NP PRC-related

[calbert at tiac.net]

Doug:

> Profiting from organ sales is capitalist behavior;

It is HUMAN behavior......it is a symptom of the same quality which 
informs slavery, or sexual exploitation.......those institutions predate 
the development of double entry book-keeping by about 1,500 years 
(give or take a few centuries)....

> capitalism was
> imported to China by the Western Imperial powers, and never completed
> elminated, despite vigorous efforts to do so, repeatedly (and often
> with tragic consequences) since 1948.

China has been involved in domestic and international trade for 
MILLENIA, they needed no coaching from any european colonialists 
to figure out that one does not engage in such activity for long 
unless one makes a "margin".....

The phase "often with tragic consequences" obcures the fact that 
what some consider to be the most brutal famine in history occurred 
as a direct result of an effort to eradicate that basic human 
instinct....the toll of that "purification ritual" is estimated to stand at 
approx. 20 MILLION, in the PRC alone. How would an event like that, 
even when prorated for population differences, play in the western 
world? MY guess is that such an event would displace the Holocaust 
as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

 Greed and exploitation obey no
> boundaries, as long as the political, economic, and social systems we
> erect use greed and exploitation to motivate and manage the way people
> behave. 

Why qualify? Greed and exploitation know no boundaries, 
PERIOD......

> It's hardly a compliment to the capitalist system to note that the
> horrid excesses and crimes that it rewards manage to infest countries
> or communities that try to take a different tack;

"Rewards"? I would posit that any leader of a representative 
democracy involved in such a debacle would hardly be rewarded - 
such an individual would gain the same immortality, albeit on a much 
grander scale, as luminaries like Vigund Quisling and Marshall 
Petain. 

By contrast, those leaders who directed such atrocities in countries 
"struggling to contain the virus of capitalism" tend to pass on in their 
sleep and never on an empty stomach....

 it is instead
> testimony to capitalism's considerable power to subvert even the most
> serious desires for equity and social justice.

Send your surplus copies of ANIMAL FARM to:

Uncle Fidel
The House with A/C
Havana
Cuba.....

but I'd suggest doing it UPS....local mail is a little sluggish.....

love,
cfa

> calbert:
> 
> hey, what's this? Greed, and exploitation of one's neighbour in its
> service, are purely capitalist pehnomena.......or so we have been
> told.....
>