#Tienanmen square

[eyepool]

The enemy is dead

I can't believe what I said

The enemy is dead

Did it only exist in our head?

Sheltered from the evils of the world until the truth is seen

Sheltered from realities of life, your human rights are free

Freedom, taken for granted

'Cause we don't know what oppression means

Freedom, taken for granted

By the leaders who would crush the dream

A crack exposing human rights

Light against a granite sky

A crack exposing human life

A fire burns

For the freedom, for the freedom

For the freedom never given but taken

For the freedom, die for the reason

One man stands

Hard as he waits for freedom's hand

A unified voice for the freedom of choice

One man stands for life

He'll give his

Would you give yours to fight for a cause?

One man stands

And the wall cracks, and the wall cracks

And the wall cracks, and the walls come crumbling

—Anthrax, “One Man Stands” (1990)

[tinyshe]

Remember June 4 Tienanmen Square

[darkmaga-retard]

They Love To Honeymoon In Communist Countries. Bernie Sanders Honeymooned In The USSR. Bill de Blasio Honeymooned in Cuba. The Biden's Honeymooned in Communist Hungary. Initiation Ritual?

Celia Farber

Aug 22, 2024

Just Don’t Call It Communism

I’m trying to figure this out. Tim Walz is like a clear-glassed aquarium into the (to me) shocking reality of the normalization of unapologetic communism (not “socialism”) in the upper echelons of the Democrat billionaire class, the so called “elite.”

I am alone in my shock, it’s quiet in here. I just feel a little queasy.

Welz went to China 30 times and came home singing Mao’s and China’s praises, and was fully funded? By CCP? Certainly? By USA? That too.

So how does it all work?

Welz and his wife, (who apparently loved the smell of burning rubber tires in the Minneapolis riots enough to leave the windows open,) honeymooned in China? And guess what date they chose for their wedding?

The anniversary of the massacre at Tienanmen Square.*

Who does that?

CCP agents? Or is that too simple? They weren’t undercover agents, that’s what’s so disturbing and confusing. It was all out in the open, and they met with precisely zero opposition from any United States agency, despite 30 trips in which they brought American students over to be brainwashed.

How come this is not really a big deal?

[malakianblog]

🎶🎶 I'M JUST SITTING IN MY CAR AND WAITING FOR MY GIRLLLL 🎶🎶😔

WHY DON'T YOU ASK THE KIDS AT TIENANMEN SQUARE ⁉️

WAS FASHION THE REASON THEY WERE THERE ⁉️

THE DISGUISE IT ‼️ HYPNOTIZE IT ‼️

TELEVISION MADE YOU BUY IT ‼️‼️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

NEXT WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

#20yrsago Group blog on unlicensed spectrum https://web.archive.org/web/20040603071554/http://www.wirelessunleashed.com/

#20yrsago Enron traders gloating about screwing California https://web.archive.org/web/20040603020342/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/eveningnews/main620795.shtml

#15yrsago Tienanmen Square erased https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/05/lost-memory-of-tiananmen/18528/

#15yrsago Investing in litigation: beat the street by buying a share in someone’s grievance against a big company https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/business/03litigate.html

#15yrsago Delving into the psyche of men who buy exfoliant advertised for use after mother-daughter threeways https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/06/03/geez-what-a-tool/

#15yrsago Search algorithms are editorial decisions https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jun/01/search-public-google-privacy-rights

#15yrsago Geek Mafia 3: Black Hat Blues; a heist novel for hackers https://memex.craphound.com/2009/06/02/geek-mafia-3-black-hat-blues-a-heist-novel-for-hackers/

#10yrsago XKCD: the TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/randall_munroe_comics_that_ask_what_if

#10yrsago Saga Volume Three: weird all the things! https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/02/saga-volume-three-weird-all-the-things/

#10yrsago Snowden, one year after: Now we know the NSA’s secrets https://web.archive.org/web/20150425191136/https://www.aclu.org/they-knew-our-secrets-one-year-later-we-know-theirs?redirect=nsa1year

#10yrsago Podcast: How to Talk to Your Children About Mass Surveillance https://ia802208.us.archive.org/8/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_274_How_to_Talk_to_Your_Children_About_Mass_Surveillance/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_274_How_to_Talk_to_Your_Children_About_Mass_Surveillance.mp3

#10yrsago Fondue-slippers: just dip your feet in this molten PVC https://satsukiohata.com/fondueslipper.html

#1yrago The long, bloody lineage of private equity's looting https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

[hintzy]

shuffle your 'on repeat' playlist and post the first ten tracks, then tag ten people. tagged by @oetter

UMMM im tagging @mathewbaldzal @jakeoetter @eliooliver83 @stickypucky and anyone else who wants to… *kisses you on the cheek and runs away*

i also added my favorite lyrics from each song 😫 because im extra

1. Caroline, Please Kill Me — Coma Cinema

“Caroline, your eyes are dead like outer space

And I know that I am boring, I can read it on your face”

2. Racehorse: Get Married! — Jordaan Mason and The Horse Museum

“Memorize your casket, your mother patterns

The space between your legs, I grab what's good of you”

3. Cutting My Fingers Off — Turnover

“You always said that every thought I had was geometric

I couldn't think outside my own lines”

4. Hypnotize — System Of A Down

“Why don't you ask the kids at Tienanmen Square

Was fashion the reason why they were there?”

5. I Would Hate You If I Could — Turnover

“Forget the days we'd waste in bed, tangled

The smoke still on your breath”

6. Us Ones In Between — Sunset Rubdown

“And I heard of creatures

Who eat their babies

And I wonder if they stop

To think about the taste”

7. Sleepyhead — The Scary Jokes

“i have never been the type to go to church

and i have never prayed for anyone but her”

8. White Trashing — Nicole Dollanganger

“Inherited your dad's crazy eyes

History repeats our whole damn lives”

9. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead — Stars

“We drove in silence across Pont Champlain

And all of that time you thought I was sad

I was trying to remember your name”

10. Never Meant — American Football

“And the autumn night when we realized

We were falling out of love”

[arcadiaberger]

What "Happened" at Tiananmen Square Never Happened | Hakim | History Tea...

One day, a decommissioned tank will stand on Tienanmen Square. A bronze statue of the Tank Man will face it. Also, the Styrofoam statue of the "Goddess of Liberty" smashed by the troops will be recreated in marble.

[peakwealth]

Silent Harbour

FROM HONG KONG

"Hong Kong people need to understand that the landscape has changed."

Chief Executive John Lee on April 16, 2024 (1)

A city muted and humbled. Victoria Harbour and Central, seen from the rainy waterfront, Kowloon , April 2024.

1.I am not inventing things when I think back to the nineteen eighties when there used to be Rolls Royce traffic jams in the back streets of lower Kowloon. Silver Shadow limousines lined up in front of the traffic lights, not far from the fabled Peninsula hotel. They were must-have symbols of Britishness in a city obsessed with wealth. Today Rolls Royce has gone out of fashion, Hong Kong has become a Tesla kind of city.

Things change. In Hong Kong they have changed dramatically.

2. The fate of Hong Kong was sealed on 19 December 1984 when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in Beijing. It set out the road map for the transition from British to Chinese rule. The formal handover didn't happen until much later, on 1 July 1997, but it was obvious from the start that a reunited Hong Kong would be subjected to a measure of resinification. The question was how much and how soon.

It is a question I have often written about because Hong Kong was close to my heart. To quote from an earlier post of this blog, back in 2014, "the world today is a very different place from what is was in 1984 when Deng (Xiaoping) and (Margaret)Thatcher worked things out. With the West in retreat and democracy in global decline, China now considers itself top-dog and has become used to throwing its weight around, and not just in Asia. The civic values espoused by Hong Kong democrats belong to a fading world Beijing has limited patience with."

Nothing has changed since then. The words 'Hong Kong democrats' now sound like an anachronism. Hong Kong has been sanitized, wiped clean of all democratic pretence.

Pedestrian underpass. Kowloon, December 2019

3. Under the original agreement, Hong Kong would remain pretty much as it had been, with its own mini-constitution (the Basic Law), a high degree of self-governance, separation from the mainland and a set of radical privileges that would last for half a century, until 2047. Free and fair elections were to be held. The underlying principle was known as one country, two systems.

And indeed, in many ways Hong Kong is still living in its own post-colonial bubble, a curious adjunct to the Western world. The border has remained, Hong Kong prints it own money (still pegged to the US dollar), the power plugs are British, traffic is on the 'wrong' side of the road. Even today, Chinese-made cars or buses are few and supermarkets carry a lot of non-Chinese, imported food, as ever. Immigration remains visa-free and (so far) the internet is essentially unrestricted.

Those are practicalities. As for the political concept of one country, two systems, it was too good to be true. The sleight-of-hand that was agreed to in 1984 did not last. In hindsight, one struggles to comprehend how anyone could have believed in it. The idea of having an open, quasi-democratic enclave attached to a massive authoritarian state was too far-fetched to begin with. It never made sense, meaning that you can’t have it both ways after all, not even for fifty years.

4. Serious trouble started when Beijing backed out of the promise of democratic governance by the year 2017 (when the Chief Executive was to be elected). They could handle free elections and universal suffrage - as long as they could vet the candidates. That was Beijing's red line: only party-approved Chinese patriots could stand for election. It was that simple. No one would be allowed to challenge the omnipotence of the Chinese Communist Party.

Exit two-systems.

5. Isn't it what they say, that history is unkind to revolutions? Uprisings generate so much youthful energy (Tahrir square, Tienanmen...) and challenge the old guard to such an extent that tragedy usually follows. It may be too early to write off the popular insurrection of Hong Kong, but the prospects don't look good. What started in 2014 with juvenile street protests and the occupation of the business district (the 'umbrella movement') escalated dangerously in the summer of 2019 when they called it ' the revolution of our times, liberate Hong Kong'. Poor choice of words. It got chaotic and violent. When protesters trashed the legislature and made fun of Chinese sovereignty, it was clear that such insults would not go unpunished.

UPPER: Protest wall. Diamond Hill, December 2019

LOWER: Painted over protest wall. Sham Shui Po, March 2024

This is where things now stand: once-indispensable, once-cosmopolitan Hong Kong has effectively been humbled, downgraded to nobody-status. The people have been infantilized and their common identity crushed. Hong Kong has become a Chinese city among many others, with a population that barely adds up to half a percent of China's total. It lost out because it refused to play dead, it dared to challenge the untouchability of the fatherland and supremacy of Xi Jinping.

6. Blazing neon signs in English used to dot the skyline of Central, prestige displays of multinational banks and companies. Today PANASONIC is about the only one left.

Over the decades freewheeling Hong Kong had grown from being China's window on the world to being Asia's uncontested financial hub. Not any more. Money and status are draining away, a disaster for a city addicted to both. Business is slow in the huge shipping terminal. The barges that used to ferry containers to and from cargo ships anchored offshore lie idle.

Expats have drifted away, adding to the brain drain as many locals have taken up invitations to resettle in the UK or elsewhere. The English language, which has been in retreat for many years, is fading from view. Packaging, menus, signs, ads are increasingly in Chinese only.

It couldn't last. Waiting for the double decker tram in Central during the insurrection. December 2019.

7. Look around the city today: the past has been scraped off, painted over, it is as if nothing ever happened. Only those who were in Hong Kong before 2020 know the anger and frustration just below the surface - but they are keeping quiet. State-mandated amnesia prevails.

Government messaging has shifted to uncontroversial concerns: animal welfare, dental hygiene, fire safety, mindfulness. You get the idea.

While the local police stations still look like walled fortresses with perimeter floodlighting and ample razor wire, the police themselves are rarely seen. There is no need for them. Many of the political activists have been jailed. Hermetic surveillance, the spectre of universal face recognition and intimidation are enough to keep the population in check.

Hong Kong's tyranny is still new but it is of the perfect variety, it is invisible.

The end was near. Kowloon December2019

_____________________________________________________

(1) The Chief Executive is the highest ranking official in Hong Kong.

[tiny-pteranodon]

Realised I never asked this but um, ‘sup with the name💀

hahaha remember the tienanmen square massacre? besically in 1989 the all lot of students gathered at the tiananmen square in tianjin china and started protesting. and the chinese government reacted in their own heroic way amd sent tanks. many people were killed and to this day. the government of china refises tp accept that anythimg like this ever happened.

so i took that sad inciden tchanged it a bit iny usual cursed way

[eyepool]

The anonymous “Tank Man” stopping the column of T59 tanks in Tiananmen Square on June 4 1989. [Photo by Stuart Franklin]

35 years ago today. Never forget!

I remember that time. All of a sudden the dictatorships that had been a constant fixture of the world my whole life were falling. The Berlin Wall was breached and torn down. Maybe the same thing would happen in China? It was heartbreaking to see these flowers of hope grow in a few days and then be crushed.

[englishchinesetranslations]

Paul Chan

Process Operator at DowDuPont (company) (2007–present)

Updated 3y

If China is collapsing, how come it is a threat?

That question can be easily answered when you take on the perspective of an American billionaire. How does an American become a billionaire and maintain her/his enormous wealth? By investing in enterprises that hold monopolies in their respective markets and supporting government policies that incentivize and subsidize such practices and by lobbying legislators, the President, governors, and judges to enact, enforce and safeguard those policies. All of these activities are perfectly legal in the United States. They are even enshrined as the pinnacles of plutocratic capitalism.

China, on the other hand, is a socialist country and its economic policies can only be best described as state capitalism. Because the Chinese Communist Party was founded on the principles of Marxism, it does not support monopolizing and profiteering from patents. As the British historian Adrian Johns succinctly put it: “[Patents] projected an artificial idol of the single inventor, radically denigrated the role of the intellectual commons, and blocked a path to this commons for other citizens — citizens who were all, on this account, potential inventors too. [...] Patentees were the equivalent of squatters on public land — or better, of uncouth market traders who planted their barrows in the middle of the highway and barred the way of the people.”

China also criminalizes the practice of “influencing” public officials as bribery or grafting. President Xi Jinping was notorious for enforcing party disciplines with his signature anti-corruption campaign that resulted in the dismissal of several prominent incumbent as well as retired party members, including those within the Politburo Standing Commitee. His nationalistic policies have time and again antagonized many American corporations hoping to expand their market shares in China. President Xi's growing popularity with his foreign policies advocating free trade and globalization is what irks American billionaires the most.

Imagine you are one of those American billionaires. Why do you love America so much? Because you have an obscene amount of money, you can buy off any political candidates you want through the use of PAC contributions. Because both the Democrats and the Republicans pander to your interests, you can readily “influence” them to provide you with tax cuts and subsidies for any investments that you may own. Because you can profit the most from monopolies and protectionism, you definitely do not want free trade. Because you want your bank investments to stay bullish, you are naturally opposed to banking regulations. Because the Chinese are promoting the Belt and Road Initiative with their own state-sponsored financing, your foreign bond investments are not going to be as lucrative as before. Moreover, the worst fear of all is your poorer fellow citizens are clamoring for socioeconomic reforms that lean toward a socialist system. That is the biggest threat to most American billionaires. The rest is just propaganda concocted to convince others to shun socialism.

[leam1983]

On Wishful Thinking

My morning trawl through YouTube ended on something that rankled me a little.

There's this channel called Business Insider that used to cover occasionally useful tidbits about the wider automotive market. Considering my line of work, I found it handy to keep it in my subscriptions, seeing as it helped me keep up with the occasionally weirdly irrational pivots some manufacturers can make. For the past year, though, they've devolved into nonstop political commentary - and especially misinformed political commentary.

Case in point, their last clickbaity upload suggesting that China's reigning dictator, Xi Jinping, would be "done" following the riots that erupted in corners of China where high incidence of COVID-19 cases led to near-permanent lockdowns - which themselves led to isolation, starvation, loss of sanity, along with the occasional death by house fire.

I'm as pro-democracy as the rest, as you'd figure, but a machine like China's and the CCP's is frightfully capable. Gaggles of concerned citizens taking to the streets does not equal a new Tienanmen Square moment; nevermind how this occurs just after the ouster of Jinping's historically more lax predecessor and the observable commitment of the Middle Kingdom to a renewed series of isolationist policies.

Saying Jinping is done is wishful thinking at the most, as if simple citizens had a prayer of massing in sufficient numbers to breach the Parliament and take down a single man, when the entire Communist Party is complicit. We've seen their riot cops, and we've seen just how hardcore they can get. We all remember Hong Kong's protests, don't we?

The CCP won't be "done", ever, unless its renewed isolationism comes back to bite them in the ass. I'll start to think the Western world's second-biggest frenemy at the moment is done at the exact moment that independent reporters start showing that fringe provinces can't be held in check by the greater governing body.

As to why I don't consider China a flat-out enemy, let me ask you this: would you take up a dehumanizing manufacturing job just so someone three salary brackets above you gets to afford the latest iPhone?

My guess is you wouldn't.

[myfuckingbudapestmovie]

The Pillar of Shame

Tienanmen square massacre memorial in Budapest

[alchemisoul]

Tankman / The Lone Protester | Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China (1989) 

"...Now renegades are the people with their own philosophy, they change the course of history, everyday people like you and me..."

-  Afrika Bambaata

[contac]