Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Visit to Syria

Syria is on the United States government's official list of state sponsors of terror. It has killed political leaders in Lebanon and virtually controls that country. It has infiltrated both arms and men into Iraq to kill American and Iraqi soldiers and terrorize the Iraqi citizenry. The current Syrian state's governmental structure was founded in emulation of Hitler's Germany.

Nancy Pelosi plans to visit Syria next week as part of a tour of the middle east. That comes after Democratic senators John Kerry, Christopher Dodd, and Bill Nelson also dropped by recently to pay their respects. Sen. Nelson even announced that he believed President Bashir Asad could be a help in stabilizing things in the region.

This is appeasement.

There are some Democrats in congress who see Syria for the evil regime that it is and who would never make a goodwill trip there but far more common are those like the above. They are cozying up to an enemy of the nation that they serve. This is Public Occurrences.

Logo Merchandise

LOGO MERCHANDISE

We have gotten several

compliments from

readers on the new logo

and inquiries from a

few if merchandise--

t-shirts, polo shirts,

mugs--with it is for sale.

Those who are interested

if you would please email

us at publocc@gmail.com

and let us know what kind

of item you would prefer and

what a fair price would be we

will look into it further.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun

China's Great Wall of Silence:

The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun

"Rumors"

During the Cultural Revolution when Chinese leaders wanted to dismiss the truth of a matter they would use one word recurrently: "rumors." For example, in 1966 when Lin Biao gave a note to each member of the Politburo dismissing Yan Weibing's letters impugning the chastity of Lin's wife (which unchasteness was widely known to be true) he wrote,

"Yan Weibing's counterrevolutionary letters contain nothing but rumors."

It's an interesting circumlocution. Not "lies" but rumors. A lie is a proven falsehood or a characterization that the user is willing to prove to be false. A rumor is a statement that appears to have some basis in fact but is not proven to be true or untrue. The basis for the factual assertion in a "rumor" is never established. Therefore the use of the word "rumor" instead of "lie" allows the author/speaker to dismiss the truth without explicitly denying it.

The same circumlocution is found in the words of some of those writing or speaking about the C.R. today.

Here is Yan Song in Morning Sun:

"I didn't take part in smashing the Four Olds or the house searches but rumors were everywhere."
.......

"Rumors about me reached the village before I arrived. Song Be Militant is coming to settle here, the one who burns, loots and rapes."
......

If my name [binbin] hadn't meant gentle Mao wouldn't have said better to be militant and then there wouldn't have been all these rumors."

And here is Dr. Weili Le in her article The Death Of Bian Zhongyun which as easily could be titled My Attempt to Exonerate My Friend and Fellow Former Red Guard Yan Song:

"As the Red Guards quickly acquired the reputation as tormentors of innocent people in the subsequent anti-four-olds campaign, rumors about Song killing numerous individuals began to circulate."
...

"During the Great Link-Up in the fall of 1966 my classmates and I saw a leaflet...which said that Song was responsible for a number of deaths...None of us believed such rumors then."

Of course the mere use of the word "rumors" is not evidence of anyone's guilt but it is suspicious verbiage made more suspicious by its linkage to the words used by CCP officials then. It also casts more doubt on the words of Yan and Dr. Weili. Listened to in their entirety Yan's statements on Morning Sun sound ludicrous. Read in its entirety Dr. Weili's defense of Yan and her entire article are gravely flawed as serious scholarship, made more so by all of these "rumors."

This is Public Occurrences.

Anyone with information on those responsible for the torture and murder of Bian Zhongyun please contact publocc@gmail.com.

Stuart Pearce is Done

Stuart Pearce is Done

Manchester City and England's Under-21 manager Stuart Pearce will be fired by Man City.

The final straw will be today's announcement that Pearce had played a larger-than-expected role in England Under-21's weekend friendly against Italy.

Pearce took the Under-21 job without telling his City employers before hand. When they found out they were concerned that the national job would take Pearce's time and focus away from his responsibilities to City.

The FA and City worked out a contract that allowed Pearce to manage his first national match but then no more until the Premiership season was over. Whether Pearce's involvement in the Italy match violated the letter of that agreement, it will prove to be the action that leads City to fire him.

This incident comes just two days after City's Italian striker, and Pearce signee, Bernardo Corradi stated that Pearce does not prepare the squad properly and that his first year with the team has been a "nightmare."

That came after former captain Sylvain Distin publicly disagreed with his replacement, Richard Dunne's, public statement that certain unnamed players were not performing up to their abilities.

All of this comes in the midst of a slide that has put City in some little fear of relegation and that comes in the midst of chairman John Wardle's efforts to sell the club to a rich, reportedly American, group that would inject much-needed cash into the club's transfer budget.

And all of that comes in a year where it is absolutely, positively, critical that City stay in the Premiership to reap the benefits of the cash windfall that will come next year with the beginning of the Premiership's new television contract.

I admire Stuart Pearce, and fervently wished him success for his sake and more so for Man City's. Alas.

I am Mike Diaz, and I'm glad that I'm not Stuart Pearce.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun

China's Great Wall of Silence:

The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun.


Carma Hinton's "Interview" of Song Binbin*


Carma Hinton says it took her three years to convince Yan Song (nee Song Binbin) to appear in and be interviewed for Hinton's movie Morning Sun.

One would never think that words as common as "appear" and "interview" would need explanation as terms of art but with Dr. Hinton they do.

As mentioned in an earlier article here Yan Song "appears" in Morning Sun back lit so that her face is not revealed. This is the technique used for example for those who inform on the Mafia. There is no explanation given for why this extraordinary
measure was needed for Yan.

Nor is the common meaning of "interview" appropriate as used by Dr. Hinton, who now teaches at a Virginia commuter school. None of her questions appear on Morning Sun and especially as regards Yan Song there is no evidence that Dr. Hinton is acquainted with the concept of "follow-up questions" or even follow-up information. Yan is just allowed to talk, to say whatever she wants to say.

So after three years of convincing this is what Dr. Hinton got for her efforts. The first quote is Yan's account of the pinning of the Red Guard armband on Mao:

"The Red Guards were all excited. They went around putting armbands on party leaders. Someone said 'Binbin why not give one to Chairman Mao.' So I went up to him."

Now if we didn't know our history we would assume that Song was not a member of the Red Guards. If Song was a member of the Red Guards she would have used the inclusive "we." She doesn't so she must not have been a Red Guard, right? Wrong. Song was indeed a Red Guard and momentarily was to become the worldwide face of the Red Guards.

So too does Song seem to differentiate herself as one who was not "all excited." It was the Red Guards who were excited not, she seems to say, her. Unfortunately, immediately after this statement from Yan Dr. Hinton's film cuts to archival footage of Song pinning Mao and shows them talking immediately afterwards. Song is beaming and is so excited she is jumping up and down as if she can't hold her water much longer.

The way Yan tells it she was something like a Forrest Gump up there with Mao: "Someone said 'Binbin why not give one to Chairman Mao. So I went up to him." Did that happen very often, someone just going up to Mao and do something physical to him?

That is ludicrous. This was a "signal honor"** that had been bestowed upon Song, not an accidental encounter.

The next quote refers to the conversation with Mao. Mao asked her if her given name meant "educated and gentle," Song said that it did and Mao then said that she should have a "more martial" name. Thus Song Yaowu (Be Militant) was born:

"I was very naive and took it to be a casual remark. But an article soon appeared in the newspaper with the title 'I put a Red Armband on Chairman Mao.' It was written in the first person and signed Song Yaowu with my name Song Binbin in brackets. I couldn't believe the press would fabricate a new name for me and put words in my mouth for their propaganda purposes."

She "took it to be a casual remark?" If this was a 60 Minutes interview (in the commonly understood sense of the word) at this point the camera would pan to Mike Wallace arching his eyebrows in disbelief.

Mike: "Ms. Song, have you had a ct-scan recently? You took it as a casual remark, like, 'Oh, you know that Mao, such a cut-up?' Weren't Mao's words, ma'am, taken to be gospel, as it were, at the time?"

"TAKEN AS A CASUAL REMARK? Violence had already occurred at your school and now the Great Helmsman himself is suggesting that you change your name to 'Be Militant' and you didn't think he was serious?"

"TAKEN AS A CASUAL REMARK! THE NAME OF YOUR SCHOOL WAS CHANGED TO THE 'BE MILITANT MIDDLE SCHOOL!'"

Yan: Carma Hinton believed me.

Nor was Song "very naive." She was 19 years old, not 13; she was the daughter of a party official; she was attending the most elite girls school in Beijing if not all of China; and she was the authority in her school at the time. Thirteen days earlier, it had been she who made the official notification to the Beijing municipal authorities that Bian, her vice-principal, had been murdered. Violence had been going on in the school for at least two months: Bian had been beaten in June so Song was not "naive" as to violence either.

Yan: "I couldn't believe the press would fabricate a new name for me and put words in my mouth for propaganda needs."

I have watched Morning Sun three times now and I can never get past this point without laughing. There are three things that Yan is trying to foist upon naive viewers here.

First, is that it was the press who gave her the name Yaowu, just "fabricated" it out of whole cloth. Minutes earlier in Morning Sun Yan ADMITTED that the name was suggested to her by Mao. This time at least People's Daily didn't fabricated anything. They got the facts exactly right.

Second, is that she did not write that article in the People's Daily. Now we are not so naive as to believe that everything penned in the People's Daily was true back then. However, there is compelling if not conclusive evidence that she did write the article: She DID pin Mao. We have the film evidence of that, and she DOES admit in Morning Sun that the conversation with Mao did in fact take place. So Mao did suggest that her given name should be changed to something more martial and then two days later there's a front-page article in the paper on the pinning and the name change and she had no idea? Possible: somebody else heard it/was told about it, and wrote it "in the first person" without Song's knowledge. More PROBABLE, the circumstantial evidence suggests, is that Song was the author. UNBELIEVABLE is Song's protest that the article was written without her approval, even if post-facto.

But then there's her statement about her naivete that the press would do what she accuses it of doing. She was "shocked, SHOCKED!" that such a thing could occur IN MAOIST CHINA? And Carma "Mike Wallace" Hinton let her say that without follow-up?

Yan continues: "My name didn't belong to me anymore. I had to change it so my friends helped me find a new single-syllable name by randomly picking a word out of a dictionary."

Indeed. One can see this poignant scene clearly:

Song: "Comrades my name has been changed by the evil communist propaganda lackeys at People's Daily!"

Her comrades: "Fear not Educated and Gentle, we will help you pick a new name! See here, comrade Rouge Guarde #236, happens to have a dictionary! Eenie-meenie, minee, moe, pick a new name and don't let go. A ha! here is 'yan' in said dictionary. Henceforth child, thouest shall be known as Yan (the 'stone', 'rock') Song!"

Song: "Oh thank you comrades!" (sobbing).

Later on Dr. Hinton's expose turns to some of the other "excesses" of the Cultural Revolution, and her three years of negotiations with Yan produce this bit of self-absolution:

"I didn't take part in smashing the four-olds or the house searches but rumors wereeverywhere: 'Song Be-Militant, the one who put the Red Guard armband on Mao, who brutally beat people up.' I was very upset because I had been always against violence."

Maybe it's true... As we have said here, we have no EVIDENCE at this point that Song "brutally beat people up." But there is a responsibility, we would submit, that Dr. Hinton has if she is an honest and truth-seeking scholar to tell us what Yan knows about WHO DID DO THE BEATINGS rather than just accept her statements of self-absolution. To do otherwise is to tell the story of the Six Million without telling us about the Nazis.

"Red Guards from other schools would come to check me out. 'You're the one? You're not what we expected.' I didn't fit their idea of a Revolutionary. My name and my image were hijacked. I had lost control of my identity. I was furious but I was also sad that people suffered because of what that name stood for."

It is clear from this that Yan continued to be known as Song Yaowu for some time. She does not say here in Morning Sun that she told these inquiring Red Guards from other schools that it was all untrue, that the press had given her this name against her will.

If her name and image had been "hijacked" why didn't she tell people right then and there that her name was not Song Yaowu and that she had never committed any of the violence attributed to her. Why didn't she tell Carma Hinton this in Morning Sun? Why didn't Dr. Hinton ask?

"When I first joined the Cultural Revolution I thought we were going to repudiate bourgeois policies in education but it turned into something altogether different."

This is absolutely untrue. Temporally, although there had been sporadic violence in the schools that summer it was not clear to what extent Mao sanctioned it. Yan's pinning of Mao represented the official sanctioning of the Red Guard violence.

Second, Yan seems to imply that the Cultural Revolution was initially something like a curriculum or textbook battle and then things somehow went awry. Totally untrue. The Cultural Revolution in the schools was precisely about students taking control of the schools from the teachers, and denouncing and beating them. Bian had been beaten in June, she had been beaten on August 4, she and four other school officials were beaten again on August 5, this time resulting in Bian's murder. Yan was one of the student leaders at the school at that time. She knew that the Cultural Revolution in the schools meant student violence against teachers.

If Yan thought that the movement was about teaching reform then why, after knowing that Bian had been murdered on her watch at her own school, was she still a Red Guard on August 18 when she so giddily pinned the armband onto Mao? And why didn't Dr. Hinton ask her?

The following quote concerns Yan's experience as a volunteer in the countryside:

"Rumors about me reached the village before I arrived. 'Song Be-Militant is coming to settle here, the one who burns, loots and rapes.' The villagers were afraid and they didn't want me there but by working hard with them I was able to gain their acceptance and they came to treat me with great kindness."

RAPES?

This interrogation of Song by Dr. Hinton is accompanied by photographic reinforcements: a photo of Song tossing a bale of hay on a farm, a photograph of Song posing lovingly with a calf, a photo of Song posing lovingly with a sheep. Apparently there was no photograph of Song with a teddy-bear available.

"My father named me Binbin because he wanted a daughter who was gentle and refined and I was indeed like that. If my name hadn't meant gentle Mao wouldn't have said 'better to be militant' and there wouldn't have been all these rumors. The name Song Be-Militant is totally against my beliefs. It's sad how history could have played such a bad joke."

More rumors, all rumors. See it was actually her father NAMING her Binbin that caused her difficulties. And history has just played a "bad joke" on her. Maybe it's true but Yan's denials are so total that they do not sound credible TO ME. One step in finding out however would be if Song agreed to a real interview. Carma Hinton, did not do that.

Morning Sun is not scholarship, it is not documentary, it is not history, it is propaganda.

This is Public Occurrences.

*Dr. Hinton was sent a draft of this post before publication and offered the opportunity to suggest corrections or write a rebuttal. She responded with silence.


**Chang and Halliday, Mao The Unknown Story.

Anyone with information on the identities of those responsible for the torture and murder of Bian Zhongyun please email publocc@gmail.com. Anyone with a photograph of Song Binbin with a teddy-bear please email Carma Hinton at chinton@gmu.edu.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun.

China's Great Wall of Silence:



The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun.



Dr. Weili Ye*

Weili Ye is a former Red Guard and

student at the Girls Middle School. She says, and

we have no reason to doubt her at this point on this,

that she was absent for the part of August 5 that

included the parading of Bian out into the school-

yard and the torture and murder. She says that she

returned only after Bian had been murdered.


She doesn't say where she was, who she was with

or what she was doing in the interim.



Ye is now a professor at a second-tier American

academic institution, the University of

Massachusetts at Boston. She has written a

memoir with a fellow Red Guard called Growing

Up in The People's Republic. In it she writes

seemingly sincerely about how the death of

"Aunt Bian" effected her then and now. She has

also written what is the most detailed

account of that day that we have come across,

The Death Of Bian Zhongyun, in the journal

The Chinese Historical Review, Fall 2006. The

latter coincided with the fortieth anniversary of

the torture/murder. The last sentence in the

article says that it "is a tribute to Bian, leader of

my secondary school, mother of four, and one

of the first sacrifices to the Cultural Revolution."

To complete this account of Dr. Ye's emotional

affect she also spoke with apparent feeling on the

subject in Morning Sun.



As to the substance of what Dr. Ye has written

she states that "The physical torture took place in

broad daylight..."

So there must have been lots of witnesses!

In fact she states that she spoke to "over twenty

schoolmates" including "A NUMBER OF STUDENTS

FROM THE CLASS IN FIRST YEAR SENIOR HIGH

THAT INITIATED THE AUGUST 5 EVENT."(emphasis

added)

HERE WE HAVE IT! A COURAGEOUS CHINESE-

AMERICAN SCHOLAR HAS GOTTEN THE TRUTH

FROM EYE-WITNESSES AND IS GOING TO TELL

ALL IN THE NAME OF VERITAS AND HISTORY!



Right? Wrong. The names of almost all who she

interviewed are unidentified. Further, what

THEY said is summarized by Dr. Weili, there

are few direct quotes. FURTHER, Dr. Ye

does not even summarize WHO if anybody

they said participated in the torture/ murder.



This is academic mush. More, it is deliberate

obfuscation.



Dr. Ye devotes a separate section of her

article to "Song Binbin and the CR Mythology."

She continues to use the name that Song went

under forty years ago, calling her neither by her

nom de guerre Song Yaowu ("the militant"), or

her current name Yan ("the stone") Song.


She absolves Yan Song of any responsibility:

"Of the nine former classmates I interviewed

in recent years, no one saw Song Binbin

(Yan Song) participate in the beating or other

forms of physical torturing during the entire

episode, or heard about Song's (Yan's) participation."

She continues "Both Song Binbin (Yan Song) and

Chen Xiaolu...were INNOCENT (emphasis added)

of committing any violent acts.."

Great, Yan's innocent! So who did your nine

former classmates say did the beating, Dr. Ye?

Silence.



She says "Based on my many interviews of

the students and teachers of the school I

believe it is possible to identify the initiators

of that day's event." YES, here it comes a

courageous stroke for truth, justice and

the Chinese-American way!


No. She never says. She never says who

her interviews pointed to or who might

be able to tell us. Silence, China's Great

Wall of Silence.



Dr. Ye says that she interviewed Yan

Song in Beijing on May 12, 2006. By now

the reader knows what to expect. Dr. Weili

never says what Yan said.



What a sham. What a disgrace to American

scholarship that such a eunuch of an article

could get published in a peer-reviewed

scholarly journal, not in China, but in

America.



After Mao Zedong's death and the arrest

of the Gang of Four, Chinese newspapers

simply air- brushed the Gang of Four out

of the mourning photos. Absurdly, the

photos, with a gap as big as a six year-old

missing her two front teeth, were foisted

on the world as if noone would notice.

Weili Ye is following in this great People's

Republic tradition by publishing a sanitized

version of history, a history that showers

apparent sympathy on the victim while

leaving gap-toothed the whole photograph,

with who the victimizers were.

This is Public Occurrences.


*Dr. Ye was sent a draft of this post and
offered the opportunity to suggest any
corrections or to write a rebuttal before
publication. She responded with silence.


Anyone with information on the
identity of those responsible for
Bian Zhongyun's torture and
murder, contact publocc@gmail.com.

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun. Song Binbin Changed Her Name to Yan Song

A different Stone.

Song Binbin got her PhD in geology at M.I.T. in 1989 under the name of "Yan Song." This name is consistent with Song's statement in Morning Sun that after her epiphanic meetign with Mao she changed to a monosyllabic name. Yan's explanation, that her friends simply picked the name randomly out of a dictionary, is still laughable.

The title of Yan's M.I.T. dissertation is The Geochemistry of Cenozoic Basalts and Peridotite Xenoliths from Hannuoba Region, Eastern China: Implication for Their Petrogenesis and Subcontinental Mantle Heterogeneity. "Yan" by the way means "stone" or "rock."

Yan's husband's name is Jin Jiansheng. In May of 2006 Song was interviewed in Beijing by fellow former Red Guard member Weili Ye. It is believed that Yan Song and her husband are living there now. This is Public Occurrences.

Anyone with information on the identities of those responsible for Bian Zhongyun's torture and murder please contact publocc@gmail.com.

On Who Tortured & Murdered

Bian Zhongyun and the Start of

the Chinese Cultural Revolution

May The Gadfly be eternally cursed.


Anyone with information on the identities of the perpetrators of Bian's torture and murder please contact publocc@gmail.com.

On Who Tortured & Murdered Bian Zhongyun: "China's Great Wall of Silence."

On Who Tortured & Murdered

Bian Zhongyun, and the Start

of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

I kidded with my girlfriend that if there was ever a book written on this it should be titled The Hunt for Red August, however with the stonewalling with which I have been met so far in getting evidence on the identity of the perpertrator(s) a better title would be China's Great Wall of Silence. I am Benjamin Harris.

Anyone with information on the identities of those responsible for Bian's torture and murder please contact publocc@gmail.com.