I am pursuing my spiritual interest in, basically, latin tridentine christianity, certainly not based upon the love of popes or Christian leaders etc at all...as I dont think any kind of god would ever have had anything to do with the various belief-seeking profiteering cxxts...whether christian, judaean, islam, buddhist etc...but I find it is best to find joy and meaning in this remarkable creation on my own terms...thus free will to choose a deity and, to define that deity in my own terms, also, interestingly, never have to give them any money. I'd be a sucker for any faith that does not demand a tithe from believers. This is why even the Reformed Church of Spongebob Squarepants holds a higher status than any of the organised world religions to me. If a god can create a universe, he certainly should be a lot better at managing his own money, rather than needing mine every fxxking payday just to keep his organisation going...with the main purpose being to root young boys. "I don't need your organisation...I've shined enough shoes."

"Well, by 63, if I hadn't picked up a few habits, biases, contradictions, spiritual dilemmas, failings, eccentricities and addictions, then I have no idea what I would have done with most of the time. I expect I would have wasted it on something meaningful to others. It has never really been part of my 'life plan' to contribute to the world at all, except in the form I prefer, which is writing things...and sometimes painting things...but that is all mostly just for me anyway...that was a decision I made when I was 'wise' and twelve, and I have stuck to it and done a range of jobs necessary for living coinage through the decades. I did tell my kids that if I do well in writing things then they will have that legacy, and maybe a few coins from me, but otherwise it would be much wiser for them to make their own fortunes and establish themselves as their own best providers. One is a great artist and teacher of art, and one is a successful weapons distributor, and neither rely on the state at all for anything. I love and have respect for both of them. One of my grand daughters, Justice, is a hunter with both high velocity accuracy bullet, and fine arrow, and also a very good taxidermist. I am very proud of her. She has found, and quite young, her own high mountain shining path."

Regime Change in North Korea isnt possible because it is a military society, albeit with a monarchy/emperor at the top. One will be replaced by the next. You can't remove the 'bad guys' because they are at least 30% of the entire population. We are stuck with North Korea as it is for a long long time...decades...so we need to talk and work out something better...well, not 'we' in the west...the north and south brothers, and they are blood brothers, need to work out whats best between them...and I expect, as between all kinds of difficult brothers, there will be push and shove and a bit of blood from time to time...but no one else can solve the artificial split in the people of north and south provinces except the people there. Vietnam springs to mind. best to let the boys work out their problems in their own fashion. They were a united country for longer than they have been divided by outsiders. Korea was given full independence by China in the old days of the Dynasties etc and China wont go back on that agreement. China is the only country on earth that has basically good relationships with both South and North Korea, and that is a diplomatic skill the foreign devils from America do need to learn...and then the US needs, mostly, to just go home.

The one thing people don't seem to understand about the very young Mr Kim Jong Un, President of the DPRK, is his stability. He has 500,000 rockets aimed at Seoul 60 kms away. Has he fired them? No. He has nuclear weapons. Has he used them? No. He will develop capacities to fire the nuclear weapons at Japan...for what Japan did to Korea, both North and South, remains one of the truly great crimes against humanity...and no one, except the West, is capable of just forgetting that. Koreans, both North and South, have very vivid national PTSD dreams about that evil time. He will develop nuclear capacities aimed specifically and especially at US Military Bases near and in Korea, and US nuclear armed ships off his coast line...and anyone with any sense would. Every year, March April, the US has its live fire military drills planning for the invasion of the North,just next to the North, and every year the big US nuclear bombers buzz the border. This happens every year and this hasn't provoked Mr Kim into doing anything except preparing his military assets and being very good at brinkmanship rhetoric. He is a bad guy, although not as bad as the Japs were. He has massive weaponry but hasn't used them the way the US has used theirs around the world with no provocation at all. He is not a mad guy. He is a tactician studiously working on the survival of his regime.

Korea 101

Korea remains the only 'tectonic' plate that could bring about a war between basically everyone who has weapons and so it is very important that North Korea not be provoked. Mr Kim knows this better than anyone and is a great player of this game, and will succeed with this game. it is his game. he is only young but has learnt the trade and the game very well.
One day Korea will be reunited, but only when the US, Russia and China are not involved at all. That's common sense...and certainly Japan cannot be involved at all, ever. The last time Japan was involved, the stench of Korean bodies, still alive and lit by diesel in the streets, was all that could be smelt for decades.

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Iain Mac Giolla Padraig
3 mins · 
You will find that, at present, as the US nuclear armed fleet moves towards North Korea, that the Chinese People's Liberation Army will be increasing its numbers significantly on the border Yalu River between China and DPRK, whilst the Russian army will be massing near their border with DPRK, and the Russian nuclear navy will be prowling around too in the same sea as the uS Navy and as China's brand new Navy...includign China's very nifty small nuclear attack submarines that the USA still can't find under the water due to their advanced designs etc.
Now, neither the Chinese army or the Russian army are there to protect the interests of the USA or of South Korea. North Korea is of fundamental geopolitical significance by its position, it has a huge work force and abundant minerals etc..and nuclear weapons already if it needs to protect itself.
We don't want to see a war and a massive power grab between the 3 powers, the US, Russia, and China at all.
The problems of Korea need to be solved by the people of Korea and no one else. Adding a Japanese military component as the US is doing will simply make it all much worse...both North and South Korea despise Japan for very good reasons.
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Iain Mac Giolla Padraig
31 mins · Balwyn North · 
I note the US is still saying they wish for a diplomatic solution with North Korea, whilt maintaing the notion that the US will not actually talk with them at all. . Not so bright. Not a great plan. At some point diplomacy is based upon interactions and even human respect or at least acknowledgment as to the human nature of borh sides. Refusal to discuss anything is not usually effective as a way to diffuse a situation.

Old memory...being 25 and a state government bus driver in Sydney, living at Manly but 'driving' from Waverley Depot, on the other side of town, split 8 hour shifts...but never more than 8...never a need for overtime for everyone who wanted to be employed was employed...so I'd wander down half asleep to the Manly Ferry Wharf, past Ben's bakery cooking up the most amazing vapours...and get on the first ferry to the city...and set off across the Sydney Harbour in winter, and I'd be wrapped up pretty well in the good government issue of good dark blue wool pants, socks, shoes, shirt, wool scarf, jacket, and thick full length dark blue pure merino wool coat, and hat... and I'd sit on the cold ferry bench and nod off as we crossed the grand harbour at sunrise. The split-shifts were hard and so we were compensated by having, for the interim hours, a fair bit more pay, a gym at the depot, a free coffee shop canteen, and a bar. We were well paid and fully employed in those long ago days. Imagine that, for the common man now...and people bark about social progress now, and the improvements...but just look at us now. We've lost more than we gained, and we are the poorer for these modern times. these may well be modern times, but there is not one thing about them that is enlightened in any way.

In England I believe that it is very difficult to maintain sex during an election.

"Sunset time. Sagas of remnant blue. It was time for him to clean up his Writing Room, and to place his notes here and there. He was not writing today. It was enough to have the sky dutifully scribbling away."

Step-daughter has been chosen to do the sound-engineering for a film to be made in Nepal in June. She's great. That should be a remarkable experience for her, to be back in or around the Himalayas. Being Chinese she has been to Tibet, so this will be looking at the giant mountains from the other side, I guess. I recall flying from Asia to Beijing once, over the grand mountains and being amazed that even from a high plane, the sharp mountains were so high, as if in deep conversation with the sky. Looking up in this remarkable 'outback of the world' I saw 12 planes criss crossing the sky, to my left and right were also planes just higher and lower, criss-crossing, all off to places. Looking down I saw wondrous rivers and occasionally the glint from the tops of high speed trains here and there. It is so interesting to live in these times.

Melbourne does turn on some beautiful weather, today being a good example. There is something very nice about these old houses, the yards, the trees, the un-mown lawns. End of the day, and it is generally quiet, apart from the dubbed rumble-clatter of the regular trams on their steel tracks...off to town and coming back. The neighbour's magnolia tree is in flower and the huge blooms point up to the sky and later tumble onto the grass. The leaves of half of the trees are going brown and yellow as the sun moves slightly away as a prelude to the seasonal mood inviting a winter. The shaded spaces become open and the sun pools on the floorboards outside. Bird song, subtle, and poignant, flows across the grass like a simple wave. I recall someone once describing 'birdsong' as a form of 'liquid arrogance'. I agree.

The problem with Nursing and many other industries in Australia is simply that in the early 1980s the Government decided that it was a hell of a lot cheaper to rent foreign nurses and doctors... and engineers etc...all the necessary trades...rather than invest in the actual education of Australians. This is why, me, at 63, can always get a job in nursing whereas, in a better organised state, I couldn't, I'd be long retired now, because of the upward pressure of the young professionals as happens everywhere else on earth in all the progressive societies. The rented folk, a lot of the time, just went home at the end of their contracts as they did indeed have their own good countries to go back to...thus leaving us with a multi-generational deficit of folk with skills...and this was government policy...the policy of many governments over the decades that have refused to take on the responsibility of real governance, and the responsibility for the future of Australians. This was a remarkably foolish and selfish decision based upon economic rationalism set over a 3 year government term rather than a good idea for the country as the years went by..and so we live in these times and have troubles now, not because the world is more complex, but simply because so many atrocious decisions were made by quite a few governments fearing the task of being actually responsible.

IDENTITY THEFT "Now, let me get this right...if someone steals your identity, they therefore become, obviously, responsible for your overwhelming debts as well? Debts not only to Visa Card, but debts to the Colombian Cartel and the Hong Kong IndependenceTriad as well???" Now, let me just put all my personal information here on the blog...and...god willing... and good luck to the new me, indeed! You'll need it.

Robbie Williams | Party Like A Russian - Official Video

I received, in the mail box, a letter from my dear Niece who is working in Shanghai. She loves it, although, having spent most of her life in London, and now with still a very pronounced English accent, China is quite a shock and on such a huge scale. She does note that she lost 5kg of weight in one month which she attributes not to specific dieting but rather to having diarrhoea for a month. She is very happy to have lost the weight. She is getting a real idea of the huge human scale and impact of mainland New China and is deeply fascinated by it all. I must write back to her. I have been waiting for her postal address for a few months, I still have a letter, unposted to her, from when I was working in the clinic in cairns and had no idea we would be moving to Melbourne...so this old letter, when posted with a new one, will be a bit of a 'time-capsule' in itself. I have no memory of what is in that letter. We write with fountain pens and use elaborate good writing paper, and seal each envelope with a proper red hot wax seal. I still recall that some letters I wrote her could never be posted because applying a hot wax seal to an envelope, for the novice, occasionally leads to a significant desk-fire. Fortunately, my old wooden desk is up to that challenge, scorched in its centre, and has survived well enough.

SNH48 'Heavy Rotation' Official Music Video

This is Modern Real Asia, calling to Asia...in Heavy Rotation...I want you...i need you...i love you...whether Japan, the Koreas, The Phillipines or the one China. Not an American in sight. Asia, like the Borg, will certainly assimilate your styles, but we don't want you, America...not in our Asia. We are Young. We are New. Go home, America, kill your own children if you have to, but not us. It is not our fault that we do not need you. It is our strength.

To understand the passing parade of the American Epoch of Splendour it is useful, for me, to understand the metaphor of Sydney, Australia's New Years Eve Fireworks Display, on Sydney's beautiful Harbour. Sydney is the closest we, as Australians, can ever come to being Americans. Every New Year's Eve Sydney launches at least $US5 million dollars worth of fireworks, paid for by Sydney/NSW tax payers...and it is an amazing display, innovative, colourful, impressive, beautiful, massive...and it lasts 20 minutes...and then everyone goes home in the crowded dark and pays more taxes. I think the USA is exactly like that. The fact that Sydney simply can't afford to do that doesn't make a dent in the idea, or the pride...or the show. Still, it is just a show...and a very very expensive show...but Sydney has to keep doing it, to exist as important to itself....very much out on a limb of failing its people...but for the show...

the US leather pussy and the big massive erect guns...now owned by China

Iain Mac Giolla Padraig

Just now · Balwyn North · 

I can imagine the floating armada death star of the US Navy approaching Korea playing Cher's " If I could turn back time" on heavy rotation. "Too proud to tell you I was wrong."

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Iain Mac Giolla Padraig
2 mins · Balwyn North · 
Big events have big consequences. The massive loss of American power money and prestige in the 2008 financial melt down meant that China jumped two decades ahead overnight as a functioning liquid economy...you can't get that back. We all expected China to rise in about 20 years time, for sure, but those clowns in the US...the Wall Street folk, just took the money home or blew it all. no investment in America...none... You can't get back from that.Real losses are in fact real losses.

Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time

i think Obama's major achievement was in noting to the world that America, whilst important, wasn't that important. There's nothing that Trump can do to make America more important than it is, or was. You can't, as the great leading USA intellectual, Cher, noted, turn back time.

emptiness and god

I do like churches of all kinds, nonetheless. I very much find solace in being alone in a church, a synagogue, a bahai temple, a mosque...beautiful. true. the beauty of the silence in some of the mosques, especially, and the architecture, is just astounding...divine in the true sense. Like the great christian cathedrals, there should be more of them, and all empty. to get poetic, the emptiness of these wondrous structures is so sublime. it is much like the emptiness of an open hand.

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Iain Mac Giolla Padraig
6 mins · Balwyn North · 
Then why don't you like going to church, John?
I just find that the idea of being surrounded by sincere well meaning people is disturbing as I do not wish to be radicalised. It may well cause me to take my finger off the mercury switch...and I find wearing the explosive vest quite uncomfortable.