"If you want peace, prepare for war."
Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Roman general.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
On the Islamic Enemy
"...the irreparable and fatal course of hoping and to a certain extent attempting to reach agreement with the Beast, whereas in dealing with apocalyptic beasts there is only one way to safety: unswerving firmness from the first minute to the last."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Thursday, August 16, 2007
On France
At the height of the Silicon Valley transformation of the American economy The Economist published an article about the visit of two French economic officials to see what they could learn and take back to France. Their hopes were high: "How do we create a Silicon Valley in France?," they asked their hosts. "Well, you have to ease your bankruptcy laws which discourage risk-taking entrepreneurs. You have to cut back on your social safety net, you have to make it easier for companies to fire workers, you have to get workers to work harder and longer into life, you have to privatize more and you have to cut back on the union influence." All sage advice, to which the French replied "We can't do that."
America's first and longest-lasting friend is France. Voltaire wrote that the "golden age of which men speak so much and never before has existed" was created in the colony of Pennsylvania. The French ardently supported America's War of Independence and Lafayette remains an American hero. Tocqueville spent nine months travelling the new republic and produced the most astute commentary ever written on the country. The Statue of Liberty was a gift of the French people to America.
More than any other European country France has been protective of its national identity. With Italy and Germany it was once one of the giants of opera in Europe but then resisted the influence of those others in favor of its homegrown version which has long since been eclipsed but exists still in all its idiosyncrasy. Likewise the French have resisted the Americanization of its culture in television, movies, fast food and theme parks.
In world affairs too France has been keen on preserving its independence and this is what has most rankled. De Gaulle, visiting Quebec, impertinently concluded a speech with "Viva a free Quebec!" France was the only NATO member to refuse to be bound by the military decisions of the alliance as a whole. More recently France incensed Americans by opposing the war in Iraq and refusing to participate. It may have broken the European Union, of which it was a founding member, by refusing to ratify the E.U.'s constitution.
France never recovered from World War I. Exhausted and depressed it lost its ambition and will and with them its prominent place in the world. France has never wanted to fight for anything since, not even Paris when Hitler marched in. French, once the language of international diplomacy, has been supplanted there and everywhere by English. The French economy has muddled along burdened by the characteristics mentioned by the Silicon Valley executive and long eclipsed by the American, German, and Japanese. Last year's production problems at Air Bus have become a symbol of French inability to win in the economic big leagues.
The result of all of this however has been the preservation of most things French and for that the world should be thankful. France remains first in attracting world tourism a sure indication that if most people don't want to live there it's still the greatest country to visit. Its slower-paced work life makes for a more relaxed daily pace that is immediately apparent and welcome to visitors from go-go America. We are awed by the art, charmed by the preservation of the architecture, made voracious by its cuisine, calmed by the beauty of the countryside, and seduced by the sound of the language.
France is not in any immediate danger of becoming as irrelevant as once-great powers like Egypt, Greece, and Rome are. There you go only to see the fossils of what once was great. In France you see great history too but in a living, functioning society, not a great nation as it once was but still a major, relevant and vital one, one that has always been distinctive and which, it is hoped, always will remain distinctive. The world doesn't need France to make computer chips. It just needs it to remain France. This is Public Occurrences.
America's first and longest-lasting friend is France. Voltaire wrote that the "golden age of which men speak so much and never before has existed" was created in the colony of Pennsylvania. The French ardently supported America's War of Independence and Lafayette remains an American hero. Tocqueville spent nine months travelling the new republic and produced the most astute commentary ever written on the country. The Statue of Liberty was a gift of the French people to America.
More than any other European country France has been protective of its national identity. With Italy and Germany it was once one of the giants of opera in Europe but then resisted the influence of those others in favor of its homegrown version which has long since been eclipsed but exists still in all its idiosyncrasy. Likewise the French have resisted the Americanization of its culture in television, movies, fast food and theme parks.
In world affairs too France has been keen on preserving its independence and this is what has most rankled. De Gaulle, visiting Quebec, impertinently concluded a speech with "Viva a free Quebec!" France was the only NATO member to refuse to be bound by the military decisions of the alliance as a whole. More recently France incensed Americans by opposing the war in Iraq and refusing to participate. It may have broken the European Union, of which it was a founding member, by refusing to ratify the E.U.'s constitution.
France never recovered from World War I. Exhausted and depressed it lost its ambition and will and with them its prominent place in the world. France has never wanted to fight for anything since, not even Paris when Hitler marched in. French, once the language of international diplomacy, has been supplanted there and everywhere by English. The French economy has muddled along burdened by the characteristics mentioned by the Silicon Valley executive and long eclipsed by the American, German, and Japanese. Last year's production problems at Air Bus have become a symbol of French inability to win in the economic big leagues.
The result of all of this however has been the preservation of most things French and for that the world should be thankful. France remains first in attracting world tourism a sure indication that if most people don't want to live there it's still the greatest country to visit. Its slower-paced work life makes for a more relaxed daily pace that is immediately apparent and welcome to visitors from go-go America. We are awed by the art, charmed by the preservation of the architecture, made voracious by its cuisine, calmed by the beauty of the countryside, and seduced by the sound of the language.
France is not in any immediate danger of becoming as irrelevant as once-great powers like Egypt, Greece, and Rome are. There you go only to see the fossils of what once was great. In France you see great history too but in a living, functioning society, not a great nation as it once was but still a major, relevant and vital one, one that has always been distinctive and which, it is hoped, always will remain distinctive. The world doesn't need France to make computer chips. It just needs it to remain France. This is Public Occurrences.
Friday, August 10, 2007
This is Public Occurrences
"What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any
medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants."
...
"What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor
Ireland, but a Fast-Fish?"
...
"What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish..."
...
"What are the Rights of Man andthe Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish?"
...
"And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish,
too?
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any
medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants."
...
"What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor
Ireland, but a Fast-Fish?"
...
"What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish..."
...
"What are the Rights of Man andthe Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish?"
...
"And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish,
too?
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
The Beginning of the End of Europe
The end of continental Europe's world preeminence began this month in 1914.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun
China's Great Wall of Silence:
The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun.
Yan Song, aka Song Waowu, nee Song Binbin, has "retired" and is living in Beijing.
Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that led to Bian Zongyun's murder please send to PUBLOCC@gmail.com
The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun.
Yan Song, aka Song Waowu, nee Song Binbin, has "retired" and is living in Beijing.
Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that led to Bian Zongyun's murder please send to PUBLOCC@gmail.com
China's Great Wall of Silence, The Murder of Bian Zhongyun. Current Photos of Song Binbin
This is the complete photograph from which the head shot of Yan Song, nee Song Binbin, published below was cropped. Jiang Zemin, former President of the People's Republic of China (1991-2003) and former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (1989-2002) pays his condolences to Song's mother at the funeral for Song's father. Song is in glasses standing between her mother and Jiang. Song's sister is behind the mother. Note the black mourning armbands on Jiang and Song. This is Public Occurrences.
(First published June 9, 2007)
china
China's Great Wall of Silence: American Complicity
Here is a Maoist website based in the United States that glorifies the Red Guard murderers and the entire Chinese Holocaust that was the Cultural Revolution. Last year they had a convention in the Pacific Northwest where they proclaimed the C.R. the greatest movement in mankind's history. I am told that the webmaster is a professor at Duke university.
Why doesn't Google shut this site down?
Why doesn't the U.S. government label this organization what it is, a terrorist group?
www.wengewang.org
Why doesn't Google shut this site down?
Why doesn't the U.S. government label this organization what it is, a terrorist group?
www.wengewang.org
China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun
"Born with a dream, died of a
dream."
-Wang Jingyao, husband of Bian Zhongyun, on what he wants engraved on his cremation box.
China's Great Wall of Silence: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
At right is the late William Hinton, Maoist. Along with Edgar Snow and Anna Louise Strong, Mr. Hinton was one of the most prominent of Mao's useful western fools.
According to his obituary in the Marxist journal Monthly Review, which he did so much to aid and vice-versa, Hinton read Snow's fiction-written-as-nonfiction Red Star Over China and the great man's chronicle "changed his life." It changed his life says Monthly Review "from that of a pacifist to that of a Marxist." The observant will notice M.R.'s dichotomy: pacifist at one end, Marxist on the other.
M.R. was accurate in making that dichotomy, both in general and in Mr. Hinton's case in particular, for the latter praised Maoist murder from the state's founding in 1949 through the Great Leap Forward, which cost perhaps 30,000,000 lives, through the Cultural Revolution, a pup by Mao's body count standards at only perhaps 3,000,000.
In 1972 Hinton wrote Turning Point in China praising the C.R., regretting only that it did not meet all of its goals, and blithely predicting that China would need many more cultural revolutions in the future.
When the Great Henchman died, and Deng Xiaoping began the process of stopping the Chinese Holocaust and putting China on the path to its current astonishing economic recovery, Mr. Hinton wrote an article in the worthy Monthly Review, issuing the most damning accusation he could think of, that Deng had shifted "from the socialist road to the capitalist road."
In 1993, on the 100th anniversary of Mao's birth, Hinton and some of the old gang got together in Beijing for a celebration. Hinton, according to his obit in The Guardian, leaped onto the stage and began singing a song to the good old days. Bet there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China today? Above left is
Carma Hinton, William's issue, who following in the family tradition of fiction masquerading as nonfiction, produced the propa-docu film Morning Sun, partly funded with my and your tax dollars through the National Endowment for the (In)Humanities with additional funding by PBS.
What kind of quality controls are in place at NEH and PBS? How obvious was it that this was going to be a film of propaganda? Carma must have had on her resume or somewhere that her father was William Hinton. If not a .4 second search on Google would have provided the link. The Chinese village that Mr. Hinton lived in and
wrote about was called Longbow. The name of Carma Hinton's production
company is Longbow. William Hinton wrote glowingly about the most psychotic and murderous regime in mankind's history; now his daughter comes hat-in-hand wanting tax dollars to make a film on the Cultural Revolution. What?
Did NEH or PBS notice that the faces of some of the interviewees--all former Red Guards--were blacked out, a la mafia informers? Did they ask why that was necessary and if the interviewees had something to hide?
What did Margo Adler, a real, like journalist, think when she read the script and saw that Song Binbin was allowed to talk and talk and talk and issue laughingly preposterous denials of everything? Her journalist's head didn't go "Hmm, something's fishy here,"? How could it not?
Who in Congress is responsible for oversight of NEH and PBS? Do they know about the outrage that is Morning Sun?
Didn't anybody think before giving approval for funding that maybe the end product would be a little...slanted... when produced by Carma Hinton?
Next up from NEH and PBS: Allesandra Mussolini's documentary The Trains Ran on Time, a moving examination of life in fascist Italy. This is Public Occurrences.
PUBLIC OCCURRENCESChina's Great Wall of Silence: American Dereliction
I care about the coverup of those responsible for Bian Zhongyun's murder because Song Binbin used the United States as her sanctuary, got her degree from one of the most elite universities in this country, and settled in comfort in the suburbs of the birthplace of the American Revolution, Boston.
I care because Liu Tingting is now a sophisticated, wealthy, jet-setting consultant with a residence on Central Park.
I care because of all the Red Guards who are packed into the faculties at elite institutions like Stanford.
I care because the Red Guards to this day continue to threaten and censor Chinese-Americans in the United States whenever they get too close to the truth.
I care because what good is having a Republican president if he doesn't pay attention to immigration as President Reagan self-evidently did not when so many of these wrongdoers immigrated here?
I care because my tax dollars helped fund Morning Sun, the Red Guards Triumph of the Will.
I care because my tax dollars help fund National Public Radio, which did a fawning interview of Carma Hinton and whose correspondent Margo Addled was narrator of Morning Sun.
My great-great-great-great grandfather did not fight in the Battle of Trenton in 1776 for this.
My great-great grandfather did not die at Fredericksburg in 1862 for this.
My grandfather did not fight in France in 1918 for this.
My uncle did not die in the Italian Apennines in 1945 for this.
My brother did not live through Tet in 1968 for this.
And I have not spent twenty-two years prosecuting murderers for this. I am Benjamin Harris and this is Public Occurrences.
I care because Liu Tingting is now a sophisticated, wealthy, jet-setting consultant with a residence on Central Park.
I care because of all the Red Guards who are packed into the faculties at elite institutions like Stanford.
I care because the Red Guards to this day continue to threaten and censor Chinese-Americans in the United States whenever they get too close to the truth.
I care because what good is having a Republican president if he doesn't pay attention to immigration as President Reagan self-evidently did not when so many of these wrongdoers immigrated here?
I care because my tax dollars helped fund Morning Sun, the Red Guards Triumph of the Will.
I care because my tax dollars help fund National Public Radio, which did a fawning interview of Carma Hinton and whose correspondent Margo Addled was narrator of Morning Sun.
My great-great-great-great grandfather did not fight in the Battle of Trenton in 1776 for this.
My great-great grandfather did not die at Fredericksburg in 1862 for this.
My grandfather did not fight in France in 1918 for this.
My uncle did not die in the Italian Apennines in 1945 for this.
My brother did not live through Tet in 1968 for this.
And I have not spent twenty-two years prosecuting murderers for this. I am Benjamin Harris and this is Public Occurrences.
China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun. Current Photos of Song Binbin
This photograph shows Chinese President Hu Jintao offering warm condolences to Song Binbin's mother on the death of Song's father. Song in center bending slightly to hear President Hu. Photo taken at memorial service.
China's Great Wall of Silence: Cracks
Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?
We have been sent the above. It is a Red Guard flier addressed to Red Guards at the schools and universities around Beijing. The first signator at the bottom, the one encircled, is that of Song Yaowu, nee Song Binbin, now Yan Song. The date is September 6, 1966.
Carma Hinton allowed this reddest of guards to say unchallenged in Morning Sun that her name had been "hijacked" without her knowledge, that she had never assumed the name of Song Yaowu. Hinton allowed Song to cry that someone else had written the famous August 20 article in People's Daily about her pinning of Mao Zedong and then signed her name, again without her knowledge.
The claim is laughable and Hinton's abetment clumsy and puerile.
Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that resulted in Bian Zhongyun's murder please email PUBLOCC@gmail.com
China's Great Wall of Silence, The Murder of Bian Zhongyun: Liu Tingting
"It was glorious to beat people to death at that time. So I exaggerated and said that I had beaten three people to death."*
*Liu Tingting, in early 1967 when asked by a schoolmate if she had beaten three people to death in the summer of 1966 as rumored (Wang Youqin, Student Attacks Against Teachers.)
Liu was a student at the school where Bian Zhongyun was murdered. She was one of those who beat Bian.
Liu was the daughter of the then President of China, Liu Shaoqi. She uses the name Liu Ting now and is a wealthy and well-connected consultant in New York with an apartment near Central Park in Manhattan. This is Public Occurrences.
China's Great Wall of Silence: Hu Jie, a Courageous Voice for Truth
Hu Jie is a brave, young film maker living in China. In 2005 he made a documentary on the murder of Bian Zhongyun. Originally available only in Chinese Though I am Gone was recently dubbed into English and has received very, very positive reviews in England. It is now available on YouTube here: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:0dTc4kX6OM0J:www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dcm1Fe1BjYyI+%22THOUGH+I+AM+GONE%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8
Hu is the anti-Carma Hinton and Though I am Gone is the anti-Morning Sun.
Red Guards, you are the Old Guard now. A new generation of courageous people like Hu have taken your place and they are not going to let the sins of their mothers be forgotten.
Liu Ting, Song Binbin, Liu Jin, Red Guards in general, do not get too comfortable in your dotage. We will never forget. This is Public Occurrences.
Anyone with information on the identity of those involved in the actions that resulted in the murder of Bian Zhongyun please email PUBLOCC@gmail.com