Below is an excerpt from
a speech by Óscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica, at the Summit of the Americas, Trinidad and Tobago, April 18, 2009. It was translated from the Spanish by our South American correspondent BG:
Forgetting something …
When one goes to a Latin American university, it still looks as though we are back in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s. It looks as though we forgot that something very important happened on Nov 9th, 1989, when the Iron Curtain in Berlin fell, and the world changed.
We have to accept that this is a different world, and I truly think along with all academics, all thinkers, all economists, and all historians that the 21st Century belongs to the Far East, not to Latin Americans. Regretfully, I have to agree with them.
While we are debating over ideologies, over all manner of “isms” (Which one is best? Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Liberalism, Social-Christianism…), Asians have come across the most realistic “ism” for the 21st century, the one called “pragmatism”.
Just to mention but one example, we should remember that when he realized his neighbors were getting rich fast, Deng Xiaoping paid a visit to Singapore [to President Lee Kuan Yew] and to South Korea, and upon his return to China, he told his good old Maoist friends: “No matter whether the cat is white or black, the only thing that is relevant is that it knows how to chase rats.” Had Mao been alive then, he would have fallen dead again, listening to Deng saying that “The truth is: becoming rich is glorious”.
And as the Chinese have kept sticking to this since 1979, with a mean growth rate of between 11% and 13% every year, pulling 300 million inhabitants out of misery, we [Latin Americans] find ourselves still commenting about ideologies we should have deep-sixed a long time ago.
1 comments:
"Chinese every year, pulling 300 million inhabitants out of misery, "
NO! That is NOT true. Just where are these figures coming from? The Minland Chinese propaganda?
You all forgot that Mainland China is IS Communist. Is still repressing Human Rights. Still rounding up dissidents..and harvesting Human Organs from them, for sale. Still forcing abortions and killing newborn babies when they are additional children.
And Communist China still blocks hjug parts of the Internet, and bans information for the Outside.
Communist China may be surging ahead, but NOT on their own, rather, it's because the U.S. of A, for some reason, has given/is giving China everything. starting from the 1980s U.S. Original Patents, blueprints of military weapons, radar and fighter planes, and raw material, and Exclusive trade status.
Everything from China sucks, including the water damns they have built, great, gigantic damsn, recently built, who villages relocated to make wy for the damn. Damns which now have huge crack.
We may owe China trillions, but in return, we've given these scum Communists, EVERYTHING of ours.
And what do we get back? POISON GOODS!
EVERYTHING - everything thsese scum Chinese have shipped back to us, has been contaminated / tainted poisoned" pet food, milk, baby formula, dry walls, chickens, children's bracelets, the dyes of fabric,melamine, and plastic bags.
Chinese goods are inferior and shoddy.
And for this, we stopped trading with Taiwan?
But it's not only the goods exported to other countries, but the Chinese Communist gov. poisons its own people, then hushes it up. One such insident is the infant's formulas and milk used right there.
What else are we getting that hasn't been tested?
We'll soon find out.
It's really a lie that China is economically advancing. What is seen outwardly, are the cities, and the skyscrapers and backs, IN THE CITIES ALONG THE COAST, Hong Kong and Shanghai, etc, but in the itnerior of the coutnry, the villages and living, is the same as it was during the last dynasty, of the early 1900s. The poor villages, hand labors, customs. The test of an evolving culture is the level of hygiene practiced and water pipes and sewage system. In communist China there is a lack of lsuch, even in the large cities, the bathrooms in "fine" restaurants for tourists, are enough to get you green around the gills.
Imagine what it is in the countryside!
Another factor to be taken into account is the level of know-how. China may make superb silk suits, but the shoes sure suck. Shoes Made of plastic, and hard, and with no adequate support, yet we, have to pay the same cost as is they were fine leather, and finely made.
So, NO China is NOT advancing.
They're poisoning us, and rolling on the floor laughing at us.
What do we really owe China, then?
NOTHING! We really owe China, zilch, nada.
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