Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 50
June 14, 2021
Today is Flag Day. Some Facts About this Misunderstood Holiday
Flag Day
Today is Flag Day. Big deal, you might say. Who cares? And anyway, just what is it and why is it considered a holiday, albeit a minor one?
Here is a little history about Flag Day along with 13 surprising facts about the American flag and how to properly display it—which I sincerely hope all of you reading this post, will do.
What follows comes from the History Channel (one of my favorite satellite TV haunts).
When the American Revolution broke out in 1775, the colonists weren’t fighting united under a single flag. Instead, most regiments participating in the war for independence against the British fought under their own flags. In June of 1775, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to create the Continental Army—a unified colonial fighting force—with the hopes of more organized battle against its colonial oppressors. This led to the creation of what was, essentially, the first “American” flag, the Continental Colors.
For some, this flag, which was comprised of 13 red and white alternating stripes and a Union Jack in the corner, was too similar to that of the British. George Washington soon realized that flying a flag that was even remotely close to the British flag was not a great confidence-builder for the revolutionary effort, so he turned his efforts towards creating a new symbol of freedom for the soon-to-be fledgling nation.
On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress took a break from writing the Articles of Confederation and passed a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white,” and that “the union be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
More than 100 years later, in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson marked the anniversary of that decree by officially establishing June 14 as Flag Day. As you celebrate the anniversary of the Stars and Stripes, here are some fast facts about “Old Glory.”
Below is a short video of the song “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Enjoy
June 13, 2021
A Message to ForeignCorrespondent Subscribers, Friends, and Visitors
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June 12, 2021
A Few Meditations on Writing
I have been writing, in one form or another, for most of my life. I learned the techniques and skills of writing by toiling for almost 30 years in the relentless and stressful world of journalism.
I was in some pretty good company. Ernest Hemingway began his writing career as a journalist. So did Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Charles Dickens, Evelyn Waugh, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack London, Annie Proulx, Stephen Crane, John Steinbeck, James Agee, Lillian Ross, and Mark Twain.
For 13 years I taught writing and reporting at the University of Illinois after leaving the world of professional journalism. During that time, I managed to condense my thoughts on writing into a structure suitable for the classroom.
So allow me to share my views on writing.
Writing is both an art and a craft. To be a good writer you must first master the tools of the craft. What are those? They are vocabulary, grammar, research, style, plot, pacing, and story.
Words are your basic tools. They are your implements in the same way hammers, saws, bubble levels, squares, screwdrivers, and tape measures are the tools a carpenter must possess.
Then comes grammar. Just as carpenters must learn to respect and skillfully master their tools, so too must writers learn to skillfully manipulate words and respect the language.
If you don’t respect the language, you will never succeed as a writer.
You must also give yourself time to learn the art and craft of writing. You don’t learn how to be a writer by sitting alone in a room and squeezing your brain for inspiration the way you wring water from a sponge.
One of the first steps to becoming a good writer is reading. Read, read, and read. As I used to tell my students, “If you want to write well, read well.”
Learn from the best; imitate (and I don’t mean plagiarize). Listen to the words! Words speak to us from the written page, IF we let them IF we allow our eyes to open our inner ears.
Gifted writing can’t be taught. It must be learned.
And we learn from doing it; from experience. That’s how we gain confidence.
Let me repeat that because it is SO VERY IMPORTANT. To be a good writer you need to be confident in your ability to use the tools of the craft: vocabulary, grammar, research, style, plot, pacing, and story.
A confident writer is typically a good writer. We gain confidence by being successful in our work–no matter what work we do. We also learn from failure. Why was a book rejected 40 times? Why isn’t it selling on Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes and Noble? There must be a reason. Find out what it is and learn from it. Then go back to work and make the book better.
Once you master the Craft of Writing…the fundamentals, the mechanics, the “donkey” work, then you are ready to move on to the Art of Writing.
I don’t know if those who do not write for a living understand just how difficult writing is. Many believe that writers work from inspiration and that the words simply leap onto the blank page (or into yawning maul of the computer).
Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway once said: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
In fact, while inspiration is a wonderful thing, it is not what makes a good writer or book. Writing requires significant research, whether fiction or non-fiction. It requires a facility for organization and a keen sense of plot, pacing and story.
I don’t believe writers are “born.”
They evolve over time as a result of significant experience in the craft.
Not all writers are brooding, intractable alcoholics, or unbearable misanthropes who feel their creations contain irrevocable and definitive truths that most of humanity is too obtuse to comprehend.
In fact, most successful writers are excellent storytellers and they like nothing more than to have their stories read by as many people as possible–even if those stories don’t always possess immutable truths.
And storytelling is not limited to fiction. Storytelling in non-fiction or journalism is just as important.
When I was young, I used to write lots of short stories. Were they any good? No. But for a person who wants to be a writer they were my way of practicing. Sort of like practicing the piano or the flute or some other instrument. The more you practice, the better and more accomplished you become.
Somerset Maugham, the author of such classics as The Razor’s Edge, The Moon and Sixpence, and Of Human Bondage, had this to say about writing: “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.”
June 11, 2021
America, the Neo-Tribal Nation
It is unsettling and sad to witness what is happening in our great country today.
Never in my lifetime—and I’m older than Methuselah in dog years—have I ever witnessed such a sprint to socialism by an occupant of the White House.
What bothers me about Joe Biden’s distressing embrace of socialism, is how compliant the left is in its capitulation to an ideology and form of government that has failed in every nation it has been instituted. Just as disconcerting is Biden’s acquiescence of identity politics rather than the rational and intelligent liberal ideology that once defined the Democrat party.
When I was young, what attracted me to the Democrat party was its issue-oriented, logical approach to dealing with the nation’s social and economic problems. I can still remember a time when voting for a Democrat didn’t mean you were embracing socialism and, by definition, extreme loathing and disgust for anybody who was not a Democrat.
Sadly, those days are gone, given the Democrat party’s apparent embrace of socialism and identity politics.
What do I mean by identity politics?
It means that each of us belongs to a sub-group defined by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Let’s look at the behavior of the Democrat Party in the last couple of Presidential elections. Instead of focusing on broad issues such as jobs and income growth, Democrats catered to members of different sub-groups, promising to give them power.
Did Hillary Clinton offer the middle class an agenda for which they could vote? No, she catered to sub-groups hoping that they would coalesce enough to send her to victory. It didn’t work.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden is continuing that strategy. In just about every speech he gives, he makes reference to America’s “systemic racism,” white supremacists, and “domestic terrorism” (code for conservatives who support the policies of Donald Trump). He promised to “reunite” the nation and bring people together. Instead, he drives a wedge deeper and deeper into the American psyche, pushing people further apart into their separate and segregated communities.
In essence, what Joe Biden and the Democrats apparently want to divide us into competing tribes, each with its own agenda, its own set of grievances, and its own view of what America should look like.
The problem with that is this: if one or two tribes win, then the others lose. Today’s result is a country that is tearing itself apart, ripping away the very fabric of our nation, and destroying the excellent idea that makes America unique in world history.
Look at what it says on the nation’s Great Seal: “E Pluribus Unum”—Out of Many, One.”
Think about what that means. Out of many peoples, races, religions, languages, and ancestries has emerged a single people and nation.
We used to talk about America being the great melting pot—a fusion of different cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities.
That is no longer politically correct. Today we are taught there is no need to assimilate, to “become an American.” Instead, we each have our own identity: African-American, Mexican-American, Transgender, LGBTQ, Muslim, Evangelical, Jew, Democrat, Republican, etc.
This is neo-tribalism, in which we are identified by what sub-group or tribe to which we belong. We are no longer “Americans.” We are something else, something I no longer recognize.
Many on the left, especially leaders in racially minority communities, talk about the “browning of America” as though it is some holy crusade. The traditional white majority will be relegated to minority status. When that happens, it will be “payback” time for whatever sins and transgressions–real or perceived–that were committed by the nation’s white majorities of the past. If that is indeed the goal of minority gurus and kingpins, we are headed down a dark and dangerous path of disunity, division, and perhaps even violence.
It means instead of thinking about the whole and the many, we will think about ourselves and what sub-group we belong to first and the country last, if at all.
It means that instead of allowing reasonable debate about issues, those who belong to a sub-group JUST WANT TO WIN. Debate is no longer a means to a solution. In their minds, violence, rioting, burning, destroying property, shouting down those who disagree with them, and ignoring freedom of speech is the new modus operandi.
Concepts that we were once taught to respect and cherish, such as freedom of speech, the rule of law, the nuclear family, patriotism, adherence to religion, and belief in God, are under dangerous assault by a profane and secular left.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson has said it very well:
“At the outset, we were fortunate to have a group of people write essential documents that gave us a good deal to think about. And I think that a lot of the higher quality of American discourse, when it has been high, is out of respect for the fact that these are valuable things that impose respect for people of other views.
“And, at this point, things have deteriorated to the point that it is morally wrong to have an attitude of presumptive respect toward someone you disagree with. That’s just bizarre, and it’s obviously not a formula for civilized society.”
I am saddened when I hear those on the left say that our Constitution is no longer germane, that our traditions are not noble, that our Bill of Rights is irrelevant, and that we do not live in an exceptional country.
I remember listening to what President John F. Kennedy said during his 1961 inauguration speech. It still resonates with me today. (I saw that speech on TV, and I would have voted for Kennedy were I old enough to vote back then).
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
I took those words to heart. I joined the U.S. Army and served four years gathering intelligence for the National Security Agency. Others joined Kennedy’s Peace Corps and went to third-world countries to help people produce clean water, build decent housing, and eliminate illiteracy.
I am proud of my service to this country. I hate seeing it ripped apart today by self-centered politicians, race hustlers, Marxists, socialists, and others who put their political dogmata and themselves before the country, who feel it is acceptable to use a deadly global pandemic to score political points, and who want to use any means possible to cancel and destroy those with whom they disagree.
That is exactly what we saw in 2020 when Democrats howled for Donald Trump’s political lynching—which is what impeachment is.
I hear some political operatives talking about doing the same thing to Joe Biden should Republicans gain control of the House in 2022–and maybe the Senate.
As much as I would love to see Joe Biden shuffle off into obscure retirement in one of his multi-million-dollar homes before he turns the country I love and served into a socialist sewer, the proper way to remove a president from office is with the ballot, not by decree, violence, or a political coup d’état.
Most of all, I hope that the malevolent ogres seeking to divide and control us are exposed for the America-haters they are and are forced to slink back to the grubby lairs from whence they crawled.
June 10, 2021
What do you like most about the Historical Fiction genre?
Historical fiction is one of the most popular forms of fiction being written today—along with young adult, zombie apocalypse, romance novels, and sci-fi.
I am specifically interested in learning why people like historical fiction books. I have a few theories, but I would like to know what others think.
As an author, I enjoyed writing the Finding Billy Battles trilogy—a historical fiction trilogy that begins in 19th Century Kansas and then moves (in Book 2) to the colonial Far East, then (in Book 3) to Mexico, and finally back to the United States in the mid-20th Century.
I am interested in knowing what it is that draws a reader (or writer) to this kind of fiction.
As for me, I enjoy doing the research necessary to create an accurate portrayal of the people, places, and events of other eras, such as the 19th Century. I especially like “slowing” down the pace of life from the frenetic and hectic world of the 21st Century.
What I find appealing about eras “BSM” (Before Social Media), smartphones, I-pads, etc. is that you actually had time to THINK rather than simply react.
When I was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, I can recall telling my office (via telex) when I was covering Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador etc. in the 70s & 80s that I would be out of touch for several days.
Then I would go to some remote area and spend time talking with people, analyzing what I was hearing and what I was seeing and then return to write a story that wasn’t filled with “instant wisdom” as we so often see today with journalists who “parachute” in to a country to cover a story.
Writing about the 19th Century, as I did in my trilogy, allowed me to slow down the pace, provide historical context, and give my characters time to think.
Today, we are all in such a hurry to do things, to pack in as much as we can in a single day. When I think about my characters in the Finding Billy Battles trilogy, I envy the fact that they were not sped up by “galloping technology” as we are so often today.
My characters actually had time to stop and smell the flowers, enjoy a brilliant sunset, “listen” to a forest, and take the time to read a good book.
So, I am asking you to tell ME what YOU think about all of this.
Write as much or as little as you like.
I would love to share your thoughts and comments with my followers.
June 9, 2021
Note to Marxists & Critical Race Theorists: Beware of the Lioness of Carmel
If you haven’t yet met Tatiana Ibrahim, let me introduce her because I can guarantee you that our corrupt leftist news media will not.
Ms. Ibrahim is a mother of a high school-age daughter who finally had enough of the racist and dishonest anti-white garbage children in her town were being indoctrinated with.
So she decided to do something about it. What did she do?
She attended a meeting of her school board to protest teachers in her school district who are bringing Marxism to the classroom in Critical Race Theory.
She also objected to teachers using Marxist Black Lives Matter propaganda in the classroom that call all police evil and, therefore, need to be defunded.
For 11 minutes Tatiana Ibrahim stood at the microphone and condemned a bucket-load of other socialist/communist notions that are being rammed down the throats of Carmel’s children.
When members of the board tried to silence her, she refused to stop talking, and she even “outed” two teachers who had publicly posted CRT, BLM, and Marxist dogma they are teaching K-12 children.
Ms. Ibrahim is not alone in her outrage. Because of the year-long COVID-19 lockdowns and the resulting distance learning that children were forced to endure, parents had a unique window into the nation’s classrooms. They saw for themselves the racially divisive messages with which teachers were brainwashing their children.
As a result, more and more exasperated parents are attending school board meetings and sending open letters to schools to protest the socialist/Marxist garbage that is the core of CRT and the deceitful history contained in the 1619 Project.
I have seen a few videos of those parents addressing school boards. In some cases, those parents were shouted down by board members and even escorted out of the meeting. Some teachers who have dared speak out about the destructive Marxist curricula being taught to children have been suspended or even lost their jobs for disparaging CRT and BLM dogma.
But a few days ago, when Tatiana Ibrahim stood before the microphone, you could tell this was a woman who was not going to be silenced by anybody. She dominated the room.
She reminded me of news anchor Howard Beale in the 1976 movie “Network” (played by the late Peter Finch), who lets out all of his frustrations of the world before shouting, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” and urges all viewers to open their windows and do the same. (Click the the link below to see that short clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRuS3dxKK9U
I have included the entire video of Ms. Ibrahim’s impressive reproach of the Carmel school board below, but I was disappointed by the passive and silent reaction of the other parents in the room.
I would have expected shouts of “right on, Tatiana,” or “let ’em have it,” or at least some applause or cheering as she made one excellent point after another.
Instead, they just sat there. Maybe they were terrified that the school board would identify them and, by association, also their children—and add them to some clandestine blacklist for future persecution or torment.
Clearly, Tatiana Ibrahim had no such concerns. She let the school board have it.
I hope more parents follow her lead and do the same before our children are irreparably damaged by the socialist/Marxist propaganda being circulated in America’s schools.
Now, please watch Tatiana Ibrahim earn her new appellation and reputation as the “Lioness of Carmel.” You will not be disappointed!
Here’s the link. (Note: FYI, the video pauses at one point early on but resumes a second or two again later).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxu3wdiXRF0
June 8, 2021
A Note to ForeignCorrespondent Subscribers, Friends, and Visitors
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https://productadvancecloud.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/ronaldyates/ronald-yates-signup.mp4Finally, if you go to the main page of the ronaldyatesbooks.com website, in addition to a couple of book trailers you will see under the heading “The Latest From My Blog” short previews of twelve of our most recent blog posts. Just click on any of these and you will be taken to the ForeignCorrespondent Blog page where you can read the post you ticked.
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June 7, 2021
Are We Entering America’s “Dark Age?”
There was a time when rational people agreed that there were certain immutable laws of nature that were based on facts, common sense, and verified scientific data.
For example, for millennia, humans have known there is a biological difference between men and women. We knew that only women had the physiological ability to become pregnant and give birth. We knew the natural male body is absolutely incapable of becoming pregnant because a simple examination of the bodies of men revealed that there is no birth canal, no ovaries, no uterus.
Gasp! Who knew?
Recently, however, the scientific geniuses at Twitter disagreed. Francisco José Contreras, deputy to Spain’s Vox Party, was locked out of his Twitter account for 12 hours after saying men cannot get pregnant. Contreras had shared a bogus news article, which reported that a “pregnant man” had given birth. “That’s a lie,” Contreras wrote on Twitter about the article. “A man cannot get pregnant. A man has neither uterus nor ovaries.”
For stating a biological fact, Twitter blocked Contreras, claiming his tweet had broken its policies prohibiting “hate, threats, harassment, and/or fomenting violence against people” based on “race, origin, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religion, age, disability, or illness.”
Twitter is not alone in its insanity. Today, thousands of years of proven facts about the physiology of men and women are being cast aside in favor of farfetched fantasies and fabrications by politically motivated quacks and charlatans who insist men and women are physically the same and therefore men, who self-identify as women, should be allowed to compete against natural female athletes. Not even in Europe’s nascent Dark Ages did such an absurd notion gain credence.
A man “identifying” as a 6-foot-8 female basketball playerIn the Dark Ages, the enemy of science was religious dogma. Today, the new religion is a blend of leftist radicalism and neo-Marxism that forbids unfettered discussion of most of today’s major questions, such as:
Should biological men and boys who “self-identify” as female be allowed to compete against women and girl athletes?What is the degree of manufactured climate change versus natural, cyclical climate change?When is life established in the womb?Is America a systemically racist nation?Is sex biologically determined or culturally constructed?Why, in an era that is more than one thousand years removed from the outset of the so-called Dark Ages, are purportedly rational people in Congress and the media insisting that there really is NO biological difference between men and women; that gender dissimilarities are a social construct, not a biological fact?
Arguments like that are built on the “fallacy of incomplete evidence,” which refers to the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It’s a first cousin to the “fallacy of selective attention,” which is commonly called “confirmation bias.” In short, they are as illogical as the syllogism below:
Most commonly, however, these irrational numbskulls resort to the “fallacy of selective use of evidence,” which rejects material unfavorable to an argument. They select data or data sets so that a study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to reality.
Folks, these are the Luddites of our time.
Today, you are likely to be called a social heretic if you insist men and women are physically different. This is thinking straight out of the Dark Ages when scientists like Galileo and Copernicus were viewed as heretics.
I suspect that behind this mind-numbing 21st-century pseudoscience, there is an agenda.
Voila! The announced agenda of those promoting pseudoscience today—primarily far-left zealots, socialists, and assorted Marxists—is to achieve “social justice,” the redistribution of income and wealth, obliteration of the First and Second Amendments (if not the entire Constitution), and the end of what they insist is systemic racism in the United States.
However, the left’s agenda actually is more ominous than that laundry list of objectives.
In essence, what the left is selling amounts to a modern version of feudalism–a self-appointed elite whose status will be maintained by promoting a self-serving socialist one-party rule steeped in neo-Marxist dogma. These “anointed” autocrats will then tell the rest of us peasants how we must live our lives, not unlike the Divine Right of Kings.
It is already happening, and the socialist autocrats are convinced they can get away with cramming such flawed and dishonest concepts as Critical Race Theory, the fraudulent 1619 Project, and even the canard that teaching mathematics and mathematics itself, is somehow racist.
Mathematics racist? Merriam Webster defines mathematics this way:
The abstract science of numbers and their operations, interrelations, combinations, abstractions, space configurations, structure, measurement, transformations, and generalizations. Algebra, arithmetic, calculus, geometry, and trigonometry are branches of mathematics.
Will somebody please explain how something so abstract can be racist?
Here is how some on the left have made that connection. And please excuse this tortured logic.
Math professors at top colleges and universities, including Harvard, Brooklyn College, and even the University of Illinois, where I toiled as a professor and college dean for 13 years, have pontificated that mathematics is rooted in “white supremacist patriarchy” and “white social construct.”
Laurie Rubel, a professor at Brooklyn College, said “the idea of math being culturally neutral is a myth because 2+2=4 reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”
Say what?
From my earliest days in elementary school, I always thought 2+2=4, nothing more or nothing less. However, it begs the question, is math considered “non-racist” if the mathematical equation were 2-2=1 or 2+2=0?
Rochelle Gutierrez, an education professor at the University of Illinois, insists that math is definitely racist.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as “whiteness,” she argues. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as “white.”
Gutierrez worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like ‘Pythagorean theorem’ and ‘pi’ perpetuate a perception that Greeks and other Europeans largely developed mathematics.”
So THAT’S it, is it? God forbid that white Europeans were somehow involved in the evolution of mathematics as a science. It HAD to be somebody else—preferably somebody with a different skin hue—that ACTUALLY developed mathematical theories and allowed mathematics to develop into a major course of study.
Well, guess what? A good deal of math was developed or improved, or passed on to us today by Greeks and Europeans. Is there something wrong with that? Are we not allowed by the PC Police to acknowledge that fact, the same way we tip our hats to brown and black Arabs each time we say the Arabic word “algebra,” even though algebra predated its modern Arab invention by several thousand years.
Folks, this is nothing more than leftist political correctness run amok.
There was a time when we accepted common sense about how the world worked according to logical, scientific, and, yes, mathematical principles. That assumption defined us as “enlightened” rather than Dark Age reductionists and ideological, myth-driven zealots.
No longer, it seems. Leftists, especially those who have hijacked our media, are most often regressive, anti-Enlightenment, and intolerant people, who start with a deductive premise and then make the evidence conform to it—or else.
Remember the “fallacy of selective use of evidence?”
Welcome to America’s Dark Ages—an Orwellian world where up is down, the sun circles the earth, hot is cold, war is peace, success is failure, mathematics is racist, boys are really girls and vice versa, and roosters crow before sunrise and, therefore, cause the sun to rise.
My question is this: will intelligent Americans allow themselves to be led like sheep to the paradoxical slaughterhouse for the half-baked?
Or will they finally say:
“Enough is enough, men are NOT women, and therefore men should not be allowed to compete against women in sporting events,”
OR
“Critical Race Theory is B.S. and so is the 1619 Project; mathematics is NOT racist, and America is not a systemically racist nation.”
OR
“Our 21st-century Luddites will not drag rational Americans into a new Dark Age where the government is the master of the people; where leftist/socialist politicians and their lackeys in the bureaucracy will determine who the winners and losers are, and where everyone must submit to the government or be canceled–a synonym today for being socially and politically annihilated.
Invictus maneo!
June 5, 2021
A Note to ForeignCorrespondent Subscribers, Friends, and Visitors–Updated
Dear subscribers and friends of ForeignCorrespondent.
You may have noticed a few changes on our blog in the past week or so.
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June 4, 2021
Tiananmen Square: A Massacre that Foretold China’s COVID-19 Treachery
As our battle against COVID-19, which began in Wuhan, China, in the fall of 2019, finally begins to wane, we are learning how the Chinese Communist Party purposely misled the world about the deadly virus—hiding the fact that it began in a Wuhan lab and is transmitted from human to human.
We are also learning that quite possibly Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shelled out a total of $7.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab to conduct gain-of-function research. According to Health and Human Services, gain-of-function is research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease in humans and warns that gain-of-function studies may entail biosafety and biosecurity risks. The National Institutes of Health, which oversees the NIAID, shut down all funding to the lab in April 2020, but the damage had already been done.
Most insidious, however, is the fact that the CCP then permitted the virus to spread worldwide when it allowed hundreds of thousands of people to leave Wuhan and seed the virus worldwide. To date, 189 countries are battling outbreaks of the coronavirus, and the death toll in the United States alone is almost 600,000, while worldwide, the death toll stands at almost 3.5 million.
The CCP says China has suffered just 4,845 Covid-19 deaths and only 102,000 cases nationwide–meager figures for a nation of 1.4 billion. I am not surprised by the lies and callous behavior of the Chinese Communist Party. I have personally seen the ruthless CCP in action.
I was in Beijing on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government sent its army into Tiananmen Square to crush thousands of students, workers, and political opponents of the ruling Communist oligarchy.
What happened that night 32 years ago remains incomprehensible to me. Tanks and armored personnel carriers roared into the square, mowing down pro-democracy demonstrators. Battle-hardened troops brought in from the tense border with Vietnam opened fire on unarmed students in what can only be called a massacre.
Today, some American politicians, including Joe Biden, say that China is our friend—an affable but tough competitor in the global marketplace. In reality, I believe Biden is obliged (for multiple reasons) to cover up China’s deceitful behavior. But that’s a topic for another day.
The fact is, China is NOT our friend!
Any government that can murder its own children so indiscriminately and ruthlessly as it did 32 years ago cannot be trusted to act rationally or benevolently toward us or any other nation. We see that behavior playing out with the COVID-19 virus when the CCP purposely misled the world beginning in November 2019 about the severity of the deadly virus attacking Wuhan.
Why? The CCP reasoned that it should not suffer the scourge of the COVID-19 virus alone. If China’s economy was going to crash, then the rest of the world should crash also. That is exactly what has happened.
The China of 2021 remains a nation of iron-handed one-party rule replete with human rights violations and corruption. This is a nation fixed on global economic and political domination. I do not doubt that if hundreds of thousands of students and protestors were to occupy Tiananmen Square again today, the result would be the same as it was on that summer night 31 years ago.
The post that follows contains my recollections of that gruesome night in 1989—one that is indelibly etched into my memory. It’s a little longer than most of my posts, but that bloody night in Tiananmen Square was also one of the longest I ever spent. I hope you will read on.
At the end of my post, you can click on the link to an interview with National Public Radio for the 25th anniversary of the massacre. Feel free to comment.
Tiananmen Square Diary China was the world’s biggest story in the summer of 1989 when several hundred thousand students, labor leaders, and other dissidents occupied the five million square foot concrete piazza known as Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. For seven weeks, as the world watched, some 500,000 “pro-democracy” demonstrators descended on Beijing’s most sacred site to protest corruption, human rights violations, and one-party rule.The protest would ultimately end in the early morning hours of June 4 with the deaths of thousands of demonstrators in what the world has come to know as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre.” The Chinese Red Cross puts the number at 3,000, with 12,000 wounded. Still, a recently declassified cable from then British Ambassador Sir Alan Donald just 24 hours after the massacre said at least 10,000 people were killed in and around the square, and perhaps as many as 20,000 were wounded or injured.
Demonstrators in Tiananmen Before the MassacreToday all evidence of that bloody night has been obliterated. Tiananmen Square is scrubbed and shimmering as it awaits the hundreds of thousands of summer visitors who will wander past the colossal portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs above the Forbidden City’s Gate of Heavenly Peace on the north end of the plaza and through the mausoleum that displays his waxy remains on the south end.Despite the scourge of the COVID-19 virus, China today is relatively sanguine and confident. Profits, not protests, are the driving force among most Chinese. However, that was not the case in 1989 when Tiananmen Square was turned into a squalid, fetid tent city of protestors.For many young Chinese, the tragedy that unfolded in Tiananmen Square 30 years ago is ancient history—an event that has been glossed over, covered up, and generally purged from the national consciousness by a nation eager to put forth its most dazzling and alluring face for tourists and the international business community.But on June 3, 1989, as I walked through what is generally regarded as the planet’s largest city square, the world was just a few hours from seeing China at its most ruthless and ugliest.The square that day was a hot, grubby place strewn with refuse, canvass tents, and other makeshift dwellings. Under the towering “Heroes of the Nation” obelisk demonstrators cooked rice and soup while others linked arms and sang a spirited rendition of the “Internationale,” the world socialist anthem. Thousands of others dozed under flimsy lean-tos or blasted music from boom boxes.Near the middle of the square, the 30-foot tall “Goddess of Democracy,” a pasty white statue constructed by art students and made of styrofoam and paper-mâché, stared defiantly at Mao’s giant portrait—almost mocking the founder of modern-day China. A truck swept by periodically spraying billowing clouds of insecticide and disinfectant over everything and everybody in its path.
Goddess of Democracy StatueHawkers guiding pushcarts containing ice cream, soft drinks, rice cakes, candy, and film encircled the students doing a brisk business. Even if the students in the square had not been able to topple China’s ruling hierarchy, at least there were profits to be made.One enterprising entrepreneur raked in several hundred yuan within a few minutes after he began renting stepping stools for the hundreds of amateur photographers and tourists who arrived to have their pictures taken next to students or standing at the base of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue. Tiananmen, I wrote at the time, had evolved into a “Disneyland of Dissent.”By June 3, the number of students occupying the square had dwindled to about 20,000 as thousands had already packed up and headed back to their provinces. But some students I talked with that afternoon were not ready to leave, and a few shared an intense sense of foreboding.One of those was Chai Ling. Chai, who had been elected “chief commander” by the dissidents, was the only woman among the seven student leaders of the pro-democracy protests. As we sat cross-legged on the hot pavement, she talked about the protests and just what the students had accomplished during their 7-week-long occupation of Tiananmen.
Chai Ling in Tiananmen Speaking to Students 1989 “There will be a price to pay for all of this,” the 23-year-old child psychology graduate warned, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Some people will have to die for democracy, but it will be worth it.”Chai, the object of a year-long nationwide search by the Chinese government after the violence in the square, would eventually escape China to Hong Kong sealed for five days and nights in a wooden crate deep in the hold of a rickety ship. She managed to elude capture in China by adopting a series of disguises, learning local Chinese dialects, and working variously as a rice farmer, laborer, and maid. Eventually, she would come to the United States, be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and graduate from Harvard Business School.Barely eight hours after my conversation with Chai, her warning would become a reality. Late in the evening of June 3 and during the early morning hours of June 4, the lethargy of weary demonstrators and the cacophony of boom box music would be replaced by shrieks of terror, gunfire, and the guttural roar of tank and armored personnel carrier engines as the People’s Liberation Army rolled into the square, crushing tents and firing indiscriminately at protesters and anybody else who got in their way.A couple of hours before the violence erupted, a few of us foreign correspondents had enjoyed a quiet meal together in the venerable Beijing Hotel on Chang’an Avenue a few blocks from the square.While dining, we discussed the events of the night before when several thousand young unarmed military recruits were sent marching toward the students in Tiananmen Square. Before they got very far, an estimated 100,000 Chinese civilians poured from their homes near the square. They confronted the soldiers—berating them for even thinking of entering Tiananmen to clear it of the thousands of students who had occupied it since late April.This rather benign event was nothing more than a probe to determine what kind of resistance armed troops might face when they stormed the square. For several weeks some 200,000 Chinese troops—most from provinces far away from Beijing—had been massing on the city’s outskirts.As Beijing entered its 15th day of martial law, it was also obvious that the government was still unable to enforce that decree. The government admonished foreign media members to “observe regulations on news coverage” as they relate to martial law.“Foreign journalists must not talk with student protesters, and any news coverage of any kind in Beijing must receive prior approval,” said a statement by Ding Weijun, spokesman for the city.The statement also warned the hundreds of foreign reporters still in Beijing against inviting Chinese citizens to their offices, homes, or hotels to conduct “interviews regarding prohibited activities.” Several foreign reporters had been expelled from the country for violating those rules.Many of us ignored those edicts and talked to anybody who wanted to speak anywhere that was deemed away from government authorities’ prying eyes and ears. I also ignored the curfew, often riding my red and white Sprick bicycle down dark streets from my hotel to the Tribune’s offices located in a foreign housing compound a half-mile away. I got to know most of the Chinese police who were supposed to enforce the curfew. They would smile and wave as I peddled past.
Aboard my Sprick BicycleThe morning of June 3, once again ignoring marital law rules, I took the Tribune car and my nervous Chinese driver, and we drove outside of the square and into several neighborhoods where streets leading toward Tiananmen had been shut down by angry civilians intent on keeping the Chinese Army from reaching the students. Dozens of intersections were blocked with buses, trucks, and makeshift barricades. Neighborhood leaders proudly showed me their arsenal of weapons—rows of gasoline-filled bottles complete with cloth wicks, piles of rocks and bricks, shovels, rakes, picks, and other garden tools.“We will protect the students,” a man named Liang Hong told me.“But how?” I asked. “The army has tanks, machine guns, and armored personnel carriers. They will kill you.”“Then we will die,” he replied. Several dozen others quickly echoed his words. “Yes, we will all die. These are our children in the square. We must help them even if it means death.”Several days after the attack on the square, when the authorities allowed people to travel once again in the city, I drove back to this same neighborhood. True to their word, I was told that Liang Hong and several of his neighbors had died or were wounded attempting to keep the army from entering the square.After dinner in the Beijing Hotel, I decided to take one more stroll through the square. As I rode into the square on the bicycle I had purchased after my arrival in Beijing from Tokyo two weeks before, I could see that many of the students were obviously spooked—not only by the unarmed incursion of the night before but by the intelligence pouring in from the neighborhoods surrounding the square that the army was on the move.“I think something will happen tonight,” one of them told me. “I am very afraid.”I stopped at the foot of the Goddess of Democracy. A couple of small spotlights illuminated the statue as it looked toward the Forbidden City and Mao’s portrait. On the edge of the square, I bought a bottle of Coca-Cola then pushed my bicycle toward the four-story KFC restaurant on the south end of the square. It was about 8:30 p.m. The restaurant (the largest KFC store in the world) was almost empty.I then rode the 2 miles down Jianguomenwei Avenue to the Jianguo Hotel where I was staying. I needed to file a story on the day’s events—specifically my conversation with Chai Ling and the other students that afternoon. I finished writing my story around 10 p.m. and decided, despite the curfew, to ride my bicycle back to the square for one more look around. I parked my bike on Xuanwumen Dong Avenue near the hulking Museum of History and Revolution on the square’s east side. I began walking toward the “Heroes of the Nation” obelisk, which became the students’ headquarters.I hadn’t gotten very far when the sound of gunfire erupted. The firing seemed everywhere, amplified by the massive buildings that surrounded the square. I ran toward my bicycle, not wanting to be trapped in the square should tanks roll in. Moments later, I ran into BBC correspondent Kate Adie, walking toward the square with her camera crew.“What’s going on,” she asked.“Looks like the army is making a move tonight,” I answered. I explained that I hadn’t seen any troops or tanks in the square at that point, but I did see muzzle flashes from the roof of the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square. Several hundred troops had massed behind the Great Hall a day before, and I assumed they had been positioned on the roof.I rode my bicycle north toward Chang’an Avenue. I hadn’t gotten very far when I noticed a line of Armored Personnel Carriers moving toward the square flanked by hundreds of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Seconds later, the dark sky was interlaced by red and yellow tracer fire, and I could hear bullets ricocheting off of concrete. I turned my bike around and raced back toward the south end of the square. Like many of my fellow correspondents, I never thought the government would use deadly force against the students.As the firing intensified, thousands of more residents poured out of their houses and formed human blockades where streets entered the square. They quickly became targets for the machine gun and small arms fire. As the casualties mounted, the crowds became increasingly belligerent. They armed themselves with bricks, bottles, iron rods, and wooden clubs and attacked some military contingents, including tanks.An infuriated mob grabbed one soldier and set him afire after dousing him with gasoline. They then hung his still smoldering body from a pedestrian overpass. It was one of the many examples of instant justice meted out that night. The crowd accused the soldier of having shot an older woman to death.I watched the wounded and the dead being carted from the square and the area surrounding it on the flatbeds of three-wheeled vehicles. The stinging stench of tear gas hovered over the embattled city and burned my eyes.
Carting the Wounded out of the Square“Tell the world!” the crowds screamed at other foreign journalists they saw and me. “Tell the United States! Tell the truth! We are students! We are common people-unarmed, and they are killing us!”Around 2 a.m., at the height of the armed assault, a maverick tank careened down Jianguomenwai Avenue in an attempt to crack open the way for troop convoys unable to pass through the milling crowds.The tank was bombarded with stones and bottles with its turret closed as it sped down the avenue. Young cyclists headed it off, then slowed to bring it to a halt. But the tank raced on, the cyclists deftly avoiding its clattering treads by mere inches.On the Jianguomenwai bridge over the city’s main ring road, where a 25-truck convoy had been marooned for hours by a mass of angry civilians clambering all over it, a tank raced through the crowd. It sideswiped one of the army trucks, and a young soldier who was clinging to its side was flung off and killed instantly.The worst fighting of the night occurred around the Minzu Hotel, west of the square, where grim-faced troops opened fire with tracer rounds on milling crowds blocking their access to the square. Bullets ripped into the crowd, and scores of people were wounded. The dead and wounded were thrown on the side of the road among a pile of abandoned bicycles as the troops moved on to take the square.
Dead and Wounded Amid Abandoned BicyclesOne tank ran into the back of another that had stalled on Chang’an Avenue. As they hurriedly bounced apart, the machine guns on their turrets began to train on an approaching crowd of about 10,000. The machine guns erupted, sending tracers above the heads of the crowd. Men and women scurried for cover, many crawling into the piles of dead and wounded along the side of the road.In my haste to return to the square, I had forgotten to bring my camera. Even though it was night, the square was illuminated by street lamps, and the sky above it was lit almost continuously with tracers and bright flares. I decided not to ride my bicycle to avoid becoming a larger target. At the same time, I didn’t want to lose the only form of transportation I had, so I pushed it wherever I went, sometimes crouching behind it. Finally, I found a small tree and padlocked it to the trunk.For most of the night, I found myself caught between trying to cover the tragedy unfolding in and around the square and watching my back. I didn’t want to be caught in the sites of some trigger-happy soldier.At one point, several hundred troops successfully occupied a corner of the square, and I watched as a crowd of some 3,000 howling unarmed students surged toward them on foot and by bicycle, intent on breaking through their line with their bare hands. A few in front of the main body rammed their bikes into the troops and were quickly beaten to the ground by soldiers using the butts of their rifles or clubs.
Dead Demonstrators Piled in a Hospital Hallway“Fascists! Murderers!” the crowd chanted.
As the main body of the crowd got within 50 yards of the first line of troops, an army commander blew a whistle, and the soldiers turned and fired volleys of automatic rifle fire. Screams of pain followed.The protesters threw themselves and their bikes on the pavement of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Dragging their bikes behind them, they crawled to safety, pursued by rifle fire and the throaty war cries of the soldiers.When the firing momentarily stopped, the crowd regrouped and slowly crept back toward the square. Then the volleys rang out again, more intense this time. Two lines of soldiers began to chase the mob, alternately firing tear gas and bullets. I watched several people stagger and fall to the ground.The acrid smell of tear gas triggered a paroxysm of coughing in the crowd. People ripped off shirt sleeves and used them as handkerchiefs over their mouths. The bodies of three women were laid out on the pavement of a side street to await transport. A crowd gathered around them, waving fists and cursing the government.“How many people did you kill?” they shouted at steel-helmeted soldiers who stood stonily with AK-47 assault rifles cradled across their chests.The fighting continued throughout the night as exhausted students and other dissidents engaged in hit-and-run battles with soldiers, tanks, and APCs. Some students, many of them wounded, scrambled aboard abandoned buses seeking refuge and aid. I watched soldiers pull them out and beat them with heavy clubs.
Students Confront APC’s in the SquareSeveral of the students, bleeding from head wounds, ran toward where I had taken cover behind a low stone wall. One of the students, a girl of maybe 16, had been shot through the shoulder and was bleeding profusely. She was falling in and out of consciousness and looked to be in shock. I looked behind me to see if there was some way to get her assistance.In the distance, I saw a man waving at me from a doorway of a brick wall. He was motioning me to bring the girl and other wounded students to him, all the while carefully watching for soldiers. With the help of another reporter, I pulled her up and dashed with her and several other wounded students to the gate. The man quickly wrapped a blanket around the girl and took her inside the compound with the other students.“Thank you,” he said. “I am a doctor. I will take care of them.”I jogged back to the low wall where I had been kneeling before. I recall thinking that if I were wounded, at least I now knew where I could go for help. For the next few hours, I moved from one location to another, trying to find a spot where I could see what was happening while ensuring I had an escape route should I come under fire.The square was finally cleared at dawn when four personnel carriers raced across it, flattening not only the tents of the demonstrators but the “Goddess of Liberty” statue. I looked at my watch. It was about 5:30, and dawn was breaking over the city.Ten minutes later, a negotiated settlement allowed the hard-core remnants of the democracy movement—some 5,000 students and their supporters—to leave by the southeastern corner of the square. As they left singing the Internationale, troops ritually beat them with wooden clubs and metal rods. The army had been ordered to clear the Square by 6 a.m, and it had done so but at a terrible cost.As daylight broke over the Avenue of Eternal Peace, dazed knots of Chinese, many of them weeping and all of them angry at their government, stood at intersections, reliving the events of a few hours before when tracer bullets and flares turned the black Beijing sky into a deadly torrent of crimson.Along the roadside leading into the square lay several wounded students, some perhaps already dead.“They murdered the people. . . . They just shot the people down like dogs, with no warning,” said a man whose shirt was soaked with blood. “I carried a woman to an ambulance, but I think she was dead.”“Please,” he said, “you must tell the world what has happened here. We need your protection from our government.”Perhaps the defining moment of the massacre came a bit later that morning when a student jumped in front of a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue and refused to move. As yet still unidentified, this student shouted at the tank commander: “Get out of my city. … You’re not wanted here.” Each time the tank would attempt to maneuver around the student, he would jump in front of it. The column of tanks turned off their motors, and then several other students ran out and pulled the student to safety. To this day, nobody is sure who the student was or what happened to him. Most Chinese still refer to him as the “tank man.”
The Still Unidentified “Tank Man” Confronting TanksI walked back to where I had left my bicycle and rode to the Jianguo Hotel. As I peddled along mostly deserted streets, I tried to make sense out of what I had seen. With the students already dispersing from the square or planning to, the attack by the army was unnecessarily brutal.There was little doubt that what I had witnessed was an assault designed to punish the demonstrators for embarrassing China’s leadership—Premier Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping, the ailing leader of China’s Communist Party.China’s hard-line rulers, clearly in control after the bloodbath, issued a statement that morning that said:“Thugs frenziedly attacked People’s Liberation Army troops, seizing weapons, erecting barricades and beating soldiers and officers in an attempt to overthrow the government of the People’s Republic of China and socialism.”China’s leaders have not forgotten the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. Unnerved by turbulence among Tibetans and always nervous about the possibility of human rights protests in the heart of the capital, China barred live television coverage from Tiananmen Square during the 2008 Beijing Olympics—just as it had in 1989. It will probably do the same on the 30th anniversary of the slaughter.However, it remains to be seen whether or not such a ban will exorcise the ghosts of June 4, 1989, that still hangs over Tiananmen Square. There is little doubt that time has not healed the deep wounds inflicted on China’s people that terrible night 30 years ago.CLICK BELOW FOR MY SHORT INTERVIEW WITH NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MASSACRE.https://will.illinois.edu/player/audio/tiananmen-square-diary
