BEIJING (Reuters) - A newspaper in southwest China has sacked three of its editors over an advertisement saluting mothers of protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, a source with knowledge of the gaffe said on Thursday.
Public discussion of the massacre is still taboo in China and the government has rejected calls to overturn the verdict that the student-led protests were subversive.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed when the army crushed the democracy movement on June 4, 1989.
Now I'm not going to paint myself into a corner here. I'm being critical of how even still today the protesters at Tiananmen Square are disgraced by their government. These people are enemies to true patriots in the mind of the government. In our society, these people should be looked at as heroes. But our recent past has mirrored this mindset. Look at the flack Sheehan got for standing up to Bush. Look at how we've disgraced the concept of protest by forcing Bush protesters to protest in cages far from the events their messages speak to. I also have to mention here my contempt for Hugo Chavez. I know I've said good things about him in the past. And I can't help but admit that while people believe communism to be evil, the revolutions of Cuba and Russia and now Venezuela have changed many lives for the better. But Chavez is also banning newspapers from printing anti-government comments and that I just can't agree with.
I think there's a balance here somewhere. And it is a Utopian ideal. Just like our democracy(AKA republic), socialist movements(AKA communist movements) are based on ideals of perfect societies. What's becoming more apparent everyday in my mind is that we need to form a balance of these ideals and not be so harsh in how others utilize those ideals. Maybe it doesn't work in the U.S. to have more than one language for official documents, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work for Canada and India and China and well a heck of a lot of places. Holding on to something like language though, holds on to racist opinions of foreigners. "Why don't they talk like us" is just as bad as "why don't they dress like us".
Certainly there are governments that are just wrong. Dictatorships really don't allow for criticism from the populace, and that is a flawed system determined to create strife. Democracies too have their flaws in that majority opinion can be swayed by media and the mandated opinion isn't always the best. Our republic meant to solve that by allowing for educated debate by the legislature, but there too we're seeing the same problem. Media sways public opinion, whether it's based on fact or money and that influences candidates to make decisions based on lobbyists instead of constituents. Socialized systems are good for the concept of broad fairness, but the person or people holding the purse always get the better goods and most money, because greed is a powerful thing. So how can power be held both among the people and controlled by some organized body? Well that takes true leadership. I don't think I've seen in my lifetime a true leader of men. Someone that actually puts themselves aside for the benefit of the whole. Indeed if such a burden of non-instinctual requirement is needed for leaders to even qualify, how can any system last beyond the life of that leader? How can you ever prevent one bad apple from breaking the system? I don't know that you can.
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