Tiananmen Square

[_The Nehor]

Nehor, a tragedy could be man-caused or it could be just a natural disaster, like a tornado strike on a town, or a tsunami. Tragedy usually, to most people, has some kind of connotation of natural and accidentalness to it. A massacre, on the other hand, is specifically man-perpetrated. Calling it a "tragedy" and not a "massacre" specifically lessens the connotations the usual name for the event carries. This lessening of the connotations is a form of denial. Don't try to hide behind the dictionary though, please - you know exactly what I'm talking about, and know that this point is meaningful.

I actually don't. The first words out of my mouth when tearfully watching the first tower fall on 9/11 was, "What a tragedy." I promise you I did not think it was an accident and knew it was done by men. When reading a newspaper about an abducted and murdered child I remember shaking my head and thinking, "Tragic." I use that word often in that context.

So, in answer, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Apparantly, I'm not alone. Here's a few snippets I found in a Google search:

"I am Jewish. I converted in 1978 after studying at the University of Judaism one year before marrying a Jewish man. I belong to a temple where my daughter attends religious school. I love the Jewish religion and I admire the Jewish community. In no way do I want to diminish the enormous magnitude of the victimization and murder of the 5,860,000 Jewish people. The Jews were singled out by the Nazis for total extermination -- a significant fact that I do not repudiate, nor want to diminish in any way. The Jewish people have done an extraordinary job of making the younger generation around the world aware of their persecution and the immense tragedy of the Holocaust." http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/

"The problem is, the argument that non-theists such as myself make regarding the tragedy of these deaths, isn't one easily absolved by lowering the body count. Saying that the terrors behind the Inquisition "wasn't that bad" because "only" 25,000 people were killed in Germany or that the population of the Duchy of Lichenstein was "only" reduced by 10% instead of far higher numbers misses the point. And mounting an argument, as several of those sited do, that Church backed investigations into heresy and witchcraft accusations was better because the Church was "less" likely to use torture . The critique, the point, the crime non-theists point to existed the moment the first person was singled out for an accusation." http://voxday.blogspot.com/2004/06/shif ... ument.html

"According to The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, "On October 30, 1838, segments of the Missouri militia attacked a settlement of Latter-day Saints at Jacob Haun's mill, located on Shoal Creek in eastern Caldwell County, Missouri. Because the attack was unprovoked in a time of truce, had no specific authorization, and was made by a vastly superior force with unusual brutality, it has come to be known as 'The Haun's Mill Massacre.'............It is important to note that the tragedy at Haun's Mill could have been avoided if the settlers there had followed the counsel they received from the prophet of the Lord. The Prophet Joseph Smith explained:"

I hope you're not thinking that the writer of this story was at one point calling Haun's Mill a Massacre and then later calling it a tragedy to minimize it.

[Guest]

Deleted

[_Coggins7]

Nehor, while it was also a tragedy, it was a massacre. How anyone can refuse to call it a massacre is beyond me. GBH may well refer to it as the "Tragedy at Mountain Meadows", but all that does is downplay the significance of it, ignore the fact that it was a massacre, and put it on par with some natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. To the extent that GBH and the current leadership cannot, or will not allow themselves to describe as it was, ie: a massacre, they are hiding being some kind of shield of denial.

Note, none of what I said in the preceding paragraph implies in any way, shape, or form that GBH would be accepting some kind of culpability on behalf of the church for the massacre. Calling it a massacre only acknowledges the fundemental nature of the event, which was a massacre, and does not imply anything at all about who is culpable for it. That they won't even acknowledge the nature of it as a massacre smacks of institutional denial.

Yup, it was a massacre, and when you or anybody produces a shred of remotely plausible historical evidence that Brigham Young or the Church had anything whatever to do with it, you'll have a point to make here. Until then, and as no one has yet produced anything that competent LDS scholarship hasn't sent to the bottom over and over again, we will just go around and around this sugar bowl again and again I suppose.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

Westerners always use Tiananmen as an example of Chinese barbarity but actually Deng Xiao Ping, the Chairman at the time, was forced to react strongly to the student dissadents. With a population of over a billion, rampant government corrupt, an instable economy, and a confused society the leaders had to react swiftly against the students in order to maintain a peaceful society. Of course they were rather violent in dealing with the protesting students but Democracy will not work in China. It never has and it never will - China is a collective society and it has been that way for 5,000 years. Sure, the Communists now are more strict about the media, free speech etc but people are content with the quality of the lives.

Tiananmen is more an example of what measures a government will take to keep its society in order and balance. Mormonism is a small subculture of corrupt leaders who "crush" the opposition through social ostracism, verbal abuse and manipulation.

I just have no idea where to start dismantling this septic mass. Now Mormondiscussions.com is featuring an apologist for a Communist dictatorship's murderous military assault upon unarmed, peaceful student protesters; shooting randomly into crowds and running down fleeing students with MBTs.

Note to the author of this piece: Deng Xiao Ping, whatever his pragmatic economic reforms, was a Communist. As such, he was an authoritarian despot for whom the democracy protests of that era were threatening beyond description. There was another option he could have taken at the time, and that was to just give the people what they wanted: political, speech, religious, and individual liberty. But this, of course, would have meant the end and delegitimization of everything Mao and Deng and their comrades had done and believed in since before WWII. It would have meant ceding control of the lives of the Chinese people to those people and to democratic institutions and taking it out of the hands of the Chinese politburo.

What happened at Tienanmen was nothing more than typical for a Communist regime. The same thing happened in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, only in those cases, those countries were invaded by their slave masters. In our case, the slave masters were indigenous to the country and used their own military.

We've heard this kind of stooging for Communist dictators before. Many did it for Stalin, and a number continue to do it for Castro, Chavez, and now, for the Butcher of Beijing. I'd like to see this individual tell Harry Wu this stuff to his face.

His shilling for Communist barbarity and despotism and his claims that the Chinese are happy in their collectivist police state is utterly classic, textbook Cold War era fellow traveling. This is the kind mind stopping ignorance and glassy eyed rationalizing that it takes long and careful cultivation to bring to maturity. What he fails to tell us is, of course, that no one ever asked the Chinese people about it. There is only one political party in China. It he thinks Deng had no choice but to unleash his military on masses of unarmed, peaceful protesters, I wonder what his explanation for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution might be. The Communists stand at present as the world's greatest mass murderers in pursuit of gknowlten's peaceful society, and that number is now approaching 70 million. Deng was there with Mao through it all, he was an old cadre and revolutionary and was part of that ruling class through Mao's reign.

The claims that China is a "collective" society (whatever this means) and that democracy will not work there are as baseless as claims made for other societies by those who wish to white wash and excuse despotism. Hmmm. Democracy won't work in China, and yet, uhh....let's see, there was Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Majority Chinese societies constructed by ethnic Chinese, all of whom had come from the mainland at one point or another. Would anyone have thought, at the end of the nineteenth century, or even better, in 1945, that democracy would ever work in Japan?


This place is becoming a clearing house for the mentally and morally infirm. Next we'll have alien abduction stories. Just give it time.

[_Coggins7]

Tiananmen is more an example of what measures a government will take to keep its society in order and balance. Mormonism is a small subculture of corrupt leaders who "crush" the opposition through social ostracism, verbal abuse and manipulation.

He then follows up his whitewash of Chinese Fascist collectivism with this rollicking lie fest. You know, the Internet is like a big, global asylum that the inmates, although they don't get to run, do have collective bargaining rights.

I'm going to lose my burritos.

[_Sethbag]

Yup, it was a massacre, and when you or anybody produces a shred of remotely plausible historical evidence that Brigham Young or the Church had anything whatever to do with it, you'll have a point to make here. Until then, and as no one has yet produced anything that competent LDS scholarship hasn't sent to the bottom over and over again, we will just go around and around this sugar bowl again and again I suppose.

Coggins, you're missing my whole point. I'm not implying in the post you are replying to that BY had anything to do with it. I'm not asserting that the LDS church bears any culpability for it. I'm not pinning blame on anyone in particular. All those questions are questions for other threads.

What I am saying in the post you replied to is that GBH and the church are wrong in trying to rename this incident the "Tragedy at Mountain Meadows" rather than the "Mountain Meadows Massacre". By doing so, they are minimizing it to a degree by taking the focus off the fact that it was something perpetrated by human beings, and using a term that can be used to describe any really unfortunate event, be it caused by nature or whatever. What does "Tragedy at Mountain Meadows" mean? That the Fancher Party got caught in a blizzard and all froze to death? That they got hit by a tornado and lost half their wagons? That one of the wagon drivers was drunk and crashed his wagon into some others causing a big pileup that killed 6 people?

Why does the LDS Church feel this need to minimize or dilute the impact of the event by changing its name into something less specifically perpetrated by human beings against other human beings? It's this that I think is a form of denial.

[_Coggins7]

I don't think that's what they're trying to do. The MMM carries with it a whole plethora of anti-Mormon polemical connotations, and that's probably what they're trying to get away from. Its a matter of PR, I understand. I have no problem with MMM myself. That's been the traditional name and when a group of fanatics takes the law into their own hands and kills a bunch of people, that's a massacre.

I guess I don't have any dog in this fight, for all intents and purposes, except that I don't think there is anything sneaky or devious in what the Church is doing.

[Guest]

Deleted

[_Sethbag]

I don't think that's what they're trying to do. The MMM carries with it a whole plethora of anti-Mormon polemical connotations, and that's probably what they're trying to get away from. Its a matter of PR, I understand. I have no problem with MMM myself. That's been the traditional name and when a group of fanatics takes the law into their own hands and kills a bunch of people, that's a massacre.

I guess I don't have any dog in this fight, for all intents and purposes, except that I don't think there is anything sneaky or devious in what the Church is doing.

Ok, I think an agreement that this is a PR move is sufficient for at least my own posts in this thread. I don't want to drag this thing out in some kind of Sethbag vs Coggins deathmatch or anything like that. I guess the next question is, however, why does the Church feel the need to modify the discussion of the MMM with this PR move of changing the name? I am *not* arguing that their doing so implies guilt, so let's nip the response to that one in the bud. However it is odd that they feel the need to do it.

[_Coggins7]

Just because a person is "Communist" doesn't mean they are inferior or demonic. Deng Xiao Ping reformed China from a backwards mess into a capitalist orientated economy. Of course he was very brutal in dealing with the students at Tian An Me; nobody's arguing with that. However, almost every single mainland Chinese person I met in my many years of living in China espressed their respect for his economic and social policies. I am not sure if you are aware, but Deng Xiao Ping was banned and imprisoned because of his evil "Westernized" ways while Chairman Mao was alive. It wasn't until Mao

and all the other blood thirsty revolutionists realized that their country was going down the drain that they begged him to come back and reform their country. He laid the foundation for China's integration with the West.

I'm glad you think that a man who ordered the massacre of hundreds of peacefully demonstrating students was neither inferior or demonic. I perceive those actions to be indicative of both. Keep in mind as well that Deng oversaw a nation wide system of Lao Gai (gulags) for the politically incorrect (as well as some actual criminals). Indeed, China is one of the last places on earth, outside of some Muslim and African countries, where chattel slavery still survives as an economic and political phenomena. Of course, in China, the state owns you when your in Lao Gai, not private individuals.

Yeah, Deng was just one of the boys.

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There was another option he could have taken at the time, and that was to just give the people what they wanted: political, speech, religious, and individual liberty

You obviously are ignorant of 5000 years of Chinese history. From Chinese History Professors to students, they all agree on the same thing: China is such a complex and diverse country that it is almost impossible to guarentee Western like ideals of individual customized liberty. China has been suffering from dictators since the Qin Dynasty and everybody knows it.

First, what Chinese history professors? I'd like a nice roster of professors from non-mainland countries please, countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Europe, who all agree liberal democracy cannot work in China and that the only alternative therefore, is a police state.

Chinese people are free to express their ideas in public but not in writing.

In other words, there is no press or speech freedom in this country of any substance. You can whisper your opinions to your friends, but don't broadcast it publically,

I often held public debates and classes where I openly critizied communist leaders and policies but nobody cared! Everybody agreed with me! If I was to put my opinions in writing and publish them then I would be in trouble (Not like America's Post 911 current political state). Chinese people are free to attend religious ceremonies as they wish - many of my students were Christian. I often discussed the Bible and religion in my class.

All I can say regarding this gold plated, bold faced lie is that it makes me nauseas. The vigorous and many times brutal persecution of Christians (and Buddhists, even the Shaolin Temple doesn't get off the hook. Indeed, several years ago the present grandmaster of the Song Shan Temple was spirited out of the country by friends to escape persecution by the government for being a pain in the ass of some kind) in China has been so well known for so long now that this attempt at sugar coating is quite simply beyond the pall. I've come face to face with something here but I really don't quite know what yet.

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What happened at Tienanmen was nothing more than typical for a Communist regime. The same thing happened in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, only in those cases, those countries were invaded by their slave masters. In our case, the slave masters were indigenous to the country and used their own military.

Actually the Communists have done much worse, but no worse than other political groups.

And your point is?


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We've heard this kind of stooging for Communist dictators before. Many did it for Stalin, and a number continue to do it for Castro, Chavez, and now, for the Butcher of Beijing. I'd like to see this individual tell Harry Wu this stuff to his face.

I am very aware and familiar with Harry Wu's work. He is a brave individual who is fighting for social justice in China. In China there is no social justice, ie, justice favors the rich (like America).

Oh, I see. You support Deng's slaughter of hundreds of peaceful teenagers and young adults and then his relentless pursuit and imprisonment of pro-Democracy leaders (which is why Wu left the country), and you also support the people he slaughtered and imprisoned. I see.

I also see you are a leftist as I suspected, which comes as little surprise.

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His shilling for Communist barbarity and despotism and his claims that the Chinese are happy in their collectivist police state is utterly classic, textbook Cold War era fellow traveling. This is the kind mind stopping ignorance and glassy eyed rationalizing that it takes long and careful cultivation to bring to maturity. What he fails to tell us is, of course, that no one ever asked the Chinese people about it.

Actually many people have been asking the Chinese people about their feelings. My family is Chinese, my friends are Chinese, all of my students were Chinese, my patients were Chinese, and everybody I met in China were Chinese. Chinese people are content with their lives because they don't waste their time worrying about what they can't change. Of course if I said that everybody was smiling and happy (like in classic Culture R. poster) it would be ridiculous. Chinese people hate their government but accept it. They worry more about raising their children, having a steady job, and keeping healthy.

Anyone who believes a word of this will also believe everything ever written by Walter Duranty, Ezra Pound, Corliss Lamont, Noam Chomski, and any number of apologists for Socialist tyranny during the last century and this new one who drank the Potemkin cool aid and took the plunge.


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There is only one political party in China. It he thinks Deng had no choice but to unleash his military on masses of unarmed, peaceful protesters, I wonder what his explanation for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution might be.

The Great Leap forward was spearheaded by other ignorant Communists. The Cultural Revolution was Mao's idea to retain political power. They are separate but all equally devastating events.

My question was not about the origin of Mao's mass land collectivization program, but how you would explain the 20 to 43 million people who died in it, vis-a-vis the excuses you made for Deng's killing of some hundreds (as Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic).


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The Communists stand at present as the world's greatest mass murderers in pursuit of gknowlten's peaceful society, and that number is now approaching 60 million. Deng was there with Mao through it all, he was an old cadre and revolutionary and was part of that ruling class through Mao's reign.

No arguments there - Communism overtly does what Democracy covertly does as a political institution. You have forgot about Jiang Jie Shi (Jiang Kai Shek) who killed most of the Chinese with his Nationalist Party before they fled to Taiwan.

You're first comment is unintelligible (although the aforementioned Dr. Chomski would probably understand it). You mean to tell me that the 2,335,000 Chinese killed by the Guomindang during the Chinese civil war compares with the 60 to 70 million killed by the Communists in their search for social justice?


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The claims that China is a "collective" society (whatever this means) and that democracy will not work there are as baseless as claims made for other societies by those who wish to white wash and excuse despotism. Hmmm. Democracy won't work in China, and yet, uhh....let's see, there was Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Majority Chinese societies constructed by ethnic Chinese, all of whom had come from the mainland at one point or another. Would anyone have thought, at the end of the nineteenth century, or even better, in 1945, that democracy would ever work in Japan?

"Collective society" is a sociological term for societies that are collective based, not like individualistic societies like America. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore are small controllable areas where democracy flourishes because of course, they are small and controllable. Japan and Germany did well as democracy's because they are homogenous cultures confined within a small geographical area. America forcefully integrated economic policies so of course they eventually become democratic. Countries, like those in the Middle East, are not culturally and socially homogenous so Democracy doesn't work there either.

Besides your definition being circular and explaining nothing, economic policy has nothing to do with America's success as a Republic. There is no inherent reason why China, with is many subcultures and minorities, could not exist peacefully, side by side, in a democratic state based in the concepts of the rule of law and equality under the law, with an understanding that each is free to live his life basically as he sees fit as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others to do so. Its interesting that you frame the problem of a democratic society in terms governmental control of the population and not in terms of a self governing society in which hetrogenous peoples can exist together in peace through the acceptance of a political contract defining the boundaries, based in the rule of law, between themselves and others.


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This place is becoming a clearing house for the mentally and morally infirm. Next we'll have alien abduction stories. Just give it time.



I can't wait for that to happen. But seriously, you are very educated and correct in your views about the negative effects of Communism but you lack social and cultural understanding of China.

Frankly, and in all seriousness, even though you say you've lived there, I don't really think you have all that much understanding about Chinese culture either, at least not historical Chinese culture. Your entire perspective is of modern, post Maoist China, a China in which people think twice before being seen with a Bible in public, think twice before writing poetry, history, or philosophy some bureaucrat may not like, are told how many children they can have on pain of docked pay, loss of job, and the elimination of any chance for higher education in the future for that child, can be sent to a forced labor camp for practicing their religion or publishing politically incorrect ideas on any number of subjects, can be subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations if found with child beyond the prescribed one, can be imprisoned, tortured and beaten for religious proselytizing etc, etc, etc.

Much of Harry Wu's work here, in fact, has been alerting America and the world to the Lao Gai system in China, as system even the Russians abandoned at least at the falling of the Berlin Wall. A Potemkin village tour is one thing. Living in one is another.