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Yang Jisheng: The man who discovered 36 million dead
BBC News World ^ | 20 November 2012 | Raul Mason

Posted on 11/26/2012 3:53:26 PM PST by BlueDragon

In the era whose secret he uncovered, a journalist's office would have looked just like the one where Yang Jisheng works now. The tiled floor, the grimy window panes, the desk piled two feet high with papers, envelopes and books. The Mao-era radiators. The cigarette ash and the dust.

Under Mao Zedong, Yang's good fortune was to find a job as a reporter with China's state-run Xinhua news agency. His misfortune had been to see his father die of hunger in 1961, at the height of the famine that killed an estimated 36 million people:

"When my dad died, I thought it was just my family's problem. I blamed myself because I hadn't gone back home to pick wild plants to feed my dad. Later on, the governor of Hubei province said millions of people had died. I was astonished," Yang says.

In the 1990s Yang, by now a senior editor at Xinhua, used his status to secretly research the truth about the famine in 12 different provincial archives:

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; History
KEYWORDS: 1961; china; deathtoll; famine; forward; friedrichvonhayek; greatleap; mao; maotsetung; maozedong; moa; redchina; starvation; theroadtoserfdom; yangjisheng
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1 posted on 11/26/2012 3:53:37 PM PST by BlueDragon
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To: BlueDragon

Mao was another leftist who liked to use “forward” in his slogans.


2 posted on 11/26/2012 4:00:26 PM PST by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: BlueDragon

Communism.... when you eat grass and roots for dinner


3 posted on 11/26/2012 4:00:26 PM PST by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: BlueDragon

Americans need to remember that among Hussein’s inner circle, Mao is admired.


4 posted on 11/26/2012 4:01:29 PM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both)
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To: BlueDragon

bttt


5 posted on 11/26/2012 4:02:25 PM PST by TEXOKIE (We must surrender only to our Holy God and never to the evil that has befallen us.)
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To: BlueDragon

grass and roots soup... yum yum.... blech


6 posted on 11/26/2012 4:02:55 PM PST by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: BlueDragon

Of note are the comments on the BBC forum from the shills for the Chinese government. Look at how several of the comments are essentially regurgitations of talking points. The Chinese are very clumsy in their censorship efforts.


7 posted on 11/26/2012 4:05:09 PM PST by MeganC (Our forefathers would be shooting by now.)
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To: BlueDragon

Mao Zedong is one of the Left’s patron saints.

His memory is sacrosanct, regardless of any minor mistakes he may have made. After all, in order to make an omelet, you must first break some eggs.


8 posted on 11/26/2012 4:06:09 PM PST by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it.)
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To: Moonman62

That did come to mind. Mao, then the LSD stoner bus, now Obama. Put 'em all together and what's that spell..? Failure, but so deluded it's not noticed, but when it is noticed. noticing is punished.

Then, as Mao ordered rapid industrialisation during the Great Leap Forward, the grain supplies disappeared. Simultaneously local officials, terrified of failure, began to report fictional bumper harvests. Mao, meanwhile, publicly humiliated any party leader who voiced doubts. The result was the greatest famine in modern history.

Not cool, dude. not cool at all.

9 posted on 11/26/2012 4:08:47 PM PST by BlueDragon (in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity)
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To: Moonman62
Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine

Another splendid triumph of the will to power in modern times. The monsters behind 0bama dream of this.

10 posted on 11/26/2012 4:11:57 PM PST by Noumenon (As long as you have a rifle, you STILL have a vote.)
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To: Noumenon

Obama and the monsters behind him dream of this.


11 posted on 11/26/2012 4:14:35 PM PST by null and void (The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.)
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To: MeganC

I didn’t check the comments until you mentioned them. Most BBC articles have no room for them, but solicit “if you are there [where the story occurred whatever it is] we’d like to hear from you” instead.


12 posted on 11/26/2012 4:15:27 PM PST by BlueDragon (in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity)
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To: BlueDragon

At least no corporate overlords were eating lush banquets while the people starved./s Only communists overlords should get to do that.


13 posted on 11/26/2012 4:16:04 PM PST by Eleutheria5 (End the occupation. Annex today.)
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To: BlueDragon
Yang, aged 72, is neat, small, swaddled in two jumpers despite the shafts of winter sunlight that stream across his desk. He is rummaging through his shelves on the hunt for a book whose title is important: by a Western author whose name has slipped his mind.
"Something about slavery?" he says. I try the name Hayek and after a bit of transliteration it works. He had stumbled on Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom in a library and chuckles with mild scepticism when I tell him it is probably the most influential book in Western economics:
"Before I read Hayek, I had only read works the party wanted me to. Hayek says that to use the state to promote a utopia is very dangerous. In China that's exactly what they did. The utopia promoted by Marx, even though it is beautiful, it is very dangerous."

GMTA...even in the PRC.

14 posted on 11/26/2012 4:22:38 PM PST by Tainan (Cogito, ergo conservatus sum -- "The Taliban is inside the building")
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To: BenLurkin

I'm still flabbergasted. Can they be that myopic while claiming to "respect" differing views? It's all an act, so their own differing view can reign unchallenged.

Did you see the part of the article where Hayek's Road To Serfdom opened the Chinaman's eyes?

15 posted on 11/26/2012 4:24:41 PM PST by BlueDragon (in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity)
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To: Noumenon
The book at the link you gave could serve as a companion book of sorts. The two could be stronger together, if shown to be researched separately?

The chinaman's Tombstone presently a bit more than $20 Amazon.

16 posted on 11/26/2012 4:40:37 PM PST by BlueDragon (in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity)
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To: BlueDragon
"Then, as Mao ordered rapid industrialisation during the Great Leap Forward, the grain supplies disappeared. Simultaneously local officials, terrified of failure, began to report fictional bumper harvests. Mao, meanwhile, publicly humiliated any party leader who voiced doubts. The result was the greatest famine in modern history."

We've seen the same behavior from the US press over the last four years of Obama. They've relentlessly played down every one of his failures, and trumpeted huge successes that were nothing more than official, state sanctioned propaganda. Whenever the press dared to dip a toe into the waters of fair criticism, they were harshly dealt with by the regime, and made to get back in line.

During the 2012 campaign, we watched the press ignore the unprecedented disasters of this man's first term, while they did everything in their power to vilify and beat up every potential Republican challenger. The yellow 'journalism' and dirty tricks were endless.

We're witnessing history repeat itself here. Welcome to Obama's Long March Forward.

17 posted on 11/26/2012 5:11:42 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Westbrook
Mao like Che is one of Hells best Presto logs..he burns hotter, faster and longer then nearly any one else around But he sure screams alot
18 posted on 11/26/2012 5:18:03 PM PST by tophat9000 (American is Barack Oaken)
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To: Windflier
We've seen the same behavior from the US press over the last four years of Obama. They've relentlessly played down every one of his failures, and trumpeted huge successes that were nothing more than official, state sanctioned propaganda. Whenever the press dared to dip a toe into the waters of fair criticism, they were harshly dealt with by the regime, and made to get back in line.

Sad but true. Have we heard anything more about the effects of hurricane Sandy? Beyond providing a campaign prop, does the MSM even care?

It seems bizarre to contemplate 35 million people being starved to death by their own government, and the event is virtually unknown. Idiot kids think it's cool to walk around with a tee shirt with a picture of Mao, the architect of this mass murder.

19 posted on 11/26/2012 5:31:37 PM PST by Flick Lives (We're going to be just like the old Soviet Union, but with free cell phones!)
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To: BlueDragon

Socialism & Totalitarianism 2.0...Plunder & Death

DEPOPULATE socialists/totalitarians from the body politic.

http://www.usdebtclock.org

live - free - republic


20 posted on 11/26/2012 6:16:51 PM PST by PGalt
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