♦♦  ♦ Taiwan, freedom & democracy? ♦   ♦ US skepticism from Taiwan ♦ ♦ Taiwan leaders - liars?  ♦ ♦ same-sex marriage in Taiwan on purpose ? ♦♦ Taiwan president's secret life?♦ ♦  mind control weaponry in Taiwan  ♦♦  China's invasion of Taiwan ♦♦♦  disinformation, interference from foreign countries  ♦♦  Taiwan - lowest trust rates in the media among democracies

OPinion  ♣♣    ♣Hong Kong (China) VS. Taiwan    in    Political cartoons  ♣ 

♣   

A picture says more and louder than thousand words

According to <Asian Political Cartoons> book (by Dr. John Lent, University press of Mississippi, 2023),  "if you offend any one of them (Taiwan's politicians), you are sent to court.  Artists only know art, and to be sent to court is unfathomable and a headache for them".  

Taiwan needs to declassify all political archives to find out if the consequence of offending politicians is only a "headache". ps1

Compare Taiwan with Hong Kong.

In protests from 2003 to 2020 ps2, Hong Kongers have created tens of thousands of political cartoons/design works ps3  for propaganda, communication, mobilization, and drawing international attentions.   Parts of Hong Kong including bus stations became a gallery.   Fortunately, there's no any editorial cartoonists being sued or imprisoned. 

At that time the HK gov. learned they need to “fill loopholes” in their laws to root out "seeds of unrest" and  "hostile forces lurking in society”.  New York Times and CNN (2024-1-30) reported that HK officials claimed “ the CIA and British intel. have publicly stated that they'll do a lot of work to target China and HK”.

After protests, some cartoon columns ended.  Cartoonist Justin Wong, a scholar at HK Baptist Univ., chose to leave HK after hearing that the school allegedly contacted the police for his works about the protests.  Radio Free Asia (2023-5-11) quoted some comments saying that the public opinion environment in HK is worse than that in mainland China.

In 2023, top cartoonist Zunzi's column in Ming Pao news, which accompanied Hong Kongers for 40 years, was suddenly discontinued.  Zunzi told AFP that it's due to "political pressure" triggered by his latest cartoon. Zunzi's cartoons have already caused controversies over the years (even banned by Singapore in 1998).    RFA believes that the cartoon criticizing the district-council reform was the straw that broke the camel's back. ps4

Professor John Lent hopes Zunzi can get a reprieve.  Thankfully, Zunzi has not been prosecuted several months after that event.   However, all of his cartoons were moved out of public libraries    ──     Hitler's autobiography < Mein Kampf>  is still on the book-shelf.   
　

N.Y. Times (2021-7-23): "Even with the security law in place, political cartoons and protest artwork have continued to thrive on the margins in Hong Kong, but that could soon change".   <Asian Political Cartoons> (2023): "Not many Taiwanese young people draw political cartoons, because now there's a plethora of political parties... ".

An art article in the New York Times (2023-10-11) says this might be the least culturally innovative century in the past 500 years.   In Hong Kong and Taiwan, innovation and ambition could be even less, for more reasons.

OPinion  ♣♣    ♣  mind control weaponry in Taiwan    ♣ ♣   

  (1) Is Taiwan government a prime criminal ?   they refuse to open classified documents concerning persecution after 1984.
　

Today's secret police are still doing bad things  ──  Taiwan's United Daily, editorial, 2023-12-13: The government trying to evade or refuse oversight or supervision by using the name "classified document" has already been a normal since long time ago ("政府利用「機密文件」規避監督，早已是常態" udn.com/news/story/7338/7636736?from=udn-catebreaknews_ch2 ).   Taiwan's United Daily, editorial, 2023-12-11 also reported that foreign diplomats from Japan, Canada, S. korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Denmark, etc and/or their offices in Taiwan were suspected to be bugged by the national security. (udn.com/news/story/7338/7631855?from=udn_ch2_menu_v2_main_cate)

Taiwan's "Black box"    ──   
Global Times (2022-12-19) : There are forces on the island of Taiwan who are mentally controlling the Taiwan people.  

Taiwan has not rebutted its "sworm enemy's" allegation for one year till present, which is nothing other than giving a tacit consent to it.

As for mind control, and electromagnetic attacks the civilians in Taiwan, those are not only violation of Privacy Act (Taiwan does not have a Privacy Act ), but also committing serious crimes.

　

★ Oversight in the U.S. and Europe

In the US, PRISM receives independent oversight from the federal Gov. executive, judicial and legislatives branches. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM) In EU Member States, they increased the number of oversight bodies to monitor the work of intelligence services

Can Taiwan do as the US and Euro do ?

Each time Taiwan's Intel. or dark forces use any of high-tech. weapons (e.g., electromagnetic attacks, mind controlling, etc) to harm or repress or abuse some of Taiwanese people,  will they record their operation on files ?  Taiwan needs a mechanism for great oversight and legal actions in the future.

There's no reason the truth of those political cases can't be exposed.   ─    According to 《國家機密保護法》(National Secrets Protection Law), in no case shall information be classified in order to conceal violations of law or administrative error;  Taiwan's president or National Security Council etc who authorized the original classification are entitled to place order to declassify those secret files.  
Taiwan president(s) seem - refuse to bring to light  ─  or intend to cover up the ugly truth.

  (2) Is the U.S. an accomplice ? 

　

Mind-control issues coming to light ?

BBC, 2021-9-9: The brain is being seen as the 21st Century battle-scape.   Reports say from the 1990s, the US Air Force had a project codenamed "Hello" to see if microwaves could create disturbing sounds in people's heads, one called "Goodbye" to test their use for crowd control. 　 New York Times, 2018-9-1 (brief): To turn microwave radiation into covert weapons of mind control...   More recently, the American military itself sought to develop microwave arms that could invisibly beam painfully loud booms and even spoken words into people's heads...  microwaves can trick the brain into perceiving what seem to be ordinary sounds.  The dimensions of the human head, scientists say, make it a fairly good antenna for picking up microwave signals.  In Albuquerque, N.M., Air Force scientists sought to beam comprehensible speech into the heads of adversaries. Their novel approach won a patent in 2002. 　 New York Post, 2021-12-31: China is developing terrifying brain control weapons capable of ‘paralyzing enemies’, according to the Washington Times...   China is trying to obtain American technology to takeover key sectors including biotech. 　 Renmin University professor of international relations Jin Canrong (中國人民大學教授金燦榮) said,  per The Times   of London: those Indian soldiers occupying the hilltops all began to vomit, they couldn't stand up, so they fled. This was how we retook the ground.    Washington Examiner 2020-11-17: India rejects claim of Chinese microwave weapon attack. 　 From reports above, it's within reason to say that Taiwan's mental-control weapons were imported from the US.   However, it's unknown whether or not the US gave their official permission for Taiwan's secret police to use any of high-tech weapons from the US on Taiwanese people.   　 CarnegieEndowment.org (2021-05-12) :  a growing number of voters support initiatives to restrict U.S. aid to Israel due to its human rights violations...   the administration should enforce existing laws that prohibit the use of U.S. security assistance for illegitimate purposes.   All countries receiving U.S. aid must meet human rights standards, and countries violating these standards are liable to be sanctioned and ineligible for U.S. funding.   The United States does have obligations under both federal and international law to ensure that it is not furthering human rights abuses.   　 If not restricting and stopping Taiwan's human rights abuses by using American high-tech weapons, the US might be an accomplice in the case.

OPinion  ♣♣    ♣  Women rights + human rights  <  LGBT rights ?

A lot of western media reported or complimented Taiwan on becoming the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.   But, is it within reason to be so passionate about LGBT rights, on the other hand, to give cold shoulder to Taiwanese women rights and human rights  ?

  ♣ 1. Women rights in Taiwan

nSCMP, 2023-6-11:  NTU professor Tso Chen-dong says the DPP has greatly disappointed the public as ... referring to the party's pledges to promote gender equality and human rights.  DPP had long focused on LGBTQ equality, rather than women's rights.
nAFP, 2023-7-7:  the crescendoing wave of #MeToo cases shows gender inequality remains a deep-seated problem, rooted in a culture prone to victim-blaming.  "Sexual violence -- from domestic violence to sexual harassment -- is more common than people think.
n L.A. Times, 2023-7-26:  as #MeToo spread to Japan, South Korea and even mainland China, it failed to take root in Taiwan.
n Reuters, 2023-7-28: a problem long shrouded in shame and silence. 
n BBC, 2023-7-21: The government must extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting sexual harassment cases, which is currently six months.  
n United Daily (聯合報 社論) , 2023-6-4 : sexual harassment and bully become the ruling DPP's norm, high-ranking officials' burying the case becomes a tacit understanding inside the party