Daily Links, Oct 12, 2007

Plenty of fine homes in the community today...

Bent has a great post arguing that the display of military might on national day was the wrong move. TaiwanAirpower has photos of some of the new missiles and launchers.

Thoth on the China-Taiwan struggle over Lust, Caution

Mark discusses his second investment in a Taiwan firm.

Several people wrote on the new culture.tw portal. Here's Alton.

Scott back with another post on the King Car English village.

Several of us have been viewing that Bubble in China's stock market with some uncertainty.

The newsblog Taiwan Community has the full text of Chen's Speech from National Day.

Foodblogging: Michael has lunch with some great pics, Hao Chr goes to the Canton Palace.

Brian blogs on the race to save Taiwan's dolphins.

Maddog with an excellent post on how China creates more pro-Taiwan feelings each day.

MEDIA: IHT reports that Ma and Hsieh differ on their approach to China. That was in case the news for the last year or so had failed to reach you. AFP has the report on the opening of Ma Ying-jeou's High Court trial. From the media standpoint its an interesting article with some funky undercurrents.

Ma denied the allegations, insisting he had acted in exactly the same way as some 6,500 other government chiefs entitled to special expenses.

One of Ma's former aides at Taipei city hall, however, was sentenced to 14 months in prison. He had been charged with switching receipts in filing Ma's expense claims.

Ma is locked in a tight race against former premier Frank Hsieh of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Last month Hsieh and his running mate Su Tseng-chang were cleared of graft due to a lack of evidence but three other DPP heavyweights, including Vice President Annette Lu, were indicted on graft and forgery charges.

Note that Ma is not labeled the "frontrunner" as he so often is; the article manages to state that Ma acted as everyone else did -- thus hinting that Ma's defense was a guilty-like "everybody does it." AFP, like most media here, will never report that the money was in Ma's personal accounts, and the issue was whether he had intended to embezzle it, not whether any money had ended up in the wrong place. A no-brainer for any justice system, but here on Taiwan....the article then ends by noting that one of Ma's guys took the fall for him. Despite the lack of relevant and crucial detail, in its weird way it almost approaches something like reality.

[Taiwan]