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.
Tuesday, 14 March 2017
The most amazing thing I found in my Faceless Bureaucratic years in Queensland Health was a Brisbane based Government set-up called SNAG, and, later, SNAFU. It was a big building with about 80 AO7/8 public servants whose job was to receive, stall, and delay the implementation of Federal Funds for urgent health services until the funds were properly allocated to appropriate political causes of most need to the State government at the time. These folk saw themselves as very good public servants. Ah, the good old days...I guess that has all changed now?
I knew a health bureaucrat in Brisbane in 2002 who made some comment that was unacceptable to the group and so no one included him in meetings for 2 years. For 2 years he had nothing to do, and because of the stress, he went on paid Stress Leave for 2 years. True. AO8/ $130k a year. Poor devil...and all for 'speaking out'.Tsk tsk.
Bureaucrap & Bureaucrasia:I want to use the word 'bureaucrasia' more often, because I invented it. I also invented 'bureaucrap'. I want to see these words in dictionaries as time goes by. So please use them: Bureaucrap: The Information Supplied from Government Agencies". Bureaucrasia: "The mental illness that feeds the notion that decisions need to be made by sub-committees before issues are discussed by normal people." Please use these new words as often as you can. You can, if you wish, note me as the Source. as I did invent them. Thank you.
My view of what happened with Malaysian Flight 370 is that it was brought down by laser-rocket fire in the South China Sea by US forces gathered there, and still there, and was due to human error. This is the most contested, viewed and studied area of just about the whole world and the US Navy and Air Force is there in Bulk to continually ping and test and find faults in China's Air and Sea defences, all the time. That's just what they do there, all the time. It is understandable that human error caused the incident...but it was a human error that the US could not take responsibility for. I believe the Chinese know this...thus the ongoing military build up of the islands off China to secure both sea and air travel for the future. If the US could do that by accident, what could they do on purpose? Mind you, for the grieving families, this reality probably isn't acceptable...thus the manufacture of something impossible is better for them? After all, most of the passengers were 'Only Chinese'.
The Media and ADD One of the most remarkable examples of the 'established world media' having Attention Deficit Disorder involves the missing flight MH370...remember that? In the most highly radar-ed and studied and militarily high-tech rich area on Earth...the big plane just...vanished and, the Malaysian Government announced that it went the other way, totally, for no reason, to the only place in the world oceans where no one was looking at the time. The information came straight from the Malaysian PM's office. Within a month Obama landed in Malaysia and gave Malaysia a really good trade and military package that no one was expecting. Then the Saudi Royal Family gave the Malaysian Prime Minister a 'personal gift' of $800 million...just because they liked him. I wonder how often they do that? Anyway, all this information came out yet not one media company investigated this rare phenomenon or joined any of the dots. ADD?
2008-2018 "A Field Day/Decade" for Chinese Capitalism
It was about
2003 when the Chinese Standing Committee got wind of the approaching 2008
Global Financial Crisis and put significant effort into seeking to isolate
China from the imbroglio, and in most ways the plans succeeded; thus China didn’t
go through the Crisis to any extent near what the Western World did.
In the
general scheme of things, in the mid 2000s, it was expected that the Chinese
economy would overtake that of Japan and the US by about 2030. Everyone
basically agreed that this would happen, but due to the withdrawal of so much
real money from the Western economies in 2008 and beyond, then China simply
rose much faster, and have been doing well, hell for leather, ever since.
A ‘Field
Day’ or ‘Field Decade’ for Chinese capitalism in all its myriad forms. So much
money was coming in that President Xie was confident enough to put into place
the One Belt One Road Initiative, reshaping the world of Trade, using the
ancient Silk Road Trade Routes to Europe, plus a Maritime Trade Route to India
and Africa, and thus to secure good trade capacities and potentials for the
next 50 years at least. The development of the OBOR initiative has been an
amazing exponential phenomenon that does a lot of good for all the countries en
route from China to Europe and does secure trade-ways for China-Russia-Europe
very effectively.
Whilst also
developing Defence Systems within the South China Sea for China’s trading
access and egress, the OBOR initiative means that China is not deeply dependent
upon sea-trade thus attempts by the USA in particular, and its Allies, like Japan
and Australia, on threatening the sea routes doesn’t matter as much to China
now. The countries that would be negatively affected by a shutdown of the South
China Sea routes of trade would be China, for sure, but equally, and probably
more so…The USA and Australia and Japan in particular.
Fake News and the Media's Attention Deficit Disorder
It is not
so much that the News is Fake it is rather that News Providers have what amounts
to an Attention Deficit Disorder.
Because of
this Disorder, based upon a rapid profit-based 24 hour news cycle, Real News
dies off in about 8 hours rather than being investigated and understood.
In
retrospect, when looking at the turbulence of the years since 2008, for
example, one can note the rationale for what was called The Arab Spring…uprisings
across the Arab World. At the time it was envisioned as a struggle towards
democracy and freedom but in fact it was a response to the poor getting poorer
and there being less money/food in the system following the 2008 Global
Financial Crisis.
This same
cause for world problems continues today. The 2008 Financial Crash was a far
more crippling systemic event than has been touted. These huge financial ‘adjustments’
have always taken at least 20-25 years to go through and now in 2017 we are
only half way, if that. The fact that no one was brought to trial or to any
justice over the crisis is indicative of just how far away from reality our
systems of governance and justice are from being useful to us.
‘Talking up
the economy’ world-wide, rather than blaming, gaoling or executing the
profiteers, has been the plan. The plan can’t work of course because a hell of
a lot of the money has been taken out…and none of it returned.
In the Arab
States it was called The Arab Spring and in Western Nations it is called the
Rise of Populism, thus Brexit, Trump, the serious changes about to happen in
Netherlands, Germany and France this year, a shift to the mad right of Nationalistic
politics, all aimed at blaming a group of people for the woes of the whole
population. When you look into the issues, it isn’t really about Islam, it is
just about people, in general, being poorer than they were before 2008.
Rather than
any Leader pointing out this fact, and preparing a population for the long hard
times ahead, through good social government, redistribution of resources, and
attendance to detail, people are still talking-up the economy, beating that
same dead horse, and blaming a section of humanity for all their woes.
A great
example of this was when the kind-of-socialist Prime Minister of Australia,
Kevin Rudd, decided to place a reasonable tax on mining companies that would
have netted enough funds to balance the country’s budget and make education,
health, pensions, etc easy to fund for the next 20 years…he was quickly voted
out and basically seen as a pariah by his own party, the opposing party and,
indeed, by the people of Australia. Rudd was a problematic being, for sure, in
many ways, but he was right. Now the Mining Industry has slumped back down, the
basically un-taxed profits have gone elsewhere, and Australia now hates Arabs
too.
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