Pan-blues have had enough of the truth
Taiwan's opposition pan-blues have been alternately crying their eyes out and advocating the murder of the president ever since they lost the March 20, 2004 election (for the second time in a row, I might add) to Chen Shui-bian. All the while, they've whined about wanting the "truth" about the election eve incident in which Chen and his running mate Annette Lu were both shot, sustaining only minor injuries.

One of the pan-blues' main (and silliest-sounding) "battle cries" has been "no truth, no president." Chen Shui-bian keeps giving them more truth than they ever bargained for.

Over this past weekend, crybaby sore loser Lien Chan "challenged" President Chen to hold a referendum on "Taiwan independence" alongside the legislative elections this December. Lien, being the chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT), should know as well as anyone that according to the law written by the pan-blues such a referendum would be illegal. But logic has never stopped Lien before. Why should it now? After all, he's still fantasizing that he won the election on March 20, 2004 and then declared himself "emperor," giving himself the "right" to go above the law as he sees fit.

Ah! If he only had a brain.

Temporal mathematics
The combined votes of Lien Chan and his own vice-presidential candidate running separately in 2000 came to 58%. They failed to take changing attitudes towards a "Taiwanese identity" into account when counting on their alliance to get the same number of votes in the 2004 election.

Speaking at a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) campaign rally on Sunday evening, President Chen made another truth painfully apparent to the pan-blues: party does not equal state as it did under Chiang Kai-shek's authoritarian rule.

The 12-pointed sun emblem of the KMT is barely distinguishable from the emblems contained within the symbols representing each of Taiwan's military branches, the police, on the flag of "Taiwan" -- or more accurately, the "Republic of China" (ROC) flag which is used in Taiwan -- and on the flag of "Chinese Taipei" that Taiwan is forced to use in international events such as the Olympics. To top it all off, the "national anthem" is actually the KMT's party anthem, too. Doesn't the KMT's behavior sound a bit like that of Nazi Germany?

President Chen has told the KMT to change their emblem within 3 months or he will revise the National Emblem Law if the DPP and the pan-greens get a majority in the legislature in December. The KMT's reply was just too funny. They told Chen to change the flag instead, even though he promised first in 2000 and again in 2004 that he wouldn't change the flag (and he has a reputation for keeping such promises)! They gave him a choice of four flags and demanded a reply within 3 days. Hahaha! The pan-blues sure get all bent out of shape when Chen keeps his promises and doesn't act like a "dictator."

Ah! If they only had brains!

STILL IN PRODUCTION: I'm still working on my shootdown of the pan-blues' "Bulletgate" pamphlet. The first installations should be online within a week or so, but I'm not making any flat-out promises as I've got to whittle down nearly 40 pages (so far) of text and HTML code into segments that are a bit more manageable.

The would-be emperors' new hosedown
On the heels of the rejection by Taiwan's High Court of the pan-blue opposition's request to nullify the outcome of the March 20, 2004 presidential election, the Ministry of Justice's Supreme Prosecutor's Office has posted online the Select Committee Report On Investigation of Shooting Incident Of President Chen Shui-bian & Vice-President Annette Lu and Select Committee Report Conclusion & Summary On Investigation of Shooting Incident Of President Chen Shui-bian & Vice-President Annette Lu published by forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee. The two parts are available in both English and Chinese-language versions and can be downloaded as PDF files from the following links:

* Report [English] [Chinese]
* Conclusion & Summary [English] [Chinese]

These documents strike yet another blow against the pan-blues' already terribly weak case. They demonstrate that the forensic evidence shows that President Chen Shui-bian and Vice-President Annette Lu were indeed struck by bullets fired from outside of the vehicle in which they were riding. The pan-blues continue to such nonsensical claims as that Lu was hit by a "marble" [BETTER TRANSLATION: "ball bearing"] or that Chen's wound isn't a bullet wound at all.

They stubbornly press on with their futile battle, all the while crying about things like "justice" and "democracy."

People First Party (PFP) legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (AKA "Mr. Bulldozer") tried to throw sand in the eyes of those who might be planning to read Henry Lee's conclusions, claiming that without Lee's signature they might be "forgeries." That kind of statement reeks of desperation! I'm fairly confident that Lee has access to both the Internet and the media, and he'd be making denials by this time if they weren't the documents he gave to the High Court.

As for the timing of the report's release, according to State Public Prosecutor General Wu Ying-chao, "now is the 'best time' to publish the report because the 319 shooting investigative team has completed investigations based on part of the report which had to be kept secret before."

The pan-blue leaders wouldn't know democracy if it bit 'em on the ass. In fact, I think it has bitten them more than once.

Ready, aim, uh, which way do I point this thing?
Politicians within the pan-blue camp criticized their own lawyers for "not having the political savvy" to handle the case successfully, according to FTV's English Edition. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan then sharply told the media not to criticize the lawyers. Talk about aimless!

In Taiwan, at least by people whose heads aren't full of rocks, John Kerry's concession in the US Presidential Election is being held up as model behavior for someone who loses an election by a narrow margin. I'm beginning to appreciate it a little more by looking at it from this angle.

Is it China or the KMT?
At 4:00 PM Thursday Wu Ching-yuan, the presiding judge of Taiwan's High Court, announced that the pan-blue opposition crybaby losers' request to nullify the March 20, 2004 presidential election had been rejected. Candidates for the upcoming legislative elections brought out "hundreds" of supporters to protest the decision -- even before the announcement had been made -- in an apparent attempt to intimidate the judges. It didn't work, fortunately, and the protesters apparently dispersed before any rioting was able to break out.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawyer Jaclyn Tsai claimed, according to the BBC News article linked above, that the judicial system is biased in favor of President Chen Shui-bian. A quick advanced search on the Taipei Times web site for "Wu Ching-yuan" brings up evidence that he was on the High Court even before Chen Shui-bian was elected president in March 2000 and that "evidence" was what he was looking for then as well as now. Evidence is exactly what the pan-blues are lacking.

Murder by any other name
Thursday's Taipei Times contained a page 3 article that didn't shy away from the strongest way to translate what loser Lien Chan said about Chen Shui-bian with this headline on Wednesday: "Murder Chen if he wins election suit, Lien says."

I like their translation better than my own. You can kill without murdering -- in self-defense, for example -- but when you strive to cause someone's death simply because you lost, that's murder in the first degree.

KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung tried to obfuscate the true meaning of Lien's words by saying that Lien really meant that anybody could "scold" President Chen. But a native speaker of the Chinese language who has any common sense knows that the word means "execute, kill, put [to] death; punish" and that it was for this reason that it got such big headlines in the Chinese-language media.

Who's he trying to fool?

With a little assistance, I was able to learn that the phrase "ren2 ren2 de2 yi3 zhu1 zhi1 was uttered by Confucius in response to a question about whether or not soldiers could be used to attack and kill Kung Shu-shu (sp?). "Of course. He's brought chaos and is an enemy of society; therefore, anyone can kill him." (That's my own translation as I can't find a better English version on the web.)

In Taiwan, Lien Chan has brought about much of the chaos, and he continues to speak such nonsense.

On Thursday, Taiwan's High Court is set to announce the results of seven months of work regarding the decision about whether or not to nullify the results of the presidential election in March. The winner of that election, President Chen Shui-bian, was shot in the stomach the day before the election while campaigning in an open jeep. His running mate, Vice-President Annette Lu was also grazed by a bullet on the right knee. Neither were seriously wounded, however, and the opposition parties began rioting the very next night when election results were broadcast on TV showing that Chen and Lu had won by a narrow margin.

The riots (which followed pre-election threats of such things happening) lasted for weeks, while the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) repeatedly attempted to provide legal solutions to the opposition. The opposition took nearly a month to tire of rioting every weekend, but to this day, the haven't quit their bitching.

(For a plethora of links to my in-depth coverage of the mess, see my September 15, 2004 post, "Birds of a feather." You can also find at least 3 more related posts on this blog since that time: 1, 2, 3.)

Back to matters at hand...

In advance of tomorrow's announcement by the High Court, the pan-blues are making more groundless accusations and threats. After repeatedly accusing President Chen of being a "dictator" and of holding "influence" over the judiciary, (If this is true, then why didn't they put Chiu Yi under the jail?) KMT Legislator Hou Tsai-feng recommended yesterday that Lien and his then-running mate James Soong go to the court and bring along more than 10,000 of their supporters when the decision is announced in order to "encourage" the justices involved in the case!

Why do they fear the result so? Is it because they know they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of achieveing their goal via legal means? Is this why they have to bring along the implied threat?

Their threats get even more overt and violent than that.

During a meeting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT or Kuomintang) in Taiwan Wednesday afternoon, their chairman Lien Chan said of Chen (translation mine): "President Chen Shui-bian is a cheater. Somebody should kill him."

The particular words Lien used ("ren ren de yi zhu zhi") were borrowed from literature in some sort of a sick attempt to make himself sound "refined." It didn't work too well. In fact, the more he talks, the more it sounds like he was involved in the election eve assassination attempt.

President Chen, addressing a meeting at the Ketagalan Institute Wednesday, could only ask in response to Lien's statement, "What kind of a society is this and what kind of a democratic manner is this?"

This is not the first time the pan-blues have openly advocated assassinating the president. Chen has also been compared to Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and bin Laden by the pan-blues. Is that the kind of response you'd expect from such a person?

The only responses you should expect from the pan-blues in the face of bad news are self-contradiction, tears, noise, riots, accusations without evidence, and threats against peoples' lives. They make me fucking sick!

It's not over 'til it's over
After all that, how will I now be able to "cry foul" about the American presidential election (which I'll surely do if Bush is officially declared the winner)? Easily. I'll provide evidence to back up everything I say. I won't shed crocodile tears, I won't participate in riots, and I won't threaten anybody's life. That's how.

More on that when I have the facts.

It's already afternoon here in Taiwan, but in the United States, most Election Day polling places won't open for another several hours.

Let's not see a repeat of the 2000 Election debacle this time around. Go vote. Offer somebody a ride to the polling place. Bring an umbrella or two to protect yourself and/or anyone else who doesn't have one from the sun or rain. And vote for John Kerry. I want to see a motherfuckin' landslide Kerry victory that will not be contested!

While you're at it, take the opportunity to smash any attempts to amend state constitutions, raise taxes, legalize discrimination, terrorize librarians, and/or install fascists on your local school boards or in the juvenile courthouses. Vote for Democrats for your state senators and congressional representatives.

Shedding some light on a touchy subject
If you're not afraid of being branded a "terrorist" for wanting to understand the causes of terrorism, then go read the transcript of bin Laden's videotaped speech released last Friday. No, not the 16-paragraph edited version -- the full 57-paragraph version. I think you'll be rather surprised at what the "news" left out.

Is it in your "best interest" to be kept in the dark about these kinds of things? I'd tend to think not.