In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.

For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's struggle in Iran as part of a western ploy.

Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

Well, that was in 1995 when I resigned from my last academic job.

Representative democracy is in crisis in the United States.

Even if I were knocked down by one gunshot it wouldn't affect our democracy and I wasn't knocked down and I have great confidence in our democracy and in Taiwan and in the people of Taiwan.

It is only when there is the supervision and critical oversight from the people that the government will be in a position to do an even better job, and employees of government departments will be the true public servants of the people.

President Obama is highly concerned with education. He's a champion on early-childhood development strategies. So I like the work he's doing, and I support it, and I realise that he's one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategise at the top of his agenda.