Radio Free Taiwan

I haven’t been using this blog at all, but just now I came across something that just had to go here. It’s a sound recording of Chinese traditional music by a group named Firedrake.

Description on YouTube:
This is the studio version of the music used by the Chinese Government to jam international broadcasters. It was taken off of Chinasat 6B,which is used by China National Radio 8 (CNR8). This music is fed to various transmitter sites around China to jam the broadcasts of Voice Of America, BBC World Service, Radio France International, Radio Deutsche Welle, Radio Canada International, Radio Taiwan International, Radio Free Asia and many many more.

I suppose Radio Free Taiwan would be on that list if it existed in fact.

I came across the video because the same user recently posted this video of Sean at Animals Taiwan explaining about Rocky, a neglected dog who is now blind.

The winner of Taipei Mayoral Election, Hao Lung-bin.

It feels like forever since I’ve posted on this blog. Most of my online opining about Taiwan politics has lately been solely on Forumosa. But the Taiwan Politics forum over there has been boring me lately. Others too, I think. People just aren’t bothering to comment on things anymore. This is not to say the politics has been dull, it hasn’t. Perhaps it’s been just too much. It always seems like politics is too much in Taiwan.

The Taipei and Kaohsiung mayor elections were held today. The DPP candidate in Kaohsiung, Chen Chiu, appears to have scraped a win by the skin of her teeth, just about 100 votes among something like 1.5 million cast. There will be a recount, but there are a lot of relieved greens. A loss of both cities would have been very depressing.

The Taipei race was never in question. James Soong did his best to help the DPP again, trying to soothe his ego by cutting into the blue vote. But the voters seemed to have none of it and voted for KMT guy Hao Lung-bin. This is what I don’t understand.

Hao is son of Hao Pei-tsun, a strong candidate for most corrupt and traitorous general Taiwan, or the ROC if you prefer, ever had. But so far, nothing hs been pinned on the elder Hao. It was just a coincidence that he visited France just before Taiwan finalized a purchase of warships from Korea, and the deal was switched to purchase from France instead just days after he returned. The French and Swiss parties to the deal basically admit that huge bribes were paid. Hao simply says it wasn’t his call, and he didn’t take bribes. End of story.

So nearly 60% of Taipei votes for the guy’s son, even as they are willing to hold their city in the lurch repeatedly by condoning huge rallies against President Chen whom they hate and accuse of sowing “ethnic division.” Corruption is the stick they use the most to beat Chen with. But they insist any leaders they would choose are above corruption.

One of their cited reasons that Chen is irredeemable is that his son-in-law appears to be guilty of insider trading. You know what they say, like son-in-law, like father.

It is also quite stunning just how uncharismatic Hao (the son) is. He doesn’t appear to have a lot to say most of the time. His face is not very expressive at all. He basically coasted to victory, drawing some criticism for not campaigning hard. This contrasts sharply with Mayor Ma, whom he will be replacing. Hao wasn’t actually Ma’s man originally. But Ma’s favorite candidate withdrew from the KMT nomination battle after speaking too freely. Haven’t heard a word about him since.

To his credit, Hao has been quite independent politically over the past few years. He used to be in the New Party (think far-right wing), and he was actually head of the Environment Department (?) for President Chen back when Chen had non-DPP members in his cabinet. Hao was responsible for the change in plastic bag rules. I think the new bags and rules are pretty dumb. Hah.

My wish is that Chen Chiu does a great job in Kaohsiung and Hao does dick all for Taipei. Eventually people will learn their lessons. By the way, in case you’re not up on Taiwan politics, the DPP candidate defeated by the illustrious Hao was Frank Hsieh, who would be Mayor of Kaohsiung right now, except he stepped down to become Premier under President Chen. Now he’s jobless I guess. He’s a possible for next DPP presidential candidate, but that’s a bit unlikely. He’s a really energetic guy who did a whole lot of good for Kaohsiung. Of course the blues say he ruined the economy there, because the port has dropped several notches on the global tonneage rankings during his tenure, and the local unemployment rate tends to be a bit higher than the national average. I’d say thats picky. At least it’s a somewhat nice city now. It has made a lot of improvements during the time Ma did little for Taipei other than see Taipei 101 through to completion.

I have an A-bian key on my too-heavy keychain. I often wear an A-bain touque, and have never drawn a comment on it from a local. A-bian is the nickname of Taiwan’s president, in case you don’t realize this. Let me see if I can find a photo of an A-bian doll.

You get the idea. Young. Hip. Lawyer. A-bian. People don’t buy it much anymore though. I still think it’s cool, of course. Once it’s retro, I’ll bring even more A-bian paraphernalia into my life.


And here is Chen’s tummy. Read my older entries for details.

Hey, I found my hat!

So, I am writing to note two things, both other writings of mine. And it’s not like I write much. Maybe I need to write more. Anyways, tonight I wrote a big long defense of Chen on Forumosa. Since I want to keep it closer to my Internet heart, I wish to reproduce it all here.

Okay, I’ll step up to bat and defend Chen. I never can stand to watch people flock to the winning side.

All I ever hear about why Chen is so rotten amounts to subjective extrapolating based on peoples’ “feelings” about him. Why is he corrupt? Well, because we can just feel it. Just look at him in his Cheshire cat grin. He’s gotta be corrupt. And all that mothing off about how much he loves Taiwan and feels deeply connected to Taiwan is surely more evidence of his duplicity. We know he only loves money (and his equally evil wife for some reason; imaging placing yourself under a car just to score political sympathy, why she probably gave him the idea for staging his own assassination!). Isn’t it so callous to alienate all the “business class” and WSR by spouting crap about how Taiwan looks, feels and smells like a country.

He’s a liar. He’s incompetent. He can’t lead. He sows division.

Yeah, right. I get it. It’s whatever you can think of. The Nazca Lines even seem to indicate somehow that Chen is guilty of being really, really, bad.


Here’s what I think Chen has done well: He got Taiwan written on the passport. He got a referendum law passed, and sort of used once. He made a visit to the U.S.A. He took down a lot of pictures of C.K.S. (And for some reason, there don’t seem to be many $200 bills circulating.) Some key companies and publications have had their names logically updated. He’s increased Taiwan’s profile in the international consciousness significantly - at least, more people around the world are now aware of China’s belligerence toward Taiwan and the fact it’s not in the UN. He got rid of the Old Thieves and cut the number of seats in the legislature. He got further arms deals from America, and has maintained an amicable relationship with America. I believe the ‘Taiwan caucus’ in the US Congress is growing. I think he even snagged a fresh diplomatic ally or two, and has worked on a relationship with Libya (Oil is oil.).

He presided over a strong response to SARS (and bird flu maybe?), praise for Taiwan’s fast action on tsunami relief and pledging, and a growth in “Taiwan consciousness” among Taiwanese. That is a very good thing in my book. He has accomodated a great deal of peaceful protesting, nearly all of it directed at him. Has ever a president allowed such a large amout of organized, visible dissent? Chavez tolerates a lot, but he commands 70% of the vote. Chen squeaked an electoral majority (that’s m-a-j-o-r-i-t-y people!!!!!) but lets his opponents (twice) take over the center of the capital to spout lies and whip up hysteria.

He hasn’t made any significant moves against the brutal media smearing that goes on daily. Ma lets a city flood. A 3-month-old dead body turns up at City Hall. Ma makes (or saves if you prefer) millions on his Dad’s funeral. Ho-hum. But wait a minute. Did you say SOGO coupons? How many? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. It’s CORRUPTION!

He has even lately pleaded with those who hate him to at least show some respect to the flag of the R.O.C. and it’s National Day. Personally, I think old Chiang Kai Shek would prefer Chen at the helm than any of the people working to depose him. So, as you should be able to clearly see, the current picture is ironic in many ways.

Let me do some research and see what I’ve missed… (consults Wikipedia)

In January 2003, a new Taiwan-Tibet Exchange Foundation was formed
opened the three mini links.
It is generally accepted that Chen’s position on this issue is intended and to a large degree has succeeded in placating his pro-independence supporters without crossing any red lines that would trigger war. His supporters see these positions as creative and indicative of a willingness to compromise.
In an interview in July 2005, Chen explicitly repudiated the position of all former Taiwanese leaders that the Republic of China was still the legitimate government of the whole of China. “The republic of China on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China on the mainland are two separate countries with divided rule and do not exercise sovereignty over each other,” he said. “Under the principle of popular sovereignty and self determination, we consider that the question of whether Taiwan should be united with China should be the decision of the 23 million people of Taiwan.”
In October 2003, Chen flew to New York City for the second time. At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he was presented with the Human Rights Award by the International League of Human Rights. In the subsequent leg of the trip to Panama, he met with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and shook hands with him.
He defended his proposals to change the constitution, but asked for constitutional reform to be undertaken through existing procedures instead of calling for a referendum for an entirely new constitution which was proposed by former president Lee Teng-hui. (That couldn’t be compromise, could it?)
In 2005 Chen became the first ROC president to visit Europe, when he attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican City (and he behaved modestly)

His failures, which he admits to: not being able to guarantee a free Taiwan for the future generations born here. Not winning a majority in the last legislative election. Not having excerted enough positive influence on his son-in-law.

About earlier comments made regarding Chen not knowing how to compromise, what about his appointing Tang Fei as Premier, and having half his original cabinet members come from other parties? The opposition blocked him steadily. Now they complain that he doesn’t make enough overtures to their point of view. But he’s clearly been moderate on cross-strait trade. Members of his own party would be more protectionist than Chen’s preference. Believe it or not, there is a strong argument against opening up to China.

So these things I have laid out are REAL, with a capital letter, la! You may not think they are all “good” things if you love the idea of China being as big as possible for some strange reason (and want to snuff out the world’s last surviving Chinese democracy).

If you want to tell me President Chen is a crook who disgraces Taiwan, I’ll show you an average Taiwanese person. Don’t forget Chen was supposed to lose the last election big-time. How many so-called sympathy votes do you really think he got?

What would you do if you were the First Lady of Taiwan at your grandson’s birthday? “Oh sorry, I cannot accept SOGO coupons as a gift because my better instincts tell me that might later be construed as a form of cash and I wouldn’t want to give my half-country the wrong impression that I was peddling my husband’s influence on the cheap.”

Show me the facts. Tell me what is REALLY so bad about Chen. What has he done other than gotten a lot of people jawboning him? I didn’t read a single fact on this thread, which I painfully read through.

And just last Sunday, the Taipei Times printed a letter of mine urging Chen to step down for the sake of his health and the health of his family members, assailed by insanity so they are. Honestly, I just think this is the best thing to do. And it would give Annette Lu the chance to be president. That would be really cool. I’ve had a not-so-secret urge for years to build an Annette Lu shrine on the Internet. I think she would make a cool prez. She might even go and say something crazy, like “Taiwan is a country” before China was ready to launch an invasion. Of course, if she does that, I want to go on record ahead of time as saying I feel it would have been better all along if there hadn’t been the stupid Shih Min-DUH rally against A-bian in the first place.

On a bright note, the ruckus kicked up by Shih Min-DUH led to the presence of several newswire stringers on island (can’t say in-country) who spread the (real) news around the world that President Chen’s wife, Wu Shu-chen was found not guilty of accepting the jaw-dropping sum of US$8000 in department store coupons as a bribe for her husband’s influence in an ownership battle that had already taken place. (Just read it twice. There are no mistakes.)

The letter isn’t on the Times Website, so I’ll have to put my copy here. They did change some wording.

To the editor:

I think the DPP should support a referendum on whether President Chen should step down. This is the most attractive of the available outcomes. For one thing, it would expose the redshirts for what they truly are - a wilfully divisive social movement that allows itself to be led by chant rather than reason.

By ceaselessly demonstrating, the redshirts are insisting that their will is more important than the will of over 50% of voters in the last election. Ironically, their spokespeople, at the same time, accuse the Chen and the pan-greens of tearing apart the country. (Maybe they have another wording.)

But the redshirts have no way of knowing just how many people voted for Chen but now regret it. That could be a half million people, or it could be four million people. Either way, it doesn’t justify a protest group giving the government an ultimatum. I wonder how many of the celebrities that have “come out” against Chen ever voted for him in the first place. How do we know what is the truth? (Remember the last slogan?) Are we to use telephone polls to determine this?

A referendum would set the record straight. Sure, Chen would probably be forced to step down, but he deserves a vacation anyway. He’s already done everything that he feels able to do for Taiwan. We’ve all heard the nos and withouts and whatnots. Any further Chen initiatives are likely to be just posturing, and the pan-blues appear sworn to some higher power to block any legislation proposed by the pan-greens. This will be doubly true in the post-red era if Chen holds onto power.

Then, there is the interesting possibility of getting some real work done under “President Lu.” She could appoint Wang Jin-pyng as Premier, helping to alleviate the arbitrary-bill-blockage problem. We might see some important stuff get done for a change. Perhaps Su Tseng-chang could become the new VP, allowing him to stay on camera, but out of trouble, in the lead-up to the next election. Maybe we could even see the Control Yuan function again. The DPP seems to be holding most of the cards right now. The protesters’ stamina can’t last forever, and winter is coming. I say, negotiate.

I don’t see why Chen should object to a referendum, except out of indignation. He has the health of his family to consider, and things are getting a little (ahem) crazed these days. And he would surely do better to agree now, than to risk some turncoat DPP legislators making the choice for him.

A referendum is a democratic instrument. Holding a second one would help establish the practice, especially since the pan-blues would consent this time. China might not even burp, which would be another fine precedent to set. Furthermore, I expect the referendum results would hearten those who still believe Chen has done a not-so-bad job during difficult times, and those who feel democratic laws are superior to “people power.” So why choose stalemate?

Peter Dearman
Hsintian (Xindian)

Two post in one night. I just had a thought that matched with an earlier one from many months ago, and I thought again, that I had better write it down. Not that it’s likely to be true or anything, but I like it.

I once read that there were studies of some sort or another that claimed to demonstrate that people who know more than one language actually do think differently. (Any trademark violation there is purely unintentional.) So maybe this could be the answer to Michael Moore’s famous question of Bowling for Columbine. The reason Canadians don’t shoot each other as much as Americans is due to bilingualism. :-b

Yeah, right. Probably most of the gun deaths are committed by dual language users, right? Probably. Oh, well. So you’re dying to know the earlier thought I suppose. It goes like this: Americans shoot each other more because pre-emptivism is more than a new doctrine for that country. It is a psychological mode of the culture that has been around for ages. When did the US last fight on its own territory? Why is it so easy to get Americans to support an overseas war (nowadays)? Pre-emption has always been the theme. Vietnam was to prevent the spread of communism and so on. Canadians, not sharing this mindset perhaps, aren’t as likely to use force to prevent something from occuring. We are more likely to take our chances with getting kidnapped or talking our way out of a violent situation than to pull that gun from under our pillow (that isn’t there) and shoot at the sillouette in the doorway. We’re not quite so obsessed with getting the other guy before he gets us first. That’s the idea.

I really was grateful for this link from an email friend that I met while backpacking in Thailand over five years ago and managed to keep in touch with. She’s currently housing a friend who fled from Lebanon. That individual’s blog can be found here, (Lebanon - Proxy Battleground), and it is well worth reading.

The link I am raving about is a Lebanese newspaper site that impresses me with its design. While a bit heavy on ads, it kind of reproduces the excitement of reading a paper version. Or maybe it is just that the current content is so shocking.

The Daily Star in Lebanon

BTW, my letter to the editor, of the previous entry in this blog that no one reads didn’t get publish. Awk! I’m a failure as a writer.

I’m not being cynical for once. I’m well aware that we are going to lose a huge percentage of the world’s species over the next few decades, so it is, of course, arbitrary to choose certain species that we find more beautiful for whatever reasons, and save them. But so what? Cheetah’s are so cool. Let’s save them. And if we need a scientific excuse to let ourselves off off the perverbial Sophie’s Hook, I’m sure the cheetah qualifies as a keystone species anyway. But, let’s save them because they’re so cool. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to put the graphic on this here blog.

My friend used to ask, ‘Why doesn’t anyone ever want to save the krill?’ My other friend used to get enraged over the tactics Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd used to (still does perhaps) go to to save seal pups just because they were cute. His words, not mine. But I’ll say this: seal pups can never hold a candle to cheetahs in my universe. I mean, come on. Tasmanian devils are cuter than seal pups, and at least they’re endangered.

That’s what I like to call it. Remember when the teacher would punish the whole class because some punk wouldn’t admit to smacking gum? Every kid knew it was wrong - of the teacher, that is. Here’s a letter I wrote to the Taipei Times yesterday. I’m not sure they’ll print it, but I’ll stick it here too.

To the editors:

Thank you for writing a timely and sensible editorial on the escalating situation in the Middle East.

Clearly, most, but not all, people in the world find Israel’s approach to conflict offensive. The question is why. I believe that these things come down to what might be called doctrines. Israel deals with affronts to its standards in a way that is different from most other countries. As spoken in the recent film, Munich, the basic goal seems to be sending a specific message: “Don’t f**k with Israel.” But while hunting down specific terrorists might be acceptable in many people’s eyes, Israel has broadened this approach considerably since the seventies, using some pretty extreme rationalization in my opinion. Israel’s doctrine now seems to be a simple and blunt one that can be summed up in two words: collective punishment. Israel’s attitude seems to be that a crime committed by one Palestinian is a crime committed by all Palestinians. This allows Israel to rationalize helicopter gunship attacks on apartment buildings in retaliation for primitive rocket lobbings or attacks on small groups of Israeli soldiers.

To be fair, it must be said that the Palestinians also seem to follow the doctrine of collective punishment. The suicide bombings are an obvious example. Either one side or the other needs to take the moral high ground in this conflict and stop punishing a whole population for the crimes of a few. Doubtlessly, a majority of people on both sides of the dispute would prefer to live in peace. After all, both Palestinians and Jews are Semetic people who have co-mingled in this part of the world for thousands of years.

Since Israel has so much money and technology, I feel the moral onus is on that country to raise its standards and make a visible effort to avoid collective punishment when engaging in conflict. But Israel currently appears to be doing the opposite: favouring blatant collective punishment, still dreaming that this will somehow make the Palestinians wake up and realize the simple solution that is, “Don’t f**k with Israel.” Such an approach is obviously stupid and invites escalation. But few are willing to label the situation accurately, so this horrible situation keeps getting worse.

Peter Dearman
Taipei

Here is a photo of Beirut under attack:

Apparently this video is being suppressed. Fox has been pressuring Web sites to remove it. They, of course, did a while back. I haven’t looked too far into it, but I hope it’s one of those conspiracy theories that isn’t true. I often think we should all be surprised at how much freedom of the press is actually extended to us (and to Americans especially). I saw Chomsky lecture once at McGill, and he said something like, the secret tactic of the American military-industrial-complex is to tolerate dissent so that true dissidents can be written off as crackpots while the elite screw everybody.

But if they’re really going to go ahead and make a move toward rewriting history a la Orwell…. well, perhaps that will bring a turning point, or perhaps they will be successful, and people will start the process of getting used to having their memorable history (the stuff they lived through) recreated right before their eyes.

But, at least for now, we still have our Chomskys, our Michael Moores, and - bless his needy soul - our Charlie Sheens.

You can download a nice hi-rez copy of that Fox report here:
CARL CAMERON’S FOX NEWS
STORY ON THE ISRAELI SPY RING

Click the photo to see more pictures.

I just got around to uploading some old photos of the Hand-in-Hand rally to protest China’s passing of an “anti-seccession law.” It was March 23, 2004. The Taiwan election was coming. This event proved to be a key factor helping Chen gain a second victory. The plan was to form a chain of people holding hands from one end of the island to the other. The actual link-up didn’t go off too well, as no one seemed to be looking after the synchronization issue. But hold hands we did, for a good minute or two when it became obvious the time had arrived. The whole event was very pleasant and peaceful. It seemed to mean a lot to all who participated, and even many of those just driving by. As a response to the negative election campaigning by the KMT and PFP parties, it was perfect. I think we need to do it again next year.

…despite nobody, but nobody visiting it. But it’s true! Just go to Google and type in “depleted uranium BBS discussion” and see what happens. Sure, it takes four words, but…

Here is the depleted uranium BBS I am talking about. Please visit, or better yet, link to it using the same text I just used. That’s my new target. Number one for “Depleted Uranium BBS”

While on the subject, here is a good source of depleted uranium information from Totse.com.

Bye for now.

I’m fed up with the lack of media coverage of depleted uranium, so I set up a BBS discussion board to foster open debate of this controversial issue. You can help this site, www.DUBBS.info, attract more attention by making a link to it on your Web page, Google Base or MySpace page. Ideal links will look like these:

Please visit this Depleted uranium BBS.
Please visit to debate depleted uranium.

On the site, you can also find some link buttons and banners to use if you like, such as this one:




The address is: www.DUBBS.info

This is interesting. Go visit the site to watch their rejected TV commercial. The commercial implies that other churches may reject people or not fully accept them, whereas this church accepts everybody. Apparently, that message is not acceptable, although it is likely true in my opinion.

Bonus links for the stronghearted: [1] [2][excerpt from 2]

Click me!
I was just reading a dose of real news (meaning unsanitized) from my favourite new source. This Website is more like an excuse for a mailing list. You can visit and browse, but you may as well just get their newsletter. It works just like real news - topical, current issues are addressed usually from a journalistic analysis viewpoint. But the perspective is that of a global citizen that values all lives as equal, not just Western lives, and reality in all its stark horror is not shied away from. I’d say it is a pretty Humanist publication. It’s based in India.

Here are some excerpts from their content, chosen by me of course:

India And UK-US Bush Wars By Gideon Polya

[brief excerpt]
The latest UN and UNICEF data indicate that the post-invasion excess mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan totals 2.3 million and the annual under-5 infant mortality totals 0.5 million (1,300 daily and 90% avoidable) – and this largely due to non-provision by the occupying Coalition of life-sustaining requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions. Further, the latest UNODC data indicate that the post-2001 global opioid drug-related deaths totalling 0.4 million (including 1,200 Scots, 1,600 Australians, 3,000 Canadians, 3,200 Brits and 50,000 Americans) are largely due to Coalition restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry back to global dominance (76% market share by 2002).

The Jericho Prison Raid By Ramzy Baroud

[brief excerpt]
The Palestinian parliamentary elections last January, which introduced Hamas as a power player, have yielded a most unfavorable formula from the point of view of the US and Britain. Both governments have invested in a carefully designed and self-serving democracy program that would cement and justify their costly meddling in the region and, of course, their lost war in Iraq. Whether they wish to admit it or not, the advent of Hamas, which has provided a moral boost to Islamic political movements everywhere, has most likely signaled the end of the US-led quasi-democracy project.

Man Will ‘Wipe Out’ Rare Creatures Of The Deep By Severin Carrell

The deep ocean is one of the world’s last great wildernesses. But not for long. Two kilometres below the surface, scores of rare and exotic species are being wiped out at a dramatic rate.

These unique species include the goblin shark which boasts a unicorn-like horn, prickly sharks with humped backs and glowing eyes, vast single-celled organisms as large as footballs and tripod fish that stand on their fins.

In a letter passed to The Independent on Sunday, Britain’s leading marine scientists have warned these species face extinction because of the global growth in deep-sea trawlers fishing for edible species such as the orange roughy, hoki and round-nosed grenadier.

The destruction of the oceans will have to wait. This just in, and it could be just as bad, according to this guy at least. He seems to be waiting for the day the American military goes all out and brings back nuclear warfare proper. And he says the effects are global and worse than “they” have admitted.

Bush’s Nuclear Madness By Stephen M. Osborn

The latest information I have had from the followers of Bush is that he has demanded and received permission to use nuclear “bunker busters” in Iran in a preemptive strike. As a nuclear veteran (Operation Redwing, Bikini, 1956) I can affirm that this is absolute madness. The “bunker buster” is a cute sounding name for a nuclear horror. Air bursts are horrible enough, doing incredible destruction through heat, shock and high initial radiation. The fallout from an air burst is registered around the world. A surface or subsurface burst is even deadlier and more long lasting.

Osborn was a witness to a nuclear test and believes the effects on “downwinders” are clear - birth defects, cancers, etc. But, he says, the radioactive fallout reaches globally and will cause “another” rise in cancer. I gather he is suggesting there was a global rise in cancers during the age of atomic testing. I wonder if he is right.

There are not too many of us left that witnessed the tests, but there are a number of groups that monitor the effects through cancers, birth defects, both physical and mental and monitoring of contamination in the environment. We are still feeling the results of those tests. I have exchanged e-mails with downwinders and with the children of downwinders who have had children with birth defects that had no previous history of such things in their families; who suffer from cancers that are peculiar to nuclear radiation.

The reason I came across this story is, once again, my depleted uranium alert at Google News. Osborn has some words to say about that too.

Now we are facing the specter of Depleted Uranium, which is turning up in atmospheric filters around the world. Depleted Uranium is a nuclear byproduct of the nuclear industry. It is a low level radioactive material of extreme density. The half life of DU is 4.5 billion years. Workers in DU have to wear full protective equipment and respirators. DU ammunition is extremely hard and dense. It penetrates armor like tissue paper, vaporizing and burning, leaving dust and particles as shrapnel to be ingested or breathed. DU is not what the public thinks of as a radioactive material. It only emits alpha and beta radiation. A piece of paper will stop it. However, when it is in the lungs or elsewhere in the body, it is in contact with living tissue, bombarding that tissue with low level radiation for the rest of your life and beyond. That radiation can lead to cancers, genetic damage and eventual death.

Independent laboratories like Johns Hopkins have studied this and made predictions of the harm it can do. The government says, as it did with Agent Orange, “There is nothing to it, it is all in your head.” Meanwhile, people continue to sicken and die and will for generations.

I recommend reading all the article. It’s easy to hear the commitment in his words, and he represents a perspective we could all use a dose of. He is someone who knows.

There are so many things I wish I’d make it a habit to do at least once each day. One of them is blogging. Hah. There’s also flossing, studying Chinese, tidying up my trail of newspapers and notes. And wht was it I heard from Tony Robbins or someone like him once? Spend an hour of each day working on success. Yeah, well. That’d be nice. I waste more than several most days continuing my education on how horrible everything is. And I consider myself to be somewhat prone to depression. I guess I still see it as training myself. I expect things to get worse.

The horror is making it into the newspapers almost every day these days. Yessiree, with the groundlessness of the Iraq attack, white phosphorus, even depleted uranium getting some coverage, it’s quite remarkable how well everybody is holding up. Well, I guess some of them lived through the Kennedy era, and there was the Gulf War - a turning point for my basic mentality - but I am still in awe of everybody’s ability to behold the horror and pretend that everything is perfectly normal. What solace is there? Some stupid theory like this one?

I really do want to make the world a better place. That’s why I “waste” so much time — more and more lately — honing my skills as a social critic that no one ever listens to. Why should they? People won’t even listen to me when I tell them Aspertame is bad for them. People who know I have biology and journalism degrees; Even after I tell them I researched it thoroughly and that I’m telling them because I’m their friend and I care. Not only do people believe what they want to believe. I’ll tell you this. People, more surely, don’t believe what they don’t want to believe.

Just Googled it. Only six hits for “don’t believe what they don’t want to believe.” Had the thought as I was writing. I’m a genius. That’s it. All my wasted time was worth it. I now know the truth. We got it all wrong. Some people believe what they want to believe, but most people don’t believe what they don’t want to believe. Okay, obviously I didn’t quite coin it, but hey. Maybe this is a place to start, ’cause we got a lot of fixing to do to deserve our consciences to be free from the guilt of apathy and inaction.

I was going to move on to Exhibit A, a story from today’s paper about dying children (billions of them nearly - just because we won’t donate a pittance to establish basic water services), but maybe I better stick with the new revelation for a moment. Let’s say that is the problem. Thinking out loud here. Duh. Smack me. Um… I was reading a great book a while ago, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” really it’s a great book, and I remember he starts off, and that was about as far as I got although I insist it’s a great book, and he says firmly, with a lot of evidence (I talk like this too) that you simply cannot convince anybody of anything by fighting with them.

He’s right. I know it’s a bit hard to believe, but he convinced me with all his evidence, that successful people have an uncanny ability to never browbeat others into agreeing with them. Carnagie says successful people rather engineer their opponents into agreeing with them. Can this be done on issues of global concern, like our environmental mess and the fact that idiots seem to control everything and are driving us toward total destruction at an accellerating rate? How can concerned people engineer a soft sell on this one? I’ll have to think about that one.

On with the exhibit! Here’s the link:
Many kids still dying for a glass of water

Excerpt:

In the next 24 hours diarrhea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation will claim the lives of 4,000 children. The annual death toll from this relentless catastrophe is larger than the population of Birmingham. Dirty water poses a greater threat to human life than war or terrorism. Yet it barely registers on the radar of public debate in rich countries.

At any one time, close to half the population of the developing world is suffering from water-related diseases. These rob people of their health, destroy their livelihoods and undermine education potential. The statistics behind the crisis make for grim reading. In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global economy, 2.6 billion people still have no access to even the most rudimentary latrine.

Over 1 billion have no source of drinking water.

In Britain, the average person uses 160 liters of clean water each day.

Ouch! Read that again. That’s gotta be heavy, right? Really. Read it again. Can that be for real? I’ve been backpacking to a lot of nooks and crannies of Asia and I’ve never seen a place where I couldn’t get bottled water. Then again, I’ve never been to Africa. And anywhere that backpackers go, a trail of money provides bottled water for all.

Bottled water is part of the problem really. Read on.

The slum was Kibera. With a population of 750,000 it is one of the largest informal settlements in Africa and accounts for one-quarter of people living in Nairobi. Over 90 percent lack access to a latrine, giving rise to a phenomenon that didn’t figure in the movie: the “flying toilet.” Lacking any alternative, people defecate into plastic bags that are thrown into the street, with terrifying consequences for public health.

Kibera is a microcosm of what happens across the developing world. Rapid urbanization and a crumbling water and sanitation infrastructure in cities like Jakarta, Manila and Lagos have left millions of poor people in overcrowded slums facing a constant threat from water infected with human excrement.

To add insult, the poor pay more for their water than the rich. In Kibera, you pay three times more than in Manhattan or London, and 10 times more than in high-income suburbs of Nairobi. Similar patterns are repeated across the cities of the developing world. The reason: water utilities pump subsidized water to well-off customers, but seldom reach the poor. Most slum dwellers face a choice between buying water from high-cost private traders, or taking a long trip to the nearest stream.

Meeting the UN’s millennium development goal of halving the proportion of the world without access to clean water would cost US$4 billion a year for 10 years. That amount represents just a month’s spending on bottled mineral water in Europe and the US.

For less than people in rich countries now spend on a designer product that produces no tangible health gains, we would roll back one of the main causes of preventable childhood death. And for every US$1 invested, another US$3 to US$4 would be generated through savings on health spending and increased productivity. So why have rich countries been cutting aid to water and sanitation for the last five years?

I would like to add for comparison that the Iraq Invasion has cost nearly US$250 billion so far. So I guess that money could hve been better spent. If you feel sorry for children dying needless painful deaths that is.

But don’t believe it! I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m sure that story is simply not true. There is no way that the leacders of America, who have the best intentions in their hearts, would ever knowingly allow money to be diverted away from saving the lives of children and put into efforts that destroy the lives of (Arab) children. What is described in the story is an oversimplification and obfuscation of the real truth which is that America does everything a country could possible[sic] do to export Democracy and a proper Way of life for all the people of this great world, thank you very much, and what was the question? Do we ignore mountains of death due to simple problems with low tech solutions? Well, we can’t have high tech without the low tech, now can we? No we certainly can’t. Amen.

I can’t wait for the day I stop including myself in the we. Is there a real war, a just one, I can sign up for and earn my stripes fighting this all-too-old world order? God bless America. Really. Her people need some help. After we help the children. I don’t know how. Go ask Bono.

And go read the whole story. It’s by Kevin Watkins, who is director of the UN Human Development Report Office. Man, the UN can sure come up with key staff members that know how to tell whoppers! Do you remember those weapons inspectors? How about that, huh?

Next issue: the raping of the oceans; Back to you, Jane.

Just kidding. But shaving the dog, yes. And wagging the dog will come later.

As you can see, we sent Didi in for a shave. Apparently he was very well-behaved and loving toward everyone. Anne said he seemed very proud of himself after the treatment. He certainly is a bit more cuddly, as we’ve had fairly chilly weather this week. We let him on the bed now because he seems cleaner. He’s getting into it. Whereas before he would get too hot or fidgity and jump down withing a few minutes, now he’s likely to stay all night.

Everyone says he’s very cute. I think he looks a bit silly, and nude. Fewer people are scared of him now. You’d be surprised how many people in Taipei will go all nervous when happy, harmless Didi trots toward them.

Moving on now to selected horoors of the world, a recent online discussion got me looking into the Diebold e-voting machines that are at the center of considerable controversy in the US. If one leans toward the side of not trusting GWB and the neo-cons to follow the normal rules of democracy, these e-voting machines are scary. Much of the scandal has been broken by Brad of The Brad Blog, the tagline of which reads, ‘Be the media. Somebody has to.’ I now proudly sport a bright green link to that blog on the right.

Brad is much more effective than a journalist since he expects powerful people to lie to defend themselves and their power. Here is a link to his convenient summary page. He’s done a lot of writing on this one.

To make half of a long story short, Ion Sancho, Leon County, Florida’s election chief was a little suspicious of his voting machines made by Diebold, an American company that makes most of their profits from ATMs (I can’t resist the urge to add, supposedly). So he called in a computer expert, Harri Hursti from Finland, who figured out a way to drastically change election results just by preprogramming some data on the memory card that collects the votes. This was about a year ago. Sancho has had a lot of negative pressure on the job since then. Diebold denied that Sancho had proved anything, but oddly enough, other tests of the machines seemed to convince most witnesses of their fallibility. More recent tests even pushed Sancho’s complaints back into the press. See this story from the Miami Herald.

Sancho first clashed with Diebold in May, when he teamed up with a nonprofit election-monitoring group called BlackBoxVoting.org, which has made a crusade of showing that electronic voting machines are subject to fraud. BlackBox hired Herbert Thompson, a computer-science professor and strategist at Security Innovation, which tests software for companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Thompson couldn’t hack into the system from the outside. So Sancho gave him access to the central machine that tabulates votes and to the last school election at Leon County High.

Thompson told The Herald he was ‘’shocked” at how easy it was to get in, make the loser the winner and leave without a trace. The machine asked for a user name and password, but didn’t require it, he said. That meant it had not just a ”front door, but a back door as big as a garage,” Thompson said.

From there, Thompson said, he typed five lines of computer code — and switched 5,000 votes from one candidate to another.

”I am positive an eighth grader could do this,” Thompson said.

After BlackBox and Sancho announced the results, Diebold’s senior lawyer, Michael Lindroos, wrote Sancho, Leon County and the state of Florida questioning the results and calling the test ”a very foolish and irresponsible act” that may have violated licensing agreements.

Apparently the voting maching software actually uses Microsoft Access databases. That’s reassuring. Moving on, a quick look at Wikipedia tells me:

Together, ES&S and Diebold Election Systems are (as of 2004) responsible for tallying approximately 80% of the votes cast in the United States. The software architecture common to both is a creation of Mr. Urosevich’s company I-Mark. Some experts claim that this structure is easily compromised, in part due to its reliance on Microsoft Access databases.

and

In August 2003, Walden O’Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to Ohio Republicans. In the letters he says he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” Critics of Diebold interpreted this as implying that he might rig the company’s electronic voting machines to give an unfair advantage to Bush. The letter also was seen as an indication of a perceived conflict of interest by critics. He has responded to the critics by pointing out that the company’s election machines division is run out of Texas by a registered Democrat. He also claims the statement about delivering Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush was simply a poor choice of words. Nonetheless, he vowed to lower his political profile lest his personal actions harm the company. O’Dell resigned his post of chairman and chief executive of Diebold on Monday December 12, 2005 following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading.

DES claims its systems provide strong immunity to ballot tampering and other vote rigging attempts. These claims have been challenged, notably by Bev Harris on her website, Blackboxvoting.org, and book by the same name. Harris and C. D. Sludge, an Internet journalist, both claim there is also evidence that the Diebold systems have been exploited to tamper with American elections — a claim Harris expands in her book Black Box Voting. Sludge further cites Votewatch for evidence that suggests a pattern of compromised voting machine exploits throughout the 1990s, and specifically involving the Diebold machines in the 2002 election. DES also has come under fire for the recent discovery that the Diebold voting machines do not and did not in 2004 meet the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) error standard.

Well there you have it. Do you trust this picture? I don’t. Not now, not ever. It depends far too much on the presumed honesty of people holding power. Do you think the ‘founding fathers’ of the USA would have gone along with such nonsense? What is it for? The vote counting system isn’t broken, or at least it wasn’t for the most part before e-voting became commonplace.

And again, I know I sound like a broken record on this one (as if anyone is reading anyway), but where is the media on this one? How can they sleep at night? Please visit www.blackboxvoting.org and learn more about this

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM

with modern day American democracy.

This is amazing. Just go see it! Gotta love Texans. They want to clean up their own mess. I guess it’s not fair to blame Texas for GWB. But we sure can blame his dad for DU.

I’m sure I won’t be, but I just want to be the first to say that I think the Mohammed cartoon flap will go down in history as an event nearly as important to our current historical epoch as 9/11 itself.

I mean it. The first thing that set me off was my own reaction the moment my Web-surfing girlfriend told me from across the room that mobs attacked certain embassies because of offensive cartoons - an issue which I had never heard of before. I suddenly became enraged, and torrents of rhetoric laced with the word they came spewing out of my mouth. How dare they declare what we can’t print? And so forth. Lot’s of people are still spewing yet.

Why do I now say it was spew? Because I reacted without thinking. In fact, it almost felt as if I’d been programmed to react that way. The next day, without learning too much more about the situation, I thought to myself and declared to my girlfriend that I thought this cartoon thing was gonna become really huge. I was feeling a little shocked by my initial agressive reaction, but I was still thinking it was ridiculous for muslims in their native countries to be protesting against what some cartoonists and newspapers had drawn to defile Mohammed. Surely they would know better than to try and enforce a censorship on the West.

I forget exactly what I was thinking during the next couple days as I read more about the flap during my compulsive daily newsreading. After a bit, I got around to checking out a rebuttal from the other side. I went to Wikipedia to get my balance. I found out that the cartoon controversy had been going on for a few months and that the cartoons were printed with two specific intentions in mind: to test/demonstrate freedom of the press, and to provoke the anger of muslims.

I take issue with the second point, as does most of the muslim world. Since when have mass-circulation newspapers been acceptable tools for the provoking of ethnic or religious groups? (Okay, I do know that mass media in many Arab countries is used this way, but I am taking to task the standards of Western society not discussing the faults of the Arab world.)

What I find disturbingly insidious is that I had gone through my initial heated reaction and its denoument basically in the frame of mind that the cartoons had depicted Mohammed almost as if by accident, as if the cartoonist didn’t know that that was sacrilege. I think I was under suspension of disbelief. I was implicitly assuming that “we” were not out to get “them.” But it turns out we were. Which is, I theorize, why “we” have reacted so strongly. Heck, our embassies have been attacked many times before.

The standard muslim defense for the protests and embassy sackings is that the West holds double standards on the issue of printing cartoons in order to offend ethno-racial-religious groups. Would the same papers run cartoons mocking the holocaust? Running cartoons of Jesus doesn’t count because nobody really takes offense to that. Targeting a group is the neccessary condition of the test.

It is quite a good defense I think. I’ll double check later, but I don’t think any Western papers ran any holocaust cartoons to demonstrate that such a right to offend is applied equally.

Still, a subconscious sense of guilt over our own hypocrisy hardly explains the reaction I see, with everyone and their dog slapping ‘Support Denmark’ banners onto their blogs and Web sites. Maybe it was just that it was Denmark. I suppose if that country had made it to the hockey finals in the Olympics most of the Western world would be rooting for them too. Who wouldn’t support little Denmark against the throbbing masses of fundamentalist Muslims?

But that can’t be the whole explanation either. No. It is deeper. We are programmed, though we don’t like to admit it. Freedom of speech is our opiate-cum-security blanket. It is the lynchpin of the American system of oligarchic control. Although obvious examples of injustice in the American socio-political system abound (Eg. lying about Lewinsky vs. lying about everything), the American public has been almost totally pacified by the deification of freedom of speech.

I once saw Noam Chomsky speak, and the first thing he said was that no wise person should trust him since, after all, by speaking he was fundamentally empowering the oligarchs by providing a strong example of the toleration of dissent. Far better, he reasoned it would be, if the powers that be sought to suppress his message. By tolerating dissent, the American (and Western) system insulates itself against nearly all dissent which might otherwise prove dangerous. Nobody has proved this like GWB and his administration.

This is why I say, the Western indignance over the cartoons reflects the hopes of Westerners that they do in fact live under a system that is reasonable. There are few other signs of that reasonability these days. The rich are getting richer; the poor, poorer; the strong do as they please; governments abrogate all responsibility to their electorates.

It seems to me that the average Westerner will defend free speech to the grave, especially to justify his sense of cultural superiority. Without this comfortable illusion (because our freedom of speech is far from absolute), he would not have many clear principles to point to when justifying the feeling in his heart that his own culture is somehow better than that he has been trained to hate.

I just successfully upgraded my Wordpress software installation. I sure hope this reduces the comment spam. Yesterday, thinking I could never successfully upgrade it myself, I registered at Wordpress.com for a free online blog. But I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted, so I tried the upgrade. Boring, I know. My point is, I was ready to turn over a new blogging leaf. Henceforth I will attempt to use this blog as my personal soapbox, rather that as a “dimunitive little blog.” What follows in this post was the first and only entry I made at my Wordpress.com blog. But I do recommend that service for those wishing to begin a blog.

This is my first post in Year of the Dog. I’m a dog-born myself. I’m not usually superstitious, but I’m a little psyched for this. Maybe my serotonin is running high.
____________

Let’s start with depleted uranium, the bugbear that I think will destroy it’s masters in the near future.

The graphic above links to a LIFE magazine photo essay on Gulf War Syndrome and the possibility that children of American vets are suffering a higher rate of birth defects because of it.

This is strange. This Web page is not linked to from any of LIFE’s top pages. A search on Google tells me only 24 pages on the whole Internet point to this story. I have been researching depleted uranium for over a year and just discovered this page yesterday by following a link from an anti-DU site.

Also strange is that I cannot discover the date of the story. (Can anyone help me here?)

The story makes reference to DU as one of the possible causes of Gulf War Syndrome. It goes into more detail about other causes, such as vaccinations and bug spray. There are, however, two sidebars linked to in the story. One of the links works fine, but the other one, which would pop-up some further information on DU doesn’t show any text. That’s odd. So, I checked the source HTML and there was the text, which I will quote here:

DID EXPOSURE TO DEPLETED URANIUM CAUSE ILLNESS?
Allied tanks and airplanes fired a new kind of ammunition in the Gulf War: shells
jacketed with depleted uranium, a waste product from nuclear reactors. When such
a shell hits an enemy tank, it heats up, incinerating the vehicle’s crew. In a
1993 report, the General Accounting Office concluded that while troops using such
ordnance were unlikely to receive a radiation dose exceeding Nuclear Regulatory
Commission limits, “the Army has not effectively educated its personnel in the
hazards of DU contamination and in proper safety measures appropriate to the
degree of hazard.” And the safety of even low-level radiation exposure remains a
subject of scientific debate. For troops salvaging shrapnel-pocked equipment, or
working in areas filled with the dust and debris of tank battles, the risk may
have been especially high. Nearly a million DU-tipped shells were fired during
the war. Says Paul Sullivan, president of the Gulf War Veterans of Georgia:
“We’re talking about tons and tons of radioactive wastes floating around.”

WERE NERVE AND MUSTARD GASES PRESENT, AFTER ALL?
In 1975 a landmark Swedish study concluded that low-level exposure to nerve and
mustard gases could cause both chronic illness and birth defects. The Pentagon
denies the presence of such chemicals during the Gulf War. But the Czech and
British governments say their troops detected both kinds of gas, presumably
released during allied bombing of Iraqi chemical plants. And veterans’ advocate
Paul Sullivan recently obtained 11 pages of a secret Defense Department log
revealing that U.S. chemical alarms went off repeatedly during the war. Pentagon
spokesmen blame those alarms on faulty equipment and note that there have been no
reports of massive Iraqi gas deaths near the bombed factories. But former
congressional investigator Jim Tuite speculates that gases were blown straight
upward, then settled miles away as fallout. And, he says, Iraqis are suffering
health problems “similar to what we’re seeing in our veterans.” Ironically, much
of Iraq’s chemical arsenal was made by U.S. companies–80 of which face a
class-action suit by 2,000 ailing vets.

It seems a quotation mark was missing from the HTML code making it display wrongly. Surely, it was just an accident right? And unfortunately went undiscovered for years (this article certainly predates Gulf War II) on that page that is difficult to discover using Google or even the LIFE homepage. But hey, it is a story on DU in the mainstream media right? And this proves that there isn’t any censorship, right? And I’m sure this page will be referenced when the hearings come and people are taken to task for knowingly poisoning an entire country and exposing American and allied troops to a proven carcinogenic toxin.

The truth is that DU has made it into the mainstream news before. Here’s an example from 2003. And here is the 2003 BBC in-depth expose. It just has trouble staying in the news. Few other newspapers ever seem to pick up the story. This happened again last week. The Sunday Times of London reported that four sampling stations detected a significant rise in atmospheric radiation over England following the ’shock and awe’ assult on Bagdhad. The government simply stated it was impossible for the radiation to have come from Iraq, although weather records from that time showed favorable winds. Whether or not the radiation came from Iraq, I am disappointed the story was not pursued further. So far, only one other online news source has followed up.

TAGS: Technorati Tags: depleted+uranium

Click to go to article in Taiwan News.

I stole that title from a Forumosa thread title. It is true that after every peak in dog buying habits of the local humans, a new wave of abandoned dogs hits the streets. Usually it is caused by a popular “cute dog movie.” Most recently it was a rush to buy the same dog as Taiwan’s newly and dubiously christened “supermodel.” But now it will be year of the dog.

Here’s an excerpt from the Taiwan News story. Click the photo to go to the story.

As people in Taiwan prepare for Lunar New Year celebrations to welcome in the Year of the Dog, pet store owners are already feeling some new year’s cheer.

Pet sellers estimate that on average more than NT$20 billion is spent on 1.6 million pet dogs and related products in Taiwan every year.

But with the “Year of the Dog” soon to arrive, pet store owners have seen their sales increase by at least 20 percent so far.