NP how many colonials can dance on the head of a Pyn?

[Doug Millison]

Continuing to enjoy my day off. The Vatican's argument in the article 
below ("The Vatican says those to be made saints died for their faith 
in anti-Christian massacres between 1648 and 1930, while Beijing says 
they were agents of Western colonialism who deserved death") reminds 
me of rj's defense of Weissmann the child abuser and rj's denial of 
Weissmann's status (seen from the Herero point of view, as in this 
article we see the Catholics from the Chinese point of view) as a 
colonial. Keep up the good work on that Weissmann/Blicero 
hagiography, rj.

http://www.scmp.com/News/China/Article/FullText_asp_ArticleID-20000928162644861.asp

(the South China Morning Post may require registration to access this article)

Thursday, September 28, 2000
         Beijing accuses opposition of plotting

         Updated at 4.30pm:
         The mainland on Thursday accused its various internal 
dissident and opposition
         groups of acting in concert and working with foreign powers 
in a plan to overthrow
         the government.

         ''Falun Gong is not only ingratiating itself with Western 
anti-China forces, but also
         ganging up with overseas and domestic pro-democracy groups as 
well as Tibetan
         and Taiwanese separatists to form an anti-Communist Party 
united front which is
         plotting to overthrow the government,'' said a state media commentary.

         The lengthy Xinhua news agency commentary, printed in the 
People's Daily, said
         China's various enemies gathered twice last March in support 
of America's ''plot'',
         at US Congressional hearings and at the annual UN human 
rights debate in
         Geneva.

         That Tibetans, Taiwanese, Falun Gong adherents and well-known 
exiled dissidents
         Wei Jingsheng and Harry Wu all came out together to back US 
human rights
         criticism ''made perfectly clear their common stance'', the 
commentary said.

         The vehement attack on disparate groups united by their 
grievances against the
         Communist Party came amid a bitter spat between Beijing and 
the Vatican over a
         Holy See plan to canonise the 120 Chinese martyrs on October 
1, the mainland's
         National Day.

         The Vatican says those to be made saints died for their faith 
in anti-Christian
         massacres between 1648 and 1930, while Beijing says they were 
agents of Western
         colonialism who deserved death.

         October 1, the 51st anniversary of Communist rule, is one of 
many ''sensitive
         dates'' in China, when those with gripes against the 
government try to stage public
         protests.

         Next month will also bring the first anniversary of China's parliament
         rubber-stamping a draconian law against ''evil cults''. 
Beijing banned Falun Gong in
         July 1999 and says it has jailed about 150 organisers of the 
spiritual group.

         Falun Gong, whose members continue protests against the ban, 
say thousands of
         adherents are in labour camps without trial. A Hong 
Kong-based human rights
         group says at least 52 adherents have died in government 
custody since the July
         1999 ban.

         Xinhua's commentary repeated Beijing's assertion that the 
practice of Falun Gong
         meditation had caused 1,500 deaths and 600 cases of mental 
illness. The group is
         a political movement and a ''threat to national security'', 
Xinhua said.

         The agency voiced particular alarm at the notion of democracy 
activists and ethnic
         separatists copying Falun Gong's persistent campaign of 
peaceful protests.

         This month, exiled poet Huang Beiling called on China's 
intellectuals to follow the
         example of Falun Gong meditators by fighting government 
oppression with civil
         disobedience.

         ''When they're beaten, they don't hit back. The intellectual 
community should do
         the same thing,'' said Mr Huang, who writes under the name 
Bei Ling and was jailed
         last month for distributing a literary journal and freed 
after international pleas.



P.S. I had the pleasure of meeting Wei Jing Sheng and talking with 
him for about a half hour last year, when he spoke at UC Berkeley, 
together with my wife (she's Chinese) and some Chinese acquaintances 
of Wei. And I was in China last July when the Party cracked down on 
Falun Gong -- amazing to watch that Big Lie propaganda machine swing 
into action.  Last July, the Party was attributing only a handful of 
suicides and cases of mental illness to Falun Gong (I saw the first 
broadcast of the Party-produced TV documentary that leveled that 
charge), now the Party's saying 1,500 deaths and 600 cases of mental 
illness.  I realize that it's grandiose to make this comparison, but 
it also reminds me of the way The Three Stooges (Mackin, Malign, rj) 
swing into action to revise and rewrite my pynchon-l posts as they 
have in the past few days.

P.P.S. Welcome back, David Casseres!

P.P.P.S. Malign, anything to offer by way of rebuttal in addition to 
your lame "No, Pynchon didn't do that"? In my copy of GR, Holocaust 
slave labor manufactures the V-2, and is therefore at the center of 
the novel.
-- 

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