Brendan O'Neill On The Woolwich Murder

"Rather, in this era in which any old fool can claim to be a "community spokesperson", and can be treated seriously as such, these murderous loners seem to be trying a psychotic version of the same trick – claiming that by dint of shared skin colour or common religious sentiment they have the authority to speak on behalf of millions of people they have never met or whose lands they have never visited."

That's Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked magazine, writing in the Telegraph to pin down the reprehensible premises behind the murder of a British soldier in Woolwich. Compare with his other article on this attack in Spiked magazine itself here. There is surely a straight parallel between this case and the recently confirmed case of a Filipino beaten in Tainan in the wake of the recent fishing boat dispute with the Philipines.

I do not care one wit whether J.M. Cole or anyone else disapproves of my comments regarding the stupidity of Taiwanese nationalism. People are people, not walking identity cards; relegating other, individual people to the status of underviduals, is a necessary premise for the commission of evil.

Hence the precept expressed in my blog's subheading:

"From collectivism to individualism in Taiwan by way of refutation, question and conjecture."

Brief Essay On The Philipine Dispute

The ability to hold conjectures and generalizations in doubt, and to dismiss them for want of plausible reasons or evidence, is one of the distinguishing features of enlightened, rational people. Having read the press coverage concerning the ongoing dispute with the Philipines over the past ten days, it would seem that for some number of Taiwanese people, the ability to doubt has suddenly deserted them. Not only were the claims of Taiwan's government immediately reported as undisputed facts, but the presumption of guilt attached to the Philipines government has been generalized: it seems all Filipino people must likewise be guilty or at least treated as though they are, whether through the denial of visas and expulsion of diplomats at the State level, or with multiple baseball bat blows to the body at the Street level.

Yet there is another generalization to be wary of, and that is the belief that Taiwanese people must be collectively outraged by the shooting of a man they themselves never knew, and exclusively on account of their involuntary identity - that of having been born on the same island as him. However, just because Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) was Taiwanese, and just because Taiwanese people yearn for their government to receive international "face" from foreign governments, does not mean that he and his crew were entirely innocent or that he is owed the collective outrage and protection of all Taiwanese people.

To begin with, the claim that Hung's vessel - along with the three other Taiwanese vessels - were operating in Taiwan's "exclusive economic zone" seems doubtful for several reasons. First, the location of the shooting (approximately 164 nautical miles south-east of Erluanbi) is not the location where the Taiwanese vessels were initially caught by the Philipine coastguard; they arrived at the location where the shooting occured after having been chased northward for four hours by the Philipine coast guard attempting to make an arrest. If that is true, then it clearly indicates that the Taiwanese vessels were almost certainly guilty of poaching deep within Philipine waters. Second, even if there had been a bilateral agreement between Taiwan and the Philipines concerning fishing rights in the seas between the two countries, the proximity principle would almost certainly apply, which would clearly demarcate both the initial location where the Taiwanese vessels were spotted and hailed, and the later location where one of them was shot as clearly within Philipine territory. Third, the provision for an "exclusive economic zone", though adopted by Taiwan's legislature, is actually given by a UN convention to which Taiwan's government is not a signatory - the Philipines government therefore has no legal reason to respect the claims of Taiwan's government. Finally, Taiwanese fishing vessels have a history of poaching in Philipine waters; since Taiwan's government have obviously failed to dissuade Taiwan's fishermen from poaching, the Philipines' coast guard has resorted to employing force as a deterrant. (I would not be surprised if, in the past, they have used "dirty tricks" to secure bribe money from the Taiwanese fishermen they have caught, but that is another matter.)

Furthermore, the notion that Taiwan's government has a duty to protect its citizens and their rights simply cannot be taken seriously due to the distinct odour of double standards. The plight of Hung, because he was attacked by an agency of a foreign government has received rampant media attention for a well over a full week and everybody I know has been talking about it. Yet the plight of other Taiwanese people, when set upon by the agencies of the Taiwan government might be made salient by the press for a day (or perhaps even two) before everybody loses interest, or invents some utilitarian "public interest" excuse to forgive the government's dereliction of its supposed duty to protect the rights of Taiwanese people. Where, for example, was the collective outrage and State protection for Chu Feng Min, whose property rights were violated by the Miaoli County government in 2010? Was she not Taiwanese also? I remember her story passing through the media at the time with nothing like the impact Hung Shih-cheng's (洪石成) story has had, and where Hung is being avenged with patrols of Taiwan's navy, Chu was left to drink a bottle of insecticide after her land was stolen from her.

The contrast between the two cases demonstrates that those Taiwanese insisting on the government's "duty" to protect Taiwanese people are insincere - they are not, in fact, concerned with the rights of the individual. They are moral collectivists who see each other as walking membership cards, accorded differing levels of permission depending on how important they are as members of the society. Hung's case is more important than Chu's because it is a pretext for an attitude of "national unity" and to reinforce the status of Taiwanese people not as individuals with inalienable rights, but as underviduals - as walking membership cards whose "rights" are nothing more than contingent permissions which may be either protected or revoked for the "public interest".

A predictable objection to this charge must be put down before it is made, and that objection is the inevitable comparison to the U.S., as if the policies of the U.S. government are ipso facto validation of the similar policies of Taiwan's government. The moral crux of the matter is simple: if you want to be thought of as a person, as an individual, and to be treated fairly by others, then you ought not to conceive either yourself or other people as walking membership cards, as underviduals deriving moral properties from an involuntary identity as a cell in a greater human hive. Instead, treat others as individuals if you want to be treated so in return.

I blame the schools.

"None Will Level On The Line, Nobody Offered His Word..."

The current dispute between Taiwan and the Philipines, with all the self-serving bullshit about EEZ claims and "duties" of protection puts me in mind of Dylan's song; but I prefer Hendrix' version. I have written a short essay, but it needs to be gone over with the editing clippers first. Other things need to be done in the meantime...

Good Work

This is by far and away the best article I have read on the entire fishing incident. The level of detail is superb and far superior to anything I have seen in the newspapers or on TV - much of which was obvious bullshit. It's also far superior as documentary journalism to anything else I've seen online.

Strongly recommended for anybody looking to catch up on this incident without having to wade through political propaganda. 

"This Is Taiwan"

"Police confirmed that a Philippine worker was attacked by four Taiwanese and beaten with iron sticks and baseball bats in Tainan City on May 16 following the recent heated dispute between Taiwan and the Philippines."

From today's China Post - I first heard this last night at the pub in Kaohsiung. "Beaten to within an inch of his life" was the phrase used. It doesn't say whether there were witnesses or whether anyone intervened, or whether the culprits have been (or will be) caught and sent to trial. Who knows, eh? 

According to the police, a 30-year-old Philippine worker was surrounded and beaten by four Taiwanese men on May 16 when he was on his way to work. The police said no one that the worker knows has any resentment against him, so the police suspected that it may have been a random attack. 

No it's not a "random" attack, the correct word is "opportunistic". If they were using "iron sticks and baseball bats" then they'd have been out specifically looking for Filipinos, or even for anybody who appeared south-east Asian.

Fools: if you want to be regarded as a person, and treated accurately and fairly by others, then you have to extend the same courtesy to others irrespective of their nationality, race or any other markers of collective identity. However, if you want to indulge in nonsense like collective guilt and collective rage and collective identity - then you're fully entitled to share the collective shame from despicable incidents like this.

People who lack the basic intellectual equipment to work with, you know, concepts must be properly understood as monsters and ought therefore to be regarded with the appropriate caution. 

"Asia In 2013 Is Like Europe In 1913"

Today was supposed to be my day off to take another reservoir trip. A combination of torrential rainfall this morning, delays in getting my big bike back from the mechanic (he was asleep when I first went to pick it up, and was out to lunch the second time), and various other little errands have resulted in that plan being cancelled. And that's three or four trips I've had to cancel now; this cancellation after cancellation is wearing me out.

And yet, the horrible slide continues.

In its' wake, various mini-horrors are surfacing: Filipino people being fired from their jobs in Taiwan - because they are Filipinos; refused service in restaurants - because they are Filipinos; Taiwanese office workers openly wondering whether the R.O.C government should request assistance from Beijing because "after all, we are Chinese". This is in Tainan - the de facto political capital of the south and base of operations for what once styled itself as the Taiwanese Independence movement.

How quickly the Taiwanese have turned amazes even me.

Yet it isn't just Taiwan; seemingly every country in East Asia is now reverberating to the loose drum-beat of nationalism, with a consequent military build-up across the region. The strategic aim of the Chinese is obvious; the ability to dictate who gets what access, when and on whose terms to shipping lanes, fisheries and oil and gas fields throughout the region. The smaller states are almost entirely dependent upon the prospect of U.S. protection; the military assets of the Philipines and Vietnam for instance, do not amount to much at all. Meanwhile the governments of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have all been attempting to further modernize and increase their military capabilities - and in Japan's case - to also reform the constitutional limits to their military. All of these Asian governments are also vigorously insistent about maintaining their sovereign control over waters and their "EEZs". My comparison of Asia in 2013 to Europe in 1913 is just stating the obvious really. I would implore the Taiwanese to hope that we don't have another Gavrilo Princip anytime soon, but - thanks to those conservatories of stupidity and obedience we euphemistically refer to as "schools" - they don't even know who he is.

As far as Taiwan is concerned, the diplomatic crisis with the Philipines appears to be pushing the island closer and closer into Beijing government's orbit; not only have the Taiwanese deployed their navy in waters close to the Philipines (a violation of their U.S. arms exports treaties), but the Beijing government is now in a position to pose as an ally to Taiwan and to profit from the boiling-over of frustrated Taiwanese nationalism. A friend of mine told me today that her colleagues at work had been openly discussing whether their government should formally request assistance from China! Another step toward de-facto annexation.

And there is the unremarked upon stink of hypocrisy: if the government's first duty is to "protect" its' citizens, then why did a certain old woman in Miaoli County, Chu Feng Min, drink a bottle of insecticide on August 3rd 2010? Apparently "protection" only applies to citizens attacked by the agencies of a foreign government, but not to those attacked by the agencies of the Taiwan government.

Of course this whole thing could have been avoided if, in contrast to the stupidity of nation-state territoriality, the seas between Taiwan and the Philipines had been governed by a common market in tradeable fishing permits with the incentives so aligned as to make overfishing unprofitable. In that case there would have been no possibility of a dispute over the legality of a Taiwanese or Filipino fishing vessel operating in any of these waters so long as they had paid for their permit, and there would be no need for coast guard vessels carrying machine guns to enforce their "EEZs". 

Is it too late for that sort of thing now? The nationalist hysteria has spread like wildfire already up and down the country - I will be amazed if I manage to get anything published in the press on the subject in the next few days. But the urgent question is: what are we going to do?

The Fishing Boat Incident In The Philipines: Initial Response

Since last week's incident in the Philipine Sea in which a Phillipine coast guard vessel opened fire on a Taiwanese fishing boat - killing one fisherman - the newspapers have saturated themselves in the noise of nationalism. The politicians are burning flags and effigies and even the people I ordinarily take to be reasonable have suddenly turned horribly unreasonable; ordinary Filipino people living in Taiwan, who presumably have nothing whatsoever to do with this incident are now going to be punished by civil associations (e.g. being excluded from the upcoming annual boat races and such), whilst future Filipino immigrants to Taiwan, who also will have had nothing to do with this incident, are now going to be denied visas.

Perhaps the extent of this wild-fire stupidity is being exaggerated by the intense media coverage, but in some sense it may also be being fanned further by the media coverage; all of the Taiwanese people I have talked to have expressed outrage, and - bar one or two exceptions - none of them seem to have had any doubts.

On the location of the incident itself, I cannot see how the Taiwanese claims to legality are at all defensible; in my opinion there is a very strong case to be made that the fishing boat was in waters to which only vessels registered with the Filipino authorities were legally entitled (for one major reason: the R.O.C government has not been a signatory to any of the relevant international agreements pertaining to governance of the seas since it lost its' place at the UN to the PRC in the 1970s). The import of that point is the dubious nature of the claims to legality made by various Taiwanese politicians and journalists; some of them may have simply been telling outright lies. The location does lie within what would be the overlapping "exclusive economic zones" of 200 nautical miles (as described by a UN convention) of both Taiwan and the Philipines - if the government of Taiwan (the ROC) had been a signatory to the UN convention under which those legal principles apply. Moreover, even if it had been, then the principle of proximity would seem to strengthen the Filipino case....

That google earth shot focuses in on Balintang Island because the incident allegedly occured 43 nautical miles to the east; the island, and the others surrounding it, are all territory claimed by the Filipino state. By contrast, the white line indicates the 164 nautical mile distance from the south-east of Taiwan. Clearly, the incident occured in waters much closer to the Philipines than to Taiwan. Had a bilateral agreement on fishing rights already existed, it would probably have incorporated the proximity principle in some way. For this reason, and also because the Philipines' government is a signatory to the UN convention whereas Taiwan's government is not, it is not immediately obvious how the Taiwanese can lay any legal claim to fishing rights in this area.

In addition to the location of the incident vis-a-vis state sovereignty claims, the other point of controversy is what actually happened in the incident itself. The Filipino claim is that the shooting of the Taiwanese fishing boat and the death of one fisherman occured after the coast guard vessel had been rammed following its' interception of the Taiwanese vessel. The Taiwanese deny this. As yet, no video evidence has emerged online to document clearly what happened. To believe the Filipino case, we have to believe that the Taiwanese fishermen (and their port authorities) disregarded the legal claims of the Filipino government in pursuit of the fish and when confronted by the Filipino coast guard, simply ignored them in order to continue fishing and then rammed the coast guard vessel when a boarding attempt was made. To believe the Taiwanese case, we have to believe that the Filipino coast guard opened fire on the Taiwanese fishing vessel either after having followed warning and boarding protocol, or without having done so. Without evidence, no firm conclusions ought to be drawn, but the Filipino case does seem to me to be much easier to believe than the Taiwanese case.

For the Taiwanese however, it seems that the Taiwanese case is ipso facto correct. I had thought to jot down some more remarks about nationalism, but (a) I am too busy with work, and (b) I am overwhelmed by just how many ways this whole thing is staggeringly stupid.

***

Later... two earlier posts on nationalism here and here.