On the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and the Declaration of an Air Defense Zone by the Peoples' Republic

Really!!!  An uninhabited archipelago of islands really deserves as much attention as to summon the Vice President of the United States to Japan to cool off tensions in East Asia!!  A few pieces of rock in the East China Sea demands a flight of U.S. B-52 bombers!  We have no business whatsoever stepping into the middle of a dispute over territorial claims between the PRC, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Japan, and Japan, given its record of imperial aggression in East Asia, has no business making territorial claims on a few pieces of rock off Taiwan's coast.  This issue is too absurd for words, and Biden has no reason to be over in Japan other to instruct Shinzo Abe to stop pissing Beijing off.  The world has enjoyed a prolonged heritage of peace from Japan that the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party seems bound to disrupt unless they are firmly put in their place.  There is no reason for Japan to covet a few isolated rocks off Taiwan's coast in an era in which, on the one hand, it enjoys the protection of the world's dominant military power and, on the other hand, the preeminent economic and regional military powerhouse has asserted its own claim on the same isolated rocks.  Japan doesn't deserve to be bolstered - they need to be put in their place and told to be quiet!!

Reflections in Passing I

It is regular appreciation night at the Northampton Brewery.  I've been a regular here for the last decade and a half, since I lived with their neon pint glass shining in my window across the parking lot at Maple Avenue.  I inaugurated an e-mail address over there  - paces50 - I lived 200 paces from the brewery, but for technical reasons I couldn't fit that definition in so it became just fifty paces.  So much in my life has been defined by my connection to drinking.  I go on my vacations in November to Montréal, in part, to enjoy the micro-breweries on Rue St. Denis, two blocks from where I like to stay on St. Hubert.  From there, Montréal reverberates in my brain - it was, in part, the reason why I wrote a whole chapter on it in my (undefended, unpublished) dissertation.  Just the same, when I want to feel myself slip away from reality, I imagine the view from the Bibliothèque nationale du quebec, overlooking parc emilie gamelin, or maybe many other sceneries in Montréal, maybe because the city has become my geographic alter-ego for Northampton!  In any case, this post bears no other rationale than to say that life deserves to be enjoyed on a regular basis, and that I cannot wait to find myself back at the Irish Embasy, Grumpy's (both on Rue Bishop), les Trois Brasseurs, or l'aimer a boire (both on St. Denis) in the very near future.