Looking Presidential at an Insurrection

          Biden was declared the president elect as Pennsylvania was won overnight. My family is happy, my friends are happy, but it means little to me or the world if the pandemic cannot be gotten under control in the US so we can travel again. I have no illusions about capitalism changing course; neo-liberalism will spend the next four years blaming the Republicans without making significant changes to America's national and international policy of anti-socialism, anti-China. But, thanks to the weakened markets and unemployment in the west that continues to this day, China, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, North Korea, Bolivia, and all nations with socialist ideals to help their own people are prepared to ignore the downward spiral and forge ahead. 

The day before, it looked like Biden pulled ahead of Trump in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada and would win more than 270 Electoral College votes to dethrone wannabe King, but the country is as divided as ever. Trump may incite riots. It could be the start of some real change after the civil war ends in socialism, but CNN is already calling for calm transition to continue the illusion of democracy and exploitation as usual; foreign policy doesn’t change in imperialism; both parties agree.

The day after Election Day, Biden had 264 with winning Michigan's 16 electoral votes overnight, so AP news said. He needed 6 more to reach 270 with Nevada probably going the Democrat's way. Georgia and Pennsylvania were still too close to call but the Democrat wouldn’t need them in the game of American politics. Scenario #2 is now the likely type of civil war possible and civil war there must be to rid the States of fascists once and for all. The police and ICE agents are on the side of the fascists and the people will need the National Guard, maybe the military to bring the war home. Internationally, the Dems and Reps are both anti-socialist and anti-worker. 

I gave my private student a paperback copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings last evening to read chapter one. I have a Taiwan pirate edition hardcover. I'm leaving it up to him to tackle the Maya Angelou and the problem of racism that tarnishes everything in America, indeed, white supremacy and its imperialism have been a pox on the world in the name of free trade since the Crusades. The depiction of Jesus as a white man is the crux of the problem; it's been the biggest co-op in the history of the world. Hank should read this book but it's up to him. I think he can do it at a chapter a week; no hurry.

Trump, who has refused to concede defeat, brings up the possibility of civil war. Mike Selinker, a war game designer that co-developed the first reboot of Axis & Allies and its D-Day edition, made a mythological Risk game called Risk Godstorm, and burned down both the Roman Empire in Gloria Mundi and medieval France in Veritas, wrote about game theory learned from simulating war outcomes. Like many people, he was stuck on that as the likely outcome of our situation, about the possibilities in detail:

          Civil War Scenario #1: A Biden blowout. Comparable war: The American Civil War (THIS IS OUT: It was a nail-biter). This was the scenario the Transition Integrity Project wasn’t worried about. If Biden wins 400+ electoral votes, they think Republicans will be so devastated that they’ll do some soul-searching and come out a different party for it. That’s nonsense. Lincoln took office after an electoral blowout, winning 180 of the 303 Electoral College votes, with no other candidate getting more than 93. One month later, he was evacuating Fort Sumter.

          Scenario #2: A close Biden win. Comparable war: The Russian Revolution. (THIS IS HAPPENING NOW) This is the scenario where the Democrats scrape out a close win for the presidency. Trump calls foul and refuses to leave. The Congress is gridlocked, he doesn’t budge, and America freaks the hell out.

          Scenario #3: A contested result. Comparable war: The Irish War of Independence. (THIS IS STILL POSSIBLE) This is a scary scenario involving the Blue team getting enough states for a win, not quite enough senators to take over the Senate, and a replacement for Ginsburg on the court in the lame duck session. Here’s how it can play out. Unlike the previous scenario, here split slates or de-certification in key states gives Trump a plausible majority or at least a plurality. It doesn’t even have to be razor thin; a 320-vote win for Biden can be turned into a loss with only the Republican legislatures in Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin failing to follow the voters’ will. The three Trump appointees, Alito, and Thomas ratify these shenanigans over the objection of Roberts, and all hell breaks loose.

          Scenario #4: A Trump win. Comparable war: The Rwandan Civil War (THIS IS OUT; Trump lost the popular vote and Electoral College). I saved the worst for last. In this scenario, Trump clearly (though probably not without some voter suppression) wins a narrow majority, and the Democrats don’t take the Senate. Ginsburg is replaced because Trump has a mandate. Biden and his fellow moderates are blamed for blowing the election, whether or not it was actually their fault.”

  The Dems and Reps were in suspended animation waiting for things to go their way, fascism or neo-liberalism, both causing the Greatest Depression America has ever had; the one before the Greatest Revolution the people will ever win. It will be a matter of denial (Trump) and failed conciliation and blame (Biden) the next four years as the downward spiral continues until leftist rebels win. Meanwhile the socialist world defends itself from imperialist bullies. 

Trials and prison time would be a good distraction from the failure of capitalism that both parties created; Americans can go from denial to blame. But the world is ready for the kind of distraction the US promotes; war the only solution to capitalist ruling class problems.

I wrote a few poems the other day, at dusk by the Han riverside in Taichung, watching bats flying hither and thither catching gnats. I thought of how simple their lives were compared to the hither and thither of counting write-in ballots to find the next president. I leave you with the poems I wrote when the election result became apparent:

Thanks for the Insurrection

Thanks for your blunder,

You orange-haired wonder,

For aggravating Americans out of their dream

Killing two major parties with one small stone

Expect it that soon you’ll be cut to the bone

 

Leave us nothing but civil war,

You ignorant childish whore,

The militia we’ll pummel into their graves

The out-of-work bosses’ factories

Collectivized in the land of the finally free

 

You’re more than an Obama Bush,

In the final beer hall putsch,

When you fascists are cut down in the streets

But if not for your despicable overt-ness

Those Dems would go silently, worthless

 

Let’s take advantage of your rot.

Comrades, the iron’s hot

To forge a new society from the shell of the old

When the value of accumulated wealth is debunked

And the capitalist world is flunked

 

Hail, Caesar Trump,

Campaign in vain on your Ahab stump

Lead your lemmings down en masse

As we commutate your 2020 vision

With victory marches of derision

 

Come on, Trumpster,

Like an unsuspecting martyr,

The nation sick with out-of-control fodder

Eat mistakes your ego bakes on fire 

And stoke the flame of workers’ desire

 

Come on now Trumpelstilskin,

Though your nap has hit a bump,

Every goose step deflowering starlets

Make them carry their fetus to term

And christen them with crosses you burn

 

Commander in grief,

Nothing less than a thief,

Fan the flames of revolution

Shoot at the looters that ask for more

Of what you said they were living for

 

Thumbs up, gangster dumpster, 

Donald Corleone’s Trumped up monster,

Like the Godfather’s henchmen thrived

With all your courtiers by your side

Fuel the tanks for their final ride

 

Be an unwitting hero,

Mister bankrupt zero,

As we cut the locks and fling open the gates

Until the ruling parties sharing power

See mansions crumble in your finest hour

 

So be it, Donny babe,

It is what it is so why be afraid,

Comrades, let us go for his throat

Char your White House bride in black

And tear it down so there’s no going back.

 

And this poem, last word on the future of the United States:

 

Looking Presidential

Bats know where they’ll go

With their bellies full of gnats

But a dying nation counts each mail-in

Yet no way home after that.

 

A typhoon passing to the south

Brings needed rain to quench the drought

But the storm between two sorrows

Has no wet tomorrows; only doubt.

 

Business unusual in the cycle of supply and demand

No promise to farmers working the land

No sustenance nor strengthened workers

With no eagle’s grace at hand

 

But bats don’t dicker or mock the sea

Unlike the gluttons of the century

Who wither and worry between two losing choices

And have no sonar to hear clear voices.

 

As dusk signals the end of the bats’ meal airborne

They return to their nests for the dawning of dawn

Grasping nature that suffices without decision

Life and death infamy or derision.

 

November 8, 2020

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Deng Xiaoping Biographies

                              

   I took the book on Deng Xiaoping I reluctantly bought in the evening and read the first page of vile points of view from the Oxford published writer. It reeks of insult, like calling Xiaoping's father "Papa Deng" with the slanderous teenage implication, Mr. Shit,  but most facts can't be disputed; only half truths. I'm glad I saved $10 from the listed price. It will be put on the shelf next to the book on Lin Piao from Martin Ebon’s dated Lin Piao; The Life and Writings of China’s New Ruler, that at least has half the pages filled with actual speeches, meant mockingly, but the two men couldn't be more ideologically different. Piao almost destroyed China's revolution with too-much too-soon radicalism. Deng saved China from itself. 

  I started reading the Deng Xiaoping book by Alexander V. Pantsov (with Steven I. Levine)  I got on sale at a bookstore in Taipei. They didn't have the 825 page Deng biography I wanted; I am not buying anything on eBay until the international mail is back to normal. Interestingly, in the introduction, the author makes a case for their biography over the one I would have preferred to read saying their version covers Deng's whole life while the other concentrates on his last twenty-seven years. His book uses research from Russia and China that Ezra F. Vogel's book didn't have access to. He says Vogel was “quite uncritical and lacking in objectivity” of Deng claiming his book is more balanced about Deng's accomplishments and drawbacks, but so far I only see anti-China propaganda and half-truths if not out-and-out lies about the youthful “streets of blood” in Tienanmen and other two “T” (Taiwan, Tibet) of western slander about China; but that was in 2015. He could have added a H.K. and X (Hong Kong and Xinjiang) if it were published five years later. Alas, this was the only book they had in English about Deng and not the “uncritical and unrealistically positive” one I wanted, but this is Taiwan and rarely anything good about China can be found in media.  At least this bio should have facts and quotes from Deng. I can peel away the bullshit and chuckle at the attempt to defame China comparing it to the 'high standards' of US democracy. I wonder what the book would say if written after China’s successful fight against coronavirus and the U.S. falling into chaos and fascism. 

The gossipy anti-communist biography by A.V. Pantsov and S.I. Levine about Deng Xiaoping; A Revolutionary Life is horribly immature.  I’d much rather have the respectful Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel, and I finally found it  on the bookstore shelf in Taiwan. The imperialist, racist, regressive bias of history written by Western academics disgusts me.

October 23, 2020

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Only Taiwan Can Prevent a Needless War

Taiwan should be ashamed for not crediting China with the standard operating procedure that contained  the outbreak of COVID-19; not "proud" of itself.

The policy of the Taiwan government in cahoots with the USA is putting the people of Taiwan in danger. The DPP/KMT neoliberal media can control the rhetoric about China being the aggressor but who really is inciting violence but the denier of reality?

          Taiwan has been occupied by her Chinese mainlanders since the 16th century when the island was rid of colonial Dutch settlers by Koxinga of the Ming Dynasty. The Chinese and native population of aboriginal settlers in Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 after China lost a war to it and it should have been returned to China when Japan lost to the US in WW II. Instead, the US kept Taiwan for the KMT, losers of the Chinese civil war between the communists and fascists, and still oversees Taiwan's international policy no matter which faction is in power, the KMT or DPP in neoliberal cahoots.

          Now the US is offering to sell Taiwan seven billion dollars in armament against international law. The DPP will take it in lieu of true independence so it can continue to preserve its political power and sustain corruption of Taiwan's ruling class. 

          The Taiwan government will be overthrown, by force if necessary if this sale is made because they are being enabled by the USA and unwilling by its own choice to accept historical reality and abide by international law recognition of China as Taiwan's legitimate government. Taiwan most certainly does not belong to the USA, independent perhaps, but not part of a fascist interloper turning its people against their cultural cohort and class interest.

          The people of Taiwan do not care who their government is so long as the economy improves and security is insured, not by a racist WASP imperial super power but by with its own people and culture. Already, many Taiwanese businessmen and workers have connected with China's growing economy and they will continue to do so since the COVID-19 outbreak was limited here through China's example of standard operating procedure to contain it, easier so in Taiwan, an island shorter than New York to Baltimore, with a population of 23 million. Instead of acknowledging the positive influence from China, its leader, Tsai Ying-Wen is claiming Taiwan did it all alone, without the help of WHO which, echoing President Trump's unfounded assertion,  was on China's side.

         The slogan "Proud of Taiwan" was flouted at the 109 anniversary of founding of the republic recently on Oct. 10, "Double Ten" day. The anti-China propaganda it shares with Angelo-American NGO's over Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang, is bent on fear-mongering and brainwashing its people but only serves the ruling class as breadwinners in families continue to be overworked, underpaid and in dangerous work environments. The price of real estate is exorbitant, for investment by the rich, and commoners cannot afford it. The capitalist hell of street chaos overcrowded with vehicles, scooters, and large trucks cause horrific accidents daily and highways are continually being built adding to the poor air quality. 

          Scenes of chaos in the USA presidential election, as a fascist fool fights against a senile opposition party stalwart, is slowly filtering into Taiwan media that can no longer bear the weight of covering up for its ruling class enabler. People are slowly realizing that aligning with China is better. In this regard, the ruling class is heading for trouble. No one wants war in Taiwan but the belligerence of the disengaged bootlickers may be leading Taiwan down a dangerous dead end. It will be the DPP/KMT that's to blame if the arms deal goes down, but the media doesn't allow for much leeway in dissension. When the PLA appears on the streets of Taiwan, no one but the ruling class will care when the last witch of western colonialism on Chinese soil is dead. Let’s hope the Taiwan government doesn’t make the good people of Taiwan die in a needless war.

October, 14, 2020

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The USA: An Enemy of the People

 

            My Pittsburgh friend, Marc, who works for the post office, says the postmaster general is a Trump crony. “Too bad the Dems sabotaged Bernie in 2016 or this might not have happened,” was a shared comment my Young Democrat daughter ignored. Guess which president started dismantling the US Post Office; starts with an ‘Oh’, as in “Oh how rotten American democracy has become. We are truly the enemy of the people for pointing this out, Republican and Democrat people alike.

Government watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, and pro-democracy advocates declared it a “Friday Night Massacre for the US Postal Service after news broke in a classic end-of-the-week dump that Louis DeJoy — a major GOP donor to President Donald Trump and the recently appointed Postmaster General — had issued a sweeping overhaul of the agency, including the ouster of top executives from key posts and the reshuffling of more than two dozen other officials and operational managers. Even if today (Aug.19) he backed off the demolition until after Election Day, I don’t believe it.  I am an enemy of the American people.

When the Democratic Party stops sabotaging progressive candidates, I'll stop laughing. Some think Biden in our time is better than showing the true colors of a racist, fascist, Christian oligarchy. With Clinton at his inauguration  insulting Stokley Carmichael (Kwame Ture) in his eulogy to John Lewis and explicitly thanking James Clyburn "for ending, with a stroke of his hand," the Sanders campaign, I'll take the third choice: Revolution. Trump must not go on but the best is not yet to come. Kwame Ture, in death, is still an enemy of the people.

Now, anything would be better than a dictatorship which would be harder to fight than a dysfunctional neoliberal state. I changed my driver’s license address so I can kill three birds with one stone; the third, a Trump bird. It would be nice to spend two or three weeks in Pittsburgh, voting and seeing three of my adult children, one with my two grandchildren. I would visit my youngest adult daughter in Portland, OR, before heading back to Taiwan for a two week quarantine.

If this wasn’t bad enough, Trump has threatened an executive order to end payroll tax, the tax that mostly funds Medicaid and Social Security. It is hard being a witness to a nation of frogs being slowly boiled alive. Radical friends know what is going on and what the ruling-class plan is for US citizens. One friend and I argued over when the dismantling of the dream began; was it after Eisenhower, after Kennedy was assassinated and Hoffa disappeared? Was it when after an anti-war struggle being won by the troops returning from Vietnam joining students and minority and women’s rights advocates was clamped down by Nixon’s resignation and pardon? Was it union membership plummeting on the attack, Patco de-certified and workers fired while taxes on the rich dwindled thanks to Reagan laws?

One cannot put a finger on the first case; I think the fish stinks from the head; Washington. What has been obvious to me since junior high school is still unclear; radicals are still the enemy of the people. To others, despite catastrophic indicators of imminent doom like green flesh floating in broth off the frogs’ boiling backs, it seems salvageable, but there is a clear choice to us: Either Americans fight back or exodus to save their families and themselves and fight from abroad, or simply start living a better life.

Howard Zinn might cringe but this is how it happened: The Stock Market crashed and The Great Depression started in 1929. The US government handled the Hoovervilles after WWI just as they handled the aspirations of rising unionists and victory before the First World War. The IWW was hounded, Eugene Debs was imprisoned, Big Bill Hayward arrested and sought asylum in the USSR. VP Wallace was marginalized and McCarthyism put socialism on the run again. Viet vets realized they were duped and joined the peace movement as Nixon made pals with the AFL-CIO that were in their beds, until Nixon was pardoned. Any progress made toward an equitable society squelched. Reagan nailed it in the 80's but progressives re-emerged in the 90's after Nicaragua, Granada, and El Salvador threatened fascism again. That's why they needed the benign neglect of a 911 attack to put national guard on the people's streets and 6 trillion dollars (3 from Bush, 3 from Obama) "to save our way of life" squelched any trend toward socialism. AFL-CIO unions played along giving back hard fought gains; the buy-out I took early retirement left young teachers and students unprotected, tenure-less, dumbed-down and tier 5. This controllable pandemic was left to decimate the common people once and for all and completely showed the USA's real colors since inception, as a fascist racist Christian imperialist state. More Americans realize what is going on but they are deer in headlights. The USA people are doomed. But radicals such as I are the enemy of the people.

You and I are the last generation to know the prospects of democracy. They've taken off the kid gloves. It's up to the young men and women who will spend their lifetimes suffering and insecure, increasingly in debt. My children are realists, contributing to the betterment of society, but they are not activists. It will take pitchforks and blood in the streets, fascist blood hopefully; CNN, NBC, the NY Times and Democratic Party don't care about The People. It is up to us. 

I want to see my grandchildren and my family this fall of an election year but I don't have to be there; I can vote by mail. Trump must be defeated and kept from starting a dictatorship. It is up to the Democrat Party; only they have the political power to respond and lead the charge. I'm afraid they won't; they haven't yet, in face sabotaging Bernie Sanders twice. I feel the US is doomed to racist dictatorship, its true colors. My Vietnam vet friend says only the military can stop them, but no one thinks like us. We know that the USA is the enemy of the people.

Expats in Taiwan Watch the USA Slide into Fascism

Will the American people do anything to stop their nation's slide into fascism? The Democratic Party helped Trump win in 2016 by sabotaging Bernie Sanders and offering a weak candidate. Why would they start helping now? They’re doing it again. It takes a radical mindset greater force to stop the downward spiral. My adult children don’t have it in them. Most young adults don’t. Will they do anything radical if Trump steals the election or cancels it? They're making monkeys out of all of us. 

Liberals don't want to realize the Democrats are in bed with the Republicans in keeping Big Pharma and the U.S. corporate power structure intact. Prolonging the pandemic is a way to make a killing on the market and keep people off the streets so they can't organize a resistance. It seems, to all but his family, the Floyd murder and reaction was a fluke. The CIA and corporate media have it already co-opted. Who is sending unmarked cars with military thugs abducting protesters in Portland? It is probably not just Trump’s decision. Unless the judiciary and Democratic Party does something radical to condemn this gestapo tactic, they are part of it. CNN and the corporate media is gas-lighting us.

The liberal corporate media, like CNN and most networks, are inciting fear of COVID-19 for the purpose of helping Biden win the election in November. I bet that after the election, but before Biden takes office, an incident [this written before unmarked goons started abducting citizens in Portland] will be created to “handcuff” the Democrats to keep up their neoliberal “good-cop-bad-cop” routine, like they did with Obama and Bush II; they are on the same team but those that think their vote counts don’t want to believe it. Obama gave a trillion dollars of tax money to prop up the banks; same as Bush did. Only after the two-party ruse is overthrown and the U.S. nuclear threat broken up, then the world lives free. Meanwhile Trump war-mongers against China and hate crimes against Asians is skyrocketing.    

Back in early March I asked my daughter in Pittsburgh if she wanted me to send masks. She said no. A few weeks later when she changed her mind the Taiwan post office would not let any masks be mailed overseas; they were all needed for use here. The ban was lifted a month ago and I sent masks immediately to my adult children. Two are employed in government jobs (public defender, Penn Hospital) from home near Pittsburgh but my son destitute from the streets of LA I am supporting during counseling in Pittsburgh, thanks to his sisters' love. My youngest daughter has government project protecting  the environment in Portland for income. All realize how lucky they are to weather this fiasco of benign neglect called the USA. My colleagues from FDR HS are better off being paid from home than contracting illness from reckless students and administrators on-site. There will be a Phoenix rising from the ashes but first the house must burn down. The hard part watching when the house is in your neighborhood. Not for a minute do I not thank my lucky stars I am with a lovely lady in pragmatic Taiwan. 

The travesty of justice is nothing new in the USA. The assault on labor and workers’ rights has been going on for decades. If there is no direct action fight back, the US dream of liberty, fairness, and democracy is dead; it has been on life support since John Kennedy was assassinated.  Anyone that thinks Democrats will change things around are living in a delusion and the greater problem; the devil you know is better than the one you don’t know.

The question is, does one stay in the States and fight the fascism or emigrate to a safer nation. Yes, we created it and must take it away from those who abuse it. But if Staters aren't going to fight for their rights more strongly, the rest of the world welcomes the die-hard intellectuals who would be the first to be punished when fascism takes hold. I'm with Snowden.

And what of emigrating to Taiwan, my adopted home of my native wife for fifteen years. A friend from the states is thinking of coming in the Fall. In the cavalier attitude of America's puppies where the world was not locked down and the Chinese suck more than the Democrats or Republicans, Taiwan rules as a primo destination for western losers, fly-by-nights, and old farts trying to remember, if not re-live, their younger days. If I see one white face in the sea of faces off the Taiwan strait, it is hard to keep a straight face or acknowledge their carpetbag. Aside from the white supremacists whose son of God was a white lizard stepped on and discarded to other stolen Indian territory where polygamy was  prudent and you're darn tootin' Jesus is rootin', foreigners here are all carriers of the failed empire of imperial planet destruction in the name of free enterprise and profit, not prophet, though they pretend they're holier than thou, their goddamned story is full of holes as in the watering hole where the geezers and looneys congregate on hot summer nights to guzzle beer and light the world with their whiteness. When they must pass a Mandarin conversation, Taiwanese and Chinese history test to even get a tourist visa to overstay and protect themselves from corona, virus, not the beer, I will welcome them at the airport with a limousine to their mandatory re-education centers to wash through white to the red white and blue and all the way under their thin skins to become as inconsiderate and selfishly unabashed as the rest of the renegade hillbillies of a la (first tone) la (second tone) la(third) and la (fourth tone) landed on a gentrification island. China airlines by any other name still will suck. When liberation from the real China comes, no one will notice until the westerns tell them and they lose their corrupted privilege. Then the white boys will have to move on back to Guam and Marshall Islands for that real nuclear day-glow. But you, my friend, you are always welcome.

The United States is full of Beavis's and Buttheads refusing to wear masks but at least those two unsavory adolescents weren't real. Most of America is crazy and scared. I would be proud of my daughter in Portland with her boyfriend if they joined the fight-back against militarized police, but they are not. Neither are my other three children; only one has a good excuse; her son is one month old. When intelligent children of a radical father don't fight back, who will? When lawyers, environmentalists, and medical staff don't join the protests who will? I cannot cajole or convince them of the urgency to join the ranks against tyranny that has finally bubbled to the top after steadily increasing since the people stopped the war machine in Vietnam. The Democrats are to blame, very much to blame, because they are the opposition party and they haven't been opposed strongly enough to prevent or turn back the onslaught. People who support the Democrats, goddamn them, too! This is a fight for the life of an American dream before it is forever gone. Wake up, America!

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Taiwan in the Downward Spiral called the United States

          I sit and watch the downward spiral called the United States in my safe Taiwanese home, but a radical at heart I remain and do what I can to educate wayward sheep busy flocking themselves with condemnations of the violence of revolt. There are no criminals in an uprising; downtrodden victims of capitalism. If anything good can come out of the botched response to COVID-19, it is this. My son was living on the streets of LA when it hit home but he wisely took my offer to transport him to his sister's homes near Pittsburgh where he will stay and get medical tests and credentials before going anywhere else.

          A friend from California wrote: “The cadet called MAGA boys to attack protesters at the WH. See what happens to night.” I was not being brazen to say I hoped, if there was a blood bath there was a blood bath outside the White House, most of it would be white supremacist or military police; there is no revolution without martyrs. The US protesters must go beyond the Yellow Vests of France, in size and shape, minorities, veterans, students, unionists, housewives. This will be the last chance to turn the US around.

There were reports of agent provocateur and police brutality during the mass uprising against the system brought on by the murder of another person by the police. The police are provoking the violence but the people can organize and fight back. Get in a car and run over some. Get on the roofs and drop Maltov cocktails on them. Follow them home and set their straw houses on fire. Don’t let the violence scare us. Organize clandestinely and fight back! There must be a civil war, as I discussed with another incredulous stateside friend no more than a month ago, to which she threatened to unfriend me; we snoozed each other. Guerilla tactics.

 I could see what they were doing with the COVID-19 unpreparedness and telling people to stay off the streets. They’ve got the guns but we’ve got the numbers. Doesn’t matter if the schmuck is calling ANTIFA a terrorist organization (it’s not an organization anyway) because we know the streets and alleyways of our towns. For all the privileged white cowards like Lorraine Green hiding behind black husbands and police officer step-children, there are many more white people that know the score and tried to burn down the CNN headquarters in Atlanta for their misinformation. We will be coming out of the woodwork and we will win to create an anarcho-syndicalist socialist state!

          The curfew in DC on June first was ten o’clock. There were thousands of beautiful young people on the streets surrounding the White House defying it. Trump was belligerent threatening to bring in troops; martial law loomed. Those brave young fellow workers were amazing! That night it looked like there was going to be the start of the revolution. There was going to be no more Republican-Democrat hegemony over American people. The Senate would be forced to resign or be hanged.

Trump was not resigning. Military police were firing teargas and I believe the protesters should have been more offensive; break through the line. But it is okay to retreat to find a location unprotected to fight back. The protesters backed off Lafayette Park, but when they were attacked every protester needed to have a weapon and protection. Telling well-apportioned police not to shoot is useless. They had noisy military helicopters hovering low over the people.

 I was watching two You-Tube feeds and felt like I was there. I would have run away, too, as I did many times in past demonstrations against the US government. I, too, would not get a stick and fight back. Before curfew at 10 pm, police started attacking peaceful and militant protesters without discrimination. The protesters then would not have been wrong to pick up metal barricades and rush at the brutal police firing teargas and rubber bullets at them, but they were backing off. But eight minutes until curfew, no one was following orders to get off the streets in DC, NYC, and elsewhere else in forty cities across the USA.

At midnight, the feed from Matt, who was sending the live, ended; he decided it was time to get into his car and go home; his parents were worrying about him. The protesters had backed away from the military police line and took their frustration out on commercial establishments going into the night seizing the time, and getting home safely to fight another day.

I was talking with my California friend for over an hour during the showdown outside the White House as I watched You-Tube feeds from D.C. He would like to think of himself as a radical; he is on the right side in this fight, but like many other liberal bourgeois WASPs in denial about their white Christian privilege, he comforts himself reminiscing how he was a Chicano amigo once. His wife, a Taiwanese born American, is out-of-touch as much as my friend about the big corruption of the DPP inviting the US military in further, buying expensive second –rate equipment, power-sharing with the KMT; the big international DPP corruption versus the little local  KMT corruption with Taiwan's mafia. My friend is not about to tell his wife anything to upset the apple cart, but at least he realizes they don't know what's really going on in Taiwan living as they do, isolated in Ventura. If she loved Taiwan as much as she said she did, they would come back here.

Seeing life in the States getting worse I ask myself: Did we escape the USA just in time? I retired early thanks to a buy-out to save the city money, marginalized in FDR's UFT and NYC GMB by the time I retired; there was nothing else for me to do but volunteer for Workers World and attend Anarchist Forums. But I never lost sight of the deterioration of justice and workers' rights in the States. I didn't jump ship, did I, but I didn't go down with it, either. The main difference between radical friends place in Brooklyn and mine is I have a choice of finding out how horrible it has become there, but he has to live in the muck. In his golden years, I wouldn't begrudge them a cabin near Walden Pond or something; unless they're in the underground; the only other way to go.

On Saturday, June 6, they had a recall vote for the KMT clown from Kaohsiung with the Donald Trump imitation; his big-mouth campaign didn’t work though and he lost to President Tsai Ying-Wen in December. He had been elected mayor for the reason that Tsai was not moving Taiwan forward, politically or economically, but instead of staying to help Kaohsiung, he immediately started a presidential campaign. Tsai had USA help and the media played up anti-China Hong Kong hysteria and neutralized her stalemate while countering her too much-too soon legalizing same-sex marriage to a conservative society. With any other pro-independence politician like Lai Ching-Da, the former independence supporting mayor from Tainan, off the table and out of the way, caved in with the rest of the DPP that has international policy to China, they chart a similar course to that of the KMT of martial law days; no discussion with the PRC, and no compromise in the US defended island, and still workers are overworked, endangered and underpaid without unions. At least the anger in the US over the brutal police murder of George Floyd is too much for Taiwan media to ignore and may make some people question why the DPP is supporting and mimicking a regime like that.

Congratulations to the people of Kaohsiung for showing the U.S. how to remove a scumbag from office, something the Democratic Party has no clue about handling. More people voted to remove him than voted to elect him. Leona and I celebrated and will make plans to visit Kaohsiung again, I hope.  

The proof I sent my California friend a few days ago supporting the Chinese claim to Taiwan, sailing to and occupying western Taiwan as early 1600, was contended by him when we chatted the morning the White House was under siege. Why he would challenge that China has a right to insist on Taiwan as part of their nation if he is as against the US government as he says, especially since the DPP has given up supporting independence and capitulated to old KMT ruse of communist slander and dependence on the US for surveillance and defense?

The U.S. sent two Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait today for the fourth time in recent months on the anniversary of the Tiananmen disaster, the anniversary when western subterfuge almost torpedoed Chinese socialism. I wondered why there were Taiwanese fighter jets in the sky that morning. How much more anti-worker, anti-people, racist action by the US government must be shown in Taiwan media before the Taiwanese people rise up and oust their own obstruction to nationhood?   

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2020 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 

Taiwan Spitting in the face of Change

On Friday, TSMC announced plans to invest US$12 billion to build

 the 5 nanometer fab, saying that construction is scheduled to start next year.

          One hand washes the other but in this time of changing priorities, Taiwan is spitting in the face of changing priorities and distancing itself from China, its cultural cohort in everything but capitalism and exploitation. First it was FOXCONN making a deal to undercut American unions with a factory in Wisconsin, now it is TSMC ready to have union free workers exploited on American soil in Arizona.  In both cases, the workforce in Taiwan gets the short end of the deal with migrant silicon valley workers from India exploited even further and keeping Taiwanese workers underpaid and overworked. This is the reward the US gives Taiwan for distancing itself from China while the real gift of independence for Taiwan has been taken off the table by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of Tsai Ying-Wen. How does the clandestine US presence in Taiwan  and English dependency work to make Taiwan America's eyes on China, blind to its own self-determination?  

          Formosan Association for Public affairs (FAPA), located in the US to lobby congressmen and senators to support Taiwan-related Bills posted this: The Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act was signed into law by President Trump last week. The remaining Taiwan-related bills in the Congress include Senate's Taiwan Assurance Act (S.878), Senate's WHO bill (S.249), House's Taiwan Envoy Act (H.R.5535), House's Employment Fairness for Taiwan Act of 2020 (H.R.6014), and Taiwan Symbols of Sovereignty Act (S.3310 & H.R.6287).” They also want support to force China Airlines to change its name to reflect its Taiwan home base so they can skirt prejudice against “real” Chinese. Taiwan’s Minister for Transportation and Communications, Lin Chia-lung, said his ministry has an “open mind” to changing the carrier’s name, but notes that “because [the carrier] is a listed company, [we] need to respect the shareholders’ and public’s opinions”. Will they wear “We are NOT Japanese” type buttons as the Chinese did in the U.S. during internment of Japanese citizens during WW II? Asians of all nations are victims of vicious racist attacks in the U.S. And the DPP through FAPA sees the US as Taiwan’s friend?  

          Taiwan’s government is clearly betting on the wrong horse to the detriment of its working class. In passive-aggressive manor, Taiwan’s DPP threw insult at the WHO for not recognizing being left out; Taiwan is part of China and should defer to her; indeed, they mimicked her response without acknowledgment. By doing as well or better than China and Hong Kong in controlling the outbreak, Taiwan has a “we’ll show them” combative attitude.

          Some supporters of Tsai Ying-Wen’s campaign to smear the WHO for not dealing with Taiwan separately from China allegedly insulted the WHO personally and sent death threats. The WHO leader fought back. Taiwan led the way in suspicion and deriding China’s response to the outbreak in the beginning mentioning “Wuhan” a thousand times a day in the media “white-man” washing of the true nature of a pandemic; it belongs to all nations unprepared to care for their common people, not China alone, though it served Taiwanese well the precautions taken, but now the DPP is riding Trump’s racist coattails, against its social cohort.

          The UN agency has come under continued fire from Trump, who mirrors Tsai Ying-Wen’s accusation that the WHO is “very China-centric” and has ended funding.

          Speaking on Wednesday, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus defended the WHO's work and called for an end to the politicization of COVID-19.

          The disease first emerged last December in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has just ended an 11-week lock-down. An advisor to the WHO chief earlier said their close work with China had been "absolutely essential" in understanding the disease in its early stages.

         Trump's attacks on the WHO come in the context of criticism of his own administration's handling of the pandemic, especially early problems with US testing.

The WHO approved a corona-virus test in January - but the US decided against using it, developing its own test instead. However, in February, when the testing kits were dispatched, some of them did not work properly, and led to inconclusive results.

Public health experts say the delay enabled the virus to spread further within the US.

          Dr Tedros said he had been at the receiving end of racist comments for the past two to three months. "Giving me names, black or negro," he said. "I'm proud of being black, or proud of being Negro." He then said he had received death threats, adding: "I don't give a damn." The WHO chief said the abuse had originated from Taiwan, "and the foreign ministry didn't disassociate" itself from it.

          "For years, we have been excluded from international organizations, and we know better than anyone else what it feels like to be discriminated against and isolated," Reuters news agency quoted her as saying. "If Director-General Tedros could withstand pressure from China and come to Taiwan to see Taiwan's efforts to fight Covid-19 for himself, he would be able to see that the Taiwanese people are the true victims of unfair treatment."

          Taiwan foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said the comments were "irresponsible" and the accusations "imaginary". The ministry said it was seeking an apology for "slander", AFP news agency reported.

          FAPA (Formosan Association of Public Affairs) is the Taiwanese-American lobby group that funnels millions of dollars to senators and congressmen to influence their stance towards Taiwan province’s de facto separation from the People's Republic of China. They originally were mostly middle-aged independence advocates with a smattering of easy-chair socialists but now they are elderly, with no new generation, and have given up their ideals to see Taiwan as a 51st State and Taiwan ties to the US stronger than with its cultural cohort 129 miles across the Strait. Instead of acknowledging the influence from China establishing policy that mirrored its quick and effective reaction to the virus outbreak in late January, FAPA and the ruling DPP want to ride Trump's coattails in blaming China for America's problem of unpreparedness and aiding the CIA in further distancing reunification, not for Taiwanese benefit alone. Too bad that the KMT used a populist approach supporting a clown that rivaled Trump for the presidency, and lost momentum of a populace reeling from a 20 year failing economy and underpaid work force; indeed losing workers to China that paid higher wages. Taiwan has become Asia's Florida; 1 out of 4 citizens over 65 and legally holding duel US passports. The lies the DPP is spreading (65,000 people died from COVID-19 in China, for example) and supporting the renaming of China Airlines (how about China Petroleum, China University Hospital, etc.) because it has given Taiwan a bad name is ludicrous.

          Using the WHO's refusal to address Taiwan's demand for consideration, embarrassing themselves at news conferences, and taking Trump's tract of blaming China, calling the WHO China's proxy, will not work as the proof is in the pudding; at least 20,000 confirmed US deaths (out of a quarter billion) to China's lock-downed Hubei Provence's 3,000 (saving the more than billion people outside Wuhan) is a figure that over a hundred nations in the WHO recognize as reality. Taiwan is riding the wrong horse into the future and I fear it will come to no good. How long can the American bubble in Taiwan last when the bubble-blowers in the White House and Senate is running out of soap. I don't fly China Airlines because the food sucks, the seats are tight, the cost is high, and the equipment is old, nor do I fly Air China with its poor handling and bureaucratic transfers. Changing the name of either airline will make no difference to me or most savvy travelers. 

           FAPA's renewed demand that China Airlines be renamed because 'China was giving it a bad name.' That bad name is the fault of racist Euro-Americans like Trump blaming instead of congratulating China for its fast and effective response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. I wouldn't fly China Airlines or Air China if they were both renamed Trans Love Airways; both airlines suck. This red herring is FAPA's only recourse to admitting it's lobbying from a sinking ship.

          The lie the US and Taiwan are spreading about the WHO not telling the world of the danger. I wrote in an article Jan. 20: “Yesterday, the World Health Organization said the virus represents a risk outside of China as the United States reported its first case of person-to-person transmission.” They did indeed tell the US and the world to be prepared.

          The hilarity of Taiwan's DPP rejection of China while pandering to the US and feigning independence is too much. Tsai Ying-Wen has given up the fight for Taiwan independence

          Meanwhile, the English media in Taiwan is controlled by the US, the defense is supported and backed by the US, English is taught from primary school up, most government officials and ruling class hold US passports, US citizens have special visa privileges here, the Taiwan dollar exchange is according to the US. Most NGO's are from the US, the church is beholden to the US, street signs and weapon instructions, propaganda in line with US, MSN, Facebook and Google given free access to private date, Lockheed-Martin research tied to US CIA, shall I continue? Okay. The US helped rescue CKS and turned a blind eye to the 228 Massacre, US fast food chains, clothing, music, and culture of US origin... Taiwan is OWNED by the US CIA, surveillance, and it's not symbiotic; they will and have jerked Taiwan around for 70 years playing both sides KMT and DPP; every Taiwan president has secret briefings with the US before taking office (except maybe Lee Tung-Huai who told the US they weren't his father) and now most COVID-19 cases are FROM THE US, NOT CHINA as they let their guard down to US-European repatriation. American youth are here in droves paraprofessionals using Taiwan as a way-station to touring the world. You're not denying that Taiwan is a vassal of the U.S. more than any other land? Its Chinese cohort is stymied.

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2020 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved