Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

How Ma is undercutting Taiwan-Pacific links

Taiwan News Editorial

The six - day visit to Taiwan's six Pacific diplomatic partners which President Ma Ying-jeou embarked yesterday evening amid doubts that his Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) administration may undermine instead of bolster Taiwan's strategic position in the Pacific.

Ma's first Pacific voyage was postponed from last October due to pressures of rescue and relief work in the wake of Typhoon Morakot, but the delay also resulted in a sea-change in the character of the program.

The 1996 Consensus, an Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come!

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Although Taiwan's current President Ma Ying-jeou regularly repeats and revels in this 1992 fabrication, the time has come for all Taiwanese to once and for all dump the hypocrisy of the "1992 Consensus." The so-called consensus of 1992 is a fraud, a deception, a duplicitous trick formulated by Su Chi. Allegedly the purpose was to facilitate cross-strait talks, but even then the People's Republic of China (PRC) never even publicly agreed to it. Further, the talks that were being "facilitated" at that time were not nation to nation talks, but rather they were party to party talks between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). What was really happening was that both parties were trying to find a way to maintain the legitimacy of their roots, and claim that there was only "one China" and each of course represented it. That idea must be scrapped.

"Formosa Betrayed" Movie Review by Roger Ebert Lays it Bare

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, imagine what a film can do in enlightening the audiences of America about Taiwan's White Terror Period (1947--1987). It is a period that most Americans know little about. If Americans believed that Taiwan was championing democratic values under Chiang Kai-shek, they are in for a rude, major shock. This film gives a much clearer picture of what was really going on on this side of the world. It was not that long ago and many of the political figures currently active in Taiwan were involved in the many cover-ups of abuses of justice and human rights. The story line is a composite of several real murders from the 1980s. I came to Taiwan in 1988, the year after Martial Law was lifted, and have written numerous articles on this topic. The following review of "Formosa Betrayed" by film critic Roger Ebert confirms them all. Ebert's comments and review follow.

NHI reform misses the point

Taipei Times Editorial

All’s well that ends well, or so the government would have us believe now that Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) has decided to stay on in his position a week after tendering his resignation over frustrations facing his National Health Insurance (NHI) reform plans.

Yaung’s change of heart followed a meeting with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Wednesday where the president backed his proposal on increasing premium payments in an attempt to save the financially stricken NHI scheme from collapse.

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