@mishin, a fantastic point! And what of the two students killed shortly thereafter at Jackson State -- a primarily black school which has never gotten even the amount of coverage that Kent State received.

Where is the evidence that jews are responsible? Rather simplistic, I think.

Like all western media articles on the Tiananmen incident, they are incomplete, biased and lack of perspectives. Most tend to favor the students and against the government, but facts tend to be more complicated and nuanced.

It is tragic that many students are killed, but all for the wrong reasons. Most westerners look at the students as hero fighting for democracy, but they are not. The students are regarded as victims, but they are not. Most people said the army is the evil force killing innocent students, but they are not. The whole tragic event is a series of miscalculations on the part of the student leaders as well as the authorities. Without the presence of the West media such as CNN, this tragic event might not have happened.

The man who is in charge, Deng, was trying very hard to avoid violent confrontation with the students but without success. The background behind the student demonstration involve political power struggle between the reformers and hard liners which included Deng who has control of the army. The students are innocent pawns got caught up in this power struggle and was used by the reformers to overthrow the hardliners. When they realized they can not succeed and tried to call off the sit-in, but at that time, most students have voted to call off the sit-in but a hard core group of students decided to stay on and tried to confront the government even though marshal law and curfew have been declared.

Some day, when historians gather all the facts and compile a chronologic order of the events, they will discover that, the first violent act was by the students on the first wave of unarmed and un-prepared police who was sent in to maintain order. Also, tv footage also showed students attacked army trucks and tanks resulting in soldiers being killed. Most Western media tend to show only the rolling of tanks against students without showing what happened before. The Western media committed the same mistake as they did covering the Tiber incident. They did not show the Han Chinese were being killed by the Tibetan rioters, but only showed the police firing at the rioters.

The students, being idealistic, innocent, and exposed to Western style democracy and freedoms, got the wrong idea that they can institute change of government simply by marching and demonstrating. They want democracy in China immediately. They were wrong and they need to read some Chinese history. Chinese history is chronicled in dynasties lasting hundreds of years. It takes a lots of fighting and violence to change one dynasty to another. Since the overthrow of the last Qing Dynasty in 1912, there is the Nationalist government which was overthrown by the Communist in 1949. It has only been 60 years of the Communist regime, and the students of Tiananmen are extremely naïve to think they can change regime just like that.

After the government declared Marshall law, there were ample opportunity for them to disband and retreat back to the campus. But for some weird miscalculation on the student leaders’ part, they hung on and that led to the disaster consequences.

I am attaching a video clip from youTube here, please listen to one of student leader talked about the incident and get more understanding of the situation, very informative and revealing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8fGgkSNkP0

And they probably will, just as soon as the US comes clean about the Basra Road massacre... (and assorted other atrocities)

http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-death.htm

The United States only needed to shoot four students to put an end to effective demonstrations here. Guess Americans learn faster.

or maybe it was the mote in our collective media eye. But did I miss the coverage of the May 4 anniversary of the Kent State killings?

Perhaps, as the press seems fascinated with numbers that end in zero, we'll see some acknowledgment of our own home-grown massacre next year as its 40th anniversary rolls around.

who did not flee and ended up spending much of the next decade in jail. Exiled to the US in 1998 where be undertook Ph.D. study at Harvard, he speaks from a position of moral authority those who came to the US immediately in the wake of the crack-down, enrolled in professional schools and then entered lucrative professions lack.

He makes some good points in an Op-Ed which appears in today's LA Times:

In the last decade, I have watched from afar as China has reasserted its role on the world stage. The economic growth is impressive.

But what about media censorship, which contributed to the high number of victims in the 2008 tainted-milk scandal? And government corruption, which led to shoddy construction practices in Sichuan and its devastating consequences during last year's earthquake?...

Interviewer: "What do you remember most vividly?"

Reporter, just returned from Beijing: "The students singing as they were being shot. And a student, a girl, who said to me - 'What can they do to us? We have our whole future ahead of us, AND WE'VE SEEN IT'".

6/4 was not a "people's uprising for freedom and democracy". You don't understand what it was about, but that puts you into the same group as 99% of Americans, and 50% (or so) of Chinese.

I think your attacks on Google are sort of ignorant of the way the world works. This too, is a very complicated issue.

I would like to leave you with this though. There wee several "tank man" (as you called it). There was the man who stood in front of the tank. There was also the man driving the tank and the man commanding the driver. The tank crew made a decision they did not want to kill a human who happened to be foolishly standing in front of a tank. They put their humanity above their mission. So they did a very Chinese thing and tried to solve their problem with an expedient solution. They turned the tank, trying to drive around the man. Because they turned the tank, they were executed.

[I don't remember if just the driver was executed or the tank commander or both]

Unfortunately, China's problems cannot be solved by gestures and expedient solutions. These problems are systematic, culturally ingrained, and highly complex. By labeling the 6/4 student demonstration a democracy movement, you make these problems seem trite. By cursing the Western companies that do business in China, you are cursing the agents of change.