Taiwan's new "anti-terrorism" bill

The Taiwanese Cabinet last week submitted a revised "anti-terrorism" bill that should alarm every Taiwanese. Lacking a definition of what constitutes terrorism and with little oversight to ensure that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies do not overstep their responsibilities in a way that would infringe upon the rights and freedoms of individuals, the new act, if passed, would represent a grave step backwards for the nascent democracy.

Having experienced and participated in activities that could only have been launched in a system where oversight is lacking and consequently where undue infringements are deemed permissible, I felt compelled to write about the dangers the proposed bill represents to Taiwan. Visitors can view the full op-ed, published in the Monday, March 26 issue of the Taipei Times, by clicking here.

Thursday Afternoon in Taipei

On of the perks of working as an editor for a newspaper is that my work schedule is from 15:30 until 22:00, which, provided I get up early enough, gives me plenty of time in the morning and early afternoon to accomplish what people abiding by more traditional schedules could never hope of doing. Another advantage is that as newspapers are also published on weekends, one’s “weekend” need not fall on Saturday and Sunday. In my case, “weekend” is Thursday and Friday.

One little indulgence I have developed in recent months is to go, mid-afternoon, to this place called in House, a lounge bar situated in the Xin-yi district, about a five minute walk from Taipei 101. Not only is in House one of my favorite lounges in Taipei, with excellent house music and a dreamy décor, but the fact that I am going there in the middle of the week before dinnertime certainly adds to the experience.

After you have been seated by one of the invariably good-looking, fashionable waitresses or waiters, you are handed a drinks menu to choose from which offers a nice variety, from wines to whiskeys to multiple cocktails. Comfortably seated in a leather sofa, with the not-too-loud mix playing round you and the faded pink and blue hues bathing you in a dreamy mood — to which we add hundreds of candles on tables, hanging from the ceiling and on windowsills — you place your order. From noon until 18:00, all drinks come with a cake or sorbet. What will it be, a 15-year-old single malt, or a kamikaze? Red wine, or a Mai Tai?

For me, part of the experience lies in the surrealism of it all. It’s as if reality were a dial and you shifted it, say, thirty degrees. There is something unreal about being in a lounge bar in mid-afternoon on a workday. It’s like stepping into a different world — not altogether unlike the real world, but like I said, a few degrees off. I also like to observe people there, for I never find myself alone in there. For me, I bring a book and read while I munch on peanuts, take a sip from my drink and eat my sorbet or cake. Others come in small groups. Some are hunched around a portable computer, talking shop, the bright monitor an out-of-place yet natural intrusion into the otherwise somber atmosphere. Others come alone, engrossed in a cigar, or deep in conversation on the ubiquitous cell phone. It’s amazing how many people one will find in a lounge at this time of the day. While some do conduct business there, for the majority it is, like me, leisure, a hedonistic escapade from reality. Looking at them, I always wonder what it is they do so that they can be there on a weekday. True, Taipei has more than its share of utterly rich people who need not have a day job for their entire lives. Maybe the people around me think I am one of them, who knows? I could very well see myself spending entire days there, writing a novel, perhaps.

At any time, it’s a place to see and be seen, where one drops all his worries and allows himself to be embraced by the alcohol and the enthralling lounge music. Make that a weekday experience, and the escapism is all the more complete.

Empty Rhetoric in Politics

Diplomacy, it seems, is as much damage control as it is the substantial fashioning of relationships between states. The principal tool of diplomats — especially when it comes to damage control — is, obviously, rhetoric. By paying close attention to what is being said, it is easy to determine whether a state has a well-rounded, coherent strategy or is just struggling to maintain the appearance of having a handle on things. As we saw last week with US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s threats to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the issue of fighting the Taliban, contradiction are usually indicative of policymaking confusion.

This week, Washington once more proved that its policies on the Taiwan Strait issue is no more coherent. The first instance is actually a long continuation of a trend, which consists of (a) a paranoid view of Chinese military growth (the People’s Republic of China’s military budget increased 17.8 percent this year) and the incessant references to the “threat” that this poses to neighboring states and US interests in the region; and (b) of Washington’s recriminatory attitude whenever Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) makes any kind of reference to independence, which Washington never fails to slap down as a “threat to peace and security in the Taiwan Strait” and as threatening to US support for the democratic nation. Here again, the contradiction is a lurid one: non-democratic, expansionist China is a growing threat, democratic Taiwan is an ally worthy of protection, but any attempt at normalization of status or reference to independence in face of Beijing’s avowed threats of military aggression is portrayed as treason.

The reason why Washington’s rhetoric is so contradictory is that its policy on Taiwan is actually a non-policy — the maintenance, in lieu of progress, of the status quo whereby China will not invade Taiwan and the latter will not declare unilateral independence. It would be all nice well if the international system were static and the balance of power unchanging, but that is not the case. Beijing is building up and modernizing its military, and there are growing indications that Beijing may not always have full control of its military apparatus, which one day could result in enterprising individuals making military decisions that do not entirely correspond to or reflect the wishes of the civilian leadership. While the panicking, to the point of irrationality, segments of the US intelligentsia and policymaking circles overestimate the Chinese “threat” and misrepresent its aims and intentions, it remains that Beijing’s policy on Taiwan does include the use of force — and the odd 1,000 missiles it points at Taiwan as well as the language adopted in its “Anti-Secession” Act attest to that. With these two contradictory forces shaping Washington’s views, its language becomes one of obfuscation, one that simply cannot lead to political development.

Taiwan is therefore a friend, in extremis one worthy of protection, but it cannot be allowed to act in its own interest or to seek for its 23 million people the representation on the world stage that they deserve. Beijing, for its part, is at times friend, at times enemy, a partner in trade but a brewing storm over the horizon. The signals are mixed, and diplomats’ rhetoric reflects that.

Aside from contradictory language, empty, meaningless rhetoric is also part of the diplomat’s toolbox. Something needs to be said to fill a void, but once it is analyzed it is obvious that whatever was said makes no contribution whatsoever. The Taiwan Strait conflict offers many examples of this, such as when US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, visiting China over the weekend, said that the 450 air-ground missiles the US intends to sell Taiwan to equip its F16s “would be for strictly defensive purposes and consistent with our ‘one China’ policy.” Close scrutiny of the language cannot but beg the question: what other use but a defensive one would Taiwan make of these missiles — invade China, perhaps? Everybody and their dog knows that the only reason why Taipei would seek such weapons, along with other packages, is to defend itself from an eventual military attack by China (whether a successful defense, under the present conditions, can be achieved is beyond the scope of this entry).

One would think that clear, rational policies lie behind and inform the relations between states — more so when it comes to unstable issues like Taiwan and China. The reality, however, is otherwise. Look to the language, see what is being said. More often than one would think, the rhetoric is empty and the diplomat is no more than the messenger attempting to buy time.

Remembering the 228 Incident

Sixty years ago, on Feb. 28, 1947, began what would lead to the slaughter of between 20,000 and 30,000 Taiwanese during a security crackdown by Republic of China officers. The event, which ostensibly was sparked the previous day by a dispute between a cigarette vendor and an anti-smuggling officer, quickly turned into a days-long civil disorder and open rebellion against the corruption and illegitimacy of the regime that, since the handover by former colonial occupier Japan in 1945, had imposed its rule on the island. The distant Kuomintang (KMT) regime on the mainland soon sent reinforcements and in the ensuing days its officers launched in sometimes random, sometimes systematic killings. An American visiting at the time reported beheadings and rapes. The incident, for which recently released accounts now put the blame on Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), opened the door to the White Terror era, which lasted until 1987 and during which tens of thousands of Taiwanese were disappeared, imprisoned or killed.

As I write this, commemorative ceremonies throughout Taiwan are being held. Just outside the window, a procession is snaking its way through the streets of the neighborhood, loud gongs and cymbals and various wind instruments, accentuated by powerful firecrackers, paraphrasing the screams of those who fell sixty years ago.

Taiwan probably wouldn’t be what it is today without its own terrible formative incidents, of which 228 was, sadly, but one among many. Nor would it be the democracy it is today had it not been for KMT rule, however repressive it might have been. The fact is, nations must build upon the geography and history they are dealt and make the most of it. And 228, painful as the memories are, is part of that dowry. It is important that these events be remembered, dug up, and studied, that attempts to comprehend them be sustained and that future generations be taught them, as they constitute the very DNA of a people. By dealing with those memories in a peaceful — perhaps even forgiving manner — Taiwanese, as have other nations that have come to accept their violent past, can serve as an example to peoples who are currently experiencing political violence or will do so in future.

Signs of failure

Despite US President George W. Bush’s constant declarations to the effect that al-Qaeda has been weakened by the “war on terrorism” launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, analysts the world over are now revisiting this assumption (see “How not to win,” Feb. 26).

A clear indication of this failure to eliminate the threat can be found in recent comments by no less a player in antiterrorism than Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the British domestic intelligence service, MI5. In November, Manningham-Buller — well-known for her usually less alarmist assessments of the terrorist threat than those of the government she serves — said that since 2005 MI5 had identified 30 major terrorist plots in Britain and was monitoring the activities of — take a deep breath — no less than 1,600 Britain-based individuals from approximately 200 terrorist networks. This is on the home front alone! The exact same figures were repeated by London Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson at a security conference in Sydney, Australia, on Monday.

With the population of Great Britain established at 60.7 million as of late last year, this means that there is one terrorist suspect for every 38,000 British — an astounding figure. Such a ratio would mean that Canada, with a population of 33 million, has 868 terrorists in its midst. If this were the case, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would have to grow something like eight-fold so that it could monitor the activities of all those suspects. And this is excludes all the other usual groups targeted by intelligence services — the usual suspects, if you will — such as China, Russia, Iran and others. Given, based on my experiences, the usual ratio (and I am being very conservative here) of 2 intelligence officers for every target of an investigation, this would mean that in Canada, more than 1,700 intelligence officers would be working on the al-Qaeda file, a figure that excludes the communication intercepts specialists, translators, and other operational staff, not to mention pay and administrative staff, lawyers, and so on. (As of last year, the total workforce at CSIS, including administration, pay services and others, was approximately 2,400.)

But what those numbers truly show is that if they are true, the West is clearly doing something wrong, so wrong, in fact, that defeat in its “war on terrorism” is almost a fait accompli. Ever since they launched the campaign against al-Qaeda and other like-minded groups in 2001, the architects of the “war on terror” have repeatedly said that this new war is as much a military campaign as it is a war for the hearts and minds of people in the Muslim world. Given the MI5 numbers, it would appear that the hearts and minds part has either gone terribly wrong — or worse, that the leadership didn’t mean what it said. This, of course, is not entirely impossible, as to this day British Prime Minister Tony Blair still refuses to acknowledge that Britain’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have absolutely no impact upon domestic security.

The most alarming part is that even if the figures are most likely overblown, the intelligence community and the British government believe they are true, and they don’t seem to grasp that they are indicative of a monumental failure on the diplomatic and hearts and minds front. Absent such an understanding, such figures — real or inflated — can only but go up.

How not to win

Amid rising fears — as it does every year around this time — of a new Taliban “spring offensive” against NATO troops in Afghanistan and rising concerns that al-Qaeda, to quote Condoleezza Rice’s odd wording, “has tried to regenerate some of its leadership” and may, as some so-called security experts would have us think, be planning future attacks, here comes US Vice President Dick Cheney, originally bound for meetings with the Afghan proconsul Hamid Karzai but barred from reaching Afghanistan — not by the Taliban, or terrorists, but rather by snow. Cheney therefore makes a secret stop in Pakistan and holds a lunch meeting with President Pervez Musharraf.

The symptoms of incoming defeat often lie in the things that are said by politicians and their spokespersons. For a few years now, the lies and contradictions coming out of the US military leadership in Iraq and in Washington when it talks about Iraq, have served as signal posts indicating the way ahead, and we all know what the road looks like. Because of the sheer amplitude of the Iraq fiasco, which now threatens to inflame an entire region, Afghanistan and even al-Qaeda have been taken off the front page. In fact, as Bruce Hoffman, professor at Georgetown University, puts it: “it appears that Iraq blinded us to the possibility of an al-Qaeda renaissance. The United States’ entanglement there has consumed the attention and resources of our country’s military and intelligence communities — at precisely the time that Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda commanders were in their most desperate straits and stood to benefit most from this distraction.”

So five years on, not only has the world’s most powerful military, with the support of some NATO countries, failed to destroy al-Qaeda, but it has in fact allowed it to regroup. Rather than take the blame for its incapacity to focus on the task at hand — i.e., “defeating” al-Qaeda following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — and to admit that its adventure in Iraq was misguided at best, Washington is resorting to the age-old dirty trick of shifting the blame. Every now and then, it lambastes its servants at NATO and tells them to do more in Afghanistan, to deploy more troops, to be more aggressive in their pursuit of the Taliban.

More recently, however, the Bush administration has turned the screw on the Pakistani government, which it wants to be more aggressive in its hunt for al-Qaeda. Reports of varying credibility claim that many insurgents attacking Coalition forces in Afghanistan use Pakistan — more specifically the Waziristan area — as a base. Musharraf’s statement that Pakistan “has done the maximum in the fight against terrorism,” was insufficient to prevent finger-pointing in Washington. “The Pakistanis remain committed to doing everything possible to fight al-Qaeda, but having said that, we also know that there's a lot more that needs to be done,” said the ever-Orwellian presidential spokesman Tony Snow. US administration officials now say that if Pakistan, despite the fact that it has done the “maximum” it can, fails to combat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the so-called “tribal areas” (note the use of language to describe the area where the insurgents allegedly find haven, giving its people an aura of savageness not unlike that which has been used throughout history to characterize groups that needed to be civilized, or altogether eradicated) more aggressively, Washington’s military aid to Pakistan could be cut. In other words, Pakistan would need to receive certification, from no less a figure than George W. Bush, that it is doing all it can to fight al-Qaeda. Since what this imposes on Pakistan is hardly achievable (after all, it’s not like the US has itself been successful at combating insurgencies), we can easily predict that Islamabad would get a failing grade.

One wonders, however, what could be accomplished by this. This is a perfect example of the signals mentioned above, the signs that matters are spiraling out of Washington’s control. The language piles into contradictions. If it were to follow upon its threat to Pakistan, Washington would weaken it military at a time when it asks it to do more. Run faster or else I’ll stop giving you water. Stop giving the marathoner water and he is sure not to complete the race.

What the planners in Washington fail to understand is that its Manichean view of the war on terrorism — the “us against them” or “good versus evil” attitude it has adopted since 9/11 — is the wrong template for a country like Pakistan that is being compelled to wage war against its own people. Things on the ground are not black and white, and not all inhabitants in the “tribal” area are pro-Taliban or al-Qaeda supporters. But Bush, Cheney and their advisers fail to see that, or simply don’t care. The only sure way Musharraf could accomplish what Washington demands of him would be by razing northern Waziristan to the ground, something even Musharraf cannot bring himself to do. Effectively, what Washington is asking the Pakistani president to do is the very same type of action it exploited to demonize a recently hanged dictator — localized ethnocide. But even if Musharraf didn't go to that extent, he must always gauge the reaction of Pakistanis to what he does. In other words, he muct make domestic political calculations.

So Pakistan is stuck in a corner, and the fault is Washington’s. The Taliban spring offensive will come, as it does every year, and al-Qaeda will continue to regroup. Unable to focus on one thing, Washington will continue to do what it does best: call upon its proxies in the region and within NATO to do more, criticize them for not doing enough, and turn its attention elsewhere.

In Iran, perhaps?

A sound signal, with a caveat

The ruling last week by the Supreme Court of Canada that the antiterrorism provision allowing the authorities to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists was counter to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — coming less than a month after Maher Arar received an official apology and a $11.5 million compensation from the Canadian government for its role in his deportation to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured — sends an encouraging signal to the world that Canada is in remission and that it recognizes, however belatedly, that some of the things it has done in the name of security have breached its age-old contract with its citizens.

At the heart of the issue are the Security Certificates which, under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), are emitted against foreign nationals or permanent residents suspected of terrorism. The certificates allow for the detention, without a fair judicial process, of those individuals for extended periods of time, pending deportation. Ostensibly to protect intelligence sources (usually foreign) and methods of collection, the accused and their defense lawyers are given no access to the charges against them or the intelligence used to back those charges, making a proper defense in the court of law virtually impossible. It is a system that, not altogether unfairly, has prompted comparisons to the manner in which the US has treated its prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Eight cases are pending, and twenty have been resolved since 1991. Of the latter, 15 were deported. Of the 28 individuals, nineteen were of Arabic, Northern African or Persian origin. Unfortunately for the individuals whose cases are pending, the court suspended the ruling for a year to allow for a rewriting of the relevant parts of IRPA. The three most prominent cases — Hassan Almrei, Mohammed Zeki Mahjoub and Mahmoud Jaballah — this means a continuation of detentions that started in 2001, 2000 and 2001, respectively. Pictures: Mohamed Harkat (Algeria) released on bail in June 2006; clockwise from centre left: Hassan Almrei (Syria), Mohammed Mahjoub (Egypt), Mahmoud Jaballah (Egypt) and Adil Charkaoui (Morocco), freed on conditional release in February 2005.

Were those individuals Canadians by birth and — let us put it bluntly — Caucasian and non-Muslim, it is highly unlikely that the public, along with government, would allow their detention to continue for a single additional day without fair trial, let alone a year. But given the current state of affairs in the post-911 world and the racist slant against individuals of Middle Eastern or Persian origin, Almrei, Mahjoub and Jaballah will remain incarcerated without provisions for a fair trial with access to the charges against them. Moreover, the ruling was accompanied by a caveat stating that prolonged detention would be allowed if the new version of the law conforms with the Charter. In other words, despite the seemingly path-breaking ruling, there is no assurance that those three individuals — and others to come — will receive a fair trial, let alone be freed and compensated.

This cannot be allowed in a democracy based on a system of law. Whether they are citizens or not, individuals suspected of participation in terrorism-related activities — this alone casting a wide net encompassing all kinds of activities, both passive and active — deserve the full set of defense tools granted individuals suspected of other crimes. If found guilty in a fair trial, they should face the full consequences of their acts. But we cannot allow for the continuation of a system whereby suspects are detained for years without the means to defend themselves and cannot know the substance of the charges against them — especially when much of the intelligence used to send them to jail in the first place is, as most things intelligence-related, of questionable value, oftentimes based on innuendo, institutional sloppiness, false assumptions or outright racism.

Without provisions for a fair trial and unmitigated respect for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Security Certificates are only a tool used by authorities to conceal less-than-airtight cases bent on ridding themselves of individuals who happen to be of the wrong ethnic or religious group.

The Middle Eastern Arms Race

As if the bloody Iraq civil war, continuing flare-ups in Palestine and the occasional bombing in Lebanon were not proof enough of the growing instability in the entire Middle East, the arms trade show that opened last weekend in the United Arab Emirates — and the billions of dollars that mainly Sunni states in the region intend to spend there — surely is a sign that, post toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, all is not well in the area.

Of course, for the US arms industry, the news that states like Saudi Arabia, to give but one example, intend to spend as much as US$50 billion at the fare purchasing fighter aircraft, cruise missile and attack helicopters, is delightful. But in the wake of an invasion that was hailed as a new birth for the Middle East (remember the Bush promise of bringing democracy to the region), the arms race by states whose record on democracy is far from envious (again, Saudi Arabia) and whose purchasing of those weapons cannot but prop the undemocratic regimes (if all the projected deals fall through, weapons providers will be making as much as US$60 billion in sales), is as clear a sign if ever there was one that the whole quixotic endeavor was utter failure. Nothing proves this failure more than an arms race pitting Shiite Iran (and its allies in states like Lebanon and Syria) and Sunnis.

Not satisfied with already having failed in Iraq and perpetuated hatred for Israel through its moral and political support for Jerusalem’s actions in the Occupied Territories and, last summer, in Lebanon, the US is now banking on the fears it has created by demonizing Tehran and its nuclear program — added to its accusations that failure in Iraq is the result of Iranian meddling there — to arm the region.

So, from the prospect of democratization a mere four years ago, what the world now faces is a divided Middle East whose constituents are racing against time to equip themselves with the means to wage war against one another. If, as many fear, the US decides to launch strikes against Iran, either because of its actions in Iraq or, more likely, its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia will have little choice but to side with Washington and could be sucked into the conflict (though, despite the billions it already has spent purchasing arms from the US, the kingdom is far from capable of engaging in a modern military confrontation, as it was in 1991, which led to the deployment of US troops there to prevent an Iraqi invasion; and of course whatever it is that Riyadh bought over the weekend will take years before it is integrated into its armed forces). Furthermore, an attack on Iran cannot but engender some reprisal from Tehran itself as well as its regional ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, which itself is on the brink of an internal armed conflict — a conflict that, in turn, would lead to Syrian and Israeli participation, as happened in the 1980s.

It is surprising how little has changed, except for the amplification, through inept military adventurism and a total abandonment of diplomacy by Washington and, to a lesser extent, London, of old divides. The solution, it appears, is not, despite Condoleezza Rice’s tour of the region, a new diplomatic course, but rather selling an unprecedented quantity of weapons to states on the brink of war.

If, in the wake of London’s decision to pull out of Iraq, Washington still wonders whether it should pack up and leave, a region-wide conflagration involving a mix of terrorism, insurgency and conventional battles surely would be the tipping point. The last time the US took a hands-off approach to a military conflict in the Middle East was in the 1980s, when Iraq launched an invasion of Iran. That conflict lasted eight years, with devastating consequences.

If Taiwan serves as an example (and there is no reason to believe that Washington’s relationship with Middle Eastern states is any different), there is no imagining what the pressure on so-called “allies” in the region for them to buy military equipment must be like. These states are being told that they must buy weapons to a level largely dictated by Washington so that they can defend themselves, or at least hold off until the US can intervene. If they fail to do so, as Taipei now has for a few years, they will be reprimanded by Washington. Through shadowy, backroom diplomacy engineered by influential arms vendors, Middle Eastern kingdoms are spending billions buying weapons that can only lead to their defeat, for no one will ever win such a complex conflict as a Middle East-wide war.

Who in his right mind — except those whose sense of morality has been rotten by greed — could look at the arms expo in the UAE and see this as a positive development? Given the situation, such arms fares should be banned altogether.

The human comedy

As an editor at a newspaper, many stories come across my desk that seem like they’ve been pulled from a comedy script. Those that I like most are the paradoxes and coincidences that show us that no matter how seriously we humans tend to take ourselves, life tends to have the upper hand and does so with thunderous laughter. Here are three gems that I came across recently.

In late January this year, Taiwan and Israel held their ninth economic and technological cooperation conference. Two-way trade between the two countries for the first 11 months of last year amounted to a little more than US$1 billion. The conference was therefore held to strengthen the links between the two states and encourage further investment and cooperation. There is no small irony in the fact that among the Taiwanese delegation to the conference was the Vice Minister of Economic Affairs, Hsieh Fa-tah (謝發達), whose first name, once Romanized, is oddly reminiscent of a certain Palestinian liberation movement.

The second one occurred yesterday in Grenada, a Caribbean state that in the mid-1990s switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing. For the past years, Beijing has been financing various projects on the cash-strapped island, including a sports stadium whose construction was recently completed. To celebrate the even, a ceremony was held, with the president and various high-ranking Chinese representatives in attendance, including the Chinese ambassador. A band was brought in to play national anthems. The look on Chinese officials’ faces must have been priceless as they struggled to keep their composure upon being served not the Chinese national anthem — but that of Taiwan.

The last one also took place yesterday. During the past week, the Taipei International Book Exhibit was held at the Taipei World Trade Center, close to where I live. This year’s theme was Russian literature, much of which has only begun to be translated into Chinese. In the afternoon, a British man who has made it his mission in the past years to save Japanese forests from the axe by purchasing them held an questions-and-answer session — in Japanese — with the media. Of course, the Taipei Times was there and coverage appeared on page two. Now, another feature of page 2 is the Lunar Prophecy box, which is offered every day and is based on sage advice found in ancient Chinese tomes. The Lunar Prophecy is twofold: it tells people which activities the day is good for and which ones it is bad for. So, as the reader moves his eyes from the story about the man who tried to save forest from being cut toward the Lunar Prophecy box, what does he see under “today is a good day for…”?

Cutting down trees.

A reminder from China

Two days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was to officially release its much-expected report in Paris on the human impact on the environment and global warming, Taiwan was sent a strong reminder from China that pollution knows no borders, makes no distinction between rich and poor, young and the elderly, and is a threat to all. That reminder came on the back of a cold front coming from China, which with it carried diverse forms of aerosolized industrial chemicals from China’s industrial coastline. Particulate and sulfur dioxide levels were at such levels that the Environment Protection Administration advised people with cardiovascular or respiratory diseases to stay indoors.

Conditions in Taipei City were not as severe as other areas in Taiwan, and yet, when I looked out the window yesterday morning, the effects of that pollution were visible to the naked eye: the apartment where I live is located less than a kilometer from the Taipei 101 building. On any given day, it is perfectly visible. But for a while yesterday the sky had a gray, steel tinge to it and the world’s tallest occupied freestanding structure was hiding behind the veil of atmospheric pollution. Ten in the morning had the light quality of a strange dawn.

Then, as I stepped outside, I fully understood why the EPA had made an advisory targeting people with respiratory or cardiovascular problems: a mere 20-minute walk left fighting for air, and my nose was clogged. All around me, people were sneezing, most of them behind the protective masks so prevalent in East Asia. As there is no alternative to breathing, one has little choice but to take in the foul-smelling oxygen, knowing full well that this implies breathing in some chemicals as well. The most astonishing thing was that a large part of those pollutants, this vaporized industrial waste, had not even originated in Taiwan proper, but in China, more than 100km away across the Taiwan Strait.

The problem of pollution is far worse in China, where environmental regulations are at best nominal only and in most cases inexistent. According to the Guardian, air pollution is responsible for 400,000 premature deaths in China every year. Every year, thousands upon thousands of people die prematurely as a result, and many children are born with respiratory and allergy problems at a prevalence historically unseen. A Chinese government study conducted in 2003 revealed that more than 100 million Chinese lived in cities where the air quality was considered “very dangerous.”

A small reminder after a walk that left me breathless, eyes itchy and nose runny, that whatever the IPCC reveals in its report on Friday, we should take seriously. If the world continues to pollute at the current rate and if its governments continue to see the Kyoto Protocol as a sound bite — if not an object of contempt, as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to — rather than an obligation to generations present and future, then it can only get worse and other landmarks will begin to disappear, in some areas perhaps for good.

Which brings me to my last point: whether it is true or not that the Harper government played a hand in the sacking of Canadian Environment Commissioner Johanne Gelinas, there is no such thing as being too tireless, or showing too much dedication, in promoting environmental protection.

A democracy health check

Let me first open with an apology to my readers for the irregularity of my postings. A few months ago, my literary agent requested that I make some changes to the first part of the volume I have been working on for more than a year. As a consequence, I have been dividing my time between my regular job at the Taipei Times and, on most mornings, sitting in a coffee shop with coffee and portable computer, making said changes to my document. One casualty of this heavy intellectual schedule has been this site. Work on my book has progressed well, and if everything goes as planned, I should be done making the edits by the end of this month, after which point one can expect to see an upsurge in postings herein.

It is no small irony that the country that, without the approval of the UN Security Council and with world opposition, invaded Iraq to ex post facto rid it of a murderous dictator who didn’t care for the wellbeing of his people, is now being led by a president who has become so unaccountable to not only the people he represents but the very democratic institutions that give his power legitimacy as to claim that he will continue the course, add soldiers in Iraq and all the while backhand the advice given him by, among others, the members of the Iraq Study Group.

The Executive Branch of the US has become so powerful that even a vote in the Senate against the President Bush’s decision to augment the US military presence in Iraq by some 21,500 soldiers is incapable of preventing him from doing so. Even worse, a few weeks ago, Bush made the headlines when he said that he would stay the course even if he only had the support of his wife and his dog. Heck, even Saddam, at the height of his power, needed the approval of more people than that, as do the powers in Beijing, however undemocratic they are.

In many ways, the US has become a dictatorship where the militarized few can hide budgets, spend at will, and decide upon war and peace as they see fit.

The so-called exporter of democracy is slowly but surely turning into an anti-democratic force that promises to sow much discord the world over, with tremendous peril for all. Bush has become an emperor, confident in the infallibility of his vision, accountable to no one but to himself and, perhaps, to the god who purportedly gives him guidance and to the handful of advisers who surround him. His deluded mission is one to civilize and to liberate. It is, in many respects, akin to Japanese emperor Hirohito’s in the lead-up to World War II.

The state of US democracy, supposedly the very model for the world to adopt, has become so decayed as to perhaps necessitate, ironically, the very antithesis of democracy — a coup — to stop the decision-makers before they further enflame the Middle East or exacerbate its alienation of Beijing.

Blindly forward in Iraq

By any yardstick imaginable, 2006 did not end well for Iraq and its people. Even the execution, in extremis, of Saddam Hussein mere days after his sentencing didn’t bring the sense of catharsis that his executioners might have wished for. In fact, the hanging of the former president — in the spirit of the age caught on film and distributed via the Internet around the globe — may not have achieved more than bring satisfaction to his long-time enemies in the Shiite camp and to exacerbate the already gaping divide between the country’s — and the region’s — Sunnis and Shiites. After all, vengeance rarely, if ever, manages to bring the sweet taste that the perpetrator had sought while planning his actions.

As for the US, whether its ambassador in Baghdad requested, as the US claims, that the execution be postponed or not, it, too, comes out the loser, as the perception will always be that American hands were behind the hanging in yet another attempt to humiliate Islam and its people. Saddam’s ultimate downfall may have brought a modicum of celebration in Washington, London and Jerusalem, but it certainly hasn’t cleared the path to victory in Iraq. For all intents and purposes, the images of Saddam’s execution will have made matters worse.

More than ever, the so-called Coalition forces in Iraq will be looking for an exit strategy, as the body count in Iraqi lives — established at somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 for 2006 — and now 3,000 for US soldiers, keeps increasing. Many had placed their hopes in the findings of the Iraq Study Group Report, a multi-month, much-lauded effort to look at the facts on the ground and establish a new strategy which in the end would allow for most US forces to depart the embattled country.

The report — published for public consumption last month by Vintage — will engender a necessary debate within society, and for the most part its findings are valuable. It is honest in assessing that the situation is deplorable and that victory (whatever the term signifies) is by no means a certainty. Gone is the hubris, the “can-do” attitude of the innocent Western agent sent abroad. Instead, the language of unwavering optimism which characterized the Bush administration’s view on Iraq in 2003 and 2004 has been replaced by the cautious “improve” and “no guarantee for success.” The report underscores the cold reality of the possibility of failure in Iraq, with dire consequences not only for the US but the region as well. The clear-eyed assessment of the situation in Iraq is the most valuable contribution this report is likely to make. Whether it is heeded by decision-makers remains to be seen.

Where the report comes short is in the recommendations that it makes, not so much because the strategy proposed makes no sense but rather because it perpetuates the lack of definition that historically has caused so much headaches to occupying powers facing an insurgency. Part of the new strategy involves giving the responsibility for security to Iraqi forces, with US forces providing training, weapons and, when needed, support. All in all, however, US soldiers are no longer to play a primary role in providing security to Iraqis. Moreover, the US would use a system of sticks and carrots whereby a failure on Iraq’s part to reach certain milestones and demonstrate that it is acting could result in a US pullout regardless of whether the country has been stabilized or not.

The report then says that US troops should move away from a policing role in Iraq and “fight al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq using special operations teams.” (p. 72). Therein lies the major flaw in the strategy: the report does not provide definitions for what constitutes mere criminality, sectarian conflict, insurgency, guerrilla and terrorism, or what, for that matter, distinguishes al-Qaeda in Iraq from the Sunni-backed insurgency. What constitutes a terrorist act? Which definition will be adopted — the Israeli one, in which every single act of resistance is “terrorism,” or one that solely focuses on attacks on civilians? Granted, there is no way to clearly define violent activities in a place like Iraq. But by failing to even attempt to provide distinctions and thereby give focus to US military activities, US forces will be caught doing the very same thing they have been doing for years, a situation with thus annuls any benefit that might have arisen from a change in strategy.

A lack of definitions for fundamental terms — terrorism, insurgency — will hound US and other forces in Iraq for years to come, regardless of whether the recommendations made in the Iraq Study Group Report are followed or not. In the meantime, countless Iraqis will continue to suffer and see their world continue on the path to collapse. If the situation perdures — and if the conflict, as it very well might, turns into a regional conflagration — some might even begin to wish a return to life under Saddam, the deposed tyrant who we are told was the very reason the US invaded Iraq and whose execution last week failed to bring the sense of achievement, of finality, that the architects of the war surely had hoped for.

Turning up the notch on fear, again

Now that the holidays are over and that people have returned to their normal lives, the time has come to strike some fear into them lest the spirit of the holidays unduly spill into everyday life. After all, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, people in the West have come to expect that there are dangers lurking somewhere in the background. Governments tell them so. But perhaps the alleged plot to bomb aircraft at Heathrow Airport in Britain was already receding too far into the past. Something needed to be said — in the absence of something being done — to resuscitate the fear in people’s heart.

Cue, therefore, on Jan. 2, a report by the Canadian Press based on a document released by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in October through an Access to Information (or is it Disinformation?) request.

According to the CSIS study, it is “quite surprising” that terrorists have not yet detonated a “dirty bomb” — known in the trade as a radiological dispersal device (RDD) — given that making such a crude weapon is, according to CSIS, relatively easy and the materials required to make one readily available to ordinary citizens.

“The technical capability required to construct and use a simple RDD is practically trivial, compared to that of a nuclear explosive device or even most chemical or biological weapons,” the study says, adding that the Sept. 11 attacks had raised fears that terrorists would try to crash airliners into nuclear power stations or find ways to disperse radioactive material with the intent of causing economic damage by rendering an entire area off limits.

CSIS claims that the detonation of an RDD is “undoubtedly the most likely” terrorist scenario involving radioactive sources, adding that “it is quite surprising that the world has not yet witnessed such an attack.”

This, again, is mere fear-mongering on the part of the authorities, as it uses that which cannot be demonstrated to create a monster on the wall. A closer look at the phraseology and choice of words in the report shows how shallow the assessment is. By saying that a dirty bomb is undoubtedly the most likely terrorist attack involving radioactive material, it is simply stating that other methods — breaking into a nuclear power station and somehow finding a way to cause a detonation, or building a nuclear device and managing to smuggle it to a targeted area — are more onerous. And they are. Putting a rifle in one’s mouth and pressing the trigger is also undoubtedly the most likely way someone would end his life — more likely than achieving death by waiting for UV rays from the sun to cause a fatal skin cancer.

What the report conveniently fails to mention — and this is the reason why it expresses surprise at the world having yet to suffer such an attack — is that physical aggression is contingent on two factors: capabilities and intent. Clearly, if building and detonating a RDD is so easy — after all, the materials required to build one are at hand in medical laboratories and universities — the variable that has been missing is intent. What the report also fails to mention is that would-be terrorists could also fairly easily build conventional explosives using ammonium nitrate — fertilizer — and other available chemicals to commit a deadly attack. That this hasn’t occurred in Canada is also a result of lack of intent.

The CP article then mentions that certain parts of the report were too sensitive to have been released through the Access to Information request. This likely is nothing more than the means by which CSIS leaves doubt in the public’s mind. What is that material that is so secret it cannot be made public? Could it be information about individuals known to CSIS who have been building such a device? By leaving black holes inviting wild fantasy, CSIS ensures that the information it gives is just enough to feed nightmares. In reality, however, this so-called sensitive information is probably little more than foreign agency information on which the CSIS report is based. The truth is, it is not the information itself that is of a sensitive nature — after all, everything in the report can be sourced in open — that is unclassified — material. The sensitive information is likely the name of the foreign agency which provided the information. In the name of good relations with its allies, CSIS is bound not to reveal the identity of the foreign agencies it deals with, and any reference thereto for public disclosure will consequently be sanitized.

Despite this renewed attempt on the part of Canadian authorities to increase the level of fear that there are terrorists out there picking apart a discarded X-ray machine to build a radiophobic’s worst nightmare, Canadians need not worry. There is a multitude of means and ways by which people with bad intentions can wreak physical, human and economic havoc. Modern society is filled with technologies that can be turned against us. In fact, certain martial artists make it their pride to transform everyday objects into deadly weapons. Murders can be committed using a pair of scissors, a pencil — heck, even a door stopper would do the job. Are the daily front pages plastered with such stories? No. Why? Lack of intent.

The fact that a RDD attack has not materialized is not for lack of opportunities. It simply is lack of intent.

Freedom of the Press is Just Too Precious

Readers of this site will have figured out by now that my perspective on Taiwanese politics and its place in the community of nations tends to dovetail with the positions of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). It is my firm belief, as is the DPP’s, that Taiwan has earned for itself, through a political, historical and democratic process, the full set of rights that are granted to officially recognized states.

Despite claims by parties within Taiwan — and certainly in Beijing — that Taiwan is a but a province of China, the different path that it has chosen since 1949, and to a much greater extent since the 1990s, when it became democratic, makes it a state a political entity altogether distinct from the mainland. We need only turn to freedom of the press to see how the two entities differ: in China, matters such as the weather and natural catastrophes are now categorized as state secrets, and reporting on those subjects can lead to media closures and imprisonment.

Despite the chaotic and, as I have written before, sensationalistic nature of Taiwanese media, the one thing that clearly distinguishes them from their mainland counterparts is the freedom with which they can report events, whether it be arguably tasteless attempts by reporters to interview a child saved from the rubble of a building after it collapsed during the powerful earthquake that struck the nation earlier this week, or unsubstantiated allegations by the China Times that the chairman of the DPP, Yu Shyi-kun (seen left), had called individuals who have been trying to force Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) out of office “Chinese pigs.”

So when Yu says that, as a result of the China Times’ defamatory piece on his uncorroborated “China pigs” comments, the DPP will boycott the paper by denying its reporters access to the party, the echoes of Beijing censorship cannot but make one pause. Regardless of whether he ever said those words or not — and it seems that he did not — and despite my respect for the DPP, boycotting a media outlet because of uncorroborated reporting, however defamatory, is inexcusable. Yu has a right to sue the newspaper, or to publish a rebuttal — even to voice his discontent publicly — but to ban a media in a liberal democracy is unacceptable, as it sets a precedent which cannot but open the door to an open-ended censorship: it starts with slander of the kind that has sparked the incident, then gradually slides towards anything that the party does not agree with, such as voices in the opposition. Whether the China Times, under its current editor-in-chief, is as Yu claims a mouthpiece for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is irrelevant: the China Times is a voice among many, and it has a place in the spectrum of Taiwanese media.

In the end, it is the public, consumers of the news, that decides whether it will support the positions of a media outlet. If the China Times acts irresponsibly — as it might have in this case — citizens of Taiwan are mature enough to stop reading it. Like everything else, market forces will dictate whether the China Times can continue to publish slander. If sales go down, something will be done to remedy the situation. Natural selection applies even to the media. Political leaders must have confidence in and show respect for their constituents’ intelligence. But it certainly isn’t their place to dictate what is reported in the news, or who is allowed to do the reporting.

If the China Times indeed published false news, it deserves a slap on the wrist and Yu is entirely within his rights to express his anger. But under no circumstance should a political party, let alone its chairman, decide who has a right to report the news. Unless one lives under a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime. Or in China. It is very ironic that the chairman of the very party that strives so hard to distinguish Taiwan from China would behave in a manner that is so reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Party.

In the spirit of the DPP, democracy and all that Taiwan has miraculously accomplished in the past fifteen years of its liberal democratic existence, Yu should seriously reconsider.

The Babel of Fear

Yesterday on one of the international pages I was working on at the Times I was asked to edit a wire story about the reaction of people in Virginia to an advertisement campaign in which small signs carrying Arabic script have been put on city buses and in colleges. The signs, in themselves, are pretty harmless and their content ranges from “paper or plastic [bag]?” to an Arabic version of the children’s rhyme “I’m a little teapot” to a version of “rock, paper, scissor.” Underneath the posters are messages reading: “ What do you think it said?” and, tellingly, “Misunderstanding can make anything scary.”

And misunderstanding it was, for no sooner had the buses begun circulating around town than calls started pouring in at local police stations and at the FBI. As it turns out, many concerned citizens were afraid that these were secret code or message used by terrorists to orchestrate their operations. Even when the callers were told that this was simply an ad campaign to raise awareness, some — including educated staff at the universities in which the ads had been posted — were still apprehensive, still feared that there might be a hidden message terrorists could use.

Unfortunately that story never appeared on my page, as it was sidelined by an evidently more newsworthy article about a study which revealed that, hum, more than nine out of 10 Americans had engaged in premarital sex.

The unpublished story is a sign of the times we’re in, however, and it tells of the dangers we face when confronted to ignorance. Every day in Taiwan I am confronted by signs that I cannot understand, but by no means do I see inherent danger in them: no plot by the Chinese Communist Party to take over Taiwan by force, no secret code used by criminal organizations used to coordinate their activities. The same with Korean: there is no message, between the lines, instructing operatives to obtain materials for Kim Jong-il so that he can build more atomic bombs. It is just what it is, a language that I do not fully understand. So why Arabic be any different?

For people who will be fortunate enough to read the entire article, their main worry will be that educated people are not impervious to this irrational fear of the unknown. Staffers at the universities, people with advanced degrees, reacted in panic and could hardly be disabused of their fear. From my own experience, however, this isn’t the greatest problem, or potential danger, we’re facing today. The gravest threat lies in the fact that people and organizations charged with “protecting” citizens from so-called terrorists are themselves incapable of the critical judgment that would dispel those fears — or put differently, those organizations, like the CIA, MI5 and CSIS in Canada, see patterns where none exist or react like regular citizens in thinking that even innocuous messages can still conceal hidden messages. Fear of the unknown — especially when it is an unknown that originates in the Middle East — has become institutionalized to such an extend that it has become part of the fabric of society. People sitting on an airplane that is about to take off will invariably react with alarm if the person sitting next to them is reading from the Koran; the same with Arab or Persian-looking individuals taking pictures of, or filming, or carrying tourism information on, public attractions, public transportation or government buildings (readers who have been following the Maher Arar story in Canada will soon hear more about other individuals who paid a heavy price for carrying the wrong kind of pamphlets, as new inquiries are likely to be launched by the Canadian government).

We now live in a society — in the West, that is — where absence of a reason for seeing something as threat is insufficient in and of itself to cancel one’s reaction of fear. Yes, the ad says “I’m a little teapot,” but what if it were secret code, a signal of some sort instructing Ahmed who works at the convenience store to detonate the ammonium nitrate he’s been hiding in his basement at the local Borders? Absence of evidence is no longer sufficient, for the architects of the “war on terror,” along with the thousands of minions who fill the halls of the intelligence agencies engaged in that war, have cultivated a climate of fear that transcends reason. Networks and hidden cells are out there, bent on the destruction of the West. In that climate, one’s critical thinking has been hacked by the responsibility — told us by political leaders — to be watchful, to keep an eye open for potential threats (if people were serious about potential threats, the FBI would be receiving thousands of phone calls every time citizens saw a gas-guzzling SUV passing by). During my time as an intelligence officer working in the center that dealt with threats to the security of Canada, I had my share of such flags being raised by the public: conversations overheard, the nature and content of which was lost on the concerned citizen by virtue of that conversation being carried out in a foreign language; suspicious-looking men seen driving a minivan from store to store; suspicious-looking men filming subways stations, airports, shopping malls, Canada’s Wonderland, Disney World, etc. Citizens thought they were fulfilling their responsibilities as citizens, and in certain circumstances we cannot blame them for doing so, as fear has been hammered into them by politicians and the media, and some them may not necessarily have very high levels of education, or may not have traveled much or been exposed to other cultures.

But when the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies fail to act as filters to what actually consists of a real potential threat and uncritically assumes that every threat — even the absence of one — is worthy of consideration, when every such threat is then communicated, in the form of trace requests, to allied agencies, then we can say that the system as a whole has failed. And it has.

It is easy to read an article such as the one I refer to above and laugh at the poor individuals who were scared by the Arabic version of “rock, paper, scissor.” But the truth is, many of the so-called specialists and experts who are paid with taxpayers’ money to deal with these matters fare no better, for they, too, have been subjected to and transformed by the climate of fear and making matters worse they work in institutions that actually encourage this uncritical view of reality, as it not only justifies their existence but furthermore ensures that by taking every threat seriously it they can avoid being not acting when the threat turned out to be real — a police euphemism for agencies covering their recently bloated asses. The examples of institutional failure at critical though within the intelligence community are rife and often provide a good laugh, but for obvious reasons I am not allowed to put them in writing.

A Pivotal Moment for Iraq and the Region

Amid calls for a change in US strategy in Iraq and the continuing trauma that its citizens are going through on a daily basis (all pretense that Iraq was a military success has long been dispelled, to such an extent that the Iraqi president and prime minister no longer feel the need even to serve as mouthpieces to the US administration), the country is rapidly turning into a potential tinderbox for regional instability.

This potentiality was compounded earlier this week when Saudi Arabia said that in the eventuality of a US pull-out of Iraq and sustained violence, the Saudi regime would bankroll Iraqi Sunnis — the religious minority in Iraq — as they try to defend themselves against a Shiite onslaught. Something like this happening would exacerbate the unhealthy polarization that has been building up in the Middle East, a Sunni-Shiite divide that is on the brink of burning hotter than it did when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in the early 1980s to prevent Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s exportation of his Shiite Islamic Revolution to the region.

At its meekest, such a scenario would fuel a civil war in Iraq, with Saudi Arabia (and perhaps other rich kingdoms in the Middle East) providing money to the Iraqi Sunnis while Iran would reciprocate with the Shiites. The middle — and probably likelier — scenario would involve a war-by-proxy between Iran and Saudi Arabia, where to the money being sent to Iraq we would also see weapons and the training of Iraqi forces by Tehran and Riyadh. Those proxy forces would wage war against each other as instruments in the two states’ strategy for the region. Much as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the proxies would be encouraged to seize strategic natural resources — in Iraq’s case oil — not only to fund themselves but to provide a channel to the countries backing them. It wouldn’t be surprising if, in such a scenario, Iran and Saudi Arabia were to justify such seizures by claiming that they need the resources as a form of reimbursement for their peacekeeping efforts in Iraq.

The worst-case-scenario, of course, involves direct war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While this eventuality is a distant one, Iraq has nevertheless proven that it is quite capable of dismembering plans of all kinds and take superior armies to their lowest. A giant is now caught between the unpalatable choices of leaving a mess behind or staying in and being unable to change a thing, its sons and daughters meanwhile adding to the already stratospheric casualty rate. If the US, and to a lesser extent the UK, is unable to follow the course it set for itself in Iraq, there is no knowing what would happen to Saudi and Iranian ones, which are not only far less professional but whose leaders have far greater and immediate interests in Iraq, as it is a neighbor and one whose civil war could very well threaten them at home.

On clear winner in this scenario — and let’s hope it never comes to happen — would be al-Qaeda. War between Iran and Saudi Arabia could finally help it achieve one of its original objectives, an objective that came years before its overt enmity towards the US: toppling the Saudi regime. While it certainly is no ally of Iran, al-Qaeda would adopt the age-old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach and could do this even as Tehran remains hostile to its philosophy. No state-terrorist meeting need take place; in fact, an alliance per se doesn’t even need to be made. All al-Qaeda would need to do is ensure that Iraqi Sunnis are being massacred by their Shiite counterparts, with funding and help from Tehran. The harsher the Sunni response (with Saudi funding and support), the more Shiites will in turn be killed, and so on and so forth, tit-for-tat until war between Saudi Arabia and Iran becomes inevitable. The only thing al-Qaeda in Iraq needs to do is target Sunnis — which it already has — and make it look as if this were the work of Shiites.

How ironic, if this were to happen, that by invading Iraq in 2003 the US would have taken Bin Laden and his cohorts ever so closer to their goal of threatening the despised Saudi regime. We are thankfully still far from such a scenario taking place, but the seeds are there, and thanks to US bungling in Iraq, this scenario certainly isn’t confabulation anymore. For the first time, Riyadh could be facing a real threat to its existence. Did al-Qaeda plan for all of this to come about? Who knows. But one thing is certain: someone, somewhere, is seeing the possibilities as they unfold. And he must be smiling a large smile at the moment.

Mayoral elections and foamy snow

Sitting outside a Starbucks coffee shop in mid-afternoon downtown Taipei, with fake foamy snow falling from the clear blue skies and out-of-place Christmas music blaring from the exterior speakers, it was difficult to ignore that tomorrow, Dec. 9, Taiwanese will be hitting the polls to vote for new mayors for Taipei City and Kaohsiung, the second-biggest city to the south of the island.

Aside for the fact that all the talk around town and on TV and in the newspapers is about the elections, or that I received on my cell phone today alone no less than five text messages encouraging me to vote for one candidate or another (regardless of the fact that I cannot participate in said vote), what makes them difficult to ignore were the dozens of vehicles, from simple cars to 4x4 jeeps to modified trucks, roaming the city with placards, flags and people sitting atop and aback them waving to the otherwise indifferent passers-by — with shouts and music and drums to enhance the experience — all representing one candidate or another. Often, one procession will be contending with the next from different street corners, the DPP candidate’s representatives shouting it off with those from the KMT, flags afloat, painting whole streets in green or blue or red. Sometimes they both will be on the same street, resulting in a cacophony of slogans and drumming aggressing enough to start an onset of epilepsy in even the healthiest of onlookers.

As if this were not enough, whole buildings are plastered with placards and gigantic posters of candidates doing the thumbs up or smiling at the unseen masses (see picture). Footbridges are adorned with hundreds of flags, giving one the impression that he or she is walking along a kaleidoscopic tunnel with some sort of wild celebration at the end. The mobilization is unlike anything I have experienced before and makes me wonder what the presidential elections must look like.

Mixed with the elections are the many political scandals that have beset the nation in recent weeks — and mixed is the appropriate word, as every hint of the wrongful use of state affairs funds or discretionary budgets, by the First Family and the current Taipei mayor, as well as other scandals, from the bullet train linking Taipei to Kaohsiung to politicians using state houses longer than they should have — everything is tied in with the elections, to such an extent that when asked to describe what they would do if they were voted into office, most candidates come up short, having used all their energy accusing their opponents.

What compounds the brew of scandals and politics is the fact that more often than not the position of Taipei mayor is a stepping stone to the presidency of the country, and that, too, has seeped into the debate.

All that to say that the entire electoral campaign — which as a newspaper copy editor I have followed first-hand and ad nauseam — is at least as empty of substantive debate as any other campaign I have experienced in Canada. It has largely been a campaign of character assassination mixed with the exploitation of scandals (so much so that at one point a candidate has had to come before the media and prove, with receipts in hand, that he himself, and not the state, had paid his phone bills at 7-Eleven) blended with an all-too-clear positioning in preparation for the 2008 presidential elections. Judging from my experience so far, this will have the result that residents of Taipei and Kaohsiung will not necessarily be casting their vote for the candidate whom they believe will do the best job representing them at City Hall, for they have nothing pithy, no promises, no blueprint proposed by the candidates, to base their votes on.

As always, the elections will boil down to one’s political affiliation: the perpetual pan-green / pan-blue divide. As meaningful a mayoral election, then, than soapy snow falling from the clear blue skies of Taipei.

The Quebec analogy is the wrong one for Taiwan

The declaration by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper — which has since received the support of both the separatist Bloc Quebecois and Quebec's Liberal government — to the effect that the province of Quebec should be granted distinctive nationhood within Canada surely will have enlivened those who tend to draw parallels with the situation of Taiwan vis-a-vis the People's Republic of China.

Some commentators, such as Chen I-chung of the Academia Sinica, have in the past turned to the issue of Quebec separatism in the hope of finding some illumination — or perhaps even a template — by which to solve Taiwan's predicament (see "Pragmatic path is the best solution," Taipei Times, Opinion, Feb. 24, page 8). Others might even dream that Harper's declaration could encourage Beijing to act in kind toward Taiwan.

The problem with this view is that it is based on flawed analogies and parallels. Other than the fact that Quebec and Taiwan both do not have official status as countries — Quebec is a province in a federal system and Taiwan is in the limbo between official statehood and international (or at least US) protectorate — the two entities have too little in common to be helpful to each other.

The reason why Taiwan finds legitimacy and a modicum of international support for independence and legal statehood lies in the fact that the other option — reunification with China — implies all sorts of risks in terms of human rights, liberties and so on. Still today, one hears about newspapers and blogs being closed, AIDS activists being arrested and entire minorities being repressed in China. Moreover, the idea of reunification with China is enforced through international isolation of Taiwan as well as the threat of military action, a form of compelling that certainly does not bode well for Taiwan regardless of its decision.

The situation in Quebec could not be more different. No minorities are being repressed (other than the aboriginals, if we really needed to find one) and never was the threat of military action used to prevent separatism — not even when former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau committed the faux pasof declaring Martial Law in October 1970. Francophones are free to express themselves in their language and were even twice granted the chance to vote, through referenda, on independence, with both instances resulting in failure. Moreover, Quebec is located in a country that is the envy of most in terms of human rights, security and the economy. It enjoys an enviable social safety net, relatively cheap education, a booming economy and one of the few truly successful multiethnic societal fabrics in the world. Homosexuals can get married legally and other than for its troops deployed in Afghanistan, no Canadian faces a threat to his security.

In many ways, Quebec's desire for separatism — and the specter of yet another costly referendum being held now that Harper's declaration has reawakened the hopes for a distinct nation — is effrontery; one can think of many poor, war-torn countries that could make a legitimate claim for separatism or some form of political independence, Darfur in Sudan being but one example. But Quebec is nothing more than the pipe-dream of an affluent minority within a minority — the odd 50 percent within the province who think they are being repressed simply because they claim to have a different culture from that which prevails in North America. It is the aspiration of the whiney well-fed who cannot distinguish between language and culture and who fail to realize that culture knows no borders and heeds no laws.

With his comments, Harper is evidently trying to improve his position with voters in the province of Quebec ahead of possible elections next spring. Already, Michael Ignatieff, the onle leading contender for the leadership of the Liberal Party, has flirted with Quebecers on the idea of distinctiveness, an out-of-character crass exploitation of an emotional non-issue to win votes. By playing that game, Harper is reopening a Pandora's Box which had better remain closed. Harper hasn't given independence to Quebec, nor, what with all its caveats, was his declaration the departure that it has been painted as. He was simply playing politics.

One can hardly imagine Communist Party officials wagging the carrots of independence and independence at Taiwan in order to gain votes — oh, that's right; one doesn't get to vote in China.

No hundreds of short-range missiles are pointed at Quebec, and Ottawa will never threaten Quebec City or Montreal with invasion should it attempt yet again to change the status quo. Ottawa is not stopping Quebec from making its place on the international scene, nor is it arresting journalists on the pretense that they were spying for the other side. Taiwan is justified in seeking independence and recognition because the alternative is either war or a grave diminution in the rights and liberties of its citizens. Quebec is located in one of the freest, wealthiest and most advanced societies in the world. By remaining in Canada, no fundamental right of Quebecers will be impinged upon. Once and for all, Taiwanese should look elsewhere for parallels.

Briefs

There are, in the Taipei Times where I work, sections called “Briefs” on the local and international pages. Consisting of a page-long single column, briefs, usually five to a page, provide little snippets of news — normally no longer than 100 words — from around the world, and the subject is usually something odd or unusual, like “Man loses boa in van,” or “Visitor bites panda at Beijing zoo.” The rest of the page is usually consecrated to more “serious” or newsworthy copy, nowadays nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, factional violence within the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Georgia/Russia.

It is indicative of the state of the world when, after reporting on unrest in the Palestinian Territories for weeks, where Hamas and Fatah have engaged in internecine violence, stories on people killed — by the factions or by the Israeli military — were relegated to the “Briefs” section. So routine had the killing of Palestinians become, it seemed, that it was no longer news as such; it was part of the oddities, of the briefs people read in passing, with little emotional attachment.

This only occurred on a few days, when violence elsewhere was such that the deaths of a dozen Palestinians didn’t suffice to break the threshold. Iraq, Afghanistan, N. Korea and Sri Lanka, through violence or the detonation of a nuclear device (this is what it takes now to make it to front page) had pushed it aside. As for Iraq, every new day brings an editorial challenge, not so much in preparing the story as in finding a headline that doesn’t read like the previous five, ten, twenty. "Forty killed in bombing in Baghdad"; "Violence intensifies as Ramadan begins"; "Bloody day in Baghdad as Ramadan comes to an end," etc, etc, etc ad bloody nauseam. There, again, the situation has become so routine that our editor-in-chief made the explicit request that we no longer publish pictures of bombings in Iraq. Every day, as we search the keyword “Iraq” in the Wire Graphics Database, which provides thousands of pictures updated on a daily basis from agencies like EPA, AFP, AP, Reuters and others, most of what we obtain are wrecked vehicles, buildings burning or ruins, in front of which are semi-dazed children or injured passers-by. Being given the order to find “something else” to tell the story is, sadly, very challenging. It’s almost like being asked to find a picture of Hong Kong with a clear sky. So in the past few weeks we provided pictures of Iraqi Muslims gathering in mosques to pray during Ramadan, or vendors making popcorn in preparation for celebrations of the Eid al-Fitr marking the end of Ramadan. But for every such picture there are dozens of carnage and violence. Afghanistan fares no better, and Sri Lanka is headed in that direction as well. Oh, and that is without mentioning the bloody pictures showing the results of war, which are too graphic to be printed in a newspaper.

It is saddening but unfortunately a symptom of the world we live in that people killed with missiles fired from the air, or in car bombings, can turn into an item of such normalcy as to become a mere “brief,” or perhaps worse, that copy editors are asked to search for pictures from the hell holes of our world that are devoid of violence, and have a hard time finding any.

Fortunate are those who can afford to read about these atrocities in the “briefs” section of a newspaper. For Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians — and I could add many others, sadly — there is nothing non-newsworthy about what’s going on around them, and they don’t get to choose what kind of picture gets taken in their immediate environment either. For them, life is unforgiving, amoral, and unedited. Kids in war zones are growing up with severed bodies around them, the very images that "cannot" be printed, and there is no editor above them telling them to look elsewhere for something brighter, more uplifting. They as they might, news outlets can only come so close to reality.

A Noisy Wakeup

I don’t know if it is like this throughout the non-English-speaking world, but at least here in Taiwan, there is this assumption that if you’re foreign-looking — and above all, “white” — you must inevitably be English speaking. Never mind that in an international city like Taipei, people from Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Italy, Sweden and other countries come to work; foreigner equals English, and English means American.

Once can hardly blame schoolchildren for holding such conceits, as foreign teachers themselves encourage those perceptions. I was in Taipei 101, on my way to a bookstore that I frequent there, when I ran into two dozen young children accompanied by a blond foreigner in her mid-40s. Immediately upon seeing me, the teacher turned to the children and shouted “Look, an English-speaking person!” whereupon in one ear-shattering and unusually high-pitched chorus the children shouted, in turn, “good morning,” followed by an incomprehensible, nerve-wracking consecution of words. I waived politely as I hurried away to the escalators, but it now transpired that the children, along with the teacher, were in hot pursuit and reached the escalators from the other side before I could escape. Seeing my discomfort, the teacher said, “You can run, but you can’t hide,” which somehow was interpreted by the children as yet another prompt to ransack my ears with the enthusiastic squeals.

Besides the offensiveness of such an unwelcome wakeup and, as I already mentioned, the groundless and quite disrespectful assumption that a foreigner must by default speak English, the incident made me feel like an animal in a zoo, something “other” that inherently warrants special attention. I have lived in Taiwan for nearly a year, integrated its society and am a tax-paying, law-abiding full participant in its fabric. Though my citizenship is Canadian, I am presently a resident of Taiwan, and as such I should be treated — and usually am — like one. Expatriates should therefore never feel compelled to become a spontaneous teacher, or a temporary amusement, on the bus, in shopping malls or on the sidewalk, nor made to feel that by virtue of being foreigner it should be expected of me to teach left and right those who are learning the language.

Did I, when I was in Canada, start shouting “ni hao” to every Chinese-looking person I encountered, expecting to obtain a free five-minute Mandarin lesson? Of course not; that would be rude. Why, then, should it be different in Taiwan, and why would foreign teachers, of all people, impress upon the children the idea that it is ok to approach expatriates in such a manner?