"100% Hong Kong-funded = 100% Chinese-funded"

Get ready for even more political bullshit. Democractic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators have finally figured out that TVBS -- which I not-so-fondly refer to as "BS-TV" -- is 100% Chinese-funded.

Here's what an article in Saturday's Taiwan News says about it:

Several outspoken lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party yesterday demanded the closure of TVBS Cable TV after claiming that the station was being financed totally by capital from China and was collaborating with China to topple the Taiwan government.

[...]

In response, the opposition Kuomintang warned that it would mobilize its supporters to recall President Chen [Shui-bian] if the DPP government dares to force the closure of TVBS over procedural problems.

Duh! How could anyone not know this about TVBS? If it looks like a Beijing duck, walks like a Beijing duck, and quacks like a Beijing duck..., you might just ask yourself "WTF?!"

My wife asked me Thursday night if I knew who the chairman of TVBS was. "Uhhhh, a Chinese official?," I guessed -- off the top of my head. The answer, she told me, was Norman Leung Nai Pang (Mandarin: Liang Naipeng), the former chairman of the Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority. Hong Kong, you must surely remember, reverted to Chinese rule back in 1997; therefore, making a distinction between Hong Kong and China in this matter is absolute nonsense.

Of course, that nonsense is exactly the defense TVBS is using. Even if it were a valid defense, they would still be violating Taiwan's law by having over 50% foreign investment.


Click the image to enlarge to a size
suitable for printing on T-shirts.
Quack!
TVBS News consistently refers to China as "the mainland" (dà lù) instead of just "China" (Zhongguó), as a Chinese-language search of their web site will reveal. In fact, TVBS has recently been using a very strange term to refer to China: "nèi dì" ("inland" or "interior") -- to "catapult the propaganda" of "one China" even further.

Counting ducks that have already hatched
A search I just did on TVBS' web site for those terms (all of which were entered in Chinese) and a couple others (which can be subtracted from the larger numbers) gave these results:

* Dà lù (mainland): 12,946
* Guómínda(ng (KMT): 5,864
* Zhongguó: 3,088
* Zhongguó Guómínda(ng (KMT): 34
* Zhongguó Shí Baò (China Times): 32
* Zhongguó Shí Yóu (China Petroleum): 6
* Nèi dì (Interior of the country): 151

Remember, China has somewhere around 700 missiles pointed at Taiwan. I suppose BS-TV considers us to be Taiwan's "Lucky Duckies."

Timing is everything
The DPP has known about this for quite some time, yet they waited until after the pan-blues passed a fucked-up bill regarding a National Communications Commission (NCC) whose party representation is proportional to that in the legislature. This means that if the pan-blues control the legislature, they also control the NCC. This in turn means that their control of the media will only become more extreme.

Why didn't the DPP talk about this before, especially in the bloody runup to this legislative mess? Why haven't they talked about it every day since they've known about such things? Are they, like so many Taiwanese, just suicidal? There isn't even a hint of self-preservational instinct in this sort of behavior.

[UPDATED for spelling (Leung's name) and proofreading errors (an extraneous "of") 8:20 PM Sunday]

Related links: (all in Chinese Big-5 encoding)
* TVBS: It's all legal
* Liberty Times: Legislator: 100% of TVBS' funds come from China
* Liberty Times: TVBS: Our stock holdings conform with the law
* Liberty Times: TVBS Chairman Leung Nai Pang is former head of HK Broadcasting Division

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Poopchutes: Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, TVBS, pan-blues, Leung Nai Pang, Norman Leung

"KMT to blame for Taiwan's international status: DPP"

That (between the quotes) is what the headline on an article in Thursday's Taipei Times read, and it's exactly right. When my wife heard this in local Chinese-language news yesterday, she was a bit surprised because I had said almost exactly the same thing to her the day before. My version went something like this:

"Look, anytime these pan-blues start scolding the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) because of some country breaking up with Taiwan, all you have to say is 'And how many countries' relationships did we lose in 1971?' End of story."

Here's an excerpt from the Taipei Times article:

DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin held a news conference yesterday to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the UN and urged people to learn the truth about how Taiwan got stuck in its present international fix and remember the historical lessons.

[...]

Tien pointed out that it was the KMT government that sacrificed Taiwan's interests and rights because of its "one China" illusion. It ignored the US and Japan's efforts to help and its actions eventually led to Taiwan being marooned in international isolation.

I would urge those in the international media who write about Taiwan to do the same and to stop continually confusing Taiwan with the KMT.

Action, reaction
The press conference at which DPP legislators took this tough stance was in response to accusations by Kuomintang (KMT) legislators that the recent breaking of diplomatic ties with Senegal was the result of ineptitude on the part of the DPP government -- which since May 2000 has been faced by an uncompromising majority opposition in the legislature. The way the KMT reacts to such news just makes me wanna say, "Why do they hate Taiwan?"

Or maybe it's just the Taiwanese that they hate...

Back that shit up
Why is the KMT to blame? Here are a few reasons:

* While the KMT actually ruled China (you know, China?) from 1912 to 1949, they lost the war to the commies and fled to Taiwan while it was still a Japanese colony.
* Beginning on February 28, 1947, the KMT occupiers carried out a campaign of "White Terror," killing between ten and twenty thousand Taiwanese, jailing countless others, and imposing martial law which lasted until 1987. To this very day, pro-China bitches still try to blame the DPP for "rupturing Taiwanese society." Ha!
* In 1971 (22 years after the founding of the PRC by the commies), when the United Nations took the China seat from the ROC (the occupiers of Taiwan) and gave it back to China (y'know, the commies in Beijing), Chiang Kai-shek had the chance to have a separate seat ("dual representation"), but he passed up what would literally be the chance of a lifetime.
* By clinging foolishly to his ROC (Republic of China) fantasy (that he still ruled all of China including Tibet and Outer Mongolia), Chiang lost the diplomatic ties of most "major" countries via that decision.
* Taking advantage of this, China has used their "one China" policy to intimidate other countries (via economic terrorism) to break official relations with Taiwan. This is apparently what happened with Senegal.
* The KMT-led opposition parties have obstructed President Chen Shui-bian's DPP at every turn, often resorting to violence to get their way.

A letter to the editor in Thursday's Taipei Times also has an interesting angle from which to view the KMT's recent nonsense:

One can only wait and hope that Taiwan's electorate can see through the blue smokescreen being created for the upcoming elections.

Indeed, and I sure hope the people of Taiwan vote those KMT motherfuckers out of there! The DPP will have a better chance of beating them if they demonstrate more backbone like the legislators in the article in Thursday's Taipei Times did.

Related: 'Cheated' foreign minister offers to quit

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Bodybags: Taiwan, China, Senegal, UN, United Nations, pan-blues, Kuomintang, KMT

Same tune, different lyrics:

O-o-kay, can you see
How the Bush White House lies?
While so blindly we watch
Eating dinner each evening

-- Tim Maddog

Same Shakespeare, different day:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."

-- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Opening the curtains
Since at least May of 2004, the "description" just below the heading of this blog has read, "Pay close attention to that man behind the curtain!" In recent days, those curtains (yes, there are many) aren't just falling in tatters -- they are on fire, and the view behind them has been demonstrated to be quite ugly.

George W. Bush held a video teleconference with troops in Tikrit, Iraq Thursday which was billed as "spontaneous" and "a chance for the president to hear directly from the troops," but which was revealed by video evidence to be a poorly-rehearsed, poorly-scripted, and poorly-executed abuse of the military as propaganda (remember Jessica Lynch?) for Bush's illegal war on Iraq.

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News begins to pull back the curtains when he says this:

"[T]his is hardly the first staged political event we have covered -- and we've seen a lot of them in the past. Today's encounter was billed as 'spontaneous.' Instead it appeared to follow a script." [Video linked here]

Yeah, if by "appeared" you mean the answers in the rehearsal with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Barber sounded just like those in the actual event.

Listen to Barber herself, and see if it merely "appears" to you to follow a script [Emphasis mine]:

"[B]ut if he gives us a question that's not something that we've scripted, Captain Kennedy, you're gonna have that mic, and that's your chance to impress us all. [edit in video] Master Sergeant Lombardo, when you're talking about the president coming to see you in New York, take a little breath before that so you can actually be talking directly to him. You've got a real message there, okay?

So "if" the president goes off-script, by some chance, "impress us all." And "when" you "spontaneous[ly]" talk about New York, act natural when you deliver our "message" -- or something like that.

Sergeant Schultz to the resc... "Help!"
The follow-up Q&A session between the press and White House spokesperson Scott McClellan was also rather ugly. In response to a question about the soldiers being "coached," McClellan's actually replied, "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're suggesting." When asked by Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post if the soldiers had "rehearsed their answers," McClellan came up with "I don't know, I was with the president" (who, even being Bush, would surely have known?). [Video (below " Act II - The Press") available here]

Countdown to a Bush-free White House?
Keith Olbermann has been pulling back the curtains for us for quite some time, but when NBC Nightly News' Andrea Mitchell shows us the video of the rehearsal then says, "Many administrations, Democrat and Republican, stage-manage events and often the news media ignore the choreography," you get the feeling that this has snowballed into something too large for even Karl Rove to hide any longer. Former presidential advisor David Gergen -- whom Mitchell reminds has worked under 3 Republican presidents -- adds to this thought, "I have rarely seen the news staged with the military in quite as blatant a way, but it has been done before, so it does belong to a long and somewhat unhappy tradition."

Meta-busting
Mitchell actually provides us more detail of the stage management of the Bush administration than she does with just the above segment quoted by Newsbusters. She prefaced that statement with this bit [Emphasis mine]:

"This isn't the first time this administration used troops to help sell the Iraq war. In fact, the Bush White House has choreographed everything from town hall meetings on Social Security to campaign events with planted questions."

So, should the media have said more about this long ago? Yes! Should this White House have denied what we saw for ourselves? No! Should we believe anything this administration says -- ever? FUCK, NO!

This blog is neither fair nor balanced
Having said that, read the apologist Newsbusters article (also linked above), and if you want to see a QuickTime video of Captain Brent Kennedy -- one of the hand-picked soldiers -- "proving" that the event wasn't staged, go here. Who ya gonna believe -- him, or your own lyin' eyes?

Video links, redux
* QuickTime and WMV video of Brian Williams, Allison Barber, Andrea Mitchell, and David Gergen is available here, via Crooks & Liars.
* The McClellan video and two others (QuickTime only) from Keith Olbermann's Countdown are available here, via onegoodmove. (Click the preview image below " Act II - The Press.")
* Streaming QuickTime video of Captain Brent Kennedy saying how much he loves Bush can be viewed here via komo news in the state of Washington (link to the right of that page, below Kennedy's photo).

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Flashing lights: Propaganda, fake news, scripted, Iraq, Bush lies, Scott McClellan, Keith Olbermann, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, David Gergen, Crooks & Liars, onegoodmove

Washington Post op-ed columnist Richard Cohen thinks that "conspiracy" and "[leaking] official secrets" are "trivial charges and wants special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to "return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals" instead of continuing to investigate the outing of a CIA operative.

In his piece "Let This Leak Go," Cohen even refers to this crime as "alleged" -- not just as though a specific person hasn't yet had a trial in the matter, but as if he's not sure that such a leak even happened.

Cohen also seems content with the fact that "there's so much crime in Washington already" and tries to use this to buttress his absolutely absurd argument ("desperate plea"?) for Fitzpatrick to let it go.

What? Is Cohen afraid that "Apres Miller comes [lui]"?

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Pegs on which to hang this: Richard Cohen, Patrick Fitzgerald, Washington Post, conspiracy