On May 18, 1:04=A0pm, chatnoir <wolfbat3...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 18, 8:30=A0am, Jim Walsh <jimNOwalsSPA...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Earthquakes and other natural disasters are a-political; they strike
> > regardless.
>
> > Unlike Burma, where the leader****p committed crimes against humanity,
th=
e CCP
> > did most of the right things. The key correct decision was not to hide
t=
he
> > facts (a common failing in previous cases: i.e., SARs.) Allowing the
Chi=
nese
> > media the re****t the news live was a huge breakthrough. The second
corre=
ct
> > decision was for the leader****p to rush massive resources to the
scene.
>
> > (Sadly, the CCP was unwilling to accept foreign experts -- like the
dog =
teams
> > from Japan -- early enough so they could save lives.)
>
> > Undoubtedly, the Chinese media could have been more aggressive (the
habi=
t of
> > following the Party Line is hard to break). For example, some
buildings =
that
> > should have survived the quake collapsed as a result of poor
constructio=
n and
> > the Chinese media could have investigated such things to learn if
neglig=
ence
> > or dishonesty or both were involved.
>
> > --
> > Love, Jim
> > (I often delete parts of the previous post and I often remove
excessive
> > crossposts.)
>
> With a bit of dread and caution no doubt!:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/5mlady
>
> headline:
>
> The World
> When the Kremlin Tried a Little Openness
>
> By PHILIP TAUBMAN
> Published: May 18, 2008
> A dash of openness can be a dangerous thing in an autocratic state.
>
> James Hill for The New York Times
> POST-GLASNOST ****traits of Soviet leaders still lay abandoned in
> Pripyat, near Chernobyl, in 2006. Viktor M. Chebrikov, left, led the
> K.G.B. in the 1980s.
> Mikhail Gorbachev discovered this two decades ago when his campaign to
> inject some daylight into Soviet society doubled back on him like a
> heat-seeking missile.
>
> Now China=92s leaders are playing with the same volatile political
> chemistry as they give their own citizens and the world an
> unexpectedly vivid look at the earthquake devastation in the nation=92s
> southwest regions. The rulers of cyclone-battered Myanmar, by
> contrast, are sticking with the authoritarian playbook, limiting
> access and even aid to the stricken delta region where tens of
> thousands of people were killed by the storm.
>
> While China=92s response to its natural catastrophe is certainly more
> humane, and is only a small step toward openness, it could set in
> motion political forces that might, over time, be unsettling. That=92s
> especially true in an age of instant communications, even in a nation
> like China, which tries to control Internet access.
>
> =93When you start opening up and loosen controls, it becomes a slippery
> slope,=94 Jack F. Matlock Jr., the American ambassador to Moscow during
> much of the Gorbachev period, said last week as he watched the events
> in China. =93You quickly become a target for everyone with a grievance
> and before long people go after the whole system.=94
>
> Chinese leaders are well aware of the Soviet experience. The bloody
> crackdown against the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989
> seemed motivated in part by fears that a relaxation of repression
> would lead to a replay of Soviet turbulence in China. It was no
> accident that China was the first country to translate and reprint Mr.
> Matlock=92s 1995 account of the demise of the Soviet Union, =93Autopsy
on
> an Empire.=94
>
> And China has taken a different reform path, in effect offering its
> people robust economic growth, with a degree of responsiveness when
> problems can be blamed on local officials, in exchange for continued
> one-party rule. Playing up the response to the earthquake, even as
> China restricts coverage of repression in Tibet, could prove a shrewd
> move, rather than one that cascades into instability.
>
> Still, it is worth recalling a time when a little openness flew out of
> control.
>
> As a correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in Moscow
> in the late 1980s, I had a ringside seat to observe the slow
> disintegration of the Soviet Union under Mr. Gorbachev. The collapse
> of the Soviet empire and dissolution of the Communist Party were not
> exactly what he had in mind when he took power in 1985 and launched
> his twin policies of glasnost (greater openness) and perestroika
> (political reform).
>
> As events unfolded, it was like watching a scientist start a nuclear
> chain reaction that races out of control, eventually consuming him and
> all those around him.
>
> Mr. Gorbachev realized his country was rotting from within, paralyzed
> by repression and ideological rigidity, a backward economy and a deep
> cynicism among Russians about their government. =93We can=92t go on
living=
> like this,=94 he told his wife, Raisa, hours before he was named Soviet
> leader, he recalled in his 1995 memoirs.
>
> But he clearly had no inkling of where his initiatives were headed
> when, shortly after taking office, he broke new ground for a Kremlin
> leader by mingling with citizens in Leningrad and giving unscripted
> interviews.
>
> In those early days of glasnost, it was hard to tell whether the
> changes were purely superficial or the start of something more
> profound.
>
> One day in late 1985, Allen Ginsberg, the American beat poet,
> unexpectedly turned up at the Moscow bureau of The Times, bearing a
> package from Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet poet. It was the text of
> a speech that Mr. Yevtushenko had given to the Writer=92s Union.
>
> Serge Schmemann, my colleague, described it a few days later in a
> front-page story: =93The session was a closed one, but even so the
> poet=92s strong words against distortion of history, against censor****p,
> self-flattery, silence and privilege in the world of letters were
> strikingly bold.=94
>
> As glasnost gathered force in the years that followed, it ripped away
> the layers of deceit that were the foundation of the Soviet state.
> Each step undermined the authority of the party and the
> government. ... (cont)
I think China will be an entirely new story. The CCP will not
hesitate to use the PLA to control, to turn events to their side. The
dis-union of China, like the USSR will not happen.
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