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The Ugly American revisited
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Posted:Feb 11, 2020 3:20 pm
Last Updated:Mar 8, 2020 6:04 am 64863 Views
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Do you recall or know of the 1958 book 'The Ugly American' written by Lederer and Burdick? Or of the much greater work of fiction 'The Quiet American' by Graham Greene? The two are often connected or confused. The earlier book of Greene presaged the coming Vietnam wars, and the mistakes of America in Asia and throughout the middle east, arguably relevant again it seems to me. Prophetic. The other followed in the wake of McCarthyism and resulted in some lasting diplomatic shift, particularly during the Kennedy era.
It seems now is the time to revisit this theme, since both Ugly American and McCarthyism are in evidence. Donald Trump bashes the drum of American Greatness, of American exceptionalism: uniqueness, transforming the world to the American vision, superiority over all other nations. I am not sure whether he has achieved his goal of 'greatness' but I assure you he has diminished the world view of America as a home of liberty equality openness fairness and social justice. The stock exchange stocks may have increased (despite Donald Trump, not because of him) but the moral and social stocks of the USA have dramatically declined throughout the world.
So Donald Trump is the Ugly American. But in their own small way people like SundayJoke are too. SundayJoke uses the 'honesty' motto, but never practises it, and perhaps we should paraphrase it 'Half-truths are better than bald-lies' yet I think she stoops to bald lies whenever it suits her. She practises the McCarthyism technique of accusation without proof. It does seem that McCarthyism is re-emerging in a large segment of the American society. I fervently hope the liberal elements of USA can regain sway.
Constantino Arias' photo titled Ugly American, showing a late-1940s Batista-era tourist in Havana; I was tempted to photoshop it and paste in the well-known face of the Chinese FriendFinder blogger mentioned here already.
老鬼
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Wuhan Hospital facility and the unthinking criticism published here and elsewhere
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Posted:Feb 11, 2020 12:41 am
Last Updated:Feb 12, 2020 8:11 pm 39243 Views
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The (SARS) hospital in Beijing in 2003 was built in seven days so the construction team is probably attempting to beat that record. Just like the hospital in Beijing, the Wuhan centre will be made out of prefabricated buildings.
Someone was talking here about curing the concrete? Really! Come on Chatillion!
How long does/did it take to construct military hospitals? Why don't people look at this in precisely that way. It is an emergency facility to house, isolate and treat confirmed, infected people. What else do you suggest when there are perhaps 10,000 infected people, many of them with critical respiratory infections, who need to be isolated from others.
SundayJoke claims 'However, one dirty squatted toilet for 2000 sick patients is not enough, so some patients urinate on the floor. ' You are simply absurd to make such a claim, and grossly dishonest! There are portable toilets available everywhere, do you imagine these would not be used in a flash? What was your source for that ridiculous assertion? Another bigot like yourself?
This 2000 bed cabin hospital has no medical treatment. Preposterous. But of course limited resources are certainly overwhelmed. The temporary hospital is built to accommodate suitable medical staff and equipment specific to the illness and the need for protection of staff.
Someone else, not sure who it was, but they will know, says: I think medical science is nonexistent in China. Check the recent Nobel prizes for medicine. See if Artemisinin rings a bell.
How stupid to put all the patients in the same room. As you said, some may have only a cold and now they are guaranteed to contract the disease.
Do you imagine that new an critical cases will all be housed with recovering patients, who certainly constitute 80% or more of the patients. These hospitals have separate isolation wards. I suggest a little thought, analytical thinking would help you avoid spouting such nonsense.
I am not here writing in praise of China, but the mindless biassed unthinking prejudice expressed in so many articles needs thoughtful reply. Not that I have any hope of convincing the sinophobes and haters amongst you. Go and vote Trump! Get what you deserve!
Interestingly, my student in Hankou (twin city of Wuhan) works for WTO - World Toilet Organisation！ 
老鬼
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This is Democracy
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Posted:Feb 8, 2020 5:55 pm
Last Updated:Feb 12, 2020 8:12 pm 38877 Views
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Australia has elected a do-nothing, idealess conservative and reactionary government,
America has elected the crazy Donald Trump, and (shudder) may do so again
Brazil elected the extremist Bolsonaro
The Phil.Islands elected the murderous Duterte
England voted for BREXIT
Hungary elects Orbán yet again
Ukraine elects a comedian Zelensky
Hong Kong 'students' vandalise their city and its economy in the name of democracy
The result (_curse_) of Democracy and the popular vote. The thinking people.
France has its Yellow shirts and now pension reform
Colombia too...
All in the name of Democracy.
Shall I go on?
laogui 老鬼
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Right to freedom of speech = right to libel according to SundayJoke
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Posted:Feb 5, 2020 10:16 pm
Last Updated:Feb 9, 2020 12:36 am 33723 Views
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Someone here is writing claiming the Director General was bribed by China. That's out and out libel. made a decision based on appearance of the infection in other countries. Such evidence was not apparent until that time somewhere around 20+ January. It had nothing to do with China had more or less contained the infection within China prior to that time. acts on behalf of the world, not of China.
Biased, unthinking, one-eyed ignorance by someone should, by self-proclaimed profession, have a modicum of knowledge of epidemiology. The anti-China bias surpasses all logic. This person is indeed a worthy supporter of their demented president.
While we are on the subject, the Hong Kong protesters practise the 'shout louder than anyone else dares to speak about other ideas' of free speech
SundayJoke writes: Chinese Ministry of foreign Affairs officer shameless to admit that CCP has bribed Ghebreyesus . Of course this is corroborated and verified and absolutely true, because SundayJoke tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth; or claims so anyway, even if it is just a version of the truth that serves her one-eyed purpose. An anonymous video, probably Taiwanese, but definitely honest of course. Really?
CCP controls AFF Really? But yet it is banned in China? Get a brain or use it for a change.
Post blogs are my freedom of press, No they are not, you signed an agreement limiting what you could say. And you deny others right of counter reply.
but my comments have been deleted many times nowhere near often enough!
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Receding Ice-age and the Tasman Glacier, doomed to extinction (Part 1)
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Posted:Jan 29, 2020 2:55 am
Last Updated:Feb 20, 2020 2:33 pm 36805 Views
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I went to_ New Zealand in 1965, escaping the Vietnam war 20-year-olds' birthday draft. (Somewhere in a filing cabinet I have a beige coloured _card exempting me, so in a sense the journey had been unnecessary. But there I was, and working in a New Zealand Tourist Bureau hotel, the Hermitage mount Cook, site of New Zealand's tallest and most imposing mountain, and of its longest glacier - the Tasman Glacier. That's what this post is about - the Tasman Glacier.
1966 I was an outside porter, night porter and steward, not yet 21. Night porter had some wonderful aspects after I had finished cleaning shoes placed out in the corridors. Solitude - but more later. Outside porter involved window cleaner and rubbish collector. On the day shifts I collected the bins and kitchen refuse, piled them onto a trailer and drove the Land-Rover down to the rubbish-tip at the foot of the Tasman Glacier. There amongst the rubble and moraine of the glacier, and the screeching of the seagulls daily winging across the mountains from the Tasman sea to await my deliveries, I emptied the bins. There too I learnt the challenge of backing a trailer into mud and offal and black snow. Sometimes too the cleaning the grease pits, no pleasure at all.
In 2005 I returned as a tourist, to the exact same_ place. Well no, not the same_ place at all. What had been the rubbish dump was now a large lake, and the glacier previously a towering wall of ice oh perhaps 50m tall had receded some 6 or 7 kilometres up the valley. ...
From the 1970s to the 1990s, small glacial lakes began to form at the terminus of the big glaciers. These lakes increase ice loss as ice at the front of the glacier calves (breaks off) into them. Many glaciers – such as the Tasman and Murchison Glaciers – are losing ice as their lakes grow.
老鬼
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YAAFFB (yet another aff bug)
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Posted:Dec 16, 2019 5:30 am
Last Updated:Dec 28, 2019 6:25 pm 28585 Views
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This one has been around for a while - you cannot edit your blog settings; well you can but it is a pointless exercise. Consequently My Blog always remains My Blog
Edit Your Blog Settings
Please correct the following errors:
Updating has failed.
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Abusive Bloggers. Ranting bloggers. Bigotry run riot.
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Posted:Dec 9, 2019 5:36 am
Last Updated:Jan 25, 2020 4:15 am 32004 Views
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Well there's only one here actually. You know wh0 I mean. I mentioned SundayJoke in my 'What is bigotry thread'. This is a vulgar loudmouthed person wh0 deals 0ut words of abuse at anyone wh0 questions their one-eyed ill-informed views of history and the world. This is an ugly person in the extreme. By ugly I refer to their words and manners, not their appearance. In appearance they have no choice, yet the words are deliberately selected.
The scream photo homage to the one-eyed dedication of SundayJoke - never let facts interfere with bias
So I ask questions of anyone wh0 listens and thinks but this of course gets labelled as a commie:
You are a slave to communist China. Shame on you!!! You know nothing. How much did China you to be their slave?
I h*te communist. You are an Aussie but a communist. Shame on you!! St*pid.
Another person wh0 dared question her:
You are st*pid A-hole, you think k*lling is right, massacre, carnage are good government??
So, very st*pid. You are a moron.
You will be blocked from my blog as soon as I finish typing.
One person foolish enough to write to SundayJoke, since she has on a friendship site then had his private conversation published. What happened to privacy, is this person unaware of human decency. He wrote to her, she published his words and announces she declines him, he is unsuitable and is blocked, and now banned from her blog. It's funny really, but I'd be annoyed by someone like this trying to humiliate me in public, wouldn't you?
Then there is her abuse of a Chinese speaker wh0 used Chinese. SundayJoke in B1/B2 level English then berated her and called her a moron for doing so. 39.5 years in USA and she still writes English with IELTS 5.5-6 grammar, whilst scolding other ESL people for using their native language. She wrote a blog about a Chinese woman in USA wh0 dared to speak to her in Chinese
You are such a moron. 如果哪天有人进你家...you are such a moron. These thing only happened in China. Shame on you!! You even don't know what is right, what is wrong. St*pid.
Work in progress...
When I mentioned to her that she argues LIKE Donald Trump, by ignoring the facts and attacking the person, it seems she interpreted this to mean SHE LIKES DONALD TRUMP
You are ridiculous. I have repeatedly said I don't like Trump, I am a Democrat, Trump is a Republican. This is the last chance for you to comment on my blogs. You are not welcome here. Good-bye.
Haha another blogger bites the dust!  It must be a long list by now. The fact is she does act exactly like Donald, ignore the facts, attack the person. The Latin phrase for such argument is 'to argue ad hominem' argue to the man, not to the facts.
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Thanks to Clive James for a life of fine words and fine wit
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Posted:Nov 28, 2019 10:11 pm
Last Updated:Nov 29, 2019 3:21 pm 25651 Views
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In Memoriam
A long illness as it turned 0ut almost 9 years an unexpected gift t0 us; 9 years during which he continued t0 write and perhaps outlasted the Japanese maple of which he wrote and which he expected t0 see ablaze with autumn colour but 0ne more time. ABC radio have published an illustrated reading by Clive himself, where we hear his thoughtful crafted and moving dying poem in his dying breaths
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