View from The China Pagoda

The Chinese blogospehere is overflowing with calls to boycott Carrefour. The torch relay in Paris was a disgrace indeed. On the one hand, pe...

“Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the Native Americans?” asks Ian Buruma in “Tibet's last stand” (The Guardian, April 14, 2008)...

The Belgian government has decided to send four F16 fighter bombers and 100 support personnel to Kandahar in September for four months to be...

The last post on this blog dates from September 15, 2007. For several reasons, I just couldn't keep up with the blog. But I still have b...

Madonna is a pop icon and some of her songs, such as “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl” will remain popular forever. One can appreciate son...

Twenty-five years ago this week, more than 1,700 Palestinians were slaughtered in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 48 hours of car...

Almost three months after the Belgian general elections of June 10 there is still no new government and no solution in sight to the problems...

On September 11, some European right-wing forces planned a demonstration in Brussels about what they view as the islamisation of Europe. But...

The most anticipated congressional testimony by a U.S. general since the Vietnam War brought nothing new. Even before the start of the Surge...

Many Chinese officials and businessmen have mistresses these days. There's nothing much wrong with that, although some become corrupt to...

Chairman Mao passed away 31 year ago today. “31” is not a sexy number, but still one would expect that some commemorative articles would hav...

As we all know, Bush's brain has left the White House and now he is acting even more like an idiot on the world stage. While attending a...

Yesterday an Israeli fighter jet intruded into Syrian airspace and apparently has bombed a target inside the country. This may very well be ...

Is the Chinese military hacking into other governments' computer systems to spy on and disrupt them? If you read a slew of revelations i...

Last week a B-52 bomber flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana carrying six cruise missiles...

George W. Bush has now made his third lightening visit to Iraq. Six hours on a U.S. airbase in Anbar province. He doesn't even dare to g...

Usually, The Independent has insightful stories about many issues, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and also publishes columns by Robert Fisk...

The U.S. is preparing a savage air attack on Iran – not excluding the use of tactical nuclear weapons – to prevent it from acquiring an atom...

Belgium still doesn't have a new government following the June 10 elections. And it doesn't look like there will be in the near futu...

A man called Michael Jackson has died yesterday. No, not his more famous namesake the pop singer. This Michael Jackson was a famous beer wri...

According to secretary general Giles Merritt of the think tank Friends of Europe , “China is mistakingly downplaying its own serious structu...

No, the Taliban are not a nice bunch of guys. Who would want to envelop the bodies of women in a burqa where not even the eyes are visible? ...

It should surprise nobody that the U.S. military is facing ever more difficulties to sign up new recruits. Everybody with a few grams of bra...

Nouri al-Maliki is an American puppet, frequently traveling to Washington to receive instructions from his boss, George W. Bush. But as it g...

Many people on the right as well as on the left of the political spectrum oppose free immigration. Foreigners – defined as people from less ...

The Facebook networking application is getting really hot. I joined some time ago at the invitation of an ex-colleague. It's certainly ...

The attempt by Yves Leterme to form a new Belgium government has crashed. The king had to be whisked back to Brussels in an airforce jet fro...

Not V from Victory, but V from Vietnam. In the past, George W. Bush stubbornly refused any comparison between Iraq and Vietnam. Now that his...

Today, 14 U.S. soldiers died when their UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in Iraq. Apparently, the cause of the crash was mechanical failur...

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has called on his country to resume diplomatic relations with Taiwan. He believes that relati...

The creation of a new Belgian government is going nowhere. The country is irrevocably split between Dutch and French speakers. The Dutch spe...