Act 1 - Miaoli County Government seizes land from legitimate landowners with deeds to facilitate questionable expansion of science parks.
Act 2 - Several protests are broken up by huge numbers of police and crops a month away from harvest are destroyed.
Act 3 - Protests on the web and in front of the Presidential Office escalate.
Act 4 - Presidential Office promises to look into the matter within a week. Nothing happens.
Act 5 - Angry netizen sends email to Presidential Office with link to a Youtube video that shows the destruction of property, heavy handed police used to protect the economic interests of developers (Read Chomsky and Zinn for how this tactic broke unions in the US)
Act 6 - Presidential Office states that it cannot open links to 'Unknown websites'.
As reported today:
In an e-mail sent to the Presidential Office earlier this month, an Internet user with the pseudonym “an angry citizen” asked President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to watch a video clip posted on YouTube that shows how excavators dispatched by the Miaoli County Government and escorted by police rode into rice paddies and dug up farmland despite protests from local farmers at the scene.Act 7 - Blame the DPP and stall for time:
The Miaoli County Government has taken over more than 28 hectares of land in Dapu Borough (大埔), Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, to make way for an expansion project of the Jhunan Science Park.
“If you still are a man of conscience, please take a look at the attached video link to see how Miaoli County commissioner Liu Cheng-hung [劉政鴻] is destroying farmland,” the user wrote to Ma. “This couldn’t be carried out with your tacit approval, now could it?”
The response by the Presidential Office came as a surprise to “angry citizen” and many netizens.
“Because of frequent and innovative attacks by malicious hackers and viruses, we have a policy to restrict access to unknown Web sites to maintain normal operations and security of our computer systems,” the Presidential Office said in its reply. “Hence, we are unable to browse the Web address that you have provided.”
The angry response from Internet users was immediate.
“The Presidential Office calls YouTube an ‘unknown’ Web site, but the stupid lie is busted by the Presidential Office’s very own Web site” — recently upgraded, at a cost of NT$7 million [US$218,000] — “since there are links to YouTube on it,” blogger “pfge” wrote in a personal entry. “This proves that the government doesn’t care about what the public thinks.”
The Presidential Office uses the YouTube Web site on a regular basis, as it posts the president’s weekly video chat on it.
“I don’t know which genius came up with this response, I don’t know whether to be mad or to laugh,” said Mira Chen, a member of the online social networking service Plurk.com. “So these are the people who are governing this country!”
Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said that for security purposes, it had been policy since the Democratic Progressive Party was in power not to access links attached in e-mails.
“If the public thinks we should change the policy, we will look more into it before making a decision,” he said.
