The opposition parties are living in the past.
How else can one explain the resurrection of the 319 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee on Tuesday? It is more than two years since the presidential election, and the pan-blues have put Taiwan right back where it started.
No one has ever presented a shred of credible evidence to prove that the shooting was a conspiracy. This is such a vital fact that it warrants repetition: No one has presented evidence of a conspiracy.
Not one document. Not one fiber of fabric. Not a single hair. Not one strand of DNA. No film footage. No still photographs. No weapons. No testimony from inside sources. No tape recordings. No fingerprints. No eyewitnesses. Nothing.
Nothing at all to indicate that the elected president of this democratic state, flawed as it may be, was involved in a conspiracy that would have required dozens, if not hundreds, of participants to execute properly -- with no certainty of what effect it would have on the election once it had been carried out.
That's another point that should be raised twice to emphasize its importance: If President Chen Shui-bian (
If he wanted to make sure he stayed in power, why didn't he just declare martial law? Ban the main opposition leaders from running? Stuff the ballot boxes? He could have done hundreds of things that would have guaranteed the result, while giving the appearance of a democratic contest.
But according to the conspiracy-peddlers, he didn't. He had someone give him a flesh wound with a homemade pistol, then covered it up and waited a day for the poll results.
It is insulting to one's intelligence to be asked to believe that.
Furthermore, evidence that the shooting was carried out by a lone nutcase is legion. The police collected bullet fragments. Shell casings. Video footage. Eyewitness testimony. Forensic analysis by a host of experts. The police spent months painstakingly gathering evidence and tracking down leads. They matched clothing. They positively identified the shooter. They found the man who sold him a homemade gun. They gathered testimony from people who knew the shooter. Even his family said he had done it -- until deciding a year later to change their story, with the help of a prominent pan-blue figure.
And what about the simple, inescapable logic of self-interest? Is there no one, inside or outside of the president's circle of trust, who would have something to gain by exposing a conspiracy that would rock the very foundations of this country's political system?
Are the thousands of broadcast and print journalists in on the plot as well? Are they all Chen supporters? Clearly not. So were they all bought off?
Why did the pan-blue camp's first unconstitutional committee not find any conclusive proof of their claim? They submitted a voluminous report that was a cold fish even among pan-blue supporters. It had charts. It had diagrams. It had speculation. It had lots of pages. But it had no evidence.
So was the committee in on the conspiracy too?
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is again showing its disregard for the rule of law, merely because it can't live with the reality that it isn't in power.
KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
The public is sick of sham conspiracy theories.
It's time for the pan-blues to put up or shut up.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS