15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

Lone Man Stages Brief Demonstration in Tiananmen

Lone Man Stages Brief Demonstration in Tiananmen

BEIJING (Reuters) - A lone man staged a short-lived demonstration on Tiananmen Square Thursday night, the eve of the 15th anniversary of China's bloody military crackdown on democracy protests, a witness said.

The man, about 50 years old, kneeled briefly to pray at the foot of the Monument to the Peoples' Heroes at the center of the square, where tens of thousands of students gathered from April to June 1989 to press demands for democratic reform.

He was swiftly taken away by police, according to a Reuters photographer who witnessed the scene. Police in plain clothes and in uniform routinely comb the square on sensitive anniversaries, snuffing out protests as quickly as they start.

The man's identity and cause could not immediately be determined. There were no further details.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed on the night of June 3-4, 1989 when People's Liberation Army soldiers backed by tanks shot their way through intersections blocked by Beijing residents and wrested control of the square.

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

I remember being in the middle of the Pacific when this happened. Interesting how you can remember where you were when tragedy abounds. Not that the US hasn't had a bad showing once in awhile, but this kind of thing is restricted, for the most part, to Communist countries...at least on this scale. Reminds me of "The Gulag Archipelago".

bbchris

I was watching the scenes on TV and could not believe what was happening. I was so scared.

questionnaire · Joined: 29 May 2003 Posts: 640

Restricted to communist countries?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

You virtually wiped out a whole indigenous Native American population.

The wars the USA has either started or sponsored have caused over 30 million deaths since 1948.

You're also murdering each other at an alarming rate and imprisoning 700 out of every 100,000 of your population.

Disgusting.

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

I think you're missing something quite obvious. Communist countries have a habit of doing this kind of thing to their own people. While war is not much less reprehensible (and possibly in some ways is more so...as in the case of the Indians), it has much stronger social implications within the confines of that particular society. Stalin was the worst example...with conservative estimates putting the number of HIS OWN PEOPLE that he had put to death at 70,000,000. Hitler pales in comparison.

questionnaire · Joined: 29 May 2003 Posts: 640

70,000,000?

Don't be ridiculous. That would have been over half the population at the time. Deaths during the Stalinist regime are estimated at around 7,000,000, but we always neglect to mention that most of them were through famine during the collectivisation process rather than the persecution of dissidents, and the famines were largely a result of the chaos that the Bolsheviks had inherited from the incompetent Czarist regime and the habit of the odious Kulak class to hoard food to inflate the price, which turned the conflict between the Kulaks and the Bolsheviks into a virtual civil war. It's odd that life expectancy is now much lower under the free-market system than it was under the more enlightened post-Stalinist years of the Soviet regime.

Anyway, I'm not defending Stalin or Mao, although I would defend some of Castro's actions. I'm just sick and tired of smug right-wing American hypocrisy. The genocide of the Native Americans and the 30 million dead since 1948 were the results of direct or indirect US-sponsored military action, not of epiphenomena such as famine.

The problem is that, just like the Russians under communism, american citizens are suffering from decades of systematic misinformation designed to make them think their politico-ecomomic system is 'the best' (e.g. Fukuyama's 'end of history, one of the stupidest books ever written), thus justifying its imposition on the rest of the world.

Answer me a question honestly. How do you think Cuba would have done had the US continued to buy its sugar?

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

I recommend you read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago"...and perhaps do a little research on the subject before attempting to gainsay something you obviously (due to your lack of knowledge of it) know little about. The more widely accepted figure is 110,000,000...OF HIS OWN PEOPLE.

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

Quote:
I was watching the scenes on TV and could not believe what was happening. I was so scared.

It was so tragic - the image of their "Statue of Liberty", the amazing man who stood alone against a column of tanks. The desire for personal freedom might be held back for a long time, but it is a strong, insistent tide that can't be stopped. I believe those who perished that day will be honored in the Mainland as national heroes.

I was hoping against hope that it would turn out as it did when the people overthew Marxism in the ex-Soviet Union. The Soviet Army was sent in to take out Boris Yeltsin & the freedom-seekers and to restore Gorbachev and Marxism. But the Soviet Army, coming in with all their tanks and weaponry said "Russians will not kill other Russians" and that ended that. It's so horrific that it didn't occur in Tiananmen Square in same way.

questionnaire · Joined: 29 May 2003 Posts: 640

" ..... recommend you read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago"...and perhaps do a little research on the subject before attempting to gainsay something you obviously (due to your lack of knowledge of it) know little about. The more widely accepted figure is 110,000,000...OF HIS OWN PEOPLE."

I read that book over 30 years ago, and I've read numerous books and articles about it since.

110,000,000? A figure widely accepted by who, precisely? That was almost the whole population at the time, you idiot. Even the rabid right-wingers peak at estimates of 15 million.

I give up. You're too stupid to bother with. The small gang of you spoils this board. If only you knew what trouble your ignorance is likely to cause in the near future.

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

...and what is it, exactly, that makes you think it happened all at once? :lamp

If you really read the book I mentioned, you'd know that this happened over the span of Stalin's reign. Perhaps you just forgot? Maybe it's time to read it again.

Galmin · The King has spoken! Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 1711

Quote:
"The Gulag Archipelago" is a non-fictional account from and about the other great holocaust of our century--the imprisonment, brutalization and very often murder of tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens by their own Government, mostly during Stalin's rule from 1929 to 1953.

questionnaire · Joined: 29 May 2003 Posts: 640

"...and what is it, exactly, that makes you think it happened all at once?"

This is just stupid and tedious. Look into the science of demographics at an elementary level and then read the history of the Soviet Union from reliable sources. According to my Oxford History of the Twentieth Century the Soviet population rose by 40 million between 1928 and 1941 (largely down to improved nutrition and health-care for loyal workers) and about 9 million died in the same period as a direct result of Stalin's enforced socio-economic revolution. 20 million also died during WWII.

Nobody can defend Stalin's monstrous actions, but to wildly exaggerate them to figures higher than the 30 million dead in wars in the so-called 'free-world' since 1948 is just pure ideological manipulation. Stalin was a total monster, I admit it, and so were some of the Chinese communists during the Cultural Revolution, but death is death, and the brutality of the global market-system and 56 years of US military intervention (over 140 'little wars') has also had monstrous results.

The fact is that you hate the idea of socialism and communism because your culture has programmed you to hate it, and you love your own way of life because your culture has programmed you to love it. You will always concoct skewed evidence to denounce one and boost the other. You're just not to be believed, just as the Soviet regime was not to be believed. I don't believe in either system, and I think we are capable of doing a lot better all round. It's a total waste of time talking to right-wing Americans, you live inside your own little delusion.

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

It's not the communism, but the totalitarianism it breads. There are aspects of communism I admire...it is just that it is based on an idealogical falacy. It is the nature of some human beings to want more...and in order for that to happen, somebody will have to do with less. And there goes communism down the tubes. In reality, it lasts for about 2 seconds. With a higher GNP in the black market than any other country (during the USSR days), it is easy to see that, ultimately, communism not only fails but creates an elite class that have no boundries as to how far they can go or what they can do. Not so in this country...here at least there are some limits.

bbchris · Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 5:51 am Post subject: Re: re

Quote:
It's so horrific that it didn't occur in Tiananmen Square in same way.

Yes Ron, that is the scary part. After 1989, there was a mass exodus of HK people as people frantically emigrated to other countries (Canada and Australia) as the wonderful Great Britain decided they couldn't grant 3 million British subjects a full British passport..... Half my family are now Canadians!

The idea of being returned to this kind of Government in 1997 was extremely scary for many. I stayed positive and focused that life can only get better.

In this day and age with Internet and sms at least the mainlanders are more aware of what outside China is getting news-wise. Although the Internet is being controlled within China.

Galmin · The King has spoken! Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 1711

Quote:
ultimately, communism not only fails but creates an elite class that have no boundries as to how far they can go or what they can do. Not so in this country

Not to be nitpicking here but as far as I understand, the idea of the communistic development is (taken from the ideology in in very basic terms); revolution (in the most evolved capitalist

state, not in some vastly feudal region), proletarian dictatorship with a ruling elite (for a short spell), communism (no ruling class).

After the Civil War (Russian) the grip was loosened up, a bunch of different political parties was allowed into the government and the New Economic Policy was introduced (Many boneheads saw these moves as compromises to capitalism, and believed from their experiences in the Civil War that the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the dictatorship of the Communist Party above all others, both in times of peace and in war. That's what you get when you revolt in a feudal country

).

When Stalin 1924 grabbed power and 1926 proclaimed that Russia was the first country to reach a communist state it was in the state of dictatorship and had been so since the revolution. The dictatorship was defenitely not proletarian.

So communism (per definizi) has never been tested in a grand scale.