World’s only Tiananmen museum opens in NYC

CHINESE dissidents who took part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests unveiled a museum in New York on Friday dedicated to remembering the “democratic dreams of the Chinese people,” two days ahead of the 34th anniversary of the uprising’s “brutal suppression.”

“The events of 1989 had an impact on China but also on the entire world,” said Wang Dan, founder of the tiny museum and a leading figure in the Tiananmen Square student movement.

“Today, as we begin to wake up to the threat to human civilization posed by the Xi Jinping regime, we should remember back to 1989,” he said, referring to China’s current leader who cemented his grip late last year by assuming a historic third consecutive term.

In a tiny office space in midtown Manhattan, Wang had put on a display of photos, videos, press clippings, posters, letters and banners about the democratic uprising that Beijing crushed, killing at least 1,000 demonstrators.

“We should commemorate those who sacrificed their lives and remember the democratic dreams of the Chinese people at that time,” said Wang, who served years in prison in China before being exiled in 1998 to the United States, where he later earned a doctorate in history at Harvard.

“Even in the United States, we still can feel the pressure and threats from the Chinese government,” he told AFP.

“The 1989 events connect not only with the past but also with today and the future,” Wang said, demanding that the world should “also remember the true face of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Several leading Chinese critics and American politicians spoke at the inauguration of the museum – the only permanent exhibition in the world on Tiananmen after the closure of a museum in Hong Kong in 2021.

The artistic flourishing that accompanied the Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong each year has almost disappeared under Beijing’s tightening grip on the territory.

For more than 30 years, tens of thousands of people gathered every June 4 in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil.

But since China imposed a national security law in 2020, local authorities have shut down such gatherings, while criminalizing most public displays of dissent. AFP declined, with a spokeswoman saying “the US knows clearly why there are currently difficulties in military communication.”

The Chinese delegation swiftly responded to Austin’s speech, with Senior Colonel Tang Hefei, spokesperson for China’s defense ministry, saying that the Pentagon chief “made several false accusations” in his remarks.

“We oppose that,” Tang told reporters in Singapore.

Another Chinese delegation member, Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo, said Washington had no business telling China what to do.

“What we do in the Chinese military is based on maintaining the core interests of

China’s security, which is fundamental,” he told reporters.

Defence minister Li, who will address the meeting on Sunday, was sanctioned by the US government in 2018 for buying Russian weapons, but the Pentagon says that does not prevent Austin from conducting official business with him.

Zhao said removing the sanctions is “one of the pre-conditions for substantial talks” with Austin.

Austin said he was “deeply concerned that (China) has been unwilling to engage more seriously on better mechanisms for crisis management between our two militaries,” expressing hope that would soon change. AFP

Pyongyang has doubled down on military development since diplomatic efforts collapsed in 2019, conducting a string of banned weapons tests, including test-firing multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last year declared his country an “irreversible” nuclear power and called for an “exponential” increase in weapons production, including tactical nuclear weapons. AFP

Twitter safety exec quits after strife on anti-trans video

TWITTER’S head of trust and safety confirmed she had quit the company, her departure coming after owner Elon Musk endorsed an anti-transgender video shared on the platform.

“I know there’s been a lot of speculation regarding what happened,” read a post on Ella Irwin’s Twitter account late Friday, a day after her resignation was reported in US media.

“I did resign but this has been a once in a lifetime experience,” she added, without revealing any reason for suddenly leaving her job at Twitter.

Irwin is the second head of trust and safety to quit Twitter since eccentric billionaire Musk bought the platform and reduced content moderation to essentially permit anything allowed by law.

Since taking over Twitter in late October, Musk has repeatedly courted controversy, sacking most of its staff, readmitting banned accounts to the platform, suspending journalists and charging for previously free services.

Musk said during a CNBC interview in May that he will continue to tweet his unfiltered thoughts even if it hurts his businesses.

“I don’t care,” the billionaire said when asked what he thought of his controversial tweets making it harder to sell ads on Twitter or hurting the share price of Tesla, his electric vehicle manufacturing business.

“I’ll say what I want to say and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.”

Irwin’s departure came as Twitter was under pressure by backers of an anti-transgender video called “What Is A Woman” who claimed Twitter went back on a deal to distribute the content free on the platform.

Backers of the video contended the video was being suppressed at Twitter for not using people’s chosen pronouns when it came to gender identification.

Musk said in a Twitter exchange with the conservative outlet behind the video that people had made a mistake and the video, while possibly “rude,” was not against the law. AFP

BUSINESS

Community nurse-turned-entrepreneur Trexie Marie Tan

Community nurse-turned-entrepreneur Trexie Marie Tan shares the same awareness of entrepreneurial empowerment since starting her business at a young age.

While her story started from a rather amusing narrative, her passage as a full-pledged entrepreneur was neither hilarious nor comical. She actively juggled business and academic pursuits, which left her spent throughout the week.

“It’s a funny story to begin with.

There was this one time when I really craved for banana chips and my Mom found three pieces of unripe saba [plantain] which she tried to cook into banana chips for me. We thought then, that, probably the remaining bananas that took time to get ripened were really meant to be banana chips,” she said.

That episode convinced her to set up a home-based enterprise for banana chips production. Incidentally, banana chips is one of her comfort snacks. She had just started her college education but still managed to stretch her time to help her parents operate their small sari-sari store in General Santos City.

Starting out a nano enterprise might seem a walk in the park to many, but for Tan, who was in the midst of her nursing degree, the extra effort to maintain the business could have placed her in a stressful predicament, if not for the encouragement of her supportive parents, who continue to assist her up to now.

The Philippines as a banana chip republic may have the most number of small enterprises that produce banana chips. This encouraged Tan to be a bit inventive and come up with a distinct product. A common trait of banana chips is its sweetness and crispness which is what Trexie’s Banana Chips is like, but what sets it apart is its smooth, almost flawless-like texture.

Unlike regular banana chips, Trexie’s Banana Chips removes the portion of bananas embellished with black, pin-prick seeds during the production process.

“So we take out the part with seeds. We slice the banana by sections, leaving the part with seeds. The end product looks more like a potato chip, which is the look we want to achieve for our banana chips,” Tan said, adding that the product, after a few innovations, is now available in different flavors—original, no sugar, barbecue, cheese and sour cream.