A Few Links

Wretchard at the Belmont Club posted an interesting (though long) paper on the blogosphere and information warfare.

The Brussels Journal featured video of the October riots in Hungary.  The anti-Chen protest movement in Taiwan peaked a bit earlier than the Hungarian protests, but it’s sobering to see what Taiwan managed to avoid.

Governments may want to start collecting taxes on virtual income?  Guess now’s not the time to brag about all the loot my half-elf used to cart home after a hard day vanquishing wyverns and wraiths…

(Bizarre China-angle on that story:  "There are companies in China, where labor is cheap, that pay people to sit in warehouses full of computers playing MMORPGs in order to accumulate virtual loot, which is then sold back to Western gamers.")

Ever since moving here, I’ve gone nuts over Christmas music.  Pre-Taiwan, not a single Christmas album in the Foreigner’s collection; now, I pick up five to ten X-mas CDs per year.  Don’t ask me why.

2006 favorites were:

Ferrante & Teicher.  Christmas Is So Special.  (Bought this from Amazon after seeing the movie Elf, and being blown away by F&T’s version of Sleighride.  Brazilian Sleigh Bells is pretty fun, too.)

Trad Jazz Christmas.  (Picked this up at FE-21.  Looks like it’s not available at Amazon, though.)

Boccherini Guitar Quartet.  Christmas Guitar.  (Also from FE-21.  On sale there for NT$50!  Mellow classical guitar.)

Speaking of Christmas, here’s a satire suggesting that governments (specifically, the Canadian government) should implement a new tax credit for Christmas presents.  Especially liked this paragraph on the politics of such a proposal:

As a bonus, for anyone reading this in the Prime Minister’s Office, a tax credit for Christmas presents would allow the Conservatives to position themselves as the pro-Christmas party, while painting the Liberals as being against Christmas. Also children. Or perhaps the Grits think people will blow it all on beer and popcorn.

Hat tip to David Frum at the National Review for that one.

Gimme That Old-Time Religion

Declining attendance in houses of worship may be a big problem for Western churches, but not here in Taiwan.  Perhaps one possible explanation for that might be…oh, I dunno, maybe the presence of pole dancers at the proceedings?

As a guy, I just have this to say:  We foreigners could really learn a LOT from these people.

Aww, Aren’t They Just Adorable?

Taiwan News editorial cartoon of two Muslim children: one in the Gaza Strip, the other in the West Bank. They look at each other sadly over a wall.

(Image from Dec 22nd ed. of the Taiwan News.  Sorry, no link available.)

So what DOES a pudgy-faced Hamas-tani learn when he and his little Fatah playmate aren’t on the outs?

#1:  Genocide.  A quote from the Hamas Charter, Article 7:

…the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) aspires to Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take…

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

#2.  Perpetual War.  Hamas Charter, Article 13:

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

#3.  Harmonious relations with other religions – but only under Islamic domination.  Hamas Charter, Article 31:

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam.

Hey, it works!  Why, just look how well mad Mahmoud gets along with Uncle Kahn. Now THERE’S a dhimmi who really knows his place!

Eyes averted, a Jewish rabbi shakes hands with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

(Image from the Dec 14th ed. of the Taipei Times.)

How dare that Jewish upstart take away Lien Chan’s stepinfetchit championship like that?

Former KMT chairman Lien Chan shakes hands with Chinese dictator Hu Jintao.

(Image from the May 4/05 ed. of the Washington Post.)

#4.  Draconian punishments for those who disagree with their jihad.  Hamas Charter, Article 32: 

Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who does that.

So if your average 5-year old has a passion for genocide, perpetual war, religious subjugation and totalitarian persecution of dissenters, then yeah, he and the Taiwan News‘ tearful Islamofascist have LOTS in common.

Sad little Hamastani child

Should there actually be a civil war between Hamas and Fatah, I’m hopin’ neither side runs out of bullets.  Anyways, here’s a comparison that’s a little closer to the mark than the Taiwan News‘.  Wicked riff on "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

UPDATE:  Spent a few hours writing this post late at night and then realized the cartoonist may not have been portraying Hamas and Fatah as CHILDREN, but instead may have been showing that Palestinian children were VICTIMS of the fight between those two movements.  Ugh.  Momentary urge to hit the delete button.  Suppress it though – the post says what I meant at the time.

Just one observation about this second interpretation: Wouldn’t Palestinian children be victims of Hamas and Fatah REGARDLESS of whether the two terrorist groups happen to be getting along at any given time or not?

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Chinese Nationalism – Rational; Taiwanese Nationalism – Irrational?

Taiwanese subservience to communist China is rational; Taiwanese independence is IRRATIONAL.  How do I know this?  ‘Cause somebody from the pro-unification media said so, that’s how!

…an independence movement is not rational.  It is emotional.  That is not easily understood by Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen, who have little experience of a people aspiring for independence.  Yes, the Americans fought a long war of independence against England, but their yearning for independence was totally different from, let’s say, the Diaspora Israelis, the Basques in Spain and France, Tamils in Sri Lanka, and the people of Taiwan…

You mean, pre-revolutionary Americans sat around and debated the pros and cons of their independence dispassionately, like Vulcans?  And today’s Taiwanese never look at Tibetans being gunned down in the snow, and QUITE RATIONALLY ask, why would we ever want to be a part of THAT?

Please.

What the columnist here doesn’t realize is that rationality applies only to means, not to ends – to how we achieve our goals, not to our goals themselves.  Steven Landsburg gives an example of this on pages 10-11 of his book, The Armchair Economist:

When we assume that people are rational, we emphatically do not assume anything about their preferences.  De gustabus non est disputandum – there’s no accounting for taste – is one of the economist’s slogans.  There is an appalling population of otherwise literate adults who prefer the poetry of Rod McKuen to that of William Butler Yeats.  We do not pronounce them irrational.  Some McKuen lovers might purchase a volume of Yeats with no intention of reading it, because it looks nice on the coffee table or impresses their more sophisticated friends.  We still do not pronounce them irrational.  When we assert that people are rational, we assert only this:  That by and large, a man who wants to read the poetry of Rod McKuen, and who does not care how his books look on the table, and who feels no urge to deceive his friends about his literary tastes, and has no other good reason to buy the collected works of Yeats, will not go out and buy the collected works of Yeats.  And most of the time, this is true.

By the same token, the desire of some Taiwanese to be a part of a Greater Chinese Empire is no more rational or irrational than the desire of the majority to be independent.  Those are merely preferences – obviously with far more reaching consequences than preferring McKuen over Yeats – but preferences nonetheless.  If some Taiwanese block a weapons package for their country over 60 times over two years, they are not behaving irrationally – provided that their goal is for Taiwan to capitulate to communist China.*  At the same time, it is entirely rational for OTHER Taiwanese to doggedly attempt to pass that same weapons package in the face of insurmountable odds – provided that their goal is to keep Taiwan independent.  In short, rationality is nothing more than an amoral tool (that’s amoral, not immoral!) for achieving one’s goals, whether those goals be good or bad.

* We can add extra wrinkles to the argument, as Landsburg has done.  Like McKuen lovers who buy Yeats, some Taiwanese capitulationists might indeed vote for weapons to defend their country because they value the maintenance of their democracy (or they fear of being sent to re-education camps) more than their desire to be part of a Greater China.  Such a vote would not be irrational.  But if a capitulationist was uninterested in keeping democracy alive in Taiwan, and if he felt confident that he wouldn’t be sent to a re-education camp, and if he wanted to be part of Greater China, then we would not expect him to vote in favor of a weapons package for Taiwan.  And this rational and completely predictable response is, of course, what we have witnessed from the KMT over the past 2 years or so.

The People Have Spoken…The Bastards!

Heh, heh.   More from the man the China Post recently dubbed a "prolific, witty writer and social critic":

Meanwhile, maverick [independent] candidate Lee Ao* – who won a total of 7,795 ballots, or less than 1 percent of the total votes – said that the results of the [Dec 9th Taipei] mayoral election proved there is no justice in Taiwan. "The results only showed Taiwan’s democracy is a fake democracy and that voters are polluted by partisanship," said Lee.  [Emphasis added]

[* Alternately spelled Li Ao, depending on the newspaper – The Foreigner]

Welcome to the real world, Li, where party candidates have an advantage over their independent rivals.  And no, what the results ACTUALLY show is that Taiwan’s voters are polluted with the silly notion that mayors shouldn’t be lunatics who open cans of teargas inside deliberative meetings, or reveal grainy 40-year old black-and-white NUDE POSTERS of themselves within the legislature.

I remember what good-ol’ Al Bundy used to say at times like that.  Something to the effect of, "My eyes!  Oh God, I think I’m blind!"

Taiwanese legislator Li AoAlessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Benito Mussolini

(Li Ao vs. Alessandra Mussolini.  While neither would get my vote at the ballot box, I know who I’d rather see nekkid!)

Over at the China Post, Joe Hung couldn’t resist looking down his nose at the electorate, too:

The heart of Khaohsiung belongs to the ruling party.  And the heart won.

[KMT chairman] Ma Ying-jeou appealed to their minds in vain.

In other words, we lost because the voters were nothing but a bunch of irrational boobs.  Oddly enough though, Taiwan’s major independence party is probably toasting Khaohsiung voters right now for their wisdom and perspicacity.  While I’ve seen this sort of sour grapes at the China Post before, I’ve never commented on it.  Cry in your beer the day after if you must, but never, EVER, express contempt for voters.  Particularly majorities.  Tough to get elected when people realize you despise them.

James Soong’s reaction was something of a contrast with Li Ao’s and the China Post‘s.  Must be rough getting a measly 4% of the votes in a crummy race for mayor 12 years after handily winning a provincial governership race with 4.7 MILLION votes.   Yet despite his drubbing, Soong still managed to say that he respected the decision the people of Taipei made in the election.

Can’t quite give him full credit for that though, seeing as though he couldn’t even find it within himself to congratulate the victor afterwards.  What’s the deal with that, anyways?  Bad sportsmanship?  Excessive pride?  Sense of entitlement?  He did the same thing when he lost the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, but those were narrower contests.  This time he clearly lost – lost by a huge margin – and he STILL couldn’t pick up the phone and say, "You sure fought a good campaign.  I wish you well the next four years."

Admitting defeat and congratulating the winner in democratic politics isn’t just a matter of good manners; it’s a way of reaffirming one’s allegiance to the system.  We fought a political battle according to a set of rules, and I lost.  I may not like you or your ideology, but I recognize that the country will be better off if I recognize that you now have the right to lead.  Conversely, the country will suffer if I step outside the system and try to wrest that right away from you.

But beyond that kind of altruism is another reason – a purely selfish reason – why candidates and parties admit defeat after democratic elections.  Recall The Right Stuff, and John Glenn’s response to the press after learning the Soviets have racked up yet another first in space:

I think we ought to be forthright, gracious and magnanimous about this and say, well, the Russian guys just beat the pants off us, that’s all.  And there’s no sense in kidding ourselves about that.  But now that the space race has begun, I think that there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.

Glenn admits losing because he doesn’t want to kid himself.  He wants America to roll up its sleeves and get to work so it can do better next time.  But if you can’t acknowledge defeat, like Li Ao and James Soong and the China Post, then there’s a big temptation to engage in self-delusion instead: I lost because the election was stolen, or, I lost because the voters are my intellectual inferiors, or, I lost because of a mysterious "assassin’s" magic bullet.

Tough as it may be to admit, sometimes the fault lies not within the voters, but within ourselves.

UPDATE (Dec 14/06):  Wednesday’s Taipei Times seconds my final point here and here.

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I’ve Heard Of Bag Ladies, But This Is Ridiculous

It's either an Iranian wedding, or one of the Shih Ming-teh protesters has gotten REALLY lost.  Either way, I'm sure she and Cousin It will be very happy together…

Iranian wedding with woman completely covered with a red bag, covering her eyes as well. She walks with the guidance of two men on each side of her.

(Photo from the Nov 29th ed of the Taipei Times.)

While all the years spent in darkness may have left her hyper-sensitive to sunlight, the acuity of the rest of her senses has become exponentially magnified.  No one suspects that in her alter-ego she battles supervillains by night, in a never-ending quest for truth, justice, and the Iranian Way.

(Unfortunately, in close combat, she's occasionally put at somewhat of a disadvantage by the fact that her crime-fighting costume lacks any openings for…well, her ARMS, for one thing.)

Maybe if I'm a good boy, Santa will deliver a sweet little miss in a big, red sack to my house, too, this Christmas.

UPDATE (Apr 25/07):  The Iranian Dresstapo threatens to banish women from Tehran for 5 years for wearing "inappropriate" clothing.  Fortunately, our lady in red has absolutely NOTHING to worry about.

UPDATE (Jul 6/09):  Spanish scientists develop ways for people to use echolocation.  The training only takes 2 hours a day for several weeks.  (Although one firefighter, er, throws hot water over the idea of using the technique in fires, where the ambient sound can be 90 dB.)

<p>Spanish scientists develop echo-location in humans</p>

[Dr. Juan Antonio Martinez] recommends trying with the typical "sh" sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed straightaway. This is a similar phenomenon to that when travelling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to "hear" gaps in the verge of the road.

The next level is to learn how to master the "palate clicks". To make sure echoes from the tongue clicks are properly interpreted, the researchers are working with a laser pointer, which shows the part of an object at which the sound should be aimed.

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America, Cynical Arms Dealer? – Part I

[The two posts that follow were initially part of a single reply I made to a reader who made this charge in response to one of last week’s posts.]

A few times in my comments section I’ve seen the sentiment expressed that making money is America’s sole motivation in selling weapons to Taiwan.  It’s kind of a Marxian argument, but never mind.  For in this post, I’ll attempt to disabuse the reader of the notion entirely.

Let me assure you, if America’s sole interest was simply to make money, it wouldn’t bother trying to sell Taiwan weapons at all.  Better instead to sell an equivalent dollar value of products from some American sunset industry, like textiles or tobacco.  That way, America would earn exactly the same thing, profit-wise, while the administration in charge would go on to reap a windfall of votes from older workers, grateful that their jobs had just been spared.*

The kicker to this is that an America that contented itself with only selling textiles or tobacco to Taiwan would need never fear economic retaliation from China.  Because as far as profits from weapons sales go, what the Taiwanese hand giveth, the Chinese hand threatens to taketh away.  Selling weapons to Taiwan is bad business.

Don’t believe me?  If an industry is profitable, what does elementary micro-economics predict?  Market entry.  At which point, I humbly point out that there aren’t a lot of countries clamoring to get a piece of the "profitable" Taiwanese arms market.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  The number of countries willing to sell military equipment to Taiwan has dwindled to a grand total of one.  Which is precisely the sort of response one would expect from suppliers involved in an unprofitable industry.

At some point in this argument, you might object that Taiwan is offered weapons because it just wouldn’t be interested in buying American textiles or tobacco.  Taiwan would find the COST of these things exceeded their VALUE (relative of course, to cheaper foreign alternatives), and would instantly reject them.  But apply that argument to defensive arms, and we suddenly notice a curious thing.

What we notice is that the executive branch of Taiwan’s government DOES believe the value of American arms outweighs its costs.  It behooves us then, to explore the reasons why.

[Part II of the reply can be found here.]

* This oversimplifies the situation somewhat, because it doesn’t take into account the wrath of defense industry workers who’ve lost out by the policy.  The key here is to remember that workers in sunset industries tend to be older (making them less easy to retrain) and more tied to their locale (owning homes in areas where it might be problematic to find a buyer).  Comparatively speaking then, workers in sunset industries are likely to feel a greater sense of relief and gratitude when their jobs are saved than those working in defense industries.

America, Cynical Arms Dealer? – Part II

In the previous post, I pointed out the folly of believing that America just wants to sell Taiwan weapons in order to make money.  Believe it or not, there really ARE easier ways of making the stuff.

I generally take it as a given that sellers want to sell.  But sales never proceed unless the buyer also wants to buy.  Why then, did the KMT request the special arms package back in the late 90s?  What value did the KMT see in it then?  And more to the point, why does the executive branch of Taiwan’s government want to buy it now?

First, let’s state the blindingly obvious.  Weapons packages are valuable to Taiwan… because they contains WEAPONS.  Should war break out, having weapons on hand is usually considered a GOOD thing.  Against a full assault, Taiwan needs enough weapons to hold Chinese invaders off for a few weeks until an American fleet can arrive.  A Taiwan that’s unwilling to make that investment is a Taiwan that America might not be able to help, even with its best effort.

Besides full assaults, Taiwan also needs to concern itself about possible Chinese "ankle-biter" tactics.  Grant from the start that Patriot Missiles will never be able to protect Taiwan against a missile onslaught like that recently unleashed against Isreal by Hesb Allah.  The cost of such defense would be prohibitive.  But Patriots might come in VERY handy in defending against a one-a-day Hamas-style attack chiefly intended to demoralize Taiwan’s civilian population into accepting "reunification" talks on Beijing’s terms.

The second reason that weapons are valuable to Taiwan is that they provide military deterence.  They do this by raising the price of war to a level that Beijing might not be willing to pay.  For example, as things stand today, China might calculate that its fleet of submarines could cheaply and easily blockade Taiwan, bringing the island to its knees.  With Taiwan in possession of modern anti-sub airplanes, however, the equation changes.  That cheap and easy blockade suddenly isn’t so cheap and easy anymore, now that Chinese subs can be blown out of the water.  Sure, Taiwan’s anti-sub airplanes are pretty slow and can be shot down, but that means China has to deploy fighters in order to fight a RATHER expensive air war with Taiwan.  And so, it’s time for China to fish or cut bait.  China can either risk a whole lot more forces than it originally intended to…or it can end up leaving Taiwan alone.

The final reason that weapons have value for Taiwan is because they provide political deterence.  What I’m trying to say here is that there is a deterent effect to be gained not merely by the possession of weapons, BUT BY THE POLITICAL ACT OF BUYING AND DEPLOYING THEM.  Such an act in and of itself is a kind of signal which contains information about the level of determination a country or its leadership might have for resisting aggression.  But the converse is equally as true.  A country which DOESN’T attempt to defend itself in the face of aggression, and simultaneously expresses a willingness to barter away its sovereignty in exchange for a peace treaty, ALSO sends a message.  A message of quite a different sort – to both its enemies AND its friends.

Postscript:  Of the three weapons systems currently being considered, the only one I haven’t mentioned are the 8 diesel submarines.  Submarines are uniquely capable of surviving a Chinese first strike, and a few of these positioned near China’s shipping lanes could have an enormous impact on the amount of oil reaching Taiwan’s foe.  Secondly, Taiwanese subs offer the subs of its allies something very desirable, namely, plausible deniability.

For this, let us consider two scenarios: Scenario One, in which a Taiwan san subs is attacked by China, and Scenario Two, in which a Taiwan that possesses subs is attacked.

In both scenarios, China threatens war with any country that attempts to aid Taiwan.  What happens under each scenario when China finds its shipping under submarine attack?

Under Scenario One, China instantly knows that America or Japan is behind the sinkings, and  it retaliates, possibly before the American or Japanese fleet is ready for it.  But under Scenario Two, China can’t be sure that anyone other than Taiwan was behind the sinkings.  America and Japan can always deny their subs had anything to do it; they may even be telling the truth.  If China attacks America or Japan at this stage, they hand them a casus belli on a platter.

Before I close, I should point out that I’m not wedded to any of the particular weapons systems I’ve mentioned here, but I do think it’s worth trying to understand WHY Taiwan’s military is interested in acquiring them.  It’s also worth trying to understand why the KMT party should ever wish to block these weapons from reaching Taiwan.  But that’s a question best reserved for another day.