China's Great Wall of Silence: New Evidence Concerning Liu Tingting and Song Binbin.*

Hu Jie's film Though I am Gone is the best cinematic

documentation to date of the murder of Bian Zhongyun

at the Girls Middle School Attached to Beijing Normal

University on August 5, 1966. Bian was the first teacher

murdered during the infamous Red August beginning

of the Cultural Revolution in China.




One of those from whom Hu Jie got evidence was another

teacher at the school, Lin Mang. In the film Lin states that

the Red Guards beat Bian Zhongyun in a toilet room. He

described one of the perpetrators as a tall, thin girl. Lin

also stated in the film that Red Guards forced him to carry

Bian's body after her murder.



Based upon subsequent additional credible evidence

received, the tall, thin girl who Lin saw beating Bian was

Liu Tingting, daughter of Liu Shaoqi, the president of

China.



Based upon other credible evidence received, we have

been informed of two separate incidents involving Song

Binbin. Both occurred in the summer of 1966.




In the first, Lin Mang was snatched up by the Red Guards

for interrogation. The person who sent for Lin was Song

Binbin. During the first interrogation a male student

was present with Song. As Song did the interrogation

and pressed Lin to confess to accusations she made

against him dating to the pre-1949 period, the male

student punched Lin so hard in the chest that Lin was

knocked to the ground.




On the second occasion Lin and fellow teacher Zhu Xuexi

were brought in for an evening interrogation by Red

Guards and leader Song Binbin. Lin and Zhu were

forced to kneel on the interrogation room floor. Female

Red Guards then beat Lin and Zhu with bronze-buckled

leather belts. In her role as Red Guard leader Song did

none of the beating herself but oversaw with a facial

expression described as "like the dark sky before a storm,

full of hatred, no smile, very awe-inspiring, and angry."




In Though I am Gone Lin relates that after this second

beating he decided--as so many others did--to commit

suicide. Hooking himself up to electrical devices in his

apartment he threw the switch to electrocute himself.

The electrical system short-circuited and he survived

and had a change of heart and decided to live on. This

is Public Occurrences.

*Song Binbin was sent a copy of this post and offered an interview to respond to this and other posts on Publocc.

Email Benjamin Harris, J.D. Publocc@gmail.com









(First published here on December 22, 2007)

China's Great Wall of Silence: Jie Li.

On Saturday October 3, 2009 Jie Li,(1) Ph.D candidate at Harvard University, asserted the following:

1. The film Morning Sun provided an “exculpation” of Song Binbin’s involvement in any Cultural Revolution violence.
2. Morning Sun also exculpated Song of volitional change of her surname from Binbin, meaning “gentle and refined” to Yaowu, “be militant.”
3. “Outrage” by Chinese toward Song after Morning Sun is due to her violation of expected Chinese gender roles (submissiveness and repentance).
4. It is Song “the symbol and not the person” that is responsible for her demonization.
5. Song is “a scapegoat and victim” of the Cultural Revolution.

Jie Li is highly intelligent, extremely articulate, Chinese-American, female, and scholar. As these are all valuable qualifications for discussion of the topic let it be said that this writer is only minimally equipped with some and is entirely lacking in the equipment of others.

The following assertions made by Jie Li, Ph.D candidate at Harvard University, are untrue:

1. Morning Sun provided an “exculpation” for Song Binbin’s involvement in any Cultural Revolution violence.
2. Morning Sun exculpated Song of volitional change of her surname from Binbin, meaning “gentle and refined” to Yaowu, “be militant.”
3. “Outrage” by Chinese toward Song after Morning Sun is due to her violation of expected Chinese gender roles (submissiveness and repentance).
4. It is Song “the symbol and not the person” that is responsible for her demonetization.
5. Song is “a scapegoat and victim” of the Cultural Revolution.

One does not have to be schooled in Western criminal jurisprudence to recognize the sweep of Ms. Li's assertions: Song Binbin is innocent, which is an entirely different matter than being not guilty.

Further, according to Ms. Li, there is positive evidence of Song's innocence, as there often is in instances of actual innocence.

Ms. Li asserted that that evidence is to be found in Morning Sun, in fact it is the sum of the evidence of actual innocence asserted by Ms. Li. This is a verbatim transcription of the entirety of Song Binbin's statements on Morning Sun. They begin with her appearance on the rostrum with Mao Zedong on August 18, 1966:

"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."

"I was very naive and took it to be a casual remark [i.e. Mao's suggestion that she change her name]. But an article soon appeared in the newspaper with the title 'I put a Red Guard 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Rumors about me reached the village [during the Great Link-Up] 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."

"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."

The reaction among Chinese to these statements, accurately characterized by Ms. Li as outrage, had nothing to do with with "expected Chinese gender roles" but rather with expected human intelligence. Song's statements are an insult to this latter.

Even at a facial level of credibility Song's statements are suspicious.

One need know nothing about the merits of her guilt or innocence to read the transcript and think "Hmm, that is a little too total a denial." In fact that was the reaction of many.

Second, and again without even getting to the merits yet, there is the specific denial of specifics. An actually innocent person is innocent generally and will enter a general denial. So for example we would expect an actually innocent person accused of armed robbery to say "I didn't do any robbery!"

If on the other hand, he (or she) says "I did not hold a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic to that person's head!" a dispassionate auditor would wonder (1) Who said anything about a semi-automatic, as opposed to a revolver, or (2)Who said anything about a 9mm Beretta as opposed to a Ruger or Smith & Wesson?, or (3) Who said anything about a firearm at all, as opposed to a knife?, or (4) Who said anything about holding whatever weapon it was to the person's head as opposed to the neck or heart? If Song had begun and ended her denial with paragraph four above she would not have run afoul of this common sense rule for judging credibility. But she didn't.

There's another problem with the specific denial of specifics: the unexpected. And here, I will use an anecdote--absolutely true--from my experience. A jailer friend of mine told me--this was in the past year or two--that he had become curious about why an older Latin inmate was constantly being picked on by the other inmates. So finally the jailer asked him. The inmate's response was, "I did not leek that turtle, I did not fock that turtle." My friend's reaction was, "YOU DIDN'T FUCK WHAT?!!"

As it is possible for men to have sex with turtles it is possible for a woman to rape a person, but it is not expected. My reaction when I heard Song's denial was: "RAPE?!!" To this day this is the first and only time I ever heard mention of that specific accusation against her.

With just a little familiarity with the period Song's statement further dissolves. She makes this statement:

"Someone said, 'Binbin,' why not give [a Red Guard armband] to Chairman Mao."

Maybe some PBS viewers took that statement at face value but probably not many. I think Mao Zedong, like Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Fidel Castro, is known generally not to have been "a people person," unless those people were dead. One did not just "go up to him" then (as one can now, now that he is dead), much less do something physical, like pin an armband onto him.

Song speaks uninterrupted in Morning Sun, a point addressed previously in Publocc and again below, so she didn't get "tripped up" by some Mike Wallace-like bulldog of an interviewer. It is in this light that the following statement should be judged:

"When I first joined the Cultural Revolution..."

I would bet most PBS viewers didn't find that statement strange. People joined the American Revolution, right? And the French, Russian, and Sexual Revolutions, too. However, it is strange. It is strange because one did not join the Cultural Revolution like those others. The Cultural Revolution was inflicted on Chinese, quite unsuspecting Chinese in fact, by Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong alone. Even his closest Party colleagues didn't "join" the Cultural Revolution.

Song Binbin knew exactly what she was saying here and Carma Hinton knew exactly what Song was saying: Song is saying she didn't join the Red Guards... without saying she didn't join the Red Guards. Throughout her Morning Sun statement Song uses words, as here, that subtly distance herself from the Red Guards. In the first paragraph she says, "The Red Guards were all excited." "The Red Guards"-those other people-"were all excited," implicitly not Song.

Song makes the Cultural Revolution sound like a school textbook fight:

"I thought we were going to repudiate bourgeois policies in education..."

Evolution Out! Creationism In! No, that wasn't what the Cultural Revolution was like.

As one goes deeper into the history of the C.R. and of Song personally there is more:

"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."

The oddity of this statement was not apparent when Morning Sun was released. As when she denied a rape that on one had accused her of, this is an instance of Song giving away a detail that few knew anything about.

Song immigrated to the United States after the Cultural Revolution. She got her Ph.D in geology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The name on her diploma reads "Yan Song." Yan is the single-syllable name Song is referring to; it means "rock" in Chinese.

1. Jie Li, presenter of “China’s Salvation through Women’s Soul? Reception of Documentary Images of Lin Zhao, Chia Ling, and Song Binbin,” N.A.A.S., Brown University. Ms. Li was sent a link to this post and invited to respond.

more

Politics & Justice in the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office

From the time that I started in the State Attorneys Office in 1982 Katherine Fernandez-Rundle was known for having the knowledge gap to which I have referred. She also has always had the reputation for being unintelligent, which is related but not identical to having insufficient knowledge. Naturally, she is sensitive about this but the reputation has been largely self-inflicted. An unhappy admixture of a knowledge gap with a tendency to speak as if she had none has repeatedly produced telling and embarrassing incidents which have perpetuated her reputation.

The setting is a reception, a gathering of her County Court chiefs and their police counterparts hosted by the former for the latter. It is an opportunity for "outreach," for "liasoning," for smiling handshakes and good-feeling, for political point-scoring.

The politician's goal at these events is to make personal contact with each person. A simple greeting and wishing well is the aimed-for limit of conversation so that the politician doesn't get button-holed by one loquacious soul and miss out on meeting others. Even the most callow politicians quickly learn these rules and have their moves choreographed: Read the person's nametag, smile, greet, shake hands, move on. It's like a dance step: read, smile, greet, shake,...1,2,3,4..., 1,2,3,4...

On this occasion Rundle is at her vivacious and charming best as she adroitly reads the nametags unnoticeably, extends her hand and moves from person to person making the rounds. Read, smile, greet...1,2,3.

"Nice to meet you, Detective Marbury," she says smiling.

The choreography is flawless but the dancer still falls flat on her face because in this instance the large African-American male with the nametag that read "Howard Marbury" was not a detective (as she assumed from his being large, African-American, and male). He was one of her chiefs of County Court.

-David Ranck

A Million Drops of Blood: Wang Yi.

Mr. Wang Yi's statement in his previous article published here, that he hated the old China but didn't find the new one much better touched on the preeminent issue to me right now, the soul of China. I asked Mr.Yi to elaborate on his feelings. His response is below.

Let me explain what I mean by saying that I hated the China I left behind but am not sure I like it better now. Recently the author of the bestselling book "Life and Death in Shanghai,” Nien Cheng has passed away. During an interview, she was asked if she would go back to China, she said, "I won't go back to China as long as Mao's portrait is still hung up there at Tiananmen Square." I fully understand why Cheng put it this way. First of all, to me it is a symbol, an intolerable insult to millions of innocent Chinese who have been persecuted, tortured, and killed during the CR and other political movements since 1949. It tells people the current rulers are not serious about the atrocities the Communist Party has committed since 1949, especially during CR. They don't care about the Holocaust Chinese people suffered in Mao and his like's hands. Instead, they tried to nurture collective amnesia in the younger generation by stirring up the dangerous nationalistic enthusiasm.

The reason why the communists were able to defeat the KMT government and come to power in 1949 is because they presented themselves to the Chinese as the standard-bearer of democracy and, at the same time, the KMT government was such a totalitarian and corrupted government that President Truman called them "thieves" because they stole about 1/5 of US financial aides to China during WWII and they invested some of the money back in US for their own good. However, compared with today's communist officials' corruption, the KMT government's embezzlement was nothing. Today, 90% of Chinese billionnairs are children of high-ranking officials. It has been years since the public opinion called for officials to open their asset records. Those voices just hit the stonewall. The exposure of their asset records would certainly arouse people's anger because people can easily trace their money back to their power.

Talking about democracy, recently, human rights activist Feng Zhenghu has been camping at Tokyo's Norita Airport for more than three weeks because Chinese government doesn't want people who know laws like him to be back in China to protect the powerless people or expose their violation of justice. It is an international disgrace to the Chinese government to refuse its own citizen with a valid passport to reenter China after traveling abroad. It is really an irony because, during Mao's time, whoever tried to escape China would have been jailed or killed under the label of "attempting to surrender to and serve the state's enemy" while today the Chinese rulers would rather send them out of the country in hopes that they could have fewer trouble-makers back home even though that is in violation of Chinese and international laws. They have been trying very hard to muffle voices for justice and democracy. They tried to convince people that the Communist Party is trying to create a so-called cordial society
but in fact they are polarizing the society further and further. Look at the China's records of human rights in the past decade, they are worsening instead of getting better. They rely on police forces to maintain their rule. Is there any other countries in the world which ban kitchenware stores from selling kitchen knives during their national day celebration? They don't have confidence in themselves. The communist officials let their children live in American and other Western countries.

It was Mao's intention that Liu Shaoqi was being tortured and eventually let die inhumanly and his wife Wang Guangmei was also tortured, jailed for years and almost killed during the CR. Surprisingly after Wang Guangmei was released, she called herself a "student of Chairman Mao." So did many other communist leaders and officials who were persecuted during the CR. I realize how unreliable the current so-called stability is! After Mao's death, even though they may complain about him in private, the communist leaders still need to keep him in the shrine for their own good to show the legitimacy of their rule now that they are in power. If we are satisfied with the status guo, we are actually waiting for someone among the communists to acquire his/her personal power and dominate the absolute authority in their party and then in the state. By then, we will have a second Mao and China will repeat this tragic history again because we don't have the weapon of democracy to fight him/her.

Let me tell you one of my experiences in Shanghai several weeks ago. One day I tried to look for the studio of an artist I knew in one of the best residential areas in Shanghai. The artist's name is Ha Ding (sounds like Hardin in English) who was my teacher. He was well-known in Shanghai before CR. Unfortunately, the house was gone, which I thought was understandable after so many years. The strange thing was that now the whole block was surrounded by a tall solid concrete wall about 8 feet. What's more, on top of the concrete wall, there was another bamboo fence about 8 feet, too. I was puzzled why someone would do something like that. It was ugly. Obviously it is not a jail, not in Shanghai's most expensive residential area. Through the cracks in closely knitted bamboo fence, I could see a modern mansion in there. At its iron-cast gate, there was a guard in PLA uniform. The gate was clearly electronically controlled. Out of curiosity, I went across the street and asked the guard who lived in this place. The guard pulled a long face and told me: "It is the nation's secret. I can't tell you." I said, "That used to be the site of my teacher's house," but the guard repeated what he said, "Still I can't tell you." So I went to see my friend who used to go to the studio with me and is now a well-known illustrating artist. He told me that Ha Ding and his family were kicked out of his house at the beginning of the CR. He could not make a living by teaching, publishing, or selling his art any more. He was labeled as a bourgeois artist. My friend told me that the artist suffered a lot and once he saw him working at a construction site. I was told that years after CR, he went to America and later died. I asked my friend who is living in the mansion there now. He answered that people say it is Jiang Zeming after he retired from the top leading position. Or maybe some people like him, definitely not people like "you and me." I felt I could have yelled at the guard if I had known it was Jiang. It made me so angry.

I am not saying I can't be forgiving. I may forgive only on condition that those who committed crimes really feel remorseful and apologize convincingly for what they did. I will never forgive those who still take advantage of their privileged position in unequal competition and came to this country to become a capitalist living in Park Ave. apartment, NYC and making light of their beating up or killing people during the CR or those who feel that they were wrongfully blamed because they became a symbol during the CR. Let me ask: What kind of Red Guard would have been elected as their leader and represented them to put an arm band around Mao's arm three days after they cruelly tortured and cold-bloodedly killed their own teachers? Ask those who were Red Guards during the CR. They would have killed more innocent teachers if they had been allowed to replace her in the leading position. They are just extension of China in this country!

Talking about "socialism with Chinese characteristics," to me the communist rule is offspring of more Chinese traditional ideology than Marxism. Comparatively speaking, maybe only North Korea or Pol Pot are/were as authoritarian and inhuman as Chinese Communist Party. Mao was a typical feudalistic dynasty, an emperor without the title. The Chinese Communists started with posing being anti-Confucianist and end up upholding Confucianism as their last straw. That's why the regime is full of Chinese characteristics. You may find most references of its power structure in Chinese history. You'll be amazed at how innovative our ancestors were in invention of torturing and killing kits in our history. By selling slave labor, China has built up a facade of prosperity which is, to a certain extent, quite deceptive, or at least satisfying to low-self-concepted people who have been demoralized by China's humiliated history since 1840. Without democracy, I don't think China can get anywhere. The bottleneck is around the corner. That's how I view it.

Wang Yi

"THE EAST IS RED,"

"DAH-DAH-DAH, DAH-DAH."

"CHINA HAS BROUGHT FORTH A MAO ZEDONG!"

WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!

INTRODUCING PUBLIC OCCURRENCES CHINA!!!!!

MAO WORLD, MAO WORLD!

GO MAO, GO MAO!

HU! HU! HU!

China's Great Wall of Silence: Public Occurrences.cn

Paramount Leader Hu Jintao

1 Dungeon Place

Beijing, China

Dear Paramount Leader Hu,

How are you I am fine.

I would like to congratulate you on becoming a capitalist. I am too.

This is my blog, which you are now reading. I hope that you can read this. English speak-speak? Nancy Tang? U got Nancy Tang?

I found out recently that you bought 51% of Google from Sergie Brinbrin. You are good at being capitalist! I was wondering if you might want to buy my blog. It's usually called Public Occurrences but I changed the name for you to Public Occurrences China! :)

You like?

I can take out the whoop, whoop, whoop if you want.

I'm sorry I don't know the second line of the lyrics in "The East is Red," I will learn.

I have had my circulation staff come up with some figures for you about the readership of Publocc (that's a "nickname.") . These are the readers from a recent day:

-3 personal friends.

-12 Chinese.

-168 sexual perverts who mistyped an "L" in their search terms which brought up Public Occurrences instead of where they really wanted to go if you know what I mean and I know you do.

The number of Chinese readers is down since you blocked Public Occurrences but now you can own it and put whatever you want on it!

Yes I will help you track down dissidents.

People advertise on Public Occurrences for real dollars which is what normal people call yuan. Recently we got the Ukrainian account. After you buy me it'll all be yours!

I have always wanted to be a rustless screw.

me

I don't know how much you paid for Google China but I will sell Public Occurrences China to you for less.

The next time you come to America, you want to stay with me?

Paramount, I look forward to doing this deal. Please say hello to Mrs. Paramount and all the little Paramounts for me.

Your friend,

Harris Lei Feng

"In China's Google, the government owns more than 51% of the shares..."

Fifty-one percent. Of Google. That's a lot of yuan. That's a lot of control. Swine Google.

Привет грузин! Я надеюсь, вы понимаете, русский, потому что нет для Google перевод на грузинский язык (если есть грузинском языке).

Wrong country, wrong flag, wrong language.

Привітання українців (або це України?)!

An ad from Ukraine?

China's Great Wall of Silence.

11-2-09

I am curious about Publocc not being available in the PRC. I have a friend in Beijing who has told me the same thing but when I get on Baidu and type in "Public Occurrences" up it comes. How is that possible, if you know?

-Ben

As for the difference between Baidu and Google, I can only guess that's because the online police's focus. Maybe they have built a taller "Great Fire Wall" against the information from outside at Google. in China's Google, the government owns more than 51% of the shares so they could do whatever they want. I don't know who owns Baidu. I didn't try Baidu in China.

-YYY

10-7-09

Sorry again,Ben,this time I was warned that the net page wanted can not be accessed!

Do not worry,it's alright.I may have another try in a couple of days.

-XXX (friend in Beijing).

So strange. So, so strange. Try this: www.publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com.

-Ben

Still strange, dear Ben! Forget it.Thank you all the same.

I will forward this to my good colleague AAA and see if he can access it. He is much more capable in computer.

-XXX

10-20-09

Hi,Ben, after a try,my capable colleague told me that he was unable to make it out either,(I mean "State Dongfeng Farm Part II")He said most probably it was blocked by the above here.

-xxx

10-24-09

Do you mean the Chinese government blocked it?

-Ben

Yes, Ben, I did mean that.

-XXX

China's Great Wall of Silence

Hi, Ben:

I couldn't have access to your website in China and some other what online police considers sensitive sites like cnd.org.

-YYY, a Chinese-American friend. (November 1, 2009)

China's Great Wall of Silence: Seeking the Soul.

In a country as centralized as any in the world with a longer history of centralization than any other, understanding Beijing, the center of the center, can go a long way to understanding the country.

But in everything I've read, Anhui comes up again and again. The Good Earth, the first post-college book I read on China, was based there; the Great Leap Forward famine was perhaps more severe there than in any other province of China; the oppression of the peasants at least as brutal as anywhere else; the April 2 incident and others like it happened there.

The Center has always feared rebellion among the peasants. A significant part of the soul of China is there in Anhui.

Above, Brickworker slaves, Anhui province (2007).

China's Great Wall of Silence: Seeking the Soul-Jie Li

Ms. Jie Li has sent the following email in response to the October 3 post here.

Hello Mr. Harris,

Thank you for coming to the presentation, but you have misquoted me. First, my
name is Jie Li and not Jie Lie, and Li is my last name. Secondly, I have not
made most of the statements you have attributed to me. I can send you the
parts of the paper related to Song Binbin, from which I was reading, provided
that you will take away the existing misquotations.

Point by point,

1. I did not say that Morning Sun exculpated Song Binbin but that the audience
of the film claim that Morning Sun exculpated Song Binbin. To say this does
not mean I agree with them.

2. The second statement:

Morning Sun also exculpated Song of volitional change of her surname from
Binbin, meaning “gentle and refined” to Yaowu, “be militant.”

implies that the change is volitional, and there is no evidence of it, so I did
not make that statement.

3. “Outrage” by Chinese toward Song after Morning Sun is due to her violation of
expected Chinese gender roles (submissiveness and repentance).

I said gender played a role, but not an exclusive role. My paper is on the role
of gender but not using gender as the exclusive explanation.

4. It is Song “the symbol and not the person” that is responsible for her
demonization.

I agree that I said this and will hold onto this. A person is held innocent
until proven guilty, and I have not seen any hard proof of her personal
violence. I know that Wang Youqin considers her not innocent, but provided no
evidence of her participation in violence. I have also spoken to Hu Jie (by
the way, I have an article about his CR films in the newest issue of the
journal "Public Culture" which might interest you), who said Song Binbin is
guilty only by virtue of her holding power and allowing the violence to take
place, but not by being violent herself. If you have other conclusive and hard
evidence of her personal participation in violence, I would appreciate the
reference.

5. Song is “a scapegoat and victim” of the Cultural Revolution.

Now this contradicts statement #1. If I say Morning Sun exculpated her, then it
would suggest that I agree that she's guilty and the film merely pardoned her.
The CR was a period with many victims, some of them complicit or even guilty
victims. Being a victim does not exclude the possibility of being a
perpetrator, and a scapegoat means who carries other people's guilt, but it
does not necessarily mean "innocent."

We can discuss this further in two weeks or so--I'm on a research trip
currently.

With Best Wishes,
Jie

Politics & Justice in the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office

Miami-Dade prosecutor charged with punching pizza delivery woman

On the third floor of the Miami Prosecutor's office, outside the offices of three administrators to State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle is a trial board. The trial board lists those assistant prosecutors who are currently in trial and the charges in their trial cases. It's supposed to be a sort of advertisement for the good crime-fighting work that the office does for the taxpayers.

The trial board also advertises the above newspaper headline.

One of Katherine Fernandez-Rundle's own prosecutors arrested, again. In the past few years one of Rundle's prosecutors was arrested for DUI and causing serious bodily injury to two people. Another was arrested for purchasing marijuana--from an undercover police officer. A third was arrested for possession of a party drug in a nightclub. A fourth was found to have marijuana in her blood after her accidental death.

The drug incidents caused a mini-scandal. Estimates were that 30%-40% of prosecutors in Rundle's office would test positive if they were tested. Some prosecutors voluntarily submitted to drug tests. And asked Rundle to require them of all. Rundle refused, fearful that the estimates might prove accurate, or low.

It is willful blindness. Rundle's office has been in the news for creating crime, not preventing it. The taxpayers of Miami-Dade County deserve better.

This is Public Occurrences.

Above, Rundle and her pet, "The First Laddie."

China's Great Wall of Silence: Seeking the Soul-Providence.

New England Conference of the

Association for Asian Studies

Brown University
October 3, 2009

MARGINAL ON THE MARGINS: AN EXPLORATION OF WOMEN AND

REPRESENTATION IN CHINA'S INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY CINEMA

Jie Li: China's Salvation Through Women's Souls? Reception of Documentary Images of Lin Zhao, Chai Ling, and Song Binbin.

.............................................................................................................................

I came across this announcement when I made a periodic search on Google and Baidu for Song Binbin in September.

When the Song constellation dominates your night sky, stumbling upon this during a routine internet search constitutes a "sign" from above.

China's Salvation Through Women's Souls?

Seeking the Soul of Lin Zhao.

China's Legal Soul.

The Struggle for the Soul of Modern China.

of a New China.

This came on top of my restlessness since the "completion" of "Beijing Diary," the gloomy realization that I was not near understanding, that I could not excise this part of all that is China and thoroughly understand it and leave all the rest, because this was a murder and at the center of any murder, and at the center of this murder at the center of the Middle Kingdom, is mens rea which is so close to "soul."

The soul is at the center of murder because every human being, by virtue of having that soul has the capacity to set the world on fire. Or to plunge it into darkness.

We are not shiny bolts.