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is china now sick of socialism?

“Today's leaders in China are looking carefully at the British style of political change over the last 400 years, analysing the difference with France," he told me at the annual Ambrosetti gathering of world policy-makers at Villa d'Este on Lake Como. "England went through incredible changes: a war against the US; wars against France; wars against Germany twice, the rise and decline of empire; and universal suffrage. Yet society remained stable through all this turmoil, with the same institutions and political structure. We think the reason is respect for tradition, yet willingness to make changes when needed." "It is a contrast with France. We know from De Toqueville's study of the Ancien Regime that if you don't do reforms, you will end up with a revolution, and that is what will happen in China if we don't reform in time, ...”

Or, as Keynes put it:

“Just as the Conservative Party will always have its diehard wing, so the Labour Party will always be flanked by the party of catastrophe - Jacobins, Communists, Bolshevists, whatever you choose to call them. This is the party which hates or despises existing institutions and believes that great good will result merely from overthrowing them - or at least that to overthrow them is the necessary preliminary to any great good. This party can only flourish in an atmosphere of social oppression or as a reaction against the Rule of Die-Hard. In Great Britain it is, in its extreme form, numerically very weak. Nevertheless its philosophy in a diluted form permeated, in my opinion, the whole Labour Party. However moderate its leaders may be at heart, the Labour Party will always depend for electoral success on making some slight appeal to the widespread passions and jealousies which find their full development in the party of catastrophe. I believe that this secret sympathy with the policy of catastrophe is the worm which gnaws at the seaworthiness of any constructive vessel which the Labour Party may launch. The passions of malignity, jealousy, hatred of those who have wealth and power (even in their own body), ill consort with the ideals to build up a true social republic. Yet it is necessary for a successful Labour leader to be, or at least to appear, a little savage. It is not enough that he should love his fellow-men; he must hate them too.”
[Am I a Liberal? in Essays in Persuasion, pp.299-300]

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the fog of war revisited

Documentary with long interviews with Robert McNamara, architect of America’s Vietnam strategy.
McNamara was head of Ford Motor Cars for a short while before being called to be Defence Secretary for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

1:46:42

No plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

I’ve never come across a military leader who has not said that military operations are chaotic.

A democratic leader has constantly to balance the wishes of the people against the interests of the nation.

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on fundamental errors of reasoning - iraq and syria

on fundamental errors of reasoning - iraq and syria

Madsam [Saddam Hussein] was in charge of Iraq for about 30 years.

From these 30 years, just one year is often chosen by those negative to curbing the barbarous excesses of Middle Eastern socialist tyrants – 2008.

This is a typical reasoning error where a person chooses a particular date, and then draws false conclusions from a strong limitation of the database.

For example: David Miliband and his socialist cronies try to pretend that the problems with the UK economy started when David Cameron was elected.

The problems in the Middle East go back more than a century, along with radical changes over that time.
They do not start in 2008.

The Irish troubles go back 800 years. This year, there is more disturbance than last year. That is trivial, a natural variation as the society moves forward in general.

Iraq is improving overall. That does not mean factional problems of Sunni, Shiite and Kurds will be resolved in one year or ten.

The approach of favouring one particular year is ridiculously short-sighted.

George W. Bush did the right thing, but that is not the same as “problem solved, move on, nothing to see here”. Society evolves. It does not perfect in one mighty leap.

Those who take this narrow approach have the rags of idealism/fundamentalism in their ‘thinking’.
They need to expunge it!

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reality, laying the foundations for sound education

socialist news service

haircuts by order, north korea

“The North Korean government has issued haircut guidance for its citizens and chosen 28 hairstyles it deems "appropriate" for members of the single-party state.”
_
“The cuts were chosen for being comfortable and resistant to Western influences.”

The approved haircuts are reminiscent of 1950 film star hair styles:

Terry Moor, Yvonne de Carlo, Deborah Kerr

job-seeking technique not for socialists

4:44 mins

“Jhaqueil Reagan set of early Friday morning on his journey to another part of the city for a 1 p.m. job interview at an Indianapolis store. It was roughly a 10-mile trip, and Reagan did not have the money for the bus.

“He often had to walk long distances, so it was no big deal.

“ "If I say I am going to be somewhere, I am going to be there," the 18-year-old Reagan told the Daily News on Tuesday.

“A few miles into his journey, Reagan stopped in the parking lot of Papa Roux restaurant to ask how far he was from his destination. Co-owner Art Bouvier told him he was still six or seven miles away.

“Reagan kept walking, but 15 minutes later, Bouvier spotted him from his car and offered him a lift. He was, after all, going in the same direction.

“ "I picked him up because he was legitimately walking another seven miles in the slush," Bouvier told The News.

“Bouvier drove Reagan to his job interview, but he said he knew immediately he wanted to hire him for himself. It seemed obvious: Anyone willing to walk 10 miles for a job must be worth it.”

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