Right Back at you, Bobby
It looks like we've got a real live one, here, folks. Sunday service in Xinzheng, otherwise known as "Bobby Fletcher" (the Serdar Agric of the Falun Gong concentration camp), responded in kind to my comments about him on this post, which I whoopsied on.
(He even did yet another single-issue blog about it after I nuked his post from Anne Coulter's entry, below)
Yes, my memories of what happened at Tiananmen are hazy, and needed a refresher course. But in the process of learning it again, I've come to see that Bobby, here, is either one scary apologist for official murder and coverup, or naive as all hell.
Here's my answer to him and his attempts to whitewash China's government's murderous actions in the name of searching for truth (or just being annoyed at Falun Gong posters in Chinatown)
I wonder if you have seen the recent Frontline segment titled "The Tank Man"?
The PBS documentary dispelled the myth that students were "massacred" on TAM square grounds. If you haven't seen this you should. The Frontline report interviewed journalists who were on the ground, as well as footage of thousands of students leaving the TAM square.
That's right. And you can read about it, and see it, here
And when we go there, what do we find...?
(June 3rd): "As word spreads that hundreds of thousands of troops are approaching from all four corners of the city, Beijingers flood the streets to block them, as they had done two weeks earlier. People set up barricades at every major interstion. At about 10:30 p.m., near the Muxidi apartment buildings -- home to high-level Party officials and their families -- the citizens become aggressive as the army tries to break through their barricades. They yell at the soldiers and some throw rocks; someone sets a bus on fire. The soldiers start firing on the unarmed civilians with AK-47s loaded with battlefield ammunition."
(June 4th): "At about 1:00 a.m., the People's Liberation Army finally reaches Tiananmen Square and waits for orders from the government. The soldiers have been told not to open fire, but they have also been told that they must clear the square by 6:00 a.m. -- with no exceptions or delays. They make a final offer of amnesty if the few thousand remaining students will leave. About 4:00 a.m., student leaders put the matter to a vote: Leave the square, or stay and face the consequences. ... The students vacate the square under the gaze of thousands of soldiers.
Later that morning, some people -- believed to be the parents of the student protestors -- try to re-enter Tiananmen Square via Chang'an Boulevard. The soldiers order them to leave, and when they don't, open fire, taking down dozens of people at a time. ... When rescue workers try to approach the street to remove the wounded, they, too, are shot.
No one knows for certain how many people died over the two days. The Chinese Red Cross initially reported 2,600, then quickly retracted that figure under intense pressure from the government. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded."
So no, maybe no students were killed. But there was still a massacre there, that day.
Actually, I have read this from another source years ago, from Columbia Univ. School of Journalism:
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/tiananmen.asp
"as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances."
Yes, that's right, too. And let's continue with what the article says, shall we?
"The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students. Black and Munro say "what took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents — precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended." They argue that the government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed.
...
Not only has the error made the American press's frequent pleas for the truth about Tiananmen seem shallow, but it has allowed the bloody-minded regime responsible for the June 4 murders to divert attention from what happened. There was a massacre that morning."
Again, I can't stress enough about critical examination. All this is public information.
Yes, and you are missing the forest for its trees.
Oh, BTW, me and my passport will be gald to meet you anywhere in Seattle, so I can put your fear of foreign agent in our land to rest. Let me know, I'd be glad to answer any of your questions.
I don't think it's needed. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can confirm your address and phone number. Like we say - "be seeing you."
Good luck with your journey for Truth, but please remember to look both ways.
This is so sickeningly hypocritical it isn't worth much of a retort.
I don't know what your problem is, or what your story is. Maybe Bob's right about you, maybe he isn't. All I know is that I was put on this planet to annoy people like you.
(He even did yet another single-issue blog about it after I nuked his post from Anne Coulter's entry, below)
Yes, my memories of what happened at Tiananmen are hazy, and needed a refresher course. But in the process of learning it again, I've come to see that Bobby, here, is either one scary apologist for official murder and coverup, or naive as all hell.
Here's my answer to him and his attempts to whitewash China's government's murderous actions in the name of searching for truth (or just being annoyed at Falun Gong posters in Chinatown)
I wonder if you have seen the recent Frontline segment titled "The Tank Man"?
The PBS documentary dispelled the myth that students were "massacred" on TAM square grounds. If you haven't seen this you should. The Frontline report interviewed journalists who were on the ground, as well as footage of thousands of students leaving the TAM square.
That's right. And you can read about it, and see it, here
And when we go there, what do we find...?
(June 3rd): "As word spreads that hundreds of thousands of troops are approaching from all four corners of the city, Beijingers flood the streets to block them, as they had done two weeks earlier. People set up barricades at every major interstion. At about 10:30 p.m., near the Muxidi apartment buildings -- home to high-level Party officials and their families -- the citizens become aggressive as the army tries to break through their barricades. They yell at the soldiers and some throw rocks; someone sets a bus on fire. The soldiers start firing on the unarmed civilians with AK-47s loaded with battlefield ammunition."
(June 4th): "At about 1:00 a.m., the People's Liberation Army finally reaches Tiananmen Square and waits for orders from the government. The soldiers have been told not to open fire, but they have also been told that they must clear the square by 6:00 a.m. -- with no exceptions or delays. They make a final offer of amnesty if the few thousand remaining students will leave. About 4:00 a.m., student leaders put the matter to a vote: Leave the square, or stay and face the consequences. ... The students vacate the square under the gaze of thousands of soldiers.
Later that morning, some people -- believed to be the parents of the student protestors -- try to re-enter Tiananmen Square via Chang'an Boulevard. The soldiers order them to leave, and when they don't, open fire, taking down dozens of people at a time. ... When rescue workers try to approach the street to remove the wounded, they, too, are shot.
No one knows for certain how many people died over the two days. The Chinese Red Cross initially reported 2,600, then quickly retracted that figure under intense pressure from the government. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded."
So no, maybe no students were killed. But there was still a massacre there, that day.
Actually, I have read this from another source years ago, from Columbia Univ. School of Journalism:
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/tiananmen.asp
"as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances."
Yes, that's right, too. And let's continue with what the article says, shall we?
"The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students. Black and Munro say "what took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents — precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended." They argue that the government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed.
...
Not only has the error made the American press's frequent pleas for the truth about Tiananmen seem shallow, but it has allowed the bloody-minded regime responsible for the June 4 murders to divert attention from what happened. There was a massacre that morning."
Again, I can't stress enough about critical examination. All this is public information.
Yes, and you are missing the forest for its trees.
Oh, BTW, me and my passport will be gald to meet you anywhere in Seattle, so I can put your fear of foreign agent in our land to rest. Let me know, I'd be glad to answer any of your questions.
I don't think it's needed. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can confirm your address and phone number. Like we say - "be seeing you."
Good luck with your journey for Truth, but please remember to look both ways.
This is so sickeningly hypocritical it isn't worth much of a retort.
I don't know what your problem is, or what your story is. Maybe Bob's right about you, maybe he isn't. All I know is that I was put on this planet to annoy people like you.
posted by J. Edward Tremlett at 4:29 PM
2 Comments:
You have a worthy calling, my man.
Get 'em. ;)
will do!
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