Daily Links, June 14, 2010: Non stop rain edition

Here's a man who successfully found a moment out of the rain. The rest of us suffering under the Deluge can only find refuge on the blogs this week.

BLOGS:

• David's letter in the Taipei Times about the death penalty.
• Rain video from Nascent
• Drew on bikes, ECFA, and mythology
• Sponge Bear says expats who like Taiwan beer are delusional and have been in Taiwan too long.
• Is China moving against Taiwanese and Japanese corporations?
• Ben observes the "collective wisdom of the Chinese nation" in Ma's discourse. Note how it too stinks of the Chinese-barbarian dichotomy in the first link in the media section.
• Taiwan Air on the Lungkung Air Station in Chungli, now abandoned.
• Wandering Taiwan on the Penghu fireworks festival
• Pat on biased media coverage on ERA cable of the world cup.
• Taiwanonymous looks at translations. I have often seen the same problems, good spot.
• Hear in Taiwan interviews local professor on wage hikes.
• Todd with pics from the Taichung Photowalk
• Joshua busts someone selling illegal birds.
• Demo! says Taiwan should expand connections with Ukraine
• China, India, Coal, Emissions.
  

MEDIA:

• Resurrecting the China-Barbarian dichotomy. Power has not made China more cosmopolitan in its thinking, argues the writer.
• KMT does well in local township elections.
• Much donated blood in Taiwan is unusable thanks to high lipid levels.
  
• Labor unrest continues to "spread" in China. Yet all the plants mentioned are foreign-owned.
• Danny B says Y2K bug looms over the ROC.
• AIG agrees on terms for Taiwan unit.
• 2009 sex ratio for births was 109 to 100 in favor of males.
  
• MOEA trying to lure Taiwan firms home.
• Taiwan students protest pro-China bullshit at their university. A Vice-President of I-shou University mentioned in the article was the KMT candidate against Chen Chu in Kaohsiung last election cycle.
• Taiwan. Oil. Belize.
• Sun Moon Lake wants another cable car.
• Rupert Hammond-Chambers with excellent piece on taking China out of the US-Taiwan equation.
• DPP says government oversimplifying ECFA with Taiwan.
• CALL CENTER gang busted in Bangkok.
  
• UDN on why new townships have failed.
• Chen Shui-bian is so f*cking awesome, he can get the Vatican to canonize the saints he desires. No, seriously, Beijing is completely insane about Chen Shui-bian.
  
• Brookings with a transcript of the May 18 event, assessing Ma Ying-jeou at mid-term.
• JapanFocus on the alternate narrative to the main gov't one on South Korean ship sinking allegedly due to N. Korean torpedo. Don Kirk has a response in Asia Times: if you don't believe a report unsupported by evidence from nations still at war with N Korea and contradicted by one of its investigators, you're obviously a conspiracy theorist.
  
• When you look at the Establishment writing on the lost Afghan conflict, which only benefits US military contractors and China, you hear the echo of the Japanese at the end of WWII, refusing to surrender even though the war was lost. Each government and its supporters are totally irrational. Greenwald captured the essential hypocrisy of our foreign policy in nifty post on John McCain the other day.
• NASA: Hottest spring, Jan-May, and 12 months on record, even as sun is at minimum.
  

RIDES & BIKING :

• UPCOMING:Several of us are biking the Central Cross Island Highway from Sincheng in Hualien to Puli on the other side this weekend, Sat-Sun, overnighting near Tayuling where 8 and 14 meet. Drew has details. Weather looks good at this point.
• Michael C did Taipingshan this week. Awesome ride.
• Cycling Satin Sestina with a marvelous musing on loving one's bike
  

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