Month: October 2006

The Graves Of My Ancestors

Taiwan’s China Post puts forth the notion that Taiwanese traveling to China to find ancestral graves and meet distant relatives constitutes proof that Taiwan is an indivisible part of China:

…President Chen’s own relatives have taken ancestry research experts to his ancestral hometown in mainland China in an effort to seek out the roots of Chen’s family heritage.

If DPP leaders really want to stress our separateness from the Chinese mainland, we suggest they cease all contacts with relatives on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.

For that matter, our leaders should truly put their money where their mouth is by changing their surnames and "starting" their own "new" family traditions.

Why not rap Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton for visiting THEIR European relatives, too?  Poor fools never realized how deeply their little family reunions were undercutting the argument for American sovereignty!

(Not to mention that Washington fellow.  If he’d REALLY been committed to American independence, wouldn’t he have changed his name to cut all ties to the mother country?)

I know that the China Post bills itself as "bridging the gap between East and West," but this is definitely one argument that’s not likely to impress too many of its Western readers.  Give it a try sometime.  Next time you talk to the folks back home, inform them that the bones of your ancestors are interred in the Old Country, and for that reason, you owe your allegiance to the Principality of Liechtenstein.

Let me know how that works out for you.

Osama bin Overeatin’

I read a few years ago that the Guantanamo prisoners were putting on weight.  Little did I know:

Only in America would you find authorities trying to cope with terrorist detainees by over-feeding them.  [We were offered a sample prisoner’s] lunch including…spiced meat patty, egg salad, tuna, yogurt, fresh dates, freshly baked bread, juice, and a down-home Middle Eastern dessert, which left us licking from our fingers the [baklava’s] honey and nuts…All told, they are offered a menu that provides 4,200 calories per day — more than the 3,800 allotted for a U.S. combat soldier in Iraq.

[…]

We were told that one detainee, who apparently cleans his plate — or his styrofoam meal box — weighs 410 pounds…At risk of triggering a human-rights campaign for Guantanamo Lite, I have to wonder if there’s method to this menu. There’s something very disturbing about coddling terrorists, but in some ways this helps cut them down to size: Yep, it’s Al Qaeda… with a weight problem.

Red Shirts And Mittens

Cleaning up a stack of old papers here, and I stumbled across this little Reuters story in the Sep 12th edition of the China Post:

Hundreds of Latvians knitting 4,500 pairs of woolen mittens as gifts for the November NATO summit have been told to avoid a folk symbol said to ward off evil since it looks like a Nazi swastika.

[…]

The Thunder Cross [or Fire Cross]…quite commonly features on such mittens and other folk items in Latvian shops.

Good call.  While the Thunder Cross may have positive connotations for people living in Latvia, the swastika’s got some pretty negative ones for the rest of Europe.

Anyone who lives in Taiwan probably sees where I’m going with this.  How is it that the Latvians managed to prevent a major diplomatic snafu with their decision not to hand out swastika mitts, but the anti-Chen crowd in Taiwan weren’t smart enough to figure out that people might just have a FEW doubts about their intentions if they adopted red as their "party" color?

I mean, this isn’t nuclear physics here.  If you’re part of a European military organization, it’s a BAD idea to wear swastikas on your clothing.  ‘Cause if you do, no one’s going to buy your story that it’s really just your "lucky Latvian Thunder Cross".

By the same token, if you live in a country like Taiwan, which owes its very EXISTENCE to the struggle against communism, getting your followers to wear red while demonstrating against a democratically-elected president is bound to raise a few eyebrows.  If you innocently claim the color simply represents "people’s anger against the president", some folks are going to be a bit sceptical.

I don’t want to be the guy who sees a red under every bed, but…c’mon.  You live 100 miles from COMMUNIST CHINA, and you chose RED as your rallying color?

At best, their sartorial choice shows exceptionally poor judgement.  And that’s the kindest thing I can possibly say about it.