digg

Join DiggAbout

The Unknown Rebel at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 watch!

youtube.com — You have all seen the photograph. Now see the harrowing video of this brave man fighting for a country he believes in.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • bruenig, on 10/12/2007, -11/+19Tank drivers should have spread out.
    • mastersquirrel3, on 10/12/2007, -10/+8I know he can't stop them all.
    • spedmyster, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2Wow, way to show your support.
    • ch28kid, on 10/12/2007, -34/+2This was from Hong Kong!
    • bruenig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23Ch28Kid

      Tiananmen Square is in Beijing.
    • nottidredd, on 10/12/2007, -28/+1i was hoping they would splatter his ass on the asphalt
    • InvertedDonkey, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1bury
    • ratnacage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+47You cant see it in the film but his massive balls prevented the tanks from going around.
    • orangemarmalade, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2"thanks for stopping"
      "it ran out of gas"
  • leffunov, on 10/12/2007, -17/+2Did he get run over?
  • buckeye45, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17who knows what they did to him. i could, however, assume that it was brutal, and he did not live much longer after that.
    • detlev409, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20There are many varying stories. No one is sure if he's alive or not. I've read [non-Onion] articles that claim the Tank Man is still alive and living in the Chinese countryside.

      I prefer to believe he still lives, but that's just me.
    • rayyy, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1He was killed. Got run over. The video even shows the aftermath of his crushed body. Search for that video on google, I am sure someone still has it.
    • detlev409, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Patently false, rayyy, but good try.
  • The0, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Is it just a fluke or does everyone else see "speed painting ketchup catsup" as the tags for this video?
  • sublimer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15that dude kicks ass!

    can anyone translate the characters at the bottom?
    • detlev409, on 10/12/2007, -2/+36"This guy has bigger balls than you."
  • qazwsxedc30, on 10/12/2007, -4/+41Why do people put music to EVERY god dam movie on the net? just keep the original audio!
    buried
    • Switchnig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17steeler's wheel was defintely not the right song for that video
    • NtHammer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4but a good song nonetheless
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1See my below comment. it had better music.
    • Vectorphobe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0the music was from the time period and it was a bit satirical of what the government was doing, i think it fit pretty well
  • kahlessreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Now thats a true Hero to democracy
    • VeryAngryJim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23I'd say he's a true hero to everyone.
    • bruenig, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I don't know if it is that simple. When you read the causes of this, this protest was mostly a response to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping who tried to move China to a more free market system which benefited far more people than it hurt. The only problem of course is that it benefited the rural farmers more than it benefited the urbanites and intellectuals. Some documentaries I have seen show that the protesters really lacked any fundamental understanding of what democracy is (one such documentary showing the students trying to democratically decide whether to continue the hunger strike, but not realizing that democracy only needed majority not unanimity), and that it was more of a intellectual catchphrase they threw around than any real ideological sticking point.
  • Cleanlyness, on 10/12/2007, -44/+2***** china, I can't believe you people want that country as a world power
    • jotux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23Shouldn't you be doing some 5th grade homework?
    • Chubs83, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3why do you say that? because the US tells you or because you've actually been there and actually know something about China?
    • stuclach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Its not enough for him (the original poster) to know that the things "tank man" was standing up for are still ignored in China and that his stance has change NOTHING.

      Seems like reason enough to bash the people who think having China as a world power is a good thing. If you REALLY HONESTLY believe people are treated better in China than in the United States then you are the one who needs to go visit. (Try bringing your TWO daughters with you and applying for citizenship.)
  • elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Read some more about it. Educate yourselves:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_man
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
  • p0und, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1they should have started driving when he climbed onto the tank.
  • Remccs, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1major points in social studies tomorrow!
  • Wonkanobi, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Little known fact: That tank is actually CGI.
  • tw0bit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2read the novel "The Forbidden City"...its all about this, with a personal touch...
  • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1761062858590826090&q=Tiananmen+Square
    The saddest Tiananmen Square video...
  • andrewlo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3i don't know if he "believes in his country"
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Well, He believes in the Republic of China I bet!
      Maybe not the People's Republic of China...
    • BleedingHeadKen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I'm wondering about that myself. Maybe he just believes in liberty, regardless of country. Seems that "belief in country" is what gets tanks rolling in the first place.
  • keegan3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23From a youtube comment:

    "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito" The Dalai Lama

    Great quote!
  • anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10This man deserved everything good in his life for standing up for what he believed in.

    Can you imagine if someone did this in Iraq though? I don't think our (and I mean Western) soldiers would hesitate to point a gun at this man unless he got out of the way, unfortunately.
    • keikun, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9you think too little of our troops
    • elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Our troops also don't slaughter thousands of civilians that are holding protests for basic freedom, though. I think we got the better end of the deal.
    • JCSaint, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1While we should be proud of the bravery and sacrifice of many of our troops, we shouldn't allow the few that do dishonor to the uniform to go unpunished. They tarnish the reputation of their fellow soldiers and their country.
  • SteveMitchell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4For an in depth video about Tankman and Tiananmen Square, just watch this PBS Frontline documentary. Pretty inspirational and heartbreaking:

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/view/

    Unfortunately you need Realplayer or Windows Media to watch it.
  • markadmin, on 10/12/2007, -31/+1Who cares this is lame. One less bad driver.
    • poogtastik, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Shut the ***** up, you ignorant *****.
  • mapkinase, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5"Israelis" would just run over him, like they did over Rachel Carrey.
  • hagbard72, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1When are American's going to stand up to their gov't with the same degree of bravery as that guy? Likely, never.
    • Bucket17, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Well, considering America doesn't send tanks and soldiers to kill me when I decide to protest against the government, I really don't have to. So, you are correct.
      But seriously, the Unknown Rebel is incredible. An amazing icon that will go down in history.
  • rayyy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2This guy eventually got run over by the tank, and it was on video too. Just not in this clip.
  • KevinAce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2 I'm on vacation in China & tried to Google this but nothing came up.. Any ideas? /End Sarcasm
  • goldylocks7621, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There is strong evidence that what happened at Tiananmen Square was not what was reported in the Western press.

    Portions an article by Jude Wanniski at lewrockwell.com
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/wanniski2.html

    As a friend of China since my first visit in 1983, I have been frustrated to find so many Americans either remembering or being taught about a “slaughter on Tiananmen Square” as evidence of the inhumanity of the leaders of the People’s Republic. More than two years ago, one U.S. journalist who was present in Beijing at the time of the conflict finally decided to correct the record when he saw one of our most respected television journalists, Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press, recall the deaths by machine guns on the Square of “ten thousand students.” Here is an excerpt of a memo I wrote to Mr. Russert on September 15, 1998:

    “I hope you saw the lead article in the September/October issue of Columbia Journalism Review on "The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press." It’s by Jay Mathews, a first-rate reporter for The Washington Post, who was the Post’s first Beijing bureau chief. He returned to Beijing in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations. The point of his piece was that nine years after the fact, the story of the slaughter gets worse as it goes along. He quotes you as having noted on the May 31 edition of Meet the Press that there were ‘tens of thousands’ of deaths on the Square that day, when in fact there is no evidence that anyone died on the Square that day. The myth began with a spurious account of students being mowed down by machine guns that was picked up a week after the day’s events by The New York Times, but Mathews notes the Times has since noted the lack of evidence of even one death. ‘Hundreds of people, most of them workers, and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances. The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.’”

    Alas, neither Mr. Russert or any other journalist in the major media made an attempt to correct the record. You can understand, Mr. President, that given the conventional wisdom of a mass slaughter of defenseless students, no American reporter or American politician was willing to stand up and do so, for they would immediately branded as “apologists” for the “butchers of Beijing.” In his Journalism Review article, Jay Mathews addressed this very point: “Who cares where the atrocities took place? That is an understandable, and emotionally satisfying, reaction. Many of us feel bile rising in our throats at any attempt to justify what the Chinese leadership and a few army commanders did that night... The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students... [The] government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed."

    From another Article from Jude Wanniski

    This did not prevent the U.S. news media from continuing to refer to the “slaughter” on Tiananmen, accounts that grew more lurid with time. One the May 31, 1998 edition of Meet the Press, Tim Russert recalled that 10,000 students had been machine-gunned to death nine years earlier. This was too much for Jay Matthews, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who had been in Beijing that day and knew this was a lot of baloney. Referring to the Russert quote in an article he wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review, Matthews made enough of an impression that we hear very little from the establishment press anymore about a “slaughter” on Tiananmen. Both the NYTimes and the Washington Post have at least put on the record, in short paragraphs at the end of long paragraphs, that nobody was killed on the Square. The Wall Street Journal, which prefers the mythical story to the true one, has made no such admission.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.