The article by John Bolton ("New president's first priority to prevent slide into recession," Jan. 3, page 9) served ostensibly to "correct a few of the more egregious errors by the international media." Allow me to clarify certain sophisms apparent in Bolton's rather partisan piece.
By saying that no voters, "particularly racial minorities, faced even the slightest discrimination ... or any other impediment" to the legal casting of their votes in Florida, Bolton allows for police roadblocks and roadside automobile inspections to occur in predominantly black neighborhoods on Election Day. Why not? No laws were broken! Those white state troopers weren't discriminatory in the very least! They checked everything from "red" brake lights, to "yellow" turn indicators, to "black and white" fuzzy dice hanging from rear-view mirrors. Who cares that those voters took an hour off work to exercise their right to vote, then got stuck jumping through those hoops for an average of 20 minutes per car? Good old boys got quotas to meet, don't you know?
Bolton further adds that "both major candidates were determined that the state's popular votes were accurately counted." I still shake my head at the Republican party's incessant use of the passive voice. Governor Bush and his camp repeated time and again that "all the votes in Florida have been counted." That simply is not true. All the ballots went through the machines, but those machines failed to register a vote for president on more than 10,000 ballots in the three contested counties. In addition, Bush's legions did all they could to stop the manual recounts, and used the flimsy excuse that an "accurate" and "fair" recount was not possible, thus infringing voters' constitutional rights to equal representation under the law.
I suppose 10,000 or more voters in Florida are exempt from those constitutional perks.
The author continues to rail against Gore and his supporters by stating they resorted "to strained legal theories and hop[ed] for rescue by activist courts." I have to ask the Bolton this: Were you asleep when the Supreme Court of the United States made history and forever shadowed its hallowed image?
Republicans and conservatives alike talk of restoring dignity to the office of the president after Clinton's appalling and shameful behavior. You never brought the man down and it tears you up inside. the only stain I see is the one left on the robes of five justices.
Charles Elliott
Kaohsiung
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and