Rumors of Whore

Story came out this week saying that former President Chen Shui-bian's son, currently running for office in Kaohsiung, was nabbed visiting a prostitute. The report was a Next Magazine report. Next also drew a lawsuit in retaliation for claims that President Ma's sister Ma Yi-nan was using her political influence to arrange favors for friends and relatives.

I'm heartily sick of hearing about other people's sex lives. I don't care what other people do with their genitals if everyone is consenting. It would be great if the media focused on the urgent problems that the island faces. If it wishes to concern itself with prostitution, perhaps it could do some good work on human trafficking. At least the Taipei Times story had a paragraph from the head of the sex workers association calling for legalization of the sex trade.

The story is apparently some kind of smear job, for despite photos of Chen's vehicle, there is no evidence that Chen was in the car, and he says he was visiting people for the election. Chen is, let us recall, running for election in Kaohsiung.

The Miaoli land grab is also the focus of swirling rumors. Miaoli County Chief Liu Chen-hong and Premier Wu yesterday promised that the abused farmers would be given land elsewhere -- the soil of their own farms allegedly had been removed and replaced with useless crap soil, a very dirty trick, I've heard. Then someone called The Talking Show and said the new land was a cemetary. Apt, if true. maddog pointed out to me that one of the farmers was permitted to build a house even though the land had been expropriated. If it wasn't his land how did he get permission to build? "What about that and the other houses? I didn't hear any offer to replace those," maddog commented.

Another rumor floating around is that the land expropriated from the farmers is going to Chinese investors. County Chief Liu has been to China a couple of times, like many KMT politicians, so it wouldn't be surprising if such a rumor arose.

maddog flipped me a Liberty Times story that one of Liu's relatives has one of the few houses inside the new Miaoli HSR station special district that wasn't knocked down for construction of the station. Apparently he complained about the noise levels of the construction. There are several other stories of similar favors floating around. Liu's brother recently lost a court case involving a road expansion that County Chief Liu was involved in (Chinese, Chinese).

Rumors fly....
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