Michael Turton and David at Jujuflop rebut an item posted by ESWN on the weekend. The article scores a few hits, but is negligent in its omission of any KMT responsibility, David argues:
The basic premise ‘The government of Taiwan is MIA’ is actually painfully true. Literally speaking it’s true (one of the 5 branches of government has been inactive for 5 months now), and pragmatically speaking it’s also pretty true (there has been such a deadlock between the KMT-controlled legislature and the DPP-controlled executive that a record low number of pieces of legislation have been passed). This deadlock, caused by an inability of the Greens and Blues to find any middle ground goes to the core of the political problem in Taiwan. However, because it’s a murky issue (with blame on both sides), it doesn’t fit in to the anti-DPP screed which ESWN reproduced.
How can anyone start a paragraph with the sentence The “old ten great projects” included items such as the CKS airport, and not follow up with an analysis of the built-in nepotism of those projects (which were started by CKS’s son)? I doubt the writer noticed the irony. I don’t think anyone would dispute that those ten projects were very beneficial to Taiwan’s development - but you’d have to be incredibly naive to think they didn’t benefit those in power (and their friends) more. Of course, the level of public scrutiny of projects started while the country was under martial law compared to the new projects (started in a fully democratic society) is incomparable.
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Mao: The Unknown Story - by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday:
A controversial and damning biography of the Helmsman.
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July 5th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Daily linklets 5th July
It wasn’t just the British involved in the opium trade: the Americans were up to their noses in it too. A new Hong Kong “blogazine” called Civic Express (like the word blog isn’t bad enough already) from the Civic Exchange grou (via Chatter Garden). A…