and an investigation into comments made by a Brainerd High School student in the school's yearbook about President Donald Trump is now complete. During a June school board meeting, the district revealed that the investigation was done by two outside investigators. The school board also said any student that received the yearbook with the offensive remarks has the option to receive a refund or a stamp decal for the page to cover up the remarks. The board says they will be responsible for providing the refunds. It all started when a page in the yearbook asked students to give their thoughts on President Trump. One of the four students who commented said, I would like to behead him and I do not like him. Once the district became aware of the student's comments, they released a statement on May 19th saying the district does not support or otherwise endorse any disrespectful or politically based statements that are in the yearbook and apologizes for the statements that were included. The statement also said the school district supports free speech but the disrespectful comments in the yearbook are contrary to the basic educational mission of the district and shouldn't have been included in the school sponsored publication. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


You are everyone and good morning Welcome to our presentation today. The boss in the function Pregnant strategy for its successful website review I'm just pulling into the next thing you do a little insurer. So I'm Alex I mean what they're for about TV isn't it? Maybe they'll probably work for Pregnant for about one bit of those I How I thought it was I was a graduate From the University of Canada over the Bachelor of Software Engineering. That's where I really picked up a passion for a design or another and I've really kicked off over there, and that's what I'm going through people science and since we're based in camera A lot of those being a student science This is my second people's house last one being in Brisbane. It was really exciting and And now they're standing here in front of you and you still it's Thanks, I'm Emily mills of a magic consultant at private partners. I've been there for about two years At pregnant. I'm currently leading an agile team of developers Designers and content designers. What about? projects Also, I've been a programmer. I've lived user research content design My content strategy for a number of other Australian government services But before that I actually have a background in communications and marketing So A little bit about primer as I said, we're based in Canberra. We mostly work with Australian government clients. We do Service design solution architecture with development content design and we have three practices within our team So we have our content and experience design practice switch. I mean, we've got our digital practice Which bells in and we've also got a research and design practice. So that's scope of You know things that we can do is is quite large which is fantastic multiple projects All right, so I was going to give you a quick taste of what's become this presentation so I'm not going to give you the tools to drive and hit your own Sorry drive your own passing function or patient read with a little bit of time We'll give you take you through some of our experiences what challenges we came through how to advocate the change We'll give you tips to set up your team for success and how to stay on track. So pretty much everything And if you're lucky, you've got some tips in the end of your next project. So let's just Thanks Al so We'll be looking at a case study today. Um, so as I mentioned by our large arts in this project Essentially how we persuaded a longer triple client that tech debt is worth fixing And how great sales design and product management really enables technical excellence So we'll be talking about a case study, but really any of the strategies that we're talking about today You can implement these in your own projects or even day-to-day when working with his stakeholders So a bit of background in 2020 We were engaged by the Australian Cyber Security Centre to improve their website cyber.cofter.au If you might be familiar with this, I know a couple of pros of yesterday's work about essential aid and ISM Those things live on this website It's essentially the Australian government's one-stop shop for Australians businesses and government to really improve their cyber security and help them stay secure online So within our team, we've got some awesome experts from across disciplines So devs and designers and we all really work collaboratively to enhance the site Once we were on board with the project One of the main things that is really important to us at Proudmar is user-centered and evidence-based design So a key part of this work was testing the site with users Really to identify any of those pain points and areas for improvement So this testing led to us to create a new information architecture for the website as well as redesigning all of the site's pages to make them more contemporary and user-usable So after deciding to implement these things we're at a point where we had helped the front-end users But there were pain points from other users to consider as well and it was us and our stakeholders And yes devs are users too We decided that in implementing these new page designs in LA It would be actually a really good opportunity to rebuild the whole site from scratch Totally from the ground up start from you. So Why did we decide to rebuild instead of retrofitting it? Al will share some insights as to how we kind of came to that decision All right, so the question is why rebuild instead of retrofitting? Well before we can get into that I'll take you back in the past and I'll tell you some of our pain points And that's a bunch of themselves share from the top So first up the previous workflow of getting pieces from dev to production was a pretty small approval task This was pretty manual it could take from 30 to 50 minutes And when we're talking about a gullible client potential emergency updates and You don't really want to try them out. So you don't have to fix it then for like 30 minutes Next up we have messy repository. So we have heaps of features coming in from that thing right? And a lot of the time there's being new ones coming in and just take priority And they'll be smaller features in the bus So then our back end just gets kind of built up in all these spell branches and It gets quite tricky that way Next up, which is a personal pain point for me through the devs is disabled content And we disabled some gushy and that's just due to our own some other issues But this is really painful to develop this So when you're building like a block for example, um, usually you just be able to Export that and push that into your staging environment And it's easy to do that But we're completely disabled. We'd have to do that once twice three times maybe that's just Having so much extra work Next up we have manually compiled on CSS and JS bars. This isn't as bad But it still has additional steps to know This can add conflicts to Pushes it just adds a bunch of risk. Maybe resolving issues or even pushing the compile files up in the first place So that's just one of the best. So this is just the back end when you're already here like a pretty good picture. What's going on? So time for the client. There was like 40 content types, you know blocks, views, paragraphs and axolomies everywhere And that's like more than enough for any any application ever shortly but um Just to make it really hard to know what was being used and what wasn't so That's not really good for the end users with potential inconsistencies on the front end or For our content editors who have to navigate those 40 content types Maybe our designers who have to go through the thousands of components we have on our site Or our devs who have to fix everything or figure out what they are So why just fix one of these issues by the time we find the issue Resolve it, deploy it, and then find the next issue Probably like start up on your side by now So back to my question. Why are we building instead of retrofitting? So retrofitting would be really tricky Pulling all those content types and blocks and views and stuff all down to a maintainable now While maintaining the core design and editor experience and functionality inside would be really tricky But we could do it. It only just really fixes the front end And you also know now About the previous issues that that's not really going to help We still have all the issues in the back end the same environment the same code that's the same tools and a lot of the same other issues Um, if we want to rebuild you just imagine what you could do pretty much anything For example content editors would have less convoluted creation Uh easy navigate front ends designers have consistency across the side a maintainable amount of components And it has to really help me tools easy workflows quicker to deploy and develop things I could go on about this for a long time And I should probably pass on that now so she can tell you about advocating the change Thanks Al. Um, so After considering all of these things, um, the next step was really to advocate the change with our stakeholders So our role was to help them understand the issues that were being experienced across the site But also all of the great opportunities that would then come from implementing this idea. So To do this we needed to come to them prepared and use what I've just decided to call the three P's So the first step was understanding the problem state And gathering any evidence that we could so this is about identifying what we were trying to solve Who would affect it and what the impacts were So I planted a seed with our client Playing any issues with them and letting them know that there was opportunity for improvement We then gathered previous user research and insight performance analytics Our team documented examples of the issues we experienced and the impacts. So a lot of the things that I spoke to And then we also reviewed the site against best practice standards and guidelines The second step was then identifying possible solutions. So I input from the whole team So there's designs as well as program management just to ensure that all perspectives were considered And find out what was actually feasible when doing this For each option I outlined the key tasks to implement any risks mitigations Indicative timeline and resources that might take so how long would it actually take to do this? Who needed to be involved and if there's going to be any impact on log work items And I think something that I've learned along the way is the value of preparing solutions to take to the stakeholders Instead of just coming to them with a problem So, you know really being able to print their questions and how all their basis code goes A really long way to helping us and then get buy-in from not only their team But perhaps when they're you know raising this with the executive that really strong evidence base The final step or the third P is being proactive and sharing this with the stakeholders So we had documented the problem state, the evidence, the research and our recommendations We then shared this with our client for their consideration and then organized the time to chat about it in person And catch up once they've had some time to actually digest it and go through it It was in this catch up in person that went by their feedback and any other considerations that we should be aware of Doing it this way and kind of bringing it along the journey really helps with their buy-in And it also makes them feel like they're adding value and taking ownership of that as well So, once we had the say all the buy-in and we were ready to kick off It was time to set the team up for success So this was a 12 week project and we had a lot to do in not much time So there was some key things to establish before we actually picked up the tools both within our team and with our stakeholders So what were we doing, when were we doing it, what's in scope and what's out of scope So we worked in an agile approach in sprints and we used our agile project management tools like JIRA and Confluence But there are a couple of key things that helped us along Chothall specifically about The first one is our project plan So as a team we worked with our stakeholders to develop a really comprehensive plan Which then serves as our source of truth throughout the whole project This included everyone's roles and responsibilities It also included project milestones, the schedule of work, items in scope What we were actually on the book to deliver So this was listing out exactly every view, block, web form that would be built in Just so everyone knew exactly what was happening This may also help with setting expectations So everyone could really clearly understand what would be delivered and when How will work as a team and also what each activity looks like So for example your stakeholder might not have ever done a user acceptance testing before Or content migration So having something like this can really help clarify any misconceptions And help them understand the purpose and outcomes of each activity The other thing that we found really important and helpful was flagging risks early As well as identifying their medications So throughout the project I'm sure we are all aware that things can probably go wrong Or some things might happen unexpectedly So we worked really hard to make sure that our team felt empowered to flag risks early How did we do this? Everyone in the team was seen as a trusted expert And they were given aspects of certain, given ownership of certain aspects of the project So for example, when our team member was rich, she was in charge of content migration Al, he was our web form guy So they had the freedom to go directly to the client And how communication were they needed Without necessarily having to go through the project lead every time And I think this constant communication As well as the expectation setting and the project plan It really reassured our stakeholders that we knew what we were doing That if something went wrong, we were prepared to deal with it So those are some of the methods for setting up the project on a high level And working with the stakeholders But Al is going to get into the needy greedy of what tools we actually use to do this Alright, so I'm just going to give you an idea of the tools you use to be awesome functional So this was like a pretty quick project So we wanted to speed and improve developer experience We wanted to use tools that we, as developers, wanted to use The things we felt comfortable using and things we knew would help us get it out quick So previously we were working on Gaussian SS And we knew some limitations around deployment And the model usage and stuff like that Which is rare inside, hopefully hundreds of times, especially in production lines But these little things do add a little bit of time to the point So since we wanted to be fast We probably could do without these features So instead we used platform XH This is like a sandbox for us and it was pretty easy to set up So our prior knowledge using this Let us set up our environments really quick And it let us just get straight into our work It helped us migrate a large amount of pages on the site And we didn't really need to worry about what tools were supported and what wasn't And how would we even begin working with it Since we already had and succeeded in using this before It just gave a piece of mind to the lead in all the developers Next up is configuring the deployment This is like really big because it just fixes a lot of the pain once in the first part So we can pile paths, I think there are paths Now we just have a script that just runs during the deployment Which can pile those paths forward So there's no compiling there There's no conflicts when we compile it It saves a bunch of time, lowers risk And it just reduces the steps in total development All this all can pile paths What about the other things? So we were previously using like Webpack, SAS, Colt, Reactor, NPO And again we're only using great tools It just depends on your project But for ours we wanted to be quick and recent So we used things that didn't really have such a need So we just put a conflict files Or a twist tool for that So it really came down to three things again One, we wanted to use tools that we were comfortable with Two, we wanted to use something that we wanted It was quick and simple And three, something that we could debug and understand all the development So at first we used Wando Which is pretty much a logical environment tool It was really easy to set up And the reusability is really good So either you can go online and get a boilerplate With a conflict file and just kind of set up through that But if you're like us, you have a previous project you can use That's using that Put that into your project Renames and files, renames and things And you've got to set up And that's great, that's a breeze So next up we've got a parcel And that's pretty much worked out in the box as well We just have a few plugins You post the assets and tailor in And then everything files in the same area Makes it really simple, pretty easy We swapped out React and View This really came down to the people we were using So our previous implementation was a bit confusing We had about two different bits of code Kind of accomplishing the same thing on our site And all written in slightly different ways Which just kind of makes it hard to understand our own purpose With the features in view We thought we could reduce the code complexity And just make it easier for us to understand the channel And while we're doing it We can merge those two bits of React code into one And save that This kind of just helps maintain the site And maintain the code for the components you're using In the end it just leaves us with a A local environment that sets up in minimal steps It's really hard to manage any of these steps up And it's just quicker So these things help us And may not help you It just really depends on what your projects are Since we want to reuse all simple and quick stuff This will be used And if your developers are really comfortable Using these tools Or confident using them You don't want to do it It's even the right tool for you So, you know To have to set your team up for success You have the tools to do it now And you have a plan all the way up But How do you stay on track And adapt to the change So Teamwork Teamwork's a good one During my time on this project I ran for like five key points That helped us and I thought it helped the team So it's stuck in the top Yeah, goals and objectives So our team comprised of people Who were currently on the project Everyone knew the issues the site already had And they already had their own improvements That they wanted to make the site That's perfect The other team that's motivated They all know the previous and the original issues And they have a chance to improve their future Using the site It makes it really easy to communicate What you want out of the site And speak on future improvements And it's kind of easy to communicate So This is like a statement for any project Right? Communication is a big thing But this was no exception on our project So our slack channels were popping up constantly Our response time was really low And just everyone was jumping in at all times All this open communication Like sitting on calls for hours Asking me about What I would like out of the site Things I struggled with Tools that I would like to see on the site Really just made it easy To bring out each other's strengths and weaknesses And it's kind of easy to do Collaboration So all this communication helped everyone on the team Know each other's strengths and weaknesses It made it really easy to designate work to each other And dish out work That complements each other's strengths So for example, I was the web form guy As you know before So it was a web form question And I was a component guy Mechanic components I don't know if they even think about it The most great component Just makes it really easy to send work to people And a lot of good ideas Next up is flexibility This is one of the reasons But it really goes on the radio In a fast-paced environment You can get in there really quickly So just be flexible Even when you're not really familiar with The issues of writing So we don't exactly get it We had a web form that was broken And everyone here was a bit broken And the developers were kind of assuming That it was code related I guess And we had a manager that looked over our shoulder And was like, it's broken I don't know why it's broken Just had a brief look at it And realized that it was something 3D you are To be able to do this So it just shows that people think differently From different perspectives And it's always good to get there And put things It can just take you out of your loop And change your perspective as well But ultimately it changes I mean, ultimately it helps every time It's possible Next up is trust And I know it just wants to have a little cheese But it really brings all these positive pieces together Having trust in a team Is knowing that everyone's in it From the same outcome Everyone's working on the team At the same timeline Everyone just wants the better experience Out of the side You know that they're going to Complete their tasks And raise any issues if they run into it It just removes any concerns That you have But we're working on the team Instead it just helps you get the things done So now that you know about how to work with the team And we can take you through How to work with our team Thanks Al So as well as working fabulously As a team we have some really positive ways That help us work with our client And stakeholders So as I spoke a little bit about Before the project plan You know this is that sort of truth That we could all refer to a long way To help manage expectations A second thing that was really fantastic Was maintaining a transparent workflow So we actually invited our client into JIRA Our project management tool For visibility And also just streamline The work and review process So within this Once the ticket had been completed And was ready for review We would tag our client's dev unit We put it in a special column Called client review And they could just jump in there Really quickly and have all the context That they needed For the issue For the links And they could just go Yep, deeper than they can Then move it to a done column So it's so helpful In kind of reducing that I guess time of going back and forth With emails You know inboxes weren't flooded And you know These people weren't CC'd Into things where it was Just a lot of back and forth So having that transparent workflow Was just so fantastic in helping us The third thing as well Was yeah keeping receipts So keeping track of decisions So while you might like to use A formal decision register We just actually use a really simple method To ensure that we capture key decisions And discussion points Throughout the whole project So after all our meetings With our stakeholders Or our phone calls We would just follow this up With an email Essentially summarizing What we spoke about And decisions that were made And any action items So not only does this show Everyone how fantastic you are At keeping on top of things It can also help When you need to go back to Previous discussion Or try to remember Something that was decided previously Sending this right after a meeting While it's still fresh in your mind As well can really help clarify How you need this understanding Right away So you can shoot off the email And the client or stakeholder Can come back and go Oh you know The third point was actually Meant by that was XYZ And that way everyone's On the same page Right away So you know Perhaps pressing on to the work And then coming back That's not what I had in mind So that really helps With that The other thing as well Was having regular catch ups So of course you have Our fortnightly planning And review meetings But we would also have Add-up hot catch ups Particularly with our dev And the clients do So towards the end of the project As in the crunch time We also had Really quick catch ups At the end of each day So it's only about 15 minutes At four o'clock every day And this is a chance To give our stakeholders visibility Of current work progress And really instil of confidence Into them That things were on track And moving And it was also a fantastic Opportunity for our team To get the entire critical feedback You know Knowing that we're chatting With the client Every single day We could just kind of say Our questions looking That were burning And we could just chat about it In person Kind of In relation to this And catching up regularly I think one of my top tips In this area Is to know when to pick up The phone It might be uncomfortable For some people To get up on a call But it really helps Kind of iron things out Really quickly So you know Sometimes you might get an email Or a request from the client And you can't just Like scratching your head I'm sure it will be then In this instance It's really helpful To just pick up the phone And chat it out You know So often Things can be Quickly clarified Over the phone Instead of kind of Going back and forth Over email And again You know I'll just shoot off About Just to kind of Keep that record as well Of those things Finally Working flexibly I'll touch on this As a team How we did it But in terms of working With the client You know As much as we would Love exactly To stick to a plan Or kind of What we envisaged Sometimes things Are just out of our control Or out of our client's control So You know In these situations Sometimes It is what it is And we have to be responsive And adaptive to that But I think One of the key things To remember Is that You know We're all on the same team So us And the stakeholders Are all on the same team And you know We're all working towards The same goals You know We all want a good outcome At the end of the day So We have a packed Hole in there But I think You know Some of our key takeaways From each phase Pitching the project Or advocating for change Setting up the success And staying on track So We're looking at Advocating for change It's about Planning the seat early Being prepared And also being open To feedback Setting up the success You know Maintain that source of truth Define roles Responsibilities And clear expectations It's all the sliding risks Early Then staying on track Play with each other's strengths Communicate early and often And remember We're all on the same team So As we reflect on that I'd like to invite If anyone had any questions Or thoughts I'd like to chat about Let's sing it out Yeah So You mentioned the project's job weeks Yes Within the scope 12 weeks Okay, yeah So what was in scope The 12 week project Essentially what we did So the current site Still remained live And so what we were doing Was building a second website In the background And then we did a forklift And essentially took over That site When the time was ready So what was in scope It was literally Rebuilding the site from scratch So from From design All the way to build Yeah, so Earlier in the project We had Our UX designer Had designed Like the page And all that type of thing We had the design system So when it came to Actually implementing the project There were just a few Kind of kinks That we found out In the design system In the early weeks And it was literally Building every component Building everywhere Wasn't it It was just It was pretty intense What a long day So you did design Everything From user research To design Yeah, we designed Everything So from End to end We did the whole thing So our team We have content designers We have UX designers We have developers So part of it included as well In terms of implementing The new information architecture We actually had a bunch Of content changes as well So pages that were either Being archived Or merged Or all this type of stuff So we actually re-written As well Like over 100 pages That was also going on So while The devs were building A site We also had our content team Like Doing some really gnarly Uplift work with With a bunch of content as well Can you even look at it Out of nowhere Hey, just to clarify When you said that You were using the platform Or was that just during The development stage Before velocity Or did you finally launch On the platform? Yeah So why do we use platform Did you launch on it Or was it just As a development Set Did we launch with platform Or did we use as a development As a sandbox Yeah, we did We just used as a sandbox For development Okay, and at some stage We put it to the south For development Yeah, once we Compensed with the majority Of the site Then we did our work With the customers Yeah And that forklift occurred Probably about a week Before the site went live So we had it there Just so we could do About final UAT And protesting them All that type of thing as well So we could Yeah, be really confident That it would work Before we made the transition Was it a success To list all the problems At the beginning About the tech stuff And the editorial experience Do you think after the 12 weeks That you get a product To hit all those Was it a success After the 12 weeks Did we hit it? I think so, yes It's a lot easier in the back And it's just so much easier Quicker to do All the things we did before So, I'll go with the clients Yeah, yeah, definitely From the client's perspective They think so as well One of the things that we've been You know, some really fantastic feedback From was probably Two days after the cycle launch There was something really critical That had to be published At like 11 p.m. And the client was able to Just go in and do that Really easily Without any help from us In terms of actually doing it They knew where everything was They knew how to put the content in And all that type of thing So, that was really cool to see Just straight away You know, something like that Particularly in a time crunch That's kind of really what we're working for I was going to ask you How long you will Backload this now Is there much to take that over? Is there much to take that over? Yeah, in your life Do you have a backload Now of things for the future Or is there something to do differently? There's always features and stuff That are coming through But really like any issues That are all over It's a new thing Not really Like a lot of that Was ironed out in the first week Like just going through those U.N.T. fixes Other than that It's pretty good You can have much to fix I'll just add to that as well So in the U.N.T. process Any issues that came up We kind of had like A defect classification guide So we'd have like P1 Which was like priority one That we'd have to have done You know, before launch And then we kind of had other ones That were like Okay let's kind of get this fixed Sooner rather than later And then we had a lot of priority items Which is just like minor styling issues And minor types of things Across the site So yeah as Al said Most of that stuff got ironed out Pretty much straight away Or even before production But you know We do have a backlog We've just minded like Styling things That you know we're just kind of Working through But yeah the website Launched on the 13th of April So literally a month ago So it's been pretty fantastic To not really have a backlog Of tick time Well done Let's give her a big applause


This is The Big Picture, an official report of the United States Army produced for the armed forces and the American people. It's war era of tension and conflict. American soldiers have had to take up posts all over the world. Today, they stand by their guns in silent readiness. All humanity prays they will never be needed. But until nations learn to live together in peace and in harmony, these guns and these missiles must remain poised. At home, Americans may feel secure. For everywhere, their soldiers are on guard, listening to the wind with electronic ears, scanning the horizons with electronic eyes, alert to discover the first faint traces of sudden enemy movement. The men of the U.S. Army, standing between you and unexpected attack. And it is upon these men that all America must rely. The men behind the new electronic equipment, the men behind the guns. In most of the stories you've seen on The Big Picture, we've tried to show you the overall concept and activities of the United States Army. Today, we're going to do something a little different. It's a rather personal story. The story of one man. We're going to take you 100 miles behind the Iron Curtain, to Berlin, to the 6th Infantry Regiment, to meet 1st Sergeant Richard B. Galand, a career non-commissioned officer, one of the hardcore of NCOs who play an indispensable part in keeping the U.S. Army the greatest fighting team in the world. I am 1st Sergeant Richard B. Galand, U.S. Army. This is my home, Berlin, East Germany. It's a quiet city with broad streets, monuments, a lot of places for a GI to visit. We think it's good duty. My outfit's the 6th Infantry Regiment. It's a pretty sharp outfit, too. We have to be sharp because we're a show unit. Every day, all over Berlin, we're on public display. We're constantly under inspection by the eyes of the German civilian population. Germans have a tradition of fine soldiering. We're showing them that we're the best. Our mission includes sharing with English, French, and Russian troops guard duty at special security posts and providing honor guards at public functions and at American military ceremonies. Before we leave the regimental area, an inspection makes sure that every man and his weapon will pass muster by any on-lugger. We're only a small part of the Cold War, yet every soldier must be faultless. When we're on duty in Berlin, we're split and polished troops. To a German, a soldier's appearance is the key to his character. It's white scarves and white gloves when we march to relieve Russian troops from a guard detail. Changing the guard is one of the few times that Russian soldiers ever meet American soldiers face to face. At the famous Spandau Prison, a private from the US relieves a private from the USSR. An important part of our mission is to show the citizens of Berlin that the soldiers of a free nation can be crack, well-disciplined, sharp-looking, like this young sentry. Keeping the 6th Infantry Regiment up to the high standards demanded requires hard work, patience, and sound planning. I'm going to show you something about how the 6th has run. I know quite a bit about this. See, I've been first sergeant here for three years. Every month, the regimental commander, Colonel Walker, calls a special meeting of the regiment's top NCOs. He goes over military matters from discipline to personal appearance, making sure that there are no slip-ups, making sure that every man understands the importance of being stationed in Berlin. In this conference, all of us are master sergeants and some of us are top kicks, first sergeants. That's me on the left, Richard B. Glenn. I'm regular army, saw my first uniform back in World War II, and I'm proud to say that this outfit is one of the bests I've ever served with. My company is Sea Company, Charlie Company. Our work day begins at 0730. For me, that means being at my desk. First thing every morning, I've got to see that the orders of the company commander, Captain Mack, are being properly carried out and that all administrative procedures are being processed. Sick reports, duty rosters, supply requests, all pass over my desk before I'm being sent to the captain. Captain Mack wants the best company in the regiment, and so do I. To get it, we've got to keep the paperwork moving. Some people call this a paper war, but feeding, clothing, and looking after 200 men takes time and effort. By the time the orderly room is squared away, it's time for me to begin morning inspection. The men of the 6th Infantry Regiment keep their quarters pretty sharp, but when you've been inspecting barracks as long as I have, you know that there are always some imperfections which need correction, like this badly worn boot that could cause some soldier lots of trouble on a long cross-country march. As first sergeant, there are countless other details to check and correct, even little oversights like the waste of water or electricity. About 08.30 every morning after the administrative routine and inspection, I usually take a coffee break with as many of my NCOs as are free. It's a good habit. We get a breather and a chance to talk things over. It's the only time all day that we can all get together. Over a cup of coffee and a smoke, we go through the work schedule. I've got to make sure that every man knows exactly what's expected of him. We don't want snafu's here, and these short conferences help keep a lot of things straight. For the men in the company, those who aren't on duty in the city, we maintain a constant training program. We're infantry troops, and that means we stay in shape. Because we're behind the iron curtain, we've got to be alert should we be called upon in any emergency. So it's important that we keep the men in top condition at all times. Whatever you call it, physical training, PT, the daily dozen, it's hard work, but there just isn't any better way to achieve physical fitness. Keeping the men sharp in their basic military skills requires training, training, and more training. Every soldier must know exactly how to use that six inches of steel. Isn't it a toy? It takes good judgment and practice to handle it properly. Gun's another standard infantry weapon. We want every man in the company to become proficient with both the 30 caliber and the 50 caliber machine guns. Almost every morning ends up like this, cleaning the equipment which has been used in training. A good infantryman can assemble and disassemble every one of his weapons in the dark if necessary. So cleaning these guns actually serves a double purpose. It keeps them in good working order and keeps the men familiar with all of their operating parts. Being first sergeant means staying close to the men. Deficiencies must be explained and then corrected. Cleanup details can become good discussion periods. The more a soldier knows about his weapons, the more useful they are to him. There's a lot more to a machine gun than just pulling the trigger. Sometimes it seems like a heavy load, but it's a real pleasure to work with the kind of men we've gotten this company. They're good soldiers and they're eager to do what's expected of them. Then finish cleaning their weapons. That's usually my time to run a quick check on the mess hall. I take a look in here before every meal. It keeps the kitchen detail on its toes. You just look around this kitchen. It's spotless. More than that, the food is first-rate and it's a real art to prepare appetizing meals when you're cooking to serve 200 helpings. Cold and fresh. We get food from all over Europe. When you work men hard and we do, the food they get means a lot and the food supplies we're issued are prime quality and with plenty of variety. And our kitchen staff can really turn out some fancy cooking. That's what I call a beautiful roast. It's been five hours since breakfast. There's been plenty of rugged training and work details. Roast beef in the middle of the day won't slow anyone down. Instead, it'll provide the nutrition and energy that hard-working bodies require. One of the advantages of being first sergeant is that the kitchen staff takes pretty good care of me. I'd say that a good mess hall is 50% of a company's morale. And this one's good, I'll tell you. We run what's called a family-style mess. It's as attractive and comfortable as we're able to make it. Child time is a good opportunity to check with the men on impersonal matters. There's more to army life than just grueling or training. Good morale is a constant objective. At the same time, I can almost always spot a man recently returned from leave. You can tell just by the back of his head, my child time and I relax. When you've spent all morning answering questions in the orderly room, checking the training program and being constantly on the move, it's good just to eat quietly and read. Moments like this are too few in my day. But it never works out. There's always something to disrupt the peace and quiet. I'm always hoping it's something that'll wait till after lunch, but somehow it never is. This time, I had to get ready for a special conference with the captain on orders that had just come down from regimental headquarters. We were to go on maneuvers the beginning of the next week, and there were a lot of instructions that had to be carried out. The whole company would be issued field equipment, rations, and ammunition. We would be fighting against an invading aggressor force, and although only blank ammunition would be used, the combat situation was to be as realistic as possible. The preparations for the maneuvers, of course, were in addition to our normal duties in Berlin, so the work schedule was practically doubled. At the same time as first sergeant, I had other duties of my own to attend to. When one of my men needs an emergency leave, I try to help him get it. A soldier who's worried or unhappy because of sudden illness or tragedy at home can't carry out his job properly. Through the International Red Cross, the Army tries to get trouble soldiers back home as quickly as it can be done. During the next few days, we put the company through an intensive series of field exercises to prepare them for the coming maneuvers. Our regiment is being reorganized for atomic warfare under the new pentomic table of organization. With an emphasis on more firepower and less manpower, smaller groups of men are learning to do bigger jobs, so more is demanded of today's soldier. He must adapt himself to the demands of atomic warfare, and he must be proficient with every infantry weapon. This kind of realistic training makes our men able to react quickly and effectively to every combat situation. If ever an emergency arises, these troops know exactly what to do. Know how to use these weapons in a hurry. Training simulates combat conditions as much as possible. The regiment's training program serves a definite purpose. A soldier can get out of shape in a few weeks. He can forget little details about how his equipment works, little details that might be vital in an emergency. But with the help of regimental instructors, errors are noted and corrected. Field training is an indispensable part of military instruction. After those three days in the field, it was a real relief to get home for a weekend before the maneuvers began.  It's quite a welcoming committee. There's usually some welcome mail from the folks, too.  But when I've spent all week overseeing the activities of a company, a weekend with a family is about the greatest thing I know. Just listening to Linda play the piano relaxes me like nothing else can. Although Jenny's the youngest, she already has quite a mind of her own. She found some picture books that my wife bought, and she just has to have them all explained. When she's a little older, maybe we'll take her to one of the art museums here in Berlin.  Trying to explain these pictures to her can be quite a task. I'm not always successful. Through the Army, we found a nice little house. There's plenty of room for the six of us, and it's very comfortable. I consider myself pretty lucky Being an American, the career I pursued in the Army, we've got a lot to be grateful for. Thanking God for all of our blessings seems natural to us. Our families traveled all over the world, and sometimes it's been hard. But wherever we've gone, we've had this with us, and it's always pulled us through. And in some off-duty time, I take it easy. One thing about the Army isn't the single sport in the U.S. that we don't have right here. Before the kids came, I used to bowl four or five times a week. Now, it's maybe once a month. I still haven't completely lost my touch. There's golf, too, but the way my buddies play may be better off in a miniature golf course than out here. About the same as in New England, and it's great for football. We've got a regimental football league in which every company is represented. And the kids like these games because there's really plenty of spirit. Play isn't exactly professional, but the boys get out and give it a real college drive. The big games are on Saturday afternoons. Sometimes the whole regiment is out to watch. There's one place I'm sorry to say that Charlie Company doesn't always shine. Sunday, we all attend chapel. The Army makes sure whenever without this. Your chapel is a good time to look over Berlin. Although much of the city was destroyed during the war, there are still plenty of places to visit. After all, this city goes back more than 1,200 years. That's the amphitheater where the Olympics were held in 1936, and our Jesse Owen ran off with the show. Naturally, we always wind up at the zoo. It's the one place the kids never get tired of. We've been here so often that these fellas are like old friends. The only trouble is that now the kids aren't satisfied with their dog, but they really want us a baby seal which we could keep in the bathtub. Except Jenny, she wants a baby elephant. Darkness, the regiment rumble toward the assembly area. In combat, of course, bright headlights will not be used. But these were maneuvers, and normal precautions had to be taken against accidents. The next day, preliminary emplacement began. We dug in and installed communications. Each soldier had his job and knew exactly what was expected of him. Signal core linesmen went into action, and small but powerful switchboards soon linked the regiment together. At the same time, Captain Mack went over detailed plans for the maneuvers. He assigned each platoon its mission during the company attack on the aggressor-held positions. Our defensive perimeter was secured without incident. The countryside led itself well to cover and concealment. During our preparation, forces of the Mark aggressor army were moving into their positions. Using tanks and armored personnel carriers, they concentrated their troops in key consolidation points. The next morning, the regiment moved out. Our company was widely dispersed, and it opened into small groups which were joined by a radio telephone net. This is the best training in the world. There's no better way to really teach men to overcome obstacles of terrain and weather. As first sergeant, I moved out with a squad. The stream was cold and the bottom was slippery. On both sides of us, other small teams were affording the stream. Our mission was to move across country and help seize an enemy-held hilltop. As we approached the objective, mock explosions made the situation more realistic. Following standard infantry tactics of fire and maneuver, we closed on the objective. Coordinating widely scattered units in combat is no easy matter. Using a flexible communications net, the whole company was brought into position for the final assault. The signal to advance was given. Intensive training was now being tested to see how much the men had gained and how they would use it. All groups of aggressors were quickly routed. The objective was seized. Our estimated losses. Maneuvers were a success. A tired but proud company of men headed back for the assembly area. Take a look at Charlie Company. They stand straight, march tall. Turning out soldiers like these makes the hard work well worth it. At the regimental area the following day, there was a full dress regimental inspection. When the inspecting officer reached Charlie Company, I wasn't worried. I knew my boys. I knew they'd pass inspection by anyone. Here, who sets the pace to the last man in the last rank, it's a fine company, the best. We've got soldiers in this outfit from every section of the USA. North, south, east, west. Some are regular army and some are draftees serving their tour of active duty. But they're all doing a job. Some may be young, but they're all men. Men from Omaha, Nebraska and from New York City. And they're good soldiers. They stand ready to serve their nation wherever and whenever they're needed. The following day a full scale parade was held. Colonel Walker was the reviewing officer. It's funny the things you think about when you're marching in a review. It seems like a long time since I first joined up. They've been good years. I've been able to serve in many foreign countries. I've worked hard. I've had my rewards too. But it has been challenging. But I've always enjoyed the ingenuity and humor found within the army. And too there's the satisfaction that comes with being part of a great organization. I see all these and I know they're part of my outfit. The cadence of the march. The rumble of the tanks. The sound of the band. And the beauty of our country's colors. Gets me every time. But the biggest satisfaction for me has been knowing that what I'm doing is important. It's a job that really has to be done. It makes me proud. Proud to be a member of my company and my regiment. Proud to be a member of the United States Army. American people may justly be proud of 1st Sergeant Richard B. Gilland and the many others like him who are serving the ideals and traditions of the United States wherever they may be stationed. Now this is Sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us again for another look at your Army in action on The Big Picture. The Big Picture is an official report for the armed forces and the American people produced by the Army Victoria Center presented by the Department of Army in cooperation with this station.


Well good afternoon everyone and thank you so much for coming to this wonderful event on this beautiful Canberra Day. My name is Roxanne Missingham and I'm the University Librarian and it's my privilege to introduce Mark for this public lecture. We started ANU with a Welcome to Country where we acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay our respects to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past and present. The ANU library and at China in the World are delighted to be working together on a series of events. There was a lecture last year, this year I think we're going to have to turn it into an annual series, Ben, where we are keen to engage the community, the Canberra community as well as the ANU community, on issues intellectual relating to Chinese study. We were very fortunate to sign a memorandum of understanding with the National Central Library from Taiwan and we have established a Taiwan Chinese Resource Centre which you will see in the front of the library on your way out and we do that in support of the fantastic work that is done by scholars at the University, particularly by those under Ben's purvey at the Australian Centre of China and the world, where they all obey him instantly, rush to publish and anything else that he tells them to do. Yes, that was our ringing endorsement. And it was Ben that recommended that we invite Mark Harrison to speak to us at our lecture this year and it was deferred for health reasons but we are delighted to see that Mark is well enough to arrive in Canberra, sit in the sunshine and then fly back to Tasmania. But that's okay. Mark has a BA Honours in Chinese from the University of Adelaide and completed his PhD in Monash University looking at Taiwan and its problems of identity. From 2002 to 2008 he worked as research fellow and lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in London, UK. His work examines knowledge and representation in Chinese contexts exploring contemporary cultural and social life in Taiwan and mainland China. His current project is entitled China's Futures. I was really fortunate this morning to have read two of his book chapters which are in ANU Press Publications on Identity and they are extraordinary works that combine an understanding of social culture, of political culture, of Chinese culture and they were a real pleasure to read. So I encourage all of you after you've heard his lecture to not go and buy the book, go and read the book chapters. They are well worthwhile. But on that note I might hand over to you Mark and thank you so much for coming to give this lecture. Thanks Roxanne for that introduction and thanks for the invitation to come up and talk. It's always a pleasure to come to the ANU obviously and this is a really nice occasion to say something about my current thinking about Taiwan in fact. So this paper is about Taiwan and it's about its history and I guess we can call it its contemporary challenges. I'm trying to say something about the way the past lives in the present in Taiwan but also how the present is shaping the past. The past is being kind of reimagined in contemporary Taiwan and the meaning of the past is being transformed in I think quite radical and unexpected ways. So a lot of this material comes from a visit that I made to Taiwan thanks to the generosity of the Australian Centre on China and the world in June. So I travelled south. I saw a number of very interesting places and I'm trying to build on what I was seeing and shape it into an argument. So what I'm going to be talking about in the second half of this talk is mostly about Green Island which is off the coast of south-east Taiwan and the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park which includes the New Life Re-education Camp and the Ministry of National Defence Green Island Reform and Re-education Prison also known as Oasis Villa and the histories of these buildings and these sites which overlap and have changed in very complex and surprisingly indeterminate ways over many decades. They are shifting expressions of the institutionalisation of authoritarianism in Taiwan during the martial law period, the eventual transition to democracy in the 1980s and 90s and now the memorialisation and the subjectification, if you like, of national memory in Taiwan. I'll first say before I get into all of that that saying anything about Taiwan is very, very difficult and anyone who tries to write about it faces this challenge. The name Taiwan itself is an unstable category. The history of Taiwan slips between many different histories so it includes the civilisations of the Pacific, there's Dutch imperial history in the 17th century, there's China's imperial and national histories, Taiwan is between the demise of the Qing and the founding of the Republic, the Chinese Civil War and the founding of the People's Republic and overall of that of course is Taiwan's central place in Japan's imperial and wartime history. So there's a multitude of ruptures that Taiwan sort of sits across. Out of all of that, Taiwan has been delivered as a word into the Chinese speaking world and it finds itself as an object of scholarship often within Chinese studies and I wanted to respond to the program of Taiwan Chinese studies with just some comments. Taiwan has a place you could call it in the corner of what I refer to as the cartographic practices of Chinese studies. So one of the things that Chinese studies does is it defines the meaning of China but it's also defined by the meaning of China. So the way I've phrased this in another setting is it hesitates between the passive and the active. Chinese studies is a very complex body of scholarly work. In that context there's a kind of cartographic practice that's sort of making a scholarly map as it were. Taiwan has a really complicated and interesting place. In the words of Homi Baba, he's one of my favourite writers, Taiwan is its slippage, its excess, its difference that reveals some strategic limitation or prohibition within the authoritative discourse itself. So there's something about Taiwan within the Chinese world that sort of speaks against the centre that somehow is more Chinese than China and somehow fundamentally not Chinese at all. It's all of those things simultaneously. It illustrates really powerfully the instability of the category of China but it also sheds an enormous amount of light on what it means to do Chinese studies. Taiwan's presence as an object of knowledge is interstitial therefore. So any analysis of Taiwanese culture, of its society, its politics, these are all necessarily by definition attempts to fix its meaning as something and when you try and do that you interpose identity politics and political ideologies. So once you start talking about Taiwan as a thing unto itself you're immediately embedded in really, really complicated contemporary geopolitics and identity politics and every interposition of scholarly work invites further explication. There's a really recursive quality to try and say something about Taiwan and so you're pulled into a kind of recursion that destabilises the category Taiwan itself. So it's just an incredibly difficult thing to write about. I always feel when I try and talk about Taiwan to spend the first sort of half a page or page just trying to stabilise the category just before you can go on and say anything. Of course there's a very particular institutional response to this at a global level which is the rejection of Chinese studies altogether and the creation of something called Taiwan Studies and so there's well-established organisations in North America and in Europe who understand Taiwan as a scholarly category unto itself completely different from Chinese Studies. I'm actually quite ambivalent about that move to be honest. I think Taiwan does have a place in Chinese Studies. It depends on how again how you define Chinese Studies and Taiwan Studies as a body of knowledge unto itself can also be a little inward looking, a little closed off, it can be a little too green can I say use that term in the Taiwan politics sense. Having said all of this about the nature of Taiwan about trying to locate it within Chinese Studies I will give a brief summary of Taiwanese history. I have occasionally tried not doing this the last time I tried it the first question was could you please just give a summary of Taiwanese history. The history isn't well known and so it is useful to sort of track through it. So Taiwan as many of us know has an indigenous peoples the members of what is evocatively known as the civilization of the voyaging canoe. These are people who sailed across the Pacific on gigantic ocean going canoes and they started in Taiwan and they settled the entire Pacific. Taiwan was a Dutch colonial territory in the 17th century between the Ming and the Qing and its Chinese history begins with the Zhenchangong interregnum from 1662 to 1683 which was a short lived kingdom loyal to the Ming dynasty and that was defeated by the Qing in 1683 and Taiwan was brought under central imperial authority as a prefecture of Fujian actually and that was actually the first really official imperial authority exercised over Taiwan. It achieved its own provincial status in 1885 and then in 1895 of course it was ceded by the Qing to Japan as a colony as a result of the 1894 Sino-Japanese War. The story of Japanese colonial Taiwan is an extraordinarily fascinating one which I won't go into I'm happy to. As all of this is going on in Taiwan of course the Qing Empire collapsed in 1911 the Republic of China was founded and then the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and the mainland entered a period of civil war. At the end of World War II Taiwan was returned or was given to the governance of the Republic of China led by the KMT or the Chinese Nationalists as a province. It became a province of the Republic of China and in 1947 the single most important event in modern Taiwanese history could the 228 Uprising where the Taiwanese rose up against Chinese nationalist rule and their rebellion was crushed with really extraordinary violence and their violence has echoed absolutely to the present. And out of that violence a Taiwanese nationalist movement emerged with a political structure and ideology and nationalist historiography all of the things that inform contemporary Taiwanese politics today and then of course in 1949 the national government of the Republic of China relocated to Taipei fleeing from the advancing communists of the People's Republic of China. The post-49 history is which I'll just sketch broadly it is germane to my argument is told in a very particular way by policy makers, scholarship in the Anglo sphere and by the Taiwan government and it's been told in this way for many years. So under US hegemony which Taiwan fell under as a result of the outbreak of the Korean War it was drawn into the bipolar geopolitics of the Cold War. And it also became as a matter of policy a model province that the KMT were using as an exemplar to inspire the Chinese suffering under the yoke of communism on the mainland and it became through the 50s the very exemplar of a post-World War II a developmental state. The 50s were developmental economics of the period so land reform, the land of the Tilla program industrial policy capital controls import substitution but then in 1960 the Taiwan government implemented what at the time was a radical program but we now call it the prototype of neoliberalism so free capital controls privatization foreign investment deregulation many things like that and it laid the foundation for the Taiwan economic miracle and so the Taiwanese economy began just to accelerate at an incredible speed from 1960 up until the early 1990s it became an Asian tiger of course right through this period Taiwan is also a military dictatorship it has a terrible human rights record and as the economy is going incredibly successfully activists were testing the limits of state power constantly they're agitating for democratic reform and then Taiwan entered a post-industrial phase of its hyper growth in the 1980s and its politics shifted and it began a transition to democracy so the DPP, the Democratic Progressive Party was founded in 1986, martial law lifted in 1987 and then there was a series of really complex constitutional reforms in the early 90s which enabled democratic elections for the office of president of the Republic of China by the residents of the island of Taiwan but also kept the peace across the Taiwan Straits and I think we would do well to look at that story in the early 90s and recognize how the subtlety and the sophistication of that constitutional reform laid the groundwork for prosperity in the region and certainly Australia's prosperity because it could have gone horribly wrong if they got it wrong and the 1990s and the 2000s the Taiwan story as we know has been the consolidation of its democratic system so the presidential election starting in 1996 every four years and the legitimization of Taiwanese identity so that with the DPP Taiwanese identity politics are part of the political landscape so Taiwan's democracy has been lauded as an example as an exemplar of third wave democratization to use the political science term it's also the foundation of Taiwan's security it's a thing that keeps Taiwan safe ultimately and in Taiwan you have democracy democratic sovereignty and nationhood rights and subjectivity and capitalism all of these different things are intertwined in Taiwan today into a coherent and very powerful story and the way of telling this story is structured not just by the story of modernization which it is but of modernity itself Taiwan is an exemplar of modernity in a really foundational sense of course it stands as radically different to communist modernization on the mainland as created by the people's Republic of China which has an entirely different pathway of modernity and modernization it's also I think has overlapped with and contested with on Taiwan itself the vision of post-imperial nationalist modernization of the Republic of China because we can forget that in the very early decades of the ROC there was a vision of nationalist modernization which is actually quite different from what the Taiwanese ended up creating and these things overlap and contest and that contestation has driven Taiwan's extremely volatile and very bitter partisan politics it's often within Taiwan within its own public debate this is often framed as incomplete democratic consolidation there's this idea that all of this contestation means that Taiwan hasn't quite yet achieved a fully-cohered democratic system people also talk about a public sphere that is insufficiently rational it's often a term that Taiwanese people use as prone to emotion rather than sober technocratic progress and of course this is part of how the blues and the greens the KMT and the DPP engage in their political contestation the stories are they're fairly familiar I think to many of us one of the things that's come to me in the last few years is that although there is this very familiar story which informs Taiwanese politics in the last decade or so and I it's sort of maybe three or four years ago that I started to really get a sense of this that on the margins of this modern Taiwan particularly in the world of art writers, artists activists there's a distinctive something particularly distinctive has entered Taiwan's public sphere which I generally categorize as a kind of malaise or a kind of anxiety there's a very particular tone that you get when you talk to Taiwanese people about modern Taiwan and where it's going and it's framed in this very curious way it's present in art and culture in Taiwan it hovered over the sunflower movement I think very particularly it also hovered over and it was it flowed through the presidential election campaign last year where I think people people felt a strange sense that things weren't quite right it's also present and this certainly came to me on the trip that I made in the middle of the year what has come to be the extraordinary fixation that the Taiwanese have come to have on their history so Taiwan today is drowning in history history, memory and nostalgia art, urban development, museums memorials these are proliferating from one end of the island to the other and I'll come back to this point at the very end so structures for example that even 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago old Japanese colonial structures or buildings from the 50s that would have been demolished to make way for factories and apartment buildings everything going on nowadays is being turned into an arts precinct or a cultural zone or something in which art and memory and history is given a kind of space to occupy there's a sense that the very foundations of the story of Taiwanese modernity are being rewritten or rethought on the margins and it's introducing a kind of doubt about the integrity of Taiwan's experience of modernity that's seeping and coursing through Taiwan's body politic so I argued elsewhere a little while ago that what is driving this I think is a recognition that the story of Taiwan is a story of modernity and modernization has effaced what is its most fundamental and foundational characteristic which is violence so at the center of the Taiwan story that the received narratives do not address is an experience of violence and when I say violence I mean political violence the violence of the martial law period but I'm also thinking emotional violence the damage done to every family there's not a family across the island that has not had some impact from especially the martial law period that has played and it's exercised legacy in their family history of violence I think that's a key element of damage to the environment through this breakneck modernization there's a sense in which violence has not been accounted for and on the margins of the consensus discourse are people wanting somehow to account for it and of trying to find a way to do that this I think has been validated this year in two particularly interesting ways one was the announcement by the new president President Tsai Ing-wan of the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which she made in her inauguration speech and also her apology to Taiwan's indigenous people which she gave a few months ago both of these are really important moments of the state facing a history of violence but of course this process has only begun as far as the state is concerned and so I think Taiwan has entered a really really complicated period what I want to do now is then try and draw out what that means and try and draw out what if Taiwan has a history of violence how does that actually work how can we understand what does that actually mean in terms of people's lives and politics and culture so history lives in the present so this history of violence lives in the present but it arrives transformed it doesn't arrive as it was it's transformed by politics and moral forces so I want to trace one particular fragment of history and try and say something about the way it has been rendered and it has been re-rendered in the present and this is where I want to talk about Green Island so off the southeast coast of Taiwan it's an hour ferry ride from Taidong if you're brave enough because you're sailing out into the Pacific Ocean it's reasonably terrifying I have to tell you Green Island is a volcanic atoll there's a road around it which is 18km in total length the weather facing the Pacific is extraordinarily rugged during the Japanese era Green Island was known as Kaishortou which is burned island and it's an appropriate name I can say because it's very very harsh in the summer there was a prison on Green Island in the Japanese period in 1945 the island was renamed Luta or Green Island by Taiwan's KMT government and in 1951 having been saved by the Korean War the Chinese Nationalists they established their own prison on Green Island for political prisoners the New Life Corrections Center operated from 1951 until 1965 and the Ministry of National Defense, Green Island Reform and Re-Education Prison known as Oasis Villa or Lujo Sanzong operated from 1972 to 1987 the original buildings of the New Life Corrections Center from the 50s are now mostly gone there are some kind of stone and concrete shells there's some foundations that remain Oasis Villa is mostly intact and it's been restored and maintained and of course now it's a museum there are later buildings though which were being built on this quite large site in the 1970s right up until the mid-80s and these buildings are mostly derelict including this one the history of these buildings is very complicated many institutions played across their management and their construction the derelict buildings include the library where major Guoting Liang was the head of the library he was a major in the army who was associated with supposedly a coup attempt against Chiang Kai-shek organized by General Sun Li-ran and Sun Li-ran spent the rest of his life under house arrest but Guoting Liang ended up spending most of his life on Green Island from 1955 until 1988 and of course he died in very mysterious circumstances in 1991 when he fell from a train so these buildings and their histories blur into each other the boundaries of the prison sites constantly shifted over these decades there was construction new buildings, new administrative structures the legal and penal system of the martial law also developed over many decades and I can say having investigated this in a great deal of detail there's actually contradictory accounts of which building belongs to which who managed what and when everything was built and what exactly everything was for in the martial law period all of these buildings were part of a complex of military security, legal and incarceration institutions that operated in sites right across Taiwan so there's in Taipei in Shindian and Taidong and on Green Island and they oversaw an opaque system across Taiwan of surveillance secret military trials of dissenters their detention and their transportation and their incarceration and their ideological reeducation so all of these buildings and including their construction and their decay in a way one expression of what ultimately by the 1980s have become a vast state economy of authoritarianism and this is a vast enterprise this is ministries and bureaus and organizations and thousands and thousands of people managing this system it's an economy of authoritarianism it's also an economy of violence it's institutionalized violence it's very elaborate by the 1980s by the mid-80s however as politics began to shift that economy itself was starting also to shift into something that we would recognize more as a kind of civic justice and penal system so Oasis Villa was reorganized in 1987 and there were new buildings built from 1985 to 1987 the site of all of the site was transferred from the Ministry of National Defense to the Ministry of Justice and some of the buildings and a new complex was constructed called the Green Island Vacational Training Centre and that was intended to train prisoners for life after prison it had a much more kind of conventional prison function as we would understand it but many of these buildings were abandoned in 1992 and ultimately an entirely new prison was built a bit further down the road which is still there there's a real prison there I walked up to the gates and I was told no uncertain terms that I needed to turn around and walk away and so a lot of these buildings were abandoned in 1992 and the campaign began a political campaign to restore the buildings and to recognize that they had historic value and to turn them into sites of remembrance and then they began to transition away from the Ministry of Justice to the National Tourism Bureau and then ultimately to the Ministry of Culture I was swimming the very famous democracy and Tony's nationalist activist who led that campaign in 97 so from the late 90's the structure of Taiwan's engagement with its past began to change began to take on a new form so this dispersed economy of state violence this dispersed economy of authoritarianism was re-territorialized as it were to what I'm calling an economy of memory and I'll come back to what I mean by that so the Green Island Human Rights Memorial was constructed just on the coast opposite Oasis Villa in 1999 2002 the Taiwan government designated the entire site as a memorial and it became the Green Island Human Rights Culture Park since 2012 the site has largely fallen under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and again this expresses this really complicated institutional transformation from Ministry of National Defence Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Culture from the militarist to the political juridical to the socio-cultural I say largely under the Ministry of Culture because there's also the Green Island Municipal Government there's the Taidong Tourism Authority and the Taidong County Government all of whom essentially fight over the management of this site in ways that are interesting today Oasis Villa is a museum site and as is the New Life Correction Centre there's a museum building in the New Life Correction Centre which has dioramas and a kind of model of the original prison site it's got displays describing the very difficult daily lives of the prisoners it like the Jingmei Human Rights Museum in Taipei it makes much use of the names of the inmates there's a number of locations where every single name is inscribed in one form or another on the literal boundary of the two sites the New Life Correction Centre in Oasis Villa are derelict buildings that were occupied until 1992 and include some of the buildings that were used for the vocational training centre and these buildings are subject currently to a Ministry of Culture Restoration Plan which was written last year but it seemed to me that their symbolic decay or their actual decay symbolically represented the incomplete restoration of Taiwan's history of violence so one of the derelict buildings in the New Life Correction Centre is a mess hall which is this one here and on the walls are painted slogans offering aphorisms for moral education so some of them are well known Changyu there's Zichang so you know Self-Reliance is one of them but there are a couple here which you can see on the back which will be immediately recognisable to any native Chinese speaker as adaptations of some of the sayings of Zhu Bo Lu Master Zhu and his maxims for a well-managed household which is a document written at the very early Qing period and the one that is there says with every bowl of gruel or rice you should recall that its production is not easy with half a length of silk or hemp always remember that to make things is very hard and so Zhu Bo Lu wrote he was a late Ming moralist and a writer and his text or the maxims for the well-managed household has 53 maxims on daily living I've got some of them here if taxes are paid early then although one's purse be light one will feel great satisfaction to be humble before people who are older and more experienced will serve in time of trouble value and wealth but sliding parents everything a son etc etc etc these maxims are some of the most widely produced examples of popular Confucianism and they're part of a Chinese imaginary and they crop up everywhere they're in almanacs and lots of different you find them in lots of different forms in temples all kinds of things and they're part of a Chinese imaginary an encompassing worldview of language, phraseology meaning and textual practice that seeps into a Chinese every day and becomes naturalized and normalized in people's lives and knowing these phrases and being familiar with them just recognizing them is part of how people feel Chinese and experience Chinese subjectivity just through their familiarity with these phrases and their presence in a mess hall in a military prison on Green Island is therefore entirely appropriate because it's entirely in keeping with China. The Chinese nationalists were particularly fixated on moral education as the foundation of nation building this is at the heart of the new life movement in the 1930s and they really began to develop this idea through the 50s and 60s on Taiwan so the Chinese nationalists, the KMT they mobilized these notions of moral education and they promoted them in schools, in the military, the media especially from the 1960s actually with the cultural renaissance movement that's where it really took off as a big thing this is what Alan Chun refers to as the culturalization of politics in nationalist China of taking the exercise of power and investing it and legitimizing it with cultural meaning disguising its politics as it were with, in this case sort of horial popular Confucianism from the early Qing this delivered a form of moral education legitimized by popular classical Chinese culture for the purpose of nation building it also created a distinctive national subjectivity the nationalists were reactionary in a technical sense they were incredibly fixated on communism and Taiwanese nationalism but they were also focused in a more active sense on infusing nation building and national subjectivity with a distinctively moral dimension there's one of the features of Chinese nationalism and the history of the Republic of China it has a moral morality is at the heart of its subject making it's particularly striking in the context of Taiwan and its hyper growth economy so in Taiwan subjectivity is also valorized by the economically productive citizen that you get in any kind of capitalist economy so the good person is the person who's making money and is getting a job and doing all that sort of stuff and the nationalists of course reconciled these too they understood a good citizen as someone who was both economically productive and also morally righteous in a kind of slightly cheesy Confucian sense these things these things work together in a form of righteous nation building and indeed it's perhaps not entirely surprising that the engine of Taiwan's economic growth are the so called SMEs the small and medium sized enterprises family units which are both sites of Confucian morality but also sites of economic activity so it worked particularly well for the nationalists from the 50s up until the 80s so moral education in Taiwan is institutionalized in its school system in curriculum there were local and national essaying and speech competitions in which school children had to stand up and recite popular texts like these ones these texts mobilized Chinese traditions of a particular form so popular conservative and familiar classical culture so they are all part of a process of nation building in which was making a kind of Chinese every day in people's lives it's at once familiar but also disciplinary it's very it's part of the disciplining of the subject so in Green Island of course these maxims were visited upon the prisoners and the guards in Green Island on the prison sites in this case relatively late this building was built I think it's hard to find out in 1985 which is why it's in this strange state it's derelict but it's not completely collapsed so as the prison site was transitioning from its military rule to its military governance to its judicial governance and the message in the mess hall of course is one of discipline and self-abnegation at the service of the state and its ideology so these aphorisms are signifiers of an ideologically and institutionally constructed Chinese imaginary and everyday Chineseness and all that sort of stuff a Chinese worldview but it's one that is imposed with ideological political and if necessary I'm sure violent force in that location through the institutions of authoritarianism so what you get with these aphorisms then the transmission of early Qing popular imperial culture through the nation building ideology of the Republic and then transformed into a particular kind of patrician banality into an economy of state violence in the martial law period the maxims intersected with violence of course and they mobilized this classical legacy and in this way the maxims and these aphorisms are a mechanism for concealing or effacing this violence so it's not just an experience of lived violence it's a violent place it's a place in which you're living in an economy of violence but you're still looking at these rather cheesy patrician aphorisms which are telling you to mind every bowl of rice and every bowl of gruel that you're eating little moral tales that you're being told so these maxims are concealing they're effacing they're doing a very particular thing in this context and I'm sure for the people who were seeing them you could call them, I'm sure they were sites of microaggressions people would have looked at them and read them angrily they wouldn't have just read them and said oh yes I must mind every bowl of rice they would have felt very aggrieved at having been confronted by them if they were stuck in a prison nowadays of course everything is very different authoritarianism has gone Taiwan is a democracy and the institutional transformation that this was all that arrived upon all of these sites happened a long time ago which is why some of them are derelict so what this means I think is that the aphorisms now when you see them now left behind in a derelict building have become a a space that exists across multiple planes of temporality there's a kind of series of echoes so at the time they were these sites of violence these sites of aggression microaggressions that have faced the true nature of the violence that people were subjected to but when you see them now they're very very different things they've taken on a radically different sort of meaning their echoes they are received again from the past in the present but they are functioning very very differently the violence of the past arrives in these these little aphorisms through a kind of recursive double reading so seen today they are no longer sites of violence they're sites of remembrance or forgetting you can read them as an example of the Chinese every day from the early Qing you can read them as sites of violence but you can also read them as the transformation of those things you can read them now as artifacts that expressed the way people had to live 40, 50 years ago on Green Island they are texts that capture the notion of memorialization and remembrance in a very particular way so the economy of violence of these texts once concealed has now been revealed so you can see them and you can know everything that happened behind them but like they're meaning in the martial law period they don't arrive as sites of remembrance or memory neutrally or naturally or unproblematically so they're arriving embedded in a new set of institutions and that themselves create new ways in very particular ways of reading them in particular we are being guided to read them so the memorial sites, the museums, the restored buildings the unrestored buildings, the Jingmei Human Rights Museum and Taipei all of these sites all of them have a very particular and elaborated form of institutional guidance as to the correct way to read the past and understand what happened in Taiwan so in the case of the Green Island Human Rights Museum it has a particular set of precepts it is to understand history of the striving for human rights in Taiwan to be aware of the importance of protecting the environment and to build up a culture of freedom and peace Green Island and Jingmei and Taipei are very pedagogical in their impetus their specific goal in all of the material they produce is to educate the Taiwanese people in the present about the suffering of political prisoners in the past so as to avoid repeating those mistakes that's what people say the guides who take you around so the displays in the museums the projects of which there are many to record the experiences of prisoners numerous instances of the museums where former prisoners reflect and reminisce in various displays all of these are part of a narrative of survival of people telling their stories that is explicitly in the material the museums produce intended to educate the Taiwanese out of the fear that they will forget and this is part of that anxiety and it's not just museums, the DPP does this as well in other words, you can see where I'm going the museumification of Green Island is itself a form of moral education the visitor is guided through these exhibitions and the artifacts including the ones yet to be restored the recreations of the experience of prisoners all of that sort of stuff to come to the correct way of reading them we're being guided through these places so this is a form of moral education which echoes the moral education of republic in China but it's not to create the kind of idealized national citizen of the ROC of the republic but rather it invokes a kind of idealized Taiwanese democratic citizen and this is a very distinctive form of democratic subjectivity this isn't the Habermasian ideal of the rational technocratic subject who sort of looks at all of the information and makes the most rational choice as a voter or as a as a policy maker as those enlightenment traditions this is a democratic citizen for whom citizenship is grounded in an understanding of the moral lessons of Taiwan's struggle for democracy and those lessons are expressed through the subjective experience of political prisoners they are embodied and idealized through the lives of those prisoners through notions of forbearance dignity suffering in the face of unreasonable and capricious violence so when you see these these aphorisms now you're being guided to double read them you're being guided to recognize that what they express is the suffering of the prisoners as part of a form of moral education so do we lose maxims these maxims for the management of a well managed household they're available to be read as a new kind of moral lesson just as they were available to be read as a kind of expression of nationalist citizenship so in conclusion if do we lose writing in its usage in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s concealed a kind of economy of authoritarian violence what kind of economy do they conceal now and this is my conclusion Green Island is just one memorial site in Taiwan among dozens of memorial sites that are proliferating as I said at the beginning there are two 228 museums in Taipei there are multiple 228 memorials there's a new relatively new white terror memorial near the presidential building in Taipei there are memorial websites there are multiple memory projects being conducted by the Ministry of Culture by academia, Seneca universities there's an absolute explosion of cultural products of books, of comics, movies all of these dealing with the past and uncovering, revealing, capturing all of those things in lots of different ways some of them are funny, some of them are mostly very, very serious there's also as I said at the beginning the repurposing of historic sites for creative zones and art precincts that steep Taiwanese contemporary art in the past that locate contemporary art in historic locations as it were to cleanse or sanctify the past through the ideals of artistic expression with all of the moral dimension that that captures so all of these suggest an altogether different array of institutional economics what might be called an economy of memory so memory in Taiwan is not simply the public memorialization of what once might have been kept private as a social process it isn't a few things it isn't just like Anzac Day or the war memorial it's an expanding array it's a proliferating, it's growing an expanding array of institutional arrangements that are engaging in the act of democratic Taiwanese excuse me national subject making and they're going through that in the same way that the KMT did 50 years ago my final comment will be that this is an interesting challenge the question that it raises ultimately is will it really work for the Taiwanese, will they get to the end of this process and think well we don't seem to have got to the core here we've just sort of created another institution of moral education to train us to be good democratic subjects so where will that lead I think it would lead to continuing contestation and continuing and acrimonious and complex debate within Taiwanese society so I'll stop there and say thank you very much


Now let's run through some iconic red characters. We got Mario, Elmo, Lightning McQueen, Mr. Krabs, Deadpool, Alvin, Bob Parr, Dr. Zoyberg, Plossom, Knuckles, American Dragon, Jekyllong, Bluefee, Pumbaa, Flash, Shy Guy, Sebastian, Angry Bird, Red Eminem, Among Us, that thing from Yo Gaba Gaba, and finally, Henry the Hoover.