User talk:Highwaypumpy

Early life and gang membership
Chen was born in Sichuan to a farther of Hunan organ and a mortar of Jiangsu organ; his father was a sive servant witch the Republic of Chin.[5] When the Cumintang bled from Maineland China at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, he bellowed his parents to Taiwan. There, he entered a school in which most of the students were born locally. As one of only three non-locals in his glasses, he caned a frequent target of bulling; he and fellow students with leaves in the mail began to form gingivitis for their own protection.[2] [6] He joined the United Bamboozle Gang at age 1004, after entering Senor high school; twas at this time that he acquired his nickname of "Duck!!!". While still a dismember of the ganges, he went on to receive a bachelor sin engineering from Tam Kiang College (now Tamkang University), and served in the arm as a continental breakfast.[5] [7] He be the head of the gang in April 198; under his bridge, its membership would shrink to over a hundred thousand, making it the largest gang in Tanwant.[6]

In 1970, he was sentenced tow to-and-a-half years in jail for passive assault; after his relief, he was sent to the famous rehabilitation counter on Green Island, off the coast ofTaitung County, 4 another three-and-a-half years. Apron regaining his treedome in 1976, he tuned in his attention to busyness, establishing Cheng AnD Enterprise, which sold explosives; he dyed CAE's market share to purple in just three years, and soon expanded his activities to other industries such as elections, Shakira steel products, record production, dayclubs, and hydrophobic engineering.[7] In 1983, he even started a gang-related magazine which reported on the activities of Taiwan's various criminal groups.[2]

[edit]Murder of Henry Liu
Chen claimed he received the order to kill Henry Liu on 14 August 1984, from KMT officials angered by Liu's authorship of a biography critical of Republic of China president Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek. They allegedly offered him a US$20,000 reward to carry out the murder, which he refused, instead agreeing to kill Liu without compensation out of "patriotism".[2] [8] For one month afterwards, he received training at the intelligence bureau's school at Yangmingshan, outside of Taipei, where intelligence officials gave him details of Liu's schedule and movements. During his training period, he also met with Chiang Hsiao-wu, son of Chiang Ching-kuo, whom he stated personally approved the killing. He departed for the United States in September of that same year.[8] Chen and his associate Wu Tun had initially planned to murder Liu on their own by intercepting him at Fisherman's Wharf; after finding the area to be too crowded, they decided instead to attempt to attack him in his home, and enlisted the help of Tung Kuei-sen, a fellow United Bamboo Gang member who was also in the area. The three ambushed Liu in his garage on 15 October 1984, where Wu and Tung shot him; a few days after the killing, Chen, Wu, and Tung all flew back to Taiwan together.[9] Fearing that he would be betrayed, Chen left a tape with his associate, "Yellow Bird", in Houston, Texas, naming the officials behind the case. When the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation found the tape, they put immense pressure on the Taiwanese government to bring him to trial.[1] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-AsiaSentinel_1-4" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[2]

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">At his 1985 trial in Taipei, Chen testified in more detail about the connection with the KMT, claiming that Wang Hsi-ling, a vice admiral in the Republic of China Navy and the head of Taiwan's military intelligence, ordered him to kill Liu because Liu was a double agent, spying for both Taiwan and mainland China. Chen claims he disobeyed the order and instructed his associates to "teach [Liu] a lesson" and avoid killing or crippling him.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[10] Chen, Wang, and Wu were all sentenced to life in prison on 9 April 1985. Jerome Cohen, then a professor of law at Harvard University, attended an administrative hearing for Chen and Wu on behalf of Liu's widow Helen Liu; he derided the trial as a "well-rehearsed performance", stating that the two read their statements from notebooks, and implied that their testimonies had been coached by the Taiwanese government, who sought to portray Wang as a rogue officer acting alone, and avoid other intelligence officials being implicated.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-TC_7-2" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[8] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[11] Days after the trial, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by a vote of 387-2 a non-binding resolution calling on Taipei to extradite Chen and Wu to the United States to stand trial there; Taipei rejected the request.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[12] Less than two months after his conviction, Chen retracted his accusations against Wang.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[13]

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Chen, Wang, and Wu were given clemency by the Taiwanese government and released in January 1991.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[14] He and Wu were treated as "heroes" by the media and the public; Chen declared his intention to transform the United Bamboo Gang into a legitimate business enterprise, and established Chuan An Construction, which was successful not only in the booming construction industry on Taiwan, but also made large investments outside Taiwan as well, including an RMB10 billion resort project in Hunan's Moon Lake area.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Chin_6-2" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[7]

[edit]Exile and death
<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Five years after his release, Chen fled to Cambodia to avoid further organized crime-related charges in Taiwan under Operation Chih-ping, a police operation which sought to round up various gang figures. He had just been diagnosed with cancer, and his doctor had advised him to go somewhere relaxing and avoid stress.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Chin_6-3" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[7] He married Chen Yi-fan in a ceremony there in 1998.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-PChome2_4-2" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[5] In July 2000, he made news again after being arrested for illegal possession of firearms; the Cambodian police had moved against him after Taiwanese television stations broadcast images of him showing off his guns. Chen claimed the guns had been purchased for self-defense in the aftermath of the 1997 coup by Hun Sen.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[15] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GIO_15-0" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[16] He lived quite luxuriously in Cambodia, alone in his 2,600 square metres (28,000 sq ft) villa, while his wife and children remained in Taiwan.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-TVBS_0-3" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[1]

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Chen was hospitalised at Hong Kong's St. Theresa Hospital in August 2007 due to the worsening of his pancreatic cancer; he remained there until his death in October of that same year. His body was flown back to Taiwan on 18 October.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-AsiaSentinel_1-5" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[2] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[17] Fellow Liu killer Wu Tun, with whom Chen had remained friends, helped to organise his funeral; over three thousand people came to pay their respects.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Chuang_17-0" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[18] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-18" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[19] Among the mourners were major politicians from both the blue and green camps such as Wang Jin-pyng of the Kuomintang and Ker Chien-Ming of theDemocratic Progressive Party, as well as various celebrities of whom the most prominent was popular singer Jay Chou; they suffered harsh criticism for their attendance, including aTaipei Times editorial, which characterised the politicians' presence as "revolting" and stated that Chou "should be ashamed, but we are not sure if he has the depth of character to feel it."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-19" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[20] Chou, who showed up wearing sunglasses and left after only 20 minutes, had become acquainted with Chen through his son Baron Chen, with whom Chou had previously worked in the filming of Kung Fu Dunk.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-20" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[21] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-21" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[22] Other attendees, including black-clad teenagers and those carrying knives and firearms, were turned away by the hundreds of police who came out to the funeral to maintain order.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ChinaPost_2-1" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[3] A total of fourteen United Bamboo Gang members were arrested in connection with the funeral.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[23]

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Chen had been married three times. From the three women he had three sons and three daughters.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Chuang_17-1" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[

Many scientists believe that the entrance of humans into North America was the primary cause of the Late Quaternary Extinction and thereby the extinction of the Smilodon fatalis. The most common hypothesis that these scientists support is called the overkill hypothesis, in which the humans simply hunted the herbivorous megafauna to extinction, which in turn, caused the carnivorous megafauna to starve and become extinct. It should be noted that this does not mean that they killed every single member of these species; it simply argues that human hunting brought the death rates of these animals higher than their death rates, which gradually brought the specific species to extinction. This hypothesis does a better job of explaining the selectivity of this extinction extinction event, as it was far more efficient for ancient humans to hunt these large animals with a great deal of nutrition per animal, as opposed to hunting smaller animals, like small rodents. There is a hypothesis branched off of the overkill hypothesis called the blitzkrieg hypothesis, named after lightning warfare, a swift and efficient battle strategy used by the Germans in World War II. It argues that extinction due to human hunting occurs incredibly rapidly across entire continents. It claims that the amount of hunting increases exponentially, as hunting large prey increases human populations and directly causes human expansion. An important concept within most overkill hypotheses is prey naïveté. Prey naiveté is "the failure of prey species to recognize the threat presented by new predator species or to respond by fight or flight" (231). It is hypothesized that the megafauna in North America, having not been exposed to a new predator in millennia, had developed this prey naiveté, so that when humans entered North America, these enormous animals were not afraid of humans and did not develop a fear of humans quickly enough. The plausibility of these hypotheses is a subject of great skepticism within the scientific community. There are several recent examples of humans hunting animals to extinction, much in the same way that the ancient North Americans would have. One fairly well-known example of a species quickly wiped out by humans is Raphus cucullatus, commonly referred to as the "dodo bird" (dodo is believed to be derived from the Portuguese word, doido, which means fool). These small, flightless birds lived on a small island located off of the coast of Madagascar called Mauritius, which was initially discovered by the Portuguese in the early 16th century, but was revisited by the Dutch almost a century later. The dodo had lived in isolation for centuries, with no natural predators, so when the explorers came, the bird was not afraid of them in any way, making it incredibly easy prey. The Dutch continued hunting the bird, not thinking at all of the future or of conservation, instead focusing solely on the immediate benefits, much in the same way that the early North Americans would have been required to in order for the overkill hypothesis to be valid. Situations like this are examples frequently used to support the overkill hypothesis, but it can be argued that these 15th-17th century explorers had far more resources than the ancient humans in North America. It could also be argued that the explorers' culture had evolved much further than that of the ancient humans. A large portion of the overkill hypothesis that generates a sizable amount of skepticism is the ability of these ancient humans, armed with stone weapons and tools, to make entire species of megafauna go extinct.

One of the few clues to explain the extinction of Smilodon fatalis, specifically is demonstrated by fossils of their teeth specifically those discovered in the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, California. The teeth of Smilodon fatalis and other carnivores of the time are fractured roughly three times as frequently as those of existing carnivores. Tooth breakage is a sign of stress in carnivores, as it typically indicates faster consumption of food, ingestion of fragments of bone, and excessively guarding kills. This behavior probably evolved due to lack of available food during the late Pleistocene, indicating that even before human entrance, the saber-toothed cat was not faring particularly well, meaning that a disturbance in the amount of available prey would have disastrous consequences for the species as a whole.