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.
During the long Lunar New Year’s holiday, Taiwan has shown several positive developments in different aspects of society, hinting at a hopeful outlook for the Year of the Horse, but there are also significant challenges that the country must cautiously navigate with strength, wisdom and resilience. Before the holiday break, Taiwan’s stock market closed at a record 10,080.3 points and the TAIEX wrapped up at a record-high 33,605.71 points, while Taipei and Washington formally signed the Taiwan-US Agreement on Reciprocal Trade that caps US tariffs on Taiwanese goods at 15 percent and secures Taiwan preferential tariff treatment. President William Lai (賴清德) in
China has apparently emerged as one of the clearest and most predictable beneficiaries of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” approach. Many countries are scrambling to defend their interests and reputation regarding an increasingly unpredictable and self-seeking US. There is a growing consensus among foreign policy pundits that the world has already entered the beginning of the end of Pax Americana, the US-led international order. Consequently, a number of countries are reversing their foreign policy preferences. The result has been an accelerating turn toward China as an alternative economic partner, with Beijing hosting Western leaders, albeit
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Deputy Chairman Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) earlier this month led a delegation to Beijing to attend a think tank forum between the KMT and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After returning to Taiwan, Hsiao spoke at length about “accumulating mutual trust” and letting matters “fall into place,” portraying the forum as a series of discussions focused on cooperation in tourism, renewable energy, disaster prevention, emerging industries, health and medicine, and artificial intelligence (AI). However, when the entire dialogue presupposes the so-called “1992 consensus — the idea that there is only “one China,” with each side of the Taiwan
As red lanterns adorn street corners and social media feeds teem with zodiac divinations, the Year of the Horse has arrived. In our hyper-accelerated age, the horse is almost exclusively synonymous with the idiom ma dao cheng gong (馬到成功) — “instant success upon arrival.” It is a linguistic shot of adrenaline, fueling the thrilling illusion that once the bell tolls, our lives would screech off into a cloud of dust, leaving all troubles behind. Yet, when examining the millennia-long partnership between humans and this magnificent “biological machine,” a different truth emerges. The true essence of the horse is not merely speed;
RSS