Taiwan's DPP wins big in latest legislative by-elections

Three out of four ain't bad

Today in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Chiayi, and Hualien, Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won three of the four elections which were held to replace legislators elected to other positions in last December's 3-in-1 election.

Huang Jen-chu (黃仁杼) beat Apollo Chen (陳學聖) and two "independent" candidates in Taoyuan, Peng Shao-chin (彭紹瑾) beat Cheng Yung-tang (鄭永堂) in Hsinchu, and Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) summarily kicked Lin Te-jui's (林德瑞) ass and handed it to him on a plate (57,451 to 27,138) in Chiayi.

In Hualien, which is known as a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) stronghold, DPP candidate Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) came in second place, but she got an impressiive 40.8% of the votes running against the winner, KMT candidate Wang Ting-sheng (王廷升), and "independent" Shih Sheng-lang (施勝郎).

Here are unofficial numbers given by various TV stations after either victories had been declared or losses conceded in all districts.

5:35 PM results via ETTV (Click to enlarge)	5:37 PM results via CTiTV (Click to enlarge)
5:37 PM results via FTV (Click to enlarge)
5:37 PM results via TVBS (Click to enlarge)	5:39 PM results via SETN (Click to enlarge)

So far, there have been no reports of losing KMT candidates trying to shoot anybody.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next elections in December 2010 so Taiwan's voters can clean things up some more.

Further reading:
* Here are the vote counts for all candidates via the Liberty Times.

* Download MS Excel spreadsheets (Hanzi) of official results from the Central Election Commission (CEC) web site.

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Front row seats: Taiwan, 台灣, election, 選舉

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

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!

Illicit electioneering by the KMT

This is how they roll

Taiwan's current president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) frequently speaks about his "clean image," and after running an "anti-corruption" campaign, he told the public that "things would be better right away" (馬上就會好) when he took office on May 20, 2008.

However, things in Taiwan have gotten worse since that date in all kinds of ways.

But one thing hasn't changed a bit: the KMT's way of doing business.

In Taipei's Da-an District (大安區), for example, KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) was recently forced out of office after a scandal which revealed that she had held office illegally for 14 years while possessing dual nationality and had regularly lied to the public about it. A by-election to fill her vacated legislative seat is scheduled for tomorrow -- Saturday, March 28, 2009.

Read what the KMT was caught doing just two days before this election:

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors yesterday accused the Taipei City Government [led by the KMT's Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌)] of abusing municipal resources to campaign for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛) in tomorrow's legislative by-election, and urged municipal officials to maintain neutrality.

About a dozen staff from the Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs [台北市政府民政局] visited a traditional market in Da-an District (大安) to hand out pamphlets urging residents to vote tomorrow. However, two people wearing the department's vest were also spotted calling on residents to vote for Chiang.

It's a serious violation of administrative neutrality and we need to stop public servants from campaigning for a specific candidate in such an obvious way [...]

Here's the video:


2:25 YouTube video: "This is how the KMT rolls (中國國民黨就是這樣)"

Notice the vests the women are wearing. They belong to the Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs -- under a KMT government.

That's the way they roll -- and they do it in broad daylight! This time, it was captured on video.

I sure hope that the voters (even in the so-called "deep blue" Da-an District) will have enough sense to NOT vote for either of the pan-blue candidates in this election -- or in any other election, for that matter. Only then will Taiwan get back to making the kind of improvements that occurred due to the efforts of those who have worked so hard to build democracy here.

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Things in the KMT's trick bag: Taiwan, 台灣, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Taipei City, 台北市, Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs, 台北市政府民政局, elections, 選舉, Diane Lee, 李慶安, Da-an District, 大安區, Chiang Nai-shin, 蔣乃辛, Hau Lung-bin, 郝龍斌

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

"Gallup Taiwan" isn't Gallup at all

First the background
On December 5, 2006, Feiren commented on a Kathrin Hille article in the Financial Times. In that post, he sought the truth by asking, "I have always heard that Gallup Taiwan is notoriously blue and in any event has had a very poor record of predicting elections. Anyone know more?"

In a comment replying to that question, I wrote:

The Gallup and Sutton bits look to be the kinds of things which the more they're said, the more they're supposed to become true. I truly hate that kind of "reporting" in the run-up to elections.

The FT has clearly made such "attempts to influence the future" before. If you look at the links beneath "Editor's Choice" at the upper right of that page, there's a link to an article from November 6 titled "Taiwanese pleas for president to quit may succeed"
(also with a Kathrin Hille byline) which contains this wishful pan-blue thought about the soon-to-fail third attempt to recall President Chen:
- - -
[T]his time it has a chance of succeeding.
- - -

Funny how that didn't even come close to happening.

Michael Turton then demonstrated similar powers of observation, saying "Feiren, I've also heard that Gallup is pro-Blue as well."

Truth to the fore: Johnny Neihu gives us the scoop
The Gallup Organization wasn't having any of that. They told the tale in yesterday's edition of Johnny Neihu's Mailbag:

Gallup vs Gallup Taiwan

Dear Johnny,

I just read your piece from last Saturday titled "You love farce? Send in the clowns." Toward the end you commented on Gallup and polling results from the recent election.

Gallup did not do this work. We are the only owner of the Gallup trademark in Taiwan and in 100 other countries around the world. We had a licensee in Taiwan who used the name up until 2002 when we revoked the rights. The poll that has used our name is a counterfeit. The individual [Dr. Timothy Ting Ting-yu, 丁庭宇] or his organization does not have any rights in the trademark Gallup and any unauthorized use is infringement of our registered rights. We respectfully request a correction.

Chris Stewart

Global Brand Manager

The Gallup Organization

Washington

Johnny replies: Interesting. And there was silly me blindly assuming that Gallup Taiwan was in all good faith a branch of The Gallup Organization. After looking at samples of the wisdom of Dr Tim, I notice that this pollster spends a lot of time barracking for political positions and telling Taiwanese what they should think about politics instead of measuring what Taiwanese think about politics. I've said before that sociologists are vulnerable to conflating cheerleading with science, but this former National Taiwan University faculty member takes the cake.

That's pretty funny coming on the heels of someone arriving at Taiwan Matters! via a Google search asking "why is all the foreigner blogger in asia dishonest" [sic]. The most dishonest ones in this area are the pro-China media, as recently demonstrated by both Taiwan Echo and myself. Open your eyes, and you will see.

More updates
I've added an overblown translation/explanation to Feiren's post of a YouTube video about the China Times this past Thursday. If you didn't quite understand the video, check out the update.

I also passed on a YouTube video to Wulingren of Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) graceful concession speech after his showing in the December 9 mayoral election in Taipei. Keep an eye open for an update to his post.

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Piecharts: Taiwan, 台灣, elections, 選舉, Frank Hsieh, 謝長廷, media, 媒體, Kathrin Hille, 席佳琳, surveys, 民調, Timothy Ting, 丁庭宇, propaganda, 宣傳

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!