John Fitzpatrick. About New China, the Koreas, Myanmar, Thailand, and also about Japanese and Chinese writers and poets. The main emphasis is on North Asia and the political tectonics of this very important, powerful, and many-peopled area.
Saturday, 10 December 2016
So, from about the 19th of December the blog and facebook will post our daily travels in the Nissan Navara Dual Cab white-bloke Ute, or Pick Up, from Cairns, here in the lost far north of tropical Australia, day by day, for the 2500 mile journey Dead South across 3 states to Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. We are going via the Coast Road to Sydney then Inland to Canberra (whatever the fuck that is) and then down the central Hume Highway, to Melbourne, Victoria. Not to be too OCD about it, of course...but...ETA at the new abode in Doncaster Road, Balwyn, Melbourne, Victoria: 27 Dec, at 8.39am.
Well, we have finished the exciting duty of packing of boxes for today. If we keep up spending about 7 hours a day doing this we will be just fine for the 16th when the Wiggles Big Twuck comes. Actually, when it comes to the Wiggles, I have my doubts about the new yellow Wiggle...and it is not because the new yellow Wiggle is a girl at all... I just liked the old yellow Wiggle who had bouts of profound social phobia and depression. I could relate to him...and any kid could.
Well, we have finished the exciting duty of packing of boxes for today. If we keep up spending about 7 hours a day doing this we will be just fine for the 16th when the Wiggles Big Twuck comes to take it all away.
Actually, when it comes to the Wiggles, I have my doubts about the new yellow Wiggle...and it is not because the new yellow Wiggle is a girl at all... I just liked the old yellow Wiggle who had bouts of profound social phobia and depression. I could relate to him...and any kid could.
I often recall my education in grief counselling, many years ago, where it was noted that everyone has a spiritual dimension, they may not have a religion, but they do have a spiritual dimension...and after all these years I must admit I disagree. I have found that some people do, and some people don't, have a spiritual dimension. To me, a faith or a spiritual dimension is a particular ability, or talent, much like musicality. Some folk are musical, some are not. Some can learn to sing a bit, as I would like to, but there are also true native singers and players of music. Some people are very good at mathematics. I am not. I am good with words, and many are not....but the numbers really do elude me. I think the capacity to have a spiritual dimension is much like that.
Thursday, 8 December 2016
Change is Coming to America
It is very interesting watching the show on the legacy of Barack Obama...to see how things change.
I guess the most remarkable thing about Obama's "Change has Come to America" is that it didn't come.
The differences between Obama and Trump are just so fascinating...Obama, the Cerebral, and Trump, the Primal.
The challenges faced by Obama were legion and the biggest was the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, a sequence that fanciful Americans thought would be over in about 2 weeks time...but these massive financial adjustments take at least 20 years, and always have.
After 8 years, with Trump still yet to formally become President, the Financial Crash of 2008 rolls on, and will do so for at least another decade, or maybe two.
Trump's rise is acknowledged to some extent as stemming from that (ongoing) Crisis. How do you reverse, fundamentally, an Economic Depression? No one ever has and I highly doubt that Trump can.
The next decade will be very hard for the USA and for other countries of the West, including Australia. That's what happens in a long economic downturn...and it happens for a long time.
What the ascendancy of Trump means is not a nation divided by race etc, the same as Brexit doesn't mean a hatred for immigrants in the UK, but because of the ways in which the complex 2008 Depression arose and occurred, and continues, people world wide are suffering, and seeking something simple to blame, so as to fix things and not suffer.
With Trump, interestingly, the term 'Change Has Come to America' could be applied. No one knows the outcome of this change at the start, or in the middle, of it, and we are not yet even at the start of it.
Saturday, 3 December 2016
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