“We are just asking the government and the building contractor to respect us local residents, include us in the negotiations, and keep a safe distance between our homes and the wind turbines,” Chen said.My friend said that they were planning to block the cement trucks coming in. I rode over on my bike today, a gorgeous day, and spoke to some of the individuals who were present, and they told me that the police struck the protesters in the kidneys with batons, cuffed them, and hauled 17 of them off to jail in nearby Tunghsiao. They were just released a few minutes ago as of this writing. There's a Facebook page here, and photos of today's incident on Facebook here. Incidents like these happen regularly, most go unreported.
The Germany-based wind energy firm, InfraVest GmbH, plans to build 12 new wind turbines along the coast of Miaoli County — six in Tongsiao Township (通霄) and the other six in Yuanli.
Worried about potential negative impacts from the turbines and upset that they were not consulted about the project, Yuanli residents have launched a campaign asking InfraVest to revise its plan about half a year ago.
While InfraVest initially suspended construction because of the protests, the project was resumed earlier this month without any agreement having been reached with residents earlier this month, triggering a larger protest.
BLOGS:
- History: The Douglas Company in Danshui
- Oz: Taiwanese man sues woman for being ugly.
- UK air campaigns against Formosa in WWII
- Richard wonders if Taiwan travel authorities have a problem with foreigners
- Sailing to Matsu -- excellent info
- Long Dong, Taiwan, a hidden gem.
- The carrier killer missile: an instrument of deception?
- Jens Kastner on the transfer of Chen Shui-bian to Taichung
- China calls for non-official political dialogue, as if that hasn't been happening since at least the mid 1990s.
- Taiwan missing out on Free Trade deals. Wow. Who could have predicted that!?
- DPP runs into trouble over allegations of underworld figures belonging to the party.
- YouBike is victim of its own success
- Foreign marriage: 475K locals married to foreigners, 320K Chinese brides, 1 in 10 elementary school students has foreign parent.
- Bird flu arrives, and so does chicken throwing.
- Taiwan expands China travel advisory.
- The Taiwan-Japan fisheries pact is bad news for tuna
- Headmistress of Machining: a Taiwanese woman conquers a China market
- China 2.0 is in trouble: with Europe and America lost in austerity, could be another tough year for Taiwan.
- Atlantic: 28,000 rivers in China are gone... "As recently as 20 years ago, there were an estimated 50,000 rivers in China, each covering a flow area of at least 60 square miles. But now, according to China's First National Census of Water, more than 28,000 of these rivers are missing."
- This has been circulating on several email groups I am on: Paul H.B. Godwin and Alice L. Miller, “China’s Forbearance Has Limits: Chinese Threat and Retaliation Signaling and Its Implications for a Sino-American Military Confrontation. How China signals its displeasure and when it is getting ready for war.
- Taiwan and India, a match made in heaven. This should have been done in the 1990s.
- Taiwan, Nepal hold talks.
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8 comments:
So why do the Taiwanese object to wind machines too? They object to Nuke Power Plant, and now wind machines too? Yet this is one place that has one of the highest demands for computer and electronic goods.
I think they objected to not being consulted. And not paid off.
A very reliable source who has to deal with this problem as part of his job (neither working for the investor nor the government) has assured me that the Yuanli residents had been part of the consultations for a long time. But basically never did anyone stand up during those meetings and conferences and voiced his concerns about the plans - until now, suddenly, the same people start these protests, claiming no one has ever asked their opinions.
Looks like some local politicians all of a sudden saw the need to mobilize everyone for protests. There are rumors that Taipower might be sponsoring these anti-wind power protests, or maybe people just expect a "rich German company" to cough up some extra NT$. I don't know what's true, but there have been a lot of protest movements recently that I could empathize with more easily.
Thanks Klaus. When i first heard of this last year, I assumed it was just a shakedown.
There you go again saying America is practicing "austerity". How do you see America practicing "austerity"?
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Austerity means not spending on stimulating aggregate demand in times of economic downturn, as mainstream economics counsels. The US version is not as nasty as the European version, but the same class war/wealth transfer effects, contempt for the future, and indifference to the fate of the hoi polloi are found on both sides of the Atlantic.
I have a friend with a family home in Houlong. Their take is that all the protests are just a tactic for landing a cash payoff and the objections are pure theater.
To me austerity means spending a lot less money than you're taking in, or at the very least not spending more money than you're taking in. America is still spending far more every year than it takes in. If it feels like austerity it's only because we've changed from spending like 350 million drunken sailors to spending like 349,999,999 million drunken sailors.
Keynes had an interesting theory about government saving during good times and spending during recessions. But we didn't save during the good times.
But even if we had, well let's look at Japan. They built up a huge reserve. Then when bad times hit they tried to spend their way out of it. They called it the "lost decade". The last time we had one of those occurred when we also we're trying to spend our way out of a problem. Instead of calling it the "lost decade" we called it the "great depression".
I'm not saying a budget deficit necessarily is bad. The Reagan boom occurred at a time of low taxes and high spending for example. But we weren't starting from such a high debt load back then.
Part of the reason for spending is to create investor confidence that money will be flowing. But when the government is as much in debt as America's - we recently lost our triple-a bond rating - investors worry about the creation of even more debt.
Sorry it took so long to respond. I've been busy.
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