Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

Blogger and artists Lovingpure(黃愛淳) uses contemporary paintings about Taiwan from distinguished painters to create this video as the ultimate travel guide for foreign tourists.

weReport, a Taiwan media project that tries to boost disappearing investigative journalism using crowd-funded and crowd-sourced mechanism, kicks off today with its first fully funded proposal proposed by China famous blogger Zola. His proposal to investigate the situation of registration fee for cross-strait marriage derives from his personal experience.

The 4th annual Taiwan Best Blog Awards was announced on Dec. 1st which aims to promote English-language blogs about Taiwan. David on Formosa piles up his list of best blogs 2011 candidates for you to visit.

Green Party member and active participant of Occupy Taipei MingWangX(王鐘銘) updates the recent activities of the movement: “On the 15th day, 10/28, the police and the park administrators came again and tried to confiscate the tents for the 3rd time. They didn’t succeed because the member in one of the tents refused to leave even though the poles were stripped and the tent toppled. …That night, Occupy Taipei showed an open-air movie, “Capitalism, A Love Story.” The Occupy Taipei members held a meeting after the movie and decided to stay in the park and keep this movement going. There will be a 2-day event on 11/11-12, including movie, open-space conference, camping, barter market.”

On Ballots and Bullets, Chun-Yi Lee brings up the role of “Taishang”(Taiwanese businessmen, especially those who are doing business in China) in the coming joint election of President and legislators next January: “Most Taishang expect the government to negotiate with the Chinese government a better deal for them in more practical terms. For instance, in acquiring loans from local Chinese banks. This kind of practical issue certainly was not included in the grand framework of ECFA, and yet it is greatly needed for most Taishang in China.”

Green Party member Wang Zhong-ming posts his picture on facebook of he sitting in a damaged tent torn down by the police near Taipei 101, the counterpart symbol of WallStreet in Taiwan. On the other hand, open data advocate Schee Zhu-han analyzed the flaws[zht] of the online strategies in different phases of the activity.

Chiou Ho-shun, a death row inmate in Taiwan, may be executed at any time. He said in the mini-documentary, “I hope you can save me, but if it’s too late, please scatter my ashes in the Longfeng harbour, and buy a meatball, come and see me.” In the documentary, you can see how police manipulated confessions by assaulting and threatening Chiou and one “witness”.

Yesterday(Oct. 15), more than 300 “occupiers” gathered at the 1st floor of Taipei 101, the landmark of capitalism in Taiwan[photo] to protest against the financial industry and biased governmental policy. Sun Qiong-li(孫窮理) of Coolloud.org pointed out[zh] that for Taiwan, our first enemy should be imperialism from US, and the event itself needs to be filled with more actions and discourses.