I totally agree with you because unfortunately I have the personal experiences at my own Taiwanese Church in Queens, NY.
Our church pastor is a tyrant like Ma. He does not allow dissent voices. We had more than 150 church members when this pastor was called to our church in 1999 and the Sunday worshippers are down to 20s. These church members "敢怒不敢言" and "背後殺死皇帝" and chose to leave the church with anger or with tears instead of standing up to fight for justice. There are only about 4 long time curch members (30+ years) left to fight for what we believe is right.
Our church has nice assests (like KMT) contributed/donated from previous hardworking faithful church members; therefore, this pastor chose not to leave simply because of money. I am the most out-spoken person and have taken the most actions against this tyrant and the current church leaders who believe the church pastor is God's sent and cannot do anything wrong; therefore, I have been severely supressed/punished by suspension of the Holy Communion once and suspension of my 30-year church membership twice. This is an unjust 21 Century crucification against me because I have not committed any crime.
The pastors and other leaders from other churches just advise us to pray and they have not dared to take any action about it. I believe God gives us hands, feet, eyes, mouth, etc to carry out His will and justice. We cannot just open our mouths and pray to God to satisfy our stomachs when we are hungry, can we? We need actions, too!
Yes, All the Religious Leaders! You must stand up and lead us to fight for justice, freedom and human rights for Taiwan! Only praying to God to bless Taiwan without our efforts will make God angry for your laziness.
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To: GlobalForumIntl@yahoogroups.com
From: lchen4real@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:50:47 -0800
Subject: RE: [GlobalForumIntl] 被扁珍家族綁著，台灣人就有明天嗎?
Hollo
Taiwan variety religions should not just with God or ? to bless Taiwan for them
without self-dignity and work hard fight for freedom and justice, or as lazy and
fearful without spirits of guts.
If you believer the God or ? than you should strong spirits trust it and move
forward, take acting for reach the goal, but most religions' believers are just
sit do nothing or fearful without courage, hand on there see what will be happened
in Taiwan next. Or wait for what will do acting by enemy next, etc.
Majority Taiwanese have no sense of justice by saying Taiwan metter beyond their responsible, let others take care of Taiwan, they take care of thiers first.
If Taiwan sinking, those rich or famous Taiwanese will become first attack by PLA or,
may attack by robbery eventually. Because the Chinese dictators never allow Taiwanese rich or famous that will disadvantage of the CCP dictators, that communist is never allow
the people have power to acting against the CCP tyranny, but controlled all.
People of China are not own any real property, but entire big land belongs CCP ruler.
If Taiwan to be aggressed by enemy CCP, Taiwanese won nothing real estate, entire
island will become CCP owns, Taiwanese won the personal property that can be depreciated from time to time and become zero, or to be conforfeiture anytime when the
land is needed by CCP.
Would Taiwanese happy such communist system? Or fight right now for freedom and justice, fight civil rights of privileges and justices. especial those rich and famous,
if they wish keep their valuable real properties, but they are danger to show on the public, than they must share the duties and obligation by donate the partcially money halp
those poor family, stand front fight against enemy, protect the homeland for entire
citizens homes and properties.
The poor people have no worry about kidnapping or blackmails, but rich or famous do.
But let poor people protect the rich family, and rich people help the poor family, isn't
that fair?
Anyone has better suggusting or reply
Louise
--- On Wed, 12/17/08, 義光教會 <gikong@netown.org.tw> wrote:
From: 義光教會 <gikong@netown.org.tw>
Subject: RE: [GlobalForumIntl] 被扁珍家族綁著，台灣人就有明天嗎?
To: GlobalForumIntl@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 1:13 AM
I can not agree with you anymore.
宜伶
台灣基督長老教會義光教會
Gikong Church of The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan
台灣國台北市信義路3段31巷16號1樓
No. 16, Lane 31, Sinyi Rd, Sec.3 Taipei,TAIWAN
Tel: 886-2-27001010 Fax: 886-2-27001438
Email:gikong@ netown.org. tw gikongchurch@ gmail.com
http://gikong. disciple. com.tw/
從林義雄律師住宅到義光教會，在悲傷痛苦之處見證上帝救恩，在幽暗之處播下光明！
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: GlobalForumIntl@ yahoogroups. com [mailto:GlobalForum Intl@yahoogroups .com] On Behalf Of 李 筱峰
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:49 AM
To: globalforumintl@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: [GlobalForumIntl] 被扁珍家族綁著，台灣人就有明天嗎?
五、六十年來台灣的民主運動與獨立運動被扁珍家族毀於一旦，現在還要接受他們的綁架嗎？
李筱峰
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: globalforumintl@ yahoogroups. com
From: chengkuangchen@ yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:58:04 +0800
Subject: [GlobalForumIntl] 台灣人的明天何在?
短評: 沉默會死?
Monsen
阿扁被押後, 罪還沒判, 民進黨倒是忠奸立見. 三年前大家不斷提醒民進黨的官員們, 不可在百姓鮮血河裡揚帆, 吃香喝辣, 夜夜笙簫; 曾幾何時, 阿扁時期獲利最大的朋友們, 一見阿扁落難, 馬上一副大義凜然的模樣, 相互背叛, 著實令人眼花撩亂, 不禁唏噓.
前些日子, 因為阿扁事件, 新潮流明顯的分裂與幾乎是恨台的舉動, 已經令人十分厭惡, 上週, 阿扁當選時獲利最高的呂秀蓮 女士更是公然放炮, 要求阿扁一家向台灣道歉, 今天, 就連扁系中阿扁相當關照的女立委邱議瑩, 也順著呂秀蓮的嘴型, 以相同字句要求阿扁一家道歉. (台獨大師黃昭堂也一模一樣,中國共匪分化台灣人100%成功! 阿輝伯及扁不睦也是共匪統戰成功!)
在阿扁是否有罪都還不知道的情況下, 若為了個人媒體曝光度或政治利益, 就連最親密的戰友都可以如此背離批判, 甚至不顧台灣人的團結力, 相譏互鬥, 現實實在不過如此! 試問, 阿扁魅力下的政治獻金, 彌補了民進黨多少的財務缺口? 難道民進黨已經共產化, 阿扁手頭的政治獻金不全數繳給民進黨, 就是罪大惡極? 台灣人若將台灣的未來交給這款的民進黨執行, 會有明天? 還是找死?! 台灣人敢要這種人代言做事? 台灣人有切割的本錢? 官場利益掩蓋了貧賤慣了的台灣官員的人性? 能不悲哀?
前些日子大家才大聲疾呼, 強調台灣人必須團結, 必須穩住共識, 奪回我們台灣人的家政權, 台灣人才有未來, 今天看到這種情況, 不免應驗了一句台語, 台灣人3好+ 1好 = 4好! 想想, 呂秀蓮的清廉會隨著台灣人政權的流失而提升? 邱議瑩下次選舉還可以選得上? 黃昭堂還有明天? 這不是站錯邊吃錯藥了? 沉默會死?
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The Ugly Taiwanese (醜陋的台灣人)
Sze-ya Yeh, M.D. (葉思雅)
About 50 years ago, I read the political novel, The Ugly American, by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The book describes how an American scholar behaves arrogantly in Southeast Asia without respecting or understanding the local tradition and culture. The scholar is a metaphor for the United States, which was losing its war with Communism in Asia. This book became a national bestseller, and later the story was made into movie with the late Marlon Brando. When I read the book, I naively thought, "How could a citizen from the world's wealthiest and strongest country behave that badly?"
In March 2008, my wife and I joined thousands of Taiwan-loving friends living abroad to return to our home country at our own expense and cast our votes for the new president. Our common goal was to help our fellow Taiwanese elect their own person as president and to continue to strive for our nation's freedom and independence. Unfortunately, the outcome was extremely disappointing. Mr. Hsieh lost to Mr. Ma by over 2 million votes. Once again, I was naive to think, "How could millions of Taiwanese willingly give up their own freedom and independence to elect a person who would surrender our country to Communist China?"
After the election, we heard many discussions about the reasons behind the loss. Most people believe Hsieh lost due to massive monetary spending by the pan-blue KMT and to heavily biased news media reports. Of course, we are not experts in Taiwanese politics and cannot analyze precisely. However, from my own simple mind, I could say that Taiwan lost our own election because of "The Ugly Taiwanese."
Yet, the ugliness of the Taiwanese in this election was different from that of the American in the novel. I summarize our people's ugliness in four words: greediness (貪), blindness (盲), laziness (懶), and corruption (爛).
The foremost influential factor was greediness. There is sufficient evidence that the KMT spent tons of money to persuade local Taiwanese people to vote for Ma or to give up their ballots. They also paid travel expenses for many overseas Chinese to return for the election. I was so heartbroken to see some greedy Taiwanese willingly give up their own future for a small bribe. And it's not just the KMT supporters; some officials in the DPP also succumbed to greed. During the last eight years of their administration, we witnessed several incidences of corruption and money extortion by the DPP's high officials. These incidences gave KMT-owned media a great opportunity to paint a negative picture of Taiwanese administration. If these DPP's corruptions had not occurred, I strongly believe that the Taiwanese people would have made the right choice for their future president.
Blindness was another key factor in this election. People in Taiwan were bombarded by so much news and information, they became shortsighted. They focused on insignificant issues instead of looking at the important, overall picture. They saw only trees, not the forest. They thought only of how much money they could make today, forgetting to deal with the consequences for future generations. They quickly criticized the government when the world economy was at its worst. Instead of being frustrated with their own government, they should have realized that the problem was a global one that the whole world was facing, not just our country. As history has already shown, under the new Ma administration, Taiwan's economy is at its worst point ever.
Many Taiwanese historians have described the Taiwanese people as lazy, not because of their nature, but because of their destiny in the history. During the last several hundred years, they have never been their own masters, except during the brief months of "the Republic of Taiwan" in 1895 after the Japanese occupation. Taiwan has always been controlled by outsiders, such as the Dutch, Japanese and Chinese. Over these years, they became accustomed to being slaves. They became lazy. They only learned how to obey orders from their masters. They were too lazy to even think about how to be their own masters. Many overseas Taiwanese realized this problem and had a difficult time convincing our fellow Taiwanese back home to change their slave mentalities. If the people of Norway did not stand up against ruling Swedes about a century ago, they would have been a part of Sweden forever. I hope Taiwanese people realize that there is always a price to pay for freedom. It might take years of hard labor or even the sacrifice of our own lives. Unless Taiwanese people are willing pay the price, we will never achieve our ultimate goal of freedom and independence.
The last, but not the least, factor is corruption, which is partially due to any of the three aforementioned factors. Some Taiwanese are willing to give up their own principles and betray their own people to achieve their selfish desire. We have seen some family members of the victims of the "two-two-eight incidence" willingly bow their heads to Chinese people; others have tried to offer Taiwan to the Chinese government. Some gave up their previous strong support for the Taiwanese people, because they did not gain government posts under the DPP administration. Now they have started to sing pan-blue songs, hoping that their wishes will come true under the KMT administration or the Chinese government.
As I describe the four ugly characteristics, I am in no way saying that all Taiwanese subscribe to them. There are over 5 million people who voted for a Taiwanese president and for the Taiwanese referendum. I believe that there are thousands of Taiwanese who voted for Ma who have regretted their decision. The most important issue now is that all Taiwanese people should put the greediness, blindness, laziness, and corruption behind them. There is still time to unite together, to elect a future government that will be of the Taiwanese people, by the Taiwanese people and for the Taiwanese people