228 Incident was a massacre
Kudos to Ketty Chen for her “Remembering Taiwan’s Tragic Past” piece, (Features, Feb. 28) and an extra round of applause for her consistently referring in the article to the “228 Massacre” instead of the “228 Incident.”
I recommend the Taipei Times and all of us adopt the same nomenclature when discussing this horrific episode in Taiwan’s history.
Why?
In early March 1770, British military presence in Boston led to a tense situation that came to a head when British soldiers fired into a crowd of US patriots.
Three US civilians were killed at the scene of the shooting. This “incident” in would go into history as “the Boston Massacre” and foreshadowed the outbreak of the US Revolutionary War also known as “The American War of Independence.”
In comparison, about 28,000 people were killed in Taiwan from Feb. 28, 1947 and during the subsequent White Terror era.
My point is: If we can refer to the March 1770 event in the US as a massacre, we can certainly refer to the 1947 happenings in Taiwan as a massacre.
We must not downplay this tragedy.
Coen Blaauw
Washington
Fracking not the answer
The article, “US ‘shale revolution’ a positive step”, (Feb 26, pg. 8) is just another overly optimistic and somewhat misinformed opinion about this latest purported panacea to solve the world’s energy crisis.
First, it completely ignores the environmental catastrophe that shale fracking represents.
In the process of releasing shale natural gas, a witch’s brew of more than 250 known carcinogens is released into the freshwater aquifers of the US, potentially polluting the entire US drinking water supply.
In 2005, amendments to the US Safe Drinking Water Act were passed at the behest of former US vice president Dick Cheney and his Halliburton minions, preventing the US Environmental Protection Agency from investigating the safety of this process, and a tsunami of corrupt, corporate cash prostitutes any rational discussion within individual states.
Second, the ability of these natural gas wells to sustain high levels of production is already shown to be ephemeral.
Older wells are already showing signs of collapse even though these are themselves relatively recent. The chance of restoring production in these is nil.
A natural gas glut is undermining prices in the US and starting to cause ripples in the investment community.
Continuing a public relations campaign to keep up the hoopla is a necessity to maintain a current financial bubble in the industry and your article may be an inadvertent spinoff of this effort.
However, no sane person would contemplate permitting the continuing environmental devastation that is being reeked by fracking. Not unless one has a black-hearted financial stake in allowing it to continue.
John Hanna
Taoyuan
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
Recent media reports have again warned that traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies are disappearing and might vanish altogether within the next 15 years. Yet viewed through the broader lens of social and economic change, the rise and fall — or transformation — of industries is rarely the result of a single factor, nor is it inherently negative. Taiwan itself offers a clear parallel. Once renowned globally for manufacturing, it is now best known for its high-tech industries. Along the way, some businesses successfully transformed, while others disappeared. These shifts, painful as they might be for those directly affected, have not necessarily harmed society
RSS