... and place a thumb or two on the scales of justice

When people talk about "blind justice," I don't think this is what they mean:

No indictment over Nov. 4 fracas

VOLUNTARY: Prosecutors have concluded that a clerk at Sunrise Records turned down the music and pulled down the shutter during protests against Chen Yunlin

[...]

Prosecutors said they would not indict a police chief who was accused of forcibly closing a record store during protests surrounding the visit of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last year.

Former Beitou Precinct chief Lee Han-ching (李漢卿), who was in charge when police closed the Sunrise Record store, had been accused of forcibly entering and conducting a search of the store without a warrant.

Chief Prosecutor Huang Mo-hsin (黃謀信) of the Taipei District Court said an investigation had established that a sales clerk at the store had voluntarily turned down the music and pulled down the shutter after being asked to do so by police.

Prosecutors quoted Lee as saying that he went into the record store to ask if the music was coming from there, not to search the place. A young clerk then turned the volume down and, when he saw the crowd and police shoving each other, began to close the store's front roller shutter.

Lee said someone yelled that he was about to be crushed under the gate, whereupon police officers tried to push the gate back up.

Contrasting with what prosecutors and police are claiming, in early November 2008, Sunrise Records issued a public statement saying that it was the police that wanted the door closed -- not the people working there.

Watching the above video, tell me if you can't plainly see the things that prosecutors apparently cannot (pay close attention around the 0:37 and 1:33 marks):


2:14 YouTube video: "Martial Law Resurrected?"
Note that Lee enters the store (0:37) with 3 or 4 other officers, that there are several more right outside the door, and that dozens more are outside on the sidewalk. (That's just counting the ones visible in this video.) After Lee and the other officers entered the store, can anything that happened inside really be considered "voluntary"? Recall Sunshine Records' statement on the matter.

Furthermore, what do you see at the 1:37 mark? The police are pulling the door down! Why can't the prosecutors see that?

And if Lee had to go into the store "to ask if the music was coming from there," he must have some serious sensory difficulties.

As Claudia Jean reminds readers, Lee was promoted -- and the promotion took place before the end of November 2008, when a so-called "investigation" would barely have had the chance to even get off the ground.

More video
Here's the same incident from a different angle:


8:44 BlipTV video: 上揚唱片行: 警察砸店
Translation: Sunrise Records: Police ransack store
In the above video, the police enter the store around 0:33, and the music continues until about 0:51 or so. Seconds later, the police are violently pushing people who were previously dancing and singing.

"Voluntary," my ass. This is pure police and prosecutorial arrogance!

UPDATE: The Monday, May 4, 2009 edition of the Taipei Times has an editorial cartoon which hits the nail on the head (pun intended) on this topic.[/update]

---

Maracas for the fracas: Taiwan, 台灣, Taipei City, 台北市, Lee Han-ching, 李漢卿, violence, 暴力

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: Lee Han-ching, Taipei City, Taiwan, violence, 台北市, 台灣, 暴力, 李漢卿

Dueling headlines

Note the headline of a front-page article in today's Taipei Times:

DPP chief slams cross-strait talks as failure

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday that Sunday's round of cross-strait talks were a failure that made concessions on sovereignty but did not help Taiwanese businesses.

Tsai said the failure of the talks was inevitable given President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) "mindset."

She said the Ma government made four mistakes: It made concessions on sovereignty before the talks; it relied too much on China's goodwill and the Chinese economy; it avoided consultation with or supervision from the legislature and opposition parties; and it had no way of ensuring that national security officials and the government's negotiators had no conflict of interest.

Tsai said Ma had made a comment supporting Chinese President Hu Jintao's (胡錦濤) speech marking the 30th anniversary of Beijing's "open letter to Taiwanese compatriots," which highlighted the "one China" principle, and which was a concession on sovereignty.

The government also gave up negotiations on the "fifth freedom of the air," essentially implying that cross-strait flights are domestic flights, she said.

Compare that with the front-page headline of yesterday's China Post


I don't think that "success" means the same thing
to the China Post that it does to others
(Click to enlarge)

SUCCESS IN NANJING

[...]

P.K. Chiang, chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), signed the agreements on financial cooperation, regular flights across the Taiwan Strait, and joint efforts to fight crime with his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin at the former capital of the Republic of China in the afternoon. Chen, chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), spoke before the signing, pledging more foreign direct investment in Taiwan and welcoming Taiwan entrepreneurs to invest in China.

SEF and ARATS are quasi-governmental organizations charged with the conduct of relations between the two sides of the strait.

They met for the third time since President Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated in May of last year, easing the tensions across the strait, while his predecessor Chen Shui-bian carried on his policy of creeping independence for Taiwan.

The China Post, you may notice, does one decent thing by putting P.K. Chiang and Chen Yunlin on equal footing. On the other hand, however, they both ignore the real problems pointed out by Tsai Ing-wen, and they conjure up imaginary ones such as "creeping independence."

Home field advantage
Considering that this took place in the old ROC capital -- on China's turf -- where official Chinese media referred to Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) as "President" of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) while Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤, AKA P.K. Chiang) was called the "Chairman" of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) (hardly on "equal footing"), I'd agree with both headlines. It's "success" for those on China's side but yet another failure for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in their dealings with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Debase? How low can you go?
For the DPP, it's obvious that they wouldn't budge on whatever the status quo was at the time and that they'd never give an inch when it came to Taiwan's sovereignty. However, what I see for the KMT's own "bottom line" is that they have no bottom line.

Fool me once, shame on you. But the shameless KMT will let the CCP fool them as many times as it takes for Taiwan to be annexed.

---

Kneel-son ratings: Taiwan, 台灣, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT, 國民黨, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Chiang Pin-kung, 江丙坤, P.K. Chiang, Straits Exchange Foundation, 海峽交流基金會, Chen Yunlin, 陳雲林>, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, 海峽兩岸關係協會, Chinese Communist Party, 中國共產黨, China Post, 英文中國郵報

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: Chen Yunlin, Chiang Pin-kung, China Post, Chinese Communist Party, KMT, Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan, 中國共產黨, 台灣, 國民黨, 江丙坤, 英文中國郵報, 陳雲林, 馬英九

Jumping-off-a-CliffsNotes

Here's the actual Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) quote [translation mine]:

「全世界沒有總統像我這麼辛苦的。」

"I'm the hardest-working president in the whole world."

... which is why he ran only half of a 10-K race last week.

Replace "hardworking" with "conceited," and I'd believe it.

---

Riddles wrapped in mysteries inside of enigmata: Taiwan, 台灣, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan, 台灣, 馬英九

Fact vs. fiction


KMT shoots DPP, DPP throws pebble, KMT cries 'Party of violence'
(Taipei Times editorial cartoon, click for original page)
If it weren't so serious, it would be laughable that someone from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) -- the party responsible for the 228 Massacre of 1947, the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979, four decades of martial law and White Terror on both sides of the Taiwan Strait (resulting in the deaths of millions, yet party members still venerate Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石]), rioting and crashing campaign trucks into courthouse gates and breaking into Central Election Commission headquarters when they lose elections, and so much more -- is calling the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a "party of violence" (暴力政黨), but that's exactly what they've done yet again.

Before I get to this latest instance, take a look at just a sampling of the behavior of the KMT, and try to keep in mind that they're accusing the other party of being "violent":


2:04 YouTube video: "換掉"
Loose translation: Time for change
On Wednesday, April 22, 2009, female DPP legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) slapped KMT legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) in the face after he provokingly called her a "shrew" (pōfù, 潑婦) in the legislature at least 11 times. Lee also accused Chiu of "lacking a proper upbringing" (沒家教).


2:42 YouTube video: "美國人的哥哥李慶華罵邱議瑩沒家教-民視新聞 20090422"
Translation: Lee Ching-hua, brother of American (Diane Lee), berates
Chiu Yi-ying as "lacking a proper upbringing" - FTV News, April 22, 2009
When Lee continued to insult Chiu, she went back and grabbed him by the collar, sarcastically shouting, "Just keep it up!" before she was pulled away by other legislators.

Throughout the day, Lee repeated the phrase "party of violence" over and over.

Later, the ever-redshirt-wearing Lee held a press conference along with other KMT legislators, where he repeated himself some more -- Mao Zedong-like (毛澤東) -- as if doing so would magically turn his lie into "the truth" when he said it for the hundredth time (while pointing to an anonymous quote in the blue media).

Holding up another mirror for the KMT
One of the legislators who accompanied Lee at this press conference was Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who said (with a large dose of racist invective) that "violence is in the DPP's DNA." Ironically, while she accuses others of being violent (and the KMT frequently accuses the DPP of being "ethnically divisive"), she can be seen in this video striking two police officers:


1:00 YouTube video: "Cop-hitter Hung Hsiu-chu says "violence is in the DPP's DNA""
The footage of Hung's violence which I used in the above video was excerpted from this one:


0:40 YouTube video: "taiwan豈有此理!洪秀柱打警察未被以現行犯逮捕!"
Translation: Taiwan ridiculousness! Hung Hsiu-chu caught red-handed hitting police, not arrested!
Lee even went to the courthouse with media in tow to press the button in order to initiate a lawsuit against Chiu. It seems like a good time to remind readers of what former president of the Executive Yuan, Hsu Shui-teh (KMT), once said: "The courts belong to us." ("法院是我們家[國民黨]開的.")

Party of violence, indeed! The KMT most certainly and demonstrably is a party of violence!

And, by the way, self-defense is not violence.

---

Weapons amass distraction: Taiwan, 台灣, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT, 國民黨, Lee Ching-hua, 李慶華, Chiu Yi-ying, 邱議瑩, violence, 暴力, martial law, 戒嚴, White Terror, 白色恐怖, 228 Massacre, 二二八大屠殺, Hung Hsiu-chu, 洪秀柱, irony, 嘲諷的話, Chiang Kai-shek, 蔣介石, CKS, 蔣中正, Chiang Ching-kuo, 蔣經國, CCK

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: Chiu Yi-ying, Hung Hsiu-chu, irony, KMT, Lee Ching-hua, Taiwan, violence, 台灣, 嘲諷的話, 國民黨, 暴力, 李慶華, 洪秀柱, 邱議瑩

It's no fun bein' an illegal alien

This story about Chinese tourists being sent back to China yesterday because they didn't have proper permits to enter Taiwan wouldn't have been so special if it hadn't been for the two groups of Chinese tourists without entry permits that were allowed entry last week.

A serious question to ask is how the hell any of these people were even allowed to board planes headed for Taiwan. Could it be yet another "test" of how far the Chinese can go in treating Taiwan as "domestic"?

Second thread
What do you think the cover story was on the two pro-blue newspapers I saw today? Take a look at what had no business being headlines:

* China Post: What's wrong with Wang?

* United Daily News (聯合報): 建仔3連敗 恐跳過先發
[Maddog translation: Wang Chien-ming loses 3 in a row, afraid he'll be benched]


What does UDN want to distract you with today?
(Click to enlarge)

Well, at least they weren't writing about their favorite subject, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

---

Entrenched entendres: Taiwan, 台灣, deep thoughts, 深思, United Daily News, 聯合報, UDN, China Post, 英文中國郵報

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: China Post, deep thoughts, Taiwan, UDN, United Daily News, 台灣, 深思, 聯合報, 英文中國郵報

The video

On Thursday, Michael Turton (The View from Taiwan) had an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled "The Culture of Taiwan: President Ma Ying-jeou's symbolic gestures matter." After being translated on SocialForce.net (與媒體對抗), it was picked up by Talking Show (大話新聞) -- Taiwan's most popular political talk show.


10:19 YouTube video: "09-04/010大話新聞 (DaHwa News) 12/12"
ERRATA: Note that Michael is a National Cheng Kung University Ph.D. student -- not an "NCKU professor," as the show describes him. [/errata]

Be sure to check out the fifty-centers (五毛黨員) in the comments section of the WSJ article.

---

Pixels: Taiwan, 台灣, Michael Turton, 麥哲恩, Wall Street Journal, 華爾街日報, SocialForce.net, 與媒體對抗, Talking Show, 大話新聞

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: Michael Turton, SocialForce.net, Taiwan, Talking Show, Wall Street Journal, 台灣, 大話新聞, 與媒體對抗, 華爾街日報, 麥哲恩

Black is white, part too-many-to-count

Remember Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) "three noes"? They were: "No unification (不統), no independence (不獨), and no war (不武, sometimes translated as 'no use of force')." Ma even said that there would be "no unification" in his lifetime, but as far as I can tell, Ma is still alive, and things are moving rapidly in that direction nonetheless.

Today's news is telling us that visits to China won't be considered "going abroad," and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials are shamelessly trying to shift blame to the DPP for their own dirty tricks! (Watch the video at the previous link.)


The Ma Ying-jeou government is betraying Taiwan yet again
Translation of highlighted text:
Visiting the mainland [sic] area...
(Announcement)
... does not count as "going abroad"
(Talking Show [大話新聞] screenshot)
(Click to enlarge)
Ma sounds just like Big Brother in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.


Ma Ying-jeou IS Big Brother
(Click to enlarge)
Take a look at those famous lines from Nineteen Eighty-Four: WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Ma has been in office for less than a year, but look at what he is actually doing to Taiwan as compared with his empty words. (As usual, hover your cursor over the links for more info.)

CALLING TAIWAN "TAIWAN PROVINCE"	IS	"NO UNIFICATION" (不統)?!
DESTROYING TAIWAN'S EXISTING INDEPENDENCE	IS	"NO (DECLARATION OF) INDEPENDENCE" (不獨)
SURRENDERING TO THE PRC	IS	"NO WAR" (不武)?!

If your eyes are open, this is what you'll see: Calling Taiwan a "province" is unification. Destroying Taiwan's existing independence is not the same as merely "not declaring independence" -- even Ma's predecessor, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), didn't come close to declaring independence! But if you can't even speak up for your own sovereignty, the other guys have killed you without even firing their weapons! Whose side is Ma on, anyway?

People of Taiwan: how long will you stand for Ma's Newspeak?!


"Ma Ying-jeou course on political terminology"
An editorial cartoon from the April 16, 2004 edition of the Taipei Times

---

Winston Smiths: Taiwan, 台灣, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Taiwan Independence, 台灣獨立

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan, Taiwan Independence, 台灣, 台灣獨立, 馬英九

Ten years for one building?

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says his government will build a whole new town "in 24 to 28 months" for the survivors of Monday's earthquake in the town of L'Aquila.

But almost 10 years (already 114 months) after Taiwan's 921 Earthquake which destroyed only one building in Taipei City (approximately 150 kilometers north-northeast of the quake's epicenter), then-mayor/current-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) still hasn't finished rebuilding that one building.

I don't think Berlusconi will meet that target, but I bet it will still happen long before Ma finishes.

Can you prove me wrong, Mr. Ma?!

---

The answer is "42," but what was the question again?: Taiwan, 台灣, deep thoughts, 深思, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Tunghsing Building, 東星大樓, 921 Earthquake, 921大地震

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: 921 Earthquake, 921大地震, deep thoughts, Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan, Tunghsing Building, 台灣, 東星大樓, 深思, 馬英九