The Week

National Review, Sept 25, 2000

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant is as good an epitaph as any for the nation of Tibet, whose wretched people-those of them not put to the sword by the Chinese army, or starved to death in artificial famines, or driven into exile-have now been incorporated into China's Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the eyes of Chinese leaders, the Dalai Lama, who owns the hearts of most surviving Tibetans, is a potential disturber of that peace, and therefore a bitter enemy. It is therefore perfectly logical that they should seek to exclude him from the Millennium World Peace Summit, a gathering of religious leaders held in New York during the last week of August. And it is, of course, dismally predictable that the financial backers of the summit (Ted Turner, the Ford Foundation, etc.) should kowtow to China's demands. Meanwhile, in early August the Chinese government seized 16,000 copies of an American book whose binding had been contracted out to a firm in Guangdong Province. It turns out that the book, a retrospective collection by a former official White House photographer, includes a shot of President Clinton with the Dalai Lama. There has been no official complaint from the U.S. about the book's interception. Will no one in authority speak up for poor, raped, starved, brutalized, enslaved Tibet, and for the gentle monk who still, after 40 years of exile and ignominy, holds aloft the shredded flag of her nationhood?

Lori Berenson had a post-college career typical of a handful of Upper West Side girls. She dropped out of MIT to pursue radical politics and radical-chic tourism in Latin America. In 1994 she moved to Peru, where she joined the Tupac Amaru, a terrorist organization that specialized in assassinating Peruvian judges. Berenson claims she did not believe the group was violent; the Peruvians, who arrested her and sentenced her, in 1996, to life in prison, were impatient with her arguments. Her trial did not conform to American norms, but then her heroes were way beyond normal American fringe groups. The Peruvian government, probably reacting to pressure from Washington, has decided to give Berenson a new trial. That is more than a pampered norteamericana inserting herself into a revolutionary situation should expect.

Anthony Summers, an Irish journalist, has published a book alleging that Richard Nixon popped pills and beat his wife. Of course: Nixon was the Devil, and the Devil does only diabolical things. Too bad Joe Lieberman wasn't around to give him a scolding, and then say we should all move on.

Leaving a restaurant in Manistee, Mich., Janice Barton encountered a man who said something to his wife in Spanish. Ms. Barton, who does not understand that language, turned to her mother and said: "I wish these damned [five-letter ethnic slur] would learn to speak English." She was overheard by an off-duty sheriff's deputy, who followed her out and copied her license-plate number. In court, Ms. Barton was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of "insulting conduct in a public place" and sentenced to jail for 45 days. National Review is willing to offer a modest cash prize for the first news of a successful prosecution against a Spanish-speaker uttering the word "gringo" or the equivalent in a public place anywhere in these United States.