The newsfeeds about Taiwan for the past day or so include these doozies (marked with X's). Behind the asterisks, I've added comments, pointed out the lies, and even noted when some truth found its way into the articles:

X The Times of India has a very short article with the deceptive headline "China and Taiwan bury the hatchet," saying in the body that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT "are set to formally declare the end of hostilities."

* I think they mean "China and the KMT want to 'bury the[ir] hatchet[s]' in the heads of the people of Taiwan."

* Lien Chan, speaking at Peking (Beijing) University on Friday, berated the Taiwanese by saying they were letting "mín cuì," or "populism" (I suspect that they mean "cult of personality") "take the place of democracy," thus indicating his disdain for them, as well as reinforcing his desire to ignore the will of the 23 million people of Taiwan, and further revealing what an ignorant elitist he is. Does he forget that it's because of the KMT that Taiwan is still filled with portraits of Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen? And does Lien forget about his own rallies after losing the presidential election last year?

X Another Indian paper, The Hindu, has a headline reading "China set to formally declare end of hostilities with Taiwan."

* It would be slightly more feasible for China to unilaterally end its bellicosity. They could easily do that without Lien Chan.

* Is the premise of the above headline believeable? If we were talking about an alternate universe, it might be, but we're not, so it isn't. If you keep repeating "one China policy," you'll be less likely to fall into their trap. Lien Chan isn't that smart.

X South Africa's SABC News slightly reduces the distance from the truth with an article bearing the headline "China Communists, Taiwan KMT set to end hostilities," going on to say that the CCP and the KMT "are likely to end decades of hostilities at a historic meeting between their current leaders in Beijing tomorrow. Lien Chan, chairman of the KMT, or Nationalist Party, flew to Beijing on Thursday to a red-carpet greeting and bouquet-waving children chanting "Welcome, welcome".

* The editorial cartoon in today's Taipei Times portrays Lien's welcome in China a little differently.

* And remember the Taiwanese Presidential election last year? Lien Chan lost, but that hasn't stopped him from imagining and behaving as if he had won. If he signs anything, it may not be valid, and he may go to jail -- if Chen Shui-bian has the balls to uphold the law.

* The SABC News article names the Taiwan-based, pro-China United Daily News as one of its sources of "positive news."

X Jianwei Wang, in an Asia Times piece titled "Chen could be Taiwan's Nixon," editorializes that Chen Shui-bian would be "much less vulnerable [than either Lien Chang or James Soong] to the accusation of 'selling out' Taiwan's interest to the Chinese communists" because "[c]ompared with the pan-blue leaders, Chen does not have the historical baggage related to the mainland."

* Wang is either dissembling or doesn't have a freaking clue (perhaps both) about how Chen's supporters would feel about such a thing. They're already feeling rather disappointed at Chen's non-response to the recent and upcoming visits to China by political opposition leaders.

X The Los Angeles Times (reg req'd) has an article titled "China Tries New Tactic With Taiwan."

* If by "new" they mean "the same old tricks," then they're right. If they mean by plying Lien Chan with cuddly pandas in order to destroy Taiwan from within, it's just more out in the open than it previously was. (See the post about the supposed "Secret meeting" between the KMT and the CCP, earlier on this blog.)

X ABC News has one with the headline "China, Taiwan Mustn't Upset Status Quo, Says Lien," adding that "China said Thursday that it wished to establish a relationship with Chen's Democratic Progressive Party."

* Leaving out the word "dominant" before "relationship" sure sounds nicer, doesn't it?

* Which status quo might Lien be referring to, hmmm? Is it the one in 1996, when China fired missiles in an attempt to intimidate Taiwan's voters? Is it the one in 2000 when there were fewer than 500 missiles aimed at Taiwan? Or is it the current and ever-changing status quo which has over 700 missiles aimed at us, a recently passed so-called "anti-secession" law threatening Taiwan with "non-peaceful means" of preventing Taiwan from "act[ing] under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from [the People's Republic of] China" -- a country to which Taiwan does not now nor has ever belonged?

* The article contains these gems, but buries them in paragraphs 18 - 20 out of 23 paragraphs:

"Beijing is just throwing us some candies in exchange for Lien Chan kissing up to them," said Hsu Chung-cheng, a 23-year old computer engineer.

Joseph Wu, chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, acknowledged that China's overtures would put international pressure on Taiwan. Although the offers looked reasonable, he said, they were designed to make Taiwan accept Chinese control.

"Opposition parties' leaders shaking hands with Beijing officials create the impression that Beijing has ended its hostility to Taiwan," Wu said. "But Beijing is actually aiming more and more missiles at us and building more and more submarines."

That's just about all the bullshit I can stand for the time being.

COMING UP: More on Lien Chan's evil speech: "Taiwan, How do I hate thee?" Let Maddog count Lien's multitudinous motherfuckin' ways.

A few arrests have been made since Tuesday. One of those arrested was Er Leng-tzu* (sp?), husband ex-husband of gang leader Wang Lan -- who left for China shortly after the riot, by the way! [*Er Leng-tzu is his "nickname." His "real" name is Chu Chia-hsun.]

Another person arrested was that idiot with the A-bian hat and the Kwandao broadsword. If it was just for show, he could've brought a wooden or plastic one. [UPDATE: After watching almost 4 hours of videotape early Friday morning, I saw the "Kwandao" guy proving his sword wasn't "real" by striking his neck with the "blade" edge and not doing any damage.]

Also arrested were at least 2 of the taxi drivers who unsuccessfully attempted to block Lien Chan's motorcade on the freeway on his way to the airport. While their goal of preventing Lien Chan from reaching the airport (or at least slowing him down) may have been noble, the execution was seriously flawed, resulting in a dangerous high-speed "chase scene" in heavy rain.

While most of Taiwan's media is giving the pan-blue side of the story, more details are slowly emerging from people on the other side who were the victims of Tuesday's violence -- who seem to be mostly from the pan-green side, by the way.

In scenes reminiscent of Taiwan's "White Terror" period, gangster "mainlanders" were approaching people and asking them in Taiwanese, "What (the fuck) are you looking at?" If they answered in Taiwanese, they would call out to their leader, "Lan Jie! ('sister' Wang Lan) We've got a Taiwanese over here!" and would proceed to beat them up! (NOTE: I don't normally use the term "mainlander," but the reason for doing so in this instance should be obvious.)

KMT politicians are out for supercharged TV host Wang Pen-hu's blood now, saying he should be arrested for doing his political talk show live from the airport that morning, according to an article in today's Taiwan News. The article paraphrases KMT legislator Kuo Su-chun as saying that "the pro-green underground radio stations had initiated the violence since they were pushing listeners to throw eggs at the pan-blue supporters."

I won't simply let you make up your own mind about that charge. I've got news video of pan-blue gangsters both preparing and using their weapons against the pan-greens -- unlike the idiot with the "show sword," who apparently didn't use it on anyone.

The Taiwan News article goes on to paraphrase PFP legislator Lee Yong-ping accusing Wang of "incit[ing] the crowd at the airport to clash with the pan-blue supporters," without providing any examples of how he did so. My wife thinks this may have something to do with TVBS' edited version of Wang's comments.

Let's "logic-check" their asses
If Wang is brought in, I suppose the police would also have to arrest Sisy Chen for doing the same thing during last year's protests in front of Taiwan's Presidential Office, no? Even the China Times mentions this, although they don't tell readers exactly what Sisy Chen did.

At the time she identified herself as an "independent" legislator, but she was constantly kissing the pan-blues' asses and demonizing the pan-greens on her radio and TV shows which she had promised to give up if DPP politicians did so first -- and they did -- but she never followed through on those promises. Not surprising.

During last year's post-election riots, PFP legislator Liu Wen-hsiung threatened to bring a bulldozer with which to crash into the Presidential Office. PFP legislator Chiu Yi rode atop a campaign truck on the night of the election and led the charge to crash the gate of the Kaohsiung District Prosecutor's office.

None of those people are in jail. They have some fucking nerve talking about people who were defending themselves against physical attacks when pan-blue politicians like New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming and New Party Secretary-General Lee Sheng-feng were ordering gangsters to "Attack!" the pan-greens on Tuesday. My wife tells me this was caught on videotape.

Yok also ridiculously spoke about returning "blood for blood" (a Chinese-language equivalent of "an eye for an eye"), ignoring the fact that most of the injured were pan-greens. He's also apparently ignoring the "228 Incident" in which several thousand Taiwanese were killed under the KMT regime.

Among other pan-greens that the pan-blues want arrested are Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Wang Shih-chien and Taiwan Solidarity Union (pan-green TSU) legislator Luo Chih-ming, despite the fact that even though the gang-instigated violence was beyond their control, the DPP has apologized for being involved in it at all and "condemn[ed] any form of violence," adding that "We are in favor of meting out punishment to those held responsible in accordance with the law and urge agencies concerned to conduct a swift and thorough examination of the matter to prevent any similar occurrence from happening again."

Pan-green talk shows such as Wang Pen-hu's "Taiwan Aspirations" (Tai2 wan1 xin1 sheng1) and Clara Chou's "Taiwan Summit" (Tai2 wan1 gao1 feng1 hui4) were making these points late Thursday night:

* The violence began with pan-blue supporters throwing water bottles across the space separating the two groups and with metal objects being thrown and fired from slingshots at the pan-greens from the airport's overlooking balconies.

* The police did far too little to prevent the two sides from clashing and even flipped off at least one pan-green supporter who asked for their help.

* One 77-year-old beating victim was interrogated in a threatening manner by police before being allowed to go to the hospital. He said the police told him he'd "better be telling the truth (about the pan-blues beating him), or [he]'d be jailed for seven years."

* Ambulances took 40 minutes to arrive and ended up only bringing the wounded to a first aid center in another part of the airport!

* The violence was perpetrated by "mainlanders" and specifically aimed at Taiwanese.

More photos of the carnage
Some of the images linked below are from Yahoo! I hope they don't move the URLs around as soon as I post them:

* This is what "hundreds" of protesters look like. (I estimate that at least a thousand people are visible in the photo.)

* A clearer view of the bloodied TSU supporter in a pool of his own blood after being beaten by 20 or so Lien Chan supporters.

* One more image of the man struggling to get up.

* Here's an image of the hooligans wearing ROC flag shirts fighting with police.

* Some TSU (?) idiots protesting Lien Chan with a sign saying "Kill [Execute, Put to death] (the) traitors, protect Taiwan."

* "Pan-blue supporters try to break the police line to get near pan-green supporters," according to the Taiwan News.

* TSU and DPP legislators "try[ing] to break the police line," according to the Taiwan News.

In conclusion, Lien Chan's so-called "journey of peace" is already far too ironic.

The questions now are these: What's going to happen when Lien returns? Chen Shui-bian says people can't assemble at the airport. What's going to happen when James Soong goes to China?

Maybe Wang Pen-hu will do a live show from in front of the Presidential Office.

First, it was the alarm clock. Then I heard rain -- heavy rain. The day would get much worse. Fortunately for me, I was far, far away from the real mess.

Later this morning at the CKS International Airport in Taoyuan, Taiwan, it was a worse mess than I had imagined it would be.

Lien Chan was on his way to China to sell out Taiwan, and there were thousands of both protesters and supporters on hand to fuck shit all up.

Among the protesters was this bèn dàn, wearing an A-bian (Chen Shui-bian's nickname) hat and a shirt with the words "Save Taiwan, 'pay respects' (?) to Lien Chan."* [See UPDATE below.] The pan-green TSU had called for a "peaceful demonstration," saying that nothing worse than "egg-throwing" should happen.

After last year's presidential election, Chen Shui-bian urged his supporters to simply stay away from the pan-blue protests to avoid trouble. Do you think Lien Chan would have told his supporters to do the same today? Nah, me neither. He didn't.

Hell, hell, the gang's all here
Among the supporters of Lien Chan that showed up were gang leader Wang Lan and her husband ex-husband Er Leng-tzu* (sp?), who had brought throngs of gangsters to the airport with weapons ranging from slingshots to clubs to swords. [*Er Leng-tzu is his "nickname." His "real" name is Chu Chia-hsun.]

On the side of the protesters, people were doing stupid things like setting off firecrackers and throwing rotten eggs inside the airport.

On the gangster side (the supporters of Lien Chan, if you really need me to be more clear), they were doing things like throwing water bottles, overturning trash cans, beating up old people, and stabbing others. The guy pictured at the bottom of this article was severely beaten by a bunch of people in black clothes and others wearing shirts that look like the ROC flag on which the KMT loves to jerk off, leaving the victim in a sizeable pool of blood (scroll down to the fifth picture on the page).

A New Party legislator displayed a (supposedly) bloodied forehead that he blamed on "pan-greens," but Huang Kuang-chin -- who was at the scene -- said on Wang Pen-hu's TV show tonight that he must have been hit by something thrown by his own side because the protesters weren't even inside at that time.

According to this evening's news reports, 3,500 police were on hand for the feast of blood, but not a single arrest was made, despite many of the beatings being captured both by news cameras and personal video cameras.

Maybe the sun'll come out tomorrow...

UPDATE: The word I couldn't read clearly was actually "sha" which means "to kill, execute, put to death," and the writing was vertical, so it should be read from right to left (though that's not always the case). Therefore, the translation should've read: "Kill Lien Chan, save Taiwan" (at least, according to the Liberty Times). Although I don't support the "kill[ing]" part of this statement at all, I should remind readers that Lien himself said last November of Chen Shui-bian that "Anybody can kill him,"and that People First Party legislator Thomas Lee said last April that people should "shoot President Chen dead" if they run into him. Remember, those are politicians talking, but that other guy is still an asshole and an idiot.

I must admit that the reason I haven't written anything for the past three weeks is that I really don't know what to think. It's time for all this damned silence to end.

Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party has been virtually silent on the matter since KMT vice-chairman P.K. Chiang (Chiang Pin-kun) returned from his trip to China. The trip came on the heels of China's passage of an "anti-secession" law (a misnomer, since Taiwan has never been a part of the People's Republic of China, but that's their official translation) and at the same time that a million or so people were taking to the streets of Taiwan's capital, Taipei, in protest of China's law which threatened to use "non-peaceful means" to take over Taiwan.

Now, KMT chairman Lien Chan, the crybaby sore loser of last year's presidential election in Taiwan, is getting ready to go to China this Tuesday for a meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao. Lien's crybaby sore loser running mate James Soong is also scheduled to separately visit China sometime in May.

WTF?! The people of Taiwan spoke loudly and clearly on March 26, 2005, but the DPP failed to counter the spin on the attendance figures. The main blogs set up to promote the rally died either that day or the very next. No pictures, personal stories, news coverage of the event, letters to the editor... nothing.

We did our part, now do yours!
The DPP needs to say loudly and clearly -- not just to the people of Taiwan, but especially to the international community -- exactly what the laws are regarding such visits and what the consequences will be if anybody breaks them!

Unfortunately, the comments that are coming out of the DPP government regarding these visits to China are so weak they make me want to vomit. Are they afraid that if they simply enforce the law in order to protect Taiwan's sovereignty that people will equate this with the martial law of the KMT regime?

The least I can do
While I won't be able to make it to the airport on Tuesday to protest Lien Chan's trip, I offer these images for anyone who can be there to hold up and taunt Lien with:

     

It would be nice to get these images in front of the TV cameras for both domestic and international audiences.

Go back whence you came!

KMT vice-chairman Chiang Pin-kun returned from China Friday night and was met at the airport by throngs of protesters screaming that he had "sold out Taiwan."

Contrast this fact with Xinhua's interpretation that things went "smoothly." The opening sentence of the article is a whole mess of lies:

The Kuomintang (KMT) delegation has completed all its tasks for the mainland journey, smoothly, said KMT Vice President Chiang Pin-kung at the airport, when he and other members of the delegation arrived at the Taoyuan International Airport, in Taipei, Friday evening.

Actually, things were not going very "smoothly" for the KMT Friday night. (Even the China Post mentions the protesters amidst its own lies.)

What's in a name?
Just as people do with airports whose locations are outside of the metropolitan areas after which they're named, most Taiwanese will say that the airport is in "Taipei," when it's actually in Taoyuan -- but not when mentioning the correct location in the same sentence.

Why does Xinhua do it here? It's probably because the real name of the airport is the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport.

Having illegally signed a "10-point consensus" with Chinese officials, those involved in this incident may now be facing criminal charges. We'll have to wait and see if the Chen Shui-bian government deals with this situation in a quick and appropriate manner.

Legal, Sméagol
Despite the fact that the preciousssss "consensus" will not have a legal basis in Taiwan, too much news coverage of the trip (especially from China, but even in Taiwan) falsely gives the impression that the KMT -- and China -- are doing something "good." [Here's an ugly example under two equally bad headlines.] Every news report that fails to mention this in the context of the March 26, 2005 Rally for Democracy, Peace, and the Protection of Taiwan fails to tell a huge part of the story.

The British Guardian Unlimited is fortunately one of the ones that gets it:

Applying the old adage "my enemy's enemy is my friend", Beijing's attempt to forge closer relations with the opposition Kuomintang party appears to be aimed at weakening the position of the Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian.

The only reason Taiwan's media doesn't get it is that they're owned and controlled by the pan-blues.

Going back to the China Post article above, let's take a look at some of the pan-blue media collaboration:

[A]n opinion poll by Taiwan's private ERA cable news network found 52 percent of 987 respondents believed the KMT visit had helped to soothe tensions.

Only 36 percent thought the trip was unhelpful, according to the survey.

"Private" like FoxNews. Ha! The pan-blues have infamously quoted a survey done by Era News as "evidence" that President Chen Shui-bian staged the election-eve assassination attempt on himself and V-P Annette Lu and that this was the key to winning the election. (See "Shooting down 'Bulletgate'" links in the sidebar for more on that subject.)

Lest we forget this
I also wonder if those who support the KMT's activities recall that in the old days, their constant motto was "You can never believe what China says." Look at them now, all lovey-dovey.

Look who else is "welcome"
Xinhua has also reported that People First Party chairman and crybaby sore loser vice-presidential candidate James Soong "is welcome to visit the mainland at a proper time." I'll tell ya what -- he's already not welcome here. If he goes to China, he won't like the kind of reception he'll get upon his return. Feh!