Tag Archives: Hidden History

Pierre Ryckmans, 78, Dies; Exposed Mao’s Hard Line

Pierre Ryckmans, a Belgian-born scholar of China who challenged a romanticized Western view of Mao Zedong in the 1960s with his early portrayal of Mao’s Cultural Revolution as chaotic and destructive, died on Monday at his home in Sydney, Australia. He was 78.

His daughter, Jeanne Ryckmans, said the cause was cancer.

Mr. Ryckmans, who was better known by his pen name, Simon Leys, fell in love with China at the age of 19 while touring the country with fellow Belgian students in 1955. One highlight was an audience with Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. The man-made famine of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and ended about the time of Mao’s death, in 1976, were still in the future. There was much to be admired in the new China.

Yet pursuing his studies of Chinese art, culture and literature in the People’s Republic itself was not an option for a Westerner, so he settled in Taiwan, where he met his future wife, Han-fang Chang. He also lived in Singapore and Hong Kong.

www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/world/pierre-ryckmans-78-dies-exposed-maos-hard-line.html?_r=0

America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837

“Earlier than many other states, Pennsylvania tried to raise taxes to cover its mounting interest costs. By 1842, total tax revenue was almost twice what it had been in 1835, but this was still far too little to restore the state’s finances. The state also resorted to other tactics to avoid collapse. In April 1840, legislators compelled banks with state charters to lend three million dollars to cover the state’s deficit, but the banks themselves were near collapse. A year later, the state treasury began paying many of its creditors with small denomination relief notes, which were often returned to the state for payment of taxes and did little to improve its ability to pay overseas lenders.

“By the end of 1841 the state was desperate. Philadelphia merchant Sidney Fisher wrote in his diary in early December that ‘the doctrine of repudiating state debts is spreading rapidly, is spoken of openly and boldly defended by many presses and leading politicians.’ A public meeting at the Philadelphia courthouse later that month passed resolutions denying that Pennsylvanians were under any ‘moral, legal or political obligation’ to repay the ‘so-called state debt.’ In early 1842, the state met interest payments by scavenging from the assets of the Bank of the United States, which had collapsed in January. By August 1842, the treasury had nothing but its own relief notes, and Pennsylvania finally defaulted. ‘The substance of our State is swallowed up,’ wrote a correspondent to the local newspaper in Smethport, Pennsylvania, ‘and repudiation stares us in the face.’ …

www.amazon.com/Americas-First-Great-Depression-Political/dp/0801450330/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381513393&sr=1-1&keywords=america%27s+first+great+depression

McCarthyism revisited in controversial book

“Even today, there is much that we don’t know–documents that have vanished, ancient records still being censored, deceptions still in circulation. However, there is also a good deal of information available for those who care to view it: sizable tranches of McCarthy’s papers, and those of his opponents; reams of formerly confidential data from the FBI; thousands of pages of hearing transcripts and archives of his committee and other panels of the Congress; intercepted Soviet communications and revelations from Cold War defectors; and so on.

Looking at this mass of materials and matching them up with McCarthy’s cases, the main thing to be noted is a recurring pattern of verification. Time and again, we see the suspects named by McCarthy and/or his committee–treated at the time as hapless victims–revealed in official records as what McCarthy and company said they were–except, in the typical instance, a good deal more so.

The accompanying table provides a sampler of some of the suspects named by McCarthy, his aides, or in his committee hearings, and reflects what is now known about them, based on official records (some of it was known even then but ignored or misrepresented).

. . . .

Analyzing this list of 50, we find all of them either (a) identified in sworn testimony, or in FBI and other once-confidential official security records, as Communists or Soviet agents, and/or (b) plead the Fifth Amendment when asked about such activities, saying a truthful answer would tend to incriminate them.

As is self-evident from this lineup, it’s untrue that McCarthy never spotted a single Communist or Soviet agent, or–per one variation–came up with only a handful of valid cases. He in fact tracked down a small army of such people, and the roster given here is merely a sampling of the flagrant suspects who attracted his attention.

This is most obviously so of the Fifth Amendment pleaders. Our table of 50 includes 18 McCarthy cases who refused to answer questions concerning Red connections, but these were only a fraction of the total who claimed the privilege. All told, an astonishing 100-plus McCarthy suspects would plead the Fifth before his committee (the bulk of these in the Fort Monmouth/defense-supply probe that triggered the Army-McCarthy hearings).

Also, contra the standard image, McCarthy and his staffers in the usual instance did not allege that his suspects were Communists or Soviet agents–though in some famous cases (Owen Lattimore, Annie Lee Moss) this did happen–for the simple reason that the probers didn’t then know the total story. More typically, they wielded dossiers concerning adverse security findings, membership in pro-Red groups, and so on–thereby understating the scope and nature of the problem. ” (Read more)