Conference quark::mennotes

    
    As I read this I cannot help but be reminded of those who say
    "It can't happen here".  As America merrily squanders the rights
    and freedoms that were purchased by the blood and sacrifice of
    so many.  If you want government to take care of you.  They'll
    take care of you all right....  China looked to one man to fix
    their problems and he turned out to be a monster.  How blessed 
    we were that the man who could have had it all, George Washington,
    had such a deep and undying belief in God and liberty.
    
    Thanks for reminding us.
    fred();

    All revolutions are BAD... and people suffer.  Did you note what
    happened to Stalin? he is first revered, then rejected and his statues
    taken away, the same will happen to Mao... wait till his opponents are
    in command... see what happens to him.  Communism is a dying ruling, it
    dissapeared from many places, Cuba is badly struggling, Russia
    abolished it, so it will be a matter of time before people can stand to
    themselves and choose their own method of government, if they CHOOSE
    comunism it is fine, as long as it is NOT forced, if it does not work
    it could be changed... but then, if it wasn't forced it means it COULD
    work! and being forced... you know the answer.  I wish Mao did too.
    
    (Soon or later, we all pay what we do)
    
    
    

    	A failed revolution is not either particularly good or bad. The
    existing government now knows exactly who their main enemies are, and
    what their reasons for complaint are. They can afford to be
    magnanimous, and if they are intelligent they can take steps to fix
    the root causes for the (failed) revolution.
    
    	Revolutions seem a bit mixed. The U.S. has had a fair number of 
    them, starting with the revolution against the British, but with
    varying names, like "Civil War", "Indian massacre", ..., so I suppose
    they should be experts compared with the British who have had only two
    or three in the last 400 years.
    
    	Revolutions happen usually *because* people are suffering, and the
    end result after the revolution may be good or bad. Tha Americans, when
    they were revolting against British rule were suffering from tea taxes.
    A fair number of German mercenaries were killed, and I wouldn't like to
    compare taxes on tea currently, so it may or may not have achieved its
    objectives. It did permit the French to take over Corsica by
    distracting the British fleet to the other side of the Atlantic, so
    from the point of view of Corsican nationalists the American revolution
    was definitely BAD.

    	Please don't think I am in the least light hearted about the base
    note. I was answering the replies. I have known several people who have
    been in situations similar to that described, and it is not a matter to
    laugh about. I sometimes find it difficult to resist teasing members of
    our former American colonies.

    
    re last couple:
    
    Thank God that the British have had the "former colonies" to bail their
    tales out at least twice in the last century.  Especially from that Hitler
    fella whom Chamberlin was so fond of, or you probably wouldn't be so
    jovial.
    
    fred();

    re revolutions:

    There two ways to deal with a revolution. 1) you can fix the problems
    that lead to the revolution, 2) you can 'fix' the dissatisfaction by
    shooting everyone that is dissatisfied (along with their families).
    China tends to do the latter.

    fred();

    There is a saying: "Those who choose to ignore history, are doomed to 
    repeat history".
    
    (I don't know the author)
    
    Jeff

    re .0
    	I've often wondered why the people of Hong Kong haven't tried to
    buy the land (or at least lease it for another 99 years) from the
    mainland government.  I'm sure that they could borrow the money from
    commercial banks and pay it back over some number of years.  The
    chinese government can probably get a lot more benefit from the cash
    than from trying to keep a few more unwilling citizens under control.
    	Alternatively, the people of Hong Kong could try to find another
    piece of waterfront property within a thousand or so miles and move
    everything that isn't tied down to the new place leaving the Chinese
    with just the piece of land that they rented to the British 90 some
    years ago.
    						John
     

    In terms of history, Mao was one of the most significant leaders ever
    to rise to power in China.  For thousands of years various dynasties
    have come and gone; the philosophical/religious systems of Confucianism
    and Taoism supported empires; then along came Mao, and harnessed the
    peasantry in a political cause.  That had never been done before.  The
    corrupt government of Sun Yat-Sen against which Mao took The Long March
    was no more legitimate to rule China than any other; and with the
    peasants behind him, Mao actually had more legitimacy than any other.
    
    What Mao did after securing power was, on the other hand, morally
    bankrupt.  The Cultural Revolution destroyed the intelligentsia, the
    educated, the artists, leaving only the least capable alive to build
    upon the ruins.  Painful industrialization and central economic
    planning proved unable to modernise China for over two decades of
    failed plans and sullen decay.
    
    Finally, since Mao's death in '78 or '79, China's powerful elite have
    gradually moved away from totally centralized economic control,
    experimenting in various regions with market reforms, and successfully
    begun to join the global trading system.  Banks are being forbidden
    from propping up the failing state industries.  Bank reforms are in
    place to promote lending to private business ventures.  Thousands of
    small and medium sized companies have sprung up to replace the failed
    state businesses.  And China's growth since the early 80's has averaged
    better than 9% per year; an utterly improbable result given the decades
    of preceding decay.  The elites have maintained a very tight political
    control during this phase, though with inept understanding of financial
    matters they allowed inflation to rob the Chinese people of their
    spending power, leading to unrest just before the Tianamen Square
    demonstration, which was suppressed at terrible cost.  Such political
    control is expected to gradually elude the elites as modernisation
    provides more and more financial and informational avenues into and out
    of China.  Mao's death freed the elites from central planning, and they
    have successfully begun the transition to market economics, which
    should eventually free the rest of the people of China.
    
    DougO

    
    re .9
    
    Funny how while so many countries are moving to Capitalism, America
    is moving to Socialism.
    
    fred();

    re .7

    Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
    
    George Santayana (1863-1952)
    American philosopher, poet

    I don't think we are, nor do I want us to.  I'm a free trader,
    capitalist all the way.  But in Mickwid's note is hardly the place 
    to discuss it.
    
    DougO

    re .10
    
    Funny how I was just thinking the same thing.  :-(
    
    Who was it who said that those who would sacrifice freedom for security
    deserve neither?
    
    - craig
    

    re .13
    
    
>    Who was it who said that those who would sacrifice freedom for security
>    deserve neither?
    
    Ben Franklin
    
    fred();

    Behind many great or infamous men and women are closets sckelotons
    (sp). Look at our curent leaders and look at some or many of the pop
    artist, athletes, and others. Perhaps its their blind side? How they
    look at the picture as a whole.
    
    Pick any famous leader and I am sure we can find some quirk. Again not
    taking .0's note out of content. I too feel for this person, for there
    are many who die at the hands of our leaders... Where else do we get
    shot thinking of things that are against the state? Or where else do we
    have our goverment give radio active cerial to the populas knowing full
    well of its results. Humanity has certainly taken a wrong turn
    someplace. We are supposingly to have advanced some place here.
    
    
    
     suposhere 
    
    ug t of 

    
    re .0
    
    Hello basenoter. Back in the late 60's left-wingers all over the
    U.S. were buying up little books which contained quotations of
    Chairman Mao.  Were these books required reading in China?  
    
    bs 
    
    

I had one of those books - my mother gave it to me.  I found it interesting
reading.

			Steve

    In August 1986 my father took my family to his hometown in China
    (Fouchow) to met our Chinese side of the family. My father is the only 
    one in his family to have left China.  He left just as Mao was closing
    China, he was 12 years old and had very unpopular political beliefs. 
    He also left becasue he needed to find a job to support his family.  
    Many of my father's friends were "purged" as teens and adults during 
    that period.
    
    I think that my father had another reason for going back there and
    taking us with him.  He looked up as many of his friends as he could
    still find.  Many of them were since brought back from the labor farms
    they had been sent to.  Many of them the same age as my father looked
    very much older.  They still seemed to have their rebeleous (sp?)
    spirit however and were very outspoken against the government.
    
    My father and one of his friends went to the 2 story tall Mao Statue in
    the square in Fouchow.  My father spit on it.  Then he mocked saluting
    Mao in a kind of rude gesture.  My father's friend would not even look
    at it.  The passersby watched them and gave no reaction.  I felt a
    better understanding of what makes my father the way he is.
    
    My father had been back to China 3 times before since it opened back up
    in 1972.
    
    I think during *this* trip my father just needed to do that.
    
    --Gina

    re: .5
>    Thank God that the British have had the "former colonies" to bail their
>    tales out at least twice in the last century.  Especially from that Hitler
>    fella whom Chamberlin was so fond of, or you probably wouldn't be so
>    jovial.
    
    	Maybe you have been listening to the wrong tails ;-)  Britain
    fought for a couple of years before the U.S. took any interest in
    Europe, with bombs falling on every major city in the country, and when
    you did take an interest (on the war loans) it was excessive - charging
    us money to fight an enemy that you would eventually have had to fight
    anyway if we had lost. When the U.S. has had bombs hitting everything
    apart from minor villages I hope to see you jovial too, and carry on
    fighting.
    
    (In case you didn't know, for the first couple of years the only
    involvement the U.S. had with the war in Europe was to lend the U.K.
    money, on the understanding that it would be spent on U.S. manufactured
    weapons, and paid back later).
    
    	Dave, with an uncle and aunt that he never met, and a grandfather
    he knew well who was permanently incapacitated from chlorine gas in the
    trenches.

    
    re .19
    
    I know all about that British stiff upper lip and all that.  The
    fact still remains that without U.S. help, Britain would have
    went under.  Without U.S. help, the Soviet Union would have withdrawn
    from the war.  Then where would you have been?  If the U.S. had waited 
    6 more months to enter the war, we'd be talking about London and New 
    York instead of Heroshima and Nagasaki.  The U.S. may have been slow 
    to enter, but kicked some tails around when it did.  Thank God the 
    Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor when they did.  
    
    But actually I was thinking more about the role that Britain had
    in creating the modern day China through the tea and opium trade.
    
    fred();

    	I agree the opium trade business was rather despicable, but opium
    was not really recognised as a "problem" drug in Victorian days, any
    more than tea or tobacco. Sherlock Holmes was depicted as smoking it,
    and it was on unrestricted sale in U.S. pharmacies 20 years after the
    opium wars and Hong Kong became British. The British wars in China to
    protect tea and opium trade are directly comparable to the more recent
    war against Irak to protect the oil trade.
    
    	And to follow the rathole, the USSR was not likely to withdraw from
    the war. Consider the casualties at Leningrad, and Stalin's behaviour
    after the war. He wasn't going to give up an inch of land, and if he
    possibly could he would gain some, as long as there was a single
    Russian left alive to throw underneath a German tank.  And Britain,
    having survived for two years from a state of unpreparedness (remember
    your own comment about Chamberlain) was, thanks to your loans, in a
    much better state to fight a war than two years earlier. If Hitler
    couldn't do it in two years he wasn't going to do it soon. If it hadn't
    been for Pearl Harbour we would probably have won the war for you and
    without you, provided you kept sending the money, guns, lawyers and
    repayments bills, and you could have kept your soldiers at home.
    
    	Maybe you wouldn't have liked the world map if you hadn't sent
    soldiers, though. Japan, *all* of Germany, Italy, Finland, Austria,
    would have ended up as part of the USSR after British and Russian
    forces met at the Rhine and discussed a a peace settlement that didn't
    involve you.

    
    re .21
    Maybe we should start a different topic for this rathole, but...
    What would you have done with a Germany that had "the bomb"?
    And V2's, and ME262's?  and you'd better go read your history
    books (again?) because in 1939-40 the Soviet Union was ineed
    prepared (after 10 million casualties) to cut a 1917's type
    deal and withdraw had the U.S not provided them with equipment.
    
    Quesion is, "If the U.S. had still been a 'colony', would it
    have been strong enought to step in when it did (althought
    belatedly) or to provide any kind of lend-lease"?.  When 
    comared to other British "colonies" at the time, I think not.
    
>    	Maybe you wouldn't have liked the world map if you hadn't sent
>    soldiers, though. Japan, *all* of Germany, Italy, Finland, Austria,
>    would have ended up as part of the USSR after British and Russian
>    forces met at the Rhine and discussed a a peace settlement that didn't
>    involve you.
    
    Could probably add the rest of Europe and England to the Soviet portion
    of the map if it hadn't been for NATO and the billions the U.S. has
    spent defending Europe during the "cold war".  And if you think it's
    over, don't look now, but there's a Screw Loose in Russia.
    
    fred();
    fred();

    	Stalin's conduct *after* the war indicates that he probably did not
    take 10 million casualties as too serious. Peace along his Western
    front, and elimination of Britain as a force would have enabled him to
    use his forces elsewhere, and would probably have given him India and
    the warm-water ports the Russians have always wanted. He would probably
    have picked up parts of China that Japan was unable to control, too.
    The deal with the U.S. enabled him to get Eastern Europe instead.
    
    	Ever read Machiavelli? When others are fighting, make sure there
    can be no outright winner, and then when all sides are sufficiently
    weakened, go in and pick up the pieces.
    
    	Consider the results at the end of the war. Western Europe was
    still split into many small countries that could be no threat to the
    U.S., particularly since there were U.S. garrisons in most countries.
    Japan was neutralised as a threat, partly because your support of
    Britain ensured that Australia did not become Japanese and India
    Russian. I don't think there is any need to assume that generosity
    played any part in the motives of your politicians, though it may have
    affected your ordinary people. Russia probably ended up with more of
    Eastern Europe than you would have liked, but since the alternative was
    probably India it was about the best you could have hoped for. And
    during the first few years it only cost you money that you could well
    afford.

    If there are no interested spectators, then maybe we should abandon
    this, or continue it by mail. Otherwise, it might be better if a
    moderator could move it to something like "U.S. policy and
    contributions in WWII".

    
    I'm for letting it drop except to say that it does tie into the base
    note in a way.  It provides an exdellent example as to why Americans
    are getting increasingly fed up with sacrificing American blood and
    American tax dollars to "police" the world.  
    
    fred();

    Ditto Fred, I too am tired of spending badly needed dollars on
    countries that drag our people thru the streets by their feet. Esp our
    dead. Let them eat cake.

Of course, many of these countries didn't ask (or even want) Americans
to "police" them. 

				Steve

    What about Margret Thacher (sp). Guess you missed that one.;) 

    
    re .27

>Of course, many of these countries didn't ask (or even want) Americans
>to "police" them. 

    I suppose you could find a bunch to go in front of a camera almost
    anywhere that don't want to be "policed".  And "news" reporters 
    gladly willing to accommodate them,  (ie. "baby-milk factory" ).
    Let some scumbag murder a million people and he world turns a blind
    eye, but let one American bullet go astray and the "media" has a 
    field day.  We rid the world of Hitler and his ilk and they complain
    we didn't do it soon enough.  We spend thousands of American lives
    and Trillions of American tax dollars to try to bottle up oppression
    and the "media" goes nuts when some over-stressed teenager in patrolling
    the streets to keep a country safe goes over the edge and opens up
    with an M-16.  

    Maybe George is right.  Maybe we should "Let them eat cake".  Maybe
    it's time for the "Great Satan" America to pull our troops out of 
    everywhere in the World but the U.S. and the next time so jack-booted 
    sadist wants to take over the place, we let them keep it.
    
    One thing about the base noter.  He still understands the difference
    between wackos like Mao and the Empire that has conquored more of
    the World than any other in history--and set it free.

    fred();

    Hi Y'all,
    I'm definitely not anti-american so don't take this wrong,but heaven
    knows its your politicians who get you into these messes,
    (Iraq,Granada,Somalia,Kuwait,Panama,Viet-nam,Korea etc.) They have a
    standing excuse that they are acting in America's interest,if that is
    correct then the money spent is on the American taxpayers behalf.So,
    if you don't agree with them take it up with your representatives.This
    is not to say the help hasn't been appreciated but the blame for the
    cost has only one home. An isolationist America is not something I'd
    like to see but if the majority wish it then thats their constitutional
    right.The original noter would probably agree that this whole forum is
    an expression of the rights we all enjoy in the free world.We shouldn't
    forget that a discussion like this could not take place in China. When
    talk comes round to "let them get on with it",take a good long look and
    remember that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do 
    nothing. Could you really see the kids in Sarajevo left to the guns of
    the soldiers,where would it end? What goes around comes around but not
    in my back yard?.
    Who was it who said "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom"?
    
    I quite agree,and am willing to pay for it.
    Geoff 
                                                      

Geoff,

I think I agree with you, but this looks contradictory:

.30>    knows its your politicians who get you into these messes,
...
.30>    all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing

Since I agree with the second part, as do most Americans, I don't think I can
just blame the politicians when things go wrong.  I've got to take a lot of
responsibility for what my country does, even when I feel that our leaders are
not doing a good job.

>    Who was it who said "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom"?

Thomas Jefferson?  And was he quoting some Roman?  I no longer trust my memory 
for quotes.

>Its worth it,isn't it?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.  It is a good idea to look at the particular 
case, rather than trying to create a universal rule.

    Hi Wally,
    What I was trying to say about "the messes" was that you can't blame
    other countries for the cost of involvement.Because getting involved
    was optional.Perhaps "messes" was the wrong word.
    I think that getting involved is sometimes justified,all I,m saying is
    that if that is the case we must expect to pay & sitting on the fence as 
    a matter of policy and never getting involved is ultimately dangerous
    for us all.Hope that clarifies things.
    Geoff
    
    ps. I happen to agree that the UK's involvement in Bosnia is in the
    best interest for peace.The soldiers there are facing terrible trials
    in trying to bring humanitarian reief to the needy.They are not
    involved in taking sides and in this I think they're right.There are no
    absolutes in a civil war so who is right is a matter of opinion.
    I only hope for the sake of the ground troops that air strikes aren't
    called in as this would put all the vastly outnumbered UN troops in
    terrible danger.The US is not involved on the ground to the best of my
    knowledge,how do you feel about that with the US calling for the air
    strikes against the Serbs? Am I opening a can of worms here?

.32>    What I was trying to say about "the messes" was that you can't blame
>    other countries for the cost of involvement.Because getting involved

Right.  It is silly for the US to blame other countries for the consequences 
of our actions.  We (people and leaders) need to accept the responsibility.
Same applies in other democratic countries.

>    knowledge,how do you feel about that with the US calling for the air
>    strikes against the Serbs? Am I opening a can of worms here?

Yes, and this can of worms is frequently opened in DEFENCE_ISSUES, which is
a better forum for the discussion.

    Wally,
    Where is defence_issues as you feel it innapropriate to have a
    discussion on a sensible subject in this conference.Whats the
    difference between the base note as a suitable subject and what I asked?
    And who picked you as topic censor?I think maybe you ought to leave it
    to natural selection,if people dont want to discuss it they won't.
    Personally I couldn't give a rats ass about the has-been Tonya or the other
    silly woman but I don't moan about other people spending hours debating 
    which one they'd take on a make believe date.Is this a more suitable
    topic?Well excuse me.
    Geoff

    COMET::DEFENSE_ISSUES  (KP7/Select, blah, blah, blah)

>    Where is defence_issues as you feel it innapropriate to have a

	COMET::DEFENSE_ISSUES

Sorry I used the American spelling.


>    And who picked you as topic censor?

Nobody, of course.  I apologize for taking seriously the question 

>	Am I opening a can of worms here?

you asked in reply 32.

I do tend to think that this is an issue more appropriate for another
conference.  I'd prefer to keep MENNOTES for topics "pertaining to men"; that
is, some relevance to "being male".  General political discussions belong
elsewhere.

				Steve