Free people, free choices
Taiwan is a sovereign state populated by a free people and has the right to conduct referendums as part of its legal and constitutional development.
China has no right to threaten Taiwan simply because the government and the citizenry of Taiwan choose to exercise the right to conduct elections, propose and pass laws and conduct other affairs inherent in the sovereign business of a free people living in dignity.
The referendum is a simple process that will decide whether China should be asked to turn away from the threat of war and remove 500 missiles aimed at Taiwan and its people.
This peaceful nation and its citizens have invested huge sums of money, set up a large number of companies, and sent tens of thousands of its best graduates to work in China. Surely these actions are not those of just a peaceful people but of a country which encourages China's development.
These are not actions which warrant any kind of hostility.
Common sense requires that Taiwan makes known its reasons for requesting that China turn away these instruments of destruction and death and that the Chinese withdraw threats of war against its peaceful neighbor.
Such requests occur within a civil society in a process called referendum, a simple and civil act based in law by the rightful inhabitants of a state. There is no room whatsoever for any official in the US to express doubts regarding this exercise of sovereignty.
Eric Hands
Seattle, Washington
Sequester SARS researchers
SARS researchers should be sequestered. Not sequestered within Taiwan as currently proposed, but within the research facility itself.
SARS research facilities should be divided into two areas. One area would be for hands-on research. The other area would be for computer modeling, desk work, library research, administration, recreation, and so on, but without any contact with the virus.
Researchers should spend at least 10 days in the second area after working in the first before being allowed to leave the facility.
During Taiwan's recent SARS scare, such a system would have restricted exposure to a relatively small number of people already aware of the need to take full precautions at all times, resulting in huge cost savings.
Stuart Saunders
Neihu
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