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On June 4, our local NPR station broadcast some BBC interviews about the fact that this year, and for the last 3 years, no public vigil/memorial was allowed on the anniversary of the "Tiananmen Square Massacre." The last two years, officials used Covid as the excuse, but this year it was clearly more than just Covid or any other pox at play. But as I listened, I almost had to laugh at the BBC interviewer who had found a person who spoke good English decrying the new rule about memorials/vigils this year. The man agreed that it was wrong to stop the memorials, and then he was asked if he thought his life or at least his freedom was in danger for giving the interview. The interviewee fumbled for a bit, knowing what the interviewer wanted, but very nicely told him that as a Chinese person he still has leeway to speak about it, but that it was still wrong for the government to disallow the actual memorial events, because it's a part of history he remembered as a child, and he wants his children never to forget it. The program cut to a replay of the BBC reporting way back from that day in 1989, and I noticed something odd in the exact wording of the report when the announcer said: "We are heading toward the Square now, and we can hear gunfire coming from not far away." This was actually one of the accurate reports, because, while there were protests on the Square that became violent, that gunfire wasn't coming from the Square but was many blocks away from the Square. The explanation is presented very simply in a "Tweet" from someone who just got banned from Twitter for it, even though it is true, but almost never reported this way in the West. This is the way some journalists on the spot at the time also reported it, until the Western narrative changed and the numbers of dead also had to be multiplied drastically.

This makes me feel old..... Were commercials REALLY that cheesy back then?

historicaltimes: Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 1989. via reddit World News