A new breed of snake (Part II)
(Continued from last week)
Dear Johnny,
Sometimes this place is so messed up I wonder what I'm doing here and why I bother to care about politics and freedom. Feel free to tell me to go home -- it's the obvious retort.
Just when you think Taiwan has a chance, that it just might do something right like stand up for itself, as President Chen Shui-bian (
I'm Canadian, and no offense to Americans in general, but this is why I speak the same language, watch the same movies and share the same culture and history (sound familiar?), but have as much chance of growing back my hair as becoming American. I take solace in believing the Americans do know what is right and are only playing "devil's advocate" for the sake of keeping up appearances with its fat, ugly friend China.
It's not right, but it is part of the facade of international politics. I should say I support the US war on terror, because terror is real, and so is China.
Meanwhile, Taipei's jackass mayor and his punch-drunk civil servants think it wise and entirely within their realm to defy the Central Election Commission. What?
Then the China Post's Sunday editorial ("Election tricks cause concern," Dec. 16) thought it wise to speculate on "dirty tricks" that might be played by Chen and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at the risk of World War III.
Yeah, and having some nut fire a homemade gun at your gut hoping it only "wounds" you is the best way to go about trying to win an election.
If that is the case, then Chen has bigger cajones than a wild 17-year-old alpha male dog from Miaoli with three legs and its nuts dragging on the ground.
Frank Hsieh (謝長廷): Cut this task manager loose. I like him, except for the kowtowing, but he's going to lose the presidential election big time. "Frank Hu"? is what people north of Taichung are wondering.
The best advice I ever received in minor hockey in Canada -- the last game where you can fight and shake hands afterward -- was to keep my head on a swivel. That way, if you see a hit coming you can get the hell out of the way. Right now, no one in the DPP seems to see the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) charging with a vicious cross-check from behind.
But back to Ma Ying-jeou (
Clones, Ma clones, all staggering and crawling to the finish line having never trained, just to show the world that the next big cash windfall or idea is just around the corner. Yes, when China gets here, they are the ones who will have the innate "will" to get rich.
I got one jiayou (
"Green terror," my butt.
As I ran through the tunnel before the finish, a song I hadn't heard in a while rang through my iPod. Pearl Jam's Do the Evolution sped up my pace for the last 1,000m and gave me goosebumps. I thought of Ma as the lyrics came screaming through Eddie Vedder's guttural voice:
Buying stocks on the day of the crash ...
All the rolling hills, I'll flatten 'em out
It's herd behavior ...
This land is mine, this land is free
I do what I want,
but irresponsibly ...
I'm a thief, I'm a liar
There's my church [the PRC],
I sing in the choir.
Taiwan, you might like the KMT bonus check, but it won't go far.
Gathering speed,
Keith Justik
P.S. Did I mention another article in the China Post? It seems the Chinese "forgive" Chiang Kai-shek (
Johnny replies: Seems to me, Keith, that you need a holiday to get all this sociopolitical gunk out of your system. Try running down the Suhua Highway. Take some of your unfit Ma wannabes with you; Darwinian principles will let a few reach Hualien; most of the others will be run over or die of carbon monoxide poisoning in some real tunnels.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs