Monday, February 22, 2010

Daily Links, Feb 22, 2010

Formosa Betrayed opens in several US cities this weekend. Take a look if you can. Meanwhile, what's brewing on the blogs?
MEDIA: Taiwan News pans the selection of the son of an arch-conservative Chinese Nationalist general as NSC chief. Big news this week was the tracing of the cyberassaults on Google and other US targets to universities in China. PCWorld has the tale. Michael Young in Epoch Times on the delusion that China is a good cooperation partner. Finally, Taiwan starts a serious solar roofs program. KMT-run legislature to impose income tax on military; could hit them at the polls come December. Taiwan film wins big in Berlin. China Times poll says DPP is leading in Hsinchu, Taoyuan, and Chiayi. Chiayi is a DPP stronghold, but either of the other two would a significant pick-up. Note that the KMT papers may well be releasing such data in order to get their people out to vote. Take with grain of salt. 2010 growth forecasts all up. Yay!

SPECIAL ANALYSIS: Shirley Kan with a Congressional Research Service report entitled: Taiwan: Major US Arms Sales since 1990. Kan's article is a rebuttal to the yammerheads who argued during the Chen Administration that Taiwan wasn't interested in its own defense. For example:
In 2007 alone, Taiwan ranked 6th among worldwide recipients, receiving $790 million in U.S. defense articles and services. Values for U.S. agreements with and deliveries to Taiwan are summarized below.1
2000-2003 period 2004-2007 period
U.S. Agreements $970 million $1.2 billion
U.S. Deliveries $4.0 billion $4.3 billion

From worldwide sources, including the United States, Taiwan received arms deliveries valued at $7.7 billion in the eight-year period from 2001 to 2008. Taiwan ranked 7th among leading arms recipients that are developing countries.
There's some excellent information on President Ma's behavior that can only add fuel to the debates over whether Ma is merely incompetent, or slyly preventing Taiwan from acquiring needed weapons.

AWESOME BLAST FROM THE PAST: Anthropologist Ryūzō Torii's photos of Formosa aborigines from the late 19th century.

RIP: Johnny Neihu's last column was this month. Many thanks for all you did, my man -- you were a source of useful information, a friend, and an inspiration.
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9 comments:

Robert R. said...

KMT-run legislature to impose income tax on military; could hit them at the polls come December.

Should be good. They've already recently imposed taxes on teachers. Or at least I thought they did. The Taiwan News article implies that teachers were still exempt and the legislature was working to change it. However my wife (a teacher) said last year that they'd be paying taxes for 2009 or 2010, and have even had some "training" from some bank or another.

However, I don't find any record of that tax change at the Nat'l Tax Admin or LY.

Michael Turton said...

Could it be a local government tax of some kind?

Tommy said...

Hmmm... where are all of the green polls? I haven't heard of any lately.

Michael Turton said...

greens don't do polls, don't know why. They don't publicize their internals.

Anonymous said...

Wha...? Greens always do polls. They just use it to keep track of how they are doing and how to allocate election resources, not to affect momentum.

Anonymous said...

Can you clarify? Did Johnny Neihu lose his job or has he passed away? What happened?

Anonymous said...

Did anyone else catch the letter in the Taipei Times yesterday by Lee Long-Hwa bitchin' about the lack of Olympic coverage?

I too have to ask, WTF is up with the TV program managers in Taiwan? Do they continuously want to be the laughingstocks of Asia??

It's funny how Taiwan constantly strives to be an "International Hub", but time after time they fail to report on anything outside of this little island. It's like the world outside of Taiwan doesn't exist.

Well at least "Band of Brothers" just started again on HBO. How can we live without that series for the millionth time. (don't get me wrong, I love BoB, but not every freakin' 6 months on HBO).

Just watch, next up will be Critters and ConAir. They must be running low on funds again. Dumbasses. No Olympic coverage is a JOKE.

Unknown said...

Anonymous 1:49 P.M. Man, you have artfully nailed one among a million of my pet peeves! Indeed, Con Air? WTF? That movie sucks! TV here is painful!
However, if you are a KBRO subscriber, as I am, things are much better. Not maybe not better in the sense of getting Olympic coverage, but much much better all the same. KBRO is cheaper. They have cheaper internet, cheaper cable, and if you are subscribing to these things, they give you a digital cable box like you have in the USA. You get ASN, which gives you American football and American + some Canadian hockey (when teams from both countries are playing). You get Universal, Hallmark, Sci Fi, CNBC, Bloomberg, Channel Newsasia, etc. You also get a lot more cheesy Taiwan non-stop gameshow/talkshow channels. You also get channels like Sanlih Taiwan, and Sanlih City. I am not sure whether those are blue-aligned or green-aligned or Chinese-owned. No doubt the latter, considering how things seem to work out media-wise on this island.

Carlos said...

Anonymous, Johnny Neihu announced the previous week that he would be wrapping up the column. Last week, the week before Chinese New Year, was the last one. It was written from his dog's perspective.

I'll miss him. Was it just one person writing? Either way those columns were great. I hope someone tries to fill in for him... I won't be picky.