Suing for future generations
In a recent article by Agence France-Presse on the appointment of scientist Steven Chu (朱隸文) as the next US secretary of energy, the news agency noted that Chu will be president-elect Barack Obama’s “dedicated champion in the life-or-death fight against global warming,” adding: “Chu has increasingly sounded the alarm on the dire need to address climate change before it is too late.”
The report also quotes the 60-year-old Chu as saying that our Earth is threatened with “sudden, unpredictable and irreversible disaster.”
It is important to keep readers informed about what is happening in the fight against global warming and to show both sides of the issue. Some people, like Chu, believe global warming is real, while others believe it is not.
In keeping with Chu’s feeling that alarms need to be sounded about the problem of climate change, I have started a process to file a class-action lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, asking for US$1 billion in damages from current world leaders for manslaughter of future generations of human beings if strong steps are not taken now to curb global warming.
The money, if any is awarded by the ICC, will be donated to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to help inform the public about this most “dire” issue.
The only news media to report on this lawsuit so far was Reuters News Service in the Netherlands, which posted a brief news item about the suit last month.
The lawsuit might seem frivolous to some people, but those who want to read more about it can visit the Web site northwardho.blogspot.com and post their opinions.
DAN BLOOM
Chiayi City
Is Taiwan a fossil?
The government plans to apply for world heritage status for traditional Chinese characters (“Bid planned for UN heritage status for complex characters,” Dec. 19, page 3) used in Taiwan.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) described these characters as “a living fossil.”
It is a pity to call a language, especially a “national language,” a fossil — even a living fossil.
But maybe Liu is being pragmatic. The Republic of China (ROC) was replaced in China by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The ROC’s UN seat was given to the PRC in 1971.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) considers ROC-PRC relations not “state-to-state” but “region-to-region.” He banned ROC flags from the streets during the visit of Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), who called Ma “you” instead of “president.” China recently included two Taiwanese women among China’s 50 most beautiful people.
These facts show that the ROC as a nation has become a living fossil well before its written language could become one.
When Ma was the mayor of Taipei City, he insisted on using China’s Hanyu Pinyin system of Romanization for the capital rather than Tongyong Pinyin. Now Ma plans to spend millions of dollars on switching to Hanyu Pinyin throughout Taiwan.
Some government officials might even change the spelling of their names.
Some people are concerned that Ma might push Taiwan to use China’s simplified characters someday.
Is the step of labeling Taiwan’s traditional characters a “living fossil” just an overture to switching to simplified characters?
Step by step, Taiwan’s identity and sovereignty are being eroded.
CHARLES HONG
Columbus, Ohio
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
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
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs