Big win for Taiwan's DPP

Sweeping those dirty counties clean!

All three of yesterday's by-elections to choose new legislators in Taoyuan (桃園), Taichung (台中), and Taitung (台東) Counties -- all Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) strongholds -- were won by pro-Taiwan opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidates, and won by surprising margins.

While the Taitung by-election was held to replace Justin Huang (黃健庭), who resigned his legislative position before being elected as Taitung County commissioner, the Taichung and Taoyuan elections were held to replace Chinese KMT politicians whose elections were annulled due to vote-buying convictions: Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) in Taoyuan and Chiang Lien-fu (江連福) in Taichung.

Here are the numbers for the two major parties extracted from a press release (MS Word .doc file) available on the Central Election Commission (CEC) web site (percentage calculations mine, "non-partisan" candidates' votes included in calculating totals):

Taoyuan: DPP = 53,633 (58.05%) / KMT = 36,989 (40.01%)
Taichung: DPP = 63,335 (55.02%) / KMT = 51,776 (44.98%)
Taitung: DPP = 23,190 (49.46%) / KMT = 21,215 (45.25%)
The Sunday Taipei Times has an English-language chart (in image format) of the same numbers I show above, but including the other candidates.

Implications
The DPP now holds 30 legislative seats (compared to the Chinese KMT's 74 seats), giving them the power to initiate recall proceedings against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) or propose amendments to the constitution.

Considering the gains made by the DPP in last month's election and this one, I'm looking forward to the February 27, 2010 by-election (to replace more legislators who were elected as county commissioners in the December 5, 2009 3-in-1 election) to demonstrate a real trend.

FURTHER READING:
* Taipei Times: "DPP wins all three seats in by-elections"

* Taiwan News: "Sweep shows voice of Taiwan people, says DPP leader"

* Taiwan News: "DPP will not launch presidential recall at legislature"

* Radio Taiwan International: "DPP takes all three legislative by-election seats "

* Straits Times (Singapore): "Taiwan opposition scores win"

* Reuters' Kelvin Soh and Ralph Jennings "report," Nick Macfie edits: "Taiwan anti-China opposition gains legislative seats" (Note the use of "anti-China" instead of "pro-Taiwan" -- putting the onus for the antipathy on the wrong side -- and so much more anti-Taiwan BS within.)

* AFP: "Taiwan opposition scores fresh election win" (Note the big zombie lie within the piece which says: "The self-ruled island and China split in 1949 after a civil war.")

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Participants: Taiwan, 台灣, election, 選舉, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT, 國民黨, Ralph Jennings, 唐甯思

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

A quick analysis of Taiwan's 3-in-1 election

DPP makes gains, but they aren't enough

Today's Taipei Times had a good visual analysis of the election result in PDF form [link updated] comparing the results with the turnout of the last Township/City/County election in 2005 and showing that out of the locales that were involved (Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, and Taipei [Cities and Counties]) weren't), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held onto all their seats plus gained Yilan County. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), on the other hand lost not only Yilan (to the DPP) but Hualien County, too, to Fu Kun-chi (傅昆萁), who had left the party to run against the KMT's Du Li-hua (杜麗華).

The election in Penghu County was close, with KMT candidate Wang Chien-fa (王乾發) beating his DPP opponent Tsai Chien-hsing (蔡見興) by just 595 votes. A recount will take place automatically.

Michael Turton notes how close the overall vote count was, though I should point out that he's only looking at the numbers for the city mayors and county magistrates.

Much more info on the election is available on today's front page and in the Taiwan News section.

Chinese KMT violence to the fore
In other election-related news, Chen Chen-hui (陳振輝), the KMT's losing candidate in the Yunlin County town of Huwei (虎尾鎮) did something incredibly stupid.

A couple of hours after votes had been counted, Chen showed up at rival Lin Wen-pin's (林文彬, DPP) campaign headquarters. Chen was drunk and had a gun, and he started shooting. The DPP candidate's son, a policeman, happened to be on the scene and quickly captured the shooter, but not before a woman had been shot in the leg. Her injuries are said not to be life-threatening.

Here's a Liberty Times (自由時報) report on the shooting from late last night, and another article in today's Liberty Times mentions that Chen has a serious criminal record for having shot two investigators 24 years ago. That article tells us:

根據警方資料，陳振輝在二十四年前曾因槍擊兩名雲林縣調查員入獄。

[Maddog translation:]
According to police sources, Chen Chen-hui was sent to prison 24 years ago for shooting two Yunlin County investigators.

Chinese KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who happens to be Taiwan's current President, said he'd run a "clean" campaign with "clean" candidates, yet this violent criminal -- who probably had the gun already -- was one of his picks.

Ah, the things that some people will call "clean."

Here's a report on the shooting from SETN (三立新聞台) that I uploaded to YouTube:


2:27 YouTube video: "Shooting in Huwei, Yunlin by loser Chinese KMT candidate"
Is anybody surprised?

UPDATE: More analyses:
* Michael Turton compares the DPP's numbers from the 2008 presidential election with those from the December 5 election. The result shows an increase in DPP support in every area but one (Chiayi City, -1.9%).

* The Monday, December 7, 2009 edition of the Taipei Times takes a magnifying glass to the local election results, showing that the DPP made were bigger than they may seem at first glance. [/update]

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Bullets in the chamber: Taiwan, 台灣, election, 選舉, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT, 國民黨, Chen Chen-hui, 陳振輝, shooting, 槍擊案, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

DPP ECFA referendum ad

With free English translation by Tim Maddog

Taiwan's DPP has a great ad to enlighten the public about the lies being told by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) about an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) which his government insists will be signed with China. See what Ma says about "sovereignty," and compare it to the direct words of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) about "complete unification" [sic -- the correct word is "annexation" (併吞)]. Cringe in horror as you hear Taiwan's Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) "explain" why he can't talk about the details of this ECFA.

Here it is with English titles (original version below):


0:35 YouTube video: "DPP ECFA referendum ad - with English titles"
Here's the original version in Mandarin:


0:35 YouTube video: "DPP ECFA referendum ad"
For a more complete description (in English) and more links, go to the YouTube pages for either video (links below each video).

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A peck of pixeled peppers for Peter Piper to pick: Taiwan, 台灣, DPP, 民進黨, Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, 經濟合作架構協議, ECFA, referendum, 公投, YouTube, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Liu Chao-shiuan, 劉兆玄, Wen Jiabao, 溫家寶, annexation, 併吞, sovereignty, 主權

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Taiwan's Joe Lieberman quits DPP... finally!

What took you so long?!


Cut from the same mold?
Joe Lieberman (faux left) and Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄)
Was either one ever a real "Democrat"?
Thursday's Taipei Times does an excellent job of recapping the reasons why it's such a pleasure to see former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) exit the party. Here's a big chunk of the article which contains some great reminders:

Shen said there was no need for him to stay in the party now that "bad boys" within the DPP felt nothing about his outspokenness against them. He did not elaborate.

"I am a good DPP member. People [in the party] just don't like me," he said.

[...]

Shen had been a member since 1992 when he ran for legislator under the party flag.

However, he was long considered a "loner" because of his outspokenness about the party's policies or other members with whom he disagreed.

He created a stir before the 2004 presidential poll when he gave credence to claims by tycoon-turned-fugitive Chen Yu-hao (陳由豪) that the businessman had given a donation to first lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) 10 years earlier.

Chen Yu-hao said Shen had been a witness to the transaction.

Shen's unwillingness to contradict Chen Yu-hao's allegations threatened to derail President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) re-election campaign in the week before the poll.

Shen has been sharply criticized ever since by pan-green supporters, who denounced him for being a DPP apostate and for making connections with pro-blue figures.

In April 2004, Shen urged pro-green politicians to stop using the phrase "love Taiwan" as an encapsulation of their pro-localization stance, saying the phrase was detrimental to ethnic harmony between the majority Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and Mainlanders who came to Taiwan after 1945.

In May this year, Shen suffered an embarrassing defeat in the party's legislative primary along with 10 other members of DPP's former New Tide faction.

Kudos to reporter Flora Wang for presenting us with all those juicy details!

As the last sentence of the article clearly indicates, the voters were the ones who didn't like Shen -- not just other DPP politicians. Note, too, that the party allowed him to run for a DPP seat instead of kicking him out. This probably hurt them in the short run, but letting him get out of his own accord, they'll hopefully have a bit more leverage in next January's legislative elections.

The last time I saw the Shen
I seem to remember Shen threatening not so long ago to (UPDATE: links down bottom) "say bad things about the DPP all across Taiwan" if they didn't give in to his demands -- as if he hadn't already been saying such things for a long time. The last time I recall seeing Shen (I took a screenshot at the time) was in the same place he'd been appearing for a good while already -- alongside Little Bo Peep cosplayer Sisy Chen (陳文茜) on her 「文茜小妹大」 ("Sisy Chen, Gangster Gal"), a veritable fiesta of feces-flinging.


June 23, 2007
Left to right: Hsu Hsing-liang (許信良), Tang Hsiang-lung (唐湘龍), (unidentified), Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄), (unidentified), and Sisy Chen (陳文茜)
I'm lookin' for clues...
Notice the people with whom Shen yucks it up in the above image. He carries on with this bunch as if they were old Double-O colleagues in espionage.

Well, aren't they? Sisy Chen and Hsu Hsin-liang both left the DPP long ago and took up with the deep blues not so long thereafter. Tang Hsiang-lung is the creator of the 一高二低 ("DPP supporters are old, low-class, and uneducated") meme frequently used by enemy media and is one of the hosts of the ETTV smear-fest 新聞龍鳳配 ("Dragon and Phoenix").

Also notice the "poll" about the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential ticket of Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) in the lower portion of the screen. Did 18,791 people really call in, or are those just more faked numbers? Oh, and the station is CTiTV (中天新聞), where the "C" stands for "China."

RELATED LINKS:
* Try not to get dizzy as you watch how the China Post views Shen's statements about the first lady through some kind of "Alien Skin" filter.
* Here's a post I wrote in 2004 (shortly before the article linked above came out) which mentions a certain "traitor in [the DPP's] midst."
* Here's another post of mine -- this one from 2006 -- helping Shen answer "What have [I] done to deserve this?" (Go see who Shen was collaborating with and learn precisely why saying "love Taiwan" hurts him so.)
* Here's a post I wrote the day after the one above about Shen running to the mendacious China Times (中國時報) for help.
* Thursday's China Post interprets Shen's departure with their usual spin.
* As usual, there are many more links within each of my own posts linked above.

UPDATE: Shen's appearance on Sisy Chen's show was just a few days before his threat against the DPP. Here are some related links:
** 民进党大佬沈富雄警告：将走遍全台批判民进党 (My translation: "DPP elder Shen Fu-hsiung: I'll criticize the DPP all across Taiwan")
** Here's a news report (WMV file), via FTV and TaiwanUS.net.
** Here's a letter to the editor about Shen's statement (Mandarin) in the June 30, 2007 edition of the Liberty Times (自由時報) by a Tunghai University graduate student of political science. [/end update]

Which side was Shen supposedly on again? Feh! Good riddance to him!

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Classifications: Taiwan, 台灣, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Shen Fu-hsiung, 沈富雄, Chen Wen-qian, Sisy Chen, 陳文茜, China Post, 英文中國郵報, China Times, 中國時報

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Hsieh vs. Ma: A virtual presidential debate

Reason vs. mere rhetoric

In the post I wrote yesterday marking the 20th anniversary of the end of martial law in Taiwan, I quoted DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) explaining that forgiveness of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) past offenses against Taiwan (which -- be honest -- continue to this very day) shouldn't include giving them another chance to be Taiwan's stewards. Here's the quote once more:

"We can forgive a 'caretaker' who harmed our people, raped our daughters and stole our property, but we can never allow him to be the caretaker again."

The quote is back in the news today, having started a debate of sorts (in which the participants were in different locations at different times). Reporters who had heard tell of each quote then asked the relevant candidate's opponent for his response. Or something along those lines.

Hong Kong-born KMT candidate Ma "There's-a-seriously-decomposed-corpse-on-the-balcony-of-my-City-Hall" Ying-jeou (馬英九) -- who announced his candidacy just hours after being indicted for misusing his "personal allowance" while he was mayor of Taipei -- responded to Hsieh's comment with the same kind of logic one would expect from a man who rode a bicycle around Taiwan for ten days and informed the world via his personal blog about not wearing underwear while doing so. (Could he be a "Britney Spears" fan?)

The article -- in which Ma wishes people would just forget all about martial law in Taiwan -- relates it like this:

Ma slammed Hsieh for his remarks, saying he "was surprised to hear Hsieh speak ill of others, because Hsieh is religious."

Ma also challenged Hsieh's idea of "reconciliation and coexistence," calling it "hollow words."

Speaking truth to authoritarianism (whether one is religious, agnostic, or atheist) doesn't count as "speak[ing] ill of others" (造口業) -- a phrase which implies unjust criticism. In the case of Hsieh's description of the KMT, it's simply truth that must be told because of the vast media conspiracy that would prefer for the public to ignore the dark past (and present) and focus on such hollow words (如空話) as "handsome" instead. Hey, Ma "Informed-on-his-Taidu-classmates-during-a-time-when-that-could-get-them-killed" Ying-jeou, people called Ted Bundy "handsome," too.

But the KMT's double-standard-bearer (Ma) didn't stop there. Continuing to avoid logic at all costs, he actually buttressed the validity of Hsieh's criticism with this next bit:

"The fact that the KMT was bad in the past doesn't prove the DPP is good now," Ma said.

First things first: "[T]he KMT was bad," and that's a fact, Jack!

But just in case your head is spinning from Ma's non sequitur, let's break down the "logic":

The fact that noun A was adjective B in the past doesn't prove that the opposite of noun A is the opposite of adjective B now.

Replacing those with some words chosen off the top of my head, I come up with this: "The fact that the dog was furry in the past doesn't prove that the cat is hairless now." Or, "The fact that Hitler was evil in the past doesn't prove that [choose your own contemporary opposite] is benevolent now."

As you can see, the statement is utter nonsense.

Ma "Foolishness-doesn't-prove-anything" Ying-jeou, therefore, can't even prove his own assertion (that the DPP is not good) -- but he does bolster my assumption above that the DPP -- despite all its faults -- is pretty much the polar opposite of the KMT. No wonder he never passed the bar exam.

The beleaguered former Taipei mayor (Ma) stumbles onward while gazing at himself in the rearview mirror:

"The KMT has stepped down [following the 2000 presidential election] and has reflected on its conduct during the martial law period," he said.

They love to claim that they "reflect" (反省) -- in a genteel and inscrutable Confucian manner -- on the errors of their murderous ways, but we still have Ma "Singapore-is-a-good-model-to-follow" Ying-jeou spewing nonsense. If any such "reflection" had actually occurred, the die-hard KMT members would have returned their stolen assets to the people of Taiwan, donated whatever was left to the victims of the "228 Massacre" and subsequent White Terror, and perhaps even gone home to the "motherland" to be with the ones they love. Whatever! Hsieh says to stay here and enjoy the democracy earned on the backs of the Taiwanese if you want -- just don't expect the people who call Taiwan their motherland to want you to be their president.

Hsieh puts the final nail in the conversation with this alliterative verse:

Hsieh said the victims [of political persecution during the martial law era] should forgive their persectors but never forget.

"Those who forget history will be forgotten by history. Those who abandon history will be abandoned by history," Hsieh said.

"Those who have harmed others are in no position to ask their victims to forget."

I can't wait to see these two go head-to-head in a real debate on live television.

FURTHER READING: For Hanzi versions of what was said by the two candidates, try here, here, here, here, or here.

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Pros and cons: Taiwan, 台灣, Republic of China, 中華民國, DPP, 民進黨, KMT, 國民黨, Frank Hsieh, 謝長廷, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, democracy, 民主, 228 Massacre, 二二八大屠殺, freedom, 自由, martial law, 戒嚴, Taidu, 台獨, White Terror, 白色恐怖

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

10 or so sources of KMT brainwashing

His brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned.
- actor Khigh Dhiegh, playing the role of Dr. Yen Lo in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate

In KMT-world, black is still white
Yet again, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has lost a big election by a small margin, and their immediate response of their Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英) was to demand that the election be invalidated. Let me just say for the record that it's exactly the response I expected to see from a party I've referred to as "sore losers" and "crybabies" so many times in the 3-1/2 years or so that I've been blogging.

Another unsurprising thing was that when confronted with evidence of KMT vote-buying, party chairman Ma Ying-jeou, currently entangled in allegations of pocketing loads of dough from his "special allowance," would cry "自導自演" (loose translation: "It was staged."), even though that tactic is a standard pan-blue trick.

Got colic?
The poow wittow kwybabies! For most of their existence, they controlled 100% of the media, and they still control a large portion of it. For this reason, whatever they said "became" the truth, since anyone who said otherwise was drowned out by a vast ocean of KMT voices.

Enter the 'Net
These days, they don't have the kind of total control that is necessary to get away completely with such things, but old habits die hard, and they're still reflexively using the same tactics, despite the ability of anybody with access to a computer and an Internet connection to use free services such as Blogger and YouTube to outflank the KMT's rigorous control of the flow of information.

By the time Huang lost the mayoral election in Kaohsiung this past Saturday by 1,114 votes, the KMT propaganda machine was already spinning in high gear and making obnoxious noises, but Huang and Ma weren't the only ones making such noises.

He's stupid and ugly, and nobody likes him
Tell me if this isn't obnoxious. The director of the KMT's Kaohsiung headquarters during the recent campaign, Hsu Fu-ming (許福明), let loose this unfortunate choice of words in response to his party's slim loss to DPP candidate Chen Chu.

[My transcript:]
高雄市教育水準比較偏低的。這些選民尤其是在很多媒體特別是地下電台長期以來這個本土意識的這個... 這個... 洗腦。

[My translation:]
The standard of education in Kaohsiung is rather low. These voters have been, er, brainwashed by many media outlets for a long time with ideas about local identity, especially by underground radio stations.

The video of that statement was rebroadcast by FTV on the show "頭家來開講" ("Boss Talk") and subsequently uploaded to TaiwanUS.net where it can now be seen world-round. (Click the button for video #2 below the embedded player. Hsu is the fourth person to speak.) In all fairness, Mr. Obnoxious did step down to "take responsibility" for the election loss (only to be immediately replaced by an exact replica?).

Here, there be pirates!
It's quite simple to explain the existence of "underground" radio stations in Taiwan. Because the KMT controlled all of the media for several decades, and people naturally fight against unjust oppression, it was the most mobile, most easily-hidden, cheapest, and most effective method of counter-propaganda, and was thus the one that flourished.

Although many of the stations have subsequently become legally authorized broadcasters, some still exist in the deep-blue ocean that is Taiwan's media environment because it is also an attempt to maintain local-language programming (such as the sound effects and dialog from traditional Taiwanese puppet-show theater or music in the Hakka language) in a place where people with "star status" brashly say that speaking Taiwanese is "low class" and where political shows like the ones hosted by Taiwanese activist Wang Ben-hu are taken off the air because they were "too local" (as opposed to what -- "suitably Chinese"?).

Who's brainwashing whom?
As promised in the title, here are more than 10 examples of where you can see the KMT's brainwashing tactics still in force, without any sort of interdiction from the unconstitutional, pan-blue dominated National Communications Commission (NCC). These are the kinds of media spigots whose language policies are visible by their use of words like "大陸"
("mainland") or "內地" ("inland China") instead of just saying "中國" (China), which promote kids who blindly imitate their elders, which have "entertainers" like the one ("小馬") pretending to check his watch while imitating the "thumbs down" gesture of the anti-Chen movement, and who have hosts on multiple shows who make shit up out of thin air like "a bullet can't make a hole like that in a window" or "somebody called me and told me Chen Shui-bian staged his own shooting, but I can't tell you who they are":

* 東風電視 ("Dong Feng" AKA Azio TV)
Taiwan? How do we "love" thee? We give thee and thine an entire TV station with the same name as one kind of Chinese missile. I say they can stick that Dong Feng right up their Azio!

* 2100 全民開講 ("Speaking Your Mind at [9 PM]") (TVBS)
General manager Lee Tao (李濤) does his worst Larry King impression while saying that two right out of ten is good enough for him. Is he talking to people with "high standards"?

* 新聞夜總會 ("News Night Club") (TVBS)
Lee's wife, Lee Yen-chiu (李豔秋), attempts to convince viewers that the DPP's resistance to authoritarian rule is worse than the KMT's resistance to democracy and performs other bescarfed acts of ill-logic.

* 搞董新聞 ("Explaining the News") (TVBS)
So-called analysts "enter-splain" [my neologism of the day] the news while mostly spinning and rumormongering. I wouldn't buy a used scooter from any of these people.

* 新聞龍鳳配 ("Dragon and Phoenix") (ETTV)
Mouthpieces mouth off until their faces look like they'll crack at any moment. If you've seen the movie "They Live," you'll know what I see when I look at these people, even without the special sunglasses.

* 周末談政治 ("Weekend Political Chat") (ETTV)
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), whining ever since his loss to Chen Shui-bian in the 1994 Taipei mayoral election, lets the BS flow. Read about the jabber-Jaw and his gangster brother on pp. 9 - 12 of this PDF file (~435 KB).

* 全民大悶鍋 ("Pressure Cooker") (CTiTV)
"Making fun" of both sides, while pushing the memes of only one. (Can you guess which?)

* 文茜小妹大 ("Sisy Chen, Gangster Gal") (CTiTV and terrestrial station CTV)
Sisy Chen (陳文茜) and Emile Sheng (盛智仁), together like peas in a pod -- except for the fact that they're both totally red!

* 文茜的世界周報 (Sisy's World News) (CTiTV)
Sisy Chen, again, tells ethnic Chinese in Taiwan (Wait -- I thought they thought Taiwan was part of China!) the "news they mustn't miss" about China (and that other "outland" called international-something-or-other).

* 火線雙嬌 ("Two Women Under Fire") (Videoland)
Brings together 2 hosts with such "varied" backgrounds as China Times, Era News, TVBS, CTi, and ETTV. Oh, wait! Those are practically all the same thing.

* 超級新聞駭客 ("Super News Hacker") (Star TV Mandarin)
Yet another piece of super-crap from super-hack Jaw Shaw-kong.

This one's been dry cleaned
With so may flavors to choose from, it's no wonder KMT legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) has drunk boatloads too much of her own party's Kool-Aid. A report in ETToday tells us that on Tuesday Ho said that the 冤魂 ("the ghost of a person who was wrongly put to death or murdered") of Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄) (the guy who all evidence points to as having shot Chen Shui-bian on March 19, 2004) came to her in a dream and told her that he didn't want the "key man" accused in a case of buying votes on behalf of mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying to end up like him. By the way, the person who is suspected of actually putting the money into voters' hands and telling them to vote for Huang has already admitted to doing so.

To me, Ho's "dream" could mean any or all of the following: 1) She needs psychiatric help. (Most people have weird dreams from time to time, but only a very small number willingly put them in the news and use them to try to influence the public's perception of their political opponents.); 2) The KMT is planning to have the guy offed, and she's prepping the public for the blame to be placed upon the DPP; 3) The problem of uneducated and easily-brainwashed people is not with Kaohsiung's voters, but rather some of the KMT politicians in that area.

Pre-completion update
It seems that another suspect in the Kaohsiung vote-buying case turned himself in to police early Thursday morning while yet another fled to Hong Kong, and a connection to Huang Chun-ying seems to exist. I'll add those details as I find them. [See UPDATE below.]

Bonus examples
I've written previously about the perpetuation of this kind of brainwashing here and here. Go back and view those pages again, even if you think you remember them well. You may see them in a different light this time around.

UPDATE: Here are some of Friday's articles related to the above.

* Taipei Times - Suspect in vote-buying scheme turns himself in
Key point: Ku Hsin-ming (古鋅酩) turns himself in, says he worked independently and just wanted to do something good, but then implicates 43-year-old suspect surnamed Yang. Excerpt: "A profile of Ku showed that he had received a 16-year sentence for a murder committed in 1989 but that he was released during an amnesty in 1994." Quote: "The prosecutors must look deeply into the case and find out who he contacted during the past four days. They must also find out why he chose to give an exclusive interview [to the Liberty Times]," [KMT chairman] Ma [Ying-jeou] said. Comments: Judging from Ma's response, I'd say Ku probably went to the Liberty Times so as to deflect blame off of the KMT. A murderer who "admired Huang and hoped he would be elected as Kaohsiung mayor"? Wow!

* Liberty Times - 檢出示同鄉會傳真 古供出實情 [Translation: Investigator shows fax from Partner Township Association, Ku confesses what really happened]
Key point: After investigators confront Ku with faxes and records of phone calls between the Kaohsiung City/Yunlin County Partner Township Association, Yang Ching-teh (楊慶德), and himself, he admits that he worked in coordination with the others. Additional info: The image below is just above this article in the print edition. Observation: Friday night's FTV News showed video of Su Wan-chi (ph) (蘇萬其) onstage during a campaign rally right up front and next to KMT candidate Huang Chun-ying. Comment: Yowzer! The plot thickens, eh? Question: What evidence will Ma Ying-jeou reveal with his next spin attempt?


* Taiwan News - Vote-buying suspect turns himself in
Key point: When suspects disappear and their stories change, suspicions are naturally aroused. Quote: "Yang reportedly left the country on a 7:45 flight headed for Hong Kong on Wednesday night." Comment: Since 1997, that means the same thing as "fled to China."

* Taipei Times - Hau picks two key players for team
Key point: Taipei mayor-elect Hau Lung-bin (KMT) chooses "special assistant to the chairman of the Chinese-language China Times" Yang Hsiao-tung (羊曉東) "as director of the city government's information department." Comment: How 1984!

* Taipei Times - Pirate radio station operators protest outside NCC
Key point: An unconstitutional body ironically works hardest at enforcing unjust laws. Quote: "The threshold that the NCC has set for licensed stations is NT$50 million [US$1.5 million] in assets and capital, which puts licensing totally out of reach of independent operators," said Tsai Chi-feng (蔡吉豐), a pirate radio station owner. Comment: You might ask yourself, haven't they ever heard of blogs?" The answer might be that many of their listeners haven't.

* China Post - Groups protest radio crackdown
First line: "The independent National Communications Commission (NCC) promised yesterday to continue cracking down on the rampant underground radio stations in Taiwan." Comments: "[I]ndependent"?! 屁! "[R]ampant"?! That would describe pan-blue brainwashing.

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Agents and reagents: Taiwan, 台灣, media, 媒體, propaganda, 宣傳, brainwashing, 洗腦, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, special allowance fund, 特支費, Huang Chun-ying, 黃俊英, Ho Tsai-feng, 侯彩鳳, elections, 選舉, YouTube

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Who will observe the Taiwan observers?

Watching the watchers

Whether it's used about Taiwan or not, I'm sick and tired of the vague and potentially dishonest "some people say" formulation that keeps appearing in articles by so-called professional reporters. It's already been used multiple times by international media outlets with regard to yesterday's elections in Taiwan.

Who, Maddog, who?! And where and why?!
In yet another BBC piece about Taiwan which dares not bear a byline (yet which "quotes" Caroline Gluck), you can read this nonsense:

A BBC correspondent says the result is not the crushing blow some had expected the government to suffer. The vote was seen as a key test for the government.

"[S]een" by whom? "[E]xpected" by whom? The nameless writer won't tell us the answer to either of these questions, probably because the BBC works hand-in-hand with pro-blue, pro-China CTiTV, and the pan-blue media was exactly who "expected" (meaning "hoped to achieve by saying it again and again") a "crushing blow."

If that's not enough nonsense for you, read this bit from the same article:

The electoral campaign was tightly fought and involved national as well as local issues, according to the BBC's Caroline Gluck in Taipei.

Mayors are powerful in Taiwan, and the post in Taipei is seen as a stepping stone for presidential hopefuls.

"[S]een" by whom? Is there an echo in here? There will be, as long as Gluck (quoting herself?) and the BBC keep dishing us this muck. That meme (an obvious attempt to make current Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou the next president) must be destroyed. In all three of the elections in which the people of Taiwan got to choose their president, they not only chose former Taipei mayors -- they chose pro-independence candidates who were born in Taiwan who were running against unificationists born in China. Stick that in your meme folder, and paste it!

See for yourself
Below, you can view two clips from Saturday night's Talking Show (大話新聞) which reveal the similarities and differences between pan-green media surveys (Liberty Times [自由時報]), pan-blue media surveys (China Times [中國時報] and United Daily News [聯合報]), and the actual election results. [UPDATE: While both videos use Mandarin and Taiwanese, I've added basic English translations on the YouTube pages where the videos are hosted. Click "(more)" in the description to the right of each video there to read them in full.]



0'33" YouTube video: "Pan-blue media surveys about Taipei election all wrong"




1'30" YouTube video: "Pan-blue media surveys about Kaohsiung election all wrong"


You make this dog mad, Grauwels
AP correspondent Stephan Grauwels rehashes the same bland recipe for saying whatever the reporter wants to say:

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Taiwan's ruling party narrowly won a crucial mayoral election in one southern city Saturday, while the opposition candidate won comfortably in the capital of Taipei in a pair of votes seen by many as a referendum for President Chen Shui-bian.

"[S]een" by whom? Indeed, there is an echo in here, but it's because there are way too many of them in the international media. If they do it enough, when you Google it, it will seem to be true, but if you follow the links, you'll just be going in circles without ever finding out who -- outside of the media -- has "seen" these things. Don't be fooled by this classic propaganda trick.

Today's Taipei Times has the decency to at least answer the question which should be on readers' minds, that being, "Who are these nebulous 'seers'?":

Although many observers, especially in the international media, were depicting the poll as a "referendum" on the president and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), this was clearly not the case, as the election maintained the current balance of power in the cities' mayorships and city councils. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) retained its hold on the Taipei mayorship, while the DPP's candidate won in Kaohsiung.

Note equally that the Taipei Times has the decency to tell us -- every time they write about them -- that the full name of the "Nationalists" mentioned five times by Grauwels in his piece (without even once using the clarifying adjective in front) is the "Chinese Nationalist Party" (KMT). Don't you forget it.

Meta-watch
"And who are the overseers of Taiwan Matters?" you may ask. The answer, according to media watcher Tim Maddog (referring to himself as if someone else wrote this), would be "You!" Follow the links. Question everything -- especially this!

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Dancing pixels: Taiwan, 台灣, Talking Show, 大話新聞, media, 媒體, BBC, 英國廣播公司, Caroline Gluck, 凱若琳葛拉克, propaganda, 宣傳, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨, elections, 選舉, YouTube

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

UDN intern spreads malicious rumors in runup to Taiwan elections; unrelated: investigator runs amok

More video
Wouldn't you know it? Just before the big mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung, an intern for the pro-unification United Daily News was caught spreading malicious rumors.

The Hsuan Chuang University student posted messages on the SocialForce.org discussion board saying that he and his neighbors had personally received payment of NT$1,700 (US$52.62) as an incentive to vote for the DPP's mayoral candidate in Taipei, Frank Hsieh. Others participating in the discussion expressed doubt, but Chiu pretended to be someone who "had originally planned to vote for Hsieh" but said that he was dismayed because "buying votes was just what the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used to do." The as yet unidentified Chiu insisted that his story was true and that he had personally received the money. Someone passed the information along to Hsieh's campaign office which, in turn, contacted the police.

The person posting the messages turned out to be Chiu Chien-lun (sp?) (邱健倫), a resident of Hsinchu who (wouldn't you know it?) wasn't even eligible to vote in Taipei. After being identified by the police, he posted an admission and a full apology on the site where the discussion occurred. As one would expect, the UDN denied any responsibility for the events, just as Chiu did before police confronted him. But the university making excuses for the student's violations of the law is rather inexplicable. [UPDATE: Here are the links to the original fabrication, the reiteration of the lie, and the admission/half-assed apology on the SocialForce.org site -- the first two being posted on December 5, and the last one on December 8.]

Fellow pro-democracy writer Jerome F. Keating has recently used the metaphor of "dogs [who] learn from wolves" to describe "dogs" like Shih Ming-teh who left the DPP to run amongst the "wolves" of the KMT. What else would explain a student from a Buddhist university working for an organization like UDN and doing such things?

Here's the video.



3'28" YouTube video: " UDN intern lies about DPP mayoral candidate"


Who will investigate our investigators?
An investigator with the Criminal Justice Investigation Bureau was accused by Taipei citizens of intimidation.

Reports on SET said that Hung Sheng-hsiung (ph) (洪勝雄) was going door-to-door in a pro-green neighborhood recently asking people about their political inclinations and berating the DPP for "corruption" and "ineptitude." Additionally, at least one person said Hung repeatedly tried to get them to admit that they had accepted money in return for voting for DPP candidates. The daughter of one of those who experienced these things said that when she identified herself to the investigator as a reporter, his attitude abruptly did a 180-degree turn.



1'42" YouTube video: "Investigator Hung Sheng-hsiung and voter intimidation"


This is precisely the kind of "justice" which former president of the Executive Yuan, Hsu Shui-teh (KMT) meant when he once said, "The courts belong to us." ("法院是我們家[國民黨]開的.")

As Keating implied in his recent article, today's elections will hopefully bring Taiwan a step closer to a day when the wolves are no longer in our living rooms or even at our doorsteps.

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Predators and prey: Taiwan, 台灣, media, 媒體, United Daily News, 聯合報, UDN, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Frank Hsieh, 謝長廷, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨, elections, 選舉, YouTube

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Differences matter: DPP vs. KMT

If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.
- inventor R. Buckminster Fuller

Pre-election video
Here's something interesting I found on YouTube earlier tonight.



0'32" YouTube video: "民進黨跟中國國民黨的差別"
(Translation: "The difference between DPP and KMT")

Click "Play" at lower left to load the video here.
Click on the screen to open the video in a new browser window.
(I suggest hitting "Pause" until the video loads fully.)
Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Flash.
Click here for YouTube help.

My translation of the video's content:
"Widening the Chungshan Freeway"

Screen right: "Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) worked on it for 10 years."
Screen left: "DPP finished the job in 2 years."

(DPP zooms straight ahead, KMT weaves, falls behind.)

Screen right: "Taipei-Ilan freeway. KMT couldn't get it done."
Screen left: "DPP finished ahead of their own schedule."

"KMT keeps asking for more money before the job is even done."
"DPP saved NT$253,200,000,000 on Freeway No. 2."

(final screen)
"DPP's frugal governance:
Taiwan's future depends on it."

Know anybody who claims to be a fencesitter or who has been influenced by all the recent accusations? Show them this video and the quote at the top.

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Tubes on the Internets: Taiwan, 台灣, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Kuomintang, 中國國民黨, KMT, 國民黨, elections, 選舉, YouTube

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Voters of Taiwan: recall all the pan-blue legislators

Time for some political jujitsu

Six and a half years after losing Taiwan's presidency, the pan-blues are still wailing and gnashing their teeth about the "bane" of democracy which threatens their very existence. These days, the duties of hypocritically opposing "corruption" are being publicly handled by Taiwan's Charles Bronson lookalike and debt-ridden has-been, the overly-hyphenated buffoon, Shih Ming-teh

He's a partisan, and he'll cry if he wants to
An article on page 3 of today's Taipei Times says that the supposedly "non-partisan" Shih is preparing to launch a recall against all pan-green legislators who don't support his and the pan-blues' shrill drive to depose President Chen Shui-bian. His real goal, however, is to get the pan-greens to do his bidding. Here's the bait:

If pan-green legislators decide to support the second presidential recall motion and hand the future of the president over to the people to decide through a national referendum, the campaign will end its month-long protest, organizers said.

Doesn't that sound tasty -- an end to all the nonsense?

Not so fast! Remember the threat behind that bait.

Also remember this. Less than a month ago, I redundantly pointed out the partisan nature of Shih's rabble-rousing, and the subsequent behavior of his camp has consistently proven this to be correct. Here's the comment from Shih's spokesman (formerly-painted-as-neutral) which I criticized last month:

"We don't want any partisan support. We try to keep this as pure as possible, as a movement of the people," said Emile Sheng, professor of politics at Soochow University, who has joined the protest camp as a media spokesman.

Would you take bait from this man or the group he supports? I certainly hope not!

This latest "carrot-which-is-actually-a-stick" comes across exactly like the behavior of a spoiled child: "I'll stop crying as soon as you buy me the expensive gift which you can't afford and I shouldn't have anyway, and if you don't, I'll hold my breath until you can see that my face is already blue." It's just another in the series of tricks from the anti-Chen camp, and you know that if you give them what they want, they'll only ask for more.

Partial recall
These faux "opposers of corruption" fail to remember, though I do quite clearly, that less than 4 months ago, KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (erstwhile supporter of corrupt officials like Hsu Tsai-li and Wu Chun-li), referring to a soon-to-fail recall motion against President Chen, had these authoritarian-sounding words to say:

"It's time to load the gun, but not yet time to pull the trigger, because you only get one shot at recalling a president."

Did you read that? "[O]ne shot." But how soon they forget.

Henry Blackhand has a much longer memory
A letter to the editor, also in today's Taipei Times, gives readers a short lesson in history and law which speaks volumes:

[I]t must be hard for the KMT and its allies to adjust to a legal system where the burden of proof lies with the accuser, when for 40 years during the White Terror period they enjoyed the power of kangaroo courts, in which a mere accusation was often enough to get someone a long stretch in prison or even a death sentence.

A "kangaroo court" is exactly what this all is, and it's just another of the many ways that this non-democratic mess is like China's Cultural Revolution.

Turn the tactics of your opponents back on them
So what can the people of Taiwan do about this madness? Well, turnabout is fair play, so I simply suggest that a recall be initiated against all the pan-blue legislators -- sincerely, and not as a "bluff" -- since the KMT chairman himself said they only had "one shot" at recalling the president. They've played their hand. Call their bluff, and let them fall on their faces. What are they gonna do about it -- cry to their mommyland?

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Things to remember: Taiwan, 台灣, Taipei Times, 台北時報, Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁, A-bian, 阿扁, Democratic Progressive Party, 民主進步黨, DPP, 民進黨, Taiwan Solidarity Union, 台灣團結聯盟, TSU, 台聯黨, pan-greens, democracy, 民主, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, pan-blues, 泛藍, China, 中國, PRC, 中華人民公和國, Cultural Revolution, 文化大革命, 文革

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!