While much online press and blog attention has been shown the Obama free-admission rock concert at Xcel arena and the upcoming Franken-Nelson Pallmeyer face-off situation, and the Hilary non-conciliation speech plus that camp's origination of a petition to make Obama's decisions for him after losing the contest [be the first on your block to sign up for this petition effort], there's more. Rice spoke to AIPAC on CSPAN [the channel not carrying Obama live]. Cantwell, Klobuchar and others had televised hearings on oil and commodity pricing with Soros and the former head of the CFTC testifying along with an industry representative looking to cast blame elsewhere [remember Phil Gramm, he was noted for monkey-wrenching regulatory capabilities over energy back in a late-night bill addition in 2000, called "the Enron loophole" from times before the Enron bubble burst]. All that is news.
But this is an anniversary for those feeling a government should serve and not demand. For those truly believing that soverignty anywhere and everywhere rests or should rest with the people.
Guardian has coverage, a retrospective editorial and reporting of efforts to free those still imprisoned for Tiananmen 19 years later. The reporting first, where this link should reach a video recollection, or link to it from the article:
Civil rights activists called on the Chinese government today to release more than 100 prisoners from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests as a sign of its commitment to improve human rights ahead of this summer's Olympic Games.
On the 19th anniversary of the bloody crackdown by People's Liberation Army troops, participants and supporters said the recent openness of the Sichuan earthquake relief operation could pave the way for a wider national reconciliation if the events of 1989 are reviewed and those punished are pardoned.
Human Rights Watch said 130 people are still in prison as a result of their roles in the pro-democracy demonstrations, which started in Beijing and spread to several other cities. By freeing them, the group said China could show "the global Olympic audience it is serious about human rights".
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators and their supporters were killed by army tanks and troops in and around Tiananmen Square on June 3 and 4, 1989.
Civic groups and foreign governments - including the US and UK - have called for a full investigation and a pardon for those imprisoned in the crackdown that followed.
The government in Beijing insists the actions were needed to restore order, but it has blocked public debate on the issue.
One of the most prominent activists from 1989, Han Dongfang, said in a statement that the relative transparency shown by the Chinese authorities in their handling of the Sichuan earthquake should be repeated for the political wrongdoings of the past.
"The shift in leadership style shown by the government in response to the earthquake disaster suggests that the time is now right for such a step," said Han in an essay titled "A Time for Unity, a Time for Reconciliation" that praised the role of the army in the relief effort.
In Tiananmen Square today, the security presence was beefed up, as is usual every year on June 4. Police checked the bags of many visitors entering the area for liquids, banners and petitions.
But most tourists seemed oblivious to the significance of the date, which is a taboo subject in the domestic media.
"It is my first visit to Beijing. The square is far more impressive than I imagined," said a middle-aged man who had just arrived from Liaoning province with his wife. "I never heard of any trouble here in 1989. We live in a country village. We don't know about that kind of thing."
I live in Ramsey, and can sympathize with that last quote about being in a country village, not being up on things. The editorial retrospective said:
For some, the events that occurred in Beijing 19 years ago today have been pushed towards the sidelines of history.
The Great Leap Forward and the consequent famine or the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution were, in purely quantitative terms, much longer and bigger (including in terms of victims) that the massacre of protesters on the night of June 3-4 1989.
"[F]riends" of China take care to describe it as the Tiananmen Incident or, at most, as a "clampdown". The protesters have been suppressed or forced into exile across the globe, except for those who have come to terms with the regime that rules in the new China; a few are still in prison.
What happened that night is a non-event as far as the rulers of China are concerned; commemoration is suppressed and, if it is remembered at all, the occasion is portrayed as a glorious defence of the people's true interests by the army. How many people died remains unknown, though what is clear is that most were not students in Tiananmen, but ordinary citizens of the capital trying to stop the armoured vehicles after previous successes at blocking their progress to the square.
Yet June 4 remains a crucial moment in China's history [...] The killings of June 4 were enough of a tragedy in themselves. But, beyond the deaths along the boulevard leading to Tiananmen and then in the square, the outcome of the Beijing Spring confirmed China in a political course which reaches back into distant history, but from which, crucially, Deng Xiaoping and his elderly colleagues decided not to divert 19 years ago.
The patriarch, the ultimate survivor of the Communist system, embarked on the path of economic, market-led reform in 1978 after his victory over Mao's anointed successor, Hua Guofeng. While this was hugely successful in one sense, kick-starting the moribund economy and bringing China into the world economic system, it had, by 1989, aroused widespread resentment bred from the inequality Deng saw as necessary for growth, inflation and corruption.
But there was a more fundamental question: if the Chinese were to be free to run their lives economically, why not politically as well? If the command economy was being dismantled, why not the command political system, too?
I have recently done a bit of re-reading about "The Battle of Seattle" where death was not a factor among demonstrators, but where the WTO will was reinforced by martial law amid claims of police brutality and arbitrariness and with some arrestees having recently attained financial relief and clearing of their records - in that the mayor's mandate was to stay out of certain areas of the city and they were arrested while outside of the verboten region - standing, grouped, not causing any ruckus.
So, that entire question about economic freedom and political freedom, is far from simple. The WTO perseveres, and while the 1999 meeting in Seattle was not the feather in Bill Clinton's cap he wanted, more like a sharp stick in the eye, nonetheless the WTO perseveres while globalization means we arguably cannot exclude goods made with slave labor or in sweat shop circumstances, but still can let a little local pork involving streetcars in Portland trump Eastern European market access, but that Congressional thing deserves another full post beyond this digression. It seems US economic freedom rests with those having lots of money to start life with, while impediments and rules and custom constrains the rest of us not born into the Bush family or its functional equivalent.
The Guardian editorial continues:
The student demonstrators in the square may have lacked a coherent message. The atmosphere may have taken on aspects of a carnival. But, underlying it all, was a basic questioning of the right of the Communist Party to exercise monopoly power, a demand for discussion and plurality.
That questioned a tenet of Chinese rule dating back to the First Emperor of 221BC. The doctrine of legalism - rule by law rather than rule of law - co-existed with the more benevolent strains of Confucianism. Mao had identified himself with the First Emperor, and in 1980, Deng and his colleagues were in no mood to cede the authority they had spent all their lives fighting for.
Their decision to declare martial law and send in the People's Liberation Army was not taken lightly. As shown in the smuggled-out records in the book, the Tiananmen Papers, they deliberated long and hard, often in deep disgruntlement as they discussed how to deal with the pesky students who could draw on the traditional esteem in which their class was held in China. Reformists in the leadership, led by the party secretary, Zhao Ziyang, tried to find an accommodation. By the beginning of June, some student leaders were ready to return to campus and build on the moral victory they had won since launching the protest in mid-April. But the moderates were overruled on both sides and the tragic result unfolded.
That may say something about the dynamics of a student movement that was poorly co-ordinated and lacked clear, realisable aims - and was filled with its fair share of egos and hotheads. But it says a lot more about the Chinese leadership, then and since. The desire for compromise, for understanding, for a peaceful way forward that encompasses as many participants as possible has little or no place in a tradition that, stretching back through the imperial millennia, puts a premium on top-down rule with force always lurking in the background to be used on dissidents who are portrayed as traitors to the received wisdom exercised by the rulers.
Luckily, our system permits a focus for young voices and energy, and Barak Obama is there to assure us "change" is right around the corner, but the word change is his, not McCain's, and we should not, I suppose, settle for small change, pocket change.
Expectations and the future may not square totally for some, but it may for others, and it gets back to which set of expectations we should expect to prevail after the November elections are over, and individual candidate losses and victories can be tallied and reform of DC and its ways and means can then commence.