Hi all,
I am German, so I appologize for bad grammar...

I want to use this oppertunity,
to tell you about something which is happening right now, and which even goes
beyond what is described in Fahrenheit 451.

I am doing this because many of my friends have been persecuted.

Please have a look at: http://clearwisdom.net/eng/info_pak/book1e/p205.html

(That site is outdated, and has some propaganda from the party mixed in, but still it gives you an outline)

Since the Chinese Communist Party
has started it's persecution of Falun Gong (a kind of traditional Chinese meditation)
severall millions of Falun Gong books
have been confiscated and publicly destroyed.
More than 100.000 people have been arrested and sentenced to forced labor camps.
At least 1059 have thus died from torture.

Yesterday a women who lived in a city next to mine, maged to return to Germany,
after she spend 2 years in a labor camp,
because she handed out flyers of the persecution in China.
In the labor Camp she was severaly beaten,
since they demanded that she sign a pre-made
"confession", telling the names of other people practicing Falun Gong,
and renuncing her belief...
which she refused.

She was forced to work for 18 hours a day,
or longer.
She told me that she basicly only managed to get through this,
because while she was doing the work,
she recited the Falun Gong books (which of course would have been confisceted.)

She remebered a passage, another inmate remembered another passage,
and so they complemented each other.

besides the link about the book burnings (which are still going on) you can check out
Faluninfo.net
for gennerell information on the persecution.

Manuel



[This message has been edited by Manuel (edited 10-12-2004).]

Thanks for the post. Very interesting. I think in the US we take a lot for granted. While there are some book/album burnings, they are typically done by small groups of extremists, as opposed to the government.

Gulp.

Sorta makes our concerns about the Patriot Act look kinda puny.

Pete

Don't forget: all we ever get to see on tv or read about in the papers has been filtered and polished to the nth degree. Similarly, there are things going on which we'll never hear about because they're deemed unworthy of our attention. In this respect our society (be it American or European) isn't all that far removed from Mildred and Montag's.

There are differences -- one of the big ones being that whatever point of view you want (in present America) you can get. In F451 government controlled information and distorted it. While that happens today, what counter-balances that is the right to free speech. If you feel a message or perspective is being suppressed or ignored, in theory (cost is a limitation, for sure) you can go spread the information yourself.

For those that are making a Bush-Hitler comparison !?!?! get real and do some reading about history, something called the Constitution, and the recent successful elections in Afganistan.

Still not buying into it?
Well, consider this if you are disenchanted completely by the American way. Maybe you will be a bit more appreciative: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/13/iraq.graves/index.html