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.
Friday 28 July 2017
Tuesday 25 July 2017
If euthanasia is wrong for you, then don't do it...don't enable someone to kill you. That is pretty simple. No one particularly wants to kill you. It's up to you. if turning up at 3am to an emergency department with a terminal illness with three hours of life left, demanding you live forever, then don't do it. It's up to you. if palliative care doesn't suit you in terms of not functionally controlling the end of your life, then don't do palliative care. These are not hard notions at all. We are mortal guys and gals and death will happen. There is no need to be too worried about any of that. Death knows us and our bodies far more intimately than we will ever know death. And, after all, life isn't everything.
The Euthanasia debate is slowly coming up in Victoria with legislation on the horizon and so I have thrown in my two cents worth, thus: As a veteran palliative care nurse for well over 25 years, having worked in 2 states as a Pal Care Registered Nurse, a Clinical Nurse, a Clinical Nurse Consultant and senior health project officer, the main writer of palliative care strategic plans, having won a state premier's award for excellence in service establishment and provision, and a Govt advisor who established a very good free standing palliative care inpatient and outreach service-which wasn't easy, I remain, as always, in favour of Euthanasia as do 50% of my colleagues. I expect, as usual, palliative care services will use the 'threat' of euthanasia to demand more funding as, historically, palliative care has only been funded basically so that governments didn't have to consider euthanasia...but the truth is that one is usually dealing with very different people, people who choose palliation, and people who would choose euthanasia if given the chance.
Monday 24 July 2017
BREXIT: England breaks away from Europe because England has its own ideas...it is a divorce, and is a real human divorce, with all the lawyers etc...but the divorce is real and for good reasons. I wish Englanders well, as most Irish-made folk do...they are the neighbours, we deal with them, we marry them...but they are not us...good luck to England and good luck to the end of the United Kingdom. The nature of Kingdoms is to, equally, both rise and fall. The UK is in free fall to failure as a state...and there's nothing unnatural, or to do, about that. In the antipodes here, Australia, having never ever been independent of anyone...must find its own way and the only reason it must find its own way is the truth coming in that being connected at the hip to the UK or the USA is a very bad idea for Australians who have hope in the future. We must move from the notion of parasite to human independence. That's hard, for sure, but a hell of a lot of countries have done that and have reaped that reward and self respect over the centuries. Australia, very late in the day, has to do that...because it has to do that...because the world has changed...and because the time is right. To exist is one thing...but to exist for the pleasure for others is different...If we do not determine for ourselves who to be, then the time will determine who we are and the sad limits of what we can be...for other peoples' jokes, for other peoples nuclear waste dumps, for other peoples wealth, and for other peoples' pleasures.
Friday 14 July 2017
A quarter of the whole round world is China. China is held together not by the Communist Party of China, nor by massive money, but rather by Chinese Women. Now you know who you are really dealing with...just accept it for the next 300 years. Save yourself a lot of grief. Gain yourself some happiness. They keep families together. They know men to their core, and some even still like men. They have been doing that for 5 thousand years without a pause. No one else, no society on earth, does that. They do know exactly what they are doing and they do know exactly how to do it.
The attainment of abiding human economic wealth and power is based upon 3 factors that never change: 1: You inherit it. 2: You steal it. 3: You marry it. there are other very infrequent happenings, for sure, but they are far too insignificant to even be worthy of the statistical analysis of the 7.5 billion of us. in terms of the stats, a person creating enormous wealth for themselves is an anomaly and hardly ever happens. This is one reason why, to me, the 'notion' of 'choices' comes up so often in our present day-dream, and, always, supporting the status quo, and, this is why, to me, it is so interesting as a concept. Do we really have these choices? Really? Is a Gambian at 3 or 33 making choices or are they simply doing what they have to do? Is an Australian from Aurukun or Parramatta really ever making choices? Did people flock to the Grenfell Towers rather than Edinburgh Castle by choice? Do soldiers fight for their country by choice? Really? Or through having no other path? I'd be interested in hearing views on this as 'choices' seems to be one of the more prevalent of our current myths about life on earth. In time it will be replaced by more fitting and believable myths, for sure, but just now it is an interesting one.
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