Baseball: Taiwan looses to China 7:8

The office is dead quiet.

TVBS: Ma wants to use "ROC(Taiwan)" for UN application

It's either a well timed leak or idle speculation.

Update: Idle speculation.

If UN bid will fail, why compromise on the name?

Since it will fail, I don't see the point in adopting "Chinese Taipei" or some other "flexible and practical" name.

DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) said the government’s strategy would weaken Taiwan’s sovereignty and confuse national identity.

I fear it's too late. The pile of crap is really getting scary: Chinese labor, dropping of the presidential title, acceptance of demands that amount to symbolic deference to China. This is not the policy the Taiwanese people want; Taiwanese people want their future to remain firmly in their own hands. At what point will the KMT overplay its hand, showing they're not interested in just showing China goodwill, but of deciding Taiwan's destiny in favor of unification?

Follow up on Chen scandal ...

Michael Turton beats me to it for now.

IHT: U.S., Poland sign missle deal due to fears of Russia

It's not particularly surprising, but it goes to show the U.S. was always interested in placing this shield in Poland not because of Iran, as Bush continually insisted, but because of the shield's usefulness against Russia, which is what the Russians always contended and what infuriated them so much. On this topic, few people have said so much as well as Daniel Larison, who seems to have the remarkable ability to analyze the situation ::gasp:: in context.

Chen laundered money?

ICRT reports ...

A lawmaker claims to have proof that former president Chen Shui-bian
laundered money through his son and daughter-in-law.

Hong Xiu-zhu claims to have a letter from the Swiss government saying it is
investigating bank accounts opened under Chen Zhi-zhong and Huang Rui-qing's
names.

According to Hong, Huang had originally opened two Swiss accounts, one with
over 20 million U.S. dollars, the other with over 70 billion NT.

The funds were later transferred to a company set up by Huang in the Cayman
islands, though 10 million dollars were transferred once again to a Swiss
account under Chen Zhi-zhong's name.

Lawmaker Hong alleges that this money was provided by former president Chen,
who is currently being investigated for abuse of a special state affairs
fund, and that the various transactions were meant to cover up the
embezzlement.

A-bian has admitted that there were discrepancies in his expense report tax report but denies wrong-doing admits wrong-doing, but I'm not clear on the details yet. Let's wait until tomorrow.

We'll see how this goes; this can be nothing but a demoralizing blow to the already crawling DPP.

College degree worth nothing

As the acceptance rate into college in Taiwan approaches 100%, employers are just yawning at bachelor degrees. We can call it education inflation. And it adds a lot to costs for education that probably aren't teaching most of the kids that much at all.

DPP sues Ma Ying-jeou for treason

Updated: After Ma nullified the classification of the documents related to Chen's State Affairs fund, the DPP has opted to sue him for treason in the Taipei District Court, A-bian's lawyer has asked for the Constitutional Court to decide if this constitutes treason, claiming it was an act of political revenge. As the Taipei Times reported today,

The documents contained information pertaining to six diplomatic missions and were therefore protected under the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), [Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) lawyer Richard] Lee (李勝琛) said. ...

Following Ma’s inauguration, instead of declassifying the documents, the Presidential Office granted the court access to them. The Special Investigation Section of the Supreme Court Prosecutors’ Office said however that access was inadequate and sought again in June to have the documents declassified.

On Tuesday, the Presidential Office said it would declassify the documents, adding that they should not have been classified in the first place.

Who knew you could sue someone for treason?

Ma nullifies classification of Chen state affairs fund documents

The decision to "nullify" the classification rather than declassify hints that the Ma administration believes the documents should never have been classified in the first place.

When there's no news, make some

Nothing serious happening today.

The Presidential Office has indicated it will probably decide whether or not to declassify documents related to President Chen's special affairs within a day or two.

Green groups are preparing for a parade on 8-30 in Taipei in front of the Presidential Office.

The name change of Taiwan Post to Chunghwa Post continues to draw cross-partisan fire.

Robberies in Taiwan are largely committed by meth addicts, and the problem makes for ugly crime statistics.

The Taitung County Commissioner's ill-timed trip abroad continues to provide fodder for the green camp.

Ma denies a shifting policy on purchasing US weapons.

Taichung Mayor Jason Hu may have taken official observation leave as an excuse for vacation in April.

Ma pledges good relations with Japan.

KMT legislator: TDMH -- > CKS Memorial

KMT legislator Chiang Yi-hsiung (江義雄) said today there is hope that the legislature will "rectify" the name of Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall back to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall next legislative session. The argument goes like this: the last Executive did not get Legislative approval for the name change, so next legislative session the KMT can make an official strike down of that name change.

What a very sad misappropriation of the word for name rectification (正名).

Olympic issue

Besides the "Chinese Taipei" vs. "Taipei, China" name use issue which seems to be resolved in favor of "Chinese Taipei," Beijing had one other trick up their sleeve. That's to place Taiwan in the "Z" C section of the opening ceremony, while Taiwan has always been in the "T" section (as the official abbreviation for the team is TPE).

Edit: An anonymous reader makes a correction:

The Taipei Times has mentioned in at least four articles that the procession order will be based on "the number of strokes in the first character of each country's Olympic designation in simplified Chinese script."
- - -
Under this system, Taiwan will be the 24th team to enter the stadium after Japan and before the Central African Republic and Hong Kong.

Some in Taiwan fear that this is will be used by Bejing as a future precedent. The Presidential Office has been very low key and just indicated it would be "difficult" to simply boycott the opening ceremony.

Coming in the wake of all the measures Ma has taken to placate Beijing, this seems like a real dickhead thing of the Chinese to do. As my wife put it, 「他們連這種小豆腐也要吃。」

It's probably too late to expect any sort of real protest from the Taiwanese side.

Flood control

Given the two recent typhoons and the unexpectedly wide-spread flooding from the first (and weaker) one, there's been lots of talk in the local political scene about flood-control measures. In particular, some have wondered aloud if part of the damage could have been prevented if the KMT legislature had passed the DPP flood-control budget back in the old administration.

Instead of reviewing and things up or down, back during Chen's administration the KMT preferred to bottle things up in committee forever. That included Chen's Control Yuan nominees, who were not reviewed at all, causing the Control Yuan to effectively shut down for, I think, close to two years; it included the annual budget at one point; and it also included this flood control budget. Not to speak of other bills.

Well, the budget was stalled for a total of about 2 years starting from the time Frank Hsieh was Premier. But it was passed before the end of the DPP term, and local governments did get to spend the money. I can't find much proof that stalling the budget limited any flood control measures from being implemented.

My guess is that no matter what Taiwan is doing about this, there are two major issues: poor drainage in cities and lack of water-holding reservoirs in rural areas. So it's pretty tough to do much about flooding until you take large scale measures in these two areas.

The Immorality of the State

In discussions related to how people judge the morality of various governments, including Taiwan's, the US's and China's, one fact is always ignored.

The State's only drive is to preserve itself. In rare cases this leads to some peaceful, neutral and economically powerful State (as in modern Northern Europe or Switzerland). In most cases it leads to the government visiting ruin on rival States, its own population or both.

The below essay by Bakunin discusses the immorality of the state as an institution. The article in full gives you a much better sense of it, but I'll also take a few paragraphs as below:

by Mikhail Bakunin [1814-1876]
From "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin" by G.P. Maximoff
1953, The Free Press, NY

Link:

...Every State, whether it is of a federative or a non-federative character,
must seek, under the penalty of utter ruin, to become the most powerful of
States. It has to devour others in order not to be devoured in turn, to
conquer in order not to be conquered, to enslave in order not to be enslaved -
for two similar and at the same time alien powers, cannot co-exist without
destroying each other....

This transcendent, super-human, and therefore anti-human morality of States is not only the result of the corruption of men who are charged with carrying on State functions. One might say with greater right that corruption of men is the natural and necessary sequel of the State institution. This morality is only the development of the fundamental principle of the State, the inevitable expression of its inherent necessity. The State is nothing else but the negation of humanity; it is a limited collectivity which aims to take the place of humanity and which wants to impose itself upon the latter as a supreme goal, while everything else is to submit and minister to it....

Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that it is actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is reestablished. And its antagonist answers with a similar manifesto, in which naturally right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are to be found respectively on its side....

This explains to us why ever since history began, that is, ever since States came into existence, the political world has always been and still continues to be the stage for high knavery and unsurpassed brigandage - brigandage and knavery which are held in high honor, since they are ordained by patriotism, transcendent morality, and by the supreme interest of the State. This explains to us why all the history of ancient and modern States is nothing more than a series of revolting crimes; why present and past kings and ministers of all times and of all countries - statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors - if judged from the point of view of simple morality and human justice, deserve a thousand times the gallows of penal servitude....

What is permitted to the State is forbidden to the individual. Such is the maxim of all governments. Machiavelli said it, and history as well as the practice of all contemporary governments bear him out on that point. Crime is the necessary condition of the very existence of the State, and it therefore constitutes its exclusive monopoly, from which it follows that the individual who dares commit a crime is guilty in a two-fold sense: first, he is guilty against human conscience, and, above all, he is guilty against the State in arrogating to himself one of its most precious privileges.

Postal service to be renamed again

The Taiwan Post, soon to be renamed the Chunghwa Post, will be the first state run enterprise renamed since Ma has taken office.