Bow to democracy
On Friday last week, FBI Director James Comey notified the US Congress that the bureau would review newly discovered e-mails connected to Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s handling of classified information.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of e-mails that appear pertinent to the investigation. I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these e-mails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation,” he said.
The newly discovered e-mails are part of an investigation into Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman, recently estranged from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin after a “sexting” incident. While sifting through Weiner’s laptop, the FBI found evidence of a trove of e-mails similar to ones that had been examined in the Clinton investigation. Clinton’s personal e-mails should be read by her and deleted by her only, now they were not only viewed by her top aide, but also shared by a third person, Weiner.
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” Comey said.
In Clinton’s first response to Comey’s letter, she asked the FBI to explain the issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay, because voting is under way, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately.
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said: “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we’ve never seen before, we must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”
US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said Clinton betrayed Americans’ trust for handling the nation’s most important secrets. This decision, long overdue, is the result of her reckless use of a private e-mail server and her refusal to be forthcoming with federal investigators, he said.
He renewed his call for the director of national intelligence to suspend all classified briefings for Clinton until the matter is fully resolved.
Comey and other senior FBI officials were not aware of what exactly was in the e-mails found on a laptop used by Abedin and her husband at beginning, so they obtained a warrant to review them.
Hopefully the public will soon be informed what those e-mails are and whether they include any classified material.
The US, as leader of the democratic system, surely will set a model for the world to learn how they fairly handle this “October surprise” e-mail storm. No crime without punishment, no punishment without crime; No guts, no glory. All are equal before the law and none is above the law.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Sunday fired several top aides in a bid to stem a worsening scandal and in an effort to regain the public’s trust, hours after Choi Soon-sil, an adviser at the center of the scandal, apologized.
While the free world is struggling to maintain a fair and just system of democracy, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) easily gained another honorary title of “core” leader in a formal document. Senior Chinese Communist Party officials have shown that, willingly or not, they have bowed to his dominance.
Under the new title Xi is almost authorized as a dictator to push through policies in the face of doubts and foot dragging.
Yes, the democratic system is not perfect, sometimes even painful and inefficient, but it is much better than a dictatorship. Democracy is the best form of government, in which all eligible citizens participate equally, either directly or through elected representatives. It is fair and reasonable with dignity to all people.
Unfortunately, in Taiwan there are a group of people, known as members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) led by KMT Chairperson Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who strongly believe they are part of China and are scrambling to worship the new Chinese core leader Xi. They hope Xi will give them the authority to rule over Taiwan.
Well, Taiwan and China are different countries with different systems: democracy and dictatorship.
Chinese in Taiwan who kowtow to Xi should go to him under the care of his umbrella and leave Taiwan alone.
Adios, dictator followers. Please stay in China and do not come back to Taiwan.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) first suggested a mass recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, the Taipei Times called the idea “not only absurd, but also deeply undemocratic” (“Lai’s speech and legislative chaos,” Jan. 6, page 8). In a subsequent editorial (“Recall chaos plays into KMT hands,” Jan. 9, page 8), the paper wrote that his suggestion was not a solution, and that if it failed, it would exacerbate the enmity between the parties and lead to a cascade of revenge recalls. The danger came from having the DPP orchestrate a mass recall. As it transpired,
Sitting in their homes typing on their keyboards and posting on Facebook things like, “Taiwan has already lost its democracy,” “The Democratic Progressive Party is a party of green communists,” or “President William Lai [賴清德] is a dictator,” then turning around and heading to the convenience store to buy a tea egg and an iced Americano, casually chatting in a Line group about which news broadcast was more biased this morning — are such people truly clear about the kind of society in which they are living? This is not meant to be sarcasm or criticism, but an exhausted honesty.
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
RSS