> The introduction to "Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong," by Lin
> Piao. His extraordinary obsequiousness was no protection. I don't
> think, even now, we know how and when Lin Piao was liquidated.
Naw, he was waxed when his airplane crashed somewhere in Mongolia. Not that we should mourn terribly -- Lin had gone kind of squirrelly his late few years, epic paranoia plus an addiction to narcotics, and was just as ruthless as Mao; only Chou En-lai seems to have retained something of his pre-1949 ideals, rescuing countless honest cadres caught up in the madness of the GPCR, a brilliant organizer and technocrat (I only know this because I've been doing some research on Mao).
As for destructive religions which are applied in brutal fashion by deluded functionaries always willing to sacrifice the little people for a glorious future, one need look no further than the IMF-World Bank, now in charge of, oh, 65% of the Earth's surface.
-- Dennis