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
A recent report concerning a student who is suing his teacher posed the question in its headline: Does failing a student in two subjects constitute bullying? The college student in Chiayi County apparently sought NT$2 million (US$63,603) in state compensation, but a court dismissed the case. The first reaction of many might have been to ask: What has happened to students nowadays? Some say that teachers have lost their authority, while others say students are overindulged. Some even start reminiscing over the days when “whatever the teacher says goes.” However, the real issue might be overlooked if emotional reactions like that are the
When I visited Taiwan last summer, I called on the nation to use its status as a technology superpower to build superweapons. It is obvious to me as I return a year later that Taiwan is now answering that call. By 2030, Taiwan envisions a domestic drone hub, capable of producing large quantities of drones per year. The nation continues to tighten cooperation across the private sector, scientific researchers and the elected government, on creating new and innovative production avenues for defense, while efforts to become central to the “democratic supply chain” are only increasing. Anduril is seeing all of these positive
Singaporean former Prime Minister and current senior minister Lee Hsien- Loong(李顯龍) last month stood on Chinese soil and told Beijing that Singapore cooperates because of “shared interests”, not because of common “ethnic descent,” a significant statement that has upended China’s cognitive warfare tactics of “ethnic nationalism.” Along with using its military buildup and economic growth to expand its international dominance, China has long deployed ethnic politics to promote the idea that all ethnic Chinese around the world, regardless of citizenship, share a tight bond with the Chinese motherland, by which it means the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Taiwan’s economic momentum, driven by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products, remains strong, with booming demand for advanced semiconductors, servers and key components. In the first quarter, GDP expanded 14.55 percent year-on-year, the second consecutive quarter of double-digit percentage growth and accelerating from the 12.95 percent expansion in the previous quarter, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported on Friday. Net exports remained the dominant driver of growth, contributing 10.33 percentage points to Taiwan’s GDP growth in the first quarter. That came as exports rose 35.76 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, outpacing 26.34 percent growth in imports, the
RSS