MRT killer must apologize
As a frequent visitor from Australia to Taiwan, I was appalled by the senseless killing and injury to those poor people on the Taipei MRT.
It is difficult to know where to begin to explain the incident, which was an entirely out-of-character attack on innocent people going about their daily business.
It was an unprovoked attack on the passengers, who would never have thought such a thing could happen in Taipei.
It is a testament to the good people of Taipei and those in the wider community of this fair country, that a healthy degree of abhorrence was quickly made public.
The individual responsible for this frightening slaughter of innocent people, with the help of his minders, should make a public statement to the families of those who have lost valued members of their families that he is deeply sorry for the suffering he caused.
Furthermore, the perpetrator should issue a statement to others to not engage in copycat crimes.
Only then could he realize the gravity of his crime.
Kenneth Laycock
Australia
Veteran opposed to merger
The news issued recently by the government about merging the marine corps into the army has raised strong argument and controversy. This issue has drawn a lot of public attention and has been extensively discussed by experts, veterans and current affairs talk show hosts.
While other countries are increasing funding for their marines, what is this government doing?
Marines are not asking that the government give them any privileges, they only ask for an equal opportunity to contribute to national defense and security. They are “loyal forever” — Semper Fidelis — but how hardhearted is the government to even consider abandoning them?
To the majority of marine veterans, the merger with the army is the dissolution of the marines in all but name. Some of the specialized conditioning of the corps cannot be replaced or substituted for in the army.
That is not to say that the combat capacity of the marines is superior to the army’s, but the missions they carry out as well as the training methods they undergo are almost entirely different.
One example is training for missions using amphibious tanks, like the AAV-7 — there is no similar division in the army.
The marine veterans cannot help but wonder where this valuable national asset is going to go. The morale and traditions of the marines are invisible weapons that cannot be replaced or substituted by anything or anyone else.
As a marine veteran, I sincerely request that the government reconsider and reassess its decision to merge the marine corps with the army.
Mark Tsai
Australia
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
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