The Nation's Pulse
Aikman, David
TH E NATION'S PULSE by David Aikman An Unusual Coalition ii ometimes noises came into my ears," China's President Jiang Zemin confessed on the second day of his late October state visit to...
...Whoops and a tattoo on the Tibetan drum rang out in response...
...As the crowd drifted off, a lone Chinese protester, Alex Guo, who came to the U.S...
...Just in front of the stage the crowd's view of Gere's handsome face was being obscured by a"Stop Killing Uighurs...
...But the twenty-six other organizations supporting them were a political smorgasbord that DAVID AMMAN is a former Time magazine foreign correspondent...
...The five sponsors were mainstream enough: Amnesty International and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, along with Human Rights in China, the International Campaign for Tibet, and the Greater Washington Network for Democracy in China...
...Only Frank Wolf, one of Congress's most energetic human rights campaigners, ventured a prediction...
...Unless the Chinese president needed a hearing aid, it would have been difficult for him not to hear the cacophony of protests that drifted, uninvited, into his White House conversations with President Clinton...
...Give your favorite children an academic and musical head start with Jeff Stambovsky's What Do You Know, Kid...
...Spend hours with the kids you love enjoying great music together while they learn about science and grammar...
...According to Amnesty International, more than 6,000 death sentences were handed down in China last year, more than in the rest of the world put together...
...John's Episcopal Church ("Church of the Presidents") chimed away during a 95-minute protest rally in Lafayette Park opposite the White House...
...It was left to Gary Bauer to explain the deeper reason for this strange new coalition of protesters...
...Tibetan monks chanted, aging, pony-tailed American hippies pounded on Tibetan prayer drums, and the bells of St...
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...It wasn't the protesters' goal to ostracize China altogether...
...Tibet," said Yauch, looking a good ten years less than his 33 years, "is actually the answer to most of the problems we are facing...
...The rally, they said, was a sinister British plot to put a stop to the China-U.S...
...More whoops and applause, then shouts of "Put the sign down...
...Guo said he had been unfairly fired from a job because he was Chinese...
...After the rally formally began at noon, a bewildering succession of speakers followed each other for brief orations on the makeshift stage: Chinese dissidents in exile, Tibetan women, U.S...
...What Do You Know, Kid...
...None of us wants to isolate China," said Lodi Gyari, who with the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet after China's 1959 invasion and is now president of the International Campaign for Tibet...
...in 1988, tried to interest passersby in leaflets and a placard that read, "Where Are My Human Rights in the U.S...
...TH E NATION'S PULSE by David Aikman An Unusual Coalition ii ometimes noises came into my ears," China's President Jiang Zemin confessed on the second day of his late October state visit to Washington...
...The politicians present had no concrete suggestions on how to force China to change its policies, though they did get off some good one-liners...
...California Rep...
...yet despite something of a fairground atmosphere on this radiant fall day, there were serious reminders of why so many Americans are still very upset with China...
...Professing Buddhists Gere and Beastie Boy Yauch appear to believe that Tibetan Buddhism itself could cure many of the world's woes...
...ranged from left to right: the Sierra Club, AFL-CIO, Friends of the Earth-U.S., Freedom House, and the Family Research Council...
...The crack of the 21-gun salute echoes the sound of gunfire on the streets of Beijing on the night of June zj," said Sen...
...But what it lacked in numbers and emotion it made up for in the kaleidoscopic nature of the organizations joining together to create it...
...features these fun and educational songs as well as a BONUS SING-ALONG SECTION: Photosynthesis E=mc Squared Gravitation Thomas Alva Edison The Apostrophe's Song Constants John Maynard Keynes Antibiotics Albert Einstein What Do You Know, Kid...
...I would like to suggest to you that this debate, while it is focused on China and Tibet and human rights, is real-ly a debate about the U.S...
...But not many Washingtonians would have been able to explain the meaning of signs that demanded "Freedom and Independence for East Turkestan" (a reference to China's control of Turkic Xinjiang Province) or for that matter, "Holiday Inn Out of Tibet," a slogan unlikely to be popular with travelers faced with the alternative hostelry of the China Travel Service...
...Russell Feingold...
...This CD helps children gain an appreciation for jazz and American Popular Standards as they learn...
...Seeing it helped explain why, eight years later, some two-thirds of Americans are unhappy that U.S...
...The audience quieted down...
...Did he think human rights were better in China...
...The gathering, rather portentously entitled "Let Freedom Ring: A Protest of Human Rights Abuses in China and Tibet," was as fascinating a collection of various groups united in a common cause as Washington has seen in recent years...
...It is a debate about who we are and what we believe in and whether we take seriously the founding values that this country was built on when it was made a shining city on a hill...
...This breakthrough album sets clever lyrics about academic topics to original jazz tunes sung in the style of American Popular Standards...
...66 December 1997 • The American Spectator crackdown had been erected at the back of the stage...
...Several placards read "Save Wei Jingsheng" and displayed a sad-looking photo of China's most famous imprisoned dissident...
...The rally of a rather modest boo people was intended to be the high point of a series of demonstrations during Jiang's eight-day, seven-city tour...
...No," he said, looking very sad...
...Put the sign down...
...I am standing here today to tell you," he said, "that China is a world leader in executing people...
...I believe in our lifetime," he said, "we will see a free China and a free Tibet...
...Half a block away, two supporters of Lyndon LaRouche harangued passers-by...
...04 Share The Music Of Your Life With The Kids In Your Life...
...While most were here to protest against the deplorable state of human rights in China and Tibet, it wasn't clear what the demonstrators were actually for...
...placard...
...This is a debate about whether the political elites of America and the foreign policy elites have the courage and the energy and the determination to stand for American values as we go into the next century...
...Most of the crowd was thoroughly mainstream, downtown office workers enjoying a burst of autumnal sunshine at lunchtime...
...There was, to be sure, something almost entertaining in watching Richard Gere, who first came to cinematic fame in American Gigolo, beaming at the audience and announcing that the demonstration was "very energizing, because it is about action...
...Harry Wu, a vigorous campaigner against China's laogai labor camp system, held up a graphic photo of a recent public execution in China...
...In fact we want China to become part of this big family that is all of us...
...Gere said that he brought greetings "from a great friend of all of us, the Dalai Lama...
...A papier-mache model of the Goddess of Democracy statue that graced Tiananmen Square in the last week before the June 1989 China brings out the best in many protesters...
...ii-IdkAti/t NYACK, NY WWW.HOKANZEE.COM RECORDS The American Spectator • December 1997 67...
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...How can we trust a government that does not trust its own people...
...senators (Well-stone and Feingold) and members of Congress (Wolf and Pelosi), suit-clad Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, and leather jacket-clad actor Richard Gere, the beauteous Bianca Jagger and a vulnerable-looking Adam Yauch, lead singer of the Beastie Boys...
...He didn't elaborate...
...trade with China has brought about no improvement in that country's human rights policies...
...Nancy Pelosi said that it was "not right to roll out the red carpet to a leader who rolled out the tanks in Tiananmen Square...
...The media is obsessed with the unusual nature of this coalition," he said, "conservatives like me and Frank Wolf and liberal human rights activists and the AFL-CIO...
...Tibetans seemed everywhere, waving brightly colored flags and handing out dozens of blue and yellow "Save Tibet" sheets to anyone who would take them...
...He paused for a second...
...Then, referring to the Chinese practice of selling the body organs of executed prisoners to foreigners (mostly overseas Chinese), he added: "This is the first time in the history of human society that a government has made profits from body parts...
...But the point, he noted, was that "I would rather be in this unusual coalition than in the other unusual coalition, the one that brings together American capitalists and Chinese Communists...
...AFL-CIO honcho John Sweeney was emphatic: "Do not let anyone, anyone, tell you that we can have normal trade relations with a government that violates every standard of human decency...
...I think they want the sign down," Gere said politely, and the placard quickly disappeared...
...But only Gary Bauer took a stab at explaining this odd mix...
Vol. 30 • December 1997 • No. 12
