The view from Hanford, California: December 2006

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Why is it you can hold a perfectlyintelligent conversation with a person about any various number of things,but when the topic is changed to the "War on Terror", or global warming,an otherwise clever person begins parroting nonsense they heard yesterdayon MSNBC? Bill Bonner explores...ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL...and better damned well stay that wayby Bill Bonner"It is largely a matter of scale...in fact, it could all be reduced to amatter of scale," said a visitor yesterday.We were talking about the way things work...and why there is such a bigdifference between the way people are able to function reasonably well insmall groups and the way they seem to blow themselves up in large ones."Yes," our friend went on, "Once you get beyond what is usually known asthe 'human scale,' things lose all their meaning."It is a question that has puzzled us for years: how is it that areasonably intelligent man can perfectly well drive through trafficwithout killing himself, but ask the same man his thoughts on globalwarming, the war on poverty or public education...and what you get is suchpreposterous nonsense you can barely believe your own ears? We have mentioned many times that there is a world of difference between aNew England town meeting and the U.S. federal government. The size of theNew England town meeting is one that the human brain is prepared to dealwith. At the town meeting, a man can know which of the people he isdealing with is a moron and which is a self-interested hustler. But when it comes to national politics, the same man is totallyill-equipped...like a mechanic who shows up with a pair of pruningshears...or a veterinarian with a wrench in his hand. He is ignorant ofthe facts...innocent of the procedures...and completely helpless in frontof the controls. He can't tell the connivers from the honest bumblers. Hehas lost the points of reference that are meaningful to him. He is like adriver who looks ahead and sees only fog. He turns the steering wheel tothe left...but the car lurches to the right. He puts on the breaks and thecar speeds up!What can the poor fellow do...but resort to lies and suchuber-simplifications as take your breath away. "If we don't fight thecommies in Vietnam," he said in 1965, "we'll have to fight them inCalifornia!" "If you want better educated people, you have to spend moreon public education," he said in 1975. "If we don't stand up to the EvilEmpire, it will take over the world," he said in 1985. "If you invest in abalanced portfolio of stocks, you will always make money over the longrun," he said in 1995. What can he do? He replaces local knowledge and experience with emptyslogans. He replaces the detailed evidence before his own eyes with broadcategorical generalizations. Meanwhile, the precise figures and intricatecalculations that he would make on his own give way to statistics andaverages. The world on TV becomes the woodcutter's world too...a world where thelocal details are washed out and replaced by caricatures and nationalaverages. It gives rise to a whole new understanding of things. Standardsare set, not according to local custom or individual experience...butaccording to the great wash of national broadcasting and advertising inwhich particularities are bleached out.... local colors faded. Everythingcomes to be seen through the grayish, white light of nationalbroadcasting. Instead of speaking his local dialect, he is soon speaking the linguafranca of the nightly news. Instead of wearing the clothes he likes, he isdressed to suit The Gap or Brooks Brothers. As the scale of his world increases, local nuance and particularities losetheir appeal. The man begins to see himself and his world in new terms. Itno longer matters whether his house is comfortable and attractive on histerms; now it has to be acceptable in national terms. He comes to realizethat many people are lodged in 'substandard' housing. Of course, the wholeidea makes no sense whatever without a standard. And the standard ishardly one that the man can set for himself. Instead, it is a standard setby people with no detailed knowledge whatsoever. It is a standard based onaverages...generalities...and public information. How many square feet perperson? How much heating? How much air-conditioning? Then, to make surethat all houses meet their standards, rules are imposed - buildingcodes...zoning rules...materials standards. The owner can no longer askhimself - 'is this house safe enough for me?' Now, the question is: doesthis house meet modern safety standards? By the new standards even the SunKing, Louis 14th, probably lived in 'substandard' housing. Education, too, takes on a new look. It is not enough to learn things; inany case, the busybodies are incapable of organizing real, individuallearning. What they can organize is education... with the learning removedor standardized to fit into some new larger national standard. 'Educators'can't be bothered with individual students as they actually are, nor evenwith local curricula. Everyone has to learn the same thing. And they haveto learn it the same way. The world may be infinitely complex and detailedbut in the national educational program, the details have to be knockedoff...like the fine detailed trim work from an old house...so that allthat is left is measurable, standardized space, which can be quantifiedand allocated by bureaucrats, who may have never met a single student intheir entire lives. Are educational standards falling short? Spend moremoney to increase the space! Who cares if anyone is actually learning? The critical thing is that allstudents get the same claptrap pounded into their poor heads, so that theyleave the machinery with the same prejudices and illusions.The woodchopper from New Hampshire may soon discover, too, that he livesnot only in a 'substandard' hovel, but that he is 'poor.' Poverty isalways a relative measure, but relative to what? A man may be perfectlyhappy with his lot in life. He may have no running water, no central heat,and no money. Imagine him tending his garden, feeding his chickens, andfixing his tattered roof. Out in the woods, he may even have set up astill for refining the fruits of the earth into even more pleasurabledistillates. In fact, by all measures that matter to him, he could have arich, comfortable and enjoyable life. But as the scale of comparisongrows, the details that make his life so agreeable to him disappear in aflush of statistics. He finds that he is below the 'poverty line.' Hediscovers that he is 'disadvantaged' and 'under-privileged.' He may evenbe delighted to realize that he has a 'right' to 'decent housing.' Maybehe will qualify for food stamps. The idea of being 'poor' may never have occurred to him before. He maylive in a part of the world where everyone is about as poor as he is...andall perfectly happy in their poverty. But now that the spell is on him, itsits like a curse. Poverty seems like something he has toescape...something he has to get out of ...something that someone hadbetter to do something about!His new scaled-up consciousness has turned him into a malcontent. The poorman, previously happy in his naïve particulars, is now miserable in hisrole as a poverty-stricken hick.But the worst thing about it, TV and popular opinion twist him towardsthinking that it is the public view of himself - not his own private view-- that really matters. In a matter of months he has forgotten how contenthe really is. He might as well be a stock market investor; the publicspectacle has turned him into a chump. He sees himself on television...asan unfortunate hillbilly. The national newspapers say he needs help. Theyeven make fun of the way he talks. And now the revenuers are in the woodslooking for his still! All over the world, local customs, styles, manners, accents aredisappearing. As the scale increases, with the expansion of the globalizedmarket economy, people are being homogenized, leveled. Their food, theirmusic, their clothes - all are becoming standardized, mongrelized.While it is true that regional variations hang on in vestigial, folkloricform, whether you go to New Orleans, Nashville or Vienna, you will hearabout the same music, find the same fashions in the same shops, and beable to eat the same McDonalds' hamburger. An investor in Bombay speaks the same language as one in New York. Yet, itis the particularities of investments that make the difference betweeninvestment failure and investment success, the very things the worldfinancial media cannot be bothered with - the kind of precise, detailed,particular, local knowledge that you really need for investment success.Instead, what you get is the standardized imprecise broadcast news. Andwhat the investor gets is the equivalent of a public school education; heknows nothing much...and thinks he knows everything.And since all investors know pretty much the same thing - which is to say,they all share the same illusions and take them for wisdom - the marketstend to reflect the popular fashions as if they were the season's latestblue jeans.A man knows perfectly well that he needs to be able to defend himself.Around the hills of New Hampshire, he may judge the risk of attack so slimthat he goes unarmed. But walking through the back alleys of Manchester hemay wish he were packing heat.But as the scale increases, he is unable to judge the risk. Give him alittle TV news and he is ready to go to war with people he has never met,in places he has never been, for reasons he will never understand. Hereagain, the scale of the thing makes a mug of the man. He cannot know thefacts, the people, or even the theory; he doesn't know what he's buying,but he's ready to pay with his life. Even in matters as personal as health, a man soon finds himself the victimof scale. The state of his health scarcely matters. What matters isstatistics. He is overwhelmed by the slogans and prejudices of thenational media. Does he weigh too much? Does he get enough exercise? Doeshe eat enough seafood? Should he have a check-up every year; what do thestatistics say? What do the papers tell him? The large-scale chatter doesn't even stop at the bedroom door. He may haveenjoyed a perfectly satisfactory sex life. But now he is confronted withcomparisons...with averages...with the statistical expectations of thenational press. Is he doing it often enough? Is he doing it well enough?Before, these matters were personal and private. In the company of hiswife, the two of them set their own standards. But now, there is no suchthing as a private matter. There is scarcely anything that is so private,so personal, so detailed, so local, and so important that it does notyield to large scale standardization. No longer does he know what really matters except by reference to thepublic spectacle, from how frequently people make love to what kind ofmisgovernment they have in Iraq.We are now all equal...all the same, all the time. We live in the samehouses...we eat the same food and suffer the very same illusions as everyone else. If we are unhappy, it is because the TV says we should be. Bill BonnnerThe Daily Reckoning

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Mao never cared about ideology. He murderedhis keen communist followers as readily as capitalist roaders. He tookmoney from Moscow...but he also turned his back on the Russians wheneverhe could get away with it. He might just as well have been a Republican.Read on...THE LATE, GREAT HELMSMANby Bill BonnerEagles soar up the long vaultFish fly down the shallow riverbedUnder a sky of frost, ten thousand creatures vie to impose their willTouched by this vastness,I ask the boundless earth:Who after all will be your master?Mao Tse-tungThe more history you read, the less you learn from it. Not that it isn'tentertaining; to the contrary, history is nothing if not diverting. Thetrouble is, it is nothing more. In the end, all you take away is a gapingmouth and a mind pried so wide open it is ready to believe anything...andnothing. We say that after reading a grand biography of Mao Tse-Tung, written byJung Chang and Jon Halliday. The authors must have spent many yearstrawling through the official records, listening to oral histories, andreading the newspapers. What they have come up with is extraordinary. Andwhat is most extraordinary about it is that it shows how man - and here wespeak of the species, not the gender - can get away with almost anything.In the 20th century, man got away with more than usual. Murder, robbery,torture, starvation were not uncommon. And the people who committed thesecrimes often found themselves the subjects of popular adoration. Theirsilhouettes were recorded on paper currency. Likenesses of themselves werechiseled out of granite and hoisted onto public squares. Their quips andsayings were printed up in little books, distributed to the masses likeChristmas candies...and studied by callow scholars as if they were Gospellessons.In the 1960s, we spent some time in a center of higher learning in Paris.We recall that the most difficult choice a young European intellectualfaced was whether to sign up with the Trotskyites, the Leninists, or theMaoists. Each had his own special style and doctrine. Students stayed uplate into the night arguing the fine points of one or the other, none ofthem with a single clue about who these men really were or what theirbloody creeds really meant.Now, with the opening of archives and the closing of the lives of most ofthe principals, we get to find out more of what really went on...and whatthese great revolutionary heroes were really like. And what a ghastly showit is! Hegel meets Helter Skelter. Das Kapital meets Texas ChainsawMassacre.The Chinese are a smart people; just look at the names that make it toadvanced science programs at America's top universities. IQ aficionadostell us the Chinese and Japanese have an edge over the rest of us. Butread the story of Mao; it makes you wonder: how could so many smart peopledo something so moronic...it would be flattery to call them stupid?Who would have thought that one of the planets most ancient and refinedcivilizations would yield itself over to a lame-brained intellectual whoseprinciple preoccupations were creating havoc...and making sure his ownbowels moved? What went through the minds of his followers when theywatched him order his trusted subordinates trussed up, tortured andmurdered...? What did they think when their own general - faced with animplacable enemy who vowed to 'annihilate' all of them - set in motion apurge of his own forces that wiped out a third of his entire army...ordilly-dallied in hostile territory, against the orders of his superiors,and managed to lose 70,000 out of an original 80,000 of his long-sufferingfollowers? What could they have thought when the man who claimed to be achampion of the poor starved, robbed, and tortured them without mercy...soruthlessly that any peasants with the strength to escape ran off to theother side?If they didn't flee, they hung themselves or opened their veins. When Maofirst got his hands on a little chunk of China he immediately turned theplace into a prison. Armed guards patrolled the streets and borders -prevent people from escaping. People were encouraged to denounce eachother...torture was barbaric...executions were everyday occurrences.Families were not allowed to visit each other...as the authorities worriedthat they might be up to something. A family found to have welcomed avisitor was to be killed. Not surprisingly, people found this proto-Maoistworker's paradise rather depressing. Even top-ranking cadres began to taketheir own lives. "Suicides are the most shameful elements in therevolutionary ranks," came the slogan designed to halt the trend. What were the Chinese thinking, to let Mao get away with it? It was as ifthey didn't think at all. During his career, Mao-Tse-Tung was responsiblefor more deaths - murder, starvation, torture...the usual ways of dying,plus a few novelties added by Mao and his thugs - than any other man inhistory. Seventy million is the sum given by Chang and Halliday. Even theentire Mongel reign of Genghis Khan and his whole line - who conqueredthree civilizations...Muslim, Chinese, and Hindu...and threatened toconquer Christendom too...didn't match Mao in killing people. You'd think one or other of the hundreds of millions of Chinese who suffered at his handswould have done something about it. Surely, millions must have realizedwhat was up. It was obvious from the very get-go that Mao was a homicidal,incompetent tyrant. Why didn't one of them whose wife had been torturedabominably...or whose sons had been killed wantonly... or whose family hadbeen starved or bayoneted...do something to get even? In the early days,it would have been fairly easy to ambush Mao. Maybe that's the troublewith the modern world; people don't take the obligation of revengeseriously enough. Mao died of natural causes, many decades later.It is a relief to many that Mao was a communist and that bolshevism nolonger fires hearts and heavy artillery. But it is a counterfeit comfort.Mao never cared about ideology. He murdered his keen communist followersas readily as capitalist roaders. He took money from Moscow...but he alsoturned his back on the Russians whenever he could get away with it. Hemight just as well have been a Republican. He went with collectivism onlybecause it was stirred the pot...and the faster it swirled, the moreruthless bits of slime came to the surface. It was necessary, he wrote,"to bring a reign of terror in every country."Practically everything about Mao Tse-Tung was a lie or a swindle. In thatsense, he made a perfect leading man for a great public spectacle. And asit turned out, he was perfect for the role. He was all show...allhumbug...all mountebank. As a soldier, Mao was a disaster. He absented himself from the fight onevery possible occasion...usually holing up in the biggest, safest, mostluxurious house in the area...generally feasting and resting...while hisgang of killers did their work. Ordered by the Marxist hierarchy to jointhe battle, he would take his army in the opposite direction...or justwait out the fight and then come in afterwards. Why the party leadershipdidn't kill him is a mystery...an oversight that they later greatlyregretted.Very early in his career, he experienced the thrill of brutality. It gavehim "a kind of ecstasy never experienced before...it is wonderful...it iswonderful..." he said. To say that he was hard-hearted was a bit likesaying the Peking sewer is malodorous; it fails to capture the smellvividly enough. Mao would take part in torture sessions. He would condemnentire villages to starvation. He would waste his own soldiers inpointless battles and unnecessary suffering. Even on the famous 'LongMarch' he did little marching himself. His skinny soldiers had to carryhim on a litter! Military men are often blockheads, at least the best of them are, but Maowas in a class by himself. The Long March was so long partly because Maowasn't going anywhere. He marched his men uphill and down...hundreds ofmiles this way and that...with meager rations...and almost no medicalattention, even to the wounded...just to avoid going to a rendezvous thatmight weaken his political grip. He was supposed to link up with anotherarmy boss, one just as ruthless as he was.The communists' main enemy at the time - almost everyone hated them - wasChiang Kai-Chek. But Chiang had already decided to let the Reds get away.Still, Mao managed to stir up fights that decimated his little army. AtTucheng, for example, Mao put his own troops in about the worst possibleposition - with their backs to the Red River - and faced the best ofChiang's force. Naturally, the communists were nearly wiped out...whileMao watched from a nearby mountain. Of those red soldiers who weren'tkilled in the fighting itself, many soon died of cold and wounds...or werekilled by the local farmers who were getting even for way they communistshad treated them. Wherever he went, Mao handled the locals with such nakedbrutality...he caused revolts - against the revolutionaries!The whole Long March is nothing but a recitation of one Mao-causedcalamity after another. But the gods must have had a sour sense of humorin the 1930s...they let Mao, Adolf and Josef rise to power anyway.While Mao was a dud of a general, he was a bad joke of a politicalphilosopher. Early in his life, he might have been a follower of Ayn Rand."People like me only have a duty to ourselves, " he wrote. We have no dutyto other people." Later, he dipped his fork into Marxism like a Westernteenager sampling sushi. He was not too sure what was in it, and wasn'ttoo eager to find out. Instead, he took Emperor Qin Shihuangdi (221-206BC) who founded imperial China as his model. Qin's empire lasted nearlytwo thousand years. Not only did he build the Great Wall, he also killedConfucian scholars, burned classical books, and persecuted thousands -perhaps millions - of people. It was his single-minded pursuit of power that made Mao so successful. Hisrivals actually believed the Marxist claptrap. They took their orders fromthe party hierarchy and earnestly tried to implement many silly andimpossible programs. When Mao gained the support of Moscow, his Chinesecontemporaries felt their hands were tied; they knew he was trouble, butthey couldn't get rid of him.Mao operated under no such restriction. He eliminated enemies and friends- as it suited him. He listened to Moscow when he wanted to; when Moscowgave him directions he didn't like, he ignored them. He was not a 'goodcommunist.' He was hardly a communist at all. "Communism is not love," he said. "Communism is a hammer we use to crushthe enemy."But it is in his relations with the fair sex, that the worst of Mao isvisible. When it came to women, the Great Helmsman was more than abungler... or a brute....he was a cad.He married one woman...and then dismissed her. The next bore him twochildren. Scarcely 18 months later, he was conducting some atrociouscampaign of murder...and brought his army up near where she lived. Maocould have and should have immediately gotten his wife out of harm'sway...but he didn't. His enemies seized the poor woman and put her todeath, hoping to strike a blow at Mao's heart in that way. But the manseemed not even to notice. He had new paramour by then and had forgottenspouse number two. The new girlfriend, Gui-yuan, then became his third wife and had a babyduring the Long March. Again, Mao was nearby but did not come to see her.Thinking to save her baby from the appalling conditions prevailing, shegave it to a local farmer, along with a sum of money to pay for its care.It soon died. Then, Gui-yuan herself nearly died when she was struck by one of Chiang'sbombs. Doctors said she only had a few hours to live and her pain was sogreat that she even begged her comrades to put her out of her misery. Onceagain, Mao, who was in a nearby village, said he was too 'tired' to comesee her. More to come...Regards,Bill BonnerThe Daily Reckoning

The C. Crane QuickCharger battery recharger. $39.95 which includes shipping and handling. Excellent device to recharge your batteries...until the spring on the "spring loaded negative battery contact" breaks. After a few months of use, two springs broke, so I could only charge two batteries at a time. I had had enough and shelled out some money to send the unit back to the company to have them repair said unit. They sent me back a whole new unit. Another few months passed. Once again, one spring breaks, then another, then another. Now I can only charge one battery at a time. I call up the C. Crane toll free customer service number. I explain the situation to the lady on the other end of the line. She tells me that I am better off simply buying a new unit. Factor in the costs, she tells me. I have to pay to ship the recharger back to the company. The company is going to charge me $19.00 just to look at the thing. So I contemplate doing an autopsy on the recharger. It has two philips screws on the back of the cover and that's it. Once I have removed the screws, the plastic cover still won't come off without cracking the body of the housing. The solution seems simple enough. As long at the metal tabs touch the bottom of the batteries, the unit should work. In photo one (see above), I have folded up pages torn out of a magazine and stuffed them into the gap, thus forcing the negative battery contacts to touch the batteries. In photo two, you see how the contacts do not touch the battery as their springs have broken. Only the number four contact works. So this is an inexpensive fix.

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Today, Bill picks up where he left off in
last Friday's essay - with our sordid protagonist, Mao Tse-tung,
lolling
in his sedan chair, with scrawny, skin-kneed porters hauling him all
around China. Read on...

THE LATE, GREAT HELSMAN, PART II
by Bill Bonner

What a sight it must have been! As many as 80,000 soldiers backed the
communists under Mao when the Long March began. A rag-tag
band...walking
along...feared and reviled almost everywhere they went. And in the
midst
of it all went the litters carrying the people's top honchos and the
wives
of the people's top honchos. By the time the wandering was over - Mao
didn't especially want to arrive anywhere - he had managed to reduce
his
own ranks to only 10,000. The rest died along the way...were killed in
pointless battles...or ran off, as soon as they got the opportunity.

In reading about the life of Mao, the dominant emotion the reader
experiences is neither contempt nor outrage, but rather puzzlement. He
wonders how the big Chinaman got away with so much. How was it possible
that a nation of so many millions couldn't manage to figure out that
their
leader was an incompetent, self-interested fraud? Or find one person
who
would put an end to him?

Didn't Mao's early career as a bloody crime boss signal what was coming
next?

When he brought out his first torturers...and his policies of mass
starvation and working the peasants to death...

...or his proto-purges...his early assassinations...

...or when he got his hands on a little bit of ground where he could
set
up his model society, and it turned out to be a miserable prison for
everybody but its bosses...

...wasn't it clear where he would take the nation? An earnest communist
from Sweden later visited one part of the country - Yenan - and
wondered
why it was so poor. After all, it was the cradle of the people's
paradise.
It was such an important part of Marxist traditions. "What went wrong?"
he
wanted to know.

"Ah traditions...traditions..." Mao laughed heartily. He couldn't
believe
the Swede was so na«Áve.

Mao cared nothing for traditions...neither real Chinese traditions nor
instant Communist ones. What he cared for was power, and he exercised
it
ruthlessly, pitilessly, recklessly and absurdly.

What's troubling about Mao's life was not Mao himself, but the rest of
us
(he was merely a talented cutthroat, and a lucky slob). What's wrong
with
us? Normal, decent human beings repeatedly buckled under Mao...they let
him get away...or couldn't get organized to oppose him. When they were
ordered to persecute each other, they took up the task readily...even
knowing that their own necks could be next. When they were told to take
up
a new agricultural policy, for example - which every peasant knew in
his
bones was lunatic - they nevertheless put their backs to it. When they
were summoned to carry Mao on their shoulders...or procure women for
him...or embark on some suicidal military campaign...or build him
another
luxury villa...did any one of them raise a serious objection? Some did;
but the rest went along, usually taking the objector out to execute
him.

Mao worried about being murdered all his life. He took exaggerated
precautions to make sure no stranger could get close enough to put a
bullet in his brain. Cronies, henchmen and servants were kept under
surveillance and in a state of terror. Those who appeared likely to
cross
Mao were eliminated. Mao encouraged periodic purges...denunciations and
confessions. Even his most trusted and loyal bagmen - such as Chou En
Lai
- were required to humiliate themselves from time to time for the
chairmen.

Still, only one person was known to have tried to assassinate Mao -
Marshal Lin Biao's son, 'Tiger,' in 1971. The plot quickly
thickened...then dissolved altogether. Tiger and his wife died in an
airplane crash in Mongolia as they were making their getaway.

There must have been a hundred million people in China who would liked
to
have seen Mao dead, and hundreds of millions more if they had known
what
was going on. But Mao controlled the press, and had created such an
aura
of fear that people dared not talk, even to friends or relatives.

In the late '30s and early '40s, while Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist
forces fought the Japanese, Mao focused on killing and purging his own
troops, and supporting his strange kingdom by selling drugs. Even this,
Mao could not do well. Opium production soon expanded beyond what the
market would take up. By the time the first American officials arrived
on
the scene, Mao had filled his coffers with cash and was ready to
suppress
the trade. (The Russians estimated his opium sales at $640 million in
today's money).

Mao also experimented with central banking during this period. He
printed
his own currency, the bianbi. This too went in the predictable way.
Neither communists nor capitalists seemed able to resist the lure of
easy
money for very long. By 1944, the reds had printed so many bianbi that
the
price of matches was 25,000 times greater than its price in 1937.

During this whole time, Chiang had threatened to wipe out the
communists
several times...but he relented; Chiang's only son was being held
captive
in Moscow. Stalin told him that if he ever wanted to see his son again,
he
would have to ease up on Mao's troops.

Then, after the Japanese were defeated, Mao found another protector -
the
United States. Once again, Chiang was going after Mao, and by this time
the Nationalist forces were seasoned fighters - they'd been engaged in
serious fighting with the Japanese for years, while the Reds had been
doing nothing but preventing each other from escaping. When the two
forces
clashed, the outcome was inevitable - Mao's men were run off. Chiang
was
about to go after them and crush them completely when George Marshal
intervened, pressuring Chiang to lay off.

Which just goes to show why U.S. public officials have no business
meddling in foreign affairs. When the first Americans arrived at Mao's
headquarters, the communists put on a show designed to win them over.
With
an apparently straight face, Chou told Marshal that Mao preferred
America
to Russia...and Mao let it be known that he was even considering
dropping
the word 'communist' from their party name! Marshal must have fallen
for
it. Because Chiang was pulled off the chase...and the commies got away
to
Manchuria.

The mistake proved fatal to the Nationalists. Out in the northwest, the
Reds linked up with the turncoat Chinese "Manchukuos" who had supported
the Japanese during the war...and were also closer to their supply
lines
from Russia. With these supports, not to mention a clandestine campaign
against poor Chiang, they were able to boot the Nationalists out of the
country and turn the whole place into the largest Auschwitz in history.

I say that not to exaggerate. It is not merely an analog guess but a
digital comparison. In the Nazi concentration camp, inmates received
between 1,300 and 1,700 calories per day, as they were worked to death.
In
the famine Mao forced on China in the late 50s and early '60s, the
average
calorie intake was only about 1,200. Mao, of course, thought the
peasants
had too much to eat. He was determined to squeeze the grain out of them
so
it could be shipped overseas, to help pay for his crackpot
modernization
programs. His agents went about their work with the same zeal they has
shown in his earlier famines and purges. Chang and Halliday report, in
their book, "Mao":

"The cadres' job was to stop the peasants 'stealing' their own harvest.
Horrific punishments were widespread; some people were buried alive,
others strangled with ropes, others had their noses cut off. In one
village four terrorized young children were saved from being buried
alive
for taking some food only when the earth was at their waists, after a
desperate plea from their parents. In another village, a child had four
fingers chopped off for trying to steal a scrap of unripe food; in
another, two children who tried to steal food had wires run through
their
ears, and were then hung up by the wire from a wall...."

People starved to death by the millions.

One of the lessons we take from these stories is that the people who
want
to force their ideas on you, are always the same people whose ideas are
idiotic. Mao had more than his share of them. He had peasants digging
up
the soil by hand, down to a depth of half a meter. Then, he figured
that
planting seeds closer could enhance crop yields...while actually
reducing
the amount of fertilizer applied. He had the whole country launched on
a
goofy program of making steel in backyard furnaces. And then, he
decided
that sparrows were eating too much of the nation's harvest...so he got
the
peasants to shoo away the birds and kill them. As the sparrows
disappeared, along came the bugs and insects that they had kept under
control, in such numbers that they soon threatened the entire harvest.
Secretly, the Chinese government finally had to ask the Russians for
aid:
please send sparrows, in the name of socialist internationalism!

Yes, there are funny parts to the Mao story. So eager were the Maoists
to
industrialize that they completely neglected quality control. Chinese
planes couldn't fly. Tanks couldn't drive in a straight line (on one
occasion, a Chinese made tank swerved around and charged at a group of
VIPs, say the "Mao" authors). Chinese ships were more of a danger to
their
crews than to the enemy. And when a Chinese helicopter was presented to
Ho
Chi Minh, the manufacturers detained it at the border because they were
afraid it might crash.

But mostly, the Mao story raises question marks about our whole race.
Western readers may be appalled by the murders, betrayals (Mao would
set
up his own troops, in the thousands, to be killed by the enemy...just
to
give himself an excuse to break an agreement or avoid following
orders),
famines, and tortures. But they will surely find Mao's attitudes to sex
reprehensible too. The modern citizen of a western democracy feels he
is
entitled to sex, above all else. At least, that is the idea you get
from
reading the press or watching TV.

But Mao was a humbug on sex, as on everything. Workers were expected to
follow orders and put the party and its rules above all else. There was
little privacy...and, with people dressed in those tawdry, gray Mao
outfits, and crowded into tiny, charm-less tenements, there was neither
the time, the energy nor the place for romance - or sexual congress.
Couples were often posted to different cities...and allowed to see each
other only 12 days per year. The rest of the time they were not allowed
any outlet for sexual feelings - if they had any. Even masturbation was
outlawed.

Meanwhile, Mao himself lived it up in his luxurious villas - dozens of
them spread all over the country - complete with in-door swimming
pools.
He ate like a pig and had his agents scour the countryside to find
young
women - 'imperial concubines' for the Chairman. Singers, dancers,
nurses,
house staff - they were all available to Mao as he pleased.

But Mao was fat and repulsive. He never bathed in 27 years, according
to
reports. And his teeth, which he never brushed, went black. How did he
get
women to sleep with him? Ah, dear reader, that is just another mystery
of
our race; people seem willing and able to do just about anything.

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning

I had the chance to eat lunch at Google headquarters today. To get a guest pass, you have to show up at the building where the Google employee (who invited you) works. The buildings are all identified by numbers, not by department name. You must go into the lobby and sign in to get a guest pass. On the desk is a keyboard, a computer monitor, and a printer. It is very simple to print out a guest pass. There are four boxes on the screen. I assume that Google likes to keep things simple. You type in your name, your company's name (I left it blank), the name of your city and state, and the Google employee's name that will escort you into the main building. There is a legal contract that you must sign. Who reads these things anyways? In a nutshell, it says that you won't take pictures, record things, or take things out of the building. Basically, behave yourself and don't be a corporate spy. You sign your name on a small computer pad. I can never get used to writing on these things. Your vistor pass now comes out of the printer and you are on your way. I'm assuming that this is a thermal printer. The pass is a simple 2" x 4" white adhesive sticker with black letters on it. Since I could not bring a camera, (I did sign the agreement after all) I can only say that there are electric scooter parked in the lobby of each building. Instead of doing a 7 minute walk to another building, employees get on these yellow scooters and get around the Google campus. Eating lunch at Google. Now I can die a happy man. Google employees eat rather well. All you can eat. All you can drink. It's a pity I'm a small eater. One nice touch is that the plates that they serve your food in comes in four colors: blue, yellow, green, and red. Be careful of what you choose to eat. Some of the dishes are on the spicy side.