well, I'll be switched
I expected something entirely different, geoff -- thanks!
To respond to a couple of your points:
One need look no farther than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib for the beam in the US collective eye (probably the one on top of the pyramid). I barely have any idea who Ward Churchill is, so he didn't enter my thoughts about "beams".
Taiwan: not only relatively sane, especially compared to N. Korea, but also nuke-less. However -- since I'm by no means an expert in inter-Asian relations -- I'd talk to the people in Hong Kong before I suggested repatriation terms to the Taiwanese.