Month: April 2007

Meet The Newest Nuclear Rogue State On The Block

From Friday’s Taiwan News:

Few experts doubt that Iran’s uranium-enrichment program would do irreparable damage to the non-proliferation regime.

Fair enough.  Just see if you can spot the odd man out in the next sentence, though:

If it goes unpunished, it will encourage other countries to follow suit, especially states on the nuclear threshold such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Argentina and Brazil.

Canada?  Eh?  Did the Russian author add that just to see if the reader was still awake, or something?  ‘Cause I rather doubt Canadians (or their leaders) want the Bomb, no matter how close to the nuclear threshold they happen to be.  And I surely must have missed reports that the mad mullahs of Ottawa one day hope to wipe St. Pierre and Miquelon off the map.

The Pigeon Game

I did a post about pigeon racing in Taiwan sometime back, and David on Formosa was good enough to leave a suggestion that I watch a National Geographic program called "The Pigeon Game" on that very topic.  Missed it, but caught it several months later.  Great stuff.

Anyways, National Geographic is showing it twice again tonight: at 8 pm and at 2 am.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.

UPDATE (Apr 15/07):  A column by someone who holds that Taiwan should legalize gambling on pigeon racing, rather than on horse and auto racing.  Interesting idea, although I’m not sure that pigeon racing has as much international tourist appeal as the author claims.  Unlike horse and auto racing, pigeon racing isn’t a spectator sport – the races can take a few days, and the participants reach the "finish line" (actually, finish coop) within 20 minutes or so of each other.

The Lost Golden Age Of Dictatorship

The KMT worships a demon labeled, Despotism, Martial Law and White Terror, while saying, Oh, Those Were The Glorious Days.

(Cartoon from the Apr 2/07 ed of the Taipei Times.)

Pitiful, really.  From last Saturday’s pro-Chiang march:

The main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) staged a march in Taipei near the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon to protest a government campaign attacking the legacy of late President Chiang Kai-shek, 32 years after he died in 1975.

[…]

During the rally, former KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou, who is considered the frontrunner in the 2008 presidential race, conceded Chiang had made errors, but told the protesters that historical figures must not be unfairly judged.

"No historical figures were perfect, and we could reassess Chiang’s legacy but must not deny all of his accomplishments," Ma said.

"He wasn’t a saint, he was like you and me and [could] make mistakes, which we will review," he said. "But don’t write him off completely because of them," Ma continued.

Now, I done some bad things in my time.  Never sentenced men that I knew were innocent to political prisons or death, though.  So in that sense, Chiang wasn’t EXACTLY like me.  And in all likelihood, he wasn’t like any of you, either.

A Taiwanese independence group held a less flattering protest at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial a day later, performing mock funeral rituals:

Traditionally, sealing the coffin — when family members hammer nails into the lid to seal it — is the last part of a funeral before burial.

Wang presented a sharp metal stake with a sign that read "Site for future Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall" and asked all participants to hammer it into the ground.  [Taiwan’s president is trying to rededicate the Chiang memorial as a Democracy hall – The Foreigner]

As he hammered, a member of the crowd shouted: "Let’s seal it so the evil spirit of Chiang Kai-shek will never be able to get out again!"

Undeterred, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held yet another pro-Chiang rally a few days later, on the anniversary of the former dictator’s death.  "Destroy Taiwan independence" was one of their slogans.  (Given the party’s obstruction of the special arms bill, I’d say they’re doing a bang-up job at that.)

After the initial rally, the Taiwan News had some food for thought about one of Chiang’s reputed accomplishments:

The common myth that the  [KMT] takeover saved the Taiwan people from "the Chinese Communist bandit regime" [after World War 2] is merely a historical "what if" that excludes numerous other possibilities, such as United Nations trusteeship or the granting of independence to a government formed by the Taiwan people.

Precisely.  Though there is another, more depressing, possibility.  Had the KMT not come to Taiwan, the Taiwanese might have foolishly welcomed re-unification, even with the communists.  They did, after all, cheer during the early days of post-war re-unification, prior to the KMT’s depredations.  What really would have happened is unknowable, by both Chiang defenders and detractors.

The Taiwan News also described the KMT’s unhealthy nostalgia:

…the event’s real aim was to "review the good fortune and prosperity brought to Taiwan in the era of the two Chiangs [Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-guo – The Foreigner]," according to KMT Acting Chairman Chiang Pin-kin.  Another KMT spokesman openly expressed the hope of restoring the "golden age" allegedly experienced by Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to the "two Chiangs."

Chiang surely did SOME good for Taiwan, but in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter.  No democratic country ought to glorify former tyrants, build statues in their name, or speak of "golden ages" of dictatorship.  That’s bad – no, DANGEROUS – for that country’s democratic soul.  When certain parties in Taiwan make a fetish out of the "oneness of purpose" that existed prior to democracy, they shouldn’t be surprised when the youth of Taiwan subsequently begin forming Hitler fan clubs out of admiration for the even greater unity that existed in Nazi Germany.  For it is their example which leads the way.

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Opportunity Costs

What will life be like without you, Fidel?

In [Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s] article, the 80-year-old revolutionary asserted that US President George
W. Bush’s support for using crops to produce ethanol for cars could deplete corn
and other food stocks in developing nations, putting the lives of [3] billion people
at risk [for hunger] worldwide.

The story in the Taipei Times doesn’t mention that Cuba was forced to embark upon a biofuel program of its own after it stopped receiving heavily-subsidized oil shipments from the Soviet Union.  El Jefe would presumably defend this, arguing that Cuban biofuels don’t come at the expense of food production, since they’re made from bagasse, a non-edible byproduct of sugar extraction.

At this point, one could observe that Cuba produces tobacco, which is grown on land that could otherwise be used to grow SOME kind of foodstuff.   So Cuba’s tobacco production takes food out of people’s mouths too, does it not?  Furthermore, Cuba has single-dwelling homes which could be razed (the inhabitants being first moved to high-rise apartments), and the land upon which they stand could be converted to agricultural use.  That would certainly feed more people, too.  In fact, if Cuba really wanted to, it could help feed that 3 billion Mr. Castro cares so much about by simply taking the land, labor and capital that’s currently being used to make OTHER THINGS and diverting it into food production.

I’m not recommending any of this.  But what I AM saying is that I fail to see how American biofuels are somehow any less moral in the grand scheme of things than Cuban cancer sticks.

Taiwanese Generals Setting Up House In Communist China?

"Chiang Kai-shek would definitely have these people executed if he were alive."

-DPP legislator

From Friday’s Taipei Times:

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday accused a number of
retired generals of having relocated to China or purchased real estate there
while accepting life-time monthly paychecks from the Ministry of National
Defense (MND).

The legislators named names – names of citizens who’ve presumably retired from public life – so they’d better have the goods, or there’s going to be a set of monster libel suits.  As well there should be.  A lot of irresponsible accusations get made here, and they’re not always confined to one side of the aisle.

That said though, the charges do have a ring of truth about them.  I’ve no doubt that some former Taiwanese officers (not necessarily the ones in question) WOULD voluntarily move to the glorious Fatherland they’d always dreamt of retaking.

Trojan Horse TV

Since I don’t understand Mandarin, I cannot intelligently comment upon Taiwan’s TVBS news station, and it’s supposed bias against Taiwanese nationalist parties.

(If anyone knows of a good blog post or newspaper column on the subject, I’ll happily link to it.)

From what I understand, TVBS has been highly critical of the current Taiwanese president.  And that, of course, is the media’s job.  The fly in the ointment is that the majority of TVBS shares are held by Hong Kong concerns, so some fear that TVBS is being used as a propaganda arm of the Communist Party of China.

Taiwan’s China Post is rather dismissive of that possibility:

While it is true that the TVBS network is majority owned
by persons and entities from Hong
Kong,
we simply do not accept the proposition that such ownership is somehow
seditious.

While TVBS’ owners have worked through a legal loophole
to retain ownership of the network, the fact remains that the loophole is
perfectly legal.

Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right.  It may be apropos to recall here that during World War II, Axis Powers were not permitted to own media within the U.S.  Perhaps there was a time, when a loophole in the law might have allowed Vichy France or Franco’s Spain to own American newspapers or radio.

But if such a loophole DID exist, I imagine it was closed quite quickly.

Tomb-Sweeping Day

The story of Keith Richards snorting his dad’s ashes with coke made the papers here, and just in time for Tomb-Sweeping Day.  Lordy-be.  I can only imagine what Taiwanese make of us Westerners after THAT little show of filial piety.

For those who don’t live in Taiwan, Tomb-Sweeping Day is a holiday set aside to pay obeisance at the tombs of one’s ancestors.  People typically trim away vegetation that has grown over family graves over the course of the year; in subtropical Taiwan this can entail quite a bit of work, particularly for children from urban centers who may’ve never handled a pruner or hedge-trimmer in their entire lives.  A good piece on Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday can be found here.

Joe Hung also wrote an interesting column on modern observances of this holiday.  I was unaware that the holiday used to be unfixed (the 15th Day of the Spring Equinox, so it fell on either Apr 5th or 6th).  It was fixed on Apr 5th by late Taiwanese dictator Chiang Ching-guo in order to honor his father, Chiang Kai-shek, who died on that day.  As part of a recent de-Chiangification campaign, it has been suggested that the holiday become unfixed again.

I don’t know if Tomb-Sweeping Day will be returned to its TRUE Chinese roots and become unfixed again, but I beg to differ with Dr. Hung on one point.  De-Chiangification is NOT de-Sinicization – unless one starts with the proposition that dictatorship is an inherent and essential part of Chinese-ness.

UPDATE:  The Taiwan News reports that Richards was joking about his dad’s ashes.

UPDATE (Apr 7/07):  Good pic of the day’s observances from Friday’s Taipei Times:

Taiwanese at a cemetery burning incense and paying obeisance to their ancestors.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised to see this picture at all.  Last time I showed some Taiwanese friends a couple pictures I’d taken of local tombs (mixed in with other photos – I’m not THAT morbid), they were horrified.  Said the ghosts were going to follow me now.

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Guests Of The Ayatollahs

None of us knows with 100% certainty whether the 15 Brits were captured in Iraqi or Iranian waters, though the cartoonist at the Taiwan News was pretty sure on March 26th that he knew the score:

The Taiwan News editorial cartoon portraying the Iranian navy as being justifiably angry with a British boat which has crossed into Iranian waters. (With two signs in the water reading: Countries you have invaded, Countries you have not invaded).

It may be particularly unwise for people in Taiwan to defend those with a well-known predilection for hostage taking. Because one of these days, the Chinese may pull a stunt like that, too.  Rather than lob off a missile, just snatch a few Taiwanese servicemen.  Demonstrate there are no Taiwanese waters – only CHINESE waters.

Fortunately for Taipei, a diplomatic solution will be graciously offered.  Anything is negotiable, under the "One China" principle…

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