Wednesday, June 4, 2014

June 4 History Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day



Ridley's Believe It Or Not—June 4, 2014Better day for holidays as who could ever forget the iconic image of the student (whose name and fate have  disappeared)  standing straight and tall preventing a line of Chinese tanks from moving into Tiananmen Square in 1989. No wonder the Chinese block access to all internet references of the event leading up to today. Hope you enjoy them along with some orange juice with or without Champagne and the factoids and quote.
            1. International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression—another one sided UN created holiday created on this day in 1992 focusing on the loss of children in Palestine and Lebanon from Israeli acts but ignoring the thousands upon thousands of children killed by other governments or fanatic sects.
            2. Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day—honoring the hundreds of students and demonstrators seeking democracy and protesting corruption who were slaughtered in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese Army on this day in 1989 and due to Chinese censorship of the internet difficult to find out anything in China about it. How to observe it here in the U.S.?  Buy nothing made in China today.
            3. International Firefighters Day—honoring the dedication and sacrifice of firefighters, observed on the feast day for St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters.
            4. World Laughter Day---first celebrated in 1998 in Mumbai, India and today in over 80 countries to recognize and promote the healthy effects of laughter—hard to harbor anger and revengeful thoughts when you are laughing so hard you cannot point a gun.
            5.  National Orange Juice Day—fresh squeezed or concentrate always a good way to start the day and if there is global warming less chance of those dreaded Florida freezes that damage the crop and increase the prices.
On this day in:
            a. 1876  An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrived in San Francisco via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York (in an example of progress at a snail’s pace, that same trip on Amtrak would take 78 hours, including a 7 hour layover in Chicago waiting for a change of trains). 
            b. 1912 Massachusetts became the first state to set a minimum wage which was noncompulsory and had lower rates for learners and slower workers (could not find the amount but Oregon 2 years later set it at $8.35 a week ($197.96 in 2014 dollars).
            c. 1939 in a dark day for the concept of give us your huddled masses desiring to be free, the S.S. St. Louis carrying over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany was turned away and sent back to Europe condemning over 300 to death in Nazi concentration camps. Shame on us.
            Sometimes when it comes to ideas like the minimum wage, words spoken almost 150 years ago ring very true today. “Whenever wages are less than the cost of living and the reasonable provision for maintaining the worker in health, the industry employing her is in receipt of the working energy of a human being at less than its cost, and to that extent is parasitic.” 1912 Report of the Commission on Minimum Wages Boards Massachusetts increased its minimum wage to $10.50 in April providing another example of why the federal government needs to get out of this business and let the states decide.
Please enjoy the 140 character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and join almost 140 growing followers and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs--click on links below. www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times for comments on important and breaking news events that should be of interest.
© June 4, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet

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