Profile now up

I now have some profile information posted as of eight o'clock this evening, Saturday, January 26, 2008.

Lesson 2 blog question

Q. Do you believe that a widespread and cataclysmic event such as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [GPCR] could occur again in China today? Why? Why not? A. In my humble poorly-informed opinion I must say that it is certainly possible, while some apparently powerful checks on the possibility would appear to be in place and holding. I even suspect that something of the sort is ultimately and not-too-distantly very probable. I suspect it would represent somewhat of a converse of the GPCR - turning the tables back toward bourgeoisie dominence. The thing that strikes me is that if you asked the stereotypical poorly-informed American "man on the street" you will find him appending the label indiscriminently of "Communist" to the nation of China to this day. And it would seem that the "official" line does little to disuade him of this view - as China is ostensibly socialist with fossils of communist ideology in its political rock collection in glass display cases. Do they not continue to play the game? Yet the reality on the street has jumped from the paradigm of Mao to the paradigm of the market, and in spectacular fashion. Doesn't anyone see a contradiction here? Just how far can you walk out on both of these two limbs simultaneously without falling through the middle? Sooner or later with a massive disjoin toward reality, reality will catch up with you. China, as Gittings notes, is a place of extremes - inspiring progress and dire circumstance in bed with each other. If the situation superficially appears fairly stable, it surely is due to some sort of what science would dub a perched equilibrium - an infrastructural scaffolding that may be strong and secure, but once it fails in even a small portion, the whole thing collapses massively. The trump card they hold over the West might be stately pillars in that infrastructure, but oil consumption and critical environmental concerns are among points of neglect that sooner or later will place those pillars in a swampy unstable quagmire. But even apart from this, just looking at the underlying mentality, I have to wonder how much time they have left before their internal contradictions become a terminal cancer. Steve

Hello everyone! The Dragon may very well have awoken, but what about me? I just now figured out I needed to create a blog site, and here is my first post. To answer your question, no, I do not yet know what I am doing. I have never blogged before. So this remark by way of introduction, and I will go back and track down what I need to comment upon - at least for the new week. I will no doubt encounter many fascinating and informative posts from the rest of you, and put my two cents worth onto them in response. Who knows, my response might even be worth three cents! Regards to all brave MALS souls, Steve