National Taiwan University professor Hsu Shih-jung’s (徐世榮) recent appeal to Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman for help to block the Aerotropolis Plan in Taoyuan County has been criticized by Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu (吳志揚), who said it was “politicizing art,” which the professor dismissed as “rhetoric aimed at deceiving the people.”
Hsu on Sunday made the appeal to Hofman, whose work, Moon Rabbit, is on display at the Taoyuan Land Art Festival, on a site the county government plans to expropriate for its Aerotropolis plan.
Taoyuan County Government Department of Information Director-General Chu Kang-cheng (朱康震) yesterday quoted Wu as responding to Hsu’s plea that the festival is a platform for artists to exhibit their artwork and that Hsu should not politicize art.
In response, Hsu yesterday said that saying art and politics are two separate things is using political rhetoric to deceive the people, and that art and politics often go hand in hand.
“Did the city government not spend public funds to invite the artists to exhibit their works at the festival and if it did, why did it not send invitations to local artists across the nation, but only to Hofman and a select few?” he asked.
Furthermore, he said that land expropriation is not simply a matter of “counting heads,” but one that should also take the needs of the minority into consideration.
“I must emphasize that the interests of the majority cannot be equated with the public interest, defined under Article 23 of the Constitution. Public interests cannot be upheld if expropriations can be carried out based on the decision of the majority, in which scenario it may be more aptly termed ‘atrocity’ of the majority,” he said. “I would like to ask Taoyuan County Government officials to review the No. 709 constitutional interpretation issued by the Council of Grand Justices on April 26 last year, which clearly states that acts in the public interest must follow due administrative procedures and be based upon consensus after negotiations.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the