Ma rules out new US beef negotiations
　

WELL DONE?: Ma Ying-jeou said his government had done more to protect the public’s health and interests in the beef talks than the previous administration
　

By Ko Shu-ling and Mo Yan-chih
STAFF REPORTERS
Friday, Oct 30, 2009, Page 1
　

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday rejected the possibility of renegotiating the recent pact on importing US beef, saying his administration was more cautious than the former Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) government in relaxing restrictions on US beef products.

Emphasizing it was “unnecessary” to relaunch negotiations with Washington, Ma said attempting to renegotiate the protocol would seriously undermine the country’s credibility.

“Our objectives [and our critics’] are the same: To protect the health and safety of the people,” he said. “The campaigns initiated by non-governmental organizations can attain the same goal. Such an act is allowed by the protocol and is the best arrangement.”

Several local governments have launched campaigns against the expanded imports and Ma said he “respected” their choice. The government relaxed its restrictions, but was not responsible for promoting US beef, Ma said while meeting representatives of outstanding businesspeople and foreign business groups in Taiwan.

Under the terms of the protocol, US bone-in beef, ground beef, cow intestines, brains, spinal cords and processed beef from cattle younger than 30 months that have not been contaminated with “specific risk materials” (SRM) will be allowed into Taiwan starting on Nov. 10.

SRMs are defined in the protocol as the brain, skull, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, vertebral column and dorsal root ganglia of cattle 30 months of age and older, or the tonsils and the distal ileum of the small intestine from all cattle.

At present, the government only allows imports of US boneless beef from cattle younger than 30 months that contain no SRMs.

Ma said the government must respond to the request of the US, a WTO member, to lift its ban on US beef and the government’s job is to strike a balance between protecting public health and securing the opportunity to participate in the international community.

“We must ask this question: Do we want to participate in the international community or not?” he said. “Negotiations are a matter of give-and-take. You cannot simply ask other people to accept your terms without accepting theirs.”

No matter what the terms were, Ma said, the bottom line was to ensure the public’s safety and health, and his administration had met that requirement.

While the new policy takes effect next month, Ma said ground beef and intestines would not be imported from the US.

The Department of Health would also establish a mandatory liability insurance system to ensure food safety, he said.

“As far as the protection mechanism is concerned, the government has been doing its best,” he said. “Compared with the former government, we are much more careful in the decision-making process. They did not negotiate, not to mention conduct studies or visit livestock farms in the US.”

Emphasizing US beef was safe, Ma said more than 50 countries import US beef and Americans eat it. The government had adopted standards stricter than the “South Korean model” and those set by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), he said.

“Taiwanese have been eating boneless US beef for three years since the former government lifted the ban,” he said. “Bone-in and boneless beef all come from the same cows ... The risks posed by bone-in beef, intestines and ground beef are miniscule.”

Meanwhile, in an interview in the latest edition of The Journalist magazine (新新聞), Ma said lifting the ban could help improve relations with the US, but denied that there had been any trade-offs.

He said he hoped to see breakthroughs in the arms procurements and a trade and investment framework agreement with the US and possibly a free-trade agreement. He also hoped there would be headway in visa-waiver privileges.

In related news, a group of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors protested against the new US beef policy near the Presidential Office yesterday, urging the government to refuse to import US beef products.

“The US promotes its beef based on US interests, but our president, elected by Taiwanese, has ignored the public’s health and national interest,” Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.

Chuang and another six DPP city councilors, including Wu Su-yao (吳思瑤) and Huang Hsiang-chun (黃向群), and their supporters tried to move closer to the Presidential Office as they carried placards and chanted slogans such as “Restart the negotiation!” and “Refuse US ground beef and internal organs!”

Taipei City police blocked the protesters to stay on a sidewalk across from the building.

Wu slammed Ma for not having any “beef” in his policies, and demanded the government begin new negotiations with the US.

Huang accused Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of teaming up with Ma to “double-cross” the public.

“The anti-US beef association is not going to work because the city government does not have the authority to ban US beef at local stores,” Chuang said, referring to the Taipei City Government’s decision to form an association of more than 200 shops and restaurants that have agreed to boycott ground beef, and cows’ internal organs and spinal cords.

Facebook wants to give peace a chance

THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Friday, Oct 30, 2009, Page 1

For many of its 300 million enthusiasts, Facebook is a convenient way to keep in touch with friends, track down old sweethearts and share drunken photographs with the world. But the global power of the social networking site is now being harnessed for a rather more laudable aim: the pursuit of world peace.

A joint project between Facebook and the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University in California — peace.facebook.com — is trying to bring together opposing sides in some of the most bitterly divided areas of the planet, encouraging online friendships between Jews and Muslims, US liberals and conservatives, and Turks and Greeks.

By tracking Facebook friendships and crunching the numbers, the site provides a daily snapshot of who is talking to whom and where.

Thursday afternoon, for example, peace.facebook revealed that over the previous 24 hours, there had been 7,339 India-Pakistan connections; 5,158 Israel-Palestine connections and 13,790 Greece-Turkey connections.

A click on the button for religious contact showed that over the same 24 hours, there had been 53,100 Christians and atheists in touch with each other, 1,250 Muslims and Jews talking, and 667 Sunni-Shiite connections. In the US, meanwhile, the number of conservative-liberal connections was 27,896.

Every day, the site also asks thousands of Facebook users the same question: Do you think we will achieve world peace within 50 years? The answers — broken down by country — reveal fluctuating geographic levels of optimism. In Colombia, nearly 40 percent said yes; in the US, the figure was just 7.8 percent.

Facebook says it is proud to be doing its bit for world peace by using technology to “help people better understand each other.”

“By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term,” it said in a statement on its Web site.

BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab and a pioneer in the field of using computer technology to influence people, said the Facebook page was just one component of a larger Stanford University project called Peace Innovation.

The Peace Dot initiative, of which the Facebook page is part, aims to encourage people to create Web pages using the “peace.[address]” format in an effort to highlight the strides already being made toward peace around the world.

To date, 19 very different groups have signed up to the Peace Dot project, registering addresses ranging from peace.couchsurfing.org to peace.dalailamafoundation.org and even peace.safeway.com.

Fogg said he was confident “substantial global peace” could be brought about in the next 30 years.

“The process for increasing world peace is innovation,” he said. “Lots of it. There’s no single answer, no single solution. Together we must innovate to create more empathy, understanding, tolerance and so on.”

“We must innovate to help people everywhere have basic needs met, like access to clean water. These are the roots of peace. We can create new ways to strengthen these roots of peace,” he said.

MOTC says death figures in ‘UDN’ report were wrong
　

BAD IDEA: The ministry said it was inappropriate to compare the traffic fatality rate in Taiwan with that in European countries that do not have many motorcycles
　

By Shelley Shan
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Oct 30, 2009, Page 2
　

The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) yesterday dismissed a media report that said Taiwan has the highest rate of traffic fatalities among the world’s developed countries.

Hsieh Chao-i (謝潮儀), executive secretary of the Road Traffic Safety Committee, said one of the committee’s division chiefs had provided incorrect statistics in a presentation to a forum on Wednesday.

Hsieh gave reporters the latest statistics from the International Road Federation on motor vehicle fatalities in several countries: On average, the number of deaths per 10,000 vehicles in China was 7.92, 3.77 in Canada, 2.52 in France, 2.44 in Singapore, 2.38 in Hong Kong, 1.71 in the US, 1.57 in Italy and 1.56 in Taiwan.

“She [the division chief] volunteered to attend the forum, but she simply cited the wrong information,” Hsieh said.

Hsieh said it was inappropriate to compare the traffic fatality rate in Taiwan with that in European countries and Japan because they do not have as many motorcycles as Taiwan.

“Some of the countries in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, may also have high death rates,” Hsieh said. “But these countries do not have databases on traffic accidents.”

American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) Director William Stanton said on Tuesday that eating US beef was safer than riding a motorcycle in Taiwan when defending the safety of US beef.

A story published in yesterday’s Chinese-language United Daily News quoted the statistics provided by the division chief of the Road Traffic Safety Committee to back Stanton’s point.

The story said 60 out of 100 traffic accidents in Taiwan were caused by motorcycles, 1.6 times higher than in France.

In 2007, 2,573 persons died in traffic accidents in Taiwan, with 64 percent of fatalities involving motorcycles and scooters.

The summit of low expectations
　

By Susan Shirk
Friday, Oct 30, 2009, Page 8

In the run-up to US President Barack Obama’s first visit to China next month, US and Chinese diplomats have been compiling lists of ongoing cooperative endeavors in case no new agreements materialize. Indeed, that outcome appears likely.

The problem is as much the fault of the US as it is of China. Whereas agreements require hard work on both sides, the Americans are having a difficult time negotiating their country’s domestic political obstacles in time to engage effectively with China.

With the Copenhagen climate summit only weeks away, forging a commitment on climate change is the most pressing challenge. The US and China are the world’s two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. Obama administration officials had been hoping that bilateral cooperation to tackle this common threat might deepen the US-China partnership in the same way that the common Soviet threat brought US president Richard Nixon and Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) together in 1972.

If Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) could agree about what actions their countries would take and what explicit commitments they would make as part of a global agreement, the rest of the world would follow. Unfortunately, the two countries stand on opposing sides on climate change.

China speaks for the developing world in demanding to be let off the hook from committing to a specific national carbon-reduction target. The US, the EU and other industrialized states caused the problem, the Chinese say, so they bear the most responsibility.

On the ground, Chinese actions to address climate change are impressive. China has undertaken a nationwide campaign to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by next year and will hold local officials accountable for achieving the targets. Moreover, the Chinese have built up wind and solar power so quickly that they have just increased their goal for renewable sources to 15 percent of total power generation by 2020.

As a matter of national pride, however, the Chinese refuse to articulate an international commitment under duress and Obama doesn’t have much standing in pressing China to compromise, since the US Congress hasn’t yet acted on cap-and-trade legislation.

The best that can be hoped for are serious joint research and development projects, such as collaboration on carbon capture and sequestration, aimed at demonstrating that both leaders are at least pulling in the same direction in addressing climate change. Because both want to avoid being blamed for scuttling a global agreement, they will work to make their modest plans look as substantial as possible and promise to do more later.

China’s self-confidence has been buoyed by its being the first country to recover from the global economic crisis — thanks to a massive and early infusion of government and bank investment that stimulated demand. The Chinese acknowledge that they enabled the US to borrow and spend beyond their means by parking China’s massive foreign reserves in US government securities, but they refuse to accept that this was the root cause of the crisis.

To the Chinese, as well as to others, it is obvious that the main cause of the crisis was the US’ flawed financial system. In fact, both sides should be working to recalibrate their bilateral imbalances — Americans should spend less and save more, and Chinese should spend more and save less.

If Obama presses Hu to revalue the Chinese currency as the best way to achieve recalibration, however, Hu is likely to push back, asking Obama what he intends to do to stem the massive US deficits that will cause inflation and reduce the value of investments by Chinese and others in US securities.

Neither side will volunteer to bear the costs of recalibrating the relationship. As a result, the summit will most likely produce promises to work together to stimulate the global recovery and adjust the economic imbalances — but not much more.

As for North Korea, Obama and Hu will agree on the importance of bringing the regime back to the six-party talks and affirming its commitments to denuclearize, and the summit communique will emphasize this common stance. Beneath the surface, however, clear differences in strategy will emerge. Hu will urge Obama to resume bilateral talks with North Korea under the six-party umbrella and he may press China’s position that, in the long term, economic engagement is more effective than sanctions in changing North Korea’s behavior.

Indeed, Chinese trade and investment are spurring market activity in North Korea’s northern region. Based on their own experience over the past 30 years, the Chinese know how economic reform and liberalization can change a country’s perception of its self-interests and stance toward the world. Why not reach out to North Korea the way you are toward Iran and Myanmar, Hu may ask Obama?

The US and China could work together to organize managerial and development training for North Koreans and encourage the World Bank and the IMF to start providing technical advice. A report by the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and the Asia Society makes the case for economic engagement with North Korea as a long-term strategy that would complement the sanctions now in place, but the US Congress might well cry “appeasement” if Obama dared to propose engaging — and changing — North Korea in this way.

Hu and Obama will work hard to present an image of unity during the summit. Both sides want to prevent any serious rupture, but substantive agreements on climate change, the financial crisis or North Korea would require both countries to take actions that could be domestically costly. The era when China made all the compromises in the relationship has passed.

Susan Shirk, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state under former president Bill Clinton, is director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
　

NATMA to continue promoting the nation
　

By Jung T. tsai 蔡榮聰
Friday, Oct 30, 2009, Page 8

As the end of my two-year term of president of the North American Taiwanese Medical Association (NATMA) draws near, I reflect on these past two years and see great accomplishments and some disappointments for the agenda I laid out during my presidency. Yet through it all, the one unwavering element was your much needed cooperation and participation. My goal as president was to promote the visions and mission of NATMA and I hope I was successful in doing so. Though we’ve made progress as an organization, I believe our dream has yet to be realized and the best is yet to come.

NATMA consists of Taiwanese medical related professionals living in the US and Canada, with a large constituent of second generation medical related professionals. We all share deep ties and a love for Taiwan, and we will do anything and everything to ensure a bright future for Taiwan. To achieve this goal, we ought to maintain the continuous influx of Taiwanese physicians to North America. This year we established a “Taiwan Chapter” as a contact window to facilitate the smooth transition for newcomers. In addition, one of our seven foundations has set up five scholarships.

Since 2003, NATMA has provided annual medical missions to the poor and needy in various Caribbean nations who retain diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognize Taiwan as a nation, not as part of the People’s Republic of China. I decided to set up a medical mission in Haiti in March last year because of the large and growing Haitian immigrant presence in the Elizabeth, New Jersey, area. Haiti is perhaps the most destitute country in the western hemisphere, largely because of political unrest, and as a result the majority of Haitians fail to receive even the most basic healthcare. During our five days in Haiti, our team provided medical, dental and surgical care to more than 1,500 patients.

This year, we traveled to the Dominican Republic, where we examined and treated more than 3,000 medical and dental patients and performed 20 major surgeries at an army hospital. Our pediatric seminar at a newly established children’s hospital provided a much needed education on children’s healthcare. It won a prestigious award and the friendship of the Dominican Republic’s first lady. As physicians with ties to Taiwan, one of NATMA’s goals is to do everything in its power to give back to society while promoting Taiwan. We, as an organization, will continue to serve in this capacity, maximizing the resources we have.

South African cleric and activist Desmond Tutu once said: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

The US and Taiwan share the same values, such as democracy, human rights and justice. Therefore, we believe that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was treated and sentenced unfairly and we will strike down those who attempt to poison and destroy our Taiwanese brothers and sisters. We have always stood up for the suppressed, from the time of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) authoritarian regime to the present day suppression of Taiwan by China and its followers.

Medical education, mission, interaction and outreach for all generations are the pillars of our organization. I humbly ask you to join me in this journey at the 25th annual meeting in Kaohsiung on Nov. 7. Typhoon Morakot’s floods and mudslides killed more than 700 people. Our most sincere thoughts and prayers go out to the victims’ families and we will bring our donations and medical expertise on our upcoming trip to comfort them in their darkest hour. Help us to help them.

Jung T. Tsai is the president of the North American Taiwanese Medical Association.