"Snuffy Smith" wrote:

:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
.. .
: (D.K.) wrote:
:
: :What I'd like to know is how widely Soviet space achievements
: Sputnik, Gagarin, Leonov, Tereshkova) were popularized in the USA?
:
: Talked about? Sure. Popularized? Not so much.
:
: It didn't help that the Russians didn't allow TV broadcasts for a lot
: of this stuff out of fear that something might go wrong.
:
:Ever notice any of the parallels between current day China and the old
:Soviet Union?

Not really, no.

:That flu virus that started in China was known for months. The Chinese tried
:to black out the world on what was going on. People in China didn't even
:know there was a deadly flu bug swirling all around them.

I assume you're referring to SARS? Not a "flu bug". China actually
had public thermometers to check people on the street. You seem a bit
misinformed here.

:Now we see that they backed out on showing their space launch live.

This is typical of any semi-dictatorship.

:Then you have all that Falun Gong and Tibet persecution stuff.

Again, typical of any semi-dictatorship.

:The question is how long before China implodes like the Soviet Union????

It won't happen. China has been much more economically flexible than
the old Soviet Union was.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw