This week's hands-down prizewinner is KMT caucus whip Chao Li-yun (趙麗雲):
“Just because [Ko-suen “Bill” Moo -- a Taiwanese convicted of spying in America for the Chinese Communist Party] finished his sentence in the US and came back to Taiwan does not mean he has to be watched,” she said. “Are we a police state, an authoritarian state, or a colony of the US?”
You tell 'em, spinach. Explain to us why the KMT is entirely justified in pursuing its current catch-and-release policy. The KMT wants eventual reunification, and so do Chinese spies...more or less. So y'all just go on and let them Chinese Communist spies fly and be free and go about their business. Unwatched.
Oh, and you're absolutely correct -- only a police state, an authoritarian state, or a colony of the US would heartlessly seek to deprive Mr. Moo of his inalienable right to life, liberty . . . and the pursuit of classified military technology.
(That can be used to conquer Taiwan.)
But it gets better. Because while raising the rhetorical question of whether Taiwan is a police state, Ms. Chao of the Chinese Nationalist Party kind of answers her own question. Only just not in quite the way she probably intended...
Chao [also] said the KMT caucus would demand that the Council of Labor Affairs and the National Immigration Agency (NIA) look into [J. Michael Cole's] residence certificate and work permit and declare [the foreign newspaper editor] persona non grata [for writing an opinion column critical of the KMT in the Wall Street Journal].
Remember: Taiwan is not -- the KMT repeats emphatically: NOT! -- a police state.
It's simply a place where it is now a deportable offense to express any opinion which has not been explicitly approved in advance by the Chinese Nationalist Party's Central Propaganda Ministry.
Kapiche?
[. . .] "Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
"He who serves me best," said he
"Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
at the hangman's hand, was our relief . . .
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Irony flies thick and heavy when the KMT crudely tries to whip up anti-American sentiment ("Are we a colony of the US?"), while simultaneously accusing OTHERS of damaging the relationship between America and Taiwan.
UPDATE #2: Another irony alert. The Chinese Nationalist Party manages to keep a VERY close eye on Taiwanese farmers wishing to demonstrate in front of the Presidential Building.
But ask 'em to monitor KNOWN Chinese Communist spies, and what's their response? "No way, Jose. What do think we are, fascists?"
