What is it that's preventing your reporters from giving us a deeper story on Gary Wang (王令麟), the KMT legislator and head of Eastern Multimedia (東森多媒體), who is being held on suspicion of rigging a land deal? This is surely the political/corruption case to beat them all and will define the near-term future of politics and business in Taiwan if it is pushed to its logical conclusion.
Wang is much more than a three-term legislator and head of one of the island's biggest cable TV companies. What is not mentioned in your reports is, perhaps most importantly, that he is the son of Wang You-tseng (王又曾), patriarch of the Rebar Group (力霸集團) of companies and a member of the KMT central standing committee. The senior Wang is about as high as you can go in the KMT's business/political hierarchy and, until the May 31 election, was widely acknowledged as being more powerful than a Cabinet minister, or perhaps even the premier.
Who can forget the image a few years ago of he and Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫), the KMT's other grandaddy of industry, being asked to shake hands in front of the cameras to resolve the latest skirmish in Taiwan's perennial cable TV war by the party's secretary-general, after the GIO Director General had surrendered any pretense about who really ran the government.
More to the point, under the previous government it would have been unthinkable for prosecutors to go after Wang's son. That they now feel emboldened by the new president's desire to clean up corruption in Taiwan is hardly surprising, however. What is going to be really interesting to see is whether they are able to take this one all the way.
When President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was touring Taiwan's diplomatic allies recently, anyone who recalls that famous scene from the cable TV war could not have failed to notice the gray-haired business tycoon following close on the president's heels.
Anthony Lawrance
Taipei, Taiwan
Real victims of the drug war
The article "Europe losing war on drugs, US agency warns" (Sept. 7, page 9) might almost have been amusing, were it not for the millions of people whose lives have been ruined -- not by drugs themselves, but by the costly, futile, and ultimately destructive attempts of most governments to prevent the sale and use of certain mind-altering substances.
The article consisted mostly of hyperbolic quotes from a report by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the USA, a country which now boasts the highest percentage of jailed citizens in the world.
Over half of these inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Normal, hardworking, "respectable" folks who just happened to get caught with a bag of weed.
A college student with a promising future (who also enjoys getting high once in a while) now finds himself in jail, his family bankrupted by the legal fees spent trying to keep him free.
A mother is jailed because she borrows a friend's car, not knowing there's a "stash" in the glove compartment. Her children become wards of the state and are sent to a foster home.
An AIDS patient uses medical marijuana to fight the nausea induced by the "cocktail" of drugs prescribed by his doctors (if you can't keep the medicine "down" long enough to absorb it, it does no good). The DEA prosecutes him and he dies in his sleep, choking on vomit.
A child is condemned to life in a wheelchair because she is caught in the crossfire of a "turf" war between rival drug-dealing gangs -- gangs which would not even be involved with the drug trade if it were legal and well regulated.
A woman is raped because her attacker had to be paroled early, in order to make room in an over-stuffed prison for the aforementioned college student.
These are the real victims of the "War On Drugs."
Meanwhile, the thugs and kingpins who actually make money on the illegal drug trade laugh at our stupidity. They don't want drugs to be legalized, because then their huge profits would dry up and they'd have to actually work for a living -- perhaps growing coffee beans instead of coca.
It would be nice to see this hardline viewpoint balance out with an article representing the fast-growing segment of the population who believe legalization, regulation, and education are the most effective strategies for curbing the ills associated with drug abuse.
I respectfully suggest the following Web sites for further study of this critically important issue:
John Diedrichs
Taipei, Taiwan
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) took the stage at a protest rally on Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei in support of former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption and embezzlement. Huang told the crowd that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) had sent a message of support the previous day, saying she would be traveling from the south to Taipei: If the protest continued into the evening, she had said, she would show up. The rally was due to end
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
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