You can take the KMT out of martial law, but you can't take the martial law out of the KMT.
Tag: Ma Ying-jeou
Ma Ying-jeou’s Bloody Crackdown: Taipei Police Beat 76-Year-Old Man With Truncheons
From today's Taipei Times:
A 76-year-old man yesterday filed a lawsuit against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other government officials, saying he was seriously beat up by police officers during a crackdown on the occupation of the Executive Yuan on Sunday night to Monday morning last week.
[…]
“I was sitting with the students during the occupation of the Executive Yuan [on Sunday night], and because I am too old to stand up immediately when police came to evict the students, several officers beat me hard and I had to stay in a hospital for six days,” he said.
Chou filed a lawsuit of attempted murder against Ma, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞), and Taipei’s Zhongzheng First Precinct Police Chief Fang Yang-ning (方仰寧).
Chou said police beat him with batons and shields until he lost consciousness. He said he woke up to find himself in a hospital.
Chou showed reporters a large area of bruises on his back.
(Image from the Taipei Times)
Shocked by President Ma's latest barbarity, reporters on the scene immediately rushed to the home of the China Post's Joe Hung for his take on the news. Hung, a staunch supporter of the KMT's self-proclaimed right to brutalize Taiwan's unarmed citizenry, had this to say:
When further pressed on the hypothetical question of whether
80-year-olds are fair game for similar treatment, the octogenarian Hung grew silent for a moment, before ordering reporters off his damn lawn.
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Is Joe Hung Taiwan’s Slimiest Liar?
Admittedly the competition is stiff, but Joe Hung goes full Goebbels with his latest screed on March 24th's government eviction of student protesters from Taiwan's Executive Building.
Claims Joe about Ma Ying-jeou's bloody crackdown:
"The force used to expel the Black Island Nation Youth Front mob wasn't violent at all." [Emphasis added]
Refutation comes from the equivalent of a thousand words:
(Image from 4am.tw)
No violence, you say, Joe? Perhaps this man just went to a REALLY bad barber then, eh? Took a little too much off the top. Happens all the time!
Or maybe it's spontaneous hemorrhaging. Brought on by…ebola! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Or, when in doubt, why not return to one of Joe Hung's pet tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories? The devious man in this photo quite obviously faked his own assault by snatching a riot stick from a virtuous policeman's hands and beat himself over the head with it to gain sympathy.
Oh, the lengths these sneaky devils go to!
The China Post's Joe Hung begins his latest column by informing his readers of the meaning of "grandiosity".
Instead, he might have been better served looking up the definition of violence, in order to avoid making a complete ass of himself.
Postscript: Heh. A good journalist would instantly recognize that "mob" probably doesn't apply to those who are peacefully seated.
But this is Joe Hung we're talking about, so standards of good journalism don't really apply.
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President Wiretap Promises Food Safety Clampdown
From today's Taipei Times:
President Ma Ying-jeou [of Taiwan] yesterday pledged to strengthen inspections on food and beverage manufacturers and severely punish those with problematic products amid a scare over adulturated cooking oils.
My advice to Taiwanese food executives?
When using the phone: speak less Mandarin…and more Klingon.
Postscript: Guess I should explain the "President Wiretap" allusion.
Again, from today's Taipei Times:
1 in 9 Taiwanese lawmakers currently have their phones tapped by Ma Ying-jeou's secret police.
The curious thing about all this wiretapping is that the Special Investigation Division (SID) apparently isn't gathering any evidence. The SID claims not to have any recordings!
Saying prosecutors later found that the wiretaps were unable to record any telephone conversations, [Ma Ying-jeou's] minister [of Justice] said they “are not so serious.”
Guess they just haven't figured out how to hit PLAY and RECORD simultaneously.
Rocket science ain't easy, ya know.
Chairman Ma-o Of Taiwan Persecutes Yet Another Religious Minority
First Ma-o Ying-jeou came for the Tibetan Buddhists,
and no one spoke out because they weren't Tibetan Buddhists.
Then Ma-o Ying-jeou came for the Falun Gong practioners,
and no one spoke out because they weren't Falun Gong adherents.
Then Ma-o Ying-jeou's persecution suddenly stopped,
Because these things have never been known to spiral out of control.
UPDATE (Oct 21/13): The Tourist Bureau of Taiwan graciously returns Falun Gong its rights to free speech again.
How big of them.
Pack Hunters
"You are an excellent tactician Captain. You let your second in command attack, while you sit and watch for weakness."
-Khan Noonien Singh, ST:TOS
Perhaps that's the only explanation I have for China's relatively mild reaction to the recent incident off the coast of Japan's Senkaku Islands. I mean, think about it: Japan arrests a P.R.C. fishing boat captain for violating Japanese waters, and what does Beijing do?
It blusters, dresses down the Japanese ambassador a few times, cancels a few underwater resource meetings, and sends a SINGLE fishery escort vessel. (For good measure, it also leaves open the possibility that it "may not be able" to control anti-Japanese mob action.)
A relatively measured response, given that it's Communist China we're talking about.
Shortly thereafter though, Taiwan does a curious thing. Remember, absolutely none of its mariners are cooling their heels in Japanese detention. Yet despite this, President Ma Ying-jeou reacts far more militantly than the P.R.C., making the "independent" decision to dispatch not one, but twelve — 12! — coast guard ships to the Japanese islands.
Like the man said, the second-in-command plays the heavy.
While the boss sits back, watching for weakness.
(Khan image from Zaphodsheads.spaces.live.com)
UPDATE: The Chinese might be breaking their pledge not to drill in a disputed undersea gas field. This, we don't know for sure, yet.
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Madman Ma Orders 12 Armed Taiwanese Ships To Violate Japanese Waters
Story at the Taipei Times. The press in Taiwan is still mum though, on how much the irredentist president's gunboat diplomacy has cost the nation — not only in precious taxpayer NT dollars, but in squandered international credibility as well.
One need not speculate what world reaction would have been had Ma instead dispatched 12 Taiwanese coast guard vessels into CHINESE waters. So that a "civilian" fishing boat could attempt to raise the Republic of China flag on P.R.C. soil. Because the answer is clear: the world would have regarded it as an outrageously dangerous provocation.
A very REAL provocation, quite unlike any of the phony "provocations" the previous Chen administration was accused of.
UPDATE: Citing irrelevant history, Beijing's mouthpiece newspaper in Taiwan urges Japan to quietly give in to the divinely-ordained territorial encroachments of the KMT-Chinese Communist Party alliance.
Saw THAT comin'…
UPDATE #2: Japan's ambassador to China has reportedly informed the Chinese government that Beijing should "take the necessary measures to avoid a worsening of the situation."
Good for him. I'm rooting for scrappy little Japan the way I used to for Taiwan. (Before the KMT surrendered body-and-soul to the Chinese Communist Empire, that is.)
(Hu Jintao & his "very special" KMT friend. Image from Life Magazine.)
UPDATE #3: Coming soon: A Tiananmen Square near you. Courtesy of Supreme Leader Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT Party. Uppity Taiwanese, beware.
(Taiwanese victim of the Chinese Nationalist Party police-riot of 2008. Image from the Taipei Times)
UPDATE #4: Perhaps I was too hasty in dismissing the relevance of the history the China Post presented. Because the Beijing - Taipei axis certainly seems busy manufacturing "incidents" and pretexts for war in 2010 the very same way Imperial Japan did in the 1930s…
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Give Chinese Ultranationalists An Inch, And They’ll Take An Isle
There's Taiwan's revanchist president, Ma Ying-jeou, still trying to stir the pot. Not for him, the blessings of peace. Or a once-a-year attempt to join the U.N.
Instead, a once-a-year provocation of Japan (almost like clockwork) over a few specks in the ocean is more his style.
Funny though, how we never hear of Taiwanese fishing boats trying to lay claim to islands owned by the P.R.C. No, just Japan. That, despite the Chinese Nationalist Party's insistence that ALL of China belongs to the R.O.C…
Why is that, I wonder?
Chinese Militarist Troublemakers Provoke Japan
Apparently, Taiwan's Chinese ultranationalist "Supreme Leader" isn't the only one who believes that Japan's Senkaku islands belong to China:
A tense maritime incident Tuesday in which two Japanese patrol vessels and a Chinese fishing boat collided near a disputed island chain triggered a diplomatic spat between the Asian giants.
[…]
The Chinese boat's bow then hit the Yonakuni's stern and also collided with another Japanese patrol boat, the Mizuki, some 40 minutes later, Kyodo reported citing the coast guard.
All the more reason for America to participate in joint exercises with ally Japan to exert sovereignty over the islands. Because contrary to the assertions made by Taiwan's China Post, Peking's Pekinese Ma Ying-jeou in Taipei simply cannot be counted on if Beijing makes a land-grab.
The Future’s So Bright They Gotta Wear…
Aw, you know. And just when I thought I'd done the whole "Ayatollah Ma Ying-jeou" thing to death, the ruling KMT party graciously provides more material:
Great fun at the China Post's comments section there. With anti-Semitic Chinese knuckledraggers who are apparently still unaware that Israel left Gaza a few YEARS ago. And a buffoon who insists the issue is a sacred matter of R.O.C. sovereignty — after voicing in a previous thread his approval for Peking to determine Taiwan's immigration policies.
UPDATE: Has anyone in Taiwan had the gumption to ask the urbane, American-educated Ma what his position is on the stoning of adulteresses? Or is that something they didn't cover at Harvard Law School?
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