Month: April 2009

No Way. Taiwanese Women Can’t Be That Stupid

Can they?

Despite the tighter regulations, tobacco companies [in Taiwan] still market fruit-flavored cigarettes to young ladies to give the impression that smoking these cigarettes has the same health benefits as eating fruit , the anti-smoking group John Tung Foundation said.

"Many young ladies, perhaps because they are unable to consume enough servings of fruit, believe that by smoking peach [cigarettes], they are getting the same amount of nutrition as they would from a real peach,” said Lin Ching-li (林清麗), director of the foundation’s Tobacco Control Division. “This is completely wrong, but young ladies pass it on to each other and create this kind of misconception.”  [emphasis added]

I'm essentially left with the choice of believing young women in Taiwan are really, REALLY dumb, or that an anti-smoking NGO is playing fast and loose with the facts.  Think I prefer to go with #2, thank you very much.

No Problem With Ma As KMT Chief?

Should presidents (or prime ministers) of democratic countries accept dual roles as chairmen of their parties as well?  It's a question I confess not having thought much about, but I suppose that if the posts are held by different people, the line is more clearly demarcated between party and state affairs.

Dr. William Fang of the China Post believes the opposite , arguing that Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou should, in addition to his current job, become chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party as well:

First it must be noted that in advanced democracies such as the United States and Great Britain, heads of the parties in power are also the highest administrative leaders of these countries.  No one accuses these rulers of being power-thirsty because they use their power [while simultaneously holding these two jobs] prudently and wisely to advance the interests of their nations.  [emphasis added]

The strength of Fang's case is unfortunately weakened by the fact that he's flat-out wrong.  America's president is currently Barack Obama (from the Democratic Party) — but the chairman of the Democratic party is not Obama:  It's Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.

As for Great Britain, its current prime minister is Gordon Brown (of the Labour Party).  But the chair of the Labour Party is not Brown:  It's a woman named Cathy Speight (to verify, click here and scroll down a couple of pages).

Now, perhaps there ARE examples of democratic countries where politicians successfully juggle roles as executives of both the party and the state.  America and the U.K. however, are not countries on that list.

GhostNet At The Feast

David Gelernter, the computer scientist who was maimed by the Unabomber a few years back, discusses the discovery of a Trojan horse program originating from China:

Last weekend, a report by researchers at the Munk Center of the University of Toronto revealed "GhostNet," a computer espionage virus that had infected around 1,300 computers worldwide–including many "high value" targets where diplomatic and national security information was stored . . .  Experts disagree on whether the evidence proves China's guilt or merely suggests it overwhelmingly.  [emphasis added]

Nice turn of phrase there.  The Chinese government's reaction was certainly telling.  Chinese officials COULD have calmly announced that **ahem** freelance hackers must be at fault, and that they'd launch an investigation to find those responsible.

Instead what the world heard was the shoe on the table.  LIES, LIES, these are all LIES!  Those devious CANADIAN schemers are trying to start a new COLD WAR for their own malicious purposes!

Very . . . Kremlinesque.  China launches Cold War-style cyber attacks — then accuses the VICTIMS of its attacks of trying to start a Cold War.

Gelernter outlines why China's cyberwarfare was so difficult to uncover:

The focused nature of the attack helped it succeed. Businesses and other organizations that detect viruses are less likely to notice and get hold of a new virus that attacks a mere thousand computers instead of hundreds of thousands. Until the target organizations do get hold of the virus, they can't analyze it and use "signature detection" and related techniques to warn users when infected cyberstuff arrives on their machines.  [emphasis added]

His conclusion?

GhostNet reminds us that the new Cold War won't be fought with the threats and weapons of the old one.  Americans might have less trouble keeping in mind occupied Tibet, the war on Chinese Christianity, the imprisonment and torture of political dissidents and members of Falun Gong, the one-child-only decree and other specimens of PRC tyranny if they didn't find Asian-on-Asian violence so deucedly boring.  Instead of paying attention to those issues, we simper about mutual respect and cooperation–without acknowledging the fact that China is today the world's most powerful Evil Empire.  The Soviets favored large armies and nuclear arsenals, but China is our new Cold War enemy, and her favorite weapons will also be novel: financial weapons, trade weapons, cyberweapons.  Welcome to Cold War II.  [emphasis added]

UPDATE:  Just ran across reports of Chinese cyber-warfare against India, from the Truth about China blog.  More about that from the Times of India.

“I Can’t Imagine Anything So Heartlessly Wickedly Cruel”

If memory serves, that's a line from Brideshead Revisited, when Lady Marchmain dresses down Charles Ryder for deliberately giving her alcoholic son money for drink.

A story about how a Taiwanese local government similarly subsidizes alcoholism, from Monday's China Post:

Thanks to the lucrative business of a distilling company, residents of [Taiwan's] offshore Kinmen County started getting their "KKL liquor vouchers" distributed by the county government yesterday.

Magistrate Lee Chu-feng said the "KKL liquor vouchers" — which allows each resident to get NT$3,600 [about $100 U.S.]  worth of the products of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor, Inc. (KKL) — are a bounty to all people living and working on the islets under the jurisdiction of the county government.

[. . .]

Magistrate Lee said 85,143 residents are entitled to the vouchers.

The fund comes from the profits of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor, which is owned by the county government.  [emphasis added]

Fortunately, the Kinmen county government doesn't own shares in the local heroin business.  That they're willing to publicize, anyways.

A year or two back I went back to my home town, and was taken aback to see a liquor store RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a homeless shelter in the downtown.  Now, I'm about as pro-capitalist as they come, but anybody who'd open a liquor store next to a homeless shelter has got a pretty black heart.

And that goes ditto for any government that does essentially the same thing.

UPDATE: I'm fairly certain I've misquoted Evelyn Waugh for the title.  The "heartlessly wickedly cruel" part is right, though.

Bogus Hocus Pocus

This story's a few weeks old.  Sure instills confidence in the Taiwanese legal system, doesn't it?

Owner of haunted Kaohsiung flat gets refund

A Tainan district court judge ruled Monday [that the buyer of a "haunted" apartment] could return the flat to the [previous] owner, who had to pay back all the money.

The owner told the judge she didn't know the house was haunted . . .

But the owner had guaranteed the house was not haunted.

"Because you guaranteed it," the judge told the owner, "you have to take responsibility."

So without any REAL evidence, a judge in Taiwan invalidated a legal real estate transaction, based upon the fiction that the apartment was "haunted".

Goodness, I'm going to have to give this a try sometime:

The Foreigner:  Your honor, denizens from the spirit world have informed me that the wicked sorcerer Ma Ying-jeou has cast an evil spell upon the land, blighting this year's mango crop.  I demand he be burned at the stake.

Taiwanese Judge:  Okey-dokey.

A hypothetical poster for a Ghostbusters III movie. The four main characters are in the foreground, while a winking no-ghost cartoon holds up three fingers. Their Ectomobile is behind them, as is a New York skyscraper which glows with eldrich energy.

i-1

Praise Be To Allah

Shariah law.  What's not to like?

Pakistani authorities ordered inquiries into a video showing the public flogging of a screaming woman in a northwestern valley where officials have yielded to Taliban demands for Islamic law [in accordance with a peace agreement].

The actual footage can be found here.  But as provincial Thuggee Arshad Abdullah says, "Let's not judge our deal by this video."

UPDATE (Apr 8/09):  A reaction to the video at Forbes.

Chinese Nationalist Nitwits Punked By April Fool’s Gag

First heard about this on Michael Turton's site.  Saturday's Taipei Times tells the story:

The hoax article titled “Pandemonium breaks out at Taipei Zoo” said that Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), the two pandas that arrived in December as gifts from China, were discovered to be Wenzhou brown forest bears dyed black and white after zoo workers noticed unusual sexual behavior.

The next day, Taiwan's China Post had more details:

[Taipei] Zoo spokesman Jason King said the zoo was flooded with phone calls from as far afield as Britain, Japan and Canada, whose callers asked if the pandas were forest bears in disguise.

O-kaaay.  Here's one big clue in the original story all those geniuses seemed to miss:

The Taipei Zoo’s . . . Connie Liu (劉長春), said she became suspicious when the pandas . . . began to spend almost all of their waking hours having sex. Pandas are notorious for their low libidos, which make them difficult to breed in captivity.

. . . “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.”  [emphasis added]

Now, the thing to remember is that newspapers are generally a bit Victorian in their use of language.  No serious article will ever, EVER contain the expression, "doggy-style."

(The part about pandas favoring the missionary position should have been a dead-giveaway, too.  Jeez, when I was 10 or 12 years old I knew that human beings were almost unique in the animal kingdom in their usage of the missionary position. * )

Speaking of that . . .

Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生) did not see the funny side either and expressed concern about the prank’s negative impact on panda conservation education.

“The story carried incorrect information on panda behavior and could mislead the public,” he said. “The Taipei Zoo made a lot of effort to get the pandas at the zoo and we don’t want to see our efforts being destroyed.”

Golly, Mr. Yeh, maybe the truth is that your zoo just hasn't been doing a very good job in the education department.  What have YOU been doing to inform zoo-goers that pandas prefer the, ah, ventro-dorsal position?

Glad to see the Taipei Times isn't apologizing to the likes of Jason Yeh and the Chinese Communist Party's paid mob of professional complainers.  Folks've got a bad case of humor-deficit disorder if they can't laugh at lines like this:

“Whenever the moaning from the panda enclosure gets too loud we gotta go in there and hose ’em down with cold water,” [a zookeeper] said.

* A quick google shows that a few other animals DO use the missionary (ventro-ventral) position.  Mostly whales, it looks like — and on rare occassions, chimps and gorillas.

Poetic Justice For George Galloway

Heh.  George "Freedom of speech is not an absolute" Galloway applauds the British government for denying entry to Geert Wilders — then cries like a baby when the Canadian government denies entry to HIM.

UPDATE (Apr 4/09):  Will the REAL Mr. Galloway please stand up?  Galloway's lawyers now argue that "free expression is the matrix of every other freedom."