Posts by Simon Grigg
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Incidentally, I've come to an understanding of why there are always lots of Chinese kids willing to demonstrate in favour of their government........That's broadly how China works.
Having spent the best part of a week here in Guangdong province, Rich, it's certainly not the place I've seen.
The economic miracle here is simply gobsmaking in both its momentum and scope and in the way it seems to be pulling vast swathes of the population with it, at least in this corner of the country which holds about 5% of the population and is admittedly the richest province.
I'm sure there are gaps but it's hard to overstate what I've seen here and I'm pretty sure that there would be little wide enthusiasm for any 'revolution' or such.
The demonstrations and fervour in support of China simply, I would hazard, indicate a fairly broad level of popular support for the road that this country is taking. In this province many people are doing very well and this city has a level of infrastructure and maintenance of that infrastructure that any city I've been to the west can only dream of. It's simply astounding. Today I travelled the from the top of Guangzhou, a city of 12 million, to the bottom on the spotlessly clean subway in about 15 minutes for about 30 cents. Part of our taxi ride back was like The Jetsons as we swerved between tower blocks at about floor level on an elevated roadway which veered off to ground level here and there. That cost about $2. The poverty one sees doesn't come close to NYC or even Redfern or Kings Cross.
I'd say for the average young Chinese person, and they seem to well educated, there seems to be plenty to demonstrate in favour of.
As an aside, I was talking to a young guy at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial and he showed me a picture of Helen Clark on his phone..he'd been looking BBC China on it. The FTA has been very big news at least in this corner of the nation.
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There has been huge internal migration since then, but you're talking about hundreds of millions of people seeking better lives and jobs in the cities. It's a simply incredible problem, and not trying to control migration flows wouldn't work out well.
Agreed, and Indonesia has the same problem..if they were able much of the country would likely uproot and move to Jakarta.
I spent some time last year with a UN population analyst (correct job title unsure) and he was saying that they believed that the population of China is under-counted by some 100-200 million (!), they being the second and third kids, or the female children, and their offspring who simply slipped out of the system and were unregistered in the past two or three decades of population control.
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One went shopping with my mother-in-law and noted that butter and cheese prices for the same New Zealand branded products were substantially higher here than in Singapore.
Not in my experience and I'm in Singapore every few months. Dairy products are rather pricey throughout Asia, apart from that horrible a Australian chocolate milk which seems to be everywhere.
Now Durian is another matter.
Incidentally, this is written from a cyber cafe in Ghangzhou where I'm able to happily access CNN, BBC and pretty much every bit of international news I want.
It worked in the hotel so I thought I'd try in a public area..and here you go.
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Simon, thank god you're here. The McCartney peeps are apparently thin on the ground.
And here was I thinking that his musical reputation had been largely rehabilitated. He usually gets the cool factor nod in all those serious Uk mags these days, and such things are pontificated at length there.
Myself, I'm a fan of lots of bits...McCartney, Ram and the odd single, and then a big big fan of his rather well received (both critically and commercially it seems) more recent albums. What is worth tracking down is the Costello / McCartney bootleg of dueting demos.
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However, McCartney has never produced anything decent since he left the Beatles.
I have a problem with this sentence .....
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I don't know if they will..its just been extended for another six months.
Guess I missed this today.......
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Oh, and if the Mehdi Army ends its ceasefire, which is looking likely, all bets are off.
I don't know if they will..its just been extended for another six months. Certainly that seems to be the biggest factor in the decline in US deaths. The bigger issue here is for Sadr to maintain control.
Much of the decline in Iraqi deaths seems simply to have come from the reality that the ethnic cleansing is largely complete.
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If a Dem president, i.e. Clinton, had invaded Iraq,
But he didn't, James, so your point is irrelevant. Why bother to make these silly political points. 'What about Clinton' is neither here nor there.
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So what is your suggestion Simon? Just walk away and allow genocide, much worse than the carnage to date, to take place? That is the most likely outcome of the implication of your statement. Just sit back and watch a bloodbath taking place and say "not my problem”. How is that the right thing to do?
And how do you know this James? You've been wrong about Iraq in practice and implementation pretty much since day one. Why are we to assume that that you have got it right now. I just don't buy the line that "we have now worked out how to be less than hopeless' especially since it seems that the decline in violence in Iraq in recent months (despite the current upward trend again) seems to have come from factors more outside the control of the US than anything else.
Right now, I think the Iraqis have a substantially better chance of moving ahead without the US than with it.
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Maybe I'm a communist or something, but I don't think Jeremiah Wright's preaching inhabited Crazyville.
Same....the HIV stuff asude, you hear or read more devoid of rationale craziness every day in the NY Post or, for that matter, the average White House press conference.
I'm not sure why confronting the word 'why' is so crazy.