Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Security overkill robs envoy, public

Taipei Times Editorial

To say the government went overboard in the scale of police presence to protect Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) would be an understatement. Even President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) doesn’t enjoy such overkill.

Chen was escorted out of the airport straight from the apron, with checkpoints and police squads deployed along the motorcade route leading to Taipei’s Grand Hotel. On a trip to the National Palace Museum, his motorcade included five police cars, three police vans and six luxury sedans, with walls of police officers deployed inside and outside of the museum. Museum Director Chou Kung-hsin (周功鑫) arranged a special tour for Chen and his wife, with exhibition areas cleared of other visitors.

Hong Kong support for Taiwan’s UN bid increases: poll

Taipei Times

More Hong Kong residents have become supportive of Taiwan’s efforts to rejoin the UN and fewer are now identifying as Chinese since Beijing authorities blocked imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, a new poll found.

A Hong Kong University poll conducted earlier this month found that 42 percent of the territory’s residents backed Taiwan’s bid to become a UN member, a 5 percent increase from similar polls in September.

Aborigines protest township losses

Taipei Times

Aboriginal and human rights activists yesterday protested the abolition of Aboriginal townships in counties to be administratively upgraded to special municipalities on Saturday, urging legal revisions to allow them to maintain their autonomous status.

“This is not our first time here, we’ve been here several times, making the same demands over and over, and received promise after promise from the government,” Aboriginal Action Alliance Convener Lituan Takelutuen told a press conference held at the Legislative Yuan.

Ma’s delusions of ‘soft power’

Taipei Times Editorial

After years of assailing our ears with notions of “win-win” situations President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has now latched onto a new term that, unfortunately for us, he now seems intent on milking dry: “soft power.”

No sooner had US political scientist Joseph Nye, the person who coined the overused and oft misused term, left after a quick visit earlier this month than Ma was borrowing it to describe his policies over the past two-and-a-half years. All of a sudden, Ma’s body of work appeared to blossom into a monument to so-called soft power, which, if we looked closely enough, was a euphemism for everything the administration of his predecessor, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), supposedly was not.

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