Typhooned! and Train Bombed

Lots of tourism sites in the hills of Miaoli

Last night a local train was bombed at Songshan Station in Taipei. Various injury reports are circulating in the media, but it seems at least 24 were injured. No deaths, luckily. I'll be updating this as more news comes in... seems to be a fireworks package, no dedicated explosives such as plastic explosives, military weapons, or homemade fertilizer bombs, etc. Still looking for more details...

Imagery and video of bombing from SETV
LATEST: Major crime, not terrorism, say police.
LATEST: Suspect identified
LATEST: Suspect identified from DNA, is 55 yr old male, injured in blast, cannot communicate

Typhoon links are below the READ ME line. It is now pounding southern Taiwan as of 4:30 PM, the eye has already entered the Taiwan Strait. Heaven help the poor people in China who have to suffer under its pounding.

Windy, Soggy, Gigantic Usagi to smack Taiwan...

Now upgraded to the year's biggest typhoon. Oh boy. The South is going to get slammed.
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Traces of Soulik: Wrecked Bridge

My man Steve F and I rode out east of Jhuolan over to Shuangchi village. The view east from the Baibufan Bridge was even lovelier than usual, because typhoon Soulik had knocked down the wires that usually chop the scene in half. And not just the wires....

....Soulik's fury had sent streams of water cascading down the hill behind Steve's left shoulder. It had undermined the bridge and sent that retaining wall floating out into the river.

Another view of the damage.

In this photo, if you look carefully at the expansion joint, you can see that the end of the bridge shifted to the east roughly an inch or so. This kind of thing is so routine, yet so expensive, a reminder of how difficult it is to keep infrastructure up in this land of steep, frangible hillsides and torrential rain.
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Typhoon Updates UPDATED X 3

Typhoon skies over Douliu this morning.

UPDATE 3: A reader was in Hengchun and sent in his pics of the typhoon on Flickr.

UPDATE 2: Saturday's Taipei Times article on Tembin flooding. Note that Tembin is still wandering the east coast.

FTV reports: 50,000 households without power, Hengchun, Pingtung area (Kenting) smacked by the typhoon (Video).

FTV reports: Fangliao in Southern Pingtung hard hit, Hengchun suffers biggest rainfall in 69 years. (Video)

UPDATES:
On Facebook, Taitung Let's Go has a bunch of S Taiwan photos. Here are three, the first two of Hengchun town in Kenting, the third of Taitung city.

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Hello, Soala

Twenty seconds of Soala in my backyard:

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=UPDATE= Video: Typhoon Fanapi, Taichung, Taiwan

7:45 am: The wind is mounting. More updates on the way!

Fanapi maps and info. Gusts up to 200 kms an hour. Ouch!

Fanapi about 9:15

UPDATE: Well, it's noon, and Fanapi seems to have fizzled here in The Chung. On the east side of city I'm not getting any rain and the wind is negligible. At present, it looks as if all you who were hoping for a day off tomorrow better get ready for work.

Downed tree in the neighborhood. This was the only serious damage I saw when I went into town to the market, which was open, though not heavily trafficked.

Northern Taichung under Fanapi.

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Siaolin Village Geological Probe Report

Typhoon Morakot buried Siaolin Village, killing hundreds. Many victims claimed that tunneling for a nearby diversion project was a cause of the disaster. This week the geological assessment was released....

“More than 30 million tonnes of mud rushed down from nearby Mount Siandu [獻肚山] at a speed of 180kph when the mountain collapsed,” Chen Chien-chih (陳建志), a professor at National Central University’s Graduate Institute of Geophysics, told a press conference yesterday. “The massive mudslide was divided into two ... only 30 seconds after it began — the larger mudslide continued on until it hit the Cishan River [旗山溪] valley, wiping out the northern part of Siaolin. This explains why some survivors said they heard two large bangs that morning.”

He said it was only 110 seconds from the beginning of the mudslide until the northern part of the village was wiped out.

The smaller mudslide went down the valley of a smaller, unnamed creek and formed a barrier lake, Chen said.

“As the mud, sand and stones built up, the barrier lake eventually collapsed 30 to 50 minutes later, burying the southern part of the village,” he said. “Most of the survivors came from the south of the village — they made it out in time, before the second mudslide buried the southern part of the village.”

National Taiwan University geosciences professor Hongey Chen (陳宏宇) said that long-term unstable geological composition was one of the causes of the tragedy.

“Field research found the geological composition of Mount Siandu to be quite unstable as it’s located on the border between shale and sandstone composition, and many geological layers there are actually leftover debris from ancient mountain collapses that occurred thousands of years ago,” Hongey Chen said. “If nothing happens, nothing happens — but if exceptionally heavy rainfall occurs, unstable layers can be washed down at any time.”

He said that as many as 92 other communities in Nantou, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Taitung counties are also under threat from unstable geological compositions.

I posted on Siaolin last year, translating a presentation on the diversion project many villagers claim to be the cause of the disaster. The Public Construction Commission reported earlier this year, saying that rainfall, not construction, caused the disaster. To wit:

Lee said the report’s conclusion was also based on the fact that the amount of explosives used to blast the tunnel was insufficient to have caused tremors large enough to lead to disaster.

The largest amount of explosives used at any one time was 182kg, less than the tremor caused by the 2006 Hengchun Earthquake, the equivalent of 475 million kilograms of explosives.

Commonwealth Magazine had an in-depth piece on the region's complex geology shortly after the disaster....

When there is too much precipitation, the environment's capacity to absorb it becomes overwhelmed.

"That's especially true in the Gaoping River's midstream and downstream areas, where the geological structure is a mix of sandstone, mudstone and shale. The terrain is not only easily loosened and vulnerable to collapse, it features dip slopes and multiple faults and is traversed by a fracture zone, conditions conducive to the entire side of a mountain sliding down," Chen explains. The result was widespread flooding, from the Cishan River Valley, encompassing Namasia Township and Siaolin Village, where hundreds were buried alive during Typhoon Morakot, to the Laonong River Valley, including Liouguei Township and the hot spring resort town of Baolai.

And a warning for the future....

Dr. Huei-long Wu, the director general of the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau, estimates that the flooding last August created about 1.2 billion cubic meters of debris in the disaster area that stretched south of Jiayi County and into Taidong County. But only about a third of that, or 400 million cubic meters, actually made its way into rivers, with the rest remaining upstream or at midstream. Thus, the next big storm could trigger even bigger debris flows, Wu believes.

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Daily Links

• Cilantro, that ubiquitous spice in Taiwan: why you might hate it
• The Economist asks what makes a country
• China is probing possible iron ore supplier monopoly. Because there is nothing like a one-party state complaining about monopoly behavior.
• Big anti-ECFA rally slated for June 6
• Taiwan should welcome Chinese students to boost competitiveness, says the MOE, even though it is unlikely that Taiwan students will study in China, says MOE.

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Typhooon Parma may gobsmack Taiwan

The Swinden Group says:

As of 1500 GMT September 30, 2009, Typhoon Parma, with sustained winds of 85 mph, is located about 160 nautical miles north-northwest of Palau. Parma is a category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale of 1 to 5 and is expected to intensify to at least a category 3 storm.

Over the next several days, Typhoon Parma will track towards Luzon, Philippines while intensifying and could come dangerously close to Luzon battering the region with torrential rains triggering life-threatening flooding and mudslides. Once past Luzon, Typhoon Parma is expected to track towards Taiwan reaching the region early next week.

“As Typhoon Parma travels closer to the Philippines, the immediate threat from this storm will be the possibility of torrential rains causing widespread flooding for central and northern Philippines,” explains Matthew Swinden, President of the Swinden Group. “If Parma continues on its forecasted track, it will skirt by Luzon, Philippines on Friday and Saturday. Even with a near miss, damage to the infrastructure due to widespread flooding could be a threat as we saw with Tropical Storm Ketsana last week. Travel in and out of Luzon may be hampered over the weekend and into early next week. We have been urging our clients to have a plan in place in the event they need to leave the area. Those that are remaining to ride out the storm should be prepared to be self sufficient, and fend for themselves for at least 72 hours if not longer.”

While Parma may prove to be a near miss for the Philippines, Taiwan may experience a direct hit. The Swinden Group is advising their clients to prepare for the worst in Taiwan as Parma may have devastating effects upon the region if it makes a direct strike.

Gird thy loins, prepare thy pocketbook. Parma (yesterday pic) looks like it is going to swing north over the Philippines and then veer into southern Taiwan. Could be grim.
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Ma Ying-jeou, comedian.

CTI, pro-KMT to the core, did a story yesterday on Ma once again making his bizarre jokes that are unfunny to their listeners, in this case Morakot refugees. This "Ma-style" joke, the news station announces, has him saying that government workers are not as good as private workers. At about 1:10 he begins:

"These houses were provided by [the Buddhist charitable foundation] Tz Chi. The ... agricultural products by the side of the road were donated by Hon Hai. What is the government doing? Sometimes private organizations are more effective than the government. Because private organizations don't have to follow the government purchasing rules, this regulation, that regulation, government workers also are afraid of making mistakes involving benefits to others. Private organizations don't have these considerations, so they are more effective."

In an earlier event depicted in the video (thanks to maddog & commenter for the correction), a woman stood up and started to discuss something with him. Then he said, apparently thinking he was funny: "Let me finish speaking and then I'll save you."

As the announcer said, it's a Ma style joke.

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Economist stinks on Dalai Lama visit

No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

As many news reports have related, the Dalai Lama will be in Taiwan soon (w00t!). He is getting a visa as a foreigner, not an entry permit as an overseas Chinese as in 1997, too. The move was a nifty one by the DPP, not only making President Ma squirm and the Chinese bluster, but also reminding the world that Taiwan exists and even more crucially, once again drawing attention to the disaster here -- which is still ongoing and still requires donations (after all, the Dalai Lama has a global following who donate to worthy causes). This was a great move by the DPP, and its payoffs go beyond politics.

There was much media commentary on this, some of it quite good, but the normally excellent Economist published an inexcusable piece on the upcoming visit of the Dalai Lama to Taiwan. I'd say it was crap, but I have no desire to slight honest fertilizer. This is one of the worst pieces they've put out on Taiwan in some time. Let's take a look....

After eight years of worsening relations under President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), now the main opposition, even a Taiwan-China summit has become conceivable. Now that Mr Ma is also chairman of the ruling Nationalist party, the Kuomintang, or KMT, such a meeting could be held with Hu Jintao not as China’s president, but as the head of its Communist Party.

The "worsening relations" propaganda theme seems to have acquired a tenacious hold in the media -- which is hardly surprising, since that is the only place where relations worsened. In the real world the busiest air route on the planet was between a city in China and one in Taiwan, and hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese had invested billions in China, a sum that grew yearly under the DPP Administration, which legalized investments. Indeed, relations got so bad that the two sides negotiated direct charter flights, student exchanges, informal police agreements, academic exchanges, and other items too numerous to list. None of these things existed under the Lee Teng-hui Administration (except for the factories moving to China) or previous KMT administrations, but never mind that. If Beijing says relations worsened, the Economist will dutifully say so too.

Thus, when investments grow and exchanges expand, relations are worsening, if you're from the DPP. And when Chinese missiles accumulate, relations are worsening, but it is the DPP Administration's fault, and has nothing to do with China's desire to annex Taiwan even at the cost of a regional war. It is hard to think of anything more stupid, more shitty, more anti-democracy, more completely retarded, than this "eight years of worsening relations" horse shit, and I devoutly hope never again to see it in print.

Pardon my rant. Why after four years am I still dreaming that facts can somehow insert themselves into discussions of cross-strait relations under the DPP?

But further observe how that in this construction China has vanished as a player -- relations get better or worse based solely on what Taiwan does. China is merely the passive recipient of Taiwanese action. This media construct is not merely wrong but actually upside down -- the determinant of cross-strait relations is China's attitude, and it didn't like the fact that the DPP defended the island's sovereignty and economy, and dickered hard with it. Finally it ceased to talk to the DPP (the DPP wanted good relations with China). Relations are "better" because Ma does Beijing's bidding, since in this calculus "better" is defined as what makes China happy -- and of course, as I have ceaselessly noted on this blog (example), the KMT has given away the shop on Taiwan.

Onward and upward....

So it seems astonishing that Mr Ma has jeopardised all this by doing the one thing most calculated to upset China: accepting a visit to Taiwan from the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, whom China reviles as a “splittist” when it is polite and “a jackal in monk’s clothing” when it feels cross.

China's control over this writer is so powerful that he apparently believes that Ma has jeopardized his China Kowtow and 2011 Hu-Ma Nobel Peace Prize Lovefest Sell-Out Tour. Not a chance. Does this writer seriously believe that China is going to expel a million Taiwanese and $200 billion worth of investments? Cut direct flights? Cancel ECFA? Start bombing immediately? Take away the er nai of Taiwanese businessmen in China? In any case -- it is worth repeating and I haven't said it in a while -- cross-strait relations are being run by KMT elites who detest Ma, not Ma himself. Ma will make a convenient whipping boy for all involved, but as reported today, China finessed the whole issue anyway by bloviating at the DPP, and the sellout will go on regardless even as the audience sits entranced by all the political theatre. It's not like ECFA, the real goal of the current Administration, will be slowed even one minute by this.

The Economist then goes on to give three reasons why the DL's visit couldn't be turned down this time as Ma did before, and continues...

China has of course responded angrily to Mr Ma’s decision to accept the Dalai Lama, as it does when any foreign government gives house room to the Tibetan leader—or these days to Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled activist from China’s ethnic-Uighur minority.

It is noticeable, however, that China has directed its fiercest criticism not at Mr Ma, but at the DPP, which favours Taiwan’s eventual formal independence from China. It accused the party of trying “to sabotage the hard-earned positive situation of cross-straits relations”.

Note that the point of view Beijing expresses here is the one the Economist has actually adopted in presenting this article -- that the DPP "worsens" relations (remember those eight years of worsening relations).

Did you catch that gross error there? Instant replay:

.....at the DPP, which favours Taiwan’s eventual formal independence from China.

Hey but (1) Taiwan isn't part of China now and (2) thus the DPP does not favor independence from China but simply independence, period. Taiwan independence supporters do not believe that Taiwan is part of China. Once again Beijing adumbrates the writer's presentation of affairs.

This indicates both the greater sensitivity China has shown in recent years to Taiwan’s internal politics, and the dilemma its policy always faces there. If it punishes Mr Ma by introducing sanctions or slowing down the pace of rapprochement, it would undo his government’ s main achievement. And the biggest beneficiary of this would be the DPP, China’s enemy.

Beijing-centric again -- the DPP is described in terms of China, and in terms that China would approve of -- the DPP is not China's enemy ("The DPP's evil motives will definitely be opposed by compatriots across the Taiwan Straits," Beijing howled today). The government of China, rather, is the enemy of Taiwan independence and democracy, just as it is the enemy of democracy in its own land.

I was talking about this on the net with a long-time observer of Taiwan affairs, who recalled that years ago The Economist printed a Leader advocating Taiwan independence. But The Economist was made of sterner stuff then.

UPDATE: Excellent comments below

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Daily Links

• Jon Adams explains why Ma permitted the DL to come to Taiwan
• Ralph Jennings of Reuters reports on Ma attempting to salvage his reputation after Morakot.
• China Daily gives the propaganda rundown from the Empire. The article is actually an interesting mix of distortions, disinformation, truths, half-truths, and lies. Great work.
• NYTimes says that China opposes the DL's trip to Taiwan. No kidding? And in other news the Raj opposed Gandhi's visit to India, and Apartheid advocates resolutely rejected attempts by Mandela supporters to get him out of jail. If the Dalai Lama wants better press, he needs to set up 1,400 missiles opposite a democracy, demand that it be annexed to Tibet, and then threaten to plunge the region into war if he doesn't get his way.
  

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DPP invites Dalai Lama to visit disaster areas

UPDATE: It's official, the DL will be permitted to come and has accepted "in principle", says AP.

DPP politicians in hard-hit southern Taiwan have invited the Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan, as Bloomberg reports:

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, whose popularity has plummeted over his response to the deadliest storm in five decades, faces a new challenge after opposition politicians invited the Dalai Lama to visit typhoon- hit areas.

Local government politicians in the opposition-controlled areas worst affected by Typhoon Morakot said they plan to invite the Tibetan spiritual leader to bless the land and people, Sunny Jien, spokeswoman for the Kaohsiung city government, said today.

The DL is widely revered in Taiwan and his previous visits packed stadiums. The DPP has a cordial relationship with the Tibetan freedom movement as well (blogged here). President Ma, as the Bloomberg piece notes, previously indicated that the "time was not right" for a DL visit. From a previous post:

Wondrously, President Ma made this announcement even though the Dalai Lama hasn't actually asked to come here....

Since the question was hypothetical — the Dalai Lama hasn’t applied for permission to visit — Ma could have avoided controversy by simply pointing this out. Instead, he chose to say the Tibetan spiritual leader would not be welcome. His statement was clearly aimed at currying favor with China. Even if such a visit had been in the cards, Ma could have stressed that it was purely for religious reasons, and that he would not meet the monk. Instead, Ma caved in completely.

Fortunately, KMT legislative speaker and Ma rival Wang Jin-pyng, always happy to stand on Ma's shoulders when he is drowning, has suggested that local religious organizations invite the Dalai Lama to Taiwan in his capacity as a religious leader. The Chen Administration made great strides in cultivating ties with Tibet, (blogged here), and succeeding in bringing the Dalai Lama to Taiwan several years ago, to great public acclaim.

A tour of the south is likely to bring the DL into contact with Master Hsing Yun, the aging pro-annexationist, pro-KMT monk who runs Foguangshan, the massive temple complex between Kaohsiung and Pingtung (most recent post) near some of the affected areas. Indeed, with so many of Taiwan's Buddhist temples and organizations openly pro-KMT, the politics of this visit, should it come off, will be fun to watch.

From a media standpoint the piece is rather interesting. On one hand, it conventionally presents the "thaw" in relations between "Taiwan" and "China" (not the KMT and the CPP) as the result of Ma...

Under Ma, relations with China have thawed, with the two sides striking agreements on investment and travel. China views the Dalai Lama, a figurehead of movements to free Tibet, as a divisive force.

...with Beijing as the passive recipient of Ma's actions, rather than the "thaw" actually resulting from Beijing's approval of a President who wants to annex Taiwan to China. On the other hand, it actually says that the DL heads up the movement to "free Tibet". It is also an unusually long piece.

Interesting news, and a challenge flung in the face of President Ma Ying-jeou, and more importantly, Beijing. What will China and its allies in Taipei do?

And how will the international media handle this conjuction of the freedom movement in Tibet, which it is sympathetic to, and Taiwan's pro-independence forces, who are (it goes without saying) "radicals" who "provoke" Beijing.

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Ma Administration Typhoon Shock Doctrine

In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein writes extensively on how governments use economic, natural, and social shocks to carry out social engineering that benefits elites while leaving ordinary individuals amid wrecked societies with decaying infrastructure, a smaller share of wealth, and diminished future prospects.*

I've made this point before, but it is worth making again: the Ma government's response to the typhoon disaster in the south is identical to its response to the economic crisis last year. The only difference is in the speed of events. As I noted then, the crisis had been used by the Ma Administration in a classic shock doctrine way, as leverage to get the shellshocked public to accept an accelerated approach to the ECFA sell-out agreement with China. Now, argues Taiwan News in today's editorial, the current typhoon disaster is being used to force through new legislation that would enable widespread social engineering in disaster-hit areas. After comparing the new legislation to the 921 Earthquake recovery laws, the editorial observes:

Article 12 would give central government and local governments the power to compulsorily order the removal of villages, naturally almost exclusively of indigenous peoples, from designated areas with no provisions for consultation with village assemblies or communities.

Article 13 would permit the resettlement of disaster victims without regard to laws or regulations concerned with urban or rural planning, national park management, environmental impact assessment, water or soil conservancy or "other related laws," including the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law.

While Liu has stated that the principles of national land recovery will guide the effort, the fact that the KMT-controlled legislature boycotted the draft national land planning law and the draft national land recovery statute proposed by the former DPP government for over four years gives scant cause for optimism that the Liu Cabinet will promote this principle. In addition, the absence of city and county mayors and disaster victim or indigenous peoples representatives on the proposed national reconstruction commission has given rise to suspicions that the KMT government will bypass DPP city and county mayors and directly disburse funds and projects without hindrance from any civic monitoring, to township governments, most of which are run by KMT commissioners, in the run-up to year-end county elections.

Liu's declaration Sunday that donating conglomerates and businesses should participate directly in the process of deciding the utilization of reconstruction funds has sparked fears of a replication in southern Taiwan of the disastrous "reconstruction" of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina which witnessed the massive privatization of public services through top-down "shock capitalism" instead of bottom-up community based rebuilding....

The law allows for compulsory resettlement of indigenous people, and permits resettlement without regard for any other considerations -- environmental, water management, or the aboriginal basic law. Conglomerates and corporations are to determine how reconstruction funds are to be used, while the proposed Morakot Reconstruction Committee excludes (DPP) city mayors and county chiefs. Stripped of the fine verbiage, the legislation basically gives the funds directly to the construction-industrial state, with the added proviso that it can now move whole villages around without concern for what anyone says, and without concern for environment regulations or local culture. Disaster capitalism at its finest. The Committee...

.....which will be chaired by Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), will have 30 officials from different government agencies, plus the heads of Delta Electronics, Uni-President Enterprises Corp, Taiwan High Speed Rail, China Steel and one university president and four professors.

In other words, the national-level Typhoon Reconstruction Committee will be composed of the central government and powerful corporations.

The Taipei Times report notes that the legislation was not reviewed by the Executive Yuan and was being accelerated through the process for a vote tomorrow. The paper also has an extensive collection of comments from aboriginal groups in this piece, in which one aboriginal representative points out that the survey work has long been done and safe areas for resettlement in the mountains have already been identified.

The green light to forced resettlement without aboriginal participation has obvious implications for expansion of the construction-industrial state. In many areas local indigenous peoples are strongly against local public works projects even though they trickle down some funds to the community. As I wrote last week, there is much opposition to the massive Tsengwen Reservoir Diversion in the area, and the project is blamed for flooding that began even before this one -- after typhoon Kalmaegi last year many of the houses in Siaolin were mildly inundated with mud and water. Forced resettlement of indigenes will also removed one claimant to area resources such as land and timber. There will be fewer objections to illegal use of forest resources by Han farmers. Of course, removal of aboriginals will simply create an even larger pool of landless laborers living in marginal areas to help hold down local labor costs.

The Taipei Times drives home this point in an editorial today:

Mountain-dwelling Aboriginal people are likely to be the biggest losers. For more than 100 years, Japanese and Chinese governments have moved these villages closer to plains areas so that they could be better governed and controlled; in many cases these people were moved into the plains while still being administratively defined as “mountain Aborigines.” All throughout, Han officials took over management of most of the land for forestry, agricultural and tourism purposes, among others, frequently to the environment’s detriment.

Supporting this line of thinking are racists and speculators who want Aboriginal reservation laws repealed so that the land can be bought up, developed and sold; and Buddhist charity officials, whose otherwise faultless conduct has been stained by asking the largely Christian Aboriginal community to “return the mountains and forests to Mother Nature.”

Sadly, the present crop of Aboriginal legislators cannot be trusted to defend the interests of affected Aboriginal communities on matters of this gravity — and certainly not Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), who is essentially an ambassador for Beijing — and even in the unlikely event that they mobilize to defend their constitutents, in all probability they will be ignored by party bosses.

May Chin took a $3 million check from Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office for disaster relief.

The new National Reconstruction Commission, with its power to dispense funds to bypass county and city mayors in the affected areas and perhaps give them directly to township chiefs, highlights a couple of issues. For one thing, the possibility of direct money handouts to local township chiefs are reminiscent of the direct money handouts through consumer vouchers -- an apparent vote buying program -- and for another, it also highlights how the "Green" south isn't really "Green" but is actually a melange of Blue and Green at different levels of government. Whether or not the DPP government levels are bypassed, note that the money will be arriving in hard-hit communities just before the December election, among ethnic groups (aborigines in the mountains, the Hakkas of Chiadong and Linbian) with long-time support for the KMT.

UPDATE: SY has some great comments below -- and latest news is that the destruction reconstruction bill passed today.

*Mike Davis' awesome Late Victorian Holocausts is another must read in this area.
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Cabinet reshuffle in the offing?

The other day Taiwan News called for the resignation of practically everyone in the Ma Administration in sentiments similar to the ones it expressed previously:

Moreover, as has been observed by numerous disaster response professionals and former related KMT and DPP government officials, the central government disaster response established after the Sept. 21, 1999 earthquake and progressively rationalized under the former DPP administration are still in place but "vanished" after Typhoon Morakot struck Aug. 8. The reason for the deteriorating function of these mechanisms beginning with Typhoon Fung-Wong last July and worsening in Typhoon Morakot lies in the identity of the new leaders at the helm of our disaster response system from President Ma Ying-jeou and Premier Liu down.

No matter how "professional" or "competent" KMT senior leaders believe themselves to have been in the 1980s and 1990s during KMT one-party rule, their ingrained bureaucratic, passive, secretive and hierarchal mentality has proven to be dysfunctional in Taiwan's democratic society in the 21st century.

There can be scant hope for the renewal of public confidence in the central government's capability to respond to crises until Liu and other incompetent leaders, including at minimum the ministers of defense, interior economics, foreign affairs, agriculture and justice along with the secretary-generals of the National Security Council and the Executive Yuan. Moreover, the lack of both empathy and political morality displayed by Ma and other KMT leaders will only undermine confidence in their future leadership.

Many Taiwan citizens recall that then Democratic Progressive Party vice premier Yu Shyi-kun resigned office immediately nine years ago after the death of four construction workers who were swept away in a flash flood in the Pachang River after the then KMT-run Chiayi County government, the National Fire Administration and the Air Force failed to coordinate a rescue effort. The subtext in the message sent yesterday by Ma's scarcely veiled hint that Liu and his Cabinet will remain in office indefinitely will be quite clearly read by the rest of the KMT bureaucracy and by Taiwan's public.

That message is simply that while a DPP vice premier resigned after the tragic death of four Taiwan workers, Ma and the ruling KMT do not believe there is any obligation for a KMT premier to step down from office after the deaths of over 400.

As the article observers, so far only the Deputy Foreign Minister has resigned and been accepted -- not because he failed the people of Taiwan, but because the Administration suffered embarrassment in its relations with the outside world. Note that not only did Vice Premier Yu resign over the botched Pachang River rescue but then KMT premier Tang, serving under President Chen, also offered to resign (Tang offer). But that was then...

Ma is in a somewhat awkward position -- during the campaign one of the criticisms he made of the DPP administration was the constant reshuffling of the cabinet. But it has become apparent that heads must roll, as confirmed by Premier Liu yesterday in the news conference:

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan stated yesterday afternoon that his Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) administration will experience a "comprehensive re-examination and reorganization in September" in the wake of intense public criticism of its performance in responding to Typhoon Morakot, whose torrential rains and landslides left over 400 dead and over NT$10 billion in agricultural damage.

For some months several long-time observers I know have been arguing that Ma would restructure the cabinet to bring in a more Taiwanese-oriented crew to address the elections at the end of the year. This typhoon has handed them the perfect excuse.

And no, I don't think the failures here will have much effect on the elections. People here vote locally for local reasons, and flows of cash, patronage networks, and party structure on the ground will outweigh the effect of this mess on the KMT. But hopefully I will be wrong.
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Ma Administration Typhoon Casualties

Bloomberg, usually a KMT cheerleader, is one of the many media organizations documenting the free fall in approval for the Ma Administration over the way Ma and his Administration have appeared to bungle the typhoon relief.

Support for Ma dropped to 29 percent, from 66 percent when he took office in May last year and 52 percent at his first anniversary, according to a survey conducted by the United Daily News published today. About 46 percent of people surveyed said they didn’t have confidence in his administration’s relief and rebuilding efforts in the aftermath of the storm.

......

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan’s approval rating also fell to a record low of 20 percent according to the survey, the Taipei- based, Chinese-language newspaper said. The newspaper said it interviewed 919 adults on Aug. 18 for the poll, which has a margin of error of 3.29 percentage points.

Note that Bloomberg draws its data from UDN, the pro-KMT paper (without mentioning that it is the former KMT party paper and is rabidly pro-KMT). When UDN says a KMT administration is not popular -- it ain't popular.

UPI talks about why:

President Ma Ying-jeou and his key Cabinet members also infuriated the public with their responses to the disaster. Ma has been heavily criticized for failing to fulfill his role as commander-in-chief of Taiwan’s armed forces. Without instructions from Ma, the army sent only 740 soldiers on rescue missions to the stricken areas on the first day, Aug. 8. [MT: note that Defense Minister resigned to take fall.]

Ma was attending a friend’s wedding on Aug. 7 while Morakot was approaching. He waited until Monday – three days after the typhoon hit – to call a special national security meeting to mobilize troops and organize rescue and relief efforts in the badly stricken southern counties of Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Taitung and Chiayi.

Big news yesterday is the sacrifice of Andrew Hsia, the Deputy Foreign Minister, who had to step down over the "misunderstanding" involving the telegram that informed everyone that Taiwan was rejecting foreign aid (also out this morning are the Defense Chief and the Sec-General of the Cabinet).

The surface story is simple: Foreign Minister Francisco Ou was out of the country, and so Hsia, who refuses to confirm he saw the memo before it went out, was in charge. Hence he must take the fall. The story circulating among knowledgeable individuals, however, is that the decision to refuse aid was made at the highest levels, either by Ma himself or by NSC chief Su Chi, one of the most powerful individuals in the government and Hsia is just a fall guy for what ultimately proved to be one of the Administration's dumbest decisions.

What motivated that decision? Also circulating is an unsigned letter dated August 10, Monday after the storm, from the Taiwan Affairs Office of China, offering aid. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the aid from other countries was put off while the government decided what to do about Beijing. However, the letter could well be an anti-Ma fraud.

The Ma press conference (Youtube) also took place yesterday. Good questions from our foreign press corps. I think it is wonderful that this typhoon has finally permitted reporters to report on criticism of Ma, something that was sorely lacking during the campaign -- when powerful financial interests overseas were strongly backing a Ma victory.

There's a back story here too. A couple of days before the press conference the GIO informed the foreign correspondents that they would have to submit their questions in writing in advance. Probably a good idea, considering that Ma unscripted has been a disaster for the KMT. But the foreign correspondents responded, essentially, that it wasn't their job to help the Ma Administration perform damage control. The GIO then hastened to retract this position which -- as my readers will now be predicting -- was just a "misunderstanding." The foreign reporters then asked the hard questions -- more power to them.

Such practices are apparently the norm with local media, which is one reason Ma gets such fawning coverage. Readers can imagine what happens to reporters who ask unscripted questions.
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Daily Links:

• Volunteers at work in the south: photos from Josh Davis.
• Protests against the effluent discharge plan from the Central Taiwan Science Park
• J Michael shows that Chinese thinkers just don't get it.
• How Microsoft makes Taiwan disappear.
• ICRT poll still running at 97% in favor of Ma stepping down. Vote here.
• Irrigation/Food issues in Asia becoming critical by 2050.
• In case you don't know, the International Service Portal for foreigners here.
  

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Hsiaolin Village: Act of God, or Men Acting like Gods?

"The whole thing is a machine, a perpetual-motion machine that keeps churning out dams, which the politicians and most westerners are reflexively in favor of, and the whole business is running the country into the ground." -- Glenn Saunders, chief counsel for the Denver Water Board, quoted in Cadillac Desert.

Cadillac Desert, an exploration of dam building in the American West, is probably the best popular nonfiction work on public policy ever written. I ponder it often when I look at water policy in Taiwan.

DPP Volunteer Efforts Report + Pics

I have the report from the DPP in its July Newsletter.

+++++++++++

Dear friends:

We are very sorry for the delay of the July issue.

[Notes: Some of you would like to unsubscribe the newsletter due to the job changes. However, due to some administrative mistakes, please kindly tell us again your name and e-mails. We are terribly sorry for the trouble.]

DPP headquarters and local chapters recently have been occupied by the Typhoon Morakot disaster relief operations. Floods, mudflows and landslides...the worst in the 50 years. While most of the counties in the South are fortunately able to start the recovering process, the rescue mission still continued in the mountain area and Kaohsuing county with death and causuality numbers still raising.

I just came back from Tainan county with my colleges last night. We were the first DPP disaster relief team going to the South- some of us went to Tainan and the others went to Pingtung. It's a three-day shift and now it's the second team stationed in these two counties (Tainan team is lead by DPP Dept of International Affairs Bikhim Hsiao). When we first departed to Tainan three days ago, we traveled with three volunteers, but now there are 73. In Pingtung, there are also about 60 volunteers. DPP HQ just sent a new team to Kaohsiung county this morning.

Tainan county is slowly recovering now. There is no flood, but it still rains quit often. (I was told by my colleges in Pingtung that the rain is non-stop there so they have to work in the rain and their clothes are never dry.) We've delivered water, instant noodles, bread, cookies etc to the families trying hard to clean their house and furnitures covered with mud (they still don't have stable electricity and water supply). What worries us is the possible outbreak of the disease once the weather goes better (since the garbages still piling up on the streets and dead fishes and rottom fruits floating on the rivers). The next immediate task is to clean up the community.

I've uploaded the photos we took in Tainan at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=34742&id=1253974525&l=c5c0736eaa

Your supports and help are great comfort and encouragement for us and those families impacted by the typhoon.

Best regards,
Hsiaoching Liu
Associate researcher
DPP Department of International Affairs
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Typhoon News Round Up

First, CNA says 1,300 still trapped in affected areas...

Taipei, Aug. 15 (CNA) The Central Emergency Operation Center (CEOC) said Saturday that 1,373 people were still trapped in isolated mountain villages in southern Taiwan as of that day, after Typhoon Morakot devastated the region the previous weekend, bringing torrential rain that triggered massive flooding and landslides.

The center said it would dispatch 75 helicopters later in the day to the villages in the counties of Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Taitung and Chiayi to conduct rescue missions and drop relief supplies.

BBC has a nice graphic of the mountain regions showing some of the problems, along with an article summarizing things to date. AP observes:

Residents have set about the huge task of rebuilding with the help of the army, a company of which was camped out at the local primary school.

As public complaints about the slow rescue work increase, the government said its operations have been hampered because many areas of the country were cut off when roads and bridges had collapsed.

Rescuers have relied on helicopters to reach the worst-hit areas, and on Thursday authorities requested larger choppers from foreign governments capable of carrying earth-moving equipment and shelters.

Many villagers have conducted their own rescue operations. More than 20,000 troops have joined civilian workers on rescue, cleanup and rehabilitation work, officials said.

Also of note is the Taipei Times' hard-hitting editorial from yesterday, which ended with the following three paragraphs:

Following the 921 Earthquake in 1999, US medical professionals studying the adequacy of the response identified a lack of central command, poor communication, lack of cooperation between the government and the military and various medical logistics problems as issues that demanded government attention.

Elsewhere, Taiwan’s Red Cross, in conjunction with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, spent three years developing a handbook and training manuals to improve and promote disaster response. The materials were bilingual and hundreds of copies were produced. But the program, which required ongoing training, allegedly floundered after a management change. The new team, according to a Red Cross report in May 2005, suffered from “limited upper management interest.”

The secretary-general of the new management team was Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌).

It is a start, but it doesn't go far enough. More to the point is Taiwan News' editorial on the link between Taiwan's pell-mell development model, the KMT-created construction-industrial state, and the disaster....

Like past floods and landslides in the wake of heavy rains, the huge floods sparked by Typhoon Morakot were triggered both by "natural" and decades of "man-made" factors, notably the excessive exploitation and virtually unregulated "development" from resorts to orchards in high-elevation and high elevation mountainous lands and the construction of "industrial roads" that have stripped up cover from sensitive watershed slope lands.

......

Satellite photographs released Tuesday by National Central University's Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research display how commercial or industrial zones or even hotels, residence and villages built right next to rivers and even inside their respective potential flood plains and "protected" by dikes have been swept away in flatlands such as Shuanghsi Bridge linking Kaohsiung and Pingtung Counties or mountain areas such as Hsiaolin Village in Kaohsiung County.

Floodplain development doesn't begin to cover it. I hope to enlarge on this in a future post, but let's talk about groundwater pumping, just as an example. Linbian on the coast was one of the hard hit areas in southern Taiwan...

(link) The research area is located mainly around the southwest coastline in Pingtung County including Linbian, Linyuan, Nanjou, and Cinbe. Owing to the rapid development of pisciculture, serious land subsidence from the excessive withdrawal of groundwater has resulted. According tothe results measured by theTaiwan Conservancy Bureau (Taiwan Conservancy Bureau, 1976), the strata in the region started to subside in 1961. The problem of settlement has become more serious since January 1979, and the rate of settlement was very rapid in the drought period in the first half of 1980, reaching an average rate of about 5 cm per month. The greatest settlement accumulated up till April 1992 was 2.35 m on the right outlet of the Linbian River in Linbian village. Moreover, it spread all around. After land subsidence, the low-lying areas in the region tend to suffer backward flow of seawater.

The land in the area had subsided 2.35 meters in some areas, and subsidence was extensive throughout the region. In Linbian alone there were 1,288 known pumping wells in 2003, with twice as many in Chiadong (link).Flooding was unstoppable in this massive rain, but human factors have made the problem much worse than it should have been.
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Where to Donate

I shamelessly stole these from the Facebook group on Typhoon Morakot Aid. Hope you find them useful. If you want to give stuff, as of this date, Aug 15, as far as I know, the need is for things useful in cleaning: disinfectants, brooms, gloves, mops, saws, flashlights, masks, rubber boots, scrub pads, bleach, soap, and so on. Food and clothing are in abundance. Also needed are medical gloves, feminine protection, baby diapers, and similar.

Global Aid Efforts

• Taiwanese American Association-USA Donation Drive: "Please send your donations in as soon as possible. All contributions would be greatly appreciated by our fellow Taiwanese, who urgently need our assistance. Please make your donation out to 'TAA-USA', mention "Typhoon Morakot Donation Drive" and send it to: Mrs. Ling Ling Huang, Treasurer, TAA-USA, 199 Bluejay Dr., Columbus, OH 43235, Phone (614) 888-6501" TAA-USA is a 501(C)3 tax exempt entity. Therefore your donation is tax-deductible.
• Taiwan Center in LA: "Please mail your donation along with the donation form; financial contributions to Taiwan Center are tax-deductible, Tax ID: 95-4679702."
• Taipei Economic Cultural Office (TECO): "For those wishing to help after seeing the horrific damaged caused by Typhoon Morakot, the government has set up an account for accepting donations." Ministry of the Interior Donation Account, Mega International Commercial Bank, Account No. 007-09-087816, Swift Code: ICBCTWTP007, San Francisco TECO Office: (415) 362-7680
• Democratic Progressive Party - Typhoon Morakot Disaster Relief Operations Center: "Donate using Paypal. Look for the DPP Typhoon Morakot Disaster Relief Fund widget on the upper right hand side of the home page."
• Global Giving: "The Fund will be disseminated to organizations providing relief to victims and survivors of the Typhoon and resulting mudslides. Activities: Provide hot meals to survivors; help in the recovery effort and rebuilding of houses damaged or destroyed in the mudslide."
• FAPA Typhoon Morakot Donation Drive Information: Many of you are eager to help with Taiwan's flood relief effort. FAPA is ready to facilitate this urgent task immediately.
• Tzuchi foundation in the US: Tzu Chi offices in the USA are launching a fundraising drive today for Typhoon Morakot victims. For the following two weekends, Tzu Chi volunteers will solicit donations on the streets and in shopping centers. Many agencies and businesses have already contacted us for donation information. The entire staff of Cathay Bank has committed one million NT dollars of donation to Tzu Chi’s charity fund. We earnestly urge every one to show our love and contribute whatever we can for the disaster victims. Online donation through Paypal and Google checkout

Taiwan Non-profit organizations/branches

• Red Cross Donation Page: 紅十字會 Online donation
• Taiwan Fund for Children and Families 家扶基金會
• World Vision 世界展望會: Online donation
• Tzuchi 慈濟: Online donation
• Chinese Christian Relief Association 中華基督教救助協會: Online donation. Select the first option to specify Morakot disaster.
• Presbyterian Church in Taiwan -- I highly recommend this one, with a long history of support for Taiwan democracy, and for local indigenous peoples.
• Presbyterian Church of Canada is also taking donations
  

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President Ma Lambasted in Major International Media

Last year Taiwan's able President Ma Ying-jeou... -- Jerome Cohen, Ma's mentor, in Asian Wall Street journal two weeks ago.

What a difference a flood makes. From able to flounder faster than you can say "flood relief." The foreign media is actually reporting negative things about President Ma, darling of the US Establishment. It is only about 18 months behind our local media.

The NYTimes had two pieces on the typhoon and President this week. The first one focused directly on public anger and consists almost entirely of negative commentary from the local public on Ma. Stunning.

The second piece contains some more positive comments -- "Harvard educated" is in there, safeguarding Ma's class status. An excerpt:

The early criticism, expressed by anguished family members and broadcast on national television, has emboldened members of Taiwan’s vocal political opposition, who have dispensed with any reluctance to exploit the challenges facing Mr. Ma.

Sisy Wen-hsien Chen, a politician who is also a television commentator, lobbed the ultimate insult by suggesting that Mr. Ma’s post-disaster performance had paled in comparison with that of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of Taiwan’s rival, China, during the Sichuan earthquake last year.

....

Harvard-educated, debonair and prone to wonkish utterances, Mr. Ma is not exactly known as a great communicator. His wooden qualities have been thrown into stark relief in recent days as he has tried to console storm victims.

A key point not made here: Sisy Chen, the TV commentator, is a KMT supporter; she switched sides almost a decade ago. The juxtaposition of her comments after the paragraph about the opposition giving up all restraint in going after Ma makes it appear she belongs to the Greens. She does not.

Note also that the explanation for the problems offered by the NYT is that Ma is a "poor communicator" (who somehow manages to be "debonair" even though he is "wooden" UPDATE: "debonair" has now been removed from this article). Anyone looking at the mess of the Makong Gondola, the Neihu Subway line mess, the lack of significant progress in Taipei during eight years of Ma's tenure, the threats to the bureaucracy when he was running for the presidency, the lawsuit against the prosecutor in his corruption case, the undisputed fact that he had downloaded government funds into his own accounts in ways widely considered illegal until he did them, the accusations that Taiwanese are brainwashed by the Japanese, his acting like an emperor in the incident at the Confucius Temple last year, and many other things, might well posit some other reason for his distance from his people.

This paragraph of the NYTimes piece, though, is wonderful:

On Thursday, the Taiwanese cabinet reversed an earlier decision and said it would accept foreign aid, including the heavy-lift helicopters needed to bring bulldozers deep into the mountains. Compounding critics’ cynicism, the Foreign Ministry asserted that the decision to turn down foreign help was actually a typographical error in documents it had sent abroad.

Gotta love the Administration. A "typo." In fact, as I heard more than 32 countries had offered aid to Taiwan. The change of heart was probably due to the fact that China had offered aid and the government had responded positively, as reported by Taiwan News on Thursday. Couldn't turn down the US but accept China. That would be a little too obvious.

WSJ also chimed in with an article on public anger at the Ma Administration. It notes at the end:

Separately, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Co. said three of its undersea cables were damaged by undersea landslides caused by the typhoon, disrupting connections throughout Asia. It estimated companies would have 50% of their voice service and 60% of their Internet service restored by the end of Wednesday.

Couple of observations. First, recall that as soon as Ma entered office, the stock market tanked, and a couple of months later, the economic crisis hit. And what has been the major criticism of the Ma Administration throughout the long economic crisis? He hasn't done anything and the government is floundering. This isn't a new behavior; the major difference is that this crisis isn't unfolding over six months, but over six days, so the floundering and indifference is rather more noticeable. But we are not witnessing something new here, folks.

Also, did anyone catch the hidden ethnic card the KMT played in its criticism of the Pingtung County government, saying it hadn't warned Chiadong and Linbian in Pingtung before the typhoon hit? As the Taipei Times reported, first the Administration directed anger at Pingtung but oh-so-coyly declined to name the neglected townships, then the pro-KMT China Times reported that they were Chiadong and Linbian. Those areas are both famous for their Hakka populations -- Chiadong has the last extant five-hall Hakka house in Taiwan. In other words, the hidden ethnic subtext of that little playlet was: Look, Hakkas, the DPP (Hoklo) government of Pingtung has screwed you again -- vote KMT to avoid that!

Many comparisons to Bush after Katrina wiped out New Orleans. It remains to be seen whether Ma's party will take a hit in the polls after this mess, though.

UPDATE: AP has an excellent article on the beating Ma is taking from within his own party and from the pro-KMT media. Ma's comments to a UK news outlet in which he appeared to say that it was the victims own fault were mentioned:

"They were not fully prepared. If they were, they should have been evacuated much earlier," Ma told an ITN reporter. "They didn't realize how serious the disaster was."

Taiwan's normally pro-Ma China Times newspaper lambasted the president for the remarks, saying they were badly out of place.

"It is not presidential to tell international media that the blame falls on people who would not evacuate in order to safeguard their own homes," the newspaper said.

UPDATE 2: Meanwhile AFP -- shock, shock -- plays down the idea that Ma is being criticized for poor leadership, restricting its remarks to:

Ma's administration has been criticised for being too slow to recognise the magnitude of the crisis in which mudslides cut off hundreds of villages, leaving them only accessible by air.

Note that Ma himself is not portrayed as an incompetent, as the other pieces zoom in on his behavior in fine detail. AFP leaves out any of the details, while referring to criticism of the "Ma administration."
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Pingtung Relief Efforts

First, updates. Numbers to call in Pingtung: 08 7365600, 08 7365012, or 08-7378821x501/x506. In Pingtung today I learned that the volunteers are being shuttled out to work sites along the coast. Pick up is at the Pingtung County Bureau of Cultural Affairs on Dalien Road in the northeast part of the city twice a day, 8:30 am and 1:30 pm. However, the Cultural Affairs Bureau building has no signs or other indicators that it is somehow involved in typhoon relief. Go inside and ask to find out what is going on.

Today Michael Cannon and I decided to go out to Pingtung to see if we could sling mud in affected areas, because if there is one thing I know, it is mudslinging. People had put money into my account, so we loaded up the van with more boots, saws, brooms, buckets, gloves, masks, garbage bags, and other goodies needed for cleaning and took them over to Pingtung Stadium where they were coordinating drop offs. Most of that stuff went out right away.

I can't thank everyone enough. With all the money that came in, we put more than $30,000 NT worth of stuff into the hands of people who needed it. You guys are awesome.

At the stadium, goods were flowing in and out pretty regularly. Lots of student volunteers again. We moved boxes here for a while, then broke for an early lunch so we could head over to the Cultural Bureau for the 1:30 pick-up.

Karoke by the river in Shuimen in Neipu. Unfortunately the 1:30 pm shuttle taking volunteers out to work sites had been canceled. We judged that we were too far from the areas on the coast, but one of the people at the Cultural Affairs building suggested that we go to Neipu, where there was cleaning work going on. If you do go directly to Linbian, Chiadong, or Donggang, go to the township offices where work is being coordinated.

Refugees in the background, the media interviews a government employee at Neipu Agricultural Vocational Technical High School.

Shuimen in Neipu township where the school was. Unfortunately there was no cleaning work to do in Neipu, we were told.

Flooded areas near Shuimen. The refugees were largely Rukai from the mountains above the area. Their villages were completely cut off by broken bridges and roads. Hence, no cleaning could be done, because no one could get into the area save by helicopter. So we were told.

We moved boxes for a while, then returned home to Taichung since we had commitments on Saturday.

Crossing Taiwan's most beautiful bridge, on Hwy 3 between Pingtung and Kaohsiung.

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