 All right, so what wasn't trending today on Twitter? At least I didn't see it trending on Twitter, and I was on Twitter a few times. What is today an anniversary of? And an important anniversary, and I think an important anniversary that'll go down in history as important in the fight for liberty, in the fight for freedom. And I don't know if some of you know this as I sort of mentioned in the chat earlier. No, it wasn't Midway, it wasn't the Six-Day War. I don't think so, although it's close. Sometime now in June, I think it's a Six-Day War, but no, I wasn't thinking Midway, I wasn't thinking Six-Day War. Something more, in some ways, more significant, more horrific, more negative, more sad, and something that's definitely shaped the country's future and present. Yeah, Tiananmen Square. 33 years ago, Deng Cha Peng ordered the tanks into Tiananmen Square, and not only bringing the tanks in, but ordered the troops, the soldiers to fire on the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of students. We remember it as Tiananmen Square, but really, it's much more than Tiananmen Square. There were crowds of young students seeking greater freedom, seeking greater democracy, seeking a greater say in the future, standing for liberty. There were hundreds of thousands of such young people all over China. They were in all the major cities and some of the smallest cities in China. We only know Tiananmen Square because that's where there were some journalists. We know Tiananmen Square because of the famous pictures of Tank Man, but what is interesting is we have very little photographs of the slaughter that followed. We have no real firsthand detailed accounts of the massacres that the Chinese soldiers inflicted on their own people. The thousands, maybe the tens of thousands, we don't even know how many people died that day and the days that followed as the Chinese regime decided in the name of one party rule, in the name of the greater good, in the name of the common good, in the name of Chinese nationalism and Chinese greatness to crush, to crush the spirit, the dream, and the lives of young Chinese students. Again, thousands, if not tens of thousands, died that day. More than that, I mean, not more than that, but on top of that, I literally think the spirit of a whole generation of Chinese was crushed. The liberty, the freedom movement in whatever terminology they thought of it, to whatever extent they believed it could grow disappeared from China or went underground. It continued to be held by intellectuals here and there that were allowed to speak sometimes. But as a movement, as a movement, certainly as a mass movement, Tiananmen Square destroyed the movement for freedom and the movement for liberty in China. What is interesting is that China bans all discussions of it. It does not teach it as schools. When you talk to young Chinese today and you mention Tiananmen Square, you will get a quizzical look from them. They have no idea what you are talking about. They do not know it even happened. Never mind what happened and how many people died. It has been wiped from the history books. If you remember the Hong Kong liberty movement, the Hong Kong demonstrations, many of them were focused around the commemoration of Tiananmen Square in years past when people were arrested, when such commemorations were banned by the Chinese government and the students in Hong Kong went out into the streets in spite of that. Well, even that now is finished. There were no commemorations in Hong Kong or at least none with any numbers. At this time, this year, the Chinese government have a complete grip on Hong Kong. There are no demonstrations, there are no commemorations. Hopefully many of the people who did not get arrested by the Chinese who are not sitting today in jail from the Hong Kong demonstrations, hopefully many of them have escaped Hong Kong, maybe in Taiwan, in Singapore, in Canada, in UK, one of the great moral travesties is that the United States did not open its doors to refugees from Hong Kong. Many of the Tiananmen Square young people managed to escape, many of the Chinese living today who are older, this was 1989, so 33 years ago, many of the 50-something year old Chinese people who have been living in the United States since the early 1990s maybe, many of those young, many of those people, if you ask them, they were part of the Tiananmen Square attempt at bringing more freedom and liberty to China and they gave up afterwards and many of them escaped to the West, emigrated to the West, went to school in the West, stayed here, did not want to go back to China because of what had happened on that horrific day. The tank man, remember tank man, the man who stood in front of the tank, daring it to run him over, trying to appeal to the soldiers, after all, you're Chinese, we're Chinese, what are you doing? You really gonna kill us? Well, the tank man actually survived Tiananmen Square and is rumored to be living in Taiwan, kind of underground, changed his name, fearful of the Chinese government finding him and killing him. So, incredible bravery by the tank man but incredibly bravely, I'd say by those students who knew there was a very high probability that the Chinese central government would not let them get away with what they got away with, not let them demonstrate for weeks, days, weeks, they were in the square for a very long time and it's only when Deng Cha-Peng realized that there was no way to negotiate, there was no, they demanded compromises, he was not willing to provide and that they would not just go home, that all the pressure put on them, the threats did not work, that the only way to stop them, the only way for the Chinese communist government to maintain one party rule was to actually inflict the kind of violence that was inflicted in Tiananmen. So, Deng Cha-Peng, in spite of doing many good things for China, starting in 1978 when he became kind of the leader and until his death really, and in spite of liberating much of the economy and in spite of allowing certain level of freedom, a lot of freedom economically and some political freedom, his hands and his legacy will always be tainted by the blood he shed that day, 33 years ago. I mean, he also has a lot to pay for the sins of being Mao Tung's right-hand man during much of Mao's rule over China, so it's not that he was a good guy always, he was a bad guy who turned pragmatic, semi-good guy who then, in Tiananmen Square, manifested itself as the bad guy and then returns as kind of more pragmatic, good guy afterwards. A lot of blood on Deng Cha-Peng's hands, a lot of blood on those Chinese soldiers' hands, a lot of blood on the generals who went along and the other party members who went along with it, unforgivable. I think it'll go down in Chinese history as a dark, black day. I think one day, and I'm convinced this day will come when China is a free country, one day when China is indeed a country that celebrates freedom, capitalism, individualism, this'll be one of the darkest days, this'll be remembered as, for the courage of the young people who are there and for the cowardice and the evil of the people who unleashed the violence on them. So my thoughts go out to the people of China who've kept the flame of liberty alive, the people of China who still fight for that liberty. My thoughts go out to the people who lost family members that day and to the survivors, to all the students who demonstrated and who survived that day. Hopefully, hopefully some of you will see a better China. It's not heading in the right direction right now, but maybe that'll be a catalyst. Maybe that'll be a catalyst to a renewed liberty movement in China. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. 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