Why, It's Like the World Is Suddenly Reacting to Bullies

A great reason for Japan to nuclearise:

Chinese Communist Party officials are advocating for the “continuous” atomic bombing of Japan, after Japan’s deputy prime minister said a Chinese attack on Taiwan would threaten Japan’s survival. 

A five-minute clip created by verified military commentary channel “Liujun Taolue” calls for Beijing to launch nuclear strikes on Japan if Tokyo intervenes in a Chinese invasion of democratic Taiwan.

 

This Taiwan: 

Taiwan will exchange representative offices with Lithuania, the self-governed island said Tuesday, in a breakthrough for its foreign relations that are under constant pressure from China.

The offices will seek to enhance economic and trade relations, along with co-operation in various other fields, the island's Foreign Ministry said.

The office will bear the name of Taiwan, rather than “Chinese Taipei,” the term used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing, which claims the island as its territory without the right to diplomatic recognition.

“The governments of Taiwan and Lithuania have mutually agreed after intensive negotiations that Taiwan will soon establish a representative office in the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnyus," Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

“The name of the representative office will be ‘The Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania.’ The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is aggressively working on the preparations," Wu said.

 

Because Lithuanians know what it's like when the world stabs it in the back and recognises one as a country one is not a part of. 

 

Also:

Britain said on Tuesday it would permanently deploy two warships in Asian waters after its Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier and escort ships sail to Japan in September through seas where China is vying for influence with the United States and Japan.

 

The ego is a set of chains that binds one to antipathy and stupidity: 

The full extinction of human rights on that small island seemed to raise little objection from many people in the United States and Canada. Castro himself, though a dictator, was seen as something of a hero in our comfortably democratic countries. His version of communism was somehow the benevolent kind, stripped of its innate cruelties, its arbitrariness, its secret police and suspension of personal liberties.

The Trudeaus were family friends. Upon Castro’s death, Alexandre Trudeau wrote what is probably the most fatuous eulogy in the history of that saccharine genre. I have room for just the barest sample: “His intellect is one of the most broad and complete that can be found. He is an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets, on everything.… Combined with a Herculean physique and extraordinary personal courage, this monumental intellect makes Fidel the giant that he is.”

Try telling that to the Cuban people he repressed for 45 years, and who still suffer under Communist rule. Of course now, the Cuban people appear to have finally found the nerve to say that they wish to have the rights and freedoms we take for granted. “We are not afraid” and “Freedom” are their protest cries, along with “Patria y Vida” (“Homeland and Life”).

It surely cannot be too much to ask that the Cuban people receive support and encouragement in their struggle against a tyrannical and repressive regime from people in countries like Canada who enjoy the very freedoms that Cubans are now demanding.

 

(Sidebar: well, not for long, Mr. Murphy.)