The "secret meeting"

According to today's Taipei Times, the allegations about a "secret meeting" made by the DPP were based on "intelligence indicating that the KMT inked a secret agreement with high-ranking Chinese officials in Bangkok in the run-up to last year's presidential election" -- not "American intelligence" about which I expressed doubt earlier.

Although this sounds exactly like something the KMT would do, it must be treated dubiously until such evidence is presented. At that point, slam the rule of law upon the fuckers!

The betrayal
The Taipei Times article mentioned above also details the touchy nature of the KMT's dealings in China. According to DPP lawmaker and former lawyer Hsu Kuo-yung:

If the [KMT] delegation enters into any agreement with the Chinese government, regardless of whether it is in writing or spoken, they will be usurping the authority of the government and violating the Criminal Code.

Article 113 of the Criminal Code stipulates that persons not authorized by the government who take the liberty of signing a contract or agreement with a foreign government are subject to a minimum sentence of seven years in prison and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Seemingly conflicting information from Taiwan's e-Government Website says:

[...] if the KMT signed any written agreement with China, it would be in violation of the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, which prohibits civic organizations from signing any agreement on issues involving government authorities and politics with China unless they are authorized by the government. According to the statute, violators can be fined up to NT$2 million (US$63,492), and if the offense is considered very serious, a jail term of up to five years can be imposed.

I think DPP Secretary General Lee Yi-yang makes things abundantly clear in this BBC article:

While Taiwan's government and the international community condemned China's anti-secession legislation, the KMT has become the Chinese communists' propaganda tool.

Following so closely on the heels of a huge demonstration against China's aggressive "anti-secession" law, and with the KMT in denial of that expression of democracy, they're not just "tools" -- they're utter fools.

With enemies like these, Taiwan needs some real friends

Taiwan's current main "opposition" party, the KMT, is doing their damnedest to promote themselves as evil in the flesh and as one of the biggest enemies of Taiwan.

A little more than two weeks after Taiwan's other huge enemy -- China -- passed an "anti-secession" law legislating the arbitrary use of "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan, a 34-member "delegation" of KMT politicians is in enemy territory on an unauthorized "mission" of self-promotion at any cost.

The "anti-secession" law has already taken its first obvious victim: Hsu Wen-lung, founder and former chairman of the Chi Mei Corporation, head of the hospital that treated Chen Shui-bian for his gunshot wound on March 19, 2004, and a senior policy advisor to the president. On the same day when countless people were protesting the Chinese law, Hsu published a suspicious open letter stating that Taiwan independence would "bring disaster."

That's quite a contrast from June 2004, when the Taipei Times reported that the Communist mouthpiece People's Daily "accused Hsu of using profits gained in China to finance the independence movement in Taiwan."

This is psychological warfare. So is the KMT's behavior. By all appearances, what they're basically doing is selling out Taiwan, and it makes me fucking sick.

In what ETTV is calling a "conspiracy theory," DPP caucus whip Chen Ching-jun has accused the KMT of having "signed a secret pact" with the Communist Party sometime before the 2004 presidential election at a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand. This story was broadcast on several Chinese-language news channels in Taiwan Wednesday evening, and I think the DPP was claiming to have received this information from American intelligence sources. I will have to verify this when more information is available.

If the KMT does sign or has already signed any kind of agreement with the Chinese authorities without the authorization of Taiwan's current government, they will be committing/will have committed treason.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) blasted the trip as behing "divisive" -- something of which the opposition often accuses the DPP. Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council chairman Joseph Wu said, "It's very odd that they would cooperate with the Communist Party instead of the ruling party here on Taiwan."

Odd? Yes, very. Surprising? No, hardly at all.

"Stop George" over at Newsclip Autopsy has some nice photos and commentary on Saturday's rally. I guess Ma Ying-jeou didn't count the people at Pizza Hut either!

The day after 326

Here's a look at some of the pan-blue spin on yesterday's march along with some counterspin. Let's play "Spot the Difference." (I'll even give you some clues. UPDATE: Hideous colors fixed.)

The numbers
Here's how The China Post spins 'em:

Quoting figures from Taipei police, leading international news agencies estimated the crowd at just over 240,000 [...]

The Taipei Times unspins that (times four) by actually specifying a source:

According to the Associated Press, about 1 million people took part in the march [...]

Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, spinning again on TV earlier: "275,000," according to the number of tour buses.

The Taiwan News does the unspinning this time:

People at the assembly points for most of the 10 lines of marches were still just starting their march when the front of their column arrived at Ketagalan Boulevard.

[...]

[DPP Culture and Information director] Cheng [Wen-tsan] said that registered persons transported into Taipei from locations across the island by tourist buses alon[e] topped 250,000 and added that the turnout from people in Taipei City and Taipei County was huge and reflected in the extremely heavy use of the city's mass transit system.

Ma's figures don't include people like me and my wife. We arrived in Taipei via train, took the MRT toward our destination, and walked the remaining distance. His figures don't include the residents of Taipei City and County who took the MRT either.

Take a look at this awesome photo. Notice that there are people all the way to the edges of the frame. I was there, and I can tell you that people extended far beyond that. (Note that the street seen at the top center of this photo is the same one that extends past the lower left corner of the "awesome photo" linked above.) I can also tell you that many people who couldn't make it any closer left early and probably weren't included in any of the figures.

Traffic
One of the lies I noted in the previous post was ETTV's on-air complaints about traffic. Their proof was a couple of "random" interviews with motorcyclists who may have just as well been friends of the reporter. After all, the routes had been reported by the news at least 3 days before the event.

The Taipei Times gives both statistics and sources:

Despite the 2,800 tour buses rushing into Taipei City and hundreds of thousands of protesters marching on the streets yesterday, Taipei police and transportation officials reported smooth traffic after they took steps to avert chaos.

[...]

The Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation also reported an unprecedented load of up to half a million passengers by 4pm yesterday, a figure that is about 120,000 passengers more than usual holiday traffic.

[...]

Meanwhile, railway authorities said five additional express trains took 5,000 people from the south to Taipei yesterday.

Compare them there apples with the spin I reported in the previous post and with Ma's report of numbers above.

Random smears
CTI's "entertainment" channel featured impressionist Kuo Tsu-chien today doing an imitation of Taiwanese actor Chen Sung-yung. One thing Kuo said in relation to yesterday's rally was, "Don't believe politicians. Don't be their dogs." While I agree with the statement entirely, yesterday was not the day to be the pan-blues' "sleeping Pekingese."

Also, I should remind readers that the pan-blues often offer cash and use free food to get people to participate in their violent demonstrations. My wife has had to talk her mother out of taking money that was offered by the pan-blues to add her voice to a protest she knew nothing about.

Contrast this with yesterday's rally, to which my wife donated money to help cover the costs. (Note: The DPP doesn't have the same kind of party assets as the KMT, which was at one time the world's richest political party.) And since Kuo took money from a pan-blue TV station to say the things he said, that would make him a true blue whore.

Era News reported at least 2 news stories today conflating arrestees with yesterday's rally. One story involved a raid on an orgy in which some of the young participants were said to have AIDS. The reporter said that they had told their parents they were going to the 326 rally as an excuse. Another report of a Kaohsiung lawyer arrested on drunk driving charges had to throw in a mention of the rally as well.

Pan-blue spokesmonkey Chou "The-VP-shot-Chen-Shui-bian" Hsi-wei mocked yesterday's event for being like a "carnival." (Never mind that the organizers themselves described it as a "democratic carnival.") While we weren't throwing Molotov cocktails at police like Chou's party did after losing last year's presidential election (after all, yesterday's rally was about "peace"), some people were supposedly "moved to tears" by the event. He's just jealous.

KMT chairman and crybaby sore loser Lien Chan expressed his "disapproval" of yesterday's rally, being paraphrased as saying that "the DPP, which controls lots of administrative resources, could have done something more meaningful to express its unhappiness with the law than mobilizing people to take to the streets." To this, I can only say to read the paragraphs about the spokesmonkey and about my wife's donation again. What would Lien have done -- prostrated himself before Hu Jintao in Tiananmen Square?

Just before midnight, I returned from Taipei, where had I spent much of the day Saturday among those protesting China's recently adopted "anti-secession" law.

A parade consisting of ten separate routes merged into a huge mass of people near the front of Taiwan's Presidential Office. News reports have the number of participants ranging from "[Shhhh!]" (Xinhua via The China Post (Taiwan)) to "thousands" (Axcess News) to "hundreds of thousands" (New York Times, Taiwan Central News Agency, CNN) to "just more than 230,000" (Reuters/Yahoo) to "about a million" (Tri-City Herald) to "over one million" (AP/Yahoo). I'd have to say that it's impossible to confirm exactly how many were present, but it was certainly at least in the hundreds of thousands as these pictures would seem to indicate.

Whatever the actual turnout, it shocked China into "silen[ce]" about the numbers and had pan-blue TV stations reporting on things like the amount of garbage left behind and traffic complaints. (As I left the rally, I had seen an ETTV cameraman on the sidewalk and admonished him, "Try not to lie too much.") The garbage that I did see was piled around overflowing garbage cans -- not randomly disposed of in the middle of the street -- and was already being cleaned up before the crowd had finished dispersing. As for traffic problems, the protesters were quite patient as police controlled the flow of people and vehicles through intersections, and there was relatively little horn-blowing for Taiwan -- probably less than what I heard in the taxi coming home from the train station.

Pan-blue politicians themselves have already begun to put their own spin on the news of the rally. KMT chairman and last year's crybaby sore loser presidential candidate Lien Chan compared the protesters to "homeless people with nowhere to go," blaming Chen Shui-bian for this. Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, comparing apples with oranges, reported the number of protesters as "275,000," adding that this was "fewer than last year's 313 [pan-blue campaign] rally" which -- even if this comparison were true -- took place "throughout the nation's 25 cities and counties" and on the same day that a single-city rally organized by Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party "mobilized nearly 500,000 people."

I almost felt like a celebrity among the crowd, standing out even more than I usually do. People were patting me on the back thanking me for supporting Taiwan. I didn't really know what to say, as it was natural for me to be there. Mostly, I replied to them in Taiwanese, "You're welcome" or "Go, Taiwan, go!"

The crowd was enthusiastic, but just like last year's "228 Hand-in-Hand Rally," it was more peaceful than you could imagine for a crowd that size. President Chen Shui-bian marched with the crowd accompanied by his daughter, her husband, and their firstborn son. Former President Lee Teng-hui marched along another route, raising up his shirt at one point for TV reporters who had asked him if he was wearing a bulletproof vest. "No. I'm not afraid," was his reply.

Despite the spin, the people of Taipei, the pan-blue crybabies, and even the leaders of China heard the voice of the people of Taiwan yesterday shouting, "Cherish peace, defend democracy, and protect Taiwan." I hope the rest of the world takes notice of the situation before it develops into something even more serious.

The Chinese Nationalist Party
The KMT still think they rule all of China, including Taiwan, Mongolia, and Tibet. They somnambulate through their daily lives imagining that they won the presidential election last year. Today's Taipei Times reports that a "delegation" "of Chinese Nationalist Party heavyweights will travel to China to pay respects to Sun Yat-sen, and might even hold discussions in Beijing."

Yeah, right. The part about paying respects being the main purpose of their trip is an obvious cover, and I'm not fooled for one minute.

And under whose authority are they going to the capital of China? The self-declared "Emperor" (and KMT chairman) Lien Chan, of course! He first announced the plans on February 28 this year -- a date which most Taiwanese remember due to the events of February 28, 1947 which led to the murder of tens of thousands of Taiwanese citizens and the jailing of countless others simply for being Taiwanese.

Fifty-eight years later, I can understand why Taiwanese still hate Lien Chan and the KMT. The real question is: "Why do Lien Chan and the KMT still hate Taiwan so much?" Well, their name is still the "Nationalist Party of China."

The whole pan-blue alliance
Once again, the pan-blues have found the small bit of common ground on which they can cooperate these days: opposing Taiwan's defense budget, calling the arms procurement "unneeded." Even after the pan-greens reduced the proposed amount from NT$610 billion to NT$480 billion, the obstinate opposition pan-blues swallowed their pride and conspired to leave Taiwan defenseless in the immediate wake of China's so-called "anti-secession" law designed to legislate an arbitrary military invasion of Taiwan -- and this occurred on the same day that a "spy ship" was spotted off Taiwan's coast.

Why do the pan-blues hate Taiwan so much that they would leave it defenseless? Perhaps they enjoy masochistically kowtowing to their masters in Beijing?

The China Post and AFP
The editorial in today's China Post ("PRC law not all minuses") takes a "Life of Brian" approach to the "anti-secession" law.

One of the perceived "non-minuses" is this: " Throughout the anti-secession law, there is no mention that the PRC is the sole legitimate government of China."

WTF?! If I hold a gun to someone's head and don't actually say out loud that I'm going to kill that person, is this somehow "positive"? To be honest, I haven't read the entire text of the law [See UPDATE below], but I did see the part about using "non-peaceful means" whenever they see fit. I'd also bet that if the law had actually retracted the "sole legitimate government" crap, it'd be all over the news. In fact, the China Post printed this lie (via AFP) yesterday:

[ U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] reiterated that the U.S. maintains a "one China policy" that recognizes Beijing as the sole government of all China, including Taiwan...

First of all, to "reiterate" something means that you've said it previously. The truth (and you can Google it yourself in less than 2 minutes) is that:

In the [three U.S.-Chinese] communiques, the United States recognized that Beijing considers there is only one China, including Taiwan, but did not explicitly adopt that view as its own.

In a letter to the editor of the China Post late last night, I broke it down for them to make it easier to understand:

1) "Beijing considers there is only one China, including Taiwan."
2) The US "recognizes" that Beijing thinks this way.
3) The US "did not explicitly adopt that view as its own."

In fact, the inclusion of the words "Beijing considers" leaves the statement purposely open-ended. Nevertheless, it should be simple enough for the China Post editors, but I'm sure they'll continue to be purposely ignorant of such obvious facts.

Topping things off, today's editorial-of-denial comes to the conclusion that " Taiwan should enact a 'unification law,' not a provocative 'anti-annexation law,' to balance the anti-secession law..." Why are they calling Taiwan the "provocative" one, echoing the exact sentiments of Xinhua? Oh, never mind. Their name is The China Post, after all.

Why do the China Post (in Taiwan) editors and AFP hate Taiwan just as much as the state media in China does?

UPDATE: The English version of the "anti-secession" law of March 14, 2005 published in the People's Daily Online has this to say (Caveat lector: This is from an "official" translation via state media):

Article 2 There is only one China in the world. Both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China. China's sovereignty and territorial integrity brook no division. Safeguarding China's sovereignty and territorial integrity is the common obligation of all Chinese people, the Taiwan compatriots included.

Taiwan is part of China. The state shall never allow the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces to make Taiwan secede from China under any name or by any means. [Emphasis mine]

Duh! If you know the PRC's definition of "one China," then you'd know that when they say the things I've indicated with bold text above that what they mean is that "the PRC is the sole legitimate government of China."

The law also contains these "mega-minuses":

Article 8 In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. [Emphasis mine]

In other words, "We can attack your country, steal your land, replace your leaders, turn your lives upside down, and kill you whenever we decide to do so, and the 23 million people of Taiwan had better not even think about the word 'independence' or we might get really mad." Remember, China's precondition for any talks with Taiwan is the acceptance of their "one China" policy, which essentially amounts to a surrender by Taiwan.

Fuck that!

Go read the full text of the law for yourself. (It's only 788 words long.) [Big-5 Chinese version can be found here, or try a Babelfish discombobulation here.]

UPDATED WITH ENGLISH VERSION OF IMAGE

Please download the below images to put on signs, T-shirts, etc, at the "326 Anti-Annexation/Anti-Invasion Rally" in Taipei on Saturday March 26, 2005.

     

The Chinese-language version also says, "This is what democracy looks like!" (min2 zhu3 zhu3 yi4 jiu4 shi4 kan4 qi3 lai2 xiang4 zhe4 yang4)

In the right side of the image is a green Taiwan and the outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Lanyu (Orchid Island), and Green Island. The background is a Photoshop-altered image of people joining hands on February 28, 2004 as part of the "228 Hand-in-Hand Rally" opposing the 496 Chinese missiles that were pointed at Taiwan at that time. Just one year later, that number has increased to around 700!

Remind me again -- which side is "harmful" to the "status quo"?

UPDATED WITH ENGLISH VERSION OF IMAGE

Please download the below images to put on signs, T-shirts, etc. at the "326 Anti-Annexation/Anti-Invasion Rally" in Taipei on Saturday March 26, 2005.

     

The Chinese-language version also says, "Just say 'NO'!" (zhi1 shuo1 bu4)

Why do they hate Taiwan?

In Saturday's China Post, the number of pan-blue protesters expected -- prior to the actual event -- to show up for their "Let's pretend to assassinate Chen Shui-bian but claim he did it himself" rally "mysteriously" precisely matches the "100,000" reported after the fact by at least three pan-blue news channels last night. However, an update from 11:56 PM Friday night in the online version of the same newspaper says that "about 20,000 people took part in the march." Robert Novak would have fun trying to spin that difference, eh?

(Oops! Looks like somebody isn't marching in lockstep. I wonder if their editors' heads exploded after I recently wrote a letter pointing out a cornucopia of contradictions within a single editorial column.)

One of the empty-headed mantras the update in the China Post reports pan-blue protesters chanting yesterday is "No truth, no peace." That phrase is only half-true. No matter how much "truth" they get, if it's not "we win," they will continue creating chaos -- and that's a fact.

"No truth, no existence." Begone, pan-blues!

Know your enemies

Today marking one year since Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian and V-P Annette Lu were shot just one day before being re-elected, opposition supporters called to demonstrate by KMT chairman (and crybaby loser presidential candidate in the same election) Lien Chan gathered in front of the KMT headquarters to hear him continue to whine about why he lost.

According to the images I saw on TV earlier today, I would estimate that there were fewer than 10,000 listening to Lien, but TVBS, Era News and CTI reported 100,000 in attendance. TVBS showed 2 young men in combat fatigues with the word "gan4" (Chinese for the exclamation "Fuck!") tied on their upper arms and helmets. I don't know if they had anything more to say. TVBS is also playing a special pre-commercial bumper today that uses low-quality CGI to fire a bullet into Chen's chest. (No wonder I prefer to call them BS-TV. Chen was actually grazed across the abdomen.) You can see their milder "bullethole" graphic on the image at the top of this page.

Speaking to those at today's event, Lien seemed aimless in a zombified Reaganesque sort of way. At one point, he had trouble enunciating the words "zhen1 xiang1" ("truth"), instead saying "zhong1..." before stopping himself just in time from saying "Zhong1 Guo2" ("China"). He doesn't have a monopoly on the desire for the truth. Supporters of President Chen would like to know for sure who shot him and why, but nobody on the pan-green side is simply making shit up without any evidence to back it up.

China's National People's Congress just passed a poorly-named law this past Monday in an attempt to legislate its desire to arbitrarily decide to use "non-peaceful means" (i.e., military force) to determine the fate of the people of Taiwan, and pan-greens burned China's flag in response the next day. Today, I saw the pan-blues burning the flag of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The pan-greens have also planned a large-scale demonstration, but have scheduled it for next Saturday, March 26, 2005, I'd assume to avoid conflicts with today's whine-fest, to avoid the association with today's unfortunate anniversary, and to actually organize something meaningful.

As opposed to the pan-blues' gathering which is based on what they imagine as the reason they lost the presidential election last year, the pan-greens' rally is based on a genuine threat to Taiwan's security -- a threat that will not disappear with the KMT back in power. Visit the links below for more information about the "326" anti-aggression/anti-annexation rally.

RELATED LINKS:
* 326 March for Democracy and Peace!
* Alliance for Democracy, Peace, and the Protection of Taiwan [My correction of what they call "The Alliance of 'Democracy, Peace, Protect Taiwan'"]

Obsession with low-slung pants, meanwhile, uses up the minimal brainpower of Taiwan's opposition politicians

On the same day that China unanimously passed a law aimed at "legalizing" war on Taiwan, the KMT can apparently neither see nor hear any evil. The news hasn't done anything for their problem with "diarrhea of the mouth," though.

Strange priorities
A comedy skit about pants is what Taiwan's opposition pan-blues consider to be "proof" that President Chen Shui-bian "staged" the March 19, 2004 assassination attempt in which he and his V-P Annette Lu were both grazed by bullets on the eve of the presidential election.

This coming Saturday will be the one-year anniversary of that shooting, and the pan-blues are still crying about their loss. Regarding much more pressing matters, they seem to be completely ignorant -- although not blissfully so.

You might think that criticism of China's so-called "anti-secession" law -- which China's Premier Wen Jiabao describes as being "anti-war" but whose very content says "non-peaceful" -- would be at the top of the agenda for most Taiwanese politicians today. However, Taiwan's pan-blues selfishly continue to promote themselves as the crybaby sore losers of last year's election.

The pan-greens, on the other hand, seem to have Taiwan's interests in mind and are rallying a million people (inviting the opposition to participate, by the way) to show up in Taipei on March 26 to demonstrate the Taiwanese people's opposition to China's law. Considering the turnout at last year's "228 Hand-in-Hand Rally" (and barring inclement weather), I think that the number could be even higher.

RELATED LINKS:
If you need a peek behind all of the rhetoric about Taiwan's sovereignty, this summary by the Taiwan Documents Project is a good place to start before wading into any "historical" arguments. That page contains links to full text English versions of all the documents referenced within. AbsoluteAstronomy.com also has some well-annotated analysis on a page titled "Political status of Taiwan."

"He was a very nice man"

Over the past day and a half or so, I've discovered an extraordinary abundance of contradictory information (yes, even more than usual) in the media about the dead man named Monday as the most likely suspect in the March 19, 2004 shooting of Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian and V-P Annette Lu.

The suspect, Chen Yi-hsiung, was found dead in the waters of Tainan City's Anping Harbor 10 days after the shooting incident. At least one report I read said that he "drove his car into a river." Another originally said that the death was ruled an "accident." (That page has changed today, and the page prevents Google caching.) But most reports call it "suicide."

How old was the guy? You can't even guess by reading the "news" reports. Voice of America wants us to believe that he was "in his 50s" and calls him "unemployed." Tuesday's Taipei Times describes him as a "a 50 year-old retired construction worker." ETToday says that "Chen Yi-hsiung was 64 years old [and] a printer."

What about his political views? A man named Huang Kun-hsing, claiming to have been a friend of the suspect for over 20 years, says that Chen Yi-hsiung "did not really have an obvious political stance himself," contradicting this by also saying that he and the suspect "seldom talked about politics." A "30-year neighbor" of the suspect, however, said that Chen Yi-hsiung "was a supporter of the pan-blue camp and had argued with others in public because of political differences."

Who are you gonna believe -- me, or your own lyin' eyes?
The neighbor's portrayal is supported by footage from April 25, 2003 that I viewed Monday night on TVBS (AKA "BS TV") which showed Chen Yi-hsiung on TVBS' "2100" talk show. Being among the audience members who had a chance to spit on the mic that night, he voiced hatred for President Chen Shui-bian and former President Lee Teng-hui, calling the former a "hillbilly" and the latter "insane."

The Chinese-language Liberty Times tells us that immediately after taking his turn at the microphone, Chen Yi-hsiung quickly crossed the center aisle toward angry pan-green supporters who surrounded him, but that workers who were there prevented a fight from occurring.

What we have here is a pan-blue supporter, stirred up by the pan-blue media, trying to fight with pan-green supporters and kill a pan-green president.

On March 19, 2004, I wrote on this blog:

Suspects? In my opinion, it would first and foremost be operatives of the opposition. My next guess would be operatives from Beijing. Thirdly, I'd suspect supporters of the opposition. Opposition presidential candidate Lien Chan was on television just a few minutes ago expressing his "concern" for Chen [Shui-bian], all the while with a big smile on his face.

Was that an "embarrassed" smile -- because he failed to kill his political opponent (who had been a political prisoner during KMT rule) -- or was he simply happy that the president had been shot?

Lien Chan's real-life ineptitude reminds me of the character of Senator John Iselin in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. While he and the rest of the pan-blues refused to participate in a rally opposing China's "anti-secession" law, he has said over the past two days that 50,000 of his supporters will gather on March 19 of this year at the site of last year's post-election riots to "commemorate" the events of last year and demand "the truth," which to the pan-blue crybaby sore losers could only mean that they get to be "Eternal Emperors." (Sick fucks, they are.)

There was a "Queen of Diamonds" in The Manchurian Candidate, but Taiwan has a "Queen of (Black) Hearts" named Sisy Chen. (Note: The surname "Chen" is the "Smith" of Taiwan [times ten].) The name of her "talk" show is "Wen2 Qian4 Xiao3 Mei4 Da4." This is a combination of her Mandarin given name (Wen-qian) and a play on the words "Da4 Ge1 Da4," (literally translated "big older-brother big" but meaning "mob leader" or "godfather" -- as in Don Corleone). "Xiao3 Mei4 Da4" would be directly translated as "small older-sister big," but we know what she really means: "Why don't you pass the time with a game of solitaire?"

Although Chen Yi-hsiung's family destroyed his suicide note, scribblings that the suspect made on a datebook on the calendar week following the shooting (March 22 to 28) still exist. These writings echo the memes of the pan-blue media precisely. "Jing1 ji4 bu4 jing3 qi4" (the economy is bad) is one of the complaints he blamed on Chen Shui-bian, but I learned this Chinese-language phrase by hearing it repeated so often by the media. Another complaint on the datebook was that "so many people are moving to China." According to my wife, this is a meme directly from Sisy Chen's "talk" show.

Yet another meme -- this one via Sisy Chen and fellow shit-stirrer Jaw Shaw-kong (owner of UFO Radio) -- that was found on the datebook said that "If not for the referendum, the other guys [Lien-Soong] would have won." A quote from a character in The Manchurian Candidate fits perfectly here:

Dr. Yen Lo: His brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned.

Does it get any crazier than that? According to the pan-blues, it was the shooting that "turned the election around."

Where did such a "nice" man get a gun with which to shoot the president? From his brother-in-law Huang Wei-fan, an 86 year-old former soldier in Chiang Kai-shek's army. Earlier today, the pan-blue media had the nerve to wonder how "such an old guy could get a gun."

The editorial in Tuesday's Taiwan News pegged it when it said:

We urge Taiwan's government officials, politicians, citizens and, especially, our news media to exercise self-restraint, reason and patience in evaluating the latest breakthrough in the on-going investigation into the election-eve shooting of President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu while the Democratic Progressive Party incumbents were campaigning in Tainan City on March 19, 2004.

[...]

The most important implication of the breakthrough was that it effectively clears President Chen of the pan-blue camp's charge that the shooting was "staged" in order to sway voters and thus "steal" the election.

[...]

Nevertheless, the finding was met with skepticism of opposition investigators, self-appointed or anointed by the defunct and unconstitutional March 19 shooting incident truth-finding commission set up last year by the KMT-PFP controlled Legislative Yuan.

[...]

In contrast to empty complaints by former pan-blue investigators that the investigation should have been driven by a motive, the CIB investigators have evidently found the "most probable" person and discovered some basic facts about his character and behavior, such as the depth of his antagonism to President Chen and his administration.

[...]

Upon hearing the news, most of Taiwan's media immediately reacted with its usual "feeding frenzy" which would make a group of starved sharks proud.

[...]

Much of the media's use of language was so imprecise as to give the impression that resulting distortions were wilfully committed in order to further sensationalize the sufficiently sensational news and demonize a now voiceless suspect and thus deprive him of his human rights and ensure the permanent ostracism of his family.

We sincerely urge the exercise of greater caution, in part because the CIB remains circumspect in its statements.

[...]

We especially urge all political parties and politicians to cease moves to further complicate or confuse this politically -- charged case.

This advice goes double for the KMT, which has unwisely resolved to rekindle ethnic and partisan divisions by holding a mass demonstration at Ketagalan Square to demand "the truth" of the incident on the occasion of its first anniversary.

Frank Zappa, from Joe's Garage, has this to say at the end of a tune called "He Used to Cut the Grass"

This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER... Yes...he used to be a nice boy...He used to cut the grass...But now his mind is totally destroyed by music. He's so crazy now he even believes that people are writing articles and reviews about his imaginary guitar notes, and so, continuing to dwindle in the twilight realm of his own secret thoughts, he not only dreams imaginary guitar notes, but, to make matters worse, dreams imaginary vocal parts to a song about the imaginary journalistic profession...

[Emphasis mine]

Local news reports are saying that Taiwan police have named Chen Yi-hsiung as a suspect in the March 19, 2004 shooting of President Chen Shui-bian and V-P Annette Lu on the eve of Taiwan's presidential election. Chen and Lu won that election by a small margin, and the opposition used the shooting as an excuse to riot for 4 consecutive weekends following the election. They also published a 20-page brochure called "Bulletgate" in the wake of the shooting which claimed that Chen Shui-bian "staged" the shooting in order to win the election. Copies of "Bulletgate" were sent to U.S. Congressional Representatives in a feeble attempt to gain support for their quest for "the truth," and I have already published 20 installations (3 introductory sections and Parts 1 through 17) of a "shootdown" of "Bulletgate." (See sidebar for links.)

Vice-President Lu just announced that police have "broken" made a breakthrough in the case, but People First Party (PFP) legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (AKA Mr. Bulldozer) is still stirring doubts among pan-blue supporters, saying that things aren't so clear.

The biggest problem is that the suspect is dead. He drowned on March 28, 2004 -- just 9 days after the shooting.

Here's some of the evidence that has been presented so far:

* Video footage of the suspect near the crime scene
* A will and/or suicide note that were made out just before the suspect's death (Note: I'm told that the Chinese words yi2 shu1 can be translated into English as either "will" or "suicide note")
* An admission by the suspect's wife that he had told her he did it

We must obviously wait for forensics to verify whether Chen Yi-hsiung's death was a suicide, whether the note was written by him (I think I just heard the news say that his family members had already destroyed some of the evidence), whether the gun that was used to shoot the president -- which hasn't yet been found -- can be connected to the suspect, and whether other evidence, such as telephone records or the yellow jacket the suspect was seen wearing in the video footage, can provide further information. Without these things -- though I suspect even with them -- the pan-blues will never stop crying for "the truth."