Daily Links, Aug 17, 2009

What's perched on the blog today?

• Paul Katz with an excellent account of the typhoon, including many links to donation recipients.
• Michael C with an account of our riding in Miaoli, Jhuolan, and Dongshih. Michael also invites you to bike the Northern Cross with he and I this weekend, the 22nd-23rd.
  
• Letters from Taiwan blogs on CNN's Should Ma Step Down poll -- and ESWN responds to CNN with a classic ESWN ploy: putting up a poll from a Chinese-owned pro-KMT TV station in Taiwan without mentioning that the pollster is pro-KMT, apparently pretending that it is an actual unbiased poll. ESWN: always a good place to see half-dressed Chinese chicks.
• Patrick visits Huwei Fort in Danshui.
• Did politics undermine the rescue efforts in Taiwan? asks J Michael
• Maddog with an excellent Morakot round up. Simply wonderful.
• Steve on Changhua's stately Confucius Temple.
• Far Eastern Sweet Potato notes that China has pledged about 35 missiles to help Taiwan.

MEDIA: The Taipei Times collected attacks on the government's response by KMT legislators -- people whose greed and shortsightedness were responsible for so much of the failure. But it shows that with the upcoming election, KMT legislators have to put some distance between themselves and the government they created. Aid pours in from abroad. Ag losses push US $4oo million. 1 MW solar power station to be built in Taiwan science park. Taiwan's mango exports to Japan climb sharply. The world's first botanical company cluster now forming in Pingtung. Such clusters are common in Taiwan -- the old Shoes Nest in Taichung, the mold and die cluster in Sanchung, the IT industry in Hsinchu, or ceramics in Yingge. Willy Lam notes that China's Hu is emphasizing military expansion. Still plans to claim Arunachal Pradesh. Asia Sentinel has a nice piece on the government failure in Morakot. CSIS looks at Japan's choices in the face of China's rise. Commonwealth Mag has three excellent English articles on the government, water policy, and Morakot. In WSJ Richard Allen has an article talking about the "legal obligations" of the US to Taiwan under Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and how they can be used to balance China. Allen was Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to Nixon in '68.

UPDATE: A friend has identified the bird as a Tiger Bittern, a relative newcomer to Taiwan.
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