http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/11/24/2003633192
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/11/26/2003633348
U.S. President Obama put his foot in Taiwan's mouth the other day saying the U.S. and Taiwan are allies against ISIS. It is not true. The support Taiwan gives to the people in the Middle World is not to counter terrorism but to help victims of terrorism.
Taiwanese people must resist being used by the U.S. and their allies in clandestine purposes creating ISIS as a proxy to terrorize its own people. When President candidate Tsai Ying-Wen wins in January 2016, the danger of terrorism in Taiwan will get worse; the DPP may even use US 'proof' to blame China by insinuation.
Liu Shih-Chung, President of the Taiwan Brain Trust, in wanting the KMT to "emulate the former DPP administration which supported then President George W. Bush's 'global war on terror" is suggesting Taiwan be put in danger by association. The last thing the people of Taiwan need is to be mentioned by the U.S. President and become entwined in the U.S. web of terrorism by proxy.
"The Eagle never hurts the fly." This applies to the dynamics of Taiwan's place between two superpowers, The United States and The People's Republic of China. Most Taiwanese are oblivious to the intentional media blurring of U.S. maleficent interests in Taiwan. Likewise, the positive intentions of the PRC for Taiwan are intentionally misinterpreted in most of the press. The U.S. tells Taiwan, "Don't move and no one gets hurt." Taiwan is one of the safest places on earth, thanks to the US-PRC tug-of-war. There isn't a tug unless China asserts itself offshore. The ripples barely reach Taiwan. The rope is slack towards Taiwan with just enough play for its neo-liberal guardians, the KMT and DPP, to hang themselves in political jockeying for position.
The good people of Taiwan, caught in the grips of the Western economic crash of 2008, have no need to fear that the equilibrium will be disturbed; only the downturn in living standard and loss of jobs caused by it. Taiwan enjoys a liberal and safe society, a safety that people in both superpowers (and their proxy states) only dream of.
There has been no terrorism, homegrown or imported, in Taiwan since the end of the KMT's "white terror" and dictatorship in 1979. The inter-party bickering, all a show, cannot hide an imprisoned former president; a "red army" of hysterical populism purging Chen Shui-Bian for crimes he did not commit.
The police force in Taiwan is civil and understanding. Their job is to keep the peace. They do not, by policy, terrorize common people with brutal tactics and ear-splitting police car sirens, like we hear in U.S. cities. Police rarely use guns to shoot innocent victims or get involved in deadly high-speed car chases. In a civil dispute, or public drunkenness, police calm the situation down instead of making it worse. There is no racial profiling; every life matters.
We in Taiwan are safe. This year we watched the ubiquitous TV news about the Tianjin fireball explosion in China, the U.S. fertilizer factory fires and train wrecks, Russian planes shooting and being shot down over the Middle World, the carnage in Syria, the collateral damage of war, multitudes of innocent bystanders, far away, and now the terrorism in Paris and Mali. The US and European allies blame the chaos on ISIS. None of those factors are felt in Taiwan. Our "sabotage" is our own accidents, like a gas pipeline explosion under the streets of Kaohsiung, or colored corn power engulfing youthful innocents in amusement park inferno, killing and injuring hundreds, with no accountability. They really are the product of local recklessness.
There have been no pro or anti-Muslim attacks in Taiwan, partly because there are few Muslim here, and because Taiwan does not send troops to the Middle World. ISIS has no issue with the government of Taiwan, and the US and China are not trying to destabilize us.
The only undercurrent of dissent is from under-employed students in the so-called "Sunflower Movement" who have a feeling that they are being had, but do not quite know by whom. Like the Occupy Wall Street activists, they know they have no future, but are distracted from blaming the right source of their oppression, ironically, the same oppressors of the people in the rest of the world; U.S. military-industrial complex.
Despite the compromise of neo-liberal two-party peace and pseudo-democracy, there is a line that the youth in Taiwan that came of age after dictatorship cannot cross. The KMT is still in power, openly. The DPP support of U.S. business-as-usual will be there when China gets too close.
Blame the U.S. for the missiles pointed at Taiwan from China. It is not the PRC's fault that the U.S. wants to renege on the United Nations agreement to give back the last piece of China puzzled away by foreign powers in the 19th century.
What if a U.S. spy had not learned of President Chiang Ching-Kuo's nuclear weapons program in Taiwan in the '70's? Could Taiwan have been a booby-trap and keep itself truly independent from PRC and U.S. interference in the name of sovereignty for twenty-three million people? Look how North Korea is able to protect their people from exploitation from superpowers.
Yes, the most important news of November 2016 was the meeting between Presidents Ma Ying-Jeou of Taiwan and Xi
Jun-Ping of the PRC. The English language press had a field day, taking the DPP's side. Tsai Ying-Wen, the DPP Presidential candidate, talked like President Ma gave her a burden to follow the One China
policy, but the DPP is all talk; all they want is business-as-usual as a U.S. lackey; no talk of
independence.
In this land of strange bedfellows, perhaps Ma is right to not wallow in the internal politics of Taiwan; to jump-start re-unification process with China. Despite his miserable economic record, reunification will get Taiwan out from the CIA’s mitts. The KMT and China must put a halt to the hegemonic monster gobbling Taiwan up, the U.S. using Taiwan as a hindrance against Chinese growth. Just because the U.S. defeated Japan in WW II, it doesn’t give it the right to dominate Asia, and the world, forever.
In this land of strange bedfellows, perhaps Ma is right to not wallow in the internal politics of Taiwan; to jump-start re-unification process with China. Despite his miserable economic record, reunification will get Taiwan out from the CIA’s mitts. The KMT and China must put a halt to the hegemonic monster gobbling Taiwan up, the U.S. using Taiwan as a hindrance against Chinese growth. Just because the U.S. defeated Japan in WW II, it doesn’t give it the right to dominate Asia, and the world, forever.
“The Eagle Never Hurts the Fly.” The terrorist attack in Paris last week shows again how many parts of the world are susceptible to terrorist attacks; Taiwan is not one of them. Taiwan is merely a fly to the eagles of the world, in a cocoon between the US and PRC. It may change, one day, depending on how much the KMT can get away with unilateral rapprochement with China, but not for now.
Mao wouldn’t understand what is going on now in Taiwan and China, but in the struggle to keep its own identity and not be swallowed up by the West’s capitalist hegemonic web, the PRC has to seem like they are giving in a little to capitalism while keeping their finger on the internet for another destabilizing Tienanmen Square. The U.S. government should not delude itself into thinking that its hegemony is good for the world's future generations. Look at all the pollution and global warming, if you need a reminder.
The US will do anything to keep Taiwan on the US side, even resort to agent provocateurs or create their own crisis here in their struggle to contain and blame China. Taiwanese must resist to have Taiwan's right to freely choose what is best for its own people. As former President Lee Tung-Hui said, neither the US nor China is Taiwan's father.
Addendum: I can see someone from the CIA walking up to the President in the Oval Office with a slip of paper saying, "Hey, Barack; throw this line into your speech about Taiwan being allies with us. Don't let Ma and Xi think they're getting away with rapprochement. For good measure, Taiwan's flag will be added to the propaganda piece about ISIS enemies." Truth is stranger than fiction.
Mao wouldn’t understand what is going on now in Taiwan and China, but in the struggle to keep its own identity and not be swallowed up by the West’s capitalist hegemonic web, the PRC has to seem like they are giving in a little to capitalism while keeping their finger on the internet for another destabilizing Tienanmen Square. The U.S. government should not delude itself into thinking that its hegemony is good for the world's future generations. Look at all the pollution and global warming, if you need a reminder.
The US will do anything to keep Taiwan on the US side, even resort to agent provocateurs or create their own crisis here in their struggle to contain and blame China. Taiwanese must resist to have Taiwan's right to freely choose what is best for its own people. As former President Lee Tung-Hui said, neither the US nor China is Taiwan's father.
Addendum: I can see someone from the CIA walking up to the President in the Oval Office with a slip of paper saying, "Hey, Barack; throw this line into your speech about Taiwan being allies with us. Don't let Ma and Xi think they're getting away with rapprochement. For good measure, Taiwan's flag will be added to the propaganda piece about ISIS enemies." Truth is stranger than fiction.
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