The Foreigner in Formosa

Is Joe Hung Taiwan's Slimiest Liar?

Admittedly the competition is stiff, but Joe Hung goes full Goebbels with his latest screed on March 24th's government eviction of student protesters from Taiwan's Executive Building.

Claims Joe about Ma Ying-jeou's bloody crackdown:

"The force used to expel the Black Island Nation Youth Front mob wasn't violent at all." [Emphasis added]

Refutation comes from the equivalent of a thousand words:

(Image from 4am.tw)

No violence, you say, Joe? Perhaps this man just went to a REALLY bad barber then, eh? Took a little too much off the top. Happens all the time!

Or maybe it's spontaneous hemorrhaging. Brought on by...ebola! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Or, when in doubt, why not return to one of Joe Hung's pet tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories? The devious man in this photo quite obviously faked his own assault by snatching a riot stick from a virtuous policeman's hands and beat himself over the head with it to gain sympathy.

Oh, the lengths these sneaky devils go to!

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The China Post's Joe Hung begins his latest column by informing his readers of the meaning of "grandiosity".

Instead, he might have been better served looking up the definition of violence, in order to avoid making a complete ass of himself.

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Postscript: Heh. A good journalist would instantly recognize that "mob" probably doesn't apply to those who are peacefully seated.

But this is Joe Hung we're talking about, so standards of good journalism don't really apply.

Congratulations To The REAL "Supreme Leader" Of Taiwan: The Taiwanese People

Well done!

(Half-a-million Taiwanese protest a KMT-Chinese Communist Party service trade pact which they fear will strip them of their liberties. Image from the Taipei Times.)

How Sweden Came To Rule The (Pop Music Radio) Waves

In the 1940s, conservative Swedes set up a universal public system of classical music education in order to "protect" the country's youth from the "corrupting" influences of foreign popular music.

(Which, considering the era, meant that they considered Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw the subversive, long-haired punks of the day. Heh!)

By the '80s, this had changed, and Sweden's musical curriculum had expanded to include rock and pop...and by the 1990s, Swedes were able to take advantage of both their musical education & their music-related social networks to conquer the pop world.

Very ironic result. Fascinating stuff.

China Ponders Putin's Georgian & Crimean Precedents

Is Vladimir Putin just about the world's greatest fool?

There is, however, one country with an imperial past and a renewed craving for empire that has territorial ambitions which make of it a threat to Russia, and that country is China...The majority of those who live there [Siberia] today are not Russian. Many of them are Chinese who have journeyed north in search of well-paid work; and China, which is just across the border from Siberia, is an economic juggernaut increasingly desperate for resources of the very sort that are found in abundance in Siberia.

Vladimir Putin should think hard about the precedent he is setting in the Crimea. The day may come when China does to Russia in Siberia what he is trying to do right now to the Ukraine in the Crimea. Putin's government piously states that its only concern is to protect the majority Russian population in the Crimea from the Tatars and the Ukrainians there. China, in time, will say the like about the Chinese in Siberia. And when that day comes, he will have alienated everyone of any significance who might otherwise have rallied to Russia's defense. [Emphasis added]

More on Putin's folly.