You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (115)

PLAYS: (148)

While discussing what the United States should do if the crisis in Iran turns into another Tiananmen Square, McCain responds that the U.S. should follow the lead of the French, who we all know Republicans love so much, the Germans and the Brits. McCain says that the death of Neda might be a defining moment in history and the end of the tyrannical regime in Iran.

When asked if we should negotiate with them if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains in power, of course Mr. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran doesn't think so. McCain also says the we can't trust the Iranians because they've "violated fundamental human rights upon which this nation (The United States) was founded".

As someone who formerly chaired and remains a member of the Indian Affairs Committee in the Senate, I wonder if Senator McCain has ever asked any of his American Indian constituents if they'd agree with that statement? He might want to ask the African American community as well. I don't think being kept as slaves qualifies as honoring someone's basic human rights.

John McCain made some similar statements and additional history revision on Sean Hannity's show last week.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 887

PLAYS: 1338

( . . and then the screens went dark.)

The final few days of the Democracy movement in Tiananamen Square. After seven weeks, it ended quickly with a death toll still disputed but varying from 300 to 20,000. The crackdown came, the organizers and sympathizers were located, rounded up and imprisoned or executed and China tried desperately to pretend it never happened and hoped everyone would forget.

Twenty years later, they're still trying.

A postscript: Right after publishing this entry I got a note from John Amato pointing me in the direction of a Chinese-American guest blogger who covered for her students after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. I urge you to check it out. G.S.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 136

PLAYS: 21

(Not thrilled to be there)

As the numbers swelled into the hundreds of thousands, the political tug-of-war continued. The students called off their hunger strike and rumors were everywhere. Deng Xiao Peng fell in step with the hardliners and pledged to break up the demonstration by sending in troops at dawn on the 21st if the student leaders didn't quit.

Dawn came and went and the PLA were still outside the city limits of Beijing, reluctant to move against the students, with thousands of students swarming to meet the troops pleading with them to join them. The waiting game was in full gear.

Here are clips from May 19-21, with reports and speculation flooding the airwaves.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 1023

PLAYS: 707

(It seemed like a great idea at the time)

Twenty years ago this month, hot on the heels of Glasnost and Perestroika within the Soviet Union, Chinese students tried for the same thing - a reform of government, an idealogical shift from hardline Mao-styled Communism to a more democratic approach, a relaxing of rigid policies and a free exchange of ideas and enterprise.

It was a little like a movement in the former Czechoslovakia twenty years before that. Prague Spring in 1968 and the liberal experiment of Alexander Dubcek. The climate in the Soviet Union was different that time, and the movement was quickly extinguished.

But it was thought since the mood had changed so much in the Soviet Union in those twenty years, why couldn't the mood change in China as well?

Lofty expectation but sadly, no. Or not in 1989 anyway.

Here are some clips from May 13-15 1989. As the confrontation wears on into June, I will add those to give some sort of timeline sense to the events that took place.