By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
Bloggers took the long Liberation Day weekend here in Korea as a chance to do the things bloggers like to do — pontificate, ruminate and gaze deeply into their own navel.
Too bad for those bloggers using Blogger and Typepad that a mysterious blog blackout popped up about the same time and anything they wrote during their extra day off was difficult to view.
But those bloggers who went once more into the breach of cyberspace wrote some interesting things, nonetheless.
So South Korea’s position is that North Korea must first give up it’s nuclear weapons program, it’s Pakistani-built uranium enrichment equipment, it’s plutonium-reprocessing facilities, it’s graphite reactors (including Yongbyon and the two larger facilities they are trying to build) the KEDO plants and summit to full IAEA inspections. Unless Pyeongyang has a light-water power plant tucked away somewhere, Seoul’s position is that Plyeongyang must give up every nuclear facility and piece of equipment it has. So when the Foreign Ministry and the State Department say that their positions are not that far apart, I agree.
In the USFK blogosphere, there is much consternation regarding the decision on the part of The Powers That Be to batten down the hatches vis-a-vis alcohol consumption off base.
The quiet little town of Anjeong-ri just got a lot quieter. The base Commander has decided to put off-limits approximately half the bars in town, including Family Mart. That’s right, Family Mart. Why you might ask? Good question. Apparently an undercover and underage CID agent was able to purchase alcohol at the now banned establishments, so they’ve been put off-limits. Is this fair? You tell me.
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I guess this is the Command’s way of making a point, and since young soldiers have disdain for the regulations, then I guess they feel justified to cut them off at the source. If a 20 year-old buys a drink in Korea it’s not a crime by the way. The crime here is making a point with a 4lb hammer when a fly-swatter would probably have sufficed. Humphreys’ leadership has gone above and beyond in pissing off the entire community this time. Is this the good neighbor program I keep hearing about? Some of these clubs are very legitimate and owned by friends.
While Korea just celebrated Liberation Day, the residents of Taiwan maybe should be singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic next July 4th.
Communist China, the People’s Republic of China or PRC, never tires of denouncing Taiwan as a “renegade province” that belongs to it, and bitterly complaining that any attempt by any country anywhere in the world to treat Taiwan as a sovereign independent nation is a gross interference in China’s “internal affairs.”
This claim is about to be publicly exposed as baseless - for it turns out that as a matter of international law, Taiwan is legally an overseas possession of the United States of America.
