Did you see that in your crystal ball? You’ll be comforted to know that I find objectionable any attempts to disrupt the torch relay, including the attempt to wrestle the torch from Jin Jing. Protestors exercising free speech and expression from the sidelines is fine. Running out and trying to grab the torch is not.

As for cheering on the violence of the Chinese students, it is unfortunate that you seem not to distinguish violent from non-violent protest. And frankly I am at a loss to understand how the US invading and occupying Iraq provides justification for Chinese students kicking Korean protestors.

btw It’s great Tai-Kwando practice for the Chinese students. Bravo!

Even if the man swung his bike, according to the account of the Chinese student, he was first kicked from behind by another student. Thus, he would have been acting in self-defense.

@Kain:

The links to photos and videos were provided as support for claims made in my posts. Supporting one’s claims with evidence is not being “fallacious.” In no less than three posts, you have made mention of motives and possible events preceding and following the encounter. It seems that you have some ideas yourself, so don’t hold back. Share with us your perspectives on the event in question.

> Thanks for the laugh. These students didn’t just show up in Seoul. They had organized and planned carefully, coming in on chartered buses, wearing specially made t-shirts identifying their student groups, and wavings tens of thousands of flags. There are plenty of photos taken by Chinese students available on the web, including the one of the man holding up the bike. Some Chinese have been savvy enough to launch a defense campaign, posting photos and commentary that has spread around the internet. Some English-speaking Chinese have compiled those images into videos posted on Youtube, grasping every opportunity to express their views using available media.

I said the “journalists” and “protesters” are professional at doing including photographing what interests them the most. I am not denying any photos. Let me now add that the Chinese students are also trying to do their best at what interests them the most. Unfortunately, it is my opinion that overall the Chinese defense campaign is a complete failure.

I said: show people all the available info (pictures and eyewitness accounts) and let people make their own judgment. It appears to me that your opinions is that the lack of a picture *clearly* showing the man was swinging his bicycle means that he did not swing his bicycle. Understood, you are entitled to your opinion. (My opinion is I do not know if he swung the bicycle or not. Like I said before, what matters more is perhaps how the Chinese students around him interpreted his action.)

In any case, glad my writing made you laugh, at least good for your health.

Thanks for the laugh. These students didn’t just show up in Seoul. They had organized and planned carefully, coming in on chartered buses, wearing specially made t-shirts identifying their student groups, and wavings tens of thousands of flags. There are plenty of photos taken by Chinese students available on the web, including the one of the man holding up the bike. Some Chinese have been savvy enough to launch a defense campaign, posting photos and commentary that has spread around the internet. Some English-speaking Chinese have compiled those images into videos posted on Youtube, grasping every opportunity to express their views using available media.

Thanks you for saying, “It’s best not to ad lib.”

Then you have ask yourself what’s the purpose of toting those photographs and videos without any attempts to understand the circumstances, both psychological and situational factors, that lead up to what we see in those pictures and videos.

If you think you had made attempts to understand what precipitated everything, please, by all means, share some of your insights with us.

Images and videos, although extremely compelling, they don’t tell the whole story. They have to be qualified by accounts from many different sources, including first hand / eyewitness accounts, that will shed light on what happen before and what happened afterwards. Even then, we have to verify the credibility of all those accounts.

To tote photographs and videos as the singular and absolute proof is fallacious. It creates an environment for the audience to lean toward their predispositions and fill in their own narratives; to Ad lib when information is lacking. Yeah, we all saw this happening on both sides.

So, help us understand what your perspective on the reasons and motivations behind the actions of the people we see in those pictures and video. Hopefully by the end of the day, we can all get a better understanding of what happened and why.

Let me know, okay.

Best
Kain

Here’s something comments from Kadfly you might find interesting for the current circumstance.

http://chineseinvancouver.blogspot.com/2008/03/mainstream-media-bias-against-china-is.html

When some one has a bicycle attacking you, you have to kick them from behind. It’s simple logic self defense!

I’d say that the key word is ‘behind’. This tells me that the account is possibly true. This is the pattern of mob behaviour. Especially in China. Seen, it, been in it. Everyone infront of you screams and yells…and then someone whacks you feebly from behind.

Yes, too bad the Chinese students do not have photos to defend themselves. You know what, or you may already know, the “journalists” and “protesters” were more professional than the young Chinese students in grasping every opportunity to take pictures of things that interest them the most. And yes, I believe this is one aspect of the whole thing. As for the Chinese students around the man, I think I would try to dodge the bicycle to avoid being hurt before I can think about taking pictures — that takes a professional to do it. And yes, that account claimed somebody got hurt by the bicycle, but unfortunately, we have not seen supporting pictures yet, bad for that guy who got hurt, and bad for the Chinese students. That account is the only account I know of regarding the kicking picture (true of false is subject to debate). Any other accounts attempting to give a fair and balance description of what happened? Is it because that picture really is everything and there is nothing else to tell, or some people just do not want to talk about what happened just before that kicking picture? But you insist on photos, and it seems that you are unwilling to discuss any further beyond photos, understood. Meanwhile, I make my own judgments about what is reasonable in the information presented to me.

> “I never said that the tools were not used by any Chinese students to throw at any Pro-NK or Pro-Tibet protesters, because I do not know.”
>
> You linked to the photographs as evidence, and that allegation is written on the photographs and accompanying text.

I did not expect that you interpreted my writing this way. I am sorry for either my writing or your comprehension. I am still investigating what parts of those photographs and stories as annotated can be trusted, and what parts cannot.

Now, show me a picture showing Chinese students using that pincer or that stone to attack anybody. Isn’t this the people who showed the pincer-stone picture to the whole world trying to convey to the world?

Yeah, before I see any picture proving that Chinese students brought in the pincer and the stone, or showing Chinese students using the pincer or stone to attack anybody, I declare the whole pincer-stone play as a dirty despicable shameless frame-up. We want photos, don’t we?

The problem with the eyewitness account is that it’s not supported by photographic evidence. There was more than one person photographing the encounter yet not one photo of the man swinging the bicycle, people ducking, or anyone getting hit. If, indeed, a Chinese student kicked the man first and the man picked up the bicycle, then he was defending himself against a hostile crowd. Mature adults don’t kick someone for saying something they don’t like. In Korea, it is not unusual for middle-aged people to speak to younger people in informal language, or banmal. I was spoken to in banmal on many occasions, sometimes in an angry or insulting manner, and I never kicked anybody.

“Sorry for not making myself clear. I meant I insisted on my original stand.”

It’s always good to stand by your beliefs even when evidence doesn’t support it.

“I never said that the tools were not used by any Chinese students to throw at any Pro-NK or Pro-Tibet protesters, because I do not know.”

You linked to the photographs as evidence, and that allegation is written on the photographs and accompanying text.

Kain wrote:

“Anyhow, let me know if you have an answer as to why things happen the way they did.”

It’s best not to ad lib.

My discussion is based on this eyewitness account:
http://zonaeuropa.com/200805a.brief.htm#004
(That page has link to the source in Chinese, of the following English translation)
”
Here is the eyewitness account from a Chinese living in South Korea. The Korean person with the bicycle was not a passerby. He was a protestor. He went into the plaza where thousands of Chinese were assembled and make protests. The Chinese students saw hm and surrounded him to chant “Go China!” Some students got excited and were about to take more radical action. So I stopped them immediately and I spoke to this protestor in Korean: “If you want to protest, you ought to try to understand China first.” He replied: “Of course, I understand China! I know all about it!” I noticed that he used irreverent language in addressing me (note: there are two forms of speaking in Korean — reverently and irreverently). Since he replied in this manner, I had nothing more to say. At that moment, he began to chant: “Free Tibet!” Upon hearing this, a Chinese student kicked him from behind. The protestor picked up his bicycle and starting swinging it to hit people. Many of the Chinese students dodged the bicycle, and so did I. But one person was hit in the head and bled. Another Chinese student got mad and kicked the protestor. This was the photo that made all the front pages in the Korean media. But the Korean media did not mention a single word about what happened before that moment. Some media even said that the Chinese were assaulting pedestrians.
”

You know, when I read “Upon hearing this, a Chinese student kicked him from behind,” I felt very uneasy. Because of this, my *personal* opinion is that it was wrong for that Chinese student to kick the protester, which was, according to that account, the first physical attack. For this, *personally* I think the Chinese students should bear the majority of the blame for this unfortunate event, if that account is accurate.

This account is reasonable to me. So my understanding is:
(1) Man shouted “Free Tibet”;
–> (2) A Chinese student kicked him from behind (conflict escalated, and see my earlier comments);
–> (3) Man raised his bicycle to use it as a tool to fight back (another escalation);
–> (4) Another Chinese fly-kicked the man (yet another escalation, the famous picture).

You said “It is more likely that a lone protestor would be defending himself.” The above account said “The protestor picked up his bicycle and starting swinging it to hit people. Many of the Chinese students dodged the bicycle, and so did I. But one person was hit in the head and bled.” My *personal* interpretation is that the man over-reacted a bit (conflict escalation). Swinging something like the bicycle shown in the picture is quite menacing. So came yet another conflict escalation, a Chinese student fly-kicked the man, and hence the famous picture.

The kicking picture looks very ugly. It was natural for me to look for a more complete description of what happened. Reporting that picture only, perhaps even with some misleading info, only serves the purposes of a small group of people, and does harm to the majority of the people in the world.

Anyway, so it looks like that you and I still disagree on how to look at this event.

> “I have nothing more to say about this.”
>
> I respect commenters who concede a point.

Sorry for not making myself clear. I meant I insisted on my original stand.

> My point is that I don’t understand why that photo is plastered all over the internet as some kind of proof that the pro-NK refugee activists brought the tool to the demonstration and that it was not thrown at them by a Chinese student.

I never said that the tools were not used by any Chinese students to throw at any Pro-NK or Pro-Tibet protesters, because I do not know.

To me, the most important questions are:
Why were the pincer and the stone in the street in the first place? What was the intention of the people who brought them in?

The next important questions are:
What did the media and netizens do to the pincer and stone (we have seen this in the media and on the Internet, haven’t we)? Fair use for the purpose of objectively informing people of what happened, or selective reporting to serve the purposes of a certain group of people? In reality, what effects were achieved?

This question is of course also important:
How were these tools actually utilized in the street? We have some pictures of how some people used the pincer and stone during the event. I have not seen any pictures showing who used the pincer or the stone to attack whom. Ok, show me a picture of a Chinese supporter using the pincer/stone to attack the protesters, and I will take that into consideration too.

We only have the available pictures for our use in our attempt to find out what happened during the event.

For the pictures under discussion, to me, annotating does not reduce the credibility of the pictures. Perhaps you were concerned about the smallness of some images as a result of cramming too many pictures into one. I was/am too. But there are some larger resolution pictures later on in that thread. I think the annotation did help me understand the situation.

Obviously, on this topic we still disagree, wildly.

BTW, when I do not respond to certain comments, it means one of the following two cases: (1) I do not agree, but it is not worth responding/ not worth my time. (2) I agree, but I do not think I have more substance to contribute to the discussion. I just want to let you know that I agree with and respect some of your comments, although I did not specifically singled them out.

Erratum on paragraph #2 for post 16.

“It is just that some of the things that surround those photographs and videos quite got answered.”

Correction:

“It is just that some of the things that surround those photographs and videos NEVER quite got answered.”

Anyhow, let me know if you have an answer as to why things happen the way they did.

Best
Kain

I don’t doubt the “facts”. I myself said in an earlier post (#6), “We are of no doubt what happened…” There are plenty of photographs and videos circulating around. You yourself provided plenty of links to them.

It is just that some of the things that surround those photographs and videos quite got answered. That is, why did things happened the way they did?

And I asked about your take on what gave rise to the things we see in those photographs and videos (#11). I never really did get an answer from you.

If you have one, let me know.

Best
Kain