Time for some consistency
The zeal with which the media have taken sides with the freedom-seeking masses, especially in North Africa and the Middle East, begs the question as to their concerns about the good people of Taiwan.
Here in the US, we have our Senator John Kerry and the UN talking about military intervention in Libya and yet, if China decided to invade Taiwan, they would look the other way. Why is the support of a democracy constantly threatened by the soon-to-be-most powerful nation on Earth any less important than the people of Libya choosing to engage in an overthrow of tyranny?
Taiwanese have already paid their dues for their freedom and it is time for the US and the rest of the free world to insist on a pledge from the UN to come to their aid while they still have any collective military and economic advantage. Every day, China grows increasingly able to turn the Taiwanese people into slaves. That will be the darkest day in history.
JOSEPH DUPONT
Towanda, Pennsylvania
Thinking of the future
With Earth Hour on March 26 approaching, I have joined thousands of climate activists around the world who want to do their small bit to “protect the Earth” from environmental and climate damage as air and water pollution and excessive carbon emissions start to make a real mess of things.
People in Taiwan will be observing Earth Hour that day along with citizens of more than 150 other nations, including big polluters China, India and the US. Here in southern Taiwan, a group of students at National Chung Cheng University (CCU) in Chiayi have made a short video about the need to “tighten the noose around coal and oil in the coming decades — or else!”
CCU senior Aremac Chuang (莊知耕) produced a four-minute YouTube video titled “A Graduation Speech to the ‘Class of 2099’ on Climate Change and Tightening the Noose around Coal” and filmed it in the communications department’s blue-wall studio, with National Taiwan University (NTU) British exchange student Deanne Laforet writing a translation in Chinese on a separate blog.
Some people think that symbolic days or events such as Earth Day or Earth Hour don’t amount to a hill of beans and accomplish very little in terms of reversing the harm human beings have been doing to our planet.
However, many activists believe that there is power in numbers and that more people participating year-by-year will help bring an end to the political apathy that seems to rule in capitals from Taipei to Washington and Beijing to Paris. Listen to the “Class of 2099” speech and see if it adds anything to your knowledge of “what needs to be done” if humankind is to survive the coming centuries.
Life today is wonderful and Taiwan is on a nice trajectory in its history as a nation of 23 million people, but what will life be like in Taipei in 90 years, when the NTU class of 2099 graduates? It’s something to ponder on March 26 as Earth Hour is observed here and worldwide.
DAN BLOOM
Chiayi
In a meeting with Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste on Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) vowed to continue providing aid to Haiti. Taiwan supports Haiti with development in areas such as agriculture, healthcare and education through initiatives run by the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF). The nation it has established itself as a responsible, peaceful and innovative actor committed to global cooperation, Jean-Baptiste said. Testimonies such as this give Taiwan a voice in the global community, where it often goes unheard. Taiwan’s reception in Haiti also contrasts with how China has been perceived in countries in the region
On Monday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) delivered a welcome speech at the ILA-ASIL Asia-Pacific Research Forum, addressing more than 50 international law experts from more than 20 countries. With an aim to refute the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) claim to be the successor to the 1945 Chinese government and its assertion that China acquired sovereignty over Taiwan, Lin articulated three key legal positions in his speech: First, the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Declaration were not legally binding instruments and thus had no legal effect for territorial disposition. All determinations must be based on the San Francisco Peace
On April 13, I stood in Nanan (南安), a Bunun village in southern Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪), absorbing lessons from elders who spoke of the forest not as backdrop, but as living presence — relational, sacred and full of spirit. I was there with fellow international students from National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) participating in a field trip that would become one of the most powerful educational experiences of my life. Ten days later, a news report in the Taipei Times shattered the spell: “Formosan black bear shot and euthanized in Hualien” (April 23, page 2). A tagged bear, previously released
The world has become less predictable, less rules-based, and more shaped by the impulses of strongmen and short-term dealmaking. Nowhere is this more consequential than in East Asia, where the fate of democratic Taiwan hinges on how global powers manage — or mismanage — tensions with an increasingly assertive China. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has deepened the global uncertainty, with his erratic, highly personalized foreign-policy approach unsettling allies and adversaries alike. Trump appears to treat foreign policy like a reality show. Yet, paradoxically, the global unpredictability may offer Taiwan unexpected deterrence. For China, the risk of provoking the
RSS