Platt: Guess I should have asked, "Does China have universal health insurance?" I gather the answer is, "No." If so, the answer comes as a surprise to me -- a socialist country without "free" medical care for everyone?. Incredible.
Andre: Platt, I have argued before that there is no such 'thing' as a socialist society. Or to put it differently: my idea of socialism does not correspond to what I see around me (staying with China for the moment). I also would have thought that the education system would be free, not so. Poor families are breaking their backs over getting money together to send their child to school. There are subsidies available but these are means tested and very difficult to qualify for. Some of my students go without a meal sometimes... . There are families with more that one child of course. When the decision comes as to who will continue studying (ie after middle school [see this as High school] the difficulty is the choice. Only one child may continue because that is all one can afford. Heartbreaking! Platt: But, in the end he "ran off" from Lila. Andre: Or did Lila feel more comfortable in the arms of Rigel's PoV's? Platt: If Iran gets atomic bombs would you consider that a threat to other countries in the area as well as Europe and America? Andre: You may not agree with this Platt but I say "No". The key, I feel is dialogue,diplomacy, fostering mutual understanding. Getting to know eachother's difficulties and differences and resolving these through mutual assistance, exchange, education and, dare I use the word, caring. Naive maybe. Fanatics, fundamentalists, racists terrorists etc. you will still have but these patterns are not born that way. There is a history to these 'attitudes' and in the main these are based on complete ignorance and misunderstandings. We have to start somewhere. Platt: He was tried by an Iraq court. Andre: Yes, with American eyes,guns,tanks,bombs and helicopters watching. Platt: Yes. At the time the Allies acted to liberate Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam, all western intelligence services concluded he was building an arsenal of WMD. Congress, which had access to the same intelligence, authorized the president to use the military to prevent Saddam from carrying out his plans. Andre: Platt, we can talk about this forever and ever but these WMD's have never been found. This whole arguement has been based on Pirsig's Believing is seeing! A collective, international group think and highly manipulative. The dismissal of a BBC journalist pointing out that UK intelligence had 'sexed-up' (i.e. making it look worse than it really was, making assumptions that were unsubstantiated etc, etc) its reports to name but one instance. The whole thing was a fabrication and based on these. In plain language this is called a lie. Andre Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
