When we are cast down, knocked down, abused and seemingly beyond repair, how do you react? Do you throw in the towel for lack of a plan or a visible manner to fix what is hurting you or may be killing you? Read how one woman replied to the most evil actions against her and her family and became a warrior for freedom. You never know, it could be you next!
Re-Constitution - Defining Moments by Steven Clark Bradley
Chapter 5
January 6, 2012, 8:51 p.m.
Rowland Heights, California
Ruby Zhang sat and stared inanely at her. Her fingers were trembling on the inside, almost like an itch she couldn’t scratch and her mind just would not cooperate. It was time for one of her episodes. She knew all the warning signs, the distraction, the inability to focus or to shake it off meant it was coming over her again, just as it had so many times over so many years. It was all more the result of her job history than her job description. She got up from her seat, dimmed the lights and lit a cigarette to take in one of her moments of reflection that both made her wish she were dead and helped her remember why she was living such a renegade life in hiding and constantly ready to run.
Ruby knew when her mind was about to be squeezed again in the vice of the appalling experience that was her life. She’d feel the most horrible sense that something was wrong or about to go wrong, but she always felt so frozen in place, unable to talk, unable to cry. She knew it was illogical and there certainly was nothing around her putting her in danger at the moment, though she had lived enough of it to never really fear danger again. It was a deeper thing than fear. It was something real; something she had lived. “I was just a kid, damn it! Shouldn’t always plague me like this.”
At first, Ruby Zhang had fought it all tooth and nail and tried and tried again to overcome her moments of being reintroduced to terror, but trying to talk herself out of her mental tirades was of no avail. When the memories and the pain of it all inopportunely returned to her mind, she had learned to just ride it out, to let it take her back in time and to let it all play out as it had so many times since growing up in Dandong, China, just across the river from North Korea, when she was just a little girl of nine, when it had all started, when she had learned so prematurely that she wasn’t a child anymore.
Dandong, China 1970
Life had seemed so good to a nine year old little girl. Li Hii Zhang had lived her life well in the midst of extreme poverty up to that very day. She never realized that she had nothing. It seemed so normal since no one else around her had anything either. Little Li Hii just loved to go outside her home and play with her feather kick toy that she could keep in the air longer than all the kids around her block, kicking it into the air in front of her, at her side and back kicks. She could play it for hours and never weary of it. Li Hii and her friends had all formed their little heavenly parade of Chinese angels who spent their days running, laughing, fighting and playing until it got dark or they had to pee. Each of them ran. Laughed, played and was oblivious to the utter suffering going on all around them. They just improvised as only a child could, and their lack of toys and children things seemed utterly normal to them in Mao Tse Tung’s China.
Li Hii often had a hard time going to sleep at night because of the rumbling and aching of her less than half-full belly; yet, it seemed normal.
The only time she could ever remember her mother and father yelling at her was once when she had taken a drink of some tofu water and had spit it out because it had had a bug inside it. She had been sure that was the right thing to do, but when her mom and dad told her to never waste their food again, Li Hii got her first inkling that everything was not as harmonious and happy around her as her young mind had always told her it was. She’d soon know the whole evil truth of the hell that Chairman Mao and his Chinese Communist Party had created in her country.
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
January 7, 2012, 9:52 a.m.
Nikki Peng sat tensely at her gate waiting for the boarding call that would get her on a flight to Los Angeles. Her undone hair and the beads of sweat across her prow was not a normal look for the young twenty-four year old reporter for the China Times Newspaper in Taipei, Taiwan. In spite of her young age, Nikki had already earned a reputation as a hard-hitting, deep-digging reporter who had chosen many of the toughest subjects that presented great dangers to her tiny but strategic island nation of Taiwan. She was quite simply a natural at dredging issues that were buried and, which were intended to stay that way by the villains she had revealed to the world. She was certain that the information she had been given was about to make her the next best kept secret to be buried.
Nikki Peng was the lead reporter who had dug up the dirt on her country’s former president that had landed him in prison. She had risked her job and her life to prove how he had pocketed large sums of the Taiwanese people’s money for himself and his family. Nikki Peng did not only investigate and report; she lived and breathed her work and had actually dreamed solutions in her sleep to investigative roadblocks several times and awoke in the morning and found what she needed. This time, Nikki had dug a little too deeply and she was in fear of her life. Her skill at her trade and her success at it had made a name for her that was now about to kill her.
January 6, 2012, 8:52 p.m.
Rowland Heights, California
Ruby took another drag off of her cigarette and she saw it all continue to troll through her mind so vividly. She recalled, as a much younger Li Hii Zhang, seeing her mother always wiping her eyes when she returned every morning from shopping with almost nothing in her bag. As a young child of nine, it did not mean too much to her. Today, as Ruby Zhang was staring out into the night sky from her window and pushing smoke out of her lungs, it meant everything and defined her uncompromising life, and she understood it completely.
Back in 1970, it didn’t matter that Li Hii’s parents had so little money. Even the rich could buy next to nothing. Mao’s Cultural Revolution had so devastated the nation that money was not the problem. There was simply nothing to buy and money would not have helped. Yet, today in Ruby Zhang’s excruciating mental vision of the past, Li Hii was happy. She had passed the whole morning away with her girlfriends, and she had managed not to think about hearing her mother crying the night before. The little girl had overheard them planning to leave, to pack up everything they’d need and leave Dandong as soon as possible. Li Hii snuck over to her parents’ bedroom door and saw the open suitcases on their bed and heard her mother’s grief-stricken words to Li Hii’s weeping father.
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
January 7, 2012, 9:53 a.m.
Nikki opened up her attaché and started pulling everything out of it. She had the strangest feeling she was being watched and it made her beautiful skin crawl. She was not accustomed to paranoia, but running for her life was not something she was used to doing either. She knew she had been followed from her newspaper office to her apartment where she had only been long enough to take a few things she needed, which wasn’t much, since she knew she was probably going to die.
She had actually driven her car toward the airport and after noticing out her rearview mirror that three cars had changed lanes every time she did for about three miles, she abruptly veered off on one of the exit ramps and into an alleyway. She had seen three cars follow her right off the freeway and one of them lost control and flipped over after hitting the guardrail and tumbled to the ground twenty feet below the freeway. She knew she had explosive information. She got out of her car and hailed a taxi the rest of the way to the airport with her computer, one carryon case and her attaché, from which she was grabbing hold of the books and files and looking up to see who was around her.
The gate was packed, but the only ones who were close enough to her to see what she was doing were a few women, two couples with children, a couple young guys playing computer games on their smart phones and one solidly built American or Canadian man who was fast asleep. She thought he was handsome, but had no time nor desire for romantic thoughts at the moment and probably never would again.
Nikki continued emptying out her attaché and pried the lining that covered the bottom of it lose. She pulled the corner up and saw the piece of paper she had hidden there earlier in the morning. Nikki Peng pulled it out and unfolded it. She read the email address that a contact had given her back in 2009 when she had managed to line up an interview with one Ruby Li Hii Zhang, the Executive Director for The International Coalition for a Free Asia or ICAF for short. “I knew I’d need this again one day.” She whispered to herself.
January 6, 2012, 8:53 p.m.
Rowland Heights, California
Ruby inhaled another deep puff of nicotine-laced smoke and could hear her mother’s words from so long ago.
“But, where will we go?”
“We can head south to Hong Kong. There we can be safe.” Li Hii’s father suggested with a fake smile laced with quivering lips.
Li Hii’s mother looked at the man she loved and admired. “Hong Kong?” she said with a hint of giving up in her voice. “We can’t even get out of Dandong. The only place we could go to is across the river into North Korea, the only place in the world worst than here.” She turned around and closed the suitcases and hid her mouth in her hands to stifle her compelling urge to scream in the middle of the night. “Oh, my God, there is nowhere to go!” she cried and tears rolled down her face. Li Hii’s father walked over to his wife and hugged her and she buried her face in her husband’s chest and let their tears silently fall together.
Li Hii did not weep until her father did. She saw her father, the closest thing to God in her life. His hands held his wife’s head and caressed her and sought to sooth her great fears as his eyes looked straight upward at the ceiling. Li Hii felt her own tears streaming down her face and she wiped them with the sleeves of her night gown.
“I can’t understand it.” Her daddy said quietly. “When the Japanese came here and the government seemed to welcome them right into the country, I with so many comrades stood up and fought back. I killed them; I took my beatings, and fought them in mountains with my comrades. Now, the beast we supported is killing us!
I stood with Chairman Mao, and I got nothing; no reward, not even a thank you, and I never even expected one. We gave him the country and he’s created something worse than what we fought against. How has he repaid us, with just a handful of meat for a month and half a kilo of rice to feed the three of us? They forced us all to turn against them. Anyway, what does it matter? They want to destroy us and butcher us now or later with no food no hope no life worth living anyway?”
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
January 7, 2012, 9:54 a.m.
Nikki Peng opened her laptop and started the same encryption program she had used when she was lining up her powerful interview with Ruby Zhang back in 2009. It cycled through and then her email popped up on her screen. Nikki looked passively around her and no one was watching her that she could see. She typed in the secret email address and the encryption program recognized it and immediate security was wrapped around the address and every word she was about to type.
Dear Ms. Zhang, my name is Szu Chieh, Peng. You can call me Nikki. I am not sure if you remember me, but I interviewed you secretly back in 2009 about your organization. I am so sorry to bother you, but I have some extremely urgent and dangerous information I need you to help me with or I’ll be dead before I get off of the plane I am about to board and you will be too not long after me.
January 6, 2012, 8:54 p.m.
Rowland Heights, California
Ruby Zhang felt the utter fear and sorrow as vividly as she had back in 1970 when she first heard her mother speak them. She could almost hear her mother’s voice audibly in her mind. “What about Li Hii? We have to get her to somewhere safe.” Li Hii’s mother said with great alarm in her quivering voice. The little girl’s father rushed over to the window and slowly pulled back the curtain. They were out there in their big black cars, just waiting for him to try to escape or to leave his home. Mao’s secret police preferred to take their victims in the daytime when everyone could see what defiance could cost if any of the people around the area had disobedience in mind. They insisted that the whole massive population of China understand and know that none of them should try to defy the word of the Chairman lest they face the same treatment.
Li Hii’s father lowered the curtain and looked at his wife. “I want to check on her.” He said and turned to go to Li Hii’s bedroom. Li Hii scurried away and jumped into her bed and pulled the covers over her and pretended to be asleep.
Li Hii’s father quietly opened the door and walked into her room. He touched her head with the palm of his hand and softly caressed his daughter and wept over her. “I am so sorry.” She felt his tears fall to her hair. He whispered and knew he had supported the devil and was getting his just recompense. He stood up and looked down at his beautiful little nine year old daughter. “I love you so much.” He said softly and turned and walked out of her room and closed her door. Li Hii watched the door close and closed her eyes and made herself think only about playing with her friends tomorrow when she woke up. It was the same thing she did every night and the only way, that she could fall asleep.
That was last night, but today; this vibrant resilient little girl was having as much fun as she could. She had received her name, Li Hii, which meant ‘tough,’ because of her great wailing at her birth that had the doctors and her parents laughing out loud. She had not laughed so much for a long time. She had spent the whole morning jumping rope, playing bad mitten and her face actually hurt from laughing so hard; her smile was about to change though to an expression of extreme horror.
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
January 7, 2012, 9:56 a.m.
Nikki Peng sat and stared at her computer screen for a moment and wondered how much she should say to Ruby Zhang. She decided that she needed to explain it all and hope Ruby would take the time to read it. “I have been investigating and following a UN designed environmental program that America has already signed onto. It is called Agenda 21, and when its final implementation takes place, it may mean the end of liberty and what may well be established is a world-wide totalitarian society.
“In 1992, the United Nations successfully passed the environmental action plan called Agenda 21 for sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Agenda 21 is the global-transformational result of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in the Brazilian city. Agenda 21 is an all-inclusive action plans that, when fully implemented, will absorb every living person globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the UN, governments, and major groups in every area where humans directly affect the environment.
Most people don’t even know about it or have only heard of it as a conspiracy theory, but it is quietly slinking into everything we do, what we buy and what we sell, where we live and what we eat and how we prepare it. It will eventually affect what you drive, where you work and how you heat and cool your home and work place, and it may well be irreversible.
“Agenda 21 is a totalitarian comprehensive environmental program that, when fully implemented, will direct where you live, how much water you can use, and how and where you can travel. Officially, Agenda 21 is being marketed as a worldwide effort to ensure that all human beings will have access to adequate housing, health care, water and food. The means by which this accord will achieve its sinister aims will require a massive redistribution of wealth from prosperous countries to poorer countries. Predictably, capitalistic countries, like the United States, will suffer lower standards of living, while poor nation’s standards will rise. It is clear that the one nation that will suffer the greatest setbacks in the world is China. The People’s Republic of China has refused to sign onto the accords, and, while the United States is calling Agenda 21 progress; China, quite correctly in actual fact, is calling it international political suicide.
“It is important to note that Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and current US President Thomas Arthur have all have signed onto Agenda 21, through Executive Orders. Hundreds of governors, mayors, and county commissioners have also signed onto this agreement that will, in effect, end the super-power status of the United States, which has already happened, as a matter of fact. Under the controls and subjugation of Agenda 21, the future, your future, America’s future is even now being relegated to mediocrity, an idea of the past, a nation that squandered its standard of living; a nation controlled and being dismantled by President Thomas Arthur.
“Arthur has made sure that our standard of living shall be lowered into a new dark age, without the current power base of a healthy, gun-laden and faithful American citizenry. America’s slightest gesture of pulling out of the accord and this totalitarian regime of Thomas Arthur will take you down. What Agenda 21’s tentacles are already latched onto is only now emerging, but it is evident and clear that President Arthur was put in office with the dismantling of the United States of America as his mandate. In that devilish effort, he has been masterful. Though I have great sadness about what this will mean for the United States, the real concern I have is how it is about to destroy my country, Taiwan.
January 6, 2012, 8:56 p.m.
Rowland Heights, California
Ruby could still hear the sounds from her little playground that was the street in front of her home. The smells of the broken down society of those days in China were still very fresh in her mind. Like every other time she had had an episode, Ruby saw little Li Hii running down the street in front of her home to fetch a ball some boy had kicked. When she picked it up and turned around to walk back to the front of her home, she saw three large black cars pull up in front of her small home. Moms and dads from the homes around Li Hii’s ran outside and gathered their children from the street they had been playing in and rushed them into their homes.
Instinctively, Li Hii backed up into the alleyway and watched as she began to pee her pants in profound fear and sadness. She knew she’d never see her mommy and daddy again. She took three huge steps forward to live up to her name and run over to the evil men and fight for her mom and dad’s lives, but her young mind told her it was impossible. So, she backed up again and just hid and watched.
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
January 7, 2012, 9:57 a.m.
“Once this accord is fully in place, all private property rights of ownership will be a thing of the past. All forms of irrigation, pesticides & commercial fertilizer will become illegal as well as livestock production and most eating of meat. Privately owned vehicles will no longer be allowed and personal travel will be severely regulated much like the Soviet Union regulated its citizens in its totalitarian communist regime. The use of fossil fuels for power generation or mechanized travel will no longer be permitted under Agenda 21, and single-family dwellings will be abolished.
“The economy will flounder as most forms of mineral extraction and timber harvesting will be unacceptable. Finally, the key to the implementation of all the terms found inside Agenda 21 is the UN’s mandate to reduce the human population to less than 1 billion people. We can already see that abortion, infanticide, rules against resuscitation of the elderly, the infirm and the willful negligence of providing the needed care for the mentally ill or mentally handicapped around us. Also, gay marriage will be legalized since no children can be produced. These are but a few of policies The Arthur regime will use to achieve this evil goal. This simply means that insurance will be no assurance at all, except for your funeral.
“The mechanisms for empowering and installing Agenda 21, for the most part, do not come from Washington D.C. or state legislatures. These new objectives are bleeding in through local city and county governments. Agenda 21 brings with it surreptitious code words, such as “smart growth,” “social justice,” “bio-diversity,” and “sustained development.” You can already hear them on a daily basis. Translated, these terms effectively mean total environmental dictatorship and the reestablishment of the pagan practice of the worship of Mother Earth. I am sorry to bore you with all this information, but you have to understand how important these actions will be to feel the great weight of what I have uncovered as a result of my investigation. What I want to tell you next will show you how my nation and your life and mine are now in grave peril.
January 6, 2012, 8:57 p.m.
Rowland Heights, California
Li Hii’s mother and father knew the cars were there when they heard the car doors shutting. “Li Hii, where is my baby?” Li Hii’s mother exclaimed. Li Hii’s father ran over and opened his back door window and through a stone through his neighbor’s window. The neighbor began cursing and screaming in Chinese and ran to the window and saw Li Hii’s father looking at him from his home with tears flowing from his eyes and shaking his head up and down. The neighbor knew what he had to do.
Li Hii’s father thought about using the gun he had kept after the great revolution. He cleaned it every month and kept is loaded since the day he had turned against Mao and joined the International Coalition for a Free Asia. He knew he’d need it one day for just such a situation as was before him right then. He started to open the cabinet drawer and take it out, but then he looked at his wife. If he tried it, surely he would die, and that was fine with him, but he knew his wife would be killed as well, so he left the gun there in the drawer.
Little Li Hii poked her head out from behind a garbage bin and saw five men walk up to her door and violently and aggressively pounded on it. She saw her door open and the men ran in took her father strongly by his throat and threw him out of the house and to the ground outside. Li Hii saw her mother run out of the house and started hitting the men and tried to make them lose her husband. One of the men hit her in the face with his fist and she collapsed to the ground.
Li Hii felt her feet instinctively start moving to run over to the only two people she knew she could die for. She started to scream for them to leave her mommy and daddy alone, but she suddenly felt a hand cover her mouth and an arm wrap around her waist and pull her into the air. Li Hii started kicking her legs into the air and wrestled her mouth free. Just before she screamed, she turned her head and saw it was her neighbor who had come to take her to a safe place. Tears exploded from her eyes and she pointed toward her parents who were now in separate cars that were just pulling away from Li Hii’s home. “My daddy! I want my mommy!”
The man hugged Li Hii tightly and let her scream and wail as she knew the two people she loved so much and who had loved her perfectly were surely about to die. He patted Li Hii and held her close. “I am your daddy now.”
“He was my father from that day on until he died.” Ruby told herself as she peered out into the night sky out her window and put out her cigarette, just as she did every time an episode came over her. In spite of herself, Ruby Zhang had somehow started to enjoy her massive swings into agonizing depression each time all the past of her childhood punched her solidly in her face and forced her to remember what the secret police did to her mother and father.
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
January 7, 2012, 9:59 a.m.
Nikki Peng paused for a second and thought about how best to describe the reason she was fleeing for her life. “Ms. Zhang, it is a fact that no nation on the face of the earth has protected the rights of the oppressed more than the United States of America. Until the election of President Thomas Arthur, the United States was the greatest friend of all people whose human rights were abused, oppressed or nonexistent and the greatest friend to Taiwan. That has all now changed.
“Three days ago, I received a high priority message in my email from a colleague who has since been murdered. He instructed me to keep this information until I could reveal it to the public in Taiwan. My coworker was so terrified that he did not even conclude the email, but only ended the message with the words, “Oh my god, they’re here”, and sent it to me immediately. That was the last communication I had with him.
I opened the message and read that since 1992, every major nation had signed onto Agenda 21 except the People’s Republic of China. Beijing knows that the implementation of the new rules will be a massive drain on China and that with the massive population, it is virtually impossible to follow Agenda 21 and continue China’s modernization program. China is one of the most important parties needed to sign the accord, but the rules in Agenda 21 will affect China the hardest and virtually bankrupt the huge country.
“The people of Taiwan are very aware that we have not been able to develop a modern nation peacefully of our own might and ability. We know that China could easily surround our tiny country with their navy and put an armada of planes over our airspace and takes us over in minutes without America’s constant protection. Yet, according to satellite photos my colleague sent me, China is getting a massive number of ships ready to do just that. Here’s is why.
“I have conclusive proof that in an effort to get Beijing’s signature on the Agenda 21 accord, the Arthur Administration has told China that if they agree to sign onto the accord, China will be given an extra twenty years to implement the agreement and that, as a carrot to attract and secure their approval, America would cease its protection of Taiwan and would cast a blind eye to Chinese aggression against my country. Arthur has also said that he will give up organizations such as yours, which are fighting for freedom in China and will arrest their leaders and return them to China.
“I was called into my manager’s office immediately after I received the email. I don’t know how, but he knew that the email had arrived on my system. I was ordered to hand over the information that he called subversive. When I refused, I was fired. I stood up and ran to my desk and grabbed my computer and ran out the door. The State Police were already on their way and I saw them run into the building as my elevator door closed.”
Nikki Peng stopped typing and looked at her hands. They were shaking so badly, as she recounted her story to Ruby Zhang. Nikki took a deep breath and looked around her again and continued. “Right now, I am at Taoyuan International Airport waiting for a flight to Los Angeles, and I need your people to meet me when I arrive. I hope you receive this and can see the deep danger that awaits us both. You are my only hope.
Please let me know you received this by dialing the number below on my secure line. Let it ring two times and hang up. Then, I’ll know you agree to help me. If you do not, at least I won’t have to watch Communist China destroy what my people have built since 1949, because, I’ll be dead.” Nikki Peng hit the send button and the message was encrypted and her computer told her that it was sent...
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From the Author: Agenda 21 is a actual program to which the United States has already signed and dedicated its resources to implementing. This story, though fiction, is currently taking place and will affect us all and already is. Do not take all the words, deeds and actions of the men and women who run our nation at face value. There are things happening under our noses that the government knows we will simply follow all the way to the butcher block. Stand up for your country; be engaged and insist that you be told the truthm whatever the cost or you might find yourself staring out a window wondering how you got to the sinister, dangerous place you may well find yourself in the not too distant future. - Steven Clark Bradley
