The Neocon Chicken Hawk
Profiles in Courage
Bevin Chu
August 01, 2002
Executive Summary: Professional soldiers who goad civilian leaders into wars of foreign adventurism are guilty of bringing death and destruction upon the nation they swore to protect. Compared to their civilian counterparts however, they are paragons of virtue. The professional soldier, the combat veteran at least, is a man of uncommon valour willing to sacrifice his life defending his beliefs. The same cannot be said of the Neocon Chicken Hawk, who shrilly demands "War!" even as he evades military service in the very wars he demanded and got. The Neocon Chicken Hawk will not be found on distant battlefields engaged in combat against the "Axis of Evil." He will be found at Washington insider cocktail parties, engaged in witty repartee with fellow laptop bombardiers, while Americans less privileged fight the Chicken Hawk's wars and die the Chicken Hawk's death. The Neocon Chicken Hawk, a warmongering draft-dodger, is the living embodiment of Hypocrisy.
Hollywood War Hawks: Art Imitates Life
"Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conflict, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It is, indeed, a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. [It] is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West: Book IV, 1896
Hollywood often depicts the Pentagon's brass hats as rabid warmongers, variations on the mentally deranged General Jack D. Ripper portrayed by Sterling Hayden in Stanley Kubrick's antiwar classic "Dr. Strangelove" (1964, directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Peter George, Terry Southern). Such negative depictions, while obviously hyperbole, are not entirely without factual basis.
Movie characters based on real life individuals are usually too bland, too lackluster to be brought to the silver screen straight, without dramatic embellishment. But not always. In his Academy Award winning film "Patton" (1970, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, written by Ladislas Farago and Omar N. Bradley) director Franklin Shaffner was actually compelled to tone down the shrill militancy of real life warmonger General George S. Patton. The "Ripley's Believe it or Not" reality of Patton the Man turned out to be too real for Patton the Movie Character. As Patton biographer Charles Province put it, "[Actor George C.] Scott's rendition of the speech was highly sanitized so as not to offend too many fainthearted Americans."
Nor was Patton the first. Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt, Hero of San Juan Hill, icon of the Neoconservative Chicken Hawks, led a similar life whose truth was stranger than fiction. For Brian Keith's brilliant, engaging portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt, see John Milius' rip-roaring, vastly entertaining romantic adventure film, "The Wind and the Lion" (1975, written and directed by John Milius). For the ugly reality of Teddy Roosevelt's "Fascism with American Characteristics" on the other hand, see "Roosevelt's Portrait of Roosevelt," and read TR's own words in "Theodore Roosevelt Quotations, The Winning of the West." Rest assured it is not a perspective Thomas Jefferson, who championed the property rights of the American Indian would have endorsed.
See:
The Famous Patton Speech
Roosevelt's Portrait of Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt and The Winning of the West
Blessed are the Warriors
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we would get too fond of it."
-- Robert E. Lee
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
But soldiers are people too, as complex and as varied as the rest of us. Unregenerate War Hawks such as Teddy Roosevelt and George Patton tell only one side of the story. Professional soldiers know better than most that "War is Hell" and often end their careers as dedicated peacemakers. Professional soldiers have immense wisdom to impart their civilian leaders, if only they would listen. When I say "Blessed are the Warriors," I am not being ironic. The wisdom of "warriors turned peacemakers" was acquired the hard way, the most costly way imaginable. We who love America owe it to ourselves to heed their wise counsel at this watershed moment in our nation's history.
Former Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, hero of the Spanish-American War, two time recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, would eventually defy the establishment he had served so ably to expose the ugly truth: War is a racket, waged for the benefit of Washington power brokers and their wealthy cronies. Raised as a Quaker, the prodigal son turned warrior would return to his cultural and spiritual roots to reaffirm the virtues of peace.
Former Five Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower, victorious Supreme Allied Commander of Allied Forces in WWII, upon leaving the White House at the onset of the Cold War, would warn prophetically of the invisible but real threat posed by the "Military-Industrial Complex."
Former Four Star General Colin Powell, Vietnam War combat veteran, hero of Desert Storm, author of the Powell Doctrine, would solemnly warn America's civilian leadership not to intervene in international conflicts unless America had vital interests and realistic goals, not to deplete America's limited resources intervening anywhere and everywhere, because America is not the world's policeman, nor should it attempt to be. As a furious Powell once lashed back at Madeleine Albright, "American GIs are not toy soldiers to be moved around on some global game board."
Ron Kovic and Oliver Stone were the author and director of the Academy Award winning 1989 antiwar film, "Born on the Fourth of July." Kovic and Stone were gung-ho Marines who enlisted in the corps of their own volition. Kovic dreamed of being another Audi Murphy. Stone quit Yale to go to Vietnam when Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton were scrambling for college deferments. Kovic and Stone were so thoroughly disillusioned by the ugly reality of war in general and the Vietnam War in particular, they would become dedicated, high-profile antiwar activists.
See:
Smedley Butler on Interventionism
Observer | Reluctant warrior
The Patriot Hawk: The Patriot Dove
The Neocon Chicken Hawk: White Collar Rambo Wannabe
In America today a curious paradox prevails. The peacemakers are soldiers, while the warmongers are civilians. The peacemakers wear military uniforms, while the warmongers wear business suits. The peacemakers' offices are located along the labyrinthine rings of the Department of Defense in Arlington, Virginia, while the warmongers' offices are located along the corridors of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Project for the New American Century, and media publications such as the The New Republic, the Washington Times, and the Weekly Standard.
What are some of the distinguishing characteristics of the civilian warmongers, predominantly Neoconservatives or "Neocons," who inhabit these NGOs and media organizations?
How about craven cowardice, rank hypocrisy, and an utter lack of integrity?
First these Neocon Chicken Hawks insist the wars they demand be fought are vital to "America's long term strategic security." They imply that anyone who suggests otherwise, who doesn't fall in line and get with the program, is at best myopic, at worst chicken-hearted, lily-livered, treasonous.
These same Neocon Chicken Hawks then exert every influence, call in every favor, pull every string to avoid combat duty in the very same wars they so loudly and shrilly insisted were absolutely essential, hence unpatriotic not to fight.
One can only imagine how these Neocon Chicken Hawks reconcile their strident warmongering with their resolute draft-dodging. Perhaps they think if nobody calls attention to the yawning chasm between what they say and what they do, nobody will notice. Sad to say, they're probably right. But what about at 3:00 AM? Do their consciences nag at them? Do they hold their pillows over their ears? What can one say about such people, really? The sheer chutzpah of their undisguised hypocrisy leaves one speechless with incredulity.
Who are Neocon Chicken Hawks to find Vietnam combat vet Colin Powell lacking? They are among the least qualified people on planet earth to cast aspersions on Colin Powell's courage or determination. Whatever one thinks of Colin Powell, he was there, in the rice paddies, among the landmines, among the punji sticks. The Neocon Chicken Hawks were not.
Frankly, Neocon Chicken Hawks don't even rank next to Adolph Hitler. No discussion of warmongers would be complete without mentioning Adolph Hitler. Adolph Hitler was a monster. Adolph Hitler was the personification of evil. But Adolph Hitler was also a highly decorated WW I combat veteran wounded in battle, the recipient of six combat medals, including Germany's highest military honor, the Iron Cross. Whatever else he was, Adolph Hitler was no REMF. Adolph Hitler was no civilian Chicken Hawk. Adolph Hitler was at least willing to risk his life on the battlefield fighting for his beliefs.
The same was true of Hitler's closest and most trusted henchmen. Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Hess served in the Wehrmacht, and Hermann Goering served in the Luftwaffe during Woodrow Wilson's "War to end all wars," the "War to make the make the world safe for democracy." Joseph Goebbels did not evade military service, but was frustrated in his attempt to enlist in the Wehrmacht by a physical handicap, his club foot.
Can the same be said of draft-dodging warmongers George AWOL Bush Jr. and Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney, of "National Greatness Conservatives" William Kristol and David Brooks?
One synonym for integrity is "oneness," oneness between what one says and what one does. To the extent such oneness equals integrity, then Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolph Hess, Hermann Goering, even Joseph Goebbels had more oneness, more integrity than the average Necon Chicken Hawk.
Ridley Scott's retro epic "Gladiator" (2000, directed by Ridley Scott, written by David H. Franzoni) inspired political analysts to revisit analogies of post Cold War America with Imperial Rome.
If America today is the Roman Empire Redux, then Colin Powell is the American counterpart of the war weary Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridus, who dreamed only of returning to his rustic farm in the Spanish countryside to live out his remaining years in peace, while Dubya, aka King George III, is the American counterpart of the pusillanimous, power mad Emperor Commodus, whose combat skills were limited to political infighting in the imperial capitol, far from the frontier. Bush Senior despite being a bona fide hero of WW II, doesn't quite make it as Marcus Aurelius. In contrast to the wise old Emperor who realized his son "Commodus is not a moral man" and attempted to thwart his succession to the throne, the elder Bush knowingly foisted his idiot son upon the American people.
See:
Send in the Weekly Standard. The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
The Warrior Class, Bill Kristol and the National Greatness crowd would love to have a war
Hypocritical, Cowardly Chicken-Hawk Armchair Generals
Ex-Clinton official slams Bush and Cheney war records
Hitler in World War One
Nazi Leaders
The American Way vs. the Neocon Chicken Hawk Way
Neocon Chicken Hawks drape themselves in the American flag and declare their undying devotion to the American Way. But what is the American Way? Is the American Way really what Neocon Chicken Hawks are peddling to the American people? As Christian conservative James Nuechterlein astutely notes in his article "Conservative Confusions,"
"Take, for starters, the curious linking of Roosevelt and Reagan, a linking as habitually indulged in by McCain as by Kristol and Brooks... Contra the Weekly Standard and its... "national greatness conservatism," [Reagan] did believe that, foreign policy aside, government should "just get out of the way." His conception of national greatness rested on faith in the creative energies of the American people rather than in their government. His favorite Republican presidential predecessor, it should be remembered, was not TR but Calvin Coolidge. And even in foreign policy, his program was not the wholesale interventionism that TR sometimes inclined to and that the Weekly Standard appears to favor."
The American Way is the individualist way, the capitalist way. The American Way is the "I" Way, as in "I must pay for what I want." The American Way is eloquently summed up by the libertarian credo, "TANSTAAFL!" For Neoconservatives who find core American values alien to their nature, the acronym made famous by libertarian SF novelist Robert Heinlein stands for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!"
What is the Neocon Chicken Hawk Way?
The Neocon Chicken Hawk Way is the collectivist way, the socialist way, the "We" Way, as in "We American taxpayers must pay for a post Cold War war making capability greater than that of the ten next most powerful militaries combined, because I want an empire, not a republic." The Neocon Chicken Hawk Way is War Socialism, socialism for the purpose of making war, and as such the diametric opposite of the American Way, which is peaceful capitalism for the purpose of making a buck. The Neocon Chicken Hawk Way is to send other Americans abroad to get their brains splattered by an enemy bullet or their legs vaporized by an enemy land mine, while the civilian Chicken Hawk stays home, posting tough-talking editorials or chest-thumping messages at FreeRepublic.com and WorldNetDaily.com.
A man of integrity, aware of the high price tag attached to his visions of military glory, will do one of two things. One, volunteer for combat. Two, promote international peace. Peacemaking being more morally elevated than warmongering, volunteering for combat is hardly "morally equivalent" to promoting international peace, but it is at least internally consistent and evidence of integrity.
Neocon Chicken Hawks choose neither. They choose instead to foist the human cost of their Walter Mitty day dreams onto hapless strangers. These Profiles in Courage are painfully aware that rather than return from the front line physically intact like the invincible, invulnerable "action figures" portrayed by Sly and Ah-nuld, they would likely return with essential parts of their bodies missing, like wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, assuming they return at all.
The Neocon Chicken Hawk boasts of "Benevolent Global Hegemony" and "The Unipolar Moment," but scuttles for cover like a cockroach when asked personally to maintain the "unparalleled American military supremacy" he so stridently and self-righteously demands. Is this really the meaning of patriotism? Does this really represent the American Way? No? Then the Neocon Chicken Hawk is not an American patriot, and his way is not the American Way.
Francis Ford Coppola's classic gangster saga "The Godfather" (1972, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, written by Mario Puzo) contains an unexpected scene in which the heads of New York's Five Families attempt to pressure Don Corleone to formally authorize heroine dealing. Don Barzini lays out his position:
"If Don Corleone has all the judges and politicians in New York, then he must share them or let others use them. Certainly he can present a bill for such services, we're not Communists, after all... "
If only Neocon chicken hawks had as much respect for the principle that you must pay for what you expect to get as organized crime bosses.
How to Smash the War Racket
"War is a racket... always has been... possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious... the only one international in scope... the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives... Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. We must take the profit out of war. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes."
-- General Smedley Butler, USMC
See:
War is a Racket, Chapter Four, How to Smash this Racket
Someone coming across Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" for the first time might confuse Butler with an anti-capitalist, "Progressive Era" reformer. That would be a mistake. Butler does not object to free and fair competition in the open market place. Butler's righteous anger is directed not at laissez-faire capitalism, but at the corrupt crony capitalism Eisenhower would later identify as the "Military-Industrial Complex." As Butler explains,
"Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying... Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war."
Note the distinctly market-oriented, incentive-based character of Butler's remedy. Butler understood, implicitly if not explicitly, the economic concept known as "moral hazard." Moral hazard is a state of affairs in which the costs of implementing a policy are not born by those benefitting from the policy. Moral hazard guarantees complete and utter irresponsibility, in welfare or warfare, because somebody else is footing the bill or doing the dying.
Moral hazard in welfare guarantees that liberal do-gooders will squander the hard-earned wealth of American taxpayers on countless domestic boondoggles. After all, Ralph Nader isn't going to reach into his own pocket to pay for all those lethal airbags.
Moral hazard in warfare guarantees that Neoconservative Chicken Hawks will squander the precious lives of American soldiers in countless foreign quagmires. After all, William Kristol isn't going to volunteer to take the point while invading Baghdad. Can you picture the white collar Rambos of the Weekly Standard decked out in boonies, toting M-16s? Neither can I.
Butler understood all this. Butler understood that any real solution would have to target and eliminate this defect in the incentive structure.
Neocon Chicken Hawks who would like to make this columnist eat his words, can do so quite readily. Enlist now at the DOD's Joint Service Recruiting page, URL listed below.
See:
United States Department of Defense Joint Service Recruiting
Be sure to request combat duty.
What, no takers?
Then allow me to follow General Butler's lead by offering three provisions of my own.
A Modest Proposal
"Wouldn't it be great if wars could be settled by the assholes who start them?"
-- Kevin Costner, in "The Postman" (1997, directed by Kevin Costner, written by David Brin, Eric Roth)
Provision One: Any American President / Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces who demands and subsequently receives an official Declaration of War from Congress, shall be required to fight in that war. Not from a swivel chair in Washington, not from some field office in the rear, but leading one's troops in combat, on the front lines, the way America's first and greatest president, General George Washington did at Valley Forge, the way Alexander of Macedon, Hannibal Barca, Julius Caesar, Hua Mulan, Richard the Lion-hearted, Genghis Khan, Jeanne D'Arc, and Napoleon Bonaparte did. You want an empire? Be prepared to lead the charge. You want war? Be prepared to take the point. You want glory? No guts, no glory.
But then who will "run the country" while the Commander in Chief is away at the front? The vice president, of course. (Don't laugh. Neocons, being Mussolini style corporativists who demand "energetic government," don't know about Laozi's "wu wei" and Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." They actually think a country is "run" by its chief executive.) What happens if the president is KIA? The vice president will take his place at the front, and the Speaker of the House will assume the office of president pro tem. Presidential succession, you know? Unless of course the vice president is smarter than the president and negotiates an armistice or signs a peace treaty, in which case he shall no longer be required to serve in combat.
Provision Two: Any congressman or senator who votes for war, shall be required to fight in that war, under the same terms as for the president, in combat, on the front lines. Who will fill in for him at home? The candidate in the previous election with the next most votes shall assume his duties in the interim, until such time as the "patriotic," pro war congressman or senator is honorably discharged and returns from the front. Returning congressmen and senators wounded in combat shall of course be eligible for all veterans' benefits, including occupational therapy at VA hospitals. Returning congressmen and senators KIA shall be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Provision Three: The financial cost of any war fought on foreign soil, not in the direct defense of the American homeland, i.e., the 50 states, territories and possessions, shall be underwritten entirely by those citizens who voted in favor of that war in a public referendum. American citizens who vote against such wars shall be exempt from taxes levied for such wars.
In case I failed to make myself clear, in case anyone imagined otherwise, everything I said applies equally to every government on earth, not just the United States. If peace-loving citizens of every nation on earth, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, were to require the civilian Chicken Hawks among them to personally fight the wars they provoked, the human race would be at peace faster than you can say "4F."
Thursday, August 01, 2002
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
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.
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.
Friday, May 31, 2002
Defending Taiwan's 'Democracy'
Defending Taiwan's 'Democracy'
Bevin Chu
May 31, 2002
Executive Summary: Whenever Blue Team "China Threat" theorists need to rationalize gunboat diplomacy against China, they trot out their "Taiwan is a Democracy" thesis. "Taiwan is a lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" they declare, "therefore Americans have a moral obligation to rally to its defense." Their syllogism is bogus in every respect. First, Taiwan is not a democracy, but a cronyist dictatorship ruled by an Asian strongman. Taiwan under Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian is akin to the Philippines under Marcos and Indonesia under Suharto. Second, Taiwan's liberty and prosperity are under threat, not from Beijing, but from an autocratic, doctrinaire and incompetent Taiwan independence nomenklatura in Taipei. Third, the Blue Team is not defending Taiwan's "democracy," it is expanding America's empire by encroaching on China's territory. If 278 million Americans have any moral obligation, it is to prevent Blue Team China hawks from provoking yet another Asian debacle underwritten with American taxes and American blood.
I Looked the Man in the Eye... I was Able to Get a Sense of His Soul
President Bush with Russian President Vladimir Putin
"President Putin and I have just concluded two hours of straightforward and productive meetings... I looked the man in the eye... I was able to get a sense of his soul... I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him. (Laughter.)
-- George W. Bush, June 16, 2001
See:
Press Conference by President Bush and Russian Federation President Putin
The press laughed, and so did we. How could we not? Was this actually how the frat boy in the Oval Office determined which nations were "strategic allies" and which were "strategic competitors?" Was this actually how the Best and the Brightest in the West Wing determined for whom our military machine would "do whatever it took," even launch a nuclear first strike?
Unfortunately the answer to these disturbing questions seems to be "yes."
Taiwan independence spokespersons have long maintained that they "share Americans' deep and abiding respect for Freedom and Democracy." Having taken the Taiwan Lobby's reassuring public declarations at face value, many Americans have assumed quite naively that they understood what made Taiwan independence zealots tick.
They could not be more mistaken. As with Albania's fascist KLA or Afghanistan's Northern League, the true face of Taiwan independence has been systematically hidden from Americans by a complicit fellow traveler media establishment.
Goodbye White Terror, Hello Green Terror
During the final years of Chiang Ching-kuo's administration the younger Chiang rescinded martial law, legalized opposition political parties, and promoted Taiwan born Chinese to key positions in the ROC government. Taiwan was well its way to political in addition to economic liberalization.
But time has not stood still. Taiwan underwent a catastrophic regression after Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian assumed office. Taiwan today is a thoroughly corrupt "elective dictatorship" which tramples over its own national constitution and democratic majority. Its ruling DPP, having received a meager 39% plurality at the polls, doesn't even rate the epithet "majoritarian tyranny."
Taiwan today persecutes independent journalists and opposition parliamentarians who dare to criticize the Taiwan independence nomenklatura's rampant corruption and cavalier Rule of Law violations. What has replaced the defunct White Terror is not Freedom and Democracy, but an increasingly ominous Taiwan independence Green Terror. This may be news to Taiwan independence sympathizers in America and Europe, but to loyal citizens of the Republic of China it is Old News. Americans and Europeans are just now getting wise to what has been common knowledge to any cab driver in Taipei.
On March 20, 2002 alas, the Taiwan independence nomenklatura's mask slipped. Goons from the "democratically elected" Chen regime stormed the offices of Next magazine and the private residence of one of its reporters in a chilling attempt to intimidate Taiwan's ostensibly free media into cowed silence.
Taiwan Magazine raided as Spy Scoop prompts National Security Alert
Wednesday March 20, 2002
TAIPEI (AFP) - [A]ccusing it of attempting to endanger security by reporting on secret expense accounts used to bankroll spy operations in mainland China... investigators and police searched the offices of the Next Magazine in downtown Taipei... a printing shop outside Taipei and the home of Hsieh Chung-liang, the writer of the sensitive article. Investigators confiscated thousands of copies of the weekly that were ready to be distributed Thursday... the National Security Bureau said the search was necessary for safeguarding security and "the rights and security of foreign friends"... [and] threatened... a lawsuit against the Chinese-language China Times which carried related articles.
Freedom of The Press is not for Reactionaries
"This has nothing to do with freedom of the press, freedom of the press also has its limits."
-- Chen Ding-nan (DPP) Minister of Justice to Chen Shui-bian
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right."
-- Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan is the Taiwanese equivalent of homegrown authoritarians Janet Reno and John Ashcroft. Chen Ding-nan's categorical denial was a lie. The Next magazine case has everything to do with freedom of the press. The Chen Shui-bian administration's Gestapo raid on Taiwan's independent media was motivated not by any alleged concern for national security, but by fear of criminal exposure. A major scandal potentially disastrous to the international image of the Taiwan independence movement, an image cultivated at great expense by the Taiwan Lobby, could not be allowed to see the light of day.
Lee Teng-hui ran for the office of President of the Republic of China. Lee Teng-hui swore a solemn Oath of Office, promising to defend the Constitution of the Republic of China. Upon being elected President of the Republic of China however, Lee Teng-hui misappropriated Republic of China taxpayer funds for the purpose of overthrowing the Republic of China and replacing it with a "Republic of Taiwan." Lee Teng-hui subverted the democratic will of Taiwan's pro reunification majority. Lee Teng-hui betrayed his Oath of Office. Lee Teng-hui violated the Constitution he swore to uphold. In short, Lee Teng-hui sold out his country.
That is what this scandal is about.
To put matters in perspective, the Republic of Korea's Chun Doo-hwan and Roe Tae-woo received Draconian sentences for crimes far less serious than Lee's. Chun and Roe's crimes were purely economic. Lee Teng-hui's crimes involved not merely graft, but high treason. The question is not whether Lee is guilty of these deeds. Lee freely admits having committed them. The only question is will he ever be brought to justice for having committed them by Chen Shui-bian, a political ally who shares Lee's dream of a "Republic of Taiwan."
Even the "energetically" interventionist Washington Post, Taiwan independence fellow traveler and no friend of Beijing, saw no way around the obvious:
"Taiwan under former president Lee Teng-hui established a secret $100 million fund to buy influence with foreign governments, institutions and individuals... U.S. think tanks... Washington lobbyists... people now in senior positions in the Bush administration... That Taiwan has used money to win friends and influence people has been an open secret for decades. Its lobbying machine is one of Washington's slickest, outclassing the less practiced attempts by its Communist [sic] adversaries from [mainland] China... "
-- John Pomfret, Washington Post Foreign Service
See:
Secret Taiwan Fund Sought Friends, Influence Abroad
Read My Lips...
Question: "How can you tell when A-Bian is lying?"
Answer: "His lips are moving."
According to Reuters the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists faxed a letter of protest to President Chen Shui-bian: "CPJ considers this an important press freedom issue that has serious implications for the health of Taiwanese democracy."
The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres or "Reporters Without Borders" issued a similar statement: "The use of such practices is unworthy of a democracy [sic] like Taiwan. Invoking national security to justify this seizure is very questionable."
See:
Taiwan: Police raid magazine offices
Chen's Gestapo raids were in clear and direct violation of Article 11 of the Republic of China's Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression.
How did A-Bian respond to the CPJ and RSF's strenuous objections?
Chen responded the way he always does -- the way he responds to strenuous objections from majority Pan Blue voters on Taiwan that "stealth separatism" and "creeping independence" were in clear and direct violation of Article 4 of the Republic of China's One China Constitution.
Chen shined them on.
In a glib reply oozing the smarmy insincerity that is A-Bian's trademark, and which must be read to be believed, Chen paid pro forma lip service to press freedom, promising everything but delivering nothing:
"... History will also show that I have a long-standing record of being an unconditional supporter of freedom of press. [sic] As an activist for democratic reform, I became a prisoner of conscience in 1984 after publishing a magazine. Hence, I share your conviction that freedom of speech is an unequivocal, indispensable human right... the essence of democracy should never be quelled under the pretext of national security, nor should the flag of national security be used as a cover for undermining freedom of press. [sic]"
See:
President Chen's Letter to Ms. Ann K. Cooper, Committee to Protect Journalists
... As I Lie through My Teeth
What "History will show" is that Chen served time not as "a prisoner of conscience," not because he was "an activist for democratic reform," but because as a magazine publisher he waged a libelous media campaign against a hated political enemy -- former New Party legislator Fung Hu-hsiang.
Unable to discredit Fung's pro reunification political philosophy, a frustrated, vindictive Chen set out to destroy Fung by fabricating charges of plagiarism against him. Fung demanded that Chen issue a retraction and an apology. Chen not only refused, he escalated his smear campaign.
Left with no alternative, Fung filed suit against Chen. Confronted in open court with demands that he present evidence to back up his scurrilous charges, Chen couldn't. Chen was convicted of libel and served an 8 month sentence.
This is all a matter of public record. You'd think with the scores of US based "China experts" busy scribbling away on cross Straits issues, one of them would have bothered to verify the authenticity of A-Bian's account? No such luck.
Full Disclosure: Josef Goebbels was right. The Big Lie works, in the short to medium term anyway. I myself was taken in by this Big Lie of A-Bian's, as one of my early op eds which mistakenly refers to Chen as "a former political prisoner" reveals.
It was so typical of Chen not merely to lie, but to embed one lie within another. Not only did Chen lie about his nonexistent commitment to "freedom of [the] press," he lied about his record of libel as a magazine publisher, to a media watchdog group no less. Perhaps Chen confused Cooper with one of his semiliterate, narrow-minded True Believers?
Cooper to her credit, was neither deceived nor amused, and faxed Chen again:
" ...recent actions by your government have undermined Taiwan's legal protections for freedom of speech, which is guaranteed in Article 11 of the constitution... CPJ strongly urges Your Excellency to ensure that your promises to respect press freedom are reflected in the policies and actions of your administration... we are not convinced that the articles in Taiwan Next and China Times pose a genuine threat to national security... we see no justification for raiding the offices of Taiwan Next and attempting to censor the publication..."
Cooper's postscript drops all pretense at diplomatic circumlocution:
"Join CPJ in protesting this attack on the press. Write or fax to the address above."
See:
Taiwan: Journalists threatened with prosecution for reporting on secret government funds
The frustration in CPJ's letter, and the disappointment in RSF's public statement was palpable. Taiwan independence sympathizers were finally getting a clue. So this was the "lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" they had been praising in the abstract without having experienced in the concrete. So this was what the democratic majority on Taiwan has had to endure for the past fourteen years.
Talk about "making an ass out of you and me."
Tribal Membership, not Individual Liberty
"The people have the right to know. Next magazine has the right to publish the news... the two secret funds have nothing to do with national secrets, so the search is a violation of press freedom."
-- Pei Wei, Executive Editor
Taiwan Next Magazine
"This is ridiculous. This is costing us a lot of money. We did not publish missile defense plans here. We published a politically embarrassing situation."
-- Mark Simon, Director of Corporate Accounts
Apple Daily, flagship publication of Hong Kong's Next Media Group
The DPP's heavy handed Gestapo tactics against Taiwan Next Magazine finally laid bare an ugly reality long concealed from the American public. Taiwan independence zealots were never bona fide champions of Freedom and Democracy. They were petty tribalists morbidly preoccupied with identity politics. Their highest priority was never individual rights and individual liberty, but collective identity and tribal membership.
As long as they achieved their "Taiwan, not China; Taiwanese, not Chinese, ROT, not ROC" goals, all other considerations were secondary, optional, dispensable. The Republic of China's Constitution and Taiwan's pro reunification majority are mere inconvenient obstacles standing in the way of their would-be "Republic of Taiwan" to be circumvented by any means available, no matter how illegal, unconstitutional or immoral.
See:
Freedom and Democracy disappear in Taiwan
The Anaconda in The Chandelier: Censorship on Taiwan Today
"In sum, the Chinese government's censorship is less like a man-eating tiger or fire-snorting dragon than a giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier. Normally it doesn't move. It doesn't have to. It feels no need to be clear about its prohibitions. Its silent message is "You yourself decide," after which everyone below makes his or her large and small adjustments -- all quite "naturally."
-- Perry Link
The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Censorship in China Today
Ever since Hongkong's retrocession to China in 1997, our establishment media has been harping relentlessly on Beijing's "chilling effect" on the territory's freewheeling media. But Green Terror intimidation of dissident media personalities on Taiwan by the pro independence Chen regime makes the sob stories related by former South China Morning Post writers Jasper Becker and Willy Lam pale in contrast.
Most Americans and Europeans haven't the slightest inkling as to how relentlessly Lee and Chen have persecuted anyone who stands in the way of their dream of a "Republic of Taiwan." Taiwan's Green Terror began with Lee Teng-hui fourteen years ago, and accelerated with Chen Shui-bian's "democratic" succession to Taiwan's throne two years ago. Witnessing a Pan Blue opposition divided and in disarray, impotent to check rampant "Green Government" lawlessness, Taiwan's Quisling nomenklatura grows more brazen with each passing month.
See:
Taiwan's Fraudulent Election
Political talk show hosts Li Yen-chiu, Li Ao, and Sisy Chen for example, have been forced into a desperate game of musical chairs as political refugees, fleeing from one cable channel to the next as media bosses cozy with the ruling DPP acquire control of one media company after another.
Even Hu Chung-hsing, author of the hagiographic biography "Son of Taiwan," who helped A-Bian get elected by portraying him as a larger than life Man of Destiny, was not immune. A bitterly disillusioned Hu made the mistake of pointing out his former idol's feet of clay, and is currently both out of favor with the Chen regime, and out of his General Manager's job at CTV.
So by all means, visit Perry Link's article, posted at the U.S.-China Commission, www.uscc.gov. That's right, dot gov. Yes, yes, I know. Link was just lecturing us about academic and media independence from official government orthodoxy, but he was referring to Chinese academic and media independence from official Chinese orthodoxy, not American academic and media independence from official US government orthodoxy, you understand. Hardly the same thing.
Read Link's piece. Substitute "Taiwan" for "China" and "Taiwanese" for "Chinese." You will soon get a sense of what our Academia / Government / Media Establishment does not want you to know about the Taiwan independence movement.
So Who's Afraid of Freedom Now?
Last month the Chen Shui-bian regime abruptly and unceremoniously cut reception to CCTV-4, China Central Television, denying Taiwan cable television subscribers access to a mainland television channel they have watched on a daily basis for the past decade, the only mainland television channel. Taiwan under Green government now has five full time Japanese channels and zero mainland Chinese channels. Taiwan television channels, on the other hand, remain available for viewing in major cities all across the Chinese mainland.
So my question to China-bashing Taiwan independence fellow travelers is this: When it comes to the issue of cross Straits reunification at least, just exactly who feels threatened by the free exchange of ideas across the Taiwan Straits? Just exactly who feels the need to impose state censorship to keep the goodwill between mainland and Taiwan Chinese a secret?
Is it champions of a reunified, inclusive China embracing Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait? Or is it small-minded, petty "Us vs. Them" Taiwan independence "nativists" who would seal the island off from the outside world, if only they could?
I haven't even mentioned "Jie ji yong ren" which roughly translates as "Avoid haste, be patient," the euphemistic term for Lee Teng-hui's imperial edict forcibly prohibiting Chinese citizens on Taiwan from exercising their personal liberty by associating with fellow Chinese across the Taiwan Straits. "Mr. Democracy" refers to his arbitary, unconstitutional decree forbidding ROC citizens from taking an airliner, mailing a letter, or shipping a freight container, directly from Taipei to Xiamen or Shanghai as a "policy." Chinese on Taiwan who defy Lee's "policy," stringently enforced by Lee's successor Chen, face legal prosecution.
Memo to wannabe dictators the world over: How do you commit a flagrant human rights violation and get away with it? Simple. Commit it in full view of the world, but make sure you label it an "policy."
What's "Mr. Democracy's" motive? Lee doesn't want Chinese on Taiwan to reconcile with their kinfolk on the mainland. Too much chipping away at the virtual Berlin Wall down the center of the Taiwan Straits, and China will soon be reunified like Germany. Right-wing Japanophile Lee can then whisper "sayonara" to his pipe dream of a "Republic of Taiwan," nominally independent but in geopolitical reality a Japanese strategic outpost against the Chinese mainland.
Most Minan Chinese on Taiwan trace their roots back to Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian province directly to the west. Lu Chuan-sheng for example, is a prominent Taipei attorney. He is also Vice President Annette Lu's elder brother. When the two were young children Lu hid his baby sister in the woods to prevent her from being given up for adoption. Lu obviously believes in keeping families together. In sharp contrast to his younger sister, Lu is a dedicated champion of Chinese reunification, and has organized repeated family reunions between the mainland and Taiwan branches of the Lu clan.
See:
Wrath from Annette Lu's Ancestral Home
The News that We think They oughta See
"The people of this country see the news that we think they oughta see."
-- Ted Turner, Founder of CNN
Why Don't Americans Know about Taiwan's Green Terror?
Americans don't know about Taiwan's Green Terror because our establishment media has decided Taiwan's Green Terror, which they insist ordinary Americans are morally obligated to defend with American taxes and American blood, is not "news we think they oughta see."
Americans don't know about Taiwan's Green Terror because previous outrages have gone unreported by the same western journalists so vigorously defended by such organizations as CPJ and RSF, and whose inexcusable silence as Lee and Chen's censorship of pro reunification sentiment has been deafening.
How's that for irony?
Our establishment media, in gross violation of journalistic ethics, assuming that is not an oxymoron akin to "military intelligence," systematically evades its professional responsibility to report the failure of Taiwan's stillborn "democracy" to the American public. Our establishment media engages in this unprofessional moral evasion because they failed to retain their objectivity while reporting on One Divided China, but instead allowed themselves to be seduced by the Taiwan Lobby's "One China, One Taiwan."
Having taken sides, having allowed themselves to become emotionally invested in the "lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" presided over by "Mr. Democracy" Lee Teng-hui and "Son of Taiwan" Chen Shui-bian, our establishment media is reluctant to confront developments which bring them professional discredit by underscoring their historical myopia and political naiveté.
The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same
"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."
-- Old French Aphorism
Several years ago Hsu Shui-teh, Secretary General of the KMT under Chairman Lee Teng-hui was asked about an impending court case, one potentially damaging to "Mr. Democracy" Lee Teng-hui's thoroughly corrupt Mainstream Faction. Hsu, an obsequious ass-kisser, rushed to bossman Lee Teng-hui's defense:
"What have we got to be worried about? After all, the courts are operated by the KMT."
Hsu's Freudian slip, his momentary, unintentional lapse into uncharacteristic honesty, earned him a footnote in ROC political history.
Today Chen Ding-nan could easily say the same thing about the Democratic Progressive Party:
"What have we got to be worried about? After all, the courts are operated by the DPP!"
Ever since assuming power in 2000, the "reformist" DPP has flagrantly, openly, brazenly engaged in every single form of corrupt behavior for which they rightly condemned Lee Teng-hui's "Taiwan KMT" in years past. As Sisy Chen, former Public Relations Chief for the DPP has noted, the new generation of DPP leaders exhibits an unseemly eagerness to sell out the party's long professed ideals in exchange for money, power or a combination of the two, that is downright sickening.
The Pan Green Golden Rule: He Who Has the Gold, Rules
During the late Chairman Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, coercive egalitarian Maoists demanded "Xian hong, hou zhuan," or "First red, then expert." Mao's insane economic "policy," astounding in its obtuseness, has been reincarnated on Taiwan by the DPP and the TSU. The terms "Nativization" and "Taiwanization" are the Taiwan independence Quislings' code words for de-Sinicization and Japanization. During Chairman Lee and now Chairman Chen's Nativization / Taiwanization Witch Hunt, Taiwan independence zealots are demanding "Xian lu, hou zhuan," or "First green, then expert."
Instead of eliminating State Owned Enterprises outright by introducing across the board privatization, the Chen regime has used them to reward politically correct but professionally unqualified political benefactors.
China Steel is, or rather was, an exceptional SOE which consistently yeilded handsome profits quarter after quarter, year after year under an experienced, capable Pan Blue chairman. The Chen regime recently fired him and turned over China Steel's management to the former chairman of Taiwan's state-owned Taiwan Sugar, a clue-less, incompetent Pan Green political crony with a proven track record -- of losing money.
Christine Tsung, the Republic of China's Minister of Economic Affairs was recently forced to resign only three months after assuming office. Tsung publicly acknowledged she wasn't up to the job. Tsung's qualifications were twofold. One, Tsung was Finance Director for the small southern California community of Poway, near San Diego. Two, Tsung's husband, president of Taiwan's state-owned First Bank, donated US$1,000,000 to Chen Shui-bian's presidential election campaign.
Transportation tycoon Chang Rong-fa, head of the Evergreen Group, (http://www.evergreen.com.tw/) is Chen Shui-bian's sugardaddy. When Chen was an ROC legislator, his staff of twenty legislative assistants were employees of Evergreen, provided free of charge to Chen by Chang. Recently a Chen appointee made his debut as Chairman of the Board of Taiwan's state-owned Bank of Transportation and Communications. The new bank chairman is Chang Rong-fa's son in law.
Chairman Chen, meet Chairman Mao
Since its founding the DPP has routinely and rightly condemned the KMT for its Leninist conflation of Party, State and Military authority into a single Supreme Leader. One of the DPP's solemn promises was that once in office it would put a swift end to such top heavy "cult of leadership" institutions inconsistent with bottom up, grass roots style democracy.
A mere two years into a DPP administration however, guess what? DPP officials have suggested that if President Chen of the ROC was simultaneously Chairman Chen of the DPP, "coordination between the executive branch and the ruling party would be more streamlined, more efficient." Would you be surprised to learn that instead of indignantly rejecting the proposal, A-Bian promptly put his seal of approval on it?
So now the "Son of Taiwan" is simultaneously Chairman of the DPP, President of the ROC, and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Chairman Chen, meet Chairman Mao. You have more in common with him than you would care to acknowledge.
You think I exaggerate? When Chen's administration came under withering fire last year for gross incompetence, A-Bian blamed everybody except himself. President Chen ordered all civil servants to attend compulsory study groups in which they would read and discuss quotations from his speeches "in order to serve the public better." No, Chairman Chen didn't have his Revealed Wisdom printed up in the form of little green "Quotations from Chairman Chen," a la Mao's little red "Quotations from Chairman Mao," but he might as well have.
The Immortal Folly
"Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it... can never willingly abandon it."
--Edmund Burke
Patterns in nature replicate themselves, or expressed in more mundane terms, "History repeats itself." The Reformer overthrows the Tyrant; the Reformer becomes the Tyrant. Intoxicated with power and incapable of self-introspection, the Reformer turned Tyrant cannot admit to himself that just like those he has replaced, he too has been corrupted by Absolute Power. He tells himself "I'm different, the times are different, the circumstances are different," when in fact the only thing different is the color of his uniform. This immortal folly is brilliantly depicted in such film masterpieces as:
All the King's Men (1949, directed by Robert Rossen, written by Robert Penn Warren)
Viva Zapata (1952, directed by Elia Kazan, written by John Steinbeck)
and in the immensely satisfying film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy,
-- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Directed by Peter Jackson, Written by J.R.R. Tolkien, Screenplay by Frances Walsh
See:
The Tragedy of Boromir
"Mr. Democracy": Prime Suspect
"Despite considerable media publicity in both countries concerned the Taiwan kick-backs with murder process and the partially related French kick-backs with influence peddling process will fade away as this millennium year ends. Some punishments may be inflicted on some of those involved but there will be no dramatic transparency of the corruption that lies at the base of both processes."
-- Franz Schurmann
Prediction #76: Crime and Corruption in France and Taiwan
If heavy-handed Green Terror press censorship and endemic Green Terror corruption weren't bad enough, it is merely the tip of the Green Terror iceberg. How many Americans know for example, that Lee Teng-hui is the prime suspect in the cold-blooded execution/murder of Captain Yin Ching-feng, an ROC Navy whistle blower? That's right, none other than Newsweek magazine's cover boy of 1996, "Mr. Democracy" himself. A murder suspect.
In 1993, Republic of China Navy Captain Yin had in his possession taped evidence implicating "Mr. Democracy" as the chief conspirator in a mind-boggling military procurement scandal involving astronomical kickbacks on Lafayette frigates purchased from France. The night before he was about to go public with his evidence, Yin was seen being forced into a sedan by two men and "taken for a ride," Chicago gangland style. Yin's corpse was later found floating off the coast of Hualien by fishermen. His throat had been cut. One need not be Gil Grissom or Catherine Willows of the TV series "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation" to realize Yin did not die of a boating accident.
Former ROC legislator Lee Ching-hua has been conducting his own independent investigation of Yin Ching-feng's murder. Lee Ching-hua has lamented that despite a mountain of damning evidence, the case is going nowhere, at least on Taiwan. The only real progress is being made in France by French prosecutors. As Lee Ching-hua put it, it's a too typical instance of "ban bu xia qu, yin wei ban bu shang qu," which loosely translated means "the case cannot go forward, because it cannot go upward."
The situation is pretty much summed up by the Chinese expression "Guan guan xiang hu," which means "Officials cover for each other." In case that still wasn't plain enough, it means Chen Shui-bian is covering for Lee Teng-hui. Let's be clear, we are not talking about anything so tame as "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" We are talking about "What did the president order done, and when did he order it?"
Fall guys, some guilty, others totally innocent, have been designated to take the heat off Lee Teng-hui and fellow crooks Su Chi-cheng and Liu Tai-ying. Among those falsely accused are retired General Hau Pei-tsun and Admiral Lei Hsueh-ming, father of Lei Chien, a former Executive Vice President of the American Broadcasting Company, a former ROC legislative candidate and currently a highly respected television talk show host. Would it surprise you to learn that both General Hau and Admiral Lei are "mainlanders," so-called, and staunch defenders of the ROC's One China Constitution?
See:
Control Yuan slammed over Hau investigation
Admiral linked to ship scandal freed
Meanwhile key witnesses have fled overseas, crucial evidence has mysteriously vanished, a cold trail grows colder, and justice for the heroic Captain Yin and for long-suffering Chinese citizens on Taiwan less hopeful with each passing day.
Fifty-four Suitcases, Eight-five Million Dollars
Bucharest, Romania, 14 December 1999 (RFE/RL) ...The next day, for reasons known only to himself, Ceausescu called a mass rally in downtown Bucharest. Perhaps the Romanian leader still felt loved by the people, or else he was confident in his ability to manipulate the rally. It was a fatal mistake that was to be witnessed by the entire nation. A minute into his speech from the balcony of the Central Committee building, Ceausescu was interrupted by shouts from the crowd of "Timisoara!" and "Down with Ceausescu!" ...By the afternoon of December 21, the center of the capital was filled with thousands of people demanding Ceausescu's ouster. Violent clashes with police soon erupted and continued through the night.
The Republic of China's March 18, 2000 presidential election had nothing to do with "democracy" let alone Constitutional Rule of Law. Instead, it was about "the peaceful transfer of political authority," as Lee himself so shrewdly termed it. By exploiting the dictatorial powers and immense resources available to him as combined head of state and chairman of the ruling party, Lee was able to engineer the defeat of his own party's candidate Lien Chan, a reunificationist and to "transfer political authority" to the pro independence DPP's Chen Shui-bian. Because Lee was able to foist his anti-democratic travesty on the ROC electorate without provoking armed rebellion, Lee felt free to characterize his election fraud as "peaceful."
Immediately following Mr. Democracy's outrageous "peaceful transfer of power" thousands of KMT Reform Faction and New Party supporters staged a Tiananmen style protest in front of KMT headquarters in Taipei. This columnist was among those who took to the streets, waving banners, angrily shouting "Down with Lee Teng-hui!" and "Lee Teng-hui, step down!"
That was Tseng Wen-hui's (Mrs. Lee Teng-hui) cue to make her now infamous "Escape to New York" with US$85 million in undeclared used bills stuffed into 54 suitcases.
Why now?
Lee was suddenly a lame duck, and Taiwan's First Couple panicked. Lee Teng-hui and Tseng Wen-hui, like millions of CNN viewers worldwide had seen what the Romanian people did to Romania's First Couple Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. A frightened and apoplectic Mr. Democracy was quoted as saying, "If Deng Xiaoping could use tanks to put down Tiananmen, why can't I?"
A-Bian had already gotten what he wanted, the presidency of the ROC. Lee could no longer be certain A-Bian wouldn't sell them out. Whatever dirt Lee might have on Chen, whatever sums might have changed hands in some smoke-filled room, Chen had also sworn publicly he would "investigate [the Lafayette Scandal] to the bitter end, even if it shook the foundations of the nation."
Given Chen's public declaration, plus the seething mass of "peasants with pitchforks" gathered outside KMT headquarters and Lee's official residence, and it is doubtful the First Couple got much sleep during those fateful days.
So Mrs. Democracy absconded with a portion of Mr. Democracy's kickbacks from the Lafayette frigate and Mirage fighter procurements, just in case. I was not speaking figuratively when I compared Lee Teng-hui and Tseng Wen-hui to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and to Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu.
See:
What made you start writing about the Marcoses?
Crimes of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos
Unfortunately for them the undeclared cash was discovered by US Customs officials at JFK airport. Just counting the bills took seven hours. Among the eyewitnesses to Mrs. Democracy's flight from justice were US Customs officials, US State Department officials, EVA Air baggage handlers, Bank of America employees, and armed security guards (Pinkerton's, if my memory serves me) who escorted the cash back to Taipei.
EVA Air's boss Chang Rong-fa as I mentioned, is a major benefactor to Taiwan independence politicians Lee and Chen. Chang, in financial terms, practically is the DPP. Evidence suggests that with the help of the outgoing Clinton administration, Lee and Chang covered up the entire fiasco. The cash in excess of US $10,000 would not be confiscated as required by US law, but Mr. Democracy would have to step down as KMT Party Chairman in order to mollify outraged pro democracy protesters outside the presidential palace, and to avoid embarrassing the US government for having sponsored a de facto dictator and shameless kleptocrat.
Less than a week later, Mrs. Democracy sneaked back to Taipei and arranged a photo op at Tamsui Golf Course, ostentatiously playing golf in the rain and fog, pretending that she had never left Taiwan at all, insisting disingenuously that she had "been here all the time."
When ROC legislators Fung Hu-hsiang and Hsieh Chi-tah quite reasonably demanded an official investigation of Tseng Wen-hui's failed getaway attempt and subsequent cover-up, Tseng filed a libel suit against them to shut them up. Fung and Hsieh were compelled to respond defensively with a counter suit.
Let's be absolutely clear. Fung and Hsieh did not commit libel. Far from it. Fung and Hsieh were demanding an American-style Watergate/Whitewater investigation, which as duly elected members of the ROC parliament they were not only well within their rights to demand, but morally obligated to demand.
Both Tseng's lawsuit and Fung and Hsieh's counter suit were dismissed in Taipei's District Court. The presiding judge in essence handed this political hot potato which landed in his lap off to the Appeals Courts by issuing a "Guess what? Nobody's guilty!" verdict.
The Taiwan public is outraged that the court lacked the judicial independence to pursue the matter to the end, and in effect officially sanctioned Mrs. Democracy's theft of mind-boggling sums her husband could not possibly have earned legally during his career as a civil servant. Tseng Wen-hui and her hubby have "gotten away with murder," so to speak, probably literally.
On the other hand, given the bright green Taiwan independence "Anaconda in the Chandelier," hanging over the novice judge's head, it is fortunate Fung and Hsieh weren't railroaded, incarcerated in the Green Gulag and fined exorbitant sums they as public officials of rare honesty could never hope to pay off in ten lifetimes.
This is the true face of "Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" loudly trumpeted by the Taiwan independence propaganda machine, from the Taipei Times to the Washington Times. As I said, this is merely the tip of the Green Terror iceberg.
This isn't The Republic Anymore, It's The Empire. We are The Bad Guys
"All democracies turn into dictatorships -- but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea... How did the Republic turn into the Empire? ...How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic. One day Princess Leia and her friends woke up and said, 'This isn't the Republic anymore, it's the Empire. We are the bad guys... This democracy is a sham...'"
-- George Lucas, creator of "Star Wars"
See:
Dark Victory, an inside look at the new "Star Wars" episode
Our Benevolent Global Hegemonists' complicity in Israel's brazen campaign of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and in Venezuela's abortive military coup should leave no one in doubt. The primary concern of the New Imperialists, as they are now calling themselves, is not whether America's client states practice "American-style Democracy." The primary concern of our homegrown versions of Emperor Commodus, as depicted in Ridley Scott's retro epic "Gladiator," is whether foreign and domestic political entities represent inconvenient obstacles to "American-style Empire."
Post-communist China is struggling to extricate herself from Third World poverty and to throw off the final remnant of 19th century colonialism. An economically prosperous, laissez-faire capitalist China immune to US and Japanese gunboat diplomacy however, is not part of the New Imperialists' strategic scenario for the 21st Century. A bankrupt, Balkanized, and defenseless China is.
Without meaning to, China finds itself standing squarely in the path of the New Imperialists. Any Chinese government which properly insists on China's political independence, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity will find itself involuntarily cast by the Blue Team as America's implacable "strategic competitor" and targeted for subversion and eventual destruction.
Taiwan is neither a democracy, nor would Americans, who have their own lives to live, be morally obligated to defend it even if it were. Defending "Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" is nothing more than the Blue Team's flimsy pretext to justify China's destabilization and disintegration, and to deny China's restoration to her historical status as a respected member of the world community. Likewise with Bush Jr.'s incomprehensible hostility towards Nobel Laureate Kim Dae-jung and his "Sunshine Policy" towards the northern part of his country. So much for the "benevolence" in Benevolent Global Hegemony.
See:
Gregory Clark Japan Website articles on China
A global American Empire does not constitute the fulfilment of our Founding Fathers' American Republic on a global scale. Just the opposite. A global American Empire is the antithesis, the negation of our Founding Fathers' American Republic. A global American Empire is to the Founding Fathers' American Republic what antimatter is to matter, what the antichrist is to Christ. The American Empire is the oppressor not only of foreigners abroad, but of Americans at home.
It is not the American Republic, but the American Empire that can besiege, starve, gas, machine gun and incinerate an entire Protestant sect in rural Texas, and still declare without irony that it is "deeply disturbed that Beijing is harassing Christians in China."
It is not the American Republic, but the American Empire that can countenance killing half a million Iraqi children in the name of "helping the Iraqi people liberate themselves from domestic Iraqi tyranny."
It is not the American Republic, but the American Empire that can make astonishing statements such as "Rising Chinese economic prosperity constitutes a grave threat to American military supremacy in the western [sic] Pacific" without even blinking.
Blue Team American Imperialists jealous of China's astonishing resurgence will need to cast about for a more compelling pretext than "defending Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" to justify preemptive "containment" of China's lively / thriving / vibrant capitalist economy -- not to mention the "deconstruction" of the Great Republic established by America's visionary Founders.
Bevin Chu
May 31, 2002
Executive Summary: Whenever Blue Team "China Threat" theorists need to rationalize gunboat diplomacy against China, they trot out their "Taiwan is a Democracy" thesis. "Taiwan is a lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" they declare, "therefore Americans have a moral obligation to rally to its defense." Their syllogism is bogus in every respect. First, Taiwan is not a democracy, but a cronyist dictatorship ruled by an Asian strongman. Taiwan under Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian is akin to the Philippines under Marcos and Indonesia under Suharto. Second, Taiwan's liberty and prosperity are under threat, not from Beijing, but from an autocratic, doctrinaire and incompetent Taiwan independence nomenklatura in Taipei. Third, the Blue Team is not defending Taiwan's "democracy," it is expanding America's empire by encroaching on China's territory. If 278 million Americans have any moral obligation, it is to prevent Blue Team China hawks from provoking yet another Asian debacle underwritten with American taxes and American blood.
I Looked the Man in the Eye... I was Able to Get a Sense of His Soul
President Bush with Russian President Vladimir Putin
"President Putin and I have just concluded two hours of straightforward and productive meetings... I looked the man in the eye... I was able to get a sense of his soul... I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him. (Laughter.)
-- George W. Bush, June 16, 2001
See:
Press Conference by President Bush and Russian Federation President Putin
The press laughed, and so did we. How could we not? Was this actually how the frat boy in the Oval Office determined which nations were "strategic allies" and which were "strategic competitors?" Was this actually how the Best and the Brightest in the West Wing determined for whom our military machine would "do whatever it took," even launch a nuclear first strike?
Unfortunately the answer to these disturbing questions seems to be "yes."
Taiwan independence spokespersons have long maintained that they "share Americans' deep and abiding respect for Freedom and Democracy." Having taken the Taiwan Lobby's reassuring public declarations at face value, many Americans have assumed quite naively that they understood what made Taiwan independence zealots tick.
They could not be more mistaken. As with Albania's fascist KLA or Afghanistan's Northern League, the true face of Taiwan independence has been systematically hidden from Americans by a complicit fellow traveler media establishment.
Goodbye White Terror, Hello Green Terror
During the final years of Chiang Ching-kuo's administration the younger Chiang rescinded martial law, legalized opposition political parties, and promoted Taiwan born Chinese to key positions in the ROC government. Taiwan was well its way to political in addition to economic liberalization.
But time has not stood still. Taiwan underwent a catastrophic regression after Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian assumed office. Taiwan today is a thoroughly corrupt "elective dictatorship" which tramples over its own national constitution and democratic majority. Its ruling DPP, having received a meager 39% plurality at the polls, doesn't even rate the epithet "majoritarian tyranny."
Taiwan today persecutes independent journalists and opposition parliamentarians who dare to criticize the Taiwan independence nomenklatura's rampant corruption and cavalier Rule of Law violations. What has replaced the defunct White Terror is not Freedom and Democracy, but an increasingly ominous Taiwan independence Green Terror. This may be news to Taiwan independence sympathizers in America and Europe, but to loyal citizens of the Republic of China it is Old News. Americans and Europeans are just now getting wise to what has been common knowledge to any cab driver in Taipei.
On March 20, 2002 alas, the Taiwan independence nomenklatura's mask slipped. Goons from the "democratically elected" Chen regime stormed the offices of Next magazine and the private residence of one of its reporters in a chilling attempt to intimidate Taiwan's ostensibly free media into cowed silence.
Taiwan Magazine raided as Spy Scoop prompts National Security Alert
Wednesday March 20, 2002
TAIPEI (AFP) - [A]ccusing it of attempting to endanger security by reporting on secret expense accounts used to bankroll spy operations in mainland China... investigators and police searched the offices of the Next Magazine in downtown Taipei... a printing shop outside Taipei and the home of Hsieh Chung-liang, the writer of the sensitive article. Investigators confiscated thousands of copies of the weekly that were ready to be distributed Thursday... the National Security Bureau said the search was necessary for safeguarding security and "the rights and security of foreign friends"... [and] threatened... a lawsuit against the Chinese-language China Times which carried related articles.
Freedom of The Press is not for Reactionaries
"This has nothing to do with freedom of the press, freedom of the press also has its limits."
-- Chen Ding-nan (DPP) Minister of Justice to Chen Shui-bian
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right."
-- Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan is the Taiwanese equivalent of homegrown authoritarians Janet Reno and John Ashcroft. Chen Ding-nan's categorical denial was a lie. The Next magazine case has everything to do with freedom of the press. The Chen Shui-bian administration's Gestapo raid on Taiwan's independent media was motivated not by any alleged concern for national security, but by fear of criminal exposure. A major scandal potentially disastrous to the international image of the Taiwan independence movement, an image cultivated at great expense by the Taiwan Lobby, could not be allowed to see the light of day.
Lee Teng-hui ran for the office of President of the Republic of China. Lee Teng-hui swore a solemn Oath of Office, promising to defend the Constitution of the Republic of China. Upon being elected President of the Republic of China however, Lee Teng-hui misappropriated Republic of China taxpayer funds for the purpose of overthrowing the Republic of China and replacing it with a "Republic of Taiwan." Lee Teng-hui subverted the democratic will of Taiwan's pro reunification majority. Lee Teng-hui betrayed his Oath of Office. Lee Teng-hui violated the Constitution he swore to uphold. In short, Lee Teng-hui sold out his country.
That is what this scandal is about.
To put matters in perspective, the Republic of Korea's Chun Doo-hwan and Roe Tae-woo received Draconian sentences for crimes far less serious than Lee's. Chun and Roe's crimes were purely economic. Lee Teng-hui's crimes involved not merely graft, but high treason. The question is not whether Lee is guilty of these deeds. Lee freely admits having committed them. The only question is will he ever be brought to justice for having committed them by Chen Shui-bian, a political ally who shares Lee's dream of a "Republic of Taiwan."
Even the "energetically" interventionist Washington Post, Taiwan independence fellow traveler and no friend of Beijing, saw no way around the obvious:
"Taiwan under former president Lee Teng-hui established a secret $100 million fund to buy influence with foreign governments, institutions and individuals... U.S. think tanks... Washington lobbyists... people now in senior positions in the Bush administration... That Taiwan has used money to win friends and influence people has been an open secret for decades. Its lobbying machine is one of Washington's slickest, outclassing the less practiced attempts by its Communist [sic] adversaries from [mainland] China... "
-- John Pomfret, Washington Post Foreign Service
See:
Secret Taiwan Fund Sought Friends, Influence Abroad
Read My Lips...
Question: "How can you tell when A-Bian is lying?"
Answer: "His lips are moving."
According to Reuters the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists faxed a letter of protest to President Chen Shui-bian: "CPJ considers this an important press freedom issue that has serious implications for the health of Taiwanese democracy."
The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres or "Reporters Without Borders" issued a similar statement: "The use of such practices is unworthy of a democracy [sic] like Taiwan. Invoking national security to justify this seizure is very questionable."
See:
Taiwan: Police raid magazine offices
Chen's Gestapo raids were in clear and direct violation of Article 11 of the Republic of China's Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression.
How did A-Bian respond to the CPJ and RSF's strenuous objections?
Chen responded the way he always does -- the way he responds to strenuous objections from majority Pan Blue voters on Taiwan that "stealth separatism" and "creeping independence" were in clear and direct violation of Article 4 of the Republic of China's One China Constitution.
Chen shined them on.
In a glib reply oozing the smarmy insincerity that is A-Bian's trademark, and which must be read to be believed, Chen paid pro forma lip service to press freedom, promising everything but delivering nothing:
"... History will also show that I have a long-standing record of being an unconditional supporter of freedom of press. [sic] As an activist for democratic reform, I became a prisoner of conscience in 1984 after publishing a magazine. Hence, I share your conviction that freedom of speech is an unequivocal, indispensable human right... the essence of democracy should never be quelled under the pretext of national security, nor should the flag of national security be used as a cover for undermining freedom of press. [sic]"
See:
President Chen's Letter to Ms. Ann K. Cooper, Committee to Protect Journalists
... As I Lie through My Teeth
What "History will show" is that Chen served time not as "a prisoner of conscience," not because he was "an activist for democratic reform," but because as a magazine publisher he waged a libelous media campaign against a hated political enemy -- former New Party legislator Fung Hu-hsiang.
Unable to discredit Fung's pro reunification political philosophy, a frustrated, vindictive Chen set out to destroy Fung by fabricating charges of plagiarism against him. Fung demanded that Chen issue a retraction and an apology. Chen not only refused, he escalated his smear campaign.
Left with no alternative, Fung filed suit against Chen. Confronted in open court with demands that he present evidence to back up his scurrilous charges, Chen couldn't. Chen was convicted of libel and served an 8 month sentence.
This is all a matter of public record. You'd think with the scores of US based "China experts" busy scribbling away on cross Straits issues, one of them would have bothered to verify the authenticity of A-Bian's account? No such luck.
Full Disclosure: Josef Goebbels was right. The Big Lie works, in the short to medium term anyway. I myself was taken in by this Big Lie of A-Bian's, as one of my early op eds which mistakenly refers to Chen as "a former political prisoner" reveals.
It was so typical of Chen not merely to lie, but to embed one lie within another. Not only did Chen lie about his nonexistent commitment to "freedom of [the] press," he lied about his record of libel as a magazine publisher, to a media watchdog group no less. Perhaps Chen confused Cooper with one of his semiliterate, narrow-minded True Believers?
Cooper to her credit, was neither deceived nor amused, and faxed Chen again:
" ...recent actions by your government have undermined Taiwan's legal protections for freedom of speech, which is guaranteed in Article 11 of the constitution... CPJ strongly urges Your Excellency to ensure that your promises to respect press freedom are reflected in the policies and actions of your administration... we are not convinced that the articles in Taiwan Next and China Times pose a genuine threat to national security... we see no justification for raiding the offices of Taiwan Next and attempting to censor the publication..."
Cooper's postscript drops all pretense at diplomatic circumlocution:
"Join CPJ in protesting this attack on the press. Write or fax to the address above."
See:
Taiwan: Journalists threatened with prosecution for reporting on secret government funds
The frustration in CPJ's letter, and the disappointment in RSF's public statement was palpable. Taiwan independence sympathizers were finally getting a clue. So this was the "lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" they had been praising in the abstract without having experienced in the concrete. So this was what the democratic majority on Taiwan has had to endure for the past fourteen years.
Talk about "making an ass out of you and me."
Tribal Membership, not Individual Liberty
"The people have the right to know. Next magazine has the right to publish the news... the two secret funds have nothing to do with national secrets, so the search is a violation of press freedom."
-- Pei Wei, Executive Editor
Taiwan Next Magazine
"This is ridiculous. This is costing us a lot of money. We did not publish missile defense plans here. We published a politically embarrassing situation."
-- Mark Simon, Director of Corporate Accounts
Apple Daily, flagship publication of Hong Kong's Next Media Group
The DPP's heavy handed Gestapo tactics against Taiwan Next Magazine finally laid bare an ugly reality long concealed from the American public. Taiwan independence zealots were never bona fide champions of Freedom and Democracy. They were petty tribalists morbidly preoccupied with identity politics. Their highest priority was never individual rights and individual liberty, but collective identity and tribal membership.
As long as they achieved their "Taiwan, not China; Taiwanese, not Chinese, ROT, not ROC" goals, all other considerations were secondary, optional, dispensable. The Republic of China's Constitution and Taiwan's pro reunification majority are mere inconvenient obstacles standing in the way of their would-be "Republic of Taiwan" to be circumvented by any means available, no matter how illegal, unconstitutional or immoral.
See:
Freedom and Democracy disappear in Taiwan
The Anaconda in The Chandelier: Censorship on Taiwan Today
"In sum, the Chinese government's censorship is less like a man-eating tiger or fire-snorting dragon than a giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier. Normally it doesn't move. It doesn't have to. It feels no need to be clear about its prohibitions. Its silent message is "You yourself decide," after which everyone below makes his or her large and small adjustments -- all quite "naturally."
-- Perry Link
The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Censorship in China Today
Ever since Hongkong's retrocession to China in 1997, our establishment media has been harping relentlessly on Beijing's "chilling effect" on the territory's freewheeling media. But Green Terror intimidation of dissident media personalities on Taiwan by the pro independence Chen regime makes the sob stories related by former South China Morning Post writers Jasper Becker and Willy Lam pale in contrast.
Most Americans and Europeans haven't the slightest inkling as to how relentlessly Lee and Chen have persecuted anyone who stands in the way of their dream of a "Republic of Taiwan." Taiwan's Green Terror began with Lee Teng-hui fourteen years ago, and accelerated with Chen Shui-bian's "democratic" succession to Taiwan's throne two years ago. Witnessing a Pan Blue opposition divided and in disarray, impotent to check rampant "Green Government" lawlessness, Taiwan's Quisling nomenklatura grows more brazen with each passing month.
See:
Taiwan's Fraudulent Election
Political talk show hosts Li Yen-chiu, Li Ao, and Sisy Chen for example, have been forced into a desperate game of musical chairs as political refugees, fleeing from one cable channel to the next as media bosses cozy with the ruling DPP acquire control of one media company after another.
Even Hu Chung-hsing, author of the hagiographic biography "Son of Taiwan," who helped A-Bian get elected by portraying him as a larger than life Man of Destiny, was not immune. A bitterly disillusioned Hu made the mistake of pointing out his former idol's feet of clay, and is currently both out of favor with the Chen regime, and out of his General Manager's job at CTV.
So by all means, visit Perry Link's article, posted at the U.S.-China Commission, www.uscc.gov. That's right, dot gov. Yes, yes, I know. Link was just lecturing us about academic and media independence from official government orthodoxy, but he was referring to Chinese academic and media independence from official Chinese orthodoxy, not American academic and media independence from official US government orthodoxy, you understand. Hardly the same thing.
Read Link's piece. Substitute "Taiwan" for "China" and "Taiwanese" for "Chinese." You will soon get a sense of what our Academia / Government / Media Establishment does not want you to know about the Taiwan independence movement.
So Who's Afraid of Freedom Now?
Last month the Chen Shui-bian regime abruptly and unceremoniously cut reception to CCTV-4, China Central Television, denying Taiwan cable television subscribers access to a mainland television channel they have watched on a daily basis for the past decade, the only mainland television channel. Taiwan under Green government now has five full time Japanese channels and zero mainland Chinese channels. Taiwan television channels, on the other hand, remain available for viewing in major cities all across the Chinese mainland.
So my question to China-bashing Taiwan independence fellow travelers is this: When it comes to the issue of cross Straits reunification at least, just exactly who feels threatened by the free exchange of ideas across the Taiwan Straits? Just exactly who feels the need to impose state censorship to keep the goodwill between mainland and Taiwan Chinese a secret?
Is it champions of a reunified, inclusive China embracing Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait? Or is it small-minded, petty "Us vs. Them" Taiwan independence "nativists" who would seal the island off from the outside world, if only they could?
I haven't even mentioned "Jie ji yong ren" which roughly translates as "Avoid haste, be patient," the euphemistic term for Lee Teng-hui's imperial edict forcibly prohibiting Chinese citizens on Taiwan from exercising their personal liberty by associating with fellow Chinese across the Taiwan Straits. "Mr. Democracy" refers to his arbitary, unconstitutional decree forbidding ROC citizens from taking an airliner, mailing a letter, or shipping a freight container, directly from Taipei to Xiamen or Shanghai as a "policy." Chinese on Taiwan who defy Lee's "policy," stringently enforced by Lee's successor Chen, face legal prosecution.
Memo to wannabe dictators the world over: How do you commit a flagrant human rights violation and get away with it? Simple. Commit it in full view of the world, but make sure you label it an "policy."
What's "Mr. Democracy's" motive? Lee doesn't want Chinese on Taiwan to reconcile with their kinfolk on the mainland. Too much chipping away at the virtual Berlin Wall down the center of the Taiwan Straits, and China will soon be reunified like Germany. Right-wing Japanophile Lee can then whisper "sayonara" to his pipe dream of a "Republic of Taiwan," nominally independent but in geopolitical reality a Japanese strategic outpost against the Chinese mainland.
Most Minan Chinese on Taiwan trace their roots back to Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian province directly to the west. Lu Chuan-sheng for example, is a prominent Taipei attorney. He is also Vice President Annette Lu's elder brother. When the two were young children Lu hid his baby sister in the woods to prevent her from being given up for adoption. Lu obviously believes in keeping families together. In sharp contrast to his younger sister, Lu is a dedicated champion of Chinese reunification, and has organized repeated family reunions between the mainland and Taiwan branches of the Lu clan.
See:
Wrath from Annette Lu's Ancestral Home
The News that We think They oughta See
"The people of this country see the news that we think they oughta see."
-- Ted Turner, Founder of CNN
Why Don't Americans Know about Taiwan's Green Terror?
Americans don't know about Taiwan's Green Terror because our establishment media has decided Taiwan's Green Terror, which they insist ordinary Americans are morally obligated to defend with American taxes and American blood, is not "news we think they oughta see."
Americans don't know about Taiwan's Green Terror because previous outrages have gone unreported by the same western journalists so vigorously defended by such organizations as CPJ and RSF, and whose inexcusable silence as Lee and Chen's censorship of pro reunification sentiment has been deafening.
How's that for irony?
Our establishment media, in gross violation of journalistic ethics, assuming that is not an oxymoron akin to "military intelligence," systematically evades its professional responsibility to report the failure of Taiwan's stillborn "democracy" to the American public. Our establishment media engages in this unprofessional moral evasion because they failed to retain their objectivity while reporting on One Divided China, but instead allowed themselves to be seduced by the Taiwan Lobby's "One China, One Taiwan."
Having taken sides, having allowed themselves to become emotionally invested in the "lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" presided over by "Mr. Democracy" Lee Teng-hui and "Son of Taiwan" Chen Shui-bian, our establishment media is reluctant to confront developments which bring them professional discredit by underscoring their historical myopia and political naiveté.
The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same
"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."
-- Old French Aphorism
Several years ago Hsu Shui-teh, Secretary General of the KMT under Chairman Lee Teng-hui was asked about an impending court case, one potentially damaging to "Mr. Democracy" Lee Teng-hui's thoroughly corrupt Mainstream Faction. Hsu, an obsequious ass-kisser, rushed to bossman Lee Teng-hui's defense:
"What have we got to be worried about? After all, the courts are operated by the KMT."
Hsu's Freudian slip, his momentary, unintentional lapse into uncharacteristic honesty, earned him a footnote in ROC political history.
Today Chen Ding-nan could easily say the same thing about the Democratic Progressive Party:
"What have we got to be worried about? After all, the courts are operated by the DPP!"
Ever since assuming power in 2000, the "reformist" DPP has flagrantly, openly, brazenly engaged in every single form of corrupt behavior for which they rightly condemned Lee Teng-hui's "Taiwan KMT" in years past. As Sisy Chen, former Public Relations Chief for the DPP has noted, the new generation of DPP leaders exhibits an unseemly eagerness to sell out the party's long professed ideals in exchange for money, power or a combination of the two, that is downright sickening.
The Pan Green Golden Rule: He Who Has the Gold, Rules
During the late Chairman Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, coercive egalitarian Maoists demanded "Xian hong, hou zhuan," or "First red, then expert." Mao's insane economic "policy," astounding in its obtuseness, has been reincarnated on Taiwan by the DPP and the TSU. The terms "Nativization" and "Taiwanization" are the Taiwan independence Quislings' code words for de-Sinicization and Japanization. During Chairman Lee and now Chairman Chen's Nativization / Taiwanization Witch Hunt, Taiwan independence zealots are demanding "Xian lu, hou zhuan," or "First green, then expert."
Instead of eliminating State Owned Enterprises outright by introducing across the board privatization, the Chen regime has used them to reward politically correct but professionally unqualified political benefactors.
China Steel is, or rather was, an exceptional SOE which consistently yeilded handsome profits quarter after quarter, year after year under an experienced, capable Pan Blue chairman. The Chen regime recently fired him and turned over China Steel's management to the former chairman of Taiwan's state-owned Taiwan Sugar, a clue-less, incompetent Pan Green political crony with a proven track record -- of losing money.
Christine Tsung, the Republic of China's Minister of Economic Affairs was recently forced to resign only three months after assuming office. Tsung publicly acknowledged she wasn't up to the job. Tsung's qualifications were twofold. One, Tsung was Finance Director for the small southern California community of Poway, near San Diego. Two, Tsung's husband, president of Taiwan's state-owned First Bank, donated US$1,000,000 to Chen Shui-bian's presidential election campaign.
Transportation tycoon Chang Rong-fa, head of the Evergreen Group, (http://www.evergreen.com.tw/) is Chen Shui-bian's sugardaddy. When Chen was an ROC legislator, his staff of twenty legislative assistants were employees of Evergreen, provided free of charge to Chen by Chang. Recently a Chen appointee made his debut as Chairman of the Board of Taiwan's state-owned Bank of Transportation and Communications. The new bank chairman is Chang Rong-fa's son in law.
Chairman Chen, meet Chairman Mao
Since its founding the DPP has routinely and rightly condemned the KMT for its Leninist conflation of Party, State and Military authority into a single Supreme Leader. One of the DPP's solemn promises was that once in office it would put a swift end to such top heavy "cult of leadership" institutions inconsistent with bottom up, grass roots style democracy.
A mere two years into a DPP administration however, guess what? DPP officials have suggested that if President Chen of the ROC was simultaneously Chairman Chen of the DPP, "coordination between the executive branch and the ruling party would be more streamlined, more efficient." Would you be surprised to learn that instead of indignantly rejecting the proposal, A-Bian promptly put his seal of approval on it?
So now the "Son of Taiwan" is simultaneously Chairman of the DPP, President of the ROC, and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Chairman Chen, meet Chairman Mao. You have more in common with him than you would care to acknowledge.
You think I exaggerate? When Chen's administration came under withering fire last year for gross incompetence, A-Bian blamed everybody except himself. President Chen ordered all civil servants to attend compulsory study groups in which they would read and discuss quotations from his speeches "in order to serve the public better." No, Chairman Chen didn't have his Revealed Wisdom printed up in the form of little green "Quotations from Chairman Chen," a la Mao's little red "Quotations from Chairman Mao," but he might as well have.
The Immortal Folly
"Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it... can never willingly abandon it."
--Edmund Burke
Patterns in nature replicate themselves, or expressed in more mundane terms, "History repeats itself." The Reformer overthrows the Tyrant; the Reformer becomes the Tyrant. Intoxicated with power and incapable of self-introspection, the Reformer turned Tyrant cannot admit to himself that just like those he has replaced, he too has been corrupted by Absolute Power. He tells himself "I'm different, the times are different, the circumstances are different," when in fact the only thing different is the color of his uniform. This immortal folly is brilliantly depicted in such film masterpieces as:
All the King's Men (1949, directed by Robert Rossen, written by Robert Penn Warren)
Viva Zapata (1952, directed by Elia Kazan, written by John Steinbeck)
and in the immensely satisfying film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy,
-- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Directed by Peter Jackson, Written by J.R.R. Tolkien, Screenplay by Frances Walsh
See:
The Tragedy of Boromir
"Mr. Democracy": Prime Suspect
"Despite considerable media publicity in both countries concerned the Taiwan kick-backs with murder process and the partially related French kick-backs with influence peddling process will fade away as this millennium year ends. Some punishments may be inflicted on some of those involved but there will be no dramatic transparency of the corruption that lies at the base of both processes."
-- Franz Schurmann
Prediction #76: Crime and Corruption in France and Taiwan
If heavy-handed Green Terror press censorship and endemic Green Terror corruption weren't bad enough, it is merely the tip of the Green Terror iceberg. How many Americans know for example, that Lee Teng-hui is the prime suspect in the cold-blooded execution/murder of Captain Yin Ching-feng, an ROC Navy whistle blower? That's right, none other than Newsweek magazine's cover boy of 1996, "Mr. Democracy" himself. A murder suspect.
In 1993, Republic of China Navy Captain Yin had in his possession taped evidence implicating "Mr. Democracy" as the chief conspirator in a mind-boggling military procurement scandal involving astronomical kickbacks on Lafayette frigates purchased from France. The night before he was about to go public with his evidence, Yin was seen being forced into a sedan by two men and "taken for a ride," Chicago gangland style. Yin's corpse was later found floating off the coast of Hualien by fishermen. His throat had been cut. One need not be Gil Grissom or Catherine Willows of the TV series "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation" to realize Yin did not die of a boating accident.
Former ROC legislator Lee Ching-hua has been conducting his own independent investigation of Yin Ching-feng's murder. Lee Ching-hua has lamented that despite a mountain of damning evidence, the case is going nowhere, at least on Taiwan. The only real progress is being made in France by French prosecutors. As Lee Ching-hua put it, it's a too typical instance of "ban bu xia qu, yin wei ban bu shang qu," which loosely translated means "the case cannot go forward, because it cannot go upward."
The situation is pretty much summed up by the Chinese expression "Guan guan xiang hu," which means "Officials cover for each other." In case that still wasn't plain enough, it means Chen Shui-bian is covering for Lee Teng-hui. Let's be clear, we are not talking about anything so tame as "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" We are talking about "What did the president order done, and when did he order it?"
Fall guys, some guilty, others totally innocent, have been designated to take the heat off Lee Teng-hui and fellow crooks Su Chi-cheng and Liu Tai-ying. Among those falsely accused are retired General Hau Pei-tsun and Admiral Lei Hsueh-ming, father of Lei Chien, a former Executive Vice President of the American Broadcasting Company, a former ROC legislative candidate and currently a highly respected television talk show host. Would it surprise you to learn that both General Hau and Admiral Lei are "mainlanders," so-called, and staunch defenders of the ROC's One China Constitution?
See:
Control Yuan slammed over Hau investigation
Admiral linked to ship scandal freed
Meanwhile key witnesses have fled overseas, crucial evidence has mysteriously vanished, a cold trail grows colder, and justice for the heroic Captain Yin and for long-suffering Chinese citizens on Taiwan less hopeful with each passing day.
Fifty-four Suitcases, Eight-five Million Dollars
Bucharest, Romania, 14 December 1999 (RFE/RL) ...The next day, for reasons known only to himself, Ceausescu called a mass rally in downtown Bucharest. Perhaps the Romanian leader still felt loved by the people, or else he was confident in his ability to manipulate the rally. It was a fatal mistake that was to be witnessed by the entire nation. A minute into his speech from the balcony of the Central Committee building, Ceausescu was interrupted by shouts from the crowd of "Timisoara!" and "Down with Ceausescu!" ...By the afternoon of December 21, the center of the capital was filled with thousands of people demanding Ceausescu's ouster. Violent clashes with police soon erupted and continued through the night.
The Republic of China's March 18, 2000 presidential election had nothing to do with "democracy" let alone Constitutional Rule of Law. Instead, it was about "the peaceful transfer of political authority," as Lee himself so shrewdly termed it. By exploiting the dictatorial powers and immense resources available to him as combined head of state and chairman of the ruling party, Lee was able to engineer the defeat of his own party's candidate Lien Chan, a reunificationist and to "transfer political authority" to the pro independence DPP's Chen Shui-bian. Because Lee was able to foist his anti-democratic travesty on the ROC electorate without provoking armed rebellion, Lee felt free to characterize his election fraud as "peaceful."
Immediately following Mr. Democracy's outrageous "peaceful transfer of power" thousands of KMT Reform Faction and New Party supporters staged a Tiananmen style protest in front of KMT headquarters in Taipei. This columnist was among those who took to the streets, waving banners, angrily shouting "Down with Lee Teng-hui!" and "Lee Teng-hui, step down!"
That was Tseng Wen-hui's (Mrs. Lee Teng-hui) cue to make her now infamous "Escape to New York" with US$85 million in undeclared used bills stuffed into 54 suitcases.
Why now?
Lee was suddenly a lame duck, and Taiwan's First Couple panicked. Lee Teng-hui and Tseng Wen-hui, like millions of CNN viewers worldwide had seen what the Romanian people did to Romania's First Couple Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. A frightened and apoplectic Mr. Democracy was quoted as saying, "If Deng Xiaoping could use tanks to put down Tiananmen, why can't I?"
A-Bian had already gotten what he wanted, the presidency of the ROC. Lee could no longer be certain A-Bian wouldn't sell them out. Whatever dirt Lee might have on Chen, whatever sums might have changed hands in some smoke-filled room, Chen had also sworn publicly he would "investigate [the Lafayette Scandal] to the bitter end, even if it shook the foundations of the nation."
Given Chen's public declaration, plus the seething mass of "peasants with pitchforks" gathered outside KMT headquarters and Lee's official residence, and it is doubtful the First Couple got much sleep during those fateful days.
So Mrs. Democracy absconded with a portion of Mr. Democracy's kickbacks from the Lafayette frigate and Mirage fighter procurements, just in case. I was not speaking figuratively when I compared Lee Teng-hui and Tseng Wen-hui to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and to Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu.
See:
What made you start writing about the Marcoses?
Crimes of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos
Unfortunately for them the undeclared cash was discovered by US Customs officials at JFK airport. Just counting the bills took seven hours. Among the eyewitnesses to Mrs. Democracy's flight from justice were US Customs officials, US State Department officials, EVA Air baggage handlers, Bank of America employees, and armed security guards (Pinkerton's, if my memory serves me) who escorted the cash back to Taipei.
EVA Air's boss Chang Rong-fa as I mentioned, is a major benefactor to Taiwan independence politicians Lee and Chen. Chang, in financial terms, practically is the DPP. Evidence suggests that with the help of the outgoing Clinton administration, Lee and Chang covered up the entire fiasco. The cash in excess of US $10,000 would not be confiscated as required by US law, but Mr. Democracy would have to step down as KMT Party Chairman in order to mollify outraged pro democracy protesters outside the presidential palace, and to avoid embarrassing the US government for having sponsored a de facto dictator and shameless kleptocrat.
Less than a week later, Mrs. Democracy sneaked back to Taipei and arranged a photo op at Tamsui Golf Course, ostentatiously playing golf in the rain and fog, pretending that she had never left Taiwan at all, insisting disingenuously that she had "been here all the time."
When ROC legislators Fung Hu-hsiang and Hsieh Chi-tah quite reasonably demanded an official investigation of Tseng Wen-hui's failed getaway attempt and subsequent cover-up, Tseng filed a libel suit against them to shut them up. Fung and Hsieh were compelled to respond defensively with a counter suit.
Let's be absolutely clear. Fung and Hsieh did not commit libel. Far from it. Fung and Hsieh were demanding an American-style Watergate/Whitewater investigation, which as duly elected members of the ROC parliament they were not only well within their rights to demand, but morally obligated to demand.
Both Tseng's lawsuit and Fung and Hsieh's counter suit were dismissed in Taipei's District Court. The presiding judge in essence handed this political hot potato which landed in his lap off to the Appeals Courts by issuing a "Guess what? Nobody's guilty!" verdict.
The Taiwan public is outraged that the court lacked the judicial independence to pursue the matter to the end, and in effect officially sanctioned Mrs. Democracy's theft of mind-boggling sums her husband could not possibly have earned legally during his career as a civil servant. Tseng Wen-hui and her hubby have "gotten away with murder," so to speak, probably literally.
On the other hand, given the bright green Taiwan independence "Anaconda in the Chandelier," hanging over the novice judge's head, it is fortunate Fung and Hsieh weren't railroaded, incarcerated in the Green Gulag and fined exorbitant sums they as public officials of rare honesty could never hope to pay off in ten lifetimes.
This is the true face of "Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" loudly trumpeted by the Taiwan independence propaganda machine, from the Taipei Times to the Washington Times. As I said, this is merely the tip of the Green Terror iceberg.
This isn't The Republic Anymore, It's The Empire. We are The Bad Guys
"All democracies turn into dictatorships -- but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea... How did the Republic turn into the Empire? ...How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic. One day Princess Leia and her friends woke up and said, 'This isn't the Republic anymore, it's the Empire. We are the bad guys... This democracy is a sham...'"
-- George Lucas, creator of "Star Wars"
See:
Dark Victory, an inside look at the new "Star Wars" episode
Our Benevolent Global Hegemonists' complicity in Israel's brazen campaign of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and in Venezuela's abortive military coup should leave no one in doubt. The primary concern of the New Imperialists, as they are now calling themselves, is not whether America's client states practice "American-style Democracy." The primary concern of our homegrown versions of Emperor Commodus, as depicted in Ridley Scott's retro epic "Gladiator," is whether foreign and domestic political entities represent inconvenient obstacles to "American-style Empire."
Post-communist China is struggling to extricate herself from Third World poverty and to throw off the final remnant of 19th century colonialism. An economically prosperous, laissez-faire capitalist China immune to US and Japanese gunboat diplomacy however, is not part of the New Imperialists' strategic scenario for the 21st Century. A bankrupt, Balkanized, and defenseless China is.
Without meaning to, China finds itself standing squarely in the path of the New Imperialists. Any Chinese government which properly insists on China's political independence, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity will find itself involuntarily cast by the Blue Team as America's implacable "strategic competitor" and targeted for subversion and eventual destruction.
Taiwan is neither a democracy, nor would Americans, who have their own lives to live, be morally obligated to defend it even if it were. Defending "Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" is nothing more than the Blue Team's flimsy pretext to justify China's destabilization and disintegration, and to deny China's restoration to her historical status as a respected member of the world community. Likewise with Bush Jr.'s incomprehensible hostility towards Nobel Laureate Kim Dae-jung and his "Sunshine Policy" towards the northern part of his country. So much for the "benevolence" in Benevolent Global Hegemony.
See:
Gregory Clark Japan Website articles on China
A global American Empire does not constitute the fulfilment of our Founding Fathers' American Republic on a global scale. Just the opposite. A global American Empire is the antithesis, the negation of our Founding Fathers' American Republic. A global American Empire is to the Founding Fathers' American Republic what antimatter is to matter, what the antichrist is to Christ. The American Empire is the oppressor not only of foreigners abroad, but of Americans at home.
It is not the American Republic, but the American Empire that can besiege, starve, gas, machine gun and incinerate an entire Protestant sect in rural Texas, and still declare without irony that it is "deeply disturbed that Beijing is harassing Christians in China."
It is not the American Republic, but the American Empire that can countenance killing half a million Iraqi children in the name of "helping the Iraqi people liberate themselves from domestic Iraqi tyranny."
It is not the American Republic, but the American Empire that can make astonishing statements such as "Rising Chinese economic prosperity constitutes a grave threat to American military supremacy in the western [sic] Pacific" without even blinking.
Blue Team American Imperialists jealous of China's astonishing resurgence will need to cast about for a more compelling pretext than "defending Taiwan's lively / thriving / vibrant democracy" to justify preemptive "containment" of China's lively / thriving / vibrant capitalist economy -- not to mention the "deconstruction" of the Great Republic established by America's visionary Founders.
Monday, January 28, 2002
Backtalk! The Big Lie of Taiwan's Election
Backtalk! The Big Lie of Taiwan's Election
January 28, 2002
From Phil, regarding The Strait Scoop
January 28, 2002
Phil: I happened to read one of [Bevin Chu's]... articles, "The Big Lie Of Taiwan's Elections," at the Pravda website. It was such a good article that I went into the Antiwar.com site to find out more about you. I was very pleased to learn that you had written many previous articles! Wow, I must say every one of them are excellent! I'm very impressed and sent the link to my friends recommending that they must check it out.
Bevin Chu: Thank you very much. Please do recommend the Strait Scoop to your friends. Those of us who oppose military confrontation and advocate peaceful commerce between the US and China need to get the word out. We cannot allow the warmongers to monopolize the public debate.
Phil: Yes the Singapore Straits Times is a very fine newspaper indeed. I read it every day and their coverage of China/Taiwan affairs are right on the mark. The irony is that a tiny nation-state that is constantly lambasted by the western nations for not having a free press can report more accurately about China/Taiwan than CNN, NY Times, Newsweek and other western media organizations. There is probably no statesman that knows China and Taiwan more than Lee Kuan Yew. I don't think it's exaggerating to say that he is a precious asset to all ethnic Chinese people in the world.
Bevin Chu: Not only ethnic Chinese, but to non-Chinese as well, as LKY's political wisdom is a contribution to the world at large, including Europe and North America, not merely Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
Phil: Your writings about the Taiwan independence gang is most eye-opening. I'm so surprised that a Chinese person originating from Taiwan would actually speak up for mainland China in so many issues.
Bevin Chu: Strictly speaking, I'm not "speaking up for mainland China" per se. I'm helping Americans to understand that being from Taiwan does not mean one automatically favors Taiwan independence, that only a small minority of extremists on Taiwan actually insists on Taiwan independence. The vast majority are either pro-reunification or else indifferent. Not quite the same thing as "speaking up for mainland China." That is only part of the larger picture.
Phil: You also recognize this ridiculous demonizing China campaign launched by the anti-China gang in the USA is nothing more than an attempt to contain China and keep her down. My thoughts on those issues are almost identical to yours so it was encouraging to read your excellently articulated arguments.
Bevin Chu: The China bashers don't realize that not only is it not necessary for China to lose for America to win, it may well be necessary for China to win for America to win. Chinese markets may well be essential to America's continued future prosperity.
Phil: I've also noticed the dates of your articles, they appear approximately once every 4 months. So that means I will have to wait 4 months for your next installment? That's a long wait!
Bevin Chu: As I mentioned in "Taiwan Independence, RIP" I have come to realize that that due to global economic factors Taiwan independence is basically kaput. I now feel considerably less pressured to combat it now that I am quite confident it will not succeed. Hence my reduced output. However I may dash off shorter articles more frequently in the near future.
From Anonymous, regarding "pro reunification"
January 24, 2002
Your point is well taken that the western press has blindly followed an erroneous conclusion. If a sitting president's party in any western democracy got only 33.4% of the vote, it would be a major defeat. The DPP and its TSU ally will hold 44.4 percent of the seats in the new legislature, having gained only 41.2 percent of the vote. Still a major defeat any way you look at it. [To allege] That the election was a victory for the DPP is absurd, and almost gives the appearance of another agenda (I dare not use the word "conspiracy") among the western press.
Yes, the Taipei Times has become a propaganda sheet for the Taiwan independence crowd. The Taipei Times even cast Mayor Ma's "crackdown" (so to speak) on prostitution in terms of unification-independence. The Taiwan News is moving in that same direction very quickly. (James Wei would be spinning in his grave, if he knew the current content of the newspaper he founded.) The China Post on the other hand is much more balanced in its content, so there still is a rational source of news in English in Taipei.
However, Bevin, you must realize that most people are neither for independence (knowing it would be short lived) nor unification. They want things to stay the way they are, hoping that, in time, maybe 50 years, China will become more democratic and free from corruption. I believe that implying the pan-blue group is "pro-unification" is an incorrect characterization. Most of these people are pro-status quo.
Bevin Chu replies:
Actually, I have corresponded with this writer before, who needs to remain anonymous for political reasons. He would be subject to Taiwan independence fundamentalist "Green Terror" treatment if he were found out. He is very well informed about Taiwan.
In fact we do not disagree about the issue of "pro-reunification." The issue is purely semantic. I have been using the term "pro-reunification" the way almost everyone else on Taiwan uses it, to mean "in favor of eventual reunification" and "to be committed to reunification as the final goal." I have been using the term "pro-independence" the way almost everyone else on Taiwan uses it as well, to mean "in favor of eventual independence" and "to be committed to independence as the final goal."
In this straightforward, non-misleading, "non-Clintonian" sense, the KMT under Lien Chan, the PFP and NP are clearly and unequivocally "pro-reunification." They are committed to reunification as the ultimate goal, and "pro-status quo" merely as an interim condition.
Taiwan independence spinmeisters such as DPP legislator Shen Fu-hsiung, play an underhanded, deceptive numbers game. They inflate their own numbers by lumping those who favor eventual reunification together with those who favor eventual independence. They do this by characterizing "pro interim status quo" members of the public as "opposed to reunification," when in fact they are merely opposed to immediate reunification. They do this by characterizing "pro interim status quo" members of the public as "favoring de facto independence," when in fact they favor eventual de jure reunification.
I refuse to play such dishonest games, and don't need to, because truth favors the reunificationists. I leave shameless, barefaced, lying through one's teeth to the Taipei Times.
January 28, 2002
From Phil, regarding The Strait Scoop
January 28, 2002
Phil: I happened to read one of [Bevin Chu's]... articles, "The Big Lie Of Taiwan's Elections," at the Pravda website. It was such a good article that I went into the Antiwar.com site to find out more about you. I was very pleased to learn that you had written many previous articles! Wow, I must say every one of them are excellent! I'm very impressed and sent the link to my friends recommending that they must check it out.
Bevin Chu: Thank you very much. Please do recommend the Strait Scoop to your friends. Those of us who oppose military confrontation and advocate peaceful commerce between the US and China need to get the word out. We cannot allow the warmongers to monopolize the public debate.
Phil: Yes the Singapore Straits Times is a very fine newspaper indeed. I read it every day and their coverage of China/Taiwan affairs are right on the mark. The irony is that a tiny nation-state that is constantly lambasted by the western nations for not having a free press can report more accurately about China/Taiwan than CNN, NY Times, Newsweek and other western media organizations. There is probably no statesman that knows China and Taiwan more than Lee Kuan Yew. I don't think it's exaggerating to say that he is a precious asset to all ethnic Chinese people in the world.
Bevin Chu: Not only ethnic Chinese, but to non-Chinese as well, as LKY's political wisdom is a contribution to the world at large, including Europe and North America, not merely Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
Phil: Your writings about the Taiwan independence gang is most eye-opening. I'm so surprised that a Chinese person originating from Taiwan would actually speak up for mainland China in so many issues.
Bevin Chu: Strictly speaking, I'm not "speaking up for mainland China" per se. I'm helping Americans to understand that being from Taiwan does not mean one automatically favors Taiwan independence, that only a small minority of extremists on Taiwan actually insists on Taiwan independence. The vast majority are either pro-reunification or else indifferent. Not quite the same thing as "speaking up for mainland China." That is only part of the larger picture.
Phil: You also recognize this ridiculous demonizing China campaign launched by the anti-China gang in the USA is nothing more than an attempt to contain China and keep her down. My thoughts on those issues are almost identical to yours so it was encouraging to read your excellently articulated arguments.
Bevin Chu: The China bashers don't realize that not only is it not necessary for China to lose for America to win, it may well be necessary for China to win for America to win. Chinese markets may well be essential to America's continued future prosperity.
Phil: I've also noticed the dates of your articles, they appear approximately once every 4 months. So that means I will have to wait 4 months for your next installment? That's a long wait!
Bevin Chu: As I mentioned in "Taiwan Independence, RIP" I have come to realize that that due to global economic factors Taiwan independence is basically kaput. I now feel considerably less pressured to combat it now that I am quite confident it will not succeed. Hence my reduced output. However I may dash off shorter articles more frequently in the near future.
From Anonymous, regarding "pro reunification"
January 24, 2002
Your point is well taken that the western press has blindly followed an erroneous conclusion. If a sitting president's party in any western democracy got only 33.4% of the vote, it would be a major defeat. The DPP and its TSU ally will hold 44.4 percent of the seats in the new legislature, having gained only 41.2 percent of the vote. Still a major defeat any way you look at it. [To allege] That the election was a victory for the DPP is absurd, and almost gives the appearance of another agenda (I dare not use the word "conspiracy") among the western press.
Yes, the Taipei Times has become a propaganda sheet for the Taiwan independence crowd. The Taipei Times even cast Mayor Ma's "crackdown" (so to speak) on prostitution in terms of unification-independence. The Taiwan News is moving in that same direction very quickly. (James Wei would be spinning in his grave, if he knew the current content of the newspaper he founded.) The China Post on the other hand is much more balanced in its content, so there still is a rational source of news in English in Taipei.
However, Bevin, you must realize that most people are neither for independence (knowing it would be short lived) nor unification. They want things to stay the way they are, hoping that, in time, maybe 50 years, China will become more democratic and free from corruption. I believe that implying the pan-blue group is "pro-unification" is an incorrect characterization. Most of these people are pro-status quo.
Bevin Chu replies:
Actually, I have corresponded with this writer before, who needs to remain anonymous for political reasons. He would be subject to Taiwan independence fundamentalist "Green Terror" treatment if he were found out. He is very well informed about Taiwan.
In fact we do not disagree about the issue of "pro-reunification." The issue is purely semantic. I have been using the term "pro-reunification" the way almost everyone else on Taiwan uses it, to mean "in favor of eventual reunification" and "to be committed to reunification as the final goal." I have been using the term "pro-independence" the way almost everyone else on Taiwan uses it as well, to mean "in favor of eventual independence" and "to be committed to independence as the final goal."
In this straightforward, non-misleading, "non-Clintonian" sense, the KMT under Lien Chan, the PFP and NP are clearly and unequivocally "pro-reunification." They are committed to reunification as the ultimate goal, and "pro-status quo" merely as an interim condition.
Taiwan independence spinmeisters such as DPP legislator Shen Fu-hsiung, play an underhanded, deceptive numbers game. They inflate their own numbers by lumping those who favor eventual reunification together with those who favor eventual independence. They do this by characterizing "pro interim status quo" members of the public as "opposed to reunification," when in fact they are merely opposed to immediate reunification. They do this by characterizing "pro interim status quo" members of the public as "favoring de facto independence," when in fact they favor eventual de jure reunification.
I refuse to play such dishonest games, and don't need to, because truth favors the reunificationists. I leave shameless, barefaced, lying through one's teeth to the Taipei Times.
Friday, January 25, 2002
The Big Lie of Taiwan's Election, as published by Pravda
The Big Lie of Taiwan's Election, as published by Pravda
Bevin Chu
January 25, 2002
Bevin Chu: The Big Lie of Taiwan's Election
A Lie Heard Halfway around the World
25.01.2002
Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/25758-0
"A lie gets halfway around the world before truth can even get its boots on." ~ Ken Duberstein, veteran Washington public relations expert and former Reagan Chief of Staff
The tragic aftermath of our US-led war against the Serbian people revealed one thing – our intrepid Fourth Estate got the story of Kosovo exactly backwards. Now the establishment media has reprised its sorry performance in the Balkans. It has gotten Taiwan's 2001 legislative, county and municipal elections exactly backwards as well. You would never know it from the deluge of "expert commentary" by Taiwan independence fellow travelers, but Taiwan's election does not represent a "mandate for Taiwan independence." It merely confirms what genuine China experts have known all along – enthusiasm for political independence on the island continues to wane with each passing year.
THE BIG LIE
The Taipei Times ["Has Beijing Got the Message Yet?," December 4] has alleged that the 88 seats won by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), plus the 13 seats won by Lee Teng-hui's Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), out of a total of 225 in the Republic of China legislature, amount to a clear and unequivocal mandate for Taiwan independence.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Taipei Times is the English language mouthpiece for the Taiwan independence movement. What the Taipei Times offers in abundance is "dezinformatsiya," the old KGB's term for deliberate and systematic deception as an instrument of official policy.
Needless to say, the Taipei Times' mendacious post-election spin control is being parroted by all the usual suspects, notably "Yellow Peril" China-baiter William Kristol ["Embrace Taiwan," Washington Post, December 4]. What a surprise.
For a good laugh, courtesy the Taiwan independence amen corner, see "Has China Seen the Light?" [the Christian Science Monitor, December 6]. This slapdash bit of "expert commentary" amounts to an open admission of complete and utter ignorance concerning its purported subject matter.
THE HARD FACTS
Those who read Chinese and want to know the true significance of Taiwan's 2001 legislative, county and municipal elections owe it to themselves to read an eye-opening article entitled "Who Won?," by Sisy Chen, former Public Relations Chief for the DPP, now one of the Taiwan independence movement's most feared critics. Chen is especially formidable in bare knuckles television debates with her former comrades, because, as the DPP's former "Minister of Propaganda," she "knows where the bodies are buried."
Those who can't read Chinese, relax. Chen's insights have been incorporated into this article.
Sisy Chen, along with former DPP party chairmen and "White Terror" political prisoners Shih Ming-teh and Hsu Hsing-liang were the DPP's political superstars. Shih, who was imprisoned for three decades, is Taiwan's Nelson Mandela. Because they were far brighter than the typical Taiwan independence True Believer, all three saw the light and repudiated not only the DPP, but Taiwan independence per se.
They repudiated the the Democratic Progressive Party because it had betrayed its founding ideals: democracy and progressive government. They repudiated Taiwan independence because they realized, however belatedly, that Taiwan independence was not in the best interest of ordinary men and women on Taiwan. Together with former New Party Chairman Jaw Shau-kang, former New Party legislator Chu Hui-liang, they have founded a forward-looking pro-reunification thinktank known as "Shan Meng" or "Mountain Alliance."
Sisy Chen has mentioned on her nightly TV program that she is one fourth Japanese. Legendary Ming dynasty Chinese hero Cheng Cheng-kung, aka "Koxinga," was half Japanese. Let no one accuse this columnist of anti-Japanese bigotry. This columnist's outrage has always been animated by moral/ethical considerations, never ethnicity, and has never been directed at fellow human beings of Japanese origin, only at Japanese militarists and colonialists who victimized China.
As Chen notes, the actual vote totals reveal something seriously amiss with Taiwan independence spin control. For starters, votes cast in favor of pro-reunification Pan Blue candidates clearly outnumber votes cast in favor of pro-independence Pan Green candidates.
Voter Turnout, Legislative Elections – 66%
Pan Blue – 50% KMT – 29% PFP – 19% NP – 3%
Pan Green – 41% DPP – 33% TSU – 8%
I have purposely rounded the percentages off to the nearest whole number, making them easy to remember and track, even though doing so introduces a slight rounding-off error.
As you can see, the DPP performed worse this year than it did two years ago. DPP legislative candidates received 33% of the vote, 6% fewer than DPP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian received during the March 2000 presidential election, when he squeaked into the president's office with an underwhelming 39% plurality.
At the grassroots county and municipal levels Taiwan independence suffered an even worse setback. Sure, the Pan Green parties captured 45% of the county and municipal level vote, up from 43% in 1997. But the Pan Blue parties captured 47% of the county and municipal level vote, up from 42% in 1997! Northern and central Taiwan are now in Pan Blue hands. Only southern Taiwan remains in Pan Green hands.
THE REAL TRUTH
So how did the Pan Green parties wind up with so many seats in the ROC legislature? Specifically, how the hell did the DPP, which received a mere 33% of the total vote, wind up with 39% of the 225 seats in the legislature? Thirty-three percent of 225 equals 74, right? How did the DPP wind up with 88 seats, 14 more than their vote totals warranted?
Simple. Taiwan boasts, if that is the right word, a peculiar voting system, assumed to be the only one of its kind in the world. In the US two or three candidates compete for a single seat in an electoral district. On Taiwan dozens of candidates compete for a half dozen or so seats in an electoral district. On Taiwan elections resemble an "every man for himself, the devil take the hindmost," free-for-all. This system is not without merit, but also has drawbacks.
On the one hand it permits constituencies which might be totally shut out to achieve at least minimal representation. On the other hand it pits candidates from the same party and candidates from different parties but similar political platforms against one another. These candidates can wind up bumping each other off, leaving their constituents without representation. A candidate with a smaller constituency and dramatically different political agenda can then waltz into office over his opponents' corpses. A larger constituency can go unrepresented, even as a smaller constituency winds up overrepresented.
This is exactly what happened on December 1, 2001.
The pro-reunification Pan Blue parties, each struggling to maintain or expand their existing power base, nominated far too many candidates. The pro-independence Pan Green parties, on the other hand, nominated an optimum number of candidates and successfully apportioned their votes among them. This apportioning of votes is referred to as "pei piao."
The result was Pan Blue candidates averaged down each others' vote totals. KMT, PFP and NP candidates got elbowed aside by DPP and TSU candidates in district after district, even though Pan Blue votes island wide outnumbered Pan Green votes. The sole exception was the PFP, which grew from 19 seats to 46 seats, primarily at the expense of the NP.
The squeaky-clean, ethical-to-a-fault New Party was virtually wiped out, a grotesquely undeserved victim of a combined "xi gua xiao ying" ("Watermelon Effect") and "qi bao xiao ying" ("Dump/Save Effect.) Voters were shocked and dismayed when NP and KMT lawmakers rated among the top five in the ROC legislature lost their bids for re-election. Among them were Lai Shi-bao (NP), Hsieh Chi-tah (NP), and Ting Shou-chung (KMT).
Too many Pan Blue candidates plus faulty Pan Blue vote apportioning added up to Pan Blue disaster. The media even coined a name for the phenomenon – the "Lai Shi-bao Effect," after the universally admired New Party legislator. By then of course it was too late. Farsighted and courageous NP lawmakers Fung Hu-hsiang and Fu Kuen-chen also fell victim. Overall the Pan Blue "alliance," and I use the term loosely, decimated its own ranks with "friendly fire."
WHY DIDN'T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING?
Somebody did. The New Party tried vainly to drag their larger Pan Blue allies to the negotiating table. New Party elder Wang Chien-hsuan vigorously championed a coordinated Pan Blue candidate nomination protocol to ensure that pro-reunification votes were not split among two, three or even more Pan Blue candidates. New Party elder Yu Mu-ming went even further, and boldly organized and led a Pan Blue march calling for "San he yi, zhu zheng dang," or, "Three into One, Form One Party."
Little came of it, except the potential imminent demise of the idealistic New Party. Neither ambitious PFP party chairman James Soong nor selfish KMT local party bosses were willing to negotiate in good faith. New Party willingness to compromise for the sake of a Pan Blue victory was misperceived as lack of political will. Many Pan Blue voters voted PFP. Others stayed home.
The outcome, widely predicted by everyone from political reporters to taxi drivers, was referred to as "Yu ong de li," meaning "The fisherman benefits." "Yu ong de li" refers to the Chinese fable about a stork and a clam. Each has the other in a death grip. Neither is willing or able to let go. A fisherman scoops them both up, the serendipitous beneficiary of their lose/lose struggle.
Taiwan's election was no "mandate for Taiwan independence," it was merely one more dismal repeat of "Yu ong de li." It was the 1994 Taipei mayoral election, which saddled Taipei with A-Bian for four dreary years. It was the 1996 presidential election, which saddled the ROC with "Mr. Democracy" Lee Teng-hui for four more years. It was deja vu all over again.
The central challenge for the Pan Blue leadership is to reorganize the KMT, PFP and what's left of the NP into a unified political force, either a trans-party alliance, or a single political entity. If they can pull this off, key political offices such the presidency or the Mayorship of Taipei, a stepping stone to the presidency, will never again be occupied by Japanophile quislings plotting treason against the Constitution of the Republic of China. If Pan Blue leaders can't find some way to work together, Taiwan independence opportunists will continue to exploit Pan Blue disunity.
ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS: THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
Now you know the real story. The December 1, 2001 election was not a "victory for Taiwan independence." The vast majority of Chinese on Taiwan – Aborigine, Minan, Hakka, "mainlander" – have never opposed reunification, providing the mainland was no longer communist, no longer totalitarian. They never rejected China, they never considered themselves anything other than Chinese, they merely rejected communism and totalitarianism.
None of what Sisy Chen and I have written is news to Chinese people on Taiwan. You will never read about it, however, in the Taipei Times, which is not a newspaper, but a propaganda organ. Its raison d'etre is not to report the news, but to peddle a political agenda – Taiwan independence. Its primary weapon is Americans' lack of facility with the Chinese language, who by default rely on the Taipei Times because it is written in English.
Support for cross-Straits reunification has been climbing steadily since Chen Shui-bian was elected two years ago, and is currently at unprecedented highs. Independent polls conducted periodically since March 2000 reveal, to the dismay of Taiwan's quisling elite, that the Chinese people on Taiwan now want reunification, sooner rather than later.
Poll Results in Favor of "One Country, Two Systems," in Chronological Order
United Daily News – 33% China Times – 29% TVBS Cable Channel – 31% Fung Hu-hsiang (New Party) commissioned poll – 48% CTN, China Television Network – 52%
The trend is hard to miss, wouldn't you say?
Not long ago Chen Shui-bian's own Mainland Affairs Council polled the Taiwan public regarding "One Country, Two Systems." To ensure that they got the low numbers they desperately wanted for propaganda purposes, the MAC's "pollsters" prefaced their questionnaire with a long-winded description of what constituted "One Country, Two Systems." The only problem was the system the MAC was describing was not "One Country, Two Systems," but "One Country, One System." Their deception backfired when 16% of the Taiwan public in effect endorsed "One Country, One System." Not exactly the result they were hoping for. The moral of this fable? Don't ask questions unless you're willing to hear the answers.
I haven't even mentioned the estimated one million "Tai Shang" or "Taiwan merchants" and their families currently living on the mainland on an essentially permanent basis. They voted too – with their feet. That's close to 5% of Taiwan's entire population. Twenty years from they'll no longer be "Taiwan Chinese," they'll be "mainland Chinese," and they'll have been joined by millions more. Taiwan has no provision for absentee voting. Imagine how they would vote if it did?
TAIWAN'S QUISLING ELITE
The only segment of Taiwan society which categorically rejects reunification with the mainland is an invisible but influential Japanophile elite, comprised of ethnic Japanese members of Taiwan's colonial era ruling class and their ethnic Chinese collaborators. This seedy "elite" is enamored of everything Japanese and contemptuous of anything Chinese. It never reconciled itself to Taiwan's restoration to China, never came to terms with Japan's surrender in 1945, and is obsessed with prying Taiwan away from China for a second time and reannexing it to Japan.
This Quisling elite would have Americans believe that the majority of Chinese on Taiwan yearn for a "Republic of Taiwan" separate from and hostile to the Chinese mainland. Sad to say, they have been largely successful. Their Big Lie has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by much of the American public. Just remember, the next time you come across Taipei Times "dezinformatsiya" posted on the internet, you are reading lies which have gotten halfway around the world before truth could even get its boots on.
AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME, AND GONE
Remember how incredulous, how disoriented we were in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down? Who could have imagined that the "Evil Empire" had been on the verge of imploding and the Cold War approaching its oddly anticlimactic conclusion?
Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu may be greeted by cheering self-styled "Taiwanese, not Chinese" waving green and white "Republic of Taiwan" flags in Texas and New York. But back on Taiwan, political independence is an idea whose time has come, and gone.
In "Taiwan Independence, RIP" I wrote,
"A-Bian has arrived at a fork in the road. Both roads lead to One China. Take one and arrive before dusk, warm, dry and refreshed. Take the other and arrive at the same destination after midnight, cold, wet and exhausted. The route is optional; the destination is not."
Two years into his first and hopefully only term, A-Bian has chosen to take the long way around. Too bad. As I said, "The route is optional; the destination is not." China will be reunified. Maybe sooner than anyone in 2002 can imagine.
Bevin Chu Antiwar.com
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.
[LiveInternet: показано число просмотров и посетителей за 24 часа] Rambler's Top100 Рейтинг@Mail.ru
Bevin Chu
January 25, 2002
Bevin Chu: The Big Lie of Taiwan's Election
A Lie Heard Halfway around the World
25.01.2002
Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/25758-0
"A lie gets halfway around the world before truth can even get its boots on." ~ Ken Duberstein, veteran Washington public relations expert and former Reagan Chief of Staff
The tragic aftermath of our US-led war against the Serbian people revealed one thing – our intrepid Fourth Estate got the story of Kosovo exactly backwards. Now the establishment media has reprised its sorry performance in the Balkans. It has gotten Taiwan's 2001 legislative, county and municipal elections exactly backwards as well. You would never know it from the deluge of "expert commentary" by Taiwan independence fellow travelers, but Taiwan's election does not represent a "mandate for Taiwan independence." It merely confirms what genuine China experts have known all along – enthusiasm for political independence on the island continues to wane with each passing year.
THE BIG LIE
The Taipei Times ["Has Beijing Got the Message Yet?," December 4] has alleged that the 88 seats won by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), plus the 13 seats won by Lee Teng-hui's Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), out of a total of 225 in the Republic of China legislature, amount to a clear and unequivocal mandate for Taiwan independence.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Taipei Times is the English language mouthpiece for the Taiwan independence movement. What the Taipei Times offers in abundance is "dezinformatsiya," the old KGB's term for deliberate and systematic deception as an instrument of official policy.
Needless to say, the Taipei Times' mendacious post-election spin control is being parroted by all the usual suspects, notably "Yellow Peril" China-baiter William Kristol ["Embrace Taiwan," Washington Post, December 4]. What a surprise.
For a good laugh, courtesy the Taiwan independence amen corner, see "Has China Seen the Light?" [the Christian Science Monitor, December 6]. This slapdash bit of "expert commentary" amounts to an open admission of complete and utter ignorance concerning its purported subject matter.
THE HARD FACTS
Those who read Chinese and want to know the true significance of Taiwan's 2001 legislative, county and municipal elections owe it to themselves to read an eye-opening article entitled "Who Won?," by Sisy Chen, former Public Relations Chief for the DPP, now one of the Taiwan independence movement's most feared critics. Chen is especially formidable in bare knuckles television debates with her former comrades, because, as the DPP's former "Minister of Propaganda," she "knows where the bodies are buried."
Those who can't read Chinese, relax. Chen's insights have been incorporated into this article.
Sisy Chen, along with former DPP party chairmen and "White Terror" political prisoners Shih Ming-teh and Hsu Hsing-liang were the DPP's political superstars. Shih, who was imprisoned for three decades, is Taiwan's Nelson Mandela. Because they were far brighter than the typical Taiwan independence True Believer, all three saw the light and repudiated not only the DPP, but Taiwan independence per se.
They repudiated the the Democratic Progressive Party because it had betrayed its founding ideals: democracy and progressive government. They repudiated Taiwan independence because they realized, however belatedly, that Taiwan independence was not in the best interest of ordinary men and women on Taiwan. Together with former New Party Chairman Jaw Shau-kang, former New Party legislator Chu Hui-liang, they have founded a forward-looking pro-reunification thinktank known as "Shan Meng" or "Mountain Alliance."
Sisy Chen has mentioned on her nightly TV program that she is one fourth Japanese. Legendary Ming dynasty Chinese hero Cheng Cheng-kung, aka "Koxinga," was half Japanese. Let no one accuse this columnist of anti-Japanese bigotry. This columnist's outrage has always been animated by moral/ethical considerations, never ethnicity, and has never been directed at fellow human beings of Japanese origin, only at Japanese militarists and colonialists who victimized China.
As Chen notes, the actual vote totals reveal something seriously amiss with Taiwan independence spin control. For starters, votes cast in favor of pro-reunification Pan Blue candidates clearly outnumber votes cast in favor of pro-independence Pan Green candidates.
Voter Turnout, Legislative Elections – 66%
Pan Blue – 50% KMT – 29% PFP – 19% NP – 3%
Pan Green – 41% DPP – 33% TSU – 8%
I have purposely rounded the percentages off to the nearest whole number, making them easy to remember and track, even though doing so introduces a slight rounding-off error.
As you can see, the DPP performed worse this year than it did two years ago. DPP legislative candidates received 33% of the vote, 6% fewer than DPP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian received during the March 2000 presidential election, when he squeaked into the president's office with an underwhelming 39% plurality.
At the grassroots county and municipal levels Taiwan independence suffered an even worse setback. Sure, the Pan Green parties captured 45% of the county and municipal level vote, up from 43% in 1997. But the Pan Blue parties captured 47% of the county and municipal level vote, up from 42% in 1997! Northern and central Taiwan are now in Pan Blue hands. Only southern Taiwan remains in Pan Green hands.
THE REAL TRUTH
So how did the Pan Green parties wind up with so many seats in the ROC legislature? Specifically, how the hell did the DPP, which received a mere 33% of the total vote, wind up with 39% of the 225 seats in the legislature? Thirty-three percent of 225 equals 74, right? How did the DPP wind up with 88 seats, 14 more than their vote totals warranted?
Simple. Taiwan boasts, if that is the right word, a peculiar voting system, assumed to be the only one of its kind in the world. In the US two or three candidates compete for a single seat in an electoral district. On Taiwan dozens of candidates compete for a half dozen or so seats in an electoral district. On Taiwan elections resemble an "every man for himself, the devil take the hindmost," free-for-all. This system is not without merit, but also has drawbacks.
On the one hand it permits constituencies which might be totally shut out to achieve at least minimal representation. On the other hand it pits candidates from the same party and candidates from different parties but similar political platforms against one another. These candidates can wind up bumping each other off, leaving their constituents without representation. A candidate with a smaller constituency and dramatically different political agenda can then waltz into office over his opponents' corpses. A larger constituency can go unrepresented, even as a smaller constituency winds up overrepresented.
This is exactly what happened on December 1, 2001.
The pro-reunification Pan Blue parties, each struggling to maintain or expand their existing power base, nominated far too many candidates. The pro-independence Pan Green parties, on the other hand, nominated an optimum number of candidates and successfully apportioned their votes among them. This apportioning of votes is referred to as "pei piao."
The result was Pan Blue candidates averaged down each others' vote totals. KMT, PFP and NP candidates got elbowed aside by DPP and TSU candidates in district after district, even though Pan Blue votes island wide outnumbered Pan Green votes. The sole exception was the PFP, which grew from 19 seats to 46 seats, primarily at the expense of the NP.
The squeaky-clean, ethical-to-a-fault New Party was virtually wiped out, a grotesquely undeserved victim of a combined "xi gua xiao ying" ("Watermelon Effect") and "qi bao xiao ying" ("Dump/Save Effect.) Voters were shocked and dismayed when NP and KMT lawmakers rated among the top five in the ROC legislature lost their bids for re-election. Among them were Lai Shi-bao (NP), Hsieh Chi-tah (NP), and Ting Shou-chung (KMT).
Too many Pan Blue candidates plus faulty Pan Blue vote apportioning added up to Pan Blue disaster. The media even coined a name for the phenomenon – the "Lai Shi-bao Effect," after the universally admired New Party legislator. By then of course it was too late. Farsighted and courageous NP lawmakers Fung Hu-hsiang and Fu Kuen-chen also fell victim. Overall the Pan Blue "alliance," and I use the term loosely, decimated its own ranks with "friendly fire."
WHY DIDN'T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING?
Somebody did. The New Party tried vainly to drag their larger Pan Blue allies to the negotiating table. New Party elder Wang Chien-hsuan vigorously championed a coordinated Pan Blue candidate nomination protocol to ensure that pro-reunification votes were not split among two, three or even more Pan Blue candidates. New Party elder Yu Mu-ming went even further, and boldly organized and led a Pan Blue march calling for "San he yi, zhu zheng dang," or, "Three into One, Form One Party."
Little came of it, except the potential imminent demise of the idealistic New Party. Neither ambitious PFP party chairman James Soong nor selfish KMT local party bosses were willing to negotiate in good faith. New Party willingness to compromise for the sake of a Pan Blue victory was misperceived as lack of political will. Many Pan Blue voters voted PFP. Others stayed home.
The outcome, widely predicted by everyone from political reporters to taxi drivers, was referred to as "Yu ong de li," meaning "The fisherman benefits." "Yu ong de li" refers to the Chinese fable about a stork and a clam. Each has the other in a death grip. Neither is willing or able to let go. A fisherman scoops them both up, the serendipitous beneficiary of their lose/lose struggle.
Taiwan's election was no "mandate for Taiwan independence," it was merely one more dismal repeat of "Yu ong de li." It was the 1994 Taipei mayoral election, which saddled Taipei with A-Bian for four dreary years. It was the 1996 presidential election, which saddled the ROC with "Mr. Democracy" Lee Teng-hui for four more years. It was deja vu all over again.
The central challenge for the Pan Blue leadership is to reorganize the KMT, PFP and what's left of the NP into a unified political force, either a trans-party alliance, or a single political entity. If they can pull this off, key political offices such the presidency or the Mayorship of Taipei, a stepping stone to the presidency, will never again be occupied by Japanophile quislings plotting treason against the Constitution of the Republic of China. If Pan Blue leaders can't find some way to work together, Taiwan independence opportunists will continue to exploit Pan Blue disunity.
ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS: THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
Now you know the real story. The December 1, 2001 election was not a "victory for Taiwan independence." The vast majority of Chinese on Taiwan – Aborigine, Minan, Hakka, "mainlander" – have never opposed reunification, providing the mainland was no longer communist, no longer totalitarian. They never rejected China, they never considered themselves anything other than Chinese, they merely rejected communism and totalitarianism.
None of what Sisy Chen and I have written is news to Chinese people on Taiwan. You will never read about it, however, in the Taipei Times, which is not a newspaper, but a propaganda organ. Its raison d'etre is not to report the news, but to peddle a political agenda – Taiwan independence. Its primary weapon is Americans' lack of facility with the Chinese language, who by default rely on the Taipei Times because it is written in English.
Support for cross-Straits reunification has been climbing steadily since Chen Shui-bian was elected two years ago, and is currently at unprecedented highs. Independent polls conducted periodically since March 2000 reveal, to the dismay of Taiwan's quisling elite, that the Chinese people on Taiwan now want reunification, sooner rather than later.
Poll Results in Favor of "One Country, Two Systems," in Chronological Order
United Daily News – 33% China Times – 29% TVBS Cable Channel – 31% Fung Hu-hsiang (New Party) commissioned poll – 48% CTN, China Television Network – 52%
The trend is hard to miss, wouldn't you say?
Not long ago Chen Shui-bian's own Mainland Affairs Council polled the Taiwan public regarding "One Country, Two Systems." To ensure that they got the low numbers they desperately wanted for propaganda purposes, the MAC's "pollsters" prefaced their questionnaire with a long-winded description of what constituted "One Country, Two Systems." The only problem was the system the MAC was describing was not "One Country, Two Systems," but "One Country, One System." Their deception backfired when 16% of the Taiwan public in effect endorsed "One Country, One System." Not exactly the result they were hoping for. The moral of this fable? Don't ask questions unless you're willing to hear the answers.
I haven't even mentioned the estimated one million "Tai Shang" or "Taiwan merchants" and their families currently living on the mainland on an essentially permanent basis. They voted too – with their feet. That's close to 5% of Taiwan's entire population. Twenty years from they'll no longer be "Taiwan Chinese," they'll be "mainland Chinese," and they'll have been joined by millions more. Taiwan has no provision for absentee voting. Imagine how they would vote if it did?
TAIWAN'S QUISLING ELITE
The only segment of Taiwan society which categorically rejects reunification with the mainland is an invisible but influential Japanophile elite, comprised of ethnic Japanese members of Taiwan's colonial era ruling class and their ethnic Chinese collaborators. This seedy "elite" is enamored of everything Japanese and contemptuous of anything Chinese. It never reconciled itself to Taiwan's restoration to China, never came to terms with Japan's surrender in 1945, and is obsessed with prying Taiwan away from China for a second time and reannexing it to Japan.
This Quisling elite would have Americans believe that the majority of Chinese on Taiwan yearn for a "Republic of Taiwan" separate from and hostile to the Chinese mainland. Sad to say, they have been largely successful. Their Big Lie has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by much of the American public. Just remember, the next time you come across Taipei Times "dezinformatsiya" posted on the internet, you are reading lies which have gotten halfway around the world before truth could even get its boots on.
AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME, AND GONE
Remember how incredulous, how disoriented we were in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down? Who could have imagined that the "Evil Empire" had been on the verge of imploding and the Cold War approaching its oddly anticlimactic conclusion?
Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu may be greeted by cheering self-styled "Taiwanese, not Chinese" waving green and white "Republic of Taiwan" flags in Texas and New York. But back on Taiwan, political independence is an idea whose time has come, and gone.
In "Taiwan Independence, RIP" I wrote,
"A-Bian has arrived at a fork in the road. Both roads lead to One China. Take one and arrive before dusk, warm, dry and refreshed. Take the other and arrive at the same destination after midnight, cold, wet and exhausted. The route is optional; the destination is not."
Two years into his first and hopefully only term, A-Bian has chosen to take the long way around. Too bad. As I said, "The route is optional; the destination is not." China will be reunified. Maybe sooner than anyone in 2002 can imagine.
Bevin Chu Antiwar.com
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.
[LiveInternet: показано число просмотров и посетителей за 24 часа] Rambler's Top100 Рейтинг@Mail.ru
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