Saturday, December 15, 2007

Daily Links, Dec 15, 2007

Lots of nourishing stuff on the blogs this week:

  • Fili blogs on cheese. It's everywhere in Taiwan now. And gets his fortune told.

  • Pashan goes to Pull Out Knife Mountain.

  • Formosa Neijia sees I am Legend (check out the poster)

  • Jerome Keating says the US has made a secret deal with China about Taiwan. Jerome also has a few choice observations on the claim that Lee Teng-hui told voters not to vote DPP, which turns out to be another bit of disinformation from Agence France Presse.

  • Pinyin News blogs on Ma's shifting stand on English education.

  • David blogs on the opening of human rights memorial at a former political prison in Chingmei.

  • Mark has a great blogpost comparing Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

  • Red A has a good post on the housing market, and how to calculate what you need. I'm with you Red; I can't pull the trigger on a house here either.

  • Talking Taiwanese has another strong post, this one on the university system here.

  • ACADEMIA: The new eJournal Taiwan in Comparative Perspective is out in force and everything is accessible by simple download of .PDF. Here's the TOC

    Articles

    ‘Communism’ in Taiwan and the Mainland: Transmission of the Great Leap Famine and of the White Terror
    Stephan Feuchtwang

    Death-Scapes in Taipei and Manila: A Postmodern Necrography
    Paul-François Tremlett

    The Intrusive Rendering: Dictation of Stereotypes and the Extra-Ordinary
    Doreen Bernath

    Commentaries

    The EU Two-Level Sovereignty System as Model for Taiwan and China
    Bengt Johansson

    Ethnicity in the Politics of the Unreal
    Allen Chun

    The 'Red' Tide Anti-Corruption Protest: What Does it Mean for Democracy in Taiwan?
    Fang-long Shih


    There are also book reviews of Mark Harrison's new book. Those of you into Chinese history might want to take a gander at Frog In the Well's Asian History Carnival.

    BLOGS: Dre alerted me to Taiwaneil. The Real Taiwan has started a photo forum.

    MEDIA: The transcript of Tom Christensen's roundtable comments on the referendum are here. The Onion parodizes China's Sha Zukang, the disarmament official who once said China's no-first-use nuke policy might not apply to Taiwan. The Establishment thinktank Council on Foreign Relations has a paper on the EU's China strategy. Dan Bloom compares renaming the Murderous Dictator Memorial to tearing down the Berlin Wall. China urges Taiwan's military to join forces to oppose independence.

    SPECIAL: Enjoy this clinically insane account from Chinese-owned Taiwan TV station TVBS that ESWN collected this week:

    When AIT chairman Raymond Burghardt came to visit recently, he met with KMT vice-president candidate Vincent Siew. During the meeting, Siew spoke about three foul plays by the DPP. Foul play #1: President Chen does not like his party's candidate Frank Hsieh, and so Hsieh will be assassinated in order to make way for Su Cheng-tseng to become the candidate. Foul play #2: On the 228 march or the 314 anti-Chinese-anti-splittism-law march, riots will occur that lead to imposition of emergency laws that will postpone the election. Foul play #3: Assassinate the KMT candidate.

    8 comments:

    Dave Chesser said...

    Michael,
    Thanks for the link. The "I Am Legend" poster struck me because that's what CKS will likely look like after the DPP and KMT finish fighting over it. :)

    Formosa Neijia

    Anonymous said...

    Mr. Turton:

    Have you heard anything about this story?
    洋老師罵髒話 朝陽科大學生激憤
    http://news.chinatimes.com/2007Cti/2007Cti-Focus/2007Cti-Focus-Content/0,4518,9612150131+96121511+0+172746+0,00.html

    Michael Turton said...

    Yes, anon. The story is the usual nonsense. I might blog on it, but what could I say?

    Michael

    Prince Roy said...

    if you have some hard facts that story is nonsense, then it might be interesting to run with it, maybe more as commentary on the continued lack of journalistic standards in the media here that results in this kind of baseless reporting.

    Michael Turton said...

    It isn;t about me, and I shall blog on it as soon as I have finished making pizza today.

    Mark said...

    The sad thing is that the day after I wrote that piece on Kucinich, the Democrats announced they were excluding him from the next debate.

    Anonymous said...

    Siew alluded to these "tricks" in the headlines of the Taipei Times, too. He spoke of meeting with his 'good friend,' Burghardt.

    Michael Turton said...

    Mark, that SUCKS. The Dem choice is awful, and the Rethugs are worse. No way your man Paul wins out; and so we get another center-right establishment asshole when what we need is to change whole direction of things.

    Marc, liberty times had a list of seven of these tricks Siew mentioned. I can't believe anyone could have taken them seriously.

    Michael