(Or a few thousand, as the case may be.)
(Photo of the KMT employing water cannon against Taiwanese youth during the Sunflower protests of 2014.)
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Category: Relations -Sino-Taiwanese
China Uses Ex-PLA Mouthpiece To Communicate Its Plans To Drown Taiwan In A Sea Of Blood
From today's Taipei Times:
“The Taiwan issue will not remain unresolved for a long time. We will not abandon the possibility of using force; according to the law, it is also an option to resolve the issue by military means if necessary,” said Liu [Jingsong], a former president of the influential Chinese Academy of Military Sciences. [emphasis added]
In response to the Communist Party's barbarous threat, veteran political commentator Joe Hung of Taiwan's China Post enthusiastically gushed:
That's truer than you know, Joe. Truer than you know.
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Well, Lee Teng Hui DID tell the Chinese, “Let my people go!”
River In China Mysteriously Turns Bloody Red Overnight
Xi Jinping's first-born son may not be sleeping well tonight…
President Ma Ying-jeou Allies With Gangsters Against Taiwanese Because Constitution!
Visiting Communist Party apparatchik Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) must feel right at home watching President Ma of Taiwan brutalize the citizenry.
Using members of the Taiwanese mafia, no less – for plausible deniability. That PhD in law from Harvard sure does come in handy sometimes.
With a bloody face, a wound on his forehead and blood-stained clothing, Liang Po-chou (梁伯洲) told reporters at the square in front of the temple that he was assaulted by five or six people using steel blowpipes.
Liang said he was there with his father, Changhua County Councilor Liang Chen-hsiang (梁禎祥) of the Democratic Progressive Party, and other people trying to show Zhang posters with slogans against the cross-strait service trade agreement and slogans that the future of Taiwan is a matter for 23 million Taiwanese people to decide.
The “gangster-like people” began beating him when he was trying to argue with executive officers of the temple because he was angry that they asked staff to set off firecrackers on the streets in an attempt to disperse people who refused to leave, Liang said.
Perhaps the Strongman-In-Shortpants ran out of policemen willing to do his dirty work.
(Chinese mafia runs security for Taiwanese mob boss president Ma ("Fredo") Ying-jeou. Image from the Taipei Times.)
Professor Jerome Cohen must be very, very proud of his former student's scrupulous adherence to the rule of law.
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We Will Never Be Brothers
A poem by a young Ukrainian woman about the "fraternity" of Ukraine & Russia.
This is the best of the two translations I've seen:
We will never be brothers
Neither countrymen, nor blood brothers.
You don’t have the freedom breath –
We can’t be even stepbrothers.
You have called yourselves “elder brothers” –
We would like to be younger brothers, but not yours.
There’re so many of you, but you all are faceless.
You are huge, but we are great.
You press… you trudge,
You will choke on your envy.
You don’t know what freedom means,
You all are encased in chains from childhood up.
Silence is golden in your home,
And we burn Molotov cocktails,
Yes, there’s warm blood in our hearts,
What sort of blind “relatives” are you for us?
We all have fearless eyes,
We are dangerous without any weapons.
We grew up and became courageous
We all are at the shooters’ gunpoint.
We were forced to our knees by the hangmen –
But we revolted and corrected everything.
The rats are hiding and praying for nothing –
They will wash themselves with their blood.
You have new instructions –
And there’re revolt lights here.
You have your Tsar, but we have Democracy.
We will never be brothers.
"What is this doing on a blog mostly about Taiwan?" you might ask…
A Tale Of Two Building Occupations
First, in Ukraine:
Ukraine's acting president Oleksandr Turchynov is promising amnesty for pro-Russian demonstrators if they give up their weapons and abandon government buildings under siege in two eastern Ukrainian cities.
Second, in Taiwan:
Students who have broken the law during protests against the cross-strait service trade agreement will not be treated differently from other lawbreakers, Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) said yesterday.
Curiously enough, no KMT members were ever arrested when they broke the law in 2006 while protesting against former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian.
But, I guess the law just doesn't apply to you if you're a KMT man…
KMT Continues To Lie About The Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement
With the implementation delay of the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement, many countries have placed a hold on their current trade negotiations with Taiwan, said Economic Minister Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) yesterday.
Today, one of Taiwan's trade partners called Chang on his bullshit:
The current dispute over the cross-strait service trade agreement would not negatively affect the US’ position on Taiwan’s bid to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) spokesman Mark Zimmer said.
KMT Admits Their Trade Pact With Chinese Communists Strip Taiwanese Of Democratic Liberties
From today's Taipei Times:
Former Executive Yuan spokesperson Hu Yu-wei (胡幼偉) has recently come under fire for posting a message on Facebook saying that students who participated in the Sunflower movement [a protest movement against a service trade agreement made between the KMT & the Chinese Communist Party] could face job-hunting difficulties due to their “perceived anti-establishment tendencies.”
Hu…said several high-level managers at private corporations had told him they planned to include questions such as “Did you participate in the student movement?” and “Do you support the student protesters’ anti-establishment behavior?” into their list of routine job interview questions.
Know your place, peasants. You may think you have some sort of right to "free-speech" and "freedom of assembly"…but pro-Communist Red Fat Cats will do their damndest to make sure you'll never work in Taiwan again!
Hu Yu-wei has done the people of Taiwan an enormous favor by this frank admission. But he would do them an even greater favor if he were to name which companies have adopted this policy of Communist repression.
That would provide democracy-loving Taiwanese the information they need to boycott traitorous freedom-hating companies and bankrupt them.
Punch back twice as hard.
Postscript: Of course, there is no need for the thuggish Hu Yu-wei to name names.
All that is necessary is for but a single student to be asked an irrelevant political litmus test question during a job interview, and the 500,000-strong student movement can arrange the rest.
The China Post Projects Its Own Love Of Autocracy Onto Others
Taiwan's worst English-language newspaper put out a howler today:
…the Sunflower students, who violated the law by hijacking the parliament and storming the government house of the Executive Yuan, [conducting a peaceful sit-in at government buildings against an economic surrender agreement with Communist China] have succeeded in imposing their “people's democracy” on Taiwan. Theirs isn't democracy. It's monocracy. [Emphasis added]
Monocracy? Mono, as in ONE?
Hate to break it to ya fellas, but:
500,000 >>> 1
Guess that old trope about Asians being really good at math was just a myth…
Oh, but wait, the best part comes at the end of the China Post's latest editorial:
The last card President Ma may play may be to invoke the Statute Governing the Relations between the People in the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area to have the trade in services agreement go into force by an executive order. [emphasis added]
..it's probably the only way to ensure Taiwan's economic survival.
Evidently, the only way for Taiwan to avoid the dangers of monocracy…is for its president to govern by dictat!
Joe Hung Still Counsels Surrender To Communist China
…will the grandiose Sunflower activists call it quits? They believe they are tough and strong, but there is another interpretation of “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” It means: when the situation becomes almost impossible, those who are truly strong are wise enough to pull out, rather than being totally decimated.
Well, no, it doesn't mean that at all. As usual, "Traitor Joe" gets it completely cockeyed once again.
Perhaps Joe Hung refers to a facetious screwball interpretation however, which suggests that apathy and cowardice are preferable to perserverance and resolution.
Understandably, such an aphorism holds greater appeal to a man who's sold his soul to the Communist Party of China:
Better Red than dead, huh Joe?
UPDATE: Students obtain promise from speaker of the legislature, Wang Jin-pyng, to push for a law for the monitoring of agreements made between democratic Taiwan and Communist China.
Which is something the Taiwanese wouldn't have received had its students taken Joe Hung's ill-considered advice.
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