Month: March 2008

All You Need To Start An Insane Asylum Is A Committee Room…And A 75% Parliamentary Majority

From the Saturday edition of Taiwan’s China Post:

President-elect Ma Ying-jeou said yesterday that he supports reopening the [partisan kangaroo court investigation that would "prove" President Chen Shui-bian’s election in 2004 was invalid, because he "faked" an assassination attempt upon his life in order to win sympathy votes.  The pieces fit together PERFECTLY – really, they do!]

Bet the Taiwanese electorate will be positively thrilled to watch the KMT hard at work, fulfilling all those sincere campaign pledges to FOCUS LIKE A LASERBEAM on the economy.

Taiwan’s President-Elect: “I Was A Grade-School Martinet”

No, no – that’s not a scoop from hostile newspapers. That’s the glowing message from SYMPATHETIC media organs:

Seventeen of [Ma Ying-jeou’s] classmates at the former affiliated elementary school of the provincial Taipei Girls’ Normal School were present at the morning [class reunion] party, where they reminisced about Ma, the discipline enforcer of the class.

"He was a strict disciplinarian," one classmate pointed out.

[…]

All his classmates present at the [recent class reunion] addressed Ma as "Our Classmate the President," though he continued to serve as their discipline enforcer.

Ma called the roll. Everyone had to answer "Here." Then he led everyone in singing the school anthem. He never hesitated to point an accusing finger at anyone who didn’t open his mouth wide enough to sing.

When the former classmates jostled against each other to get an autograph, Ma the disciplinarian ordered them to line up for a group picture first. "Picture first, then the autograph," Ma commanded. Everybody obeyed.

Don’t think I’ve ever heard the words, "strict disciplinarian," used as a compliment before.  There’s something a bit repulsive about rosily portraying the officious behavior of a bossy 6 year-old.

At any rate, that’s the narrative Ma’s idolizers in the Fourth Estate are trying to create, as this recounting of an earlier encounter shows:

President-elect Ma Ying-jeou brought his supporters into line in front of his home in Taipei [on the morning of March 25th].

"I will count [to] five," Ma told the hundreds of people who gathered to wait for his return home from a morning jogging.

"Then, line up in queue," ordered the president-elect like a drill sergeant giving orders to his recruits in boot camp.

They obeyed.  They had to, because they wanted to shake his hands, pose with him for a picture, or get autographs.

Ma obliged.

Former elementary school classmates and star-struck supporters are one thing.  It remains to be seen whether Taiwan’s 81 Tyrants will be quite so servile towards the former Strongman-in-Short-Pants.

Ma Ying-jeou’s Double Standard

Remember how the KMT threatened to sic John Law after Theresa Shaheen when it looked like she might deliver some unwelcome news about the validity of Ma Ying-jeou’s old American green card?

Theresa Shaheen, former chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan, is being given a…warning against getting involved in the "green card" issue over Kuomintang presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou.

"We wish Ms. Shaheen to know that it’s unlawful for an foreign national to get involved in an election in Taiwan," a top aide to Ma said yesterday. According to the Election Law, no foreign nationals may electioneer for a candidate in Taiwan.

Well, I was just throwing out old newspapers around here, when I happened to run across this:

Meanwhile, Ma’s campaign team invited a US immigration lawyer to support the candidate’s claim that it was not necessary to complete an I-407 form to give up one’s green card.

Query:  I wonder if Ma’s aides issued similar threats to the U.S. immigration lawyer whom they invited to speak on their candidate’s behalf?  I mean, you can’t graduate with an S.J.D. in Law from Harvard like Ma did, and not believe in the sacred principle of equality before the law, can you?

Can you?

POSTSCRIPT:  My initial post on the subject can be found here.

UPDATE (Mar 31/08):  Therese Shaheen denies the KMT story that she was ever willing to wade into the green card controversy:

In her statement, in English and Chinese, Shaheen said she was "never involved in any matters" regarding the green card issue during the presidential campaign.

"Fantastic rumors about my alleged involvement, my plans to make public statements about it, and the allegation that I was doing so because I favored one party over the other were 100 percent false," she said.

 

More On The Genocide Games

A great Rex Murphy commentary from the Great White North, via Ezra Levant’s blog.  Wait for the line about Gandhi (from 1:15 to 1:53).

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum discusses some Olympic fallacies:

"The Olympics are a force for good." Not always! The 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, were an astonishing propaganda coup for Hitler. It’s true that the star performance of Jesse Owens, the black American track-and-field great, did shoot some holes in the Nazi theory of Aryan racial superiority. But Hitler still got what he wanted out of the Games. With the help of American newspapers such as the New York Times, which opined that the Games put Germany "back in the family of nations again," he convinced many Germans, and many foreigners, to accept Nazism as "normal." The Nuremburg laws were in force, German troops had marched into the Rhineland, Dachau was full of prisoners, but the world cheered its athletes in Berlin. As a result, many people, both in and out of Germany, reckoned that everything was just fine and that Hitler could be tolerated a bit longer.

(Hat tip to Instapundit for that last one.)

A-Groveling We Will Go

Taipei City Hall prepares a delegation for a big Beijing pow-wow kowtow for a couple of pandas.  No word yet as to whether Taipei will offer sanctuary to members of that other rare Chinese species, the endangered saffron-robed Tibetan monk.

The Foreigner wants to know: couldn’t these "One China"-obsessed pols at least have had the decency to wait until AFTER the blood had dried in the streets of Shangri-La?

UPDATE:  Taipei’s High Court dismisses the City Zoo’s bid to import panda bears from China.  For now.

Georgie Ann Geyer Gets It Wrong

Used to be a really big fan, so it’s sad to see she’s fallen under the spell of Taiwan’s saviour, its sainted Ma-ssiah:

His name is Ma Ying-jeou, and he is almost too good to be true.  Fifty-seven years old, he is a handsome man of vigor and intelligence who as a child mastered Chinese classics and calligraphy, who holds a doctorate of juridical science from Harvard University (1981), and who is the head of Chiang’s old Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party.

Well, it IS almost too good to be true that Ma was elected president – too good to be true for China, that is.  Especially after "little elder brother" labored so mightily to block the special arms bill for weapons that were intended for the defense of Taiwan from Beijing’s predations.  How obediently Ma danced to China’s tune, blocking that bill around sixty times over a two year period!

Asked about the fate of Taiwan’s companies in China in the case of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, he answered sagely, "Actually, if more Taiwan companies are investing in coastal China, I doubt very much the Chinese could attack — their missiles would be threatening their own companies."

Somewhere in that sagely response, Ma obviously forgot to mention that outright confiscation of private property is something that would never, ever, EVER occur to leaders of China’s COMMUNIST party.  Why, it’s just INCONCEIVABLE that the acolytes of Lenin or Mao would do such a thing to equipment and capital belonging to citizens of an ENEMY COUNTRY.  During WARTIME.

Maybe Ma’s right – if you can’t trust Marxists to play by Marquis of Queensbury rules, who CAN you trust?

Taipei Beverage Alert

Jason’s Supermarket in the basement of Taipei 101 now has Mott’s Clamato juice.  First time I’ve ever seen Clamato here.  No more lugging six-packs of the stuff onto airplanes for me.

They’ve also got Bundaberg Ginger Beer back in stock, after being sold out for the last 4 or 5 MONTHS.  ‘Bout time!

And finally, I noticed at the end of the juice aisle peach-flavored Snapple iced tea.  Pretty hard to find that for the last couple of years.