The organizers of Peacefest, the annual anti-war music festival in Taoyuan County started by a group of expats, are shifting their attention to the environment.
Held in collaboration with local activists, Earthfest is a weekend of live music in the scenic forest area of Kunlun Herb Gardens in Taoyuan County, which starts next Friday. More than 40 bands and DJs, both expat and Taiwanese, will be performing, and proceeds will go to several of the country’s non-profit environmental groups.
Given the locale and people involved, the event will likely feel a lot like Peacefest, but the theme has a more practical bent. “Peacefest is more about ‘why,’ and Earthfest is the ‘how’ … how to actually do something positive for the environment,” says Sean Wratt, one of the organizers.
The festival aims to put green ideals into practice. All stage equipment and lighting for the music will be powered by bio-diesel fuel made from recycled cooking oil. Organizers are trying to arrange workshops on solar-powered cooking, organic farming and composting. The roving art fair and market Campo will sell environmentally friendly products at the event.
The organizers have also applied the concept of sustainability to financing the festival. Earthfest operates as a non-profit organization that pays its workers, whereas Peacefest relies solely on volunteers.
But Earthfest workers get paid only if the festival turns a profit; if the festival loses money, the workers have to fork out themselves. And to ensure that charities receive a robust share of the revenues, there is a limit on how much they can earn.
This system aims to create a “sense of financial responsibility” among workers while ensuring “their hearts are in the right place,” according to a document posted on Earthfest’s Web site.
The event is a good opportunity to bring like-minded people together, says Calvin Wen (溫炳原) of the Taiwan Friends of the Global Greens (全球綠人台灣之友), a Taipei-based environmental advocacy group that helped organize the festival.
Wen’s group will run a booth at Earthfest to publicize its work, which includes organizing local rallies for this year’s Global Day of Action on Dec. 6, scheduled to coincide with the UN’s annual meeting on climate change.
Other NGOs aim to raise public awareness of local issues including nuclear waste and the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and the conservation of the Chinese White Dolphin along Taiwan’s west coast.
Bands appearing at Earthfest include a long list of crowd-pleasers and Peacefest regulars: Mister Green and Highway 9; Militant Hippi; and the Money Shot Horns.
Prominent Taiwanese acts include punk-garage rockers 88 Balaz (八十八顆芭樂籽), traditional Taiwanese hip-hop outfit Kou Chou Ching (拷秋勤), and nu-metal funk rockers Coach. On the electronic music front, S.U.N. Project and DJ Marco Menichelli will be visiting from Germany.
Both camping accommodations and onsite hotel rooms are available. Visit the Earthfest Web site for details.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS