Thursday, June 20, 2002

Send in the Weekly Standard

Send in the Weekly Standard
The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
Bevin Chu
June 20, 2002

Dear Mr. Sunderland,

Thanks for your dead on piece exposing the Weekly Standard's pusillanimous laptop bombardiers for what they are. These pathetic excuses for human beings brim over with macho posturing about unchallenged US military supremacy, but scuttle for cover like cockroaches when asked to pay a personal price for maintaining the same Benevolent Global Hegemony they themselves so stridently and self-righteously demand.

These Profiles in Courage are only too aware that rather than return from the front line physically intact like the invincible and invulnerable "action figures" portrayed by Sly and Ah-nuld, it is far more likely they would return with essential parts of their bodies missing, like wheelchair bound Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, as portrayed by Tom Cruise in "Born of the Fourth of July," assuming they haven't already returned home in body bags.

A person of integrity aware of the price tag attached to his "Walter Mitty plays John Rambo" fantasy would choose one of two alternatives. One, volunteer for combat. Two, champion world peace. Not these chicken hawks. They would deliberately and knowingly foist the personal cost of their dreams of military glory onto hapless strangers. Hell has no rung low enough or hot enough for their sort.

Sincerely,

Bevin Chu
Taipei, Taiwan, China

See:
Send in the Weekly Standard. The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps

Sunday, June 09, 2002

Backtalk! Defending Taiwan's 'Democracy'

Backtalk! Defending Taiwan's 'Democracy'
June 09, 2002


From Anonymous, regarding the Strait Scoop
June 09, 2002

Great job on that exposé of the current political situation in Taiwan!

A couple of things that you could have emphasized a bit more:

Remember A-bian said he would get to the bottom of the Yin Ching-feng murder case, even if it meant, "shaking the foundations of the nation."

Well, that rhetoric died out pretty quickly. Let's examine why. If one of the mainlander Generals, like General Hau, had been involved, you can rest assured that the case would have been pursued to the end. In fact, Lee Teng-hui's running dogs did try to smear General Hau with that filthy rag, by implying that he was involved in the kickbacks on the Lafayette-class frigate sales.

So why has the case now gone into a black hole? My guess is that Li Ao is correct: Lee Teng-hui had Captain Yin killed by the Security Bureau in order to shut him up (permanently) about the LaFayette frigate kickbacks.

Then, the Security Bureau chief died in the sauna of the China Hotel Yang Ming Shan. With the modern drugs available to the spy boys, it should have been no problem to conveniently arrange a heart attack or stroke for their own boss.

Li Ao was saying this long ago, even before A-bian was elected, and I doubt that he would have made such charges with no evidence whatsoever.

This brings us back to the connection with the fund.

If the DPP government is interested in cleaning up "black gold" politics, they should certainly want all government operations done in accordance with law. Of course, they are now obstructing an investigation of the fund.

If the fund was only used to buy Eugene Chien a $2,000 suit (de minimus) and pay off Mandela's thugs $10,000,000 (foreign relations necessity), what's the big deal?

The kicker here is that a thorough investigation of the fund might show that A-bian's campaign was funded in large part by ROC government money funneled to him by Lee Teng-hui. This would have been clearly illegal, and no one, certainly not A-bian, could claim plausible deniability in this case. Thus, the sleaze bags in the DPP and TSU are now obstructing the investigation.

I would add here that you are 100% correct: the DPP and TSU are quite corrupted and are only interested in power and the money power gains.

Listen to their representatives discussing politics, and you will immediately see that there is no such thing as political principles or ideals, but rather factional coalitions to gain and retain power. As you so well pointed out, the case of Christine Shih is a prime example. No one pays $1,000,000 to a campaign in Taiwan (or anywhere else) unless they expect to gain substantially more money from the "democratic process."

How did some of these people, like A-bian and Lee Teng-hui, rise to the ranks of power and money as they did, in the first place?

Maybe this fund is the key to connecting a whole bunch of dots, and that is why it will stay in that black hole maintained by the DPP and TSU -- in collaboration with the US government?

Bevin Chu replies:

"Anonymous," whom I know lives in Taipei like me, is dead on the mark. Limited time discourages me from sharing all the sleazy goings-on within "Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" with readers. Ordinary Americans don't know the half of it. Only by living here long term can one learn the truth. Bopping in for a week or two like Mike Chinoy just doesn't cut it.

Perhaps most discouraging to the Don Quixotes and Sancho Panzas among us is knowing full well the American public will never learn the truth by reading most of the articles posted so prominently on the web by our establishment media.

It's truly amazing how these "professional journalists" who can't or won't report the real story are richly compensated for not doing their jobs. Meanwhile the real reporting is being performed by unpaid volunteers at alternative online sources such as emperors-clothes.com. What a world we live in.