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Author Topic: A story from Tiananmen Square
Michelle
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posted 02 June 2006 04:02 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
He was a truck mechanic who wanted to change China.

In the heat of the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, Lu Decheng and two friends lobbed paint-filled eggshells at Mao's portrait in Tiananmen Square. Turned in by student protesters, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for "counter-revolutionary destruction." One got life in prison, the other got 20 years.

"I have no regrets," Mr. Lu said softly in Chinese in his first in-depth interview. "In a repressive dictatorship, if no one has a spirit of sacrifice, we will never achieve democracy. This is China's tragedy."

He was 25 then. He's 42 now, with scars from prison beatings, a broken marriage and an uncertain future in Canada. After authorities released him — after 10 years — he slipped into Myanmar and then Thailand, hoping to attract attention for his friend serving life. Instead, Thai authorities arrested him. Canada granted him refugee status, and in April, he arrived in Calgary.


Jan Wong


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 02 June 2006 12:16 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Why didn't he go to Burma?. Burma is full of anti-Chinese sentiment where Marxists are thrown in jail instead of law abiding citizens and so much closer than Canada.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
greenie
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posted 02 June 2006 01:34 PM      Profile for greenie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Didn't the article say he went to Myanmar (Burma)? and then proceeded to Thailand? I guess the question is why didn't he stay in Myanmar.
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Fidel
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posted 02 June 2006 01:56 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It says he thought there was corruption and decay in the Chinese government. But he's come to the wrong country, because rot and decay is a permanent feature of our two old line party autocracy posing as multi-party democracy in Canada and aiding and abetting the largest terrorist exporting nation in the world.

Lu not only didn't realize Toronto is east of Calgary, he didn't realize that Canada is a nation of kick-back, graft and corruption at the highest levels. The Librano affair is just one time they were caught red-handed. Somebody should translate a copy of "On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed During the Mulroney years" into Mandarin.

In China and Singapore, government officials who feel "entitled to their entitlements" are given a brief trial so as save public expense. And then, and very unceremoniously, they are lined up at dawn without blindfold or cigarette and shot between the eyes. Any medical person will tell us that "rot and decay" in a flesh wound must be cut out and disinfected, otherwise, the wound will fester and kill the patient eventually.

People like Roth, Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay wouldn't do soft time and out on good behaviour. Fascists have every reason to be afraid of Asian justice. It's why we've got a billionaire crook from China hiding out in Canada right now.

[ 02 June 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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Ken Burch
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posted 02 June 2006 05:24 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
OK, Fidel, you are right about how China handles corruption and corporate crime. But I hope you'd agree that there was no excuse for what Deng and the boys did in crushing the Beijing Spring.

They should have done what the rebels asked, not sent the "People's" Army in to brutally attack and kill honorable and legitimate dissidents.

The days when China needed police state tactics and an absolute suppression of all dissent are gone and gone forever. China needs genuine socialism, genuine worker's and peasant's control of the economy, and open discussion on all the issues of society(which of course, Canada and the U.S. need as well).


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Erik Redburn
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posted 02 June 2006 07:08 PM      Profile for Erik Redburn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
China needs another revolution, preferably a bloodless one this time.
From: Broke but not bent. | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 02 June 2006 07:30 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ken Burch:
OK, Fidel, you are right about how China handles corruption and corporate crime. But I hope you'd agree that there was no excuse for what Deng and the boys did in crushing the Beijing Spring.

I know it's no real excuse, but Deng's people were told that there would be CIA-trained agitators among the students. The CIA has a well established record of agitating around the world, Ken.

China and Singapore both, Ken. The Chinese are not naive about corruption. They know about greed and kick-back, and even with the death penalty for these serious crimes against the state, there are those who will flout the law regardless. White collar criminals in North America flout the law and account for about 90 percent of the value of annual thefts in North America. But it's blue collar criminals who tend to afford the least in criminal defence and spend the most time behind bars in North America. China is just a photo negative of our own two-tiered legal system with different legal outcomes for rich and poor in North America.

quote:

They should have done what the rebels asked, not sent the "People's" Army in to brutally attack and kill honorable and legitimate dissidents.

And the South Korean army should not have murdered over 2000 students protesting a foreign military occupation of Seoul in 1980. I agree, Ken, when someone or group of special interests starts a protest over there, things can get out of hand in a hurry with that many people in the streets.

quote:
China needs genuine socialism, genuine worker's and peasant's control of the economy, and open discussion on all the issues of society(which of course, Canada and the U.S. need as well).

The truth, Ken. China has lots of work and prosperity to go around, and much of the employment they've gained is our loss. What the Chinese need are unions and worker's basic rights. It's one big human rights violation over there right now by what I can tell. But I must say, these aren't the Libranos or Republican party running the show in China, that's for sure. Those guys in Beijing are very hard, and very shrewd business people at heart.

To Live or Die in Shanghai 2000

[ 02 June 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 02 June 2006 08:51 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I hope you aren't assuming I don't equally condemn right wing governments on their human rights abuses. I always have. You're right about South Korea and Singapore on human rights.

And the "Deng was worried about the CIA" thing just doesn't wash. Even the Chinese government never made that excuse. BTW, how could the CIA have taken advantage of a situation in which the demonstrations were peaceful? Violence from the demonstrators' side didn't occur until after the PLA was unleashed and started killing innocent people indiscriminately. Then, some people fought back, yes, but that was because their lives were in danger. Were they supposed to LET the PLA kill them as a gesture of good faith?

If Deng was really that scared of the demonstrators and what they might do, it would have been enough to put them in jail for a night and then quietly release them the next day. There was no reason to kill anyone, and their was certainly no reason to give the PLA divisions involved a drug cocktail of amphetamines and hallucinogens so that they would be delusional psychotic murder machines.

Why are you even bothering to be an apologist for China, anyway? Their state no longer has anything remotely to do with socialism and even if it were overthrown, the capitalists already have control of everything that matters there now. The PRC just isn't worth your loyalty. Fidel. Mao's revolution is dead. It's just another right-wing junta now.

And I really don't understand why you seem to see the man this thread is discussing as a capitalist stooge, Fidel. He was a mechanic fighting for worker's rights, not a yuppie scum investment banker. Why the automatic suspicion and hostility?

Please get it through your head that not all criticism of "communist" states is based on a secret desire for counterrevolution.

[ 02 June 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]


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Ken Burch
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posted 02 June 2006 09:01 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Also, did you REALLY mean to dismiss the Tienenman protestors as "a group of special interests"?

Please tell me you weren't really implying that.


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Fidel
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posted 02 June 2006 10:41 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well Ken, if I'm to get anything through my thick skull, I guess you should try nailing the facts instead of skirting around them. Like the fact that news journalist Harrison Salisbury's Tianananmen Diary: 13 days in June makes special mention that he and an independent Brit news journalist witnessed no one being shot to death or run over by tanks anywhere close to their hotel rooms near Tianananmen Square.

There were at least 2000 South Korean students murdered by the army in Seoul in 1980, however. What's so important to you people about Tianananmen, Ken ?. Are the lives that were actually taken outside of that city worth more politically than those thousands snuffed out in Seoul?.

And Lee Kwan Yew was a social democrat who orchestrated Singapore's rise from fourth world nothingness to owning the world's lowest infant mortality rate today under his son's rule. The ability to carry on with capitalist economy is a consequence of social democratic reforms affecting the national and economic health of Singaporean's over a sustained period of time. They are democratic capitalist nations to the nth degree in El Salvador, Haiti, Thailand and East Timor for a long time, Ken. Washington says Haiti is the freest trading nation in the Caribbean. And where are they on Jeffrey Sachs' and Harvard Business School's top ten list of most competitive economies, eh?. And where was American capitalism at prior to New Deal socialism ?. Yes Ken, capitalism can't fly without socialism first. Communism is the left wing of the dove, but both capitalism and communism need true political centrists, the market socialists to control it and make it fly eh.

quote:
For now, he is adapting to life in Canada. He is amazed by the squirrels that scamper freely in the park, with no one trying to slaughter and eat them. And he is stunned by the traffic.

"Canadians stop at red lights. Even when no one is around, they wait for it to turn green. If only people in China were like that. What a civilized country this is!"


Ken, this writer is too much!. Imagine several hundred million workers dumped into Canada's major cities right here and now ?. We'd have riots on our hands with a lack of housing and some way for them to earn a living. There would be more than a few effing traffic lights run. There would be blood in the streets and chaos. It would likely be the biggest die-off in history as tens of millions expire from a lack of food and exposure to the Canadian elements. Our system just isn't equipped to deal with that many people, nor would our elitists welcome so many to this vast expanse of frozen moose pasture, this Puerto Rico with more of its natural resources shipped to corporate America 24/7/365 than any other nation in the world. Get real lady!. We almost didn't survive the ice storm of 98 in Ottawa, the frickin capital city!

Lu should try lobbing paint-filled projectiles in front of DFAIT downtown Ottawa when Bush and the gang are in town.

[ 02 June 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 02 June 2006 11:32 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It's a technicality to say no one was attacked in the square. Of course no one was attacked IN the square. The reason for that is that the demonstrators had peacefully left the square and were going to their homes. It was OVER already. The army didn't need to be deployed at all.

But Deng couldn't leave it at that. He had to show his power, he had to have his kills(and stop bringing South Korea into it, I have always condemned the Kwangju massacre. I hadn't brought it up in this thread because it wasn't the subject of this thread.)

(...And listen, I have NEVER let right-wing dictatorships off the hook for what they've done on human rights and you know it. I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop trying to make me look like an apologist for all U.S. allies and the entire American foreign and economic policy tradition. I was denouncing those dictatorships years before there was a Babble for you and me to argue in. I'm not guilty of letting the U.S. government and global capitalists off the hook for their brutality and I can't for the life of me understand whatever made yuo think that I had. So please stop trying to turn me into Paul Wolfowitz or something. You have no reason to do that.)

The thousands of deaths that occurred after the Tienenmen protests had peacefully and voluntarily ended were in the streets a few blocks away. The PLA was killing without rhyme or reason. They were there to terrorize all of Beijing back into silence and obedience. Never mind that the Chinese had no reason whatsoever for closing the door on democratization and free discussion.

I am a radical democratic socialist. I agree with you that socialism is what the world needs. Why do you keep implying that anyone who criticizes a government that claims to be "socialist" or "communist" is somehow an agent of capitalism? Does it always have to be unquestioning loyalty or unrelenting hostility? Can you not even consider the possibility that a person who dissents from what a "communist" or "socialist" state is doing might be dissenting because that person is defending the ideals and honor of socialism against the betrayals committe by that government?

sheesh...Jesus Lenin on a crutch....

Finally, what does corruption in either of Canada's governing parties have to do with this thread at all?

[ 02 June 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 02 June 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]


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Fidel
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posted 02 June 2006 11:45 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I know you're a socialist Ken. I want to apologize for any bad vibes. Yes, I agree that the Chinese crackdown was wrong.

I've never been to that country, but I have spoken with ex-pats from there, and I do understand that China has been ruled by brutal dictatorships for several centuries. My Chinese friends were full-fledged Canadian's when they spoke both highly and critically of Mao with me. They told me that things have changed for the better and not so under Deng. I believe the part about Deng being just another totalitarian. There are positive forces within China, however.

They've obtained the right to live past 30 in just Mao's time. They have different ways than we know. Like Russia, the country was torn apart during and after WWII. But the changes that have taken since are still very breathtaking, don't you think, Ken?.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 02 June 2006 11:51 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks, Fidel. I appreciate those comments.

I think we should leave it at that on this particular thread, you and I.

I respect your commitment and the passion you bring to these discussions.


From: A seedy truckstop on the Information Superhighway | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 03 June 2006 12:06 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Likewise Ken. I've come to realize that we leftists are the most diverse in our thinking. I once never realized myself that there were so many lefties in the states. They pushed and shoved the right as much as possible in the 60's and 70's. There are probably more potential NDP'ers and ultra violet lefties in the states than up here. I'm in awe of them Ken. San Francisco or San Jose is where I would like to live after "the revolution" takes place. You're the man tonight. I wasn't myself for some reason.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
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posted 03 June 2006 12:39 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
As I was about to post last night before my laptop crashed, no worries. I could have been a bit more tactful myself on some posts.

As to where I'd live after the revo, I'd go back and forth between the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up, the Bay Area and Greenwich Village. Assuming I wasn't volunteering for the labor brigade to bring in the crop somewhere(which I'd do from time to time).

My dream job in the revo would probably be Minister of People's Culture. Working with theatre, art, poetry and prose for the cause.


From: A seedy truckstop on the Information Superhighway | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged

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