Chen-Ma meeting provides excellent vista

Thursday's Taipei Times reports that according to Taiwan's representative to the US, David Lee, the US is "happy" with the April 3, 2006 meeting between President Chen Shui-bian and KMT chairman and Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou. I, too, am happy about it -- mostly about the clarity that resulted from what each side said.

Ma brought up Chen's "five noes" several times, giving Chen the chance to finally say out loud that which I have been reminding readers of on many occasions recently: that the promises within his "five noes" were based on the condition that China not militarily threaten Taiwan. Chen reminded Ma of the increasing number of missiles and of the "anti-secession" law (which "legislates" the arbitrary use of "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan).

Ma, on the other hand, unwittingly made it clear that his and the KMT's position is based on lies, lies, and more lies. By continuing to use a long-dried-out, recently-detached dingleberry (the so-called "1992 consensus") which was barehandedly retrieved from a 5-ton pile of horseshit as a basis for treating the DPP as a "major enemy" and China as a "minor enemy," he demonstrated a clear disregard for the simple truth.

KMT con artist Su Chi admitted just this February that he made up the term "1992 consensus."

During the Chen-Ma meeting, Ma made a really stupid analogy. He said that at the time of the Formosa Incident* (during which current V-P Annette Lu was arrested while demonstrating for democracy and human rights), no one called it that. It wasn't until much later, he stretched, that it was given this name. Therefore, he spun, the "1992 consensus" does exist.

If that's true, then I'm Ma Ying-jeou's grandmother!

Black is white, up is down
Hmmmm. Let's examine the ill logic in play here.

Abraham Lincoln is credited with asking a question that goes something like this: "If you call a dog's tail a 'leg,' how many legs does a dog have? If you answer 'five,' that's wrong, because simply calling a tail a 'leg' doesn't make it so."

By Ma's logic, even the "Formosa Incident" might as well be called the "1979 consensus" between the KMT and the (then-inchoate) DPP, right?

Let's examine the simple definition of "consensus":

An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole

By this definition, we could say there is a consensus that most dogs have four legs.

Ma defines the imaginary "1992 consensus" as "一中各表" (yi1 zhong1 ge4 biao3), or "one China, with each side having its own interpretation." Ma's and the KMT's interpretation is that this "one China" is the "Republic of China" (ROC), which -- by their reality-defying definition -- includes Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Tibet and even Outer Mongolia. China's interpretation (y'know, China?) is that "one China" is the "People's Repulic of China" (PRC), which they mendaciously insist includes Taiwan.

Here's my definition of ge4 biao3:

A condition that occurs when one side says that the tail is a "leg" ("Schrödinger's/My dog has 5 legs!") and the other says that the legs are "tails" ("No! Schrödinger's/My dog has 5 tails!"); the exact opposite of a "consensus"

Remind the KMT of this enough times, and their heads will explode.

胡說 [Hu2 shuo1]**
The KMT said it was "insincere" of President Chen to suggest during the meeting with Chair-Mayor Ma that Lien Chan ask Chinese president Hu Jintao to admit to the existence of yi1 zhong1 ge4 biao3. The reason Chen could do so -- and do it confidently -- is that he knows that Hu surely won't admit to any such thing. He can't.

Far from being "insincere," all Chen wants to do is to clearly destroy the notion of any such "consensus" ever having existed, and I think it was perfectly reasonable for him to make such a suggestion. In fact, if he hadn't done so, I would have been quite disappointed.

Boo-hoo!
It's no wonder that the KMT are calling the Chen-Ma meeting "counterproductive" and saying that the DPP needs to "solve its internal conflicts" before they'll have another such meeting. They lost face big time and slipped farther down the slippery slope of their own making. All they can do is try to distract us from the truth.

Don't let them get away with it. See through their lies, spread the truth, and vote them out of office so Taiwan's democracy can move forward instead of backward, as it certainly will if they regain the presidency in 2008.

* The Formosa Incident started out as a peaceful demonstration, but violence was instigated by KMT infiltrators.
** 胡說 is Chinese for both "Hu says" and "bullshit"

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Yuán lái roots: Taiwan, China, People's Republic of China, PRC, Republic of China, ROC, one-China principle, Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou, Kuomintang, KMT, "1992 consensus"