The KMT in Burma
Reading Panaj Mishra’s NYRB article about Burma, “The Revolt of the Monks,” I was reminded of the KMT’s adventures in Burma, a remarkable episode in the inglorious history of Taiwan’s ruling party. After several pages discussing the brutal suppression of last year’s protest by Burma’s monks, Mishra turns to the political-economic foundation of military rule:
But the larger explanation of its strength and longevity lies in a much-ignored fact: that Burma has been in a state of uninterrupted civil war since independence in 1948, with dozens of ethnic-minority insurgent groups, which operate in or control between one quarter and one third of the country, ranged against a Burman-dominated state.
It is in the context of discussing the history of this prolonged civil war that he briefly mentions the story of the KMT in Burma. Curious to know more I turned to Google, and found this excellent chapter from McCoy’s 1972 book, The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia:
The precipitous collapse of the Nationalist Chinese (Kuomintang, or KMT) government in 1949 convinced the Truman administration that it had to stem “the southward flow of communism” into Southeast Asia. In 1950 the Defense Department extended military aid to the French in Indochina. In that same year, the CIA began regrouping those remnants of the defeated Kuomintang army in the Burmese Shan States for a projected invasion of southern China. Although the KMT army was to fail in its military operations, it succeeded in monopolizing and expanding the Shan States’ opium trade.
… With CIA support, the KMT remained in Burma until 1961, when a Burmese army offensive drove them into Laos and Thailand. By this time, however, the Kuomintang had already used their control over the tribal populations to expand Shan State opium production by almost 1,000 percent-from less than 40 tons after World War 11 to an estimated three hundred to four hundred tons by 1962. From bases in northern Thailand the KMT have continued to send huge mule caravans into the Shan States to bring out the opium harvest. Today [1972], over twenty years after the CIA first began supporting KMT troops in the Golden Triangle region, these KMT caravans control almost a third of the world’s total illicit opium supply and have a growing share of Southeast Asia’s thriving heroin business.
When the KMT were driven out of the Shan state the trade was taken over by warlord Khun Sa (pictured above), whose death last year was noted by Mutant Frog’s Roy Berman. Berman also linked to to this Taipei Times article about the plight of “’stateless’ descendants of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops.”
Further information: Wikipedia, China History Forum, Time Magazine.
Technologies of the Self
If you google the letters “GTD” you’ll get seven million hits back. GTD stands for “Getting Things Done,” a time management book, method and philosophy promoted by David Allen which has spawned a huge array of self-help blogs and task management webservices. Wired magazine described it thus:
Allen’s approach is not inspirational. Instead, it is detailed and dry. But within his advice about how to label a file folder or how many minutes to allot to an incoming email there is a spiritual promise. He says there is a state of blessed calm available to those who have taken careful measure of their habits and made all the changes suggested by reason. Nirvana comes by routine steps, as an algorithm drives a machine.
I have personally found Allen’s approach tremendously beneficial. I don’t think I could get through the week without the Mac OS X application, Things. Things makes it a breeze to implement GTD without having read David Allen’s book. Before Things I relied on a variety of paper lists, my e-mail inbox, files on my desk and my computer desktop, bookmarked webpages, sticky notes, etc. to try to keep track of all the various tasks I was expected to do. Now I immediately file everything into Things and forget about it. Things allows me to distinguish between those tasks which are current, those which are due at some future date, delegated tasks, and tasks which can be put off indefinitely. Related tasks can be grouped into projects, but the design of Things prevents projects from becoming unwieldily. If you need a “sub-project” just create another project and group it in the same “area” or easily attach keywords (”tags”) to link them together.
Sicko in Taiwan
Last year I wrote a post about Taiwan’s National Health Insurance program, having found a thoughtful article about the costs and benefits of Taiwan’s system. Now it seems that Taiwan’s system is getting even more attention, this time from a new PBS TV series: “Sick Around the World.” (All episodes of Frontline are available for free online viewing via the website!) Jonathan Cohn reviews the show and talks about health care in Taiwan:
The most interesting case study is probably Taiwan. A few years ago, when Taiwan decided to revamp its health care system, it studied other countries to determine which system might work best. Its conclusion? A single-payer system–one in which the government insures everybody directly–made the most sense.
Virtually alone among health care commentators in the U.S.–a category that includes me–Paul Krugman has been touting Taiwan for a while. The film makes it easy to see why. Today, the people of Taiwan have guaranteed access to health care–and, according to the film, it’s very good health care. There are no chronic waiting lists, like you find in Britain, and the care is very advanced. Among other things, Taiwan is among the world leaders in establishing electronic medical records–an innovation that should significantly improve care by keeping doctors and nurses better informed about patient histories and, no less important, avoiding potentially dangerous drug interactions.
Reid and Palfreman note, rightly, that the Taiwanese system isn’t as foreign as it seems: We actually have a similar program here in the U.S.–for the elderly. It’s called Medicare.
Separation of Powers
If you ask most people, democracy is synonymous with elections. But, strangely enough, few people who live in electoral democracies feel that elections result in a government which truly responds to their concerns. At its best, electoral politics seems to solve the problem of succession which plagued previous forms of government. Although it is not unusual for violence to break out during elections in many parts of the world, my sense is that even the most procedurally flawed elections in a one-party state make for more peaceful transitions between rulers. By this standard a bloodless military coup is actually slightly better than a violent election, so we’re placing the bar pretty low.
I find it much more useful to think about democracy in terms of institutions. Separation of powers has been an important part of democracy since the early Greek City-States, and was a central feature of the Roman Republic. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been doing their best to undo this founding principle of democracy for some time. They object to any congressional oversight of the executive branch, and have appointed Supreme Court judges who believe in a strong executive. We all know the endless stream of abuses which have taken place under the Bush White House, many of them posing serious threats to civil liberties. And yet, somehow, the basic building blocks of US democracy remain intact - barely. (True, we are setting the bar pretty low here when we point out that there aren’t black-booted brown shirts patrolling our streets, but still…)
These thoughts occur to me as Taiwan slips back towards one-party rule less than a decade after the DPP first gained control of the presidency. During that time numerous reform measures which would have strengthened Taiwanese democracy were repeatedly defeated in the KMT controlled legislature. It is unclear whether any of these will move forward now that the KMT’s position is secure, although the KMT’s anti-corruption rhetoric during the past election will likely result in at least some minimal reforms.
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Lessig
I just donated to Lessig’s congressional campaign fund. Have you?
Research Paper
The above picture gives a pretty accurate account of my winter vacation.
(Via Why that’s delightful. Original source unknown.)
Happy New Year!
A very happy year of the (Mickey) mouse to everyone from Taiwan!
PS: Its worth noting that this is not a pirated product, but an authentic Disney product marked with a hologram to that effect. Disney must be raking it in this year!
Obama
Image by Shepard Fairey.
The biggest problem I have with the Clinton legacy is its failure to articulate a strong defense of progressive values. I think we ended up with Bush precisely because of that failure. While Gore and Kerry toyed with progressivism they were ultimately unable to embrace it, allowing the Democratic Party to drift off course without anyone at the helm. The funny thing about Obama is that he is running a more Clintonesque campaign than Hillary Clinton. It is Obama, not Clinton, who is trying to move the Democrats more towards the center on domestic policy issues. And in a needlessly foolish way at that. Clinton, by appropriating Edwards progressive platform has sought to renounce her husband’s legacy. For that reason alone I feel tempted to give her my support.
But I have two problems with Clinton. The first is foreign policy. As much as she’s embraced progressivism at home, she remains a hawk on foreign policy. That Madeleine Albright is one of her best friends doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable. And while Obama’s foreign policy of hope seems somewhat thin, it does seem to send a strong message to the rest of the world that Americans are ready to change. If the vote for US President was a global one (and perhaps it should be), it seems clear that Obama would win.
The second problem I have with Clinton is that I don’t trust her. I don’t think that she’s as competent as she’d have us believe. She certainly didn’t do very well with health care the first time around. And while her health care policy may be better than Obama’s, her close ties to the health care industry don’t bode well for genuine reform. More than that, the way her campaign invoked the race card in South Carolina really shocked me.
Obama, on the other hand, inspires. His speeches inspire. He inspires young people. He inspires people to make art and music. He inspires people who know him and worked with him. Everyone I know from Illinois loves Obama - try to find me 10 New Yorkers who are as passionate about Clinton. He’s also inspired a huge number of people I respect to endorse him.
In the end Obama is not a Bill Clinton democrat. He’s far more progressive in tone and rhetoric, even if he gets it wrong occasionally on the policy front. And while Hillary Clinton may be attempting to ride on Edward’s progressive coattails to convince us that she’s no Bill Clinton either, I don’t buy it.
Obama has declared himself the candidate of hope and then dared us to hope. Its a dirty trick. But it just might work. If it does work it will be because he isn’t asking us to have hope in Obama, but to have hope in ourselves - to believe that by voting we can make a change. Yes we can.
Firefox Reloaded
After spending one week trying to use Safari as my default browser, I decided to go back to Firefox. I was able to find numerous substitutes for my favorite Firefox plugins and features, but they never lived up to the real thing.
First of all, although Safari was generally faster, I assume that Firefox 3, when it comes out later this year, will catch up. And while Safari was generally kinder to my system, there were situations where it was actually worse. A few select web pages caused my entire OS to grind to a halt - something Firefox never does.
Second, although I was able to find substitutes for features like AdBlock Plus, Flashblock, Greasemonkey, del.icio.us Bookmarks, and Content Preferences, they just didn’t work as well. But most important, for research I needed tools like Switch Proxy and Zotero, which don’t exist for Safari. (See my previous post for a full list of substitutions.)
What finally allowed me to switch back, however, was the discovery of two very useful tools: FEBE and ProfileSwitcher. Over time one’s Firefox profile can get gunked up and it can slow down performance, even stop some extensions from working properly. Switching to a new profile helps, but you don’t want to spend hours reinstalling your extensions, reimporting your bookmarks, etc. That’s where FEBE comes in. Its a nifty tool to backup and export your Firefox profile. Its a little complicated to use, but if you are a hardcore Firefox user its definitely a must-have extension. Using these two tools together, I was able to create a lean-mean web browsing machine containing just those features I really need.
Below the fold is an image of the FEBE list of currently installed (and backed up) extensions. (Not listed is 1Password, which is added directly by the 1Password application.)
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Parallel Voting
Schee posted a link to this article on the new voting system which so affected the Taiwanese legislative elections. (See my last post on this.)
Several countries now mix proportional representation with voting for individual candidates, as Taiwan now does. However, it turns out there are two different models for how the mixing works: the one-vote model Additional Member System (AMS) [UPDATE: See comments below for further clarification.] used in Germany, and the parallel model used in Japan. Not unsurprisingly, considering their close historical relationship, Taiwan has copied the Japanese system. Here is some background on the differences, courtesy of a 2004 BA thesis [link to PDF download] by Joe Michael Sasanuma:
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
