All is not well with the socialist workers of the world, however. A dispatch from Calcutta noted the rather personal problems faced by comrades in southern India's People's War Group, a Maoist terrorist organization that has shot to death 600 policemen and numbers of other reactionaries since 1993. Cadres sleeping side by side in camps have been warned against hugging and kissing in the dark. Illicit relations will invite disciplinary action ranging from internment to expulsion. Love at first sight is unscientific, as it is only a physical attraction.
Illicit sex is anarchic and disruptive.
Now here is a foreign policy challenge the U.S. president could embrace with his own brand of moral authority. More sophisticated are the communists in Ho Chi Minh City who have decided that female beauty can be celebrated as long as the whole exercise is politically correct. Writing about the Miss Vietnam beauty pageant, also in the South China Morning Post, Harry Knowles noted that the unschooled proletarians with their natural charms didn't stand a chance during the interview phase of the competition. Perhaps the most shocking development from abroad is news of the outbreak of a particularly virulent form of homophobia in recently-liberated southern Africa. Remove that man's name from the nominees' list for the Nobel Peace Prize.