Several years ago it was reported that Kim Jong Il was the world's single largest customer for Hennessey Cognac. Hmmmmm...... Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 9:58 PM Subject: Re: RES: Kim Jong Il Thinks He's a God-King: Why Ignore It?
>Hear, hear, Alexandre. If it ain't democratic, it not only ain't
>socialist, it ain't even on the road to socialism. Democracy is the ONLY
>guard against the gradual consolidation of competing interests into
>competing classes, I reckon.
>
>I'm taken with old Lord Acton's aphorism about a world in which our
>individualistic and distorted notions of power rule: 'power corrupts and
>absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
>
>An oldie, but a goodie.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob (a 'liberal' because he actually thinks 'all power to the Soviets'
>would have been a good idea ... )
>
>
>>The habit of keeping a leader in charge until his death coupled with the
>>one party system, seems to distance progressively the leadership from the
>>masses. It´s the system fault. When a leader lives surrounded by running
>>dogs
>>that tells him only what he want, then there is a complete break up with
>>reality. Those examples of degeneration were more evident in Stalin´s
USSR,
>>Ceuacescu´s Rumania and Hoxhas´s Albania. In other socialist countries the
>>process is less dramatic, but also happened. The trouble with the one
party
>>system is that it becomes very attractive for opportunists in search of
>>social ascension. I remember a broacast interview with a right wing
>>Bulgarian
>>politician who had been member of the CP. When questioned on this he told
>>the
>>reporter that "there is a diference between CP´s in west and in our
>>countries,
>>while the Western parties affiliated are communists, the Eastern Europeans
>>CP´s are the key to social ascension". Well, with such communists, the
>>collapse
>>o communism is no surprise.
>>I can wonder how this is this degeneration process by paying attention to
>>the
>>behavior of my country´s president, a former marxist intelectual, who
turned
>>to right wing and was re-elected for a 4 year term. It´s horrible to see
>>that
>>his cynism towards the social question is achieving sttagering levels.
Last
>>week, a landless peasant died in a confrontation with the police and the
>>president said that his dead was and advise to those agitator´s...And
he´ve
>>remained only 5 years in power. What could happen in a 30 year mandate?
>>We socialists, should pay more attention to those matters of human nature
in
>>order to build a better political system.
>
>
>
>
>