No to anthem in schools
The recent debate over the compulsory singing of the national anthem in schools reminds me of two fond memories.
One is when the anthem had to be sung in movie theaters before any movie. When I first went to see a movie here in the early 1990s, I was quite surprised at the fact that everybody, young and old, stood up to sing it. I refused, and remained seated eating my popcorn with my Taiwanese girlfriend, who was quite scared at the possible reaction of everyone around us. She was right. One guy behind me tried to punch me in the nose, yelling out how disrespectful I was of his country and da da da.
This immediately brought up another memory. When I was invited as a visiting fellow in one of Munich’s best institutions on public health, I was at first living at my professor’s house. He was the head of the institute. His teenage son and I soon became good friends.
One day, I asked him what his most memorable experience was when he did a one-year stint studying in the US. He said “the first day in school.”
What happened is that the school, like many in the US, also requested the singing of the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the school day. He, like me, refused to stand up and sing. The teacher could not try to beat him up, like my fellow moviegoer tried with me. He was a foreign student with a reputed father. Instead, the teacher asked him to explain to the class why he wouldn’t at least stand up like the others, thinking maybe the poor kid didn’t know the words of the Star Spangled Banner.
His reply was simply this: “Hitler got us in Germany to do this hyper-nationalistic stuff. I can’t agree with this.”
Wise kid. Is there a need for Taiwan to return to the bad habits of the past?
BORIS VOYER
Taipei
In November last year, a man struck a woman with a steel bar and killed her outside a hospital in China’s Fujian Province. Later, he justified his actions to the police by saying that he attacked her because she was small and alone, and he was venting his anger after a dispute with a colleague. To the casual observer, it could be seen as another case of an angry man gone mad for a moment, but on closer inspection, it reflects the sad side of a society long brutalized by violent political struggles triggered by crude Leninism and Maoism. Starting
The year 2020 will go down in history. Certainly, if for nothing else, it will be remembered as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing impact it has had on the world. All nations have had to deal with it; none escaped. As a virus, COVID-19 has known no bounds. It has no agenda or ideology; it champions no cause. There is no way to bully it, gaslight it or bargain with it. Impervious to any hype, posturing, propaganda or commands, it ignores such and simply attacks. All nations, big or small, are on a level playing field
The US last week took action to remove most of the diplomatic red tape around US-Taiwan relations. While there have been adjustments in State Department “Guidelines on Relations with Taiwan” and other guidance before, no administration has ever so thoroughly dispensed with them. It is a step in the right direction. Of course, when there is a policy of formally recognizing one government (the People’s Republic of China or PRC) and not another (the Republic of China or ROC), officials from the top of government down need a systematic way of operationalizing the distinction. They cannot just make it up as
Like a thunderbolt out of the blue, with only 11 days remaining of US President Donald Trump’s term, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday last week announced that the US Department of State had, effective immediately, lifted all “self-imposed” restrictions on how US diplomats and other government officials engage with their Taiwanese counterparts. Pompeo’s announcement immediately triggered a backlash. Criticisms leveled by former US National Security Council director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia affairs Evan Medeiros, who served in the administration of former US president Barack Obama, were representative of the disapproving reaction. “The administration is over in two weeks…