Typhoon Day Short Shorts

Happy Father's Day! Hope the dreary weather hasn't damped your enthusiasm for a little light reading....

Wendell Minnick has a long piece in Defense News on the insertion of a requirement for the President to report on Taiwan's Air Force status by pro-Taiwan Congressmen in the 2010 Defense Authoritization act. The language targets the sale of F-16s to the island.

Also on the global front, the Taipei Times also had a piece on two interesting developments in Cross-Himalayan politics. Beijing and New Delhi resume talks:

“The outlook of this round [of talks] is certainly not good,” New Delhi-based strategic analyst Brahma Chellaney said. “The atmosphere has deteriorated in the recent months, plus there’s been escalation of tensions along the Himalayan border.”

Feathers were ruffled two months ago when China objected to a US$60 million Asian Development Bank loan for a project in northeast India in territory that is claimed by Beijing.

Indian officials say China also tried to block its efforts to get the UN to designate a Pakistan-based militant leader a terrorist, as well as privately lobbied against a nuclear deal between India and the US last year.

It's not really widely understood in the West what a flashpoint the Himal region is, with advanced aircraft and tens of thousands of troops poised for war, and Chinese claims on India to provide the tension. The Taipei Times paired that story with another India-China story on China's water strategy, which essentially involves the ecological catastrophe of diverting Tibet's fresh water to China, rather than letting it flow into India. That will essentially be an act of war. India has claimed before that China plans to dam the Brahmaputra River, but China has denied such plans.

Note that all of this is backed by a Chinese geostrategy to surround India with Chinese allies, ports, and bases. Here is a link again to the burgeoning China-Bangladesh relationship, which is aimed at severing the neck that connects India with its states in the east, according to the article.

It goes without saying that for the media, the cause of tensions along 90% of the Chinese border is China, but when it comes to Taiwan, it's Chen Shui-bian. Thank heaven they put A-bian in jail and saved us from a China-India War.

The Peaceful Rise is going to be neither.

Turning to the local front, mayors and County Chiefs to serve five years under new rules proposed by the Ministry of the Interior. Much money will be saved that way. This means that the next round of local elections will be in 2014. The last paragraph of the article is interesting:

It was also decided at the meeting that district administrative consultant committees would be established in the new special municipalities to allow local elected representatives who are poised to lose their jobs after the upgrade and mergers access to public office work.

A jobs program for elected representatives. You could understand if it was for government workers eliminated by the upgrades. This way the party that has the majority control will be able to insert its supporters into local government positions. *sigh*
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Daily Links

• The expansion of China's fishing fleet is a headache for the US, and Confucius Institutes in Africa are just plain headaches
  
• Taiwan Photographers is now on Twitter.
• Demo on Taiwan's pro-KMT judiciary
• Fascinating analysis of current account surpluses, debt, and the US-China-Japan economic interdependency
• Jay Chou cast as Green Hornet sidekick

EVENT: FREE BEER!!! at Forumosa's August Happy Hour at Alleycat's Huashan - their newest location! Thursday, August 13 at 8:00pm at Alleycat's Huashan
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