john klotz wrote:
>
> Dear friends and others:
>
> The following item is a companion piece to the Washington Post article on
> US nuclear energy in China.
>
> My experiences with US policy at the NPT has convinced me that one of the
> biggest problems we face is that of language. Our diplomats converse in
> "Kissinger-speak" which is all about big powers and the entente cordiale
> and nothing at all about democracy.
>
> ----------
> October 21, 1997
>
> ON MY MIND / By A.M. ROSENTHAL
>
> Shatter the Silence
>
> On Sunday afternoon, after I had seen the two videos, I thought that
> if only God had a sense of packaging He would put them back to
> back on one cassette. Then He would drop them on the heads of all
> people who can worship in freedom but are indifferent to the suffering of
> those who cannot.
>
> One video shows the overriding power of the new American value,
> international trade -- and the decreasing influence of the values that had
> made America particular. To recall, among them was the belief in the
> universality of the right to freedom of religion. The other video shows
> determination by some Americans never to forget that.
>
> The video I saw first was made by Boeing, a delighted account of its
> increasing airplane sales to China. Boeing reports proudly what else it did
> for Beijing to make China strong.
>
> At one of the China-Boeing meetings in Beijing, a company executive
> tells how Boeing organized an American lobby to get the lowest possible
> tariffs for China -- the most-favored-nation treatment.
>
> First, he says, Boeing called on the hundreds of companies that sell it
> supplies to lobby politicians for those tariffs, in person and through a
> letter campaign.
>
> Moving up, he announces that Boeing then organized America's major
> companies to lobby President Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole,
> successfully.
>
> The Boeing folk do not say why many Americans fought those low tariffs
> -- including Mr. Clinton during his first campaign. They wanted to link
> lowering tariffs with lowering of Communist repression of Chinese and
> Tibetan human rights.
>
> That kind of unpleasantness, persecution, is not mentioned. The closest
> approach on the video is Henry Kissinger saying that Americans tend to
> take a missionary approach to international affairs and that he does not
> approve.
>
> It was the American missionary zeal for freedom that inspired the
> underground railroad to rescue American slaves. It led to legislation that
> opened America's doors to Jews and Pentecostal Christians of the Soviet
> Union. And it saved at least some Jews from Hitler.
>
> Boeing officials proclaim that China and America have much to teach
> each other. For instance, the Chinese now make so many Boeing parts,
> one executive says, that when Boeing planes fly to China, why, they are
> going home. The reaction of workers in those obediently lobbying supply
> companies is not discussed, nor what America must learn from China.
>
> The second video is about religious persecution of Christians around the
> world: the attacks on Christian bodies and churches in Pakistan, Egypt
> and Iran and the enslavement, yes, enslavement, of Christians in the
> Sudan.
>
> And of course it deals with the decades of imprisonment, torture and
> perpetual harassment of Christians in China who refuse to worship
> where, when and how they are commanded by Beijing's atheistic religion
> supervisors and religion police.
>
> The video is called "Shatter the Silence" and was made by Christians
> who have been trying to do that for years. It is part of the prelude to
> Nov. 16, the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church,
> which will be observed in churches across America. For information
> about the video and the Day of Prayer: (888) 538-7772 or
> www.persecutedchurch.org.
>
> On this video, an Egyptian Christian girl tells about her sister -- raped,
> abducted and forcibly converted to Islam in a marriage from which she
> never escaped. Then she says with complete assurance that when one
> person prays, God may not hear, but when many, many people do, then
> certainly He will hear and help.
>
> Still, Christian groups preparing for the Day of Prayer hope it will be
> followed by actions -- individual and church actions toward strengthening
> a growing national movement against religious persecution abroad, and
> support of legislation like the Wolf-Specter bill in Congress.
>
> The bill calls for fairly mild penalties for persecuting Christians and other
> worshipers -- banning American loans and non-humanitarian aid to guilty
> nations. But it is fought by the business lobby that Boeing helped create
> as if it were the devil's own work.
>
> And to Beijing and its American servitors I suppose it is, because it is an
> embodiment of a message from an Iranian Christian heard on the Day of
> Prayer video: the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference
>
> JOHN KLOTZ
> http://www.walrus.com/~jklotz/
> 885 Third Avenue, Suite 2900
> New York, NY 10022
> (212) 230-2162
> (718) 601-2044