Workers toss shoes in Ma’s yard

SHOE-IN:The shoe-throwing was part of a rally laid-off freeway toll collectors staged at the presidential complex and followed another protest at transport minister Yeh’s home

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

Laid-off freeway toll collectors yesterday stage a sit-down at the gate of President Ma Ying-jeou’s residential compound in Taipei.

Photo: CNA

Former freeway toll collectors yesterday hurled more than 200 pairs of shoes over the walls of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) residential compound in Taipei as they staged a sit-down demanding appropriate compensation for the loss of their jobs.

About 1,000 toll collectors were left jobless when the nation switched to a distance-based electronic toll collection system in January.

The protest at Chunghsing Apartment (中興寓所) was the latest in a prolonged campaign that has seen demonstrations held at various government agencies across the capital and on freeways.

Although the Ministry of Transportation and Communications on Wednesday last week presented the former toll collectors with an employment plan featuring more than 2,500 job opportunities, the laid-off workers have expressed skepticism over the measure, saying that it fails to address their other key demands.

In addition to being given assistance with attaining new jobs, the workers said they should be paid full severance packages in accordance with their length of service — instead of a fixed seven-month package — and that the government should provide compensation for their labor insurance pensions.

Regarding the latest raft of job openings offered by the ministry — mostly public-sector jobs and transportation company positions — the laid-off toll collectors said the ministry should clarify the details of and qualifications for the openings, adding that similar employment programs it has offered previously have yielded negative results.

Members of the Former Toll Collectors Self-Help Organization said the ministry should have discussed the plan with the laid-off workers instead of devising it unilaterally, adding that Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) has repeatedly boycotted negotiations with a committee set up to discuss the issue.

Halfway through the sit-down, the protesters started throwing shoes from backpacks and bags that had their demands for full severance packages and pensions inscribed on the soles.

Although security personnel inside the presidential compound attempted to intercept the flying shoes with a large net, piles of footwear arched over it and landed on the property.

Scuffles broke out when police officers started to clear the former tollway collectors and their supporters from the area, shipping them off by the busload.

The demonstration followed another protest earlier in the day in another part of the city, which saw participants gather outside Yeh’s residence, to the displeasure of some local residents.

“We have attempted to speak with the minister many times during our protests in front of the ministry building, but he has refused to speak with us,” organization president Sun Hsiu-luan (孫秀鑾) told an angry resident who said that the demonstrators were disturbing the neighborhood.

Indonesia to cut worker flow to Taiwan unless treatment improves

Ed. note: This human trafficking must end. If there was a living wage in Taiwan, domestic workers would apply. The Taiwan government should stop finding ways to exploit people and raise the wages of their workers. 

Indonesia to cut worker flow to Taiwan unless treatment improves

2014/12/24 17:15:15

Nusron Wahid, head of the Agency of Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers. CNA photo Dec. 24, 2014

Jakarta, Indonesia Dec. 24 (CNA) The Indonesian government may soon stop exporting female domestic helpers to other countries but has declared that it will maintain the flow of workers to Taiwan if their working conditions, such as wages and hours, are improved.

Nusron Wahid, head of the Agency of Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers, confirmed Tuesday that what Vice President Jusuf Kalla said a few days ago about Indonesia no longer sending female workers to other countries within five years was correct.

The policy, which was proposed to protect Indonesian migrant workers' rights and benefits, focused particularly on the interests of workers in "informal sectors," Wahid said in an interview with CNA.

Indonesia's government will continue its efforts to secure the same treatment and benefits for those workers as received by those employed in "formal sectors," such as at factories and companies.

The official revealed that his country is preparing to stop exporting domestic helpers overseas in 2017.

Wahid was appointed by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to the position after Widodo was inaugurated as Indonesia's new president in October.

The new government has made improving the rights and benefits of migrant workers and overall labor conditions one of its top administrative priorities.

Understanding Taiwan's need for domestic helpers from Indonesia, Wahid suggested a solution to maintain the flow of workers in informal sectors.

Taiwan should comprehensively raise wages for Indonesian domestic helpers based on its own minimum wage regulations, and work hours should be limited to a level consistent with local law, Wahid said.

Domestic helpers should not be on call 24 hours a day and should not live under the same roof as their employers but be housed in dormitories, Wahid said.

If Taiwan can fulfill those requests, migrant worker exports will be continued after 2017, he said.

In negotiations with Indonesia in early December, Taiwan rejected a request to raise the wages of Indonesia domestic helpers working in the country.

The demands on providing separate accommodation and not allowing workers to be on call 24 hours a day could also be problematic because the majority of Indonesian women working in Taiwan are caregivers tending to senior citizens who need round-the-clock attention.

(By Jay Chou and Elizabeth Hsu)
ENDITEM/ls

Netizens react to Sunflower movement leader Chen Wei-ting’s grope admission

(Ed. note: Chen Wei-Ting was a creep when I was introduced to him in Miaoli in November 2013. I had gone to visit activist Lim It-Hong at his cafe there (see "Afterword:The Sunflower Student Uprising" http://outskirtspress.com/forgottenpeopleoftaiwan/). In walked Chen, like a gangster hero(proud of his accomplishment - throwing a sneaker at a politician) and plopped down in a seat arrogantly refusing to listen to my reasons for him to become a Wobbly and throw his lot with the Industrial Workers of the World. His mentor, Mr. Lim, a FAPA hack, wasn't interested in the plight of workers, either. Chen didn't care he was being used by the DPP Deputy Director for the Department of Hakka Affairs, Fi Chen Liu, who was there to advise and promote him. Later he was a figurehead in the takeover of the Assembly Hall. The DPP won a landslide election with the help of the publicity but Taiwanese workers still suffer. Now he wants to be a politician, too, but by exposing his sleazy past before opponents do, the workers of Taiwan have nothing to lose by his demise.) 

Netizens react to Sunflower movement leader Chen Wei-ting’s grope admission

PAST WRONGDOING:While a National Taiwan Normal University professor said Chen was ‘dangerous,’ other netizens expressed their support and lauded his courage

By Peng Chien-li and Tsai Chang-Sheng  /  Staff reporters

Taiwan March founder and Miaoli County legislative by-election candidate Chen Wei-ting stands next to a poster of himself on Monday.

Photo from Lin Fei-fan’s Facebook page

A revelation by Sunflower movement leader Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) that he once groped a female passenger’s breast on a bus has sparked heated debate among netizens, who had mixed views.

In an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) published yesterday, Chen, who is running for legislator in the by-election in Miaoli County in February, was asked to discuss his potential risk of falling victim to “attacks on his personal integrity,” to which he responded by making the revelation, saying: “There are things that I have kept to myself for a long time.”

“One day, during the summer vacation before my senior year in college, I groped the bosom of a female passenger sitting next to me on public transport and was taken to a police station. Sometime later, I had improper physical contact with a female on the dance floor at a night club, for which I underwent mental health consultation at the order of school administrators,” he said.

Some netizens condemned Chen, with one saying that touching a woman’s body without permission — whatever the reason — without her permission is exactly what “subway gropers” do.

“He is just afraid that these incidents will impact his campaign when they are exposed, so he might as well reveal it now,” one said.

National Taiwan Normal University professor Wu Chia-cheng (吳家誠), referring to Chen’s previous act of throwing his shoe at Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) to protest against the county government’s forced demolition of four houses in Dapu Borough (大埔), criticized Chen on Facebook, saying: “He throws his shoe at someone when he is mad and gropes women’s bosoms when he is high. He is dangerous.”

Others expressed support for Chen and said he showed courage by confessing his past wrongdoing.

“I was very shocked when I heard [Chen’s confession],” Defend Miaoli Youth Alliance member Yu Chieh-min (游捷閔) said.

Knowing Chen on a personal level, Yu said he has many shortcomings, but she also commended his courage in admitting what he did.

“It shows that he is not afraid to admit that he was wrong and is willing to improve. I believe he will adopt a more mature attitude toward women. He has not lost my support,” she said.

Using former US president Bill Clinton as an example, Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) said Americans could forgive Clinton because they elected him as they believed him to be capable of handling public matters, not because they saw him as a moral exemplar.

Chen’s fellow Sunflower movement leader Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) said he had known about the incident for a long time. Lin lauded Chen for having the courage to face his own demons, even though he said he did not think Chen’s mistakes could be rectified by his engagement in social issues.

Prosecutors who handled the case three years ago said Chen touched a female passenger’s breast while she was sleeping on a Taipei-bound Hsin Chu Bus in July 2011, adding that the woman awoke and shouted for help, after which the bus driver stopped the vehicle near Chongqing N Road Sec 3 in Taipei and took Chen to a police station.

Chen was given probation, with the complainant’s consent, prosecutors said.

"It Won't Work" Ch. 1 Excerpt 1: He Stole That Book

One day, Emerson went to a rally at Union Square Park with some classmates. There was a Yippie there talking whose name was Abbie Hoffman. Abbie was Jewish like Emerson and he had a lot to say about the war in Vietnam and American society controlled by the corporate Wall Street. The youth, he said, had to fend for itself. There was a book he’d written suggesting ways to do so. It was called Steal This Book because Abbie didn’t care if anyone paid for it. Emerson took Abbie Hoffman’s advice. He saw a copy of the book in a box near an outreach table where Abbie stood, and he stole that book.  

   It was May 8, 1970 that Emerson went on his first march in Manhattan. The whole Social Action Club from Central High School went. Mayor Lindsey paid for their transportation to Battery Park in a black hearse limousine. The mayor’s office even supplied the print shop where they could make flyers. What a great mayor! Business people hated him

    A metal-hinged accordion barricade twined in the street around an open manhole making a five-foot square area. Its worn bruised circular bars, one inch think and unbendable four layers. Three tubes on each of two hinged parts, bolted at 90o angles, one foot from the pavement soldered smoothly into vertical stands, uncapped raw metal bottoms made tight gray scratches on the pitch black surface. The manhole itself, three feet wide, left two feet of space within the enclosed cubicle where a pair of think gray fabric gloves lay atop of hefty pliers and a cardboard spool of thick black cable. To the side of the enclosure, perpendicular to the curb was a three foot passageway where parked cars had formally been before they were moved for the ruckus. There stood a heavy-duty yellow metallic chest on three solid rubber tire wheels, air grate vents on all four sides with knobs and red mini-lights on one of the sides closest to the open manhole. A triangular hitch extended out past the enclosure from the one-wheeled side of the power unit over and out into the street where marchers marched. One had to avoid it to make their way up Broadway without getting bruised.

      To the left of the work area lay the full breadth of Broadway, four lanes wide without cars parked at meters, thirty feet wide if you didn’t include the obstructive work area with open manhole. The legal march, originating in Battery Park a half mile down the hill at the southerly tip of Manhattan, proceeded by, the noisy procession punctuated by players banging thick dowel sticks on industrial strength white plastic containers punched with holes on either side where a rope strung around the neck of the primitive musicians. It moved on past the Consolidated Edison work site until Emerson caught it in sight out of the right corner of his eye.

      Emerson, who held the right rear end of the cardboard American flag draped coffin, moved as briskly up the Broadway as the 60,000 Americans whose death was symbolized by the box of their final resting place.

        “Ho-ho-ho Chi-Min, the N.L.F. is gonna win. Ho-ho-ho Chi Min, the N.L.F. is gonna win…” resounded and bounced off the marble facades of the business towers on either side of Broadway and seemed to echo its way up the canyon, actually clashing with previous and preceding contingents from other high schools around the five boroughs. The march shouted, the march chanted, and the earnest youth Emerson joined had to win like Ho would win.

Emerson could vaguely see, from the right corner of his eye, the work area and uncovered manhole cover which lay at its side, and he knew where to avoid walking. From out of the hole, a light blue hardhat emerged, and then a forehead, black eyebrows, bulbous nose, square opened mouth, strapped under chin, and the whole body of a workman. The face had a smile on it, a middle-aged smile with stubble beard around the lips of unshaven cheeks, a missing tooth around brown abused tiles. The mouth smiled but the eyes stared. That should have been a warning. Emerson smiled back excitedly but he shouldn’t have. Within two feet of the five foot cage, cheeks sucked in, lips puckered, the chest expanded, and a large globule of discharge shot through the air. Solid gray phlegm coagulated by whatever soots the man had breathed into his uncovered d blowhole below the street among the serpentine sewers of old New York. The gray matter flew through the air and found its mark like the dart of a cannibal’s straw into Emerson’s right ear canal and dripped down the lobe like a satellite in a cavern. Some dripped down his right cheek and near his eye. Emerson, hands occupied on the coffin flinched but couldn’t remove it fast enough.

      “That’s for the sign of the American chicken, you fuckin’ fagot retard!” said the workman as Emerson continued, drenched from the ejaculation.

      “That’s taking one for the movement.”

      “What movement. Bowel movement?”

      “Yeah man; from the fat fool’s shitty gut.” 

       They called it the Hard Hat Riot. While Emerson and another one thousand high school students were protesting the killing of four students at Kent State University a few days before, The American invasion of Cambodia, and the Vietnam War, about two hundred construction workers, brought in by bus by the New York State AFL-CIO, attacked them. Union workers from nearby projects and Con Ed workers on the street joined in the feast. Emerson dropped the coffin he'd been holding and fled with the others with tool wielding burley men in pursuit. For two hours, Emerson ran through the streets of lower Manhattan, from Broad Street to City Hall, trying to escape the violence. Escape he did by slipping into J&R Music World on Publishers' Row. He laid low inside, looking at the albums and listening to new releases on turntables in booths in the back rooms. More than seventy protesters were injured, but only four police and a smattering of construction workers who, people said, hurt themselves trying to beat up protesters. 

        What was George Meany, the AFL-CIO President thinking? Emerson couldn't understand how a union man could be anti-communist since communism meant the workers' had taken over the state. Most labor leaders supported the US military involvement in Southeast Asia without realizing American was clearing a path for sweatshop workers to take union jobs away in the new America. Emerson really thought that Con Ed worker coming out of the manhole was there to welcome the protesters, not spit on them! Peter Brennan, the President of the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York was at the heart of the betrayal. He became Republican as the skilled labor unions lost their power; he wanted to save his own job so he capitulated. Emerson had heard the please "AF of Hell" from his Grandfather when he was a student at Joe Ettor Junior High in Lawrence. He heard how the AFL-CIO of Gompers had turned their backs on the textile workers of the mills there saying they were unskilled foreign workers and didn't deserve to be in a union. The AFL-CIO hadn't changed that much in sixty years.

     The rally began at noon. While Emerson was further up Broadway getting ready to march, unbeknownst to him and the people around him, two hundred construction workers converged on the rally at Federal Hall from four directions carrying signs that said "All the way, USA' and "America, love it or leave it." They broke through a skimpy police line and started chasing students. The police stood by and did nothing to stop them.

Mayor Lindsay, who had helped the high school students by permitting teachers to join the rally that day, severely criticized the police for their lack of action. The police leaders later accused Lindsay of insulting their integrity by his statements, and blamed him for being unprepared for the demonstration. Brennan, on the other hand, was welcomed to the White House where he presented Nixon with a hard hat souvenir. 

"It Won't Work" Ch. 9 Excerpt 1: Critical Mass

“What a fucking dickhead!” Emerson knew Jack Covert had emotional issues but he always pinned him for being a real activist; maybe he had reasons to be clandestine, Emerson always covered for him. But this was serious; Jack Covert abandoned his colleague Emerson Davinsky on the battlefield!

      As soon as he heard the frantic running chaos in the street, Jack Covert turned his bicycle around, and walked with it the other way. He would have ridden it the other way but there were too many human obstacles in the street for him to make a clean getaway.

 “I’m going,” Emerson heard him say; just like that. There was no need for a cell phone or the text messages a newfangled Blackberry could provide. Even the communications system in the immense AT&T relay station behind them wasn’t necessary; Emerson heard it with his two good ears; “I’m leaving,” said Jack with a slight look of fear in his squinty eyes.

They had met there on that corner near Bryant Park not even a half hour earlier, Emerson there by subway, Jack on his bicycle he’d taken over the Brooklyn Bridge to arrive. To Jack, it was a joy ride; it stopped when the danger started. Sure, Jack Covert was there as he said he would be, even on time as a Pavlov dog is to a school bell, but he was not there with Emerson as Emerson had thought, not really there with him. In what became clear to Emerson over the years of their knowing each other, working in the same school, membership in the same organization, interest in the same topics, in typical Jack Covert style, Covert was there but he wasn’t together with anyone, anyone. Jack himself wouldn’t call it “being alone” because he knew that it was the way of many post-anarchist dickheads to existentially be alone even when acting together with others, never for the good of mankind, always alone. Nope. Jack was out of there, through the path of least resistance, to the least possible trouble he could encounter, and he walked away with the bicycle, just walked away, from Emerson, his colleague, friend and comrade; just walked away when the battle on the streets was getting heated. Emerson was disappointed to find that out about him; Jack was the closest thing Emerson had to a friend in the progressive movement. Emerson watched him weave his bike casually down Avenue of the Americas and by 40^th Street, he was out of sight.

Emerson had a decision to make. He could stand there in disbelief. He could shouted out, “Wait, I’m coming with you!” if his friendship to Jack was more important than the demonstration they’d gone there to participate in. That was not what Emerson Davinsky decided to do; he chose to continue on, to soldier on and do the legal marshaling he had agreed to do at that meeting the week before near Thompson Square Park. He felt so on his own, he felt so all alone, a character flaw Jack might call it, a childish emotion not befitting a warrior.

Emerson took a deep breath, turned the corner of Avenue of the Americas across from Bryant Park, across from that newspaper stand with the socialist periodicals, the one he learned about the Radical Guardian, Workers World, The Daily World, The Socialist Worker; the one with no socialist periodicals for sale anymore. He walked down 42^nd Street to Times Square to the appointed time and place of the happening he was to attend and marshal; his job, to write the name of the cop that arrested any of his compatriots and find out which holding pen in which precinct they were being taken to, to write down the hat number of any cop that abused a demonstrator for legal action against him later on in court, but to keep at least one foot on the sidewalk so he wouldn't get arrested himself; those were the rules of the game “oly-oly oxen free.”

He found a way to get there around the swelling crowd of protesters and onlookers and Times Square gawkers. There, to where at 12:00 noon, before the days of ‘flash mobs,’ they were all to meet and create diversion so the volunteers could assemble the twenty foot tall wooden tripod, a tripod with a seat at the top, a seat where a brave protester would dare police to remove him from and risk him bodily harm. In the crowd, he saw The Carpenter, he saw Brad Will with his camera, he saw a few people he remembered from ABC No Rio, and he saw Adonis. All were there; Emerson was not alone.

The guerrilla theater protest went on as scheduled. The police were surprised and not ready to stop it before it happened. The plan worked. These brave souls were going to get the media attention they craved, better than acting out dramas with expressive signs for the microphone-less closed circuit TV’s on the subway platforms and streets that they’d been acting out and sharing in the early days of social media.

There the daredevil was; twenty feet above the pavement, a protest, a dare to get him down in the days when the police still had to worry about following the law and being accountable. The police were advised by their white shirt captain not to let it get any media attention; to keep it down. Then the chanting began as the police jostled toward the erection guarded by activists sworn to protect the safety of their perched comrade.

“Whose streets?”

“Our Street!”

“Whose street?!?”

“”Our Streets” Critical mass was going to guard their right to ride their bikes in the streets of Manhattan.

“Whose streets?”

“Our streets!” On went the chanting, louder and louder, a hundred protesters strong among the thousands that kept police busy all overt midtown, the confusion of police jostling to get their vehicle close enough to arrest all the demonstrators creating a disturbance, and the tourists gawking and pushing to see what in blazes was going on, to abuse the one’s they could get away with abusing out of the glare of the camera in the days when smart phone cameras would have made a world of difference; now it doesn’t matter anymore.

The crowd cheered as the surreptitious tripod was guarded below, and Adonis was arrested, damn it; the police caught him off the sidewalk helping his comrade not fall down and he was arrested. Emerson kept his foot on the sidewalk. He took out his pen and wrote the cops service number onto his forearm in blue ink. He heard from another marshal that they were being taken to the Chinatown precinct, for some reason.

Other events went as planned. There was a sit-in in front of the military recruitment center where Broadway and Seventh Avenues crossed on 43^rd Street; dozens of young protesters were dragged away and put into police vans but not before the crowd felt the liberty of fighting off the guilty party of oppression, in the days when one could still fight off the guilty party of oppression without being labeled terrorists. Taking over the streets was a distinct possibility in the days before brutal force was constitutionally guaranteed and painful tactics were illegal and frowned upon by society, in the days before the society was completely under surveillance. Back before the back-door destruction of two World Trade Center Buildings by almost friendly fire, there were still possibilities of liberty. Emerson didn’t know then what he found out soon enough. The mementos  and flyers he had burned in disgust after the police of America were militarized, he would have had more details but then, in hindsight, there was no reason to remember how liberty was lost, taken away, stolen by the government in complicity. No one would believe it. The mementos would have been the cruelest reminder. 

"It Won't Work" Ch. 7 Excerpt 1: The Anarchist Forum

Brecht Forum had Anarchist Forum once a month which Emerson and Jack liked to attend. “I’ll pick you up at seven,” Emerson offered since Jack didn’t drive. To Manhattan into a strong, twelve story, brick-tall, former sweatshop building on the West side just below the Chelsea Hotel they entered the freight elevator. “I wonder if ‘Cave Man’ will be there again.”

“Probably,” Grinned Jack agreeing with the description, but knowing deeper. ‘Cave Man,’ as Emerson called him (and Jack couldn’t disagree) looked so unkempt and bent out of shape in what should have been a muscular body, wearing the same faded plaid shirt every time they saw him there, tussled medium-length hair, scraggly spotty short brown beard, black plastic-rimmed eyeglasses askew, adhesive-taped temple piece. When Peter Lamborn Wilson spoke, or some other anarchist genius, just as smart but less excited, ‘Cave Man’ would sit and gesticulate fits of rage without removing his ass from the folding chair, just by hunching his shoulders and flailing his elbows. He never said a word; only grunts and noises of objection. Cave Man didn’t shake his head in agreement; that social skill was too trite for him, nor did he shake his head ‘no’; another worn out gesture of bourgeois society. Part of the lecture’s appeal to Emerson was sitting within eyeshot behind Cave Man, near other nerdy, unfashionable anarchist thinkers, and listeners. Cave Man’s erratic moans sometimes didn’t even correspond to what was being said by the lecturer; he had to mull over the gestalt of the delivery before erupting his volcanic mind to its true meaning. Occasionally, someone seated next to him would be shocked by Cave Man, worrying, expecting his protestations to develop into a seizure, perchance, punctuated by dangerous flights or violence, but Cave Man would never go that far; he would calm down; no one ever had to fear telling him to be seated and relax. Cave Man was beyond relaxed. He was a true adherent of Hakim Bey; poetic justice threw out the rules of society, any society, along with the baby and the bath water.  

Peter Lamborn Wilson made sense, Emerson thought, when the topic was the degeneration of activism or putrid distain for acceptance of what was overthrowable in America. Wilson never talked about sex at these lectures. Sex was the farthest thing from Emerson’s mind as he listened to the old animated man rant in his scraggly gray hair, smudged plastic turtle-shell rim glasses, slowly pacing the floor, making observations about some point that he just made, occasionally alluding to a book he had written in which the point was erudite.

During the break, Emerson stood with everyone and stretched, went to the bathroom, or perused the slim literature table with a dozen copies of Wilson and other anarchist’s books for sale. Everyone milled around, even the one or two females present. There was some tea to be had at a water cooler in the slab naked reception area near the forum, a foyer really, not a theater at all. At the gigantic floor to ceiling windows of this turn-of-the-century row warehouse, one could smoke a cigarette, and, as anarchists, no one wouldn’t dare tell anyone to mind his or her manners or blow the smoke elsewhere, though one would blow it elsewhere because one was in the presence of two dozen anarchists and visionary thinkers.  

At the Sunday IWW meeting, Eupheus Clutch was livid, livid and embarrassed when hearing that Emerson and Covert were going to spend time and listen to Peter Lamborn Wilson at the Brecht Forum. “No, Emerson; I’m busy. Thanks for asking though. I don’t think I would want to go hear what that pedophile had to say.”

“What are you talking about?” Covert’s voice came in the breeze from the back of the room where he usually sat, inevitably perched higher than other members who were seated in a circle at the meeting. Mr. Covert, as a cat would, took to higher ground to view his kingdom and watch for enemies and prey. “He isn’t a pedophile.”

Colonial Clutch (since, to Emerson, he looked like chicken Sanders) lowered his head, scrunched his goatee, tipped his glasses, looked askew at Emerson and in mock secrecy said, “He is a pedophile, you know, a pedophile; he is Hakim Bey. He’s the editor of NAMBLA Bulletin.” Then in a loud voice without turning to face Covert: “He advocates sex with minors, he does.”

“But consensual,” Jack shot back in the walls of breeze, without moving to join the meeting wholly. “Consensual.”  

“Now how can an adult have consensual sex with a minor? I ask you, and even homosexual acts at that with children; now give me a break Mr. Covert,” said Colonial Clutch as he rolled his eyes.” One member objected to his negative mention of gayness.

Emerson turned to his fellow worker to his left, “Is what he’s saying true?” The gay supporter replied with mixed feelings, “Yes, it is true.”

“But that’s only a small part of his ideology,” said Mr. Covert secretly hearing what Emerson’s neighbor had said, as if secret chatter was worth responding to more than straight talk out in the open.

“I do believe Peter Lamborn Wilson, or Hakim Bey as he’s known, is an embarrassment to the anarchist community, and you know that Jack, don’t la.” responded Clutch, in final response. “Now can we get back to this meeting? I call the meeting to order. I truly hope y’all don’t have any further announcements,” said Clutch playing captain of the ship though a facilitator hadn’t been voted on yet, “because it is three o’clock already, fellow workers, and I have somewhere to go at 4pm.” 

“I move that Mr. Clutch be today’s facilitator since he is so good at it and has taken over the meeting already anyway,”

“I beg your pardon Mr. Covert, are you volunteering?”

“No.”

“…and when you join us and move your skinny ass off that box we will see if we have a quorum.”

The fact that Wilson was involved with NAMBLA, a pedophile advocacy organization that worked to abolish age of consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors, didn’t faze Jack Covert. Emerson had then only known Jack a short while as a colleague at Norman Thomas high school where they both taught. Ten years passed before, after a collected scrutiny of implied behavior, and witnessing interested glances , and meetings on the school stoop, an occasional unscheduled fifteen-year-old coed who looked up to him under his wing, the penny dropped; Emerson could only wonder if Jack was practicing what Hakim Bey preached.

Protesters take on Cross-Strait CEO Summit

TRIPLE THREAT:Three demonstrations converged on a meeting of Chinese and Taiwanese officials and business leaders, chanting slogans and waving huge flags

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

A protester scuffles with police officers yesterday as China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Deming arrives at the Cross-Strait CEO Summit in Taipei’s Xinyi District.

Photo: Reuters

After a week-long trip around Taiwan dogged by persistent protests, China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘) returned to Taipei yesterday to attend the annual Cross-Strait CEO Summit — only to be greeted by more demonstrations.

Although the summit purports to facilitate business relationships across the Taiwan Strait, critics say the meeting in effect allows the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to formulate decisions on cross-strait trade policies while circumventing legislative and administrative procedures.

Three separate rallies — led by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), pro-independence groups and youth activist organizations — took place outside the summit’s venue in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), while more than 800 business and political heavyweights from both sides of the Taiwan Strait gathered inside.

Among the attendees at the two-day event are former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and former Chinese vice premier Zeng Peiyan (曾培炎), who both spoke at the summit’s opening ceremony.

Business leaders participating in the summit include Jack Ma (馬雲), founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba; Sinopec Group senior vice president Dai Houliang (戴厚良); Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀); and Acer Corp founder Stan Shih (施振榮).

Scuffles with police occurred as protesters from a rally organized by the Taiwan Solidarity Union attempted to inch closer to the venue, resulting in TSU Department of Organization Deputy Director Chang Chao-lin (張兆林) being taken away by police for questioning.

Protesters from a rally led by pro-independence groups congregated across the street, waving towering flags that measured up to three stories high, emblazoned with pro-independence slogans.

A prerecorded track that chanted: “The communist livestock have arrived; the Chinese communist robbers have arrived,” blasted repeatedly through loudspeakers aimed toward the venue.

Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) led a third rally, shouting slogans that denounced participants in the summit as members of the “cross-strait privileged stratum.”

Lai was joined by members of several youth organizations that blossomed following the Sunflower movement in late March and April, in which students and activists occupied the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber for 23 days to protest the government’s handling of a proposed cross-strait service trade agreement.

With important officials from the KMT and the CCP present, Lai said the summit can be seen as an example of the party-to-party negotiation mechanism established during the KMT-CCP forum in 2005, adding that such an arrangement bypasses legal procedures required by Taiwanese law.

The summit touches on many issues that are still under legislative deliberation, Lai said, including draft bills for the proposed free economic pilot zones, as well as cross-strait cooperation in medical and biotechnological industries.

“By conducting negotiations with Chinese authorities without the approval of the Mainland Affairs Council, participants in the summit have broken the law,” Lai said. “Vincent Siew and [former Straits Exchange Foundation chairman] Chiang Pin-kun (江丙坤) should take responsibility for their criminal behavior.”

The protesters offered organizers of the summit a prop of a “moonflower,” referring to Chen’s remarks last week that cautioned against the occurrence of a “Moonflower” movement — a hypothetical sequel to the Sunflower movement — to ensure that the cross-strait trade agreement passes soon.

Ex-toll collectors protest outside minister’s home

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

Former freeway toll collectors yesterday hold up tickets issued to them during previous demonstrations while staging a protest outside the Taipei residence of Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih.

Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times

About 40 former freeway toll collectors and their supporters yesterday demonstrated outside the residence of Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) in Taipei yesterday.

The former toll collectors — some of the about 1,000 people who were laid off after the nation’s freeways switched to an electronic toll collection system in January — said Yeh does not deserve his post as minister as he has failed to provide a solution for the former toll collectors.

Although former premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) resigned after the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) landslide defeat in the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, most of the members of his Cabinet, including Yeh, remained at their posts, which led critics to question the government’s resolve in implementing reforms.

“In contrast with Yeh’s continued employment as a high-ranking government official, the former toll collectors received NT$6,000 tickets apiece for supposed traffic violations,” labor activist Kuo Kuan-chun (郭冠均) said, referring to earlier protests in which the toll collectors were fined for partially obstructing freeways.

Waving large orange and black flags as they lined up in front of the minister’s home, an apartment complex in Taipei named “Shakespeare’s Plaza,” the toll collectors held bundles of NT$100 notes, which they said were donations from supporters to help them pay a total of more than NT$600,000 in traffic fines.

“We are very thankful for the more than NT$620,000 we received in donations to help us pay for the tickets,” Former Toll Collectors Self-Help Organization vice president Huang Li-jung (黃麗蓉) said.

“Protesting outside the minister’s residence is a last resort for us, since he refused to meet us during numerous protests outside the Ministry of Transportation and Communications,” Huang added.

The former toll collectors reiterated their three demands: full severance packages according to their years of service instead of a fixed seven-month severance plan; compensation for their pensions; and assistance in finding new employment opportunities.

98% of businesses in New Taipei break rules on foreign workers

2014/12/08 19:05:17

CNA file photo

Taipei, Dec. 8 (CNA) Nearly all of the businesses in New Taipei that hire foreign workers have this year violated rules set up to protect such employees, the city's Labor Affairs Department said Monday.

Forty-nine of the 50 companies in the northern city that were checked were found to have committed a total of 314 violations this year, according to a news release.

Of the recorded violations, 37.9 percent involved dangerous amenities, followed by poor management (27.4 percent), according to the release.

The department said it had ordered three violators that pose immediate hazards to foreign hires to shut down and the rest to improve within a certain timeframe. Those who fail to improve within the time specified face fines of between NT$30,000 (US$955.5) and NT$300,000, the news release said.

Foreign workers in the industrial sector are often hired for tasks that are physicially trying and dangerous, or work in unsanitary environments, the department said, noting that a recent survey found that 70 percent of the foreign workers who were injured on the job had not received training to prevent injury, which is in violation of the law.

The department urged employers to offer training in the native languages of the foreign workers to prevent them from being exposed to dangerous chemicals or injured while operating machinery.

(By Justin Su and Scully Hsiao)
ENDITEM/J

Foreign caretaker rules relaxed

FORWARD PLANNING:Critics say the government has failed to address the potential migrant shortage a new Indonesian law banning export of female labor may cause

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

Families with elderly members above the age of 85 can now apply for the services of foreign caretakers under relaxed application standards, Ministry of Labor officials announced yesterday.

Previous regulations stipulated that seniors aged 80 and above were required to exhibit a score below 60 on the Barthel Index — a medical scale that measures the capacity to engage in everyday activities, such as eating or showering — before their family could apply for a foreign caretaker.

A new ministry ruling said families with seniors aged over 85 can apply for foreign caretakers as long as medical examinations show they exhibit one single disability among activities listed on the Barthel Index.

Those aged over 85 require more intensive care, since their physical and mental health conditions can deteriorate swiftly, the ministry said.

An estimated 35,000 families would be likely to benefit from the new measures, the ministry said.

However, critics say the ministry has yet to address a potential shortage of migrant workers, following a recent decision by the Indonesian government to ban the export of female labor within five years.

Chinese Association of Family Caregivers president Chen Chen-fen (陳正芬) said that instead of importing foreign labor whenever there are gaps in the workforce, the government should engage in policy reforms on long-term care and establish daycare centers for seniors.

The nation is home to about 530,000 migrant workers, mostly from Southeast Asian nations, with 220,000 who work as home care workers.

Additional reporting by CNA

My Opinion: Ko's I-Voting Farce

  

  I do not usually comment on political news in Taiwan, a neo-liberal rubbish bin permeated by the ruling class Kuomintang (KMT) and a sustainable modern alternative to their dictatorship and world-record thirty-eight-year martial law. I also do not comment on the so-called “Sunflower Student Movement,” more rubbish which benefited no one but the members of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and no-party candidates who parlayed it into a trouncing of the KMT candidates in the recent mid-term elections. Until the “Sunflower” seeds demand jobs and labor unions with collective bargaining agreements with their bosses, their street theatrics are groundless.

      I do want to comment on a front page article (Taipei Times, Fri., Dec. 5, 2014, “Candidates, voters register for Taipei labor director”) in which I see how Taipei City’s mayor-elect, Ko Wen-Je’s mimics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to vet candidates running for election in 2016 in Hong Kong. The “Umbrella Student Movement” was up in arms and on the streets for weeks because of China’s curtailing the choices Hong Kong voters will have. At least the Chinese are frank about it. Ko’s “I-Voting” system, which he will use to select the next director of the Taipei Department of Labor, seems fair and democratic on the surface, but it isn’t.

      Ko Wen-Je’s campaign promise to use an “I Voting” system was meant, he said, to encourage candidates and voters to register to vote for and choose Taipei’s new labor director. It sound democratic with collective decision making which smacks of a utopian workers’ state, but it is only a gimmick.

      The “open government” Ko is initiating goes like this: Instead of appointing a labor chief, which is always what mayors around the world do, be they from capitalistic, communistic, or theocratic cities, the mayor-elect of Taipei is opening the position of Labor Director to candidates selected in an on-line vote.

      I am skeptical about this system for a number of reasons. First of all, what if the voter is not computer literate and cannot vote on-line? ‘No problem,’ says the Ko team; campaign headquarters will serve as an alternate polling place for registered voters to sign up to vote. That’s all well and good, but what if the voter is infirm or has no convenient means of reaching the Ko Wen-Je’s headquarters? Is the Ko team prepared to send access-a-ride vehicles to pick up interested voters and drive them home? Why not just send out vote-gathers with laptop computers and Wi-Fi connections to help the dispossessed from the comfort of their own living rooms?

      According to DPP Legislator Lee Ying-Yuan, who has been made the liaison between the Ko team and DPP, “More than one hundred people have signed up as candidates and ten thousand have registered as voters.” The candidates write their platforms in the form on-line and will be interviewed somehow. Could imagine one hundred plus interviews on-line? “We have a panel of thirty, made up of unionists, who will pick five candidates…and registered voters will be asked to vote for one.” Doesn’t China also have a panel to vet and choose who the Hong Kong voters can vote for in 2016? Is what Ko doing any less democratic? What does he need a panel of unionists for to pick five candidates? Just let the people vote directly. I do not think any of the “Sunflower” youngsters will be taking to the streets to protest this lack of democracy and choice. Many probably think Ko is more democratic for inaugurating the “I Voting” system and that’s exactly what he wants them to think; that’s why he put it on his platform to attract young liberal-minded voters.

      Ko Wen-Je’s “I-Voting” system is so half-assed that his administration has no authority to verify the ID numbers of those who volunteer to be candidates or voters. Every person over twenty-years-old with a Republic of China national ID is eligible to vote; whether they live in Taipei or not, they can vote for the Taipei Labor Director!

      Furthermore, an eligible voter can register to vote as many times as he or she wishes; the media has already tested the process and was successful in having one person register three voting accounts! When asked what he would do to prevent fraud, Ko naively said it depended on honesty and trust.

      While Ko is doing “I-Voting” to fulfill a campaign promise, he is only allowing it to be done in choosing the future director of the Taipei Department of Labor. How about doing it to choose the directors for all the departments in his administration? Why is labor such a throw-away for his frivolous half-baked plan?

 Does the fate of millions of working people in Taipei mean so little to mayor-elect Ko? If he really cares for workers, he should forthrightly appoint a Labor Director who would institute a “living wage,” improve working conditions, and set a higher standard for other cities and the central government of Taiwan to follow. Wages in Taiwan are at the same level they were sixteen years ago.

The notion of “open government” is a noble idea and direct democracy is the only true democracy, but this “I-Voting” system is a sham and a farce.

Finally, the main reason Ko Wen-Je is initiating the “I-Voting” system, and he stated it himself, is to ease the pressure on him to appoint positions in his administration. “Since my election, there have been many people trying to talk me into appointing people for positions.”

Hurry up, vox-populi; you have until 5:00pm this Sunday to run for the office of Labor Director of Taipei, vote as many times as you like, and maybe be one of the five candidates chosen by a panel, and vote again for what will be five of the same ideas. 

For One Big Union.
Solidarity Forever!

My Resignation from the IWW

      In the first year here in Taiwan, 2013, FW Sam, the then secretary-treasurer, sent me referrals of people who expressed interest in joining (or had already joined) the IWW in Taiwan. I went out of my way to meet all of them. They were all deadbeats. Since the current secretary-treasurer a year ago, I have received no referrals and only two communications.

 I was an active delegate; active only if someone contacted me or I got a referral. I was in ‘good standing.’ I’ve gotten no dues besides one month from one fellow worker a year ago. The dues stay here in Taiwan. 

Things could have been so different here for my activism if Lim It-Hong and the Taipei activists I met had helped out and if the referrals I was given weren’t self-absorbed flakes. Most importantly, the current secretary treasurer hasn’t helped or given advice, referrals, or encouragement to me. I haven’t tried very hard since then.

      I just wrote a response to the secretary treasurer of the IWW that I was no longer her delegate after I had confirmed I was two days ago. She wrote back about reports that I hadn’t sent; I hadn’t sent them because I had nothing to report. I renewed my delegate status in April 2014. She sent no referrals, unlike her predecessor, FW Sam, who had sent me three. 

I have no regrets but for the people I met in Taiwan who were worthless to the workers. I still consider myself a Wobbly in spirit. I won’t use the taIWWan blog (www.taIWWan.blogspot.tw) or taIWWangmb Facebook for anything I haven’t used it before. Likewise, I will continue to copy news and comment about workers struggles in Taiwan on the taIWWan blog. On them, I will post excerpts from my published short stories Forgotten People of Taiwan, poetry (Han River Poems) and my novel in progress (It Won't Work; Life's Progressive Movement.) You are all welcome to view them and remain friends. Both the blog and Facebook page are mine; I started them and I own them; no one can take them from me even if someone wants to take them off the IWW website. I  post my resignation and this reflection. 

Solidarity Forever!  

David Barry Temple