BL> Quite true, but so is what I wrote. It's like the French
 BL> falling under English influence; they fight it furiously but
 BL> can't avoid it.

 KR> i dont think that there is much british influence in france

  ROFL! Le bullshit!

 KR> , the french are incredibly afraid of foreign influences. the
 KR> accademie fancais keep on putting out edicts on keeping the
 KR> language pure, and often as not they seem to win. "le jumbojet"
 KR> for instance is now "l'avion grande passengeur" (sp). 

  King Canute did a good deal in holding back the tide, too. I didn't
mean "English" in the sense of les Pommie bƒtards in particular but
the US and A too. The French fight it furiously as you say, but can't 
avoid it on Planet Earth.

 KR> the koreans dislike the japanese strongly, they have been using
 KR> them as part of the means needed to turn their economy around,
 KR> but i suspect that nothing would give them greater pleasure
 KR> than screwing the japs. the japs otoh look upon the koreans as
 KR> a lesser race of barbarians.

  I understand this, but the Japanese influence in the South of Korea
is inarguable. Japs are everywhere.

 KR> there are people of korean descent living in japan who even
 KR> when their families have been there for 3-4 generations still
 KR> cannot get citizenship. the japanese slang for a korean is
 KR> "garlic eater" which is odd as one of the more popular fast
 KR> food chains is "mr barbeque" which sells korean food (although
 KR> i dont think that they serve that korean/chinese delicacy - dog
 KR> (: 

  Nationalism confuses me. I was happy to think of myself as British
in the 50s, and even now I think our future would be better served as
the 51st through 54th states of the USA. I have never understood why
Queenslanders or New Zealanders think of themselves as separate so
firecely. Free communication is bringing the world inevitably together
while these wakkas insist on drawing imnaginary lines on maps to no
purpose. The only lines should be cultural serving common-interest.
That's how it ends up in practice, anyway.

  History is bunk. It's insane to hold a grudge for evils put on your
grandparents, as the Koreans, Poles, Irish and French do. 

 BL> With a communist Korea and land access to Pusan, the Russians
 BL> would have the East China Sea and nothing to stop them. America
 BL> is basically a naval power... as England was.

 KR> it is quite possible to bypass that by sailing to the east of
 KR> japan

  ROFL! To get east of Japan the Russians either go between Hokkaido
and Honshu in Japanese waters, or north around Hokkaido where the
Americans have the shallow La Perouse Strait seeded with sensors. In 
war, they'd shut them in like the English did to the the Germans in
WWII.

 KR> , and anyway, the russians were not directly involved, only the
 KR> chinese. 

  You can say that about Vietnam too, but the Russians still ended up
with Canranh Bay as a naval base and now sit on the main oil line to
Japan.

 BL> I grew up under the idea that Macarthur saved Australia and was
 BL> god. As a child I admired three great men (and the Phantom):
 BL> Churchill, Macarthur, and Montgomery.

 KR> out of those i think that the phantom is the only one to stand
 KR> the test of time. 

  ROFL! I'm not too sure about the Phantom either. He seems to be
turning politically correct in his old age. There was a time when he
*ruled* those fucking little pygmies and was adored for it. Now they
have a president.

 BL> Out of this study I now admire Roosevelt, Nimitz, and Patton
 BL> (and nice Lord Louis Mountbatten).

 KR> patton out thought rommel, which puts him up there with the
 KR> best.

  Patton was magnificent! Roesevelt sacked him because he was worried
about losses with his gung-ho approach. When the smoke cleared, Patton
had the lowest losses of all.

 KR> montgomery just did what chirchill told him to and had a lot of
 KR> photos taken of him doing it. 

  (chuckle) Montie didn't care about losses as long as he won. He
wanted a 4:1 superiority in everything before he'd even move. He'd
have gone well in WWI with the other fuckwits. I love the comparison
of the Patton/Mongomery push through Sicily. Patton was given the
"difficult" path, went throught the Germans like a packet of salts
anyway, threw them right off the isalnd, and lost less men doing it
than dopey Montie who was still farting around a month after it was
all over.

 KR> similarly macarthur was a figurehead, the war in the pacific
 KR> was more an application of superior force than tricky tactics,
 KR> that was one of the main reasons that so many died. 

  It was superior *naval* power, and not *so* many Americans losses. 
The losses came when Nimitz got close to Japan itself, with the Kamikaze. 
Macarthur ran the sideshow. Even the Philippines was taken by naval 
battles. A landing was not possible before Leyte Gulf, and afterwards 
it was unnecessary.

 BL> I think China wanted to flex its new communist muscle and its
 BL> lovely new weaponry from Russia. Without the threat of the
 BL> H-bomb and the example of Horoshima, they might have taken all
 BL> Korea.

 KR> i think that it was a lot more complex than that. mao wanted to
 KR> use the us as a bogey to unite his somewhat divided country,
 KR> but didn't want a defeat on his hands. they quit while they
 KR> could still say the they had inflicted greivous wounds on the
 KR> evil empire.

  It's just a different way of looking at what I said. China did not
risk defeat in Korea, any more than Hitler risked defeat in Spain. I
think Mao quit because half was all he could expect... either that, or
a possible nuclear war the Russians wanted even less. In the early
50s, China was very much the junior partner.

 KR> when you look at what mao inherited, a poor backward country,
 KR> that had effectively been a whole lot of little kingdoms under
 KR> individual warlords, he needed someting to unite them and make
 KR> them willing to accept the hardships of achieving maos dream.
 KR> he carried on in the same vein by sniping at taiwan, but never
 KR> carrying it too far. 

  Mao was a genius who lost the plot. China's best interest was
*never* with Russia; they're natural enemies. China was never serious
about world domination through Communism. As you say, they had more
than enough trouble just holding China together. The two enemies were
Japan and Russia, and the clear ally should have been the USA. 

  I see Mao as a great man flawed by turning China against its best
interest for 40 years. He had to die before it could be turned around.

 BL> I still wonder what would have happened if the US had tested
 BL> the new H-bomb on Peking rather than Bikini atoll, the way
 BL> Macarthur wanted.

 KR> most people would not accept the morals of that

  We would have in 1952. Can't you remember our attitudes then?
White Australia ruled okay, we helped Abos by taking their their
kids to be educated, the KKK were the good guys, and anyone who
thought J Edgar Hoover dressed up in a frock and rooted arse would
have been sent for a lobotomy. I *liked* the 50's! Things were simple
then: there was them, and there was us... whatever we did was right
and God agreed; whatever they did was basically wrong and evil too.

 KR> , and anyway, the yanks didn't know if it would work properly,
 KR> and they couldnt afford to lose that amount of face, or give
 KR> that much data to the russians. 

  In the 50's no one knew shit about data. We just tried it out and
saw if it worked.

 BL> There was a period around the Korean War when Russia did not
 BL> want a nuclear confrontation. It passed. That was the wiondow
 BL> of opportunity Macarthur wanted to exploit. He thought he could
 BL> take China. What a fuckwit!

 KR> a fuckwit in charge of an army is perhaps the world's greatest
 KR> danger, you dont have to look too far to see that today. 

  Russia worries me a bit with the Red Army still swanning around and
those generals in funny hats, but no one can really afford an Army
today. In Australia, our Police force is four-times as large as the
army! If the Indonesians invade we'll arrest them (and they'll win
the court case using Legal Aid). I love Splong!

 BL> Christianity and Communism are great ideas; what a pity no one
 BL> ever tried them. Communism was never the Marxist vision of
 BL> communism; it was just another form of despotism with a huge
 BL> bureacuracy to make it work, and the Marxist philosophy to give
 BL> the fuckwits something to believe. Marxism was the opiate of
 BL> the intelligentsia. Capitalists have more fun with cocaine.

 KR> pure communism, and pure democracy are very similar, and
 KR> neither work in anything bigger than a commune.

  No... that's true of communism, but a democracy can be quite large
as long as people are fairly homogenous; as long as most think the
same and have similar goals, and are mostly interchangeable.

  Capitalism only works on a large scale; communism only works on a
small scale.

 KR> probably the most successful communist systems are the kibbutz
 KR> (sp) in israel. what the larger experiments have ended up with
 KR> is totalitarianism not communism.

  Yes. Communism has to be imposed. It ignores human greed, and the
universal belief that we are better than everyone else. To me, the
true opposites are not communism and capitalism, but bureaucracy v.
individual enterprise.

 KR> the chinese probably came closer than most, but it all came
 KR> unglued when those in charge either went batty (the cultural
 KR> revolution) or saw the chance to do themselves a lot of good at
 KR> the expense of those who they were supposed to protect.

  The problem of communism is that it denies the role of women. Men
alone will go fishing and drinking and rooting and no one gives a
shit. It it the role of women to nag men to work and become rich and
famous. Poor old Lenin did not understand this. Mrs Lenin was a dud 
root.
  
 KR> the problem that the chinese leadership has now is the rise of
 KR> the middle class, and that historically has been the downfall
 KR> of despotic systems. 

  Only if the bureaucracy is small. Under communism, the middle class
*is* the bureaucracy.

 BL> I can see China splitting in three but I can't see the
 BL> bureaucracy letting go, not while they control capitalism
 BL> through licensing, corrupt practises, and such.

 KR> i dont know how many pieces, but several chinese friends
 KR> predict it's happening. did you know that there is a
 KR> significant reverse migration going on with young
 KR> chinese/australians seeing much more oppportunity in hong
 KR> kong/china than here over the next few years. 

  It's not exactly *reverse* migration. What they do, is move the
family (and the money) to Australia, get free Australian citizenship
and put the kids in private schools, dump the wife in a nice property
in Sydney, and then take the money and themself back to China and the
girlfriend. Australian-citizenship is the parachute.

  But you are right about opportunity - 10% growth coupled to
Universal corruption is a beauty. 

 BL> I think in 20 more years we may be saying that Macarthur could
 BL> have stopped it. 

 KR> macarthur would have been flattened if the chinese had put
 KR> their whole force on him. 

  And then he would have used the Bomb. He saw a window of opportunity
for the USA to rule Asia. He was a fuckit. The USA shut the window
years earlier when it supported Chiang Kai Chek instead of Mao. The 
Dulles brothers have a lot to answer for. China was never the enemy... 
but it will be.

 BL> What d'yer mean several hundred thousand? I was thinking around
 BL> 20 million: Peking, Shanghai, and Canton just for a start. I'd
 BL> try not to pollute the atmosphere too much though. I'm a
 BL> committed ecologist who loves small furry animals... 

 KR> the chinese love small furry animals too, they taste really
 KR> good (:

  (grin)

Regards,
Bob

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

---