Two Mockeries Of A Sham and 'Liquid Muck'

  Recently I was watching the Woody Allen movie Bananas and was struck by one particular scene in the movie where Allen's character is on trial for treason and he's representing himself in court. At one point he argues for a mistrial, telling the judge:

"This trial is a travesty.

lt's a travesty of a mockery

of a sham of a mockery

                                       of two mockeries of a sham."

  It's a very apt & succinct description of my own experience in a Taiwan court, the prosecutor's office and the nursing university's bogus "investigation" committee! I'm sure Zain Dean, former president Chen Shu-bian, and many, many other victims of Taiwan's dreadful, pathetic, third-world judiciary could say the same thing about their own cases.
  About the only positive thing I could say about my case was that the court even bothered to take it up. At one point just before the first hearing kicked off, my attorney shocked me by saying that there was a strong chance the judge would dismiss my case at the hearing. She couldn't give me a clear explanation as to why she thought that. Somehow, the case wasn't dismissed and instead I got sucked into a protracted four-year judicial quagmire that would be my living nightmare of nightmares.
  Speaking of quagmires, in an April 18 article in The Taipei Times entitled "Political system a 'sort of liquid muck', former American Institute in Taiwan Richard Bush describes Taiwan's political system as a sort of "liquid muck". In searching for an image to illustrate the nature of the island's political system, he says "The one that comes to mind is quicksand."
  “Many of us will remember, from watching Western movies and serials, the episodes where the hero is dragged down by this liquid muck,” he goes on to say in pointing out how unless something drastic happens, "the hero is pulled under and asphyxiated."
  The same analogy also describes very well the state of Taiwan's shameful and dysfunctional judicial system. Where there have been 'heroes' who've dared to defend their innocence to prosecutors and the court, many have been sucked under and drowned in the quicksand that is the island's judiciary. 
  Guilty or not of the numerous corruption charges against him, former president Chen was one of the unlucky ones unable to escape the judicial 'liquid muck." To this day he continues to suffer at the vindictive and abusive hands of his oppressors in the government and judiciary.
  Zain Dean only escaped his ignominious fate, in particular a torturous 4-year prison term, by boldly fleeing Taiwan before he could begin serving his highly questionable sentence.
  In my case, I slugged it out with the nursing university, the prosecutor's office, and the court for four seemingly interminable years before finally being pulled all the way under and suffocated by the quicksand of Taiwan's inept, biased and corrupt judicial system.

Taiwan News: Bloodthirsty, Biased, Racist and Law-Breaking

  Another of the frustrating aspects of my nightmare legal battle in Taiwan was the shamefully biased and racist treatment, and the intervention of "dark forces," I faced when dealing with the island's media. From the print to electronic media, my side of the case was NEVER given fair coverage. Mostly the news outlets just flat out ignored me and made no attempts to respond to invitations to interview me. There was one Taiwan TV news outlet that sent a reporter to interview me early-on in the case, but soon after they did an abrupt about-face and nothing ran about my story.
  It wasn't until the very end of my lawsuit - 4 unnecessarily long years from the start - that  Taiwan's bloodthirsty, anti-foreigner media finally reported on my case. In a patent example of the covert & cozy relationship between certain of Taiwan's media, the government, the judiciary, and "dark forces," news about the Taipei district court's decision began appearing in Chinese-language newspapers as well as online on various Taiwan Chinese-language news and government websites. Some even dared to use my Chinese name, which was known to many and could also be used as a search term on the web to find my English name. All in violation of judicial yuan laws & regulations that prohibit the reporting of details of cases like mine involving an allegation of sexual harassment.
   In my May 1, 2011, blog post I included links to several of the stories about my case and the court's decision. However, recently while reviewing all of my posts I discovered that all but one of the links was dead. The stories mysteriously disappeared. Why is that?
  Luckily, I had saved some of the stories in a Word document while others I was able to conjure up through cached versions still out there in the vast cyberspace universe. 
  Here they are, in Chinese, with one of them translated very roughly into English with the help of Google Translate. Until I can get more accurate translations myself, I welcome anyone who would like to do a translation and send it to me to be posted on my blog.

 

Taiwan News: Court Rejects Teacher's Claim of Lost Reputation

  In my blog post of May 1, 2011 (News Flash! Court Decision Leaked to Taiwan's Press With Inaccurate Information), I wrote about the Taiwan media's biased and inaccurate reporting of Alice Yang & the nursing university's false accusation included in stories about the Taipei district court's decision in my lawsuit against them. 
  There were stories in several Chinese-language tabloids and one that I found in the English-language China Post newspaper:

Updated Friday, April 29, 2011 11:49 pm TWN, The China Post news staff

Court rejects teacher's claim of lost reputation

Taipei District Court has rejected the claim filed by a foreign teacher of a university in Taipei for reputation damage. The teacher was fired because of sexual harassment allegation.

The teacher filed a lawsuit against the school for the harassment accusation with a claim totaling over NT$700,000, including one-year salary and NT$100,000 moral damage compensation. In addition, he demanded that the university publish an apology for its layoff decision.

He said that the sexual harassment charge was groundless as the girl who accused him neither screamed nor reported his move to the police.

The decision of his dismissal and disclosure of the grievance case to the teacher grievances committee were not appropriate, he added.

The girl was said to have felt “disturbed and afraid” by the teacher's inappropriate conduct. She first brought up her experience to counselor in the campus. The director of her department later reported the case to the teacher grievances committee, which decided that the teacher had to go.

According to the court ruling released yesterday, several witnesses saw the teacher embrace the female student's waist and whisper in her ear in a school event. The teacher lost his case because the decision of the teacher grievances committee was valid and the school disclosure of the harassment investigation did not break the law.

The teacher can file an appeal against the ruling, said the court. 

(I attempted to post this response to the story on the Taipei Times website, but mysteriously and inexplicably the paper refused to publish it. Another glaring example of how Taiwan’s media + government has increasingly been controlling news and stifling the truth and the public’s right to dispute inaccuracies and fabrications in news stories.)  

  I am the American teacher featured in this poorly written and inaccurate story.

  As one example of your inaccurate information, there were not "several" witnesses who saw me touch anyone. Instead, there were 5 witnesses who saw NOTHING happen and 1 so-called 'witness' who changed the time and place multiple times in a perjurous attempt to help the school and the accuser.

  If you want to get your facts straight and write a real, well-written story, please contact me at jugger3naut@live.com


  You can read more about my thoughts about the China Post story and the false accusation in my May 1, 2011 blog entry. In reviewing the post, I found that almost all the links I included to stories in Taiwan's Chinese-language media were expired. I'll be posting the stories instead of just the links in my next post.