Hi Andre, > 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!
You are revealing a lot about China that isn't well known -- no universal health insurance, no universal public education. I assume also that there's no universal welfare for the poor (Food Stamps), no universal retirement plan (Social Security) and no guaranteed protection of individual bank accounts (FDIC). Apparently the only thing missing in an otherwise free society are regular elections. Yet we are told that Chinese government is strictly authoritarian. What am I missing?. > 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? I didn't get that impression. But, as with everything else, I could be wrong. > 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. Maybe, maybe not. The future will tell if Iran will act on its threat to wipe Israel off the map. But I don't want to take the chance, especially if I'm an Israeli. > 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. There's a history all right. Islam goes back thousands of years calling for ruling the world by the sword. Hard to "dialogue" with an someone who has a knife at your throat. > Platt: > > He was tried by an Iraq court. > > Andre: > > Yes, with American eyes,guns,tanks,bombs and helicopters watching. All courts are backed by guns, tanks, bombs and other weapons used by the police and military. But, I guess you are implying that Saddam shouldn't have been tried and executed for murder. > 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. It's difficult to imagine that the intelligence services of many countries all conspired to lie to western leaders. It's more believable that the Democratic party in the U.S. created the current financial crisis to help get their presidential candidate elected. Platt 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/
