August 2018

KMT Lashes Out At Tsai Administration’s Handling Of Flooding

Criticisms of the Tsai administration’s handling of flooding in southern Taiwan in the past week have been seized upon by members of the pan-Blue camp. Some of this has bordered on fake news and it is unlikely that a KMT administration would have done any differently. All this would point to the KMT’s lack of any concrete policy platform upon which to contest the DPP, with the KMT instead latching onto any criticisms that it can...

Reflexive Defense Of Avital Ronell By Left Academics Points To Similar Phenomenon In Taiwan

Controversy has broken out in western academia after feminist academic Avital Ronell was accused of sexual harassment, particularly after highly reflexive defenses of Ronell from fellow high-profile academics on the political Left in the form of an open letter, including Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek. This bears a sharp parallel to incidents which have happened in leftist Taiwanese academia in the past two years and this may be worth reflecting on...

Deportation Of Former City Councillor To Philippines On Drug Charges Demonstrates Hypocrisy On Refugee Policy

Taiwan continues to prove an unfriendly place to refugees, with the deportation of Ricardo "Ardot" Parojinog back to the Philippines late last month. Parojinog was suspected of drug trafficking in the Philippines and it is possible that he may be killed after he returns, given current Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte's campaign of state-sanctioned violence and extrajudicial executions against drug dealers and users...

KMT’s 2018 National Congress Demonstrates More Confused Attempts To Appeal To Youth

The KMT's National Congress over the weekend proved an utterly bizarre sight, with the KMT embracing imagery it thinks will appeal to young people, while pushing for almost exactly the same political platform which led to such blowback against it from young people in the 2014 Sunflower Movement. Evidently, the KMT has learned incredibly little from the past four years...