The NEWS PAGE
Topics:
Human Rights Activist released from Prison: Wei Jingsheng
Human Rights Activist put into Prison: Seo Joon Shik
Scientologist from Germany gets U.S.asylum
The Love of Mrs. Schmitz
LeTourneau
The Pope and His Anti-Semitic Past
Wei Jingsheng versus Seo Joon Shik
Since the media covered Wei Jingsheng's release from Chinese prison already extensively I do not want to repeat this good news here. I am happy that some one who's only "crime" was to disagree with his government is no longer behind bars.
It offends me however how Western media and politicians are exploiting this case for anti-communism and China bashing as if there are no human rights abuses committed by our so called Western democracies.
It disgusts me that the same media and the same politicians who criticize China for imprisoning dissidents show no outrage and have no word of condolence when almost at the same time in South Korea the human rights activist Seo Joon Shik (49) is rearrested. Seo Joon Shik was already imprisoned for 17 years by the South Korean government.
During a human rights film festival from Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, 1997, Seo Joon Shik showed a documentary film called "Red Hunt". That was enough for South Korean authorities to rearrest him.
Of course to hunt the Reds is OK in the Western world and not considered a human rights abuse. Look at Germany and its "Berufsverbote"! That law was introduced by the Socialdemocratic chancellor Willi Brandt (one of the worst postwar liars on the German throne, he promised "to venture more democracy" during his election) to bar communists and other people critical of the Western establishment from government jobs like scavenger, policeman, bureaucrat or teacher. Now, we have a negative selection of hypocrites, pussyfoots, uncritical yes-men, servile government flatters and toadies and trucklers cleaning our German streets, teaching our children and hunting us when we drive too fast or have the wrong political idea or religion.
German newspapers are full with venomous
articles against the Scientologists. Unfortunately, these
articles are not very informative. For all those who believe
(like a German teacher I once talked to) that the Scientologists
worship the devil here a link to their sight:
http://faq.scientology.org/
The Love
of Mrs. Schmitz LeTourneau
Mary Kay Schmitz LeTourneau, a 35 year old teacher, sentenced to six months in jail for child rape (The Daily Yomiuri, Nov. 16).
She can call herself lucky that she is not a man. A man would probably have to spent most of the rest of his life in prison. But the guilty verdict still upsets me. Mrs Schmitz LeTourneau did not rape the 13 year old boy, but the boy was in love with her and sought a sexual relationship with her. Society is misguided when it follows a morality, that has no room for love and sex. A rule that allows sexual relationship only for people above the age of 16 ignores reality. Sexual desire is controlled by hormones and they are turned on usually at a much earlier age. To force children to live sexually abstinent, is what I call child abuse. Sexual harassment of children is when adults punish children for masturbating, looking at explicit love scenes or having sex with the partner of their choice.
I grew up in a prudish environment and it still sickens me how ignorant we were as children about sex and how guilty and dirty we felt about it.
The 13 year old boy was lucky that he found a mature partner. No harm was done, when he made love to his teacher.
Terror struck only after pious moralists took over. The boy lost the woman he loved and probably his trust in justice and society. Mrs. Schmitz LeTourneau lost almost everything, her freedom, her job, her husband, but she was neglected anyway, the custody of her four children and also of the baby, she had protected. The new baby daughter Audrey is being deprived of maternal contact and care. I do not care about laws. For me there is only one definition of crime: That is causing harm. By that definition the criminals are the judge, the prosecution and of course all those pious witch hunters with their misguided "love".
If it were not for these people, the boy and
teacher could still love each other, the five children could love
their mother and the mother her children, and if she had been
married to some one more tolerant like myself, the matrimonial
love could still continue, too.
The Pope and His Anti-Semitic Past
Censorship in Poland
The American journalist Carl Bernstein, famous for his part in uncovering the Watergate affair, and his co-author Marco Politi, wrote a biography of Pope John Paul II called "His Holiness", which was not all flattery as the Catholic Church would have liked it. One of the lies propagated by the Church was about the rosy relationship between the Pope's family and their Jewish neighbors. Now, Mr. Bernstein and his college added among other offending information the following quote from a pastoral letter by the then Catholic primate: "There will be a Jewish problem as long as the Jews remain… The Jews are fighting against the Catholic Church, persisting on free thinking, and are the vanguard of godlessness, Bolshevism and subversion."
The Polish publisher, Amber, cut this and a string of similar quotations, including some that implicitly praised the new Polish honesty about anti-Semitism, from the proposed Polish text. Amber Publishing claimed that the deleted references would be offensive to Polish readers!
People who live in the rosy fantasies of lies and religion might really be offended by truth and honesty, but to claim that every Pole would be offended by the truth is an affront to the Polish people.
Boycott publishers who kowtow to the Churches.
Nov. '97, the Danish wristwatch company Rem Rem started a great advertising campaign with the English-language slogan: "Why kill time when you can kill yourself?" and added a few suicide pictures. This campaign upset all those fools who were clenching to their lives. Unni Bille-Brahe, a leading authority on suicide (I don't know how many attempts.) was quoted as saying by the Berlingske Tidende daily: "There should be prison sentences for making money in such cynical and irresponsible way." Why not the death penalty?
There is only one thing distasteful about the
whole thing and that is not respecting the freedom of expression.
Censorship at Doshisha University in Kyoto
At a festival at Doshisha University, some students served pudding and snacks on the midriffs of lightly dressed women for 3000 Yen and on the bare stomach of male students for 1000 Yen. But a number of students strongly protested the booth's activity. Yes, among today's students there are a bunch of prudish fools. Society is surely going backward. The booth was forced to close. Masao Urabe, chief of the university's student affairs section, said "the students' behaviour demonstrated a lack of common sense." And "It is a shame that they did such a thing. The University respects students' freedom in planning and implementing the campus festival because they have faith in their good sense." What does that man know about freedom? Does he think freedom is a synonym for conformity?
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