Discussion on Miramar Demolition Event

Explant · December 5, 2020, 7:03am

Dont get me wrong, DPP is as corrupt as they come. But it seems like common knowledge that taidong is deep deep blue, CKMT, and there is a mother load of corruption. Many areas dont even have a second option in elections, just blue…The only surprisig thing about it is that people still find it surprising. A case i like to mention to locals of taidong is from southern pingdong, another ultra corrupt cesspool of government morons. However even there, when the near kenting resort was reported and suspended, they brought in excavators to vacate the oceanside eateries and showed them the face saving knee jerk the government is only capable of. The “illegal” ones anyway. Fun fact, all are now open again in pingdong.

Until taiwan SOCIETY, meaning the population, stops putting up with such bullshit, the government is going to continue on. And if only a small handful care enough and raise a stink, expect more beatings, kidnappings and murders. Sky dragons, dont think for a second you arent the same up there. The whole country is rotten in this way, and yet we are lucky enough to live in a country, that at least for now, can actually succeed is grassroot movements. But it takes numbers, not bullshit. Thats where HK have us beat, in diligence. But to be fair we havent gotten that dire yet. Which seems the human condition, fix it once its too late. Nevermind fixing things before they are broken. This line of fthinking fits taiwan just perdfect, like almost everywhere else

Willfully ignorant and/or lazy and sellfish. This hotel, like a pimple, is just a symptom of another problem.

dulan_drift · December 6, 2020, 1:49am

That’s the heart of the problem, Explant. Unfortunately, the thing about entrenched stuff is that it’s … entrenched. Including mechanisms to keep it that way.

Here’s an example. Lin Shu-ling is an Amis Shanyuan beach resident and a leader of the Miramar protest movement. She and her mother are goat herders - they took on the Miramar/Taidong Government goliath and won. Lin is a decent, humble, intelligent person. Members of the protest movement, including me, started nagging her to run for office. One way to achieve system change is to get good people involved in the political process - break the cycle.

The first problem is that a lot of ‘good people’ don’t want to have anything to do with the rat’s nest of politics in Taidong. But Lin is special, so we kept pushing and finally she embraced the idea.

She started her campaign for a seat in Taitung council in the 2018 elections. She was calling for an investigation into the corruption surrounding the Miramar BOT deal, amongst other things. The campaign was going well, getting some attention.

Enter the Taitung Electoral Commission. They informed her she was banned from participating in the election because she had a conviction for ‘public abuse’ relating to a dispute over a private development 6-months previously. My understanding is that the entity involved in the dispute forcibly entered Lin’s grandmother’s property and verbaled her. This angered Lin and she wrote a FB post telling the guy to stay-the-fuck-away from her family and pointed out that the guy was a public official at a museum in Taipei. The guy charged her with public abuse. To avoid a drawn out case, Lin agreed to a NT$3000 misdemeanor fine - she wasn’t informed of any further consequences. She didn’t think anything more of it until the election disqualification notice arrived in the mail.

She appealed the election ban, but was informed by Chen Chin-hu (陳金虎), Director of the TEC, that her appeal was rejected. Chen was also Deputy County Magistrate at the time - he was a strong supporter of Miramar and key player in negotiating both the Incinerator and Miramar payouts.

I agree that the DPP in Taitung are either useless idiots or complicit - possibly both. The only path seems to be through a third party or as an independent - but very hard to compete against highly financed party machines.

Meanwhile we can just try to shine a light on what’s going on with Taitung politics (and other counties), keep encouraging good people to run. Maybe a key to this is to focus on the financial side - not just the environment. Let people know that corruption is expensive - it’s a hip-pocket issue. The best way to motivate people is to give them a vested interest. Anyone taking up those cudgels is going to encounter tremendous blowback from the system, just like Lin has, but i don’t see any other way.

Explant · December 6, 2020, 10:43am

dulan_drift:

That’s the heart of the problem, Explant. Unfortunately, the thing about entrenched stuff is that it’s … entrenched. Including mechanisms to keep it that way.

Here’s an example. Lin Shu-ling is an Amis Shanyuan beach resident and a leader of the Miramar protest movement. She and her mother are goat herders - they took on the Miramar/Taidong Government goliath and won. Lin is a decent, humble, intelligent person. Members of the protest movement, including me, started nagging her to run for office. One way to achieve system change is to get good people involved in the political process - break the cycle.

The first problem is that a lot of ‘good people’ don’t want to have anything to do with the rat’s nest of politics in Taidong. But Lin is special, so we kept pushing and finally she embraced the idea.

She started her campaign for a seat in Taitung council in the 2018 elections. She was calling for an investigation into the corruption surrounding the Miramar BOT deal, amongst other things. The campaign was going well, getting some attention.

Enter the Taitung Electoral Commission. They informed her she was banned from participating in the election because she had a conviction for ‘public abuse’ relating to a dispute over a private development 6-months previously. My understanding is that the entity involved in the dispute forcibly entered Lin’s grandmother’s property and verbaled her. This angered Lin and she wrote a FB post telling the guy to stay-the-fuck-away from her family and pointed out that the guy was a public official at a museum in Taipei. The guy charged her with public abuse. To avoid a drawn out case, Lin agreed to a NT$3000 misdemeanor fine - she wasn’t informed of any further consequences. She didn’t think anything more of it until the election disqualification notice arrived in the mail.

She appealed the election ban, but was informed by Chen Chin-hu (陳金虎), Director of the TEC, that her appeal was rejected. Chen was also Deputy County Magistrate at the time - he was a strong supporter of Miramar and key player in negotiating both the Incinerator and Miramar payouts.

I agree that the DPP in Taitung are either useless idiots or complicit - possibly both. The only path seems to be through a third party or as an independent - but very hard to compete against highly financed party machines.

Meanwhile we can just try to shine a light on what’s going on with Taitung politics (and other counties), keep encouraging good people to run. Maybe a key to this is to focus on the financial side - not just the environment. Let people know that corruption is expensive - it’s a hip-pocket issue. The best way to motivate people is to give them a vested interest. Anyone taking up those cudgels is going to encounter tremendous blowback from the system, just like Lin has, but i don’t see any other way.

I agree with all that and it seems more or less right.

But this is what i keep trying to say over and over for too many years, especially on this forum. filled with teachers. The only REAL change one can truly expect (long term), aside from a war, is generational. Teach the kids. Fight the good fight, absolutely, but if the “enemy” is spending lots of money, time and manpower on brainwashing the next generation, the “moral side” ought to spend its time there too. This is something our current generations in so called developed regions fail at a lot. Being selfless and teaching the next generation to be better. Religions seem to do it best, but they have very well known social long term problems as well, so its a pitty we tend to only exceed in a system of fear and control that religious entities provide. I liken it to a person with land. The sellfish person will buy big trees and move them into their land for near instant gratification. whereas the selfless person will plant trees with the young generation knowing full well they will never benefit directly from the shade that tiny tree will provide them during their short human lifespan. So they spend a large portion of ther time with young generations plantin.trees, teaching them about all the realities kf life nd goin to the forest in order to satisfy te ahort term need of seeing big trees. As such we get involved with fixing retarded things like this hotel because it was corrupt and wrong. But if all ones time is spent in that hotel, rather than teaching kids, that hotel will just keep gettin reincarnated over and over.

I hope with this story you shared, it gets shared to thousands of school kids in Taitung county, otherwise there was very little point in everyones allocation of time. I will certainly be sharing, but only what is known as fact. Would be nice to hear more about the details, on record, in.order to spread with conviction

TimesThree · December 10, 2020, 2:53am

WAY back in the day it was a swimming area, I forget the exact designation. They should have just kept it the way it was.

dulan_drift · December 11, 2020, 5:44am

This link has the details of Lin Shuling’s electoral cancellation. It’s in Chinese but google translate is pretty good these days. Was it payback for protesting Miramar? I don’t know for sure.

Deputy Magistrate Chen Chin-hu (陳金虎), who doubles as Director of the Taitung Electoral Commission - the guy who signed the appeal rejection - he would know. Chen has been a backroom ‘deals’ guy for decades. All the details of the crazy shit that’s gone down in the last 30 years in Taitung politics - they’re inside his head.

That’s the thing: it’s ‘fixing’ something (using your money) that was not broken - and in doing so - breaking it. Then sending you an exorbitant bill. Then suing you. Kind of like the dodgy tradesperson from hell.

dulan_drift · December 12, 2020, 1:40am

‘Teach the kids’, as you point out, it’s what cultures do - reinforce themselves. The CCP is next-level at it, cutting edge.
It’s also alive and well in democratic countries. The Catholic Church, for example, practiced indoctrination through education - they didn’t cover themselves in glory either (or did they?)

Working out the “moral side” is notoriously tricky. The leaders of the Communist Revolution were arguably the moral side at the time. They thought they were, still do. Actually, every politician in the world will tell you they’re driven by the ‘common good’. Most of them believe it.

As for teachers getting involved in propaganda wars - i wouldn’t go there. Is your intended meaning more like ‘develop critical thinking’?

Knowledge is remembering information, but it’s also questioning information. Seeing where that goes. A good teacher activates those skills.

In theory, that faculty alone should be enough to get us through.
(Unless you’re in a country where you get disappeared for that - in which case you’re fucked.)

Here’s a wild thought - did the influx of X-generation teachers through the kindergarten’s of Taiwan in the 90’s have a butterfly-effect on Taiwan’s cultural journey?

Explant · December 12, 2020, 4:12pm

dulan_drift:

Explant:

Teach the kids… if the “enemy” is spending lots of money, time and manpower on brainwashing the next generation, the “moral side” ought to spend its time there too.

‘Teach the kids’, as you point out, it’s what cultures do - reinforce themselves. The CCP is next-level at it, cutting edge.
It’s also alive and well in democratic countries. The Catholic Church, for example, practiced indoctrination through education - they didn’t cover themselves in glory either (or did they?)

Working out the “moral side” is notoriously tricky. The leaders of the Communist Revolution were arguably the moral side at the time. They thought they were, still do. Actually, every politician in the world will tell you they’re driven by the ‘common good’. Most of them believe it.

As for teachers getting involved in propaganda wars - i wouldn’t go there. Is your intended meaning more like ‘develop critical thinking’?

Knowledge is remembering information, but it’s also questioning information. Seeing where that goes. A good teacher activates those skills.

In theory, that faculty alone should be enough to get us through.
(Unless you’re in a country where you get disappeared for that - in which case you’re fucked.)

Here’s a wild thought - did the influx of X-generation teachers through the kindergarten’s of Taiwan in the 90’s have a butterfly-effect on Taiwan’s cultural journey?

Well of coursethat is right. And as you point out, many governments, religions and cultures have done the same throughout history. In.fact most social animals. So i am of course talking about teaching the kids critical thinking, questioning bwing ok all that jazz. It may not be perfect but it so far has worked out better than simple follow the leader like the CCP for example.

Should teachers be involved in teaching.kids politics, yes. Should they be unbias and present politics as a reality of life, yes. This argument gets close to teaching kids evolution or sex ed. Teach facts, and teach critical thinking. If you are going to teach opinion, open up a separate class for said where there is no illusion of what it is. Kids benefit from mental stimulation, and teaching them how to think ought to be priority number 1 as all the other subjects beome easier and perhaps even innovated by people who can think.