Rainageddon Links

Pretty sure we had weather like this once...

• Taiwan News has vids and pics of the massive flooding, and pics are all over Facebook and elsewhere. More than 600mms of rain fell in the north in a few hours yesterday. Trains stopped, flights stopped, it's crazy. My son spent all day at the airport yesterday waiting for a flight that was never permitted to land. Everything is closed, roads are knocked out, buildings flooded. Fortunately the death toll has been light. 
• 4 Taiwanese die in Phils casino attack
• ICRT's latest podcast, with the astute and knowledgeable Ross Feingold and William Yang.
• This great tool predicts where flooding will occur in Taipei based on rainfall quantity.
• Intensity of typhoons in Asia increasing. As predicted.
• National Interest: China shoves Taiwan off the world stage
• Note the condition of our nuke plants: soon to close for lack of repository for high level waste.
• The multitalented Poagao, whose blog was an inspiration for this one, writes scathingly of the way the police used the rain to get rid of aboriginal protesters in Taipei (among the protesters was a musician who played at Tsai's inauguration a year ago):
  

  But it was true, I saw when arrived. Literally hundreds of officers swarmed over the site. All the protesters had been physically removed, and heavy cranes were violently tearing down all the tents, towers, shelters…everything. All of the kitchen supplies, the artwork, the furniture, even a large portrait of President Tsai was dumped into a heap on the pavement, crushed, shoveled with a loader into the back of a large truck and hauled away as we watched helplessly from behind the barriers and police, who had set up a large megaphone system that was spewing patent nonsense like “There is low visibility due to the rain! For your safety, please leave the area!” The atmosphere felt like it was straight out of mainland China. The most bizarre thing was the presence of Environmental Protection Department officials. In a nation notorious for morally bankrupt factories spewing hazardous pollution into the air and the rivers, the EPA always claims that it is understaffed, underfunded and unable to monitor these blatant breaches of law. Yet they apparently have plenty of time and personnel to dismantle a peaceful protest that is completely green and sustainable.

• Is it huge? Is it vapor? Chinese firm says it wants to acquire Giant bikes. Giant later issued a denial, so it looks like vapor for the moment.
• CSIS is bringing budding scholars over to Taiwan for a "transformative experience". Join up if you can, should be great for networking. I should crash one of their parties, just to see the horrified looks on the organizers' faces. 
• A totally addled piece from TW Sentinel on how 2-28 has been hijacked for politics. Bog standard KMT position, one of several the party has evolved.
• (In Chinese) Registrations for Green Island Human Rights Youth Camp now open
• How climate change will impact Taiwan
• Ketagalen Media: Migrant workers, Civic Nationalism, May Day
• Taiwan's Gays are ready to marry and save Taiwan's faltering wedding industry
• SCMP: James Mattis hurts glass hearts of Chinese people. Good
• Richard Saunders on Water Curtain Cave. It's enchanting, be careful!
• Haulien's Baibao River, another lovely site
• Did mining cause the landslide that backed the Suhua Hwy?

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