So Henry Lee (
The banalities first: Lee says that the police should go after underground arms factories because they might, by studying different methods of tooling and the marks they produce on these illegal products, be able to locate the source of the gun, which might lead them eventually to the shooter.
Somehow we didn't need a "world-famous forensic scientist" to tell us this; any 12-year-old fan of TV's CSI could have done as well.
The good doctor goes on to say that the Taiwanese police should have better preserved the crime scene. He apparently doesn't make any suggestion as to how they might have done this, which is a shame because we would like to know. After all, the crime happened during an election procession and was not immediately even detected. The president thought he had been hit by bits of an exploding firecracker, which in Taiwan is pretty much one of the hazards of the job. By the time the crime had actually been discovered, the motorcade had moved from the spot where it occurred and so had the crowd which had come to see Chen Shui-bian (
When Lee was in Taiwan at the beginning of April, this newspaper took him to task over his remarks to the effect that the shooting was not an assassination attempt against Chen because an assassin would have used a different weapon and aimed at a more vulnerable part of the body, such as the head. At the time we called this utter rubbish. And yet Lee is still peddling the same nonsense. In New York on Saturday he said -- according to The Associated Press -- "this was not a political assassination because [an assassin] would have used a more powerful weapon" than a homemade handgun.
We are appalled that someone brought in to clarify the circumstances surrounding the shooting can so muddy the waters. We are shocked that this "world-famous forensic scientist" seems to lack the most elementary forensic skills about his own logic and grammar.
An assassination is, according to the dictionary, the sudden or secretive killing of a politically prominent person. So what Lee seems to be saying is that the shooting was not intended to kill Chen. And the pan-blues think they are justified in claiming that it was a stunt to win the election. What we think Lee means is that it was not a professional assassination attempt, ie, Chen was not the victim of a professional hit man (and let us add here that we also worked this out for ourselves by the evening of the day of the shooting).
Which interpretation of Lee is the right one? We hope to be able to find out, because a lot hangs by this -- and not only in regard to the shooting. Lee appears to be equivocating, putting what he knows in such a way as to deliberately not clear up the mystery. Given his well-known pan-blue affiliations, this does no favors for the good doctor's credibility. If we are to believe in Lee he needs to stop using weasel words and tell us exactly what he means.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS