WantWant goes after student who got Chomsky to pose with anti-media monopoly image. Chomsky and another academic contacted have clearly said they did not know that the words "China's black hand" were included in the sign.
Retired generals from PRC and ROC want China and Taiwan to work together on Senkakus issue. That would be awful for Taiwan in so many ways, from making Tokyo and Washington angry at it, to strengthening China's claim to Taiwan. Remember, in the minds of right-wing nationalist fossils on both sides of the Strait, the claim to the Senkakus, Taiwan, and Okinawa are of a piece. And it comes right on the heels of the CRS report I linked to below which warns Congress to pay attention to possible Taiwan-China cooperation. It's pretty clear that at least one fork in the KMT's Senkakus strategy involves using the islands to make the US distance itself from Taiwan. I hope someone high up in AIT gives an interview in Chinese with the local Chinese language press and explains this strategy to the locals so pressure can be put on Ma to stop. And that the US re-considers its support for Ma. But see below....
...Why won't the US reconsider its support of Ma? This article by Brendan O'Reilly in the Asia Times looks like yet another one of those dreary articles claiming that the "pivot" of Obama is triggering a war in Asia. Forget that silliness. Look instead at who it relies on, Ken Lieberthal and Cheng Li, of Brookings. Cheng Li is at the John Thornton Center at Brookings. That center is named after the Chairman of the Brookings Board of Trustees and a big donor, John Thornton. I quote from The Mandarins:
....Thornton is also a director not only of corporations with huge interests in China (Ford, News Corporation) but also of large Chinese corporations (Commercial Bank of China, China Netcorn), and is even a professor at Tsinghua University....as for Kenneth Lierberthal, a major Asia figure who was the NSC's Asia Director under Bill Clinton and is Hillary Clinton's Asia guy, he had/has a post in Stonebridge China, the quietly influential China consulting firm which has/had several of its members in Administrations past and present. O'Reilly is no doubt writing in good faith; as for his sources, readers will have to make up their own minds. But I've seen a lot of pro-China whitewash stuff from Stonebridge employees scattered all over the media (for example). The US foreign policymaking community is populated with individuals doing business with China. Probably why US policy and media discourse on China is so awful. Now go and read The Mandarins if you haven't.
The staidly conservative pro-blue organization TISR (formerly Global View's survey unit) finds that support for independence has dropped. Can we see some analysis of the sample, please?
In case you live in a cave, Chinese hackers attack NYTimes for Wen Jiabao reporting. Best tweet: @JoshGartner: MOFA [Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs]: "We have read all of the NY Times internal emails and they have no evidence that China hacked their accounts."
ADDED: Forgot to point out that Ma tapped his fourth premier in five years. Remember when he accused Chen of constantly rotating officials? Under Taiwan's strange customary arrangements, cabinet officials are axed to "take responsibility" for Administration unpopularity or screw ups. But a perspicacious friend tipped me off to this prescient blog post in Chinese arguing that Premier Chen's replacement, Jiang Yi-hua, would become premier and make a great 2016 candidate. The KMT news organ noted:
Jiang Yi-huah was born in 1960. He holds a PhD degree in political science from Yale University and was a professor of political science at National Taiwan University. When President Ma was running for President for the first time in 2008, Jiang assisted in composing white papers for Ma. After Ma took office, Jiang was first appointed as Minister of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission under the Executive Yuan, before being promoted to Minister of Interior. Furthermore, on February 6th, 2012, he took up the position of Vice Premier._______________________
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