to get things around here back on track.  More to follow soon I hope.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 04:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

TRight now I am slowly losing my mind as we are deiving through the eats Texas panhadle. There is only one way to describe this partof the world, and that is bleak and depressing.  I will add a photo or two later.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 04:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.

     Wow, despite my best efforts I have less chance to update this bad boy as much as I had hoped.  That being said AIT is a hell of a lot more laid back than basic training.  The first half of my classes were over manual gunnery, ie learning how to use a chart and associated tools to create firing solutions for the gun line.  Now we are learning AFATDS, the computer system that allows to transmit and manage all of that information, for all of the gunnery compuatation are made on the quick and reliable manual methods in use since the first world war.

     As far as living conditions go they are similar to basic in that I am still living an open bay, but at the moment with only twenty five or so other guys.  When your major complaints are about your slow internet connection or that lights out means you have to turn off your Xbox is pretty telling.  Our battery is by far the most laid back in the batallion, we get overnight off post passes every weekend, while the others get on post passes or no passes at all.  Really it is all too easy, you get up in the morning, do PT, go to class, come back and have a formation after dinner chow and then we are on our own untill lights out.  If anything it will be even easier when I get to my first duty station.  That and the 40 large headed my way when I get there will make for  pretty comfotable living.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 07:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 265 words, total size 1 kb.

     I'm back baby, today is family day and tomorrow is graduation.  BCT is over and I am damn glad too.  Basic was challening, but a lot of fun at the same time, right now I am on pass and posting this from my brother's laptop in the hotel room.  In general Lawton seeems to be an ok town and fort Sill is a pretty decent post from what I have seen.

A picture of family day formation right before we were dismissed on pass.

I'll post more tomorrow if I get a chance, and for sure sunday.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 04:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 100 words, total size 1 kb.

    I am posting this from the airport in Oklahoma City, on my way to Basic Training at Fort Sill.  So I am now offically handing things over to my brother from here on out.  So lets all say Hello to the new (albeit temporary boss around here.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 07:14 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

     I don't know why or how but spending seven hours sitting in a car doing largely nothing can be as tiring as it is.  As for internet explorer the computer I had access to in Texas had IE six, and well the sight looked, not great to say the least.  So if you are still using IE six please upgrade to IE 7 or Firefox for the best looking page possible.  The only other thoughts of note aside from the giant pile of Manga I have waiting to be read is that I have no idea why it took me so long to buy an external hard drive.  Compared to backing stuff up onto CDs is just, well incomparable.  I bought myself a Seagate 80 gig free agent with a giftcard I got for christmas, and at only $59.00 at Bestbuy I couldn't be happier, though I was tempted by their after christmas special of a 500GB Western Digital book drive for $109.00.  But I was able to resist, because I have nowhere near that much data to back up.  All in all it was a good trip, the weather was a nice change of pace, with plenty of time well spent with family I don't get to see nearly often enough.

A random picture of snacks for no reason what so ever.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 12:01 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 1 kb.

     How quickly time seems to pass, it seems as though in a mere eye blink ago I was niether a soldier nor a blogger, yet  now both those things are so.  In looking back on the past year I must say that taken as a whole more good than bad has emerged from 2007.  Both for me personally, and for the world as a whole.  Perhaps it is just my optimistic nature, but I see the world becoming an even better place in 2008.  What role I will play in that, is as yet unknown to me, but I eagerly await to have that knowledge revealed to me in all due time.  Time is a strange thing, when we wish for it move more quickly it crawls by, yet when we wish for more it seems to rush by at ever increasing speed. 

     How strange it is time, that most human of creations, can seem to be a natural deliniation is merely the desire of the human mind to structure into rigid and equal units what nature does seemlessly and smoothly since before humanity even came to be.  I desire to control it, I know that I can not, and I accept it as it passes away, each passing moment ushering in the next.  That is one of the great quandries of life, and one of its greatest challenges is to learning to accept the passage of time for waht it is, an inevitable and beautiful part of our precious time on this good earth.  So enjoy every moment of your life, for each moment is already escaping into the past.  In closing I borrow the words of colonel General Dmitry Volkogonov:

The past is irretrevable, the present is incomplete, the future has already begun.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 08:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 299 words, total size 2 kb.

     New posts coming later, I am in Texas visting relatives.  And I am also enjoying the nice weather.  Sun and sixty degree temperatures are a nice change from the twenties and snow.  Well I will let the pictures do the talking.

From This:

To This:

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 02:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

    A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you.  Especially to those of you who find yourselves in sweltering jungles, scorching deserts or wind swept mountains or anywhere else on the land or upon the seas.  Here is hoping that next year is spent not at the front but in the embrace of hearth, home and family.

U.S. Army Soldiers from Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment, U.S. Marine Corps embedded trainers, Afghan National Police, and Afghan National Army Soldiers search a village in Ala Say Valley, Afghanistan, for suspected Taliban members Aug. 11, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Marcus J. Quarterman) (Released)

U.S. Army Spc. Jason Curtis provides security for members of a medical civil action project in Parun, Afghanistan, on June 28, 2007. Curtis is assigned to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 151st Infantry Regiment. DoD photo by Sgt. Brandon Aird, U.S. Army. (Released)

U.S. Navy Builder 2nd Class Chad Smith, right, of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Three and Philippine marine Pfc. Marlon Seytes, from the 5th Marine Battalion, work together to build a new school in the village of Taglibi on Jolo Island, Philippines , Feb. 20, 2007, during exercise Balikatan 2007. The annual bilateral exercise is designed to improve interoperability between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the United States military during humanitarian, medical and engineering missions. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Michael Larson) (Released)

U.S. Army Soldiers from Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division setup a fence for a veterinarian assistance operation in Yusufiya, Iraq, Oct. 23, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Luke Thornberry ) (Released)

The Military Sealift Command (MSC) Modular Cargo Delivery System Ship SS CAPE GIRARDEAU (T-AK 2039) underway on the Pacific Ocean as a USN HH-60H Seahawk, Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Four (HS-4), Black Knights, returns to pick up another load of supplies during a Vertical Replenishment (VERTREP).

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Hall, a vehicle maintainer with the 332nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron's vehicle management flight, adjusts the air compressor on the braking system of a 10-ton truck at Balad Air Base, Iraq, Sept. 17, 2007. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Joshua J. Garcia) (Released)

U.S. Marines from Detachment A, Marine Special Operations Command, attached to Joint Special Operations Task Force - Philippines observe a group of Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) soldiers do a jungle movement they learned as part of a subject matt er expert exchange in Sanga Sanga, Philippines, May 19, 2007. Subject matter expert exchanges are regularly conducted to ensure the U.S. and Philippines can work together in crisis and non-crisis circumstances while maintaining the U.S. -Philippines security partnership. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Troy Latham) (Released)

    We pause to keep you in our thoughts and prayers during these most joyus days, and to remember that we have the freedom to do so thanks to your sacrifices.  To borrow someone else's words:

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf." -- George Orwell.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 11:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 529 words, total size 4 kb.

     We got dumped on but good today, it snowed from early in the morning until about 5:30 in the afternoon.  So this year will be a white Christmass, and suppousedly it isn't going to snow for a couple of more days, but more is expexted.  I like the snow but I hate shoveling it, and digging my car out.  On balance though I like having four actual seasons as compared to other places I have lived where you got two at best, and niether one was particularly enjoyable.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 11:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

...For being gone really.  Just been feeling lazy lately with regard to posting things.  I kept putting it off until tomorrow, and well you know how it goes.  Anyway  Tomorrow or today if you want to be technical (this is being written at 00:21 to be exact) will include a Fresh From the Front, the first of the promised Gunslinger Girl reviews, a couple of posts on who knows what.  So until then look at the pretty picture of the only thing cool about the whole Gundam franchise, the models.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 12:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 97 words, total size 1 kb.

Well this should help, more on the brutality and needless cruelty of the illegitimate regeime in Beijing.  From the Taipei Times: EDITORIAL: China's other ethnic cleansing.

     While human rights organizations often focus on Beijing's repression of Tibetans and rights advocates throughout China, one group of people, the Uyghurs, has not received the attention a plight of their magnitude should warrant.

     This could, in part, be the result of Uyghurs being concentrated in Xinjiang, whose remoteness makes reporting on the situation there more onerous. Beijing's cynical exploitation of the US-led "war on terrorism" since Sept. 11, 2001, as it represses this Muslim minority is also part of the reason why their suffering remains largely unknown. Readers may recall Huseyin Celil, the Canadian Uyghur who in April was sentenced to life in prison for alleged "terrorist activities." Celil, sadly, still languishes in jail and Ottawa has grown conspicuously silent on the matter. In the past six years, more than 3,000 Uyghurs have been arrested on similar charges.

     Last week, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Rebiya Kadeer, who lives in exile in the US after spending five years in prison for defending Uyghur rights (or, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said in September, for conniving with "terrorist forces abroad" and spreading "state secrets"), accused Chinese authorities of forcibly relocating as many as 240,000 young Uyghur women out of Xinjiang, where the so-called "work opportunities" awaiting them are in reality a descent into exploitative factory work and possibly worse.

     The world must be reminded, and reminded comtinuously of just what it is that the Communists are doing to the innocent people under their control.  I can think of no fate worse than to be consigned to living an opressive, dictitoral, commustic country where one lives at the mercy of the whims of some "politically rleiable" party hack.  Commucisn has killed more people than any other ideology and has done so in a shorter period of time than any other, it is evil, and it must be destroyed.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 11:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 345 words, total size 2 kb.

From the Yomuiri Shimbun: Panel says cram-free education a failure.

     Cram-free education, a main plank of current teaching guidelines, is expected to be declared a failure in an report interim to be released shortly, it has been learned.

     The report, which will be released by the Central Council for Education, an advisory panel to the education, science and technology minister, is the first to publicly admit that cram-free education had failed to achieve the intended results.

     The council has already decided to advise the minister to increase school hours at primary and middle schools.

     Among its main points, the report will say that the cram-free policy led to an excessive reduction in school hours.

     Such self-criticism is a rare move, but the council is believed to have concluded that it is necessary to win teachers' understanding for the policy reversal.

     In 1996, the council proposed encouraging children to develop a "zest for living," including the development of self-expression and care for others.

     As a result, the current official curriculum guidelines aim to increase the effectiveness of teaching by focusing on a narrower range of subject material. The content of primary and middle schools' subjects was reduced by 30 percent, while school hours were cut by 10 percent.

     The Japanese educational system is, from all that I can gather a complete, well fiasco for lack of a better word.  Criticism of it is not exactly thin on the ground and from what I have read this seems to be step backwards.  Why should the central gov't in a nation of 150+ million people be setting the curriculum for every school from Kushiro to Naha?  What Japan desperately needs is decentralization and a reduction in governmental involvement in most aspects of daily life and business.  People tend to excell when government simply gets out of their way and lets them live up to their full potential.  Thats my opinion anyway.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 07:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 328 words, total size 3 kb.

Its Nice to be ahead of the curve sometimes.

From the China Post: Who's afraid of the Dalai Lama? China's Communists, apparently.

     Wednesday the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian honor, and China is throwing a fit. "We are furious," the Chinese Communist Party's secretary for Tibet, Zhang Qingli, declared this week. "If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world." In recent days, China has abruptly withdrawn from a summit on Iran and canceled a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received the Dalai Lama in September. Beijing, which according to The Post "solemnly demanded" that the Bush administration cancel Washington events planned for the Dalai Lama, is determined to punish and intimidate anyone who might pay tribute to Tibet's Nobel laureate.

     Why is the mighty People's Republic of China so petrified of this 72-year-old Buddhist monk? True, the Dalai Lama is no ordinary scholar and teacher; he is the living symbol of the Buddhist faith. It seems that Beijing's cadres fear his moral authority and do not want the international community to examine their record in Tibet, because they have a lot to hide.

     It has been 48 years since the Dalai Lama eluded capture by the People's Liberation Army and escaped to India, whereupon Chairman Mao Zedong began to plunder Tibet's wealth and murdered more than 1 million of its people. In the mid-1990s, the Chinese politburo implemented the "Strike Hard Campaign" that declared Buddhism "a disease to be eradicated." News of major protests in Tibet has not been widely disseminated in recent years, and now the survival of Tibetan civilization has reached a tipping point. In 2000, China launched a vast infrastructure campaign called "Opening and Development of the Western Regions" and embarked on a new phase of subjugation and control. Construction of rail and road links to Tibet, such as the Qingzang railway that opened last year, has accelerated Beijing's surveillance of Tibetans and has advanced the Sinofication of the Himalayan and Turkic peoples who inhabit China's western territories.

     Have no doubt the Chinese really do fear the Dali Lama and anyone else who can bring attention to their deplorable behavior towards the people of Tibet and elsewhere.  The more he and others like him are recognized and honored in the west the more internal trouble it creates for China, so lets give him the Presidebtial Medal of Freedom next year just to show the Chicoms that we haven't frogotten about Tibet and their repression of her.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 02:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 429 words, total size 3 kb.

     The only reason the Chicoms are getting so upset over the whole visit of the Dali Lama with the president and the award he is recieving from congress is easy to spot.  He is right and they are wrong, and by honoring him the US is acknowledging that fact.  their occupation of Tibet is not an internal matter, as they so slef righteously claim, but rather the continued and illegal occupation of one sovergien state by another.  This is just further proof that tgers can't change their spots and communists can't take criticism.

From the Bangkok Post: US honours Dalai Lama, angers China.

     Washington (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Wednesday asked China to open talks with the Dalai Lama, hours before attending a Congress ceremony honoring the Tibetan spiritual leader that has angered Beijing.

     "It's in their interest to meet with the Dalai Lama and I will say so at the ceremony today in Congress," Bush said before the controversial event where the Dalai Lama will receive a US Congressional Gold Medal - the highest civilian award bestowed by US lawmakers.

      It will be the first time a sitting US president appears in public with the 72-year-old Buddhist figurehead.

      Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had warned that Bush's private meeting with the Dalai Lama on Tuesday and the Congress ceremony represented "a severe violation of the norms of international relations."

      He accused the United States of having "severely hurt" China's feelings and interfered in its internal affairs.

     In regards to china's "hurt feelings," they can kiss my ass and get the fuck over it.  We have every right to honor whom ever we want for wahtever reason we want, so why don't the Chinese stop meddling in our internal affairs.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 12:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 301 words, total size 2 kb.

The Earth rising over the Moon, photographed by Astronaut Bill Anders of Apollo 8, December 24, 1967.  NASA Photo.

     I have never really said this out loud, but one of my deepest wishes is to be an Astronaut.  I would give just about anything to be able to float in the void of space or to stand upon the hauntingly beautiful surface of the moon and look back at the planet that we all call home.  While the number of men and women who have ventured into space is small, and only twelve men, Americans all have had the chance to set foot on a heavenly body that is not Earth.  My envy of them beggars description, yet I also know that perhaps I too, may have a chance to do the same.  Many years of my life lay yet before me, and the nature of space travel is constantly evolving.  I do not know what it is about spaceflight, or even flight in general that entrnaces me so, perhaps it is the beauty of seeing the eath from above, or the feeling of freedom that soaring through the skies briings with it.  Whatever it is it has held me fascinated for as long I can possibly remember.

     But even if I never have the chance to look down upon our graceful and magnificent blue orb I can still look up into the heavens above and allow my self to be lost in the simple beauty of the stars, planets and other celstial wonders, and all of their vast and unexplored secrets.  What makes humanity so unique among all of God's creatures is that we, and we alone strive for knowledge simply for the sake of having that knowledge.  We are propelled to explore space for the same reason Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest, because it is there.  Even when it is beyond our capability to explore first hand our celestial meighbors we find a way to go and visit them none the less.  The may be machines, but in their own way the are an extension of human life, and proof our exsistence.  For they will remain wher they are long after all of us are gone onto whatever awaits in the next life.  They shall remain, proving that we where here, and that we did all we could to find life beyond our own world and to learn all we could about everything we could.  Sometimes even robots get homesick I guess, at leat that was what I thought when I first saw this picture.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 10:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 648 words, total size 4 kb.

     Many of my fellow conservative are often heard lambasting the concept of the right to privacy as being a fallacy, nothing could be further from the truth.  Just because the words are not explicitly stated anywhere in the bill of rights and subsequent amendments the exsistence of such a right is easy enough to see by looking at the plain meaning of the words of the fourth, ninth and fourteenth amendments.  their protections and inhabitions create a clear and readily identifable concept of privacy that was in the monds of the men who wrote those words. The words below offer a fine insight into the view of the court on this issue when the right to privacy was first articulated.

     Justice John Marshall Harlan II famously wrote, "the full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This 'liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints."

      On a point by point basis I will examine and explain how each of the three amendments I have noted above contribute to the exsistence of a right to privacy.  The first and perhaps most pertinent amendment is one of the two least talked about amendments of the constitution along with its companion, the 9^th.

     The enummeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

     The 9^th amendment is an interesting creature, massively important, yet terribly ignored by the courts and the legal profession.  This amendment was along with the 10^th the comprimise necessary to get the Federalists to go along with the Anti-Federalists demands for a bill of rights.  To put it simply it allayed the fears of the Federalists that just because a right was not mentioned did not mean it didn't exsist.  Rather it does exsist and it belongs only to the people as only rights can.  Thus it follows that the right to privacy does indeed exsist, even though it was not specifically enummerated, and is given protection equal to the enummerated rights.

     Given that , in the words of John Adams freedoms are more inumerable than grains of sand upon a beach one must indeed tread lightly when it comes to dismissing a right just because it isn't in the constitution as it is written.

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and siezures will not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, amd particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be siezed.

     The 4^th amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and siezures, but what is more important is what it describes as being protected.  ones person, home, papers and effects (property).  What is this but the right to privacy described in excruiating detail?  This gives people the right to be free from state interference in their lives by forbidding the state from prying into the activities of its citizens.  Except when in posession of a valid warrant the government can not violate your person, home, property and papers except in rare and very specific circumstances.  Here in plain english is the right that so many people have said is not in the constitution is right before them if they would choose to see it.

     Article 1:  All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privliges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shallany State deprive any person of life. liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.

     Article 5:  The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisons of this article.

Note: (Articles 2, 3, and 4 deal with issues related to the civil war and former comfederates and the public debt of the US and are excluded for non-relevance and brevity.) 

     The 14^th amendments contirbution to the right to privacy is the hardest to articulate, and therefore tends to come in for the most criticism.  The basic position is that, each individual must be treated equally by the state, and the stae can not discriminate in the treatment of it's citizens by applying laws to some and not to others.  These cases sighting this facet of the right to privacy tend to revolve around things like birth control, abortion and state laws prohibiting certain types of consenual sexual intercourse.  Generally though I see the 14^th amendment as forcing the restrictions of the 4^th and 9^th amenments onto the states, as the drafters of the 14^th amendment intended.

     No one who espouses to be a conservative can not make a decent argument against the exsistance of the right to privacy, rather they revert to the charge of Judicial activism.  This is largely motivated by a desire to advance the 'conservative' (read moral) agenda on abortion and gay marriage.  Two topics about which I give exactly a damn.  I have a strong libertarian streak when it comes to what consenting adults do to themselves and between themselves.  I believe abortion is morally reprehensable, but that does not give me, or anyone else the right to tell someone else what they can do with thier body.  I want less government at every level, not more, and trying to legislate morality is simply counter productive to that goal.  I hope that this election cycle we can discard the 'moral' issues and focus on the real problems in the world today, like say terrorism and the war, or lowering taxes etc, etc.  Well enough ranting for now.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 07:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1041 words, total size 7 kb.

From the Taipei Times: State of a hemmed-in nation.

     This is one fine editorial, I sympathize greatly with Taiwan, she has been betrayed by her protector and denied the basic recognition that is the right of every sovergein government, of which Taiwan's certainly is.  It is heartening to see that despite her difficult situation Taiwan continues to mature and develop as free and democratic nation, in stark contrast to the illegitimate and repessive regieme across the strait.

     We noted last year that beyond the hardware, these nationalist displays have a hollow core and that nationalism is ill-served by symbols and rhetoric that simply serve as face-saving mechanisms for organs of state. Meanwhile, the alternative -- that Taiwan is part of China and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is the natural party to rule all of China -- is so discredited now that even chunks of the KMT cannot bring themselves to spout it in public.

     By and large, however, Taiwan is chugging along nicely, with solid economic credentials and growth, even if inflationary pressures are building. Shunting aside media hyperbole, Taiwan remains one of the safest countries in the world, with encouraging standards of education, growing (if erratically distributed) income and a good international reputation in various sectors.

     In recent years the picture of Taiwan in the international eye has bounced back and forth between the predatory neuroses of China and the political mandates of competing foreign-affairs factions in the US -- the balance of which has not helped Taiwan to expand its global space.

This an excellent piece of writing go read the whole thing, go on read it all here

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 01:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 281 words, total size 2 kb.