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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 86 to 110 of 135. Go back in thread:
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 20:38:25
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by alexandra_k on August 6, 2018, at 6:30:41
> I don't know anything about any of this...
I might know 2% :)
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 21:16:16
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2018, at 20:01:53
I know this post is from a ways back in the conversation, but, or so, economic hardship in AU is filtering onto my radar. I hadn't realized there was as much economic difficulty for many people. Is there actual homelessness? Forgive my ignorance.
> > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/03/fiona-the-underemployed-bettong-v-malcolm-goldplated-trufflecustard-turnbull
>
> I shuddered a lot at this one.
>
> Because (if Australia is anything like NZ) there are a lot of phoney jobs out there. I mean, there are things they call 'jobs' but you need to purchase a uniform (and / or pay for the uniform to be laundered) and you need to pay for parking in the vicinity etc... Such that the hourly rate you earn is actually less then the costs involved in taking the job.
>
> I used to believe that they wouldn't make you do anything like that if you were a genuine person...
>
> But my more recent experience of things in Dunedin, particularly, leads me to believe that actually, yes, that is precisely the sort of things that some people would do.
>
> Stanford Prison Guard experiment-style. Or Nazi electrocution experiment-style.
>
> There are people who are forced to work at these job agencies. Who have quotas on how many people they need to give those awful 'jobs' to. If they don't send people to those awful jobs - then they will be next. They will be sent off to one of those awful jobs instead...
>
> These actually are the sorts of pressures some people are operating under.
>
> And it would be nice to think that these people must be fundamentally base, or something, to be treated, so.
>
> But my recent experience of things in Australia and New Zealand... And that's simply not so.
>
> And I think 'who would make all of these people do these awful things? and why?' Because there really is enough for everyones need...
>
> And I think it is about human depravity. The urges... Needs... Some people have in genuinely sadistic directions.
>
> Something about how not everyone can grow up with self-esteem. Who would dance in our strip clubs? And what would the point of a high speed internet connection be if there wasn't so much porn?
>
> People want things... And there need to be people who will do fairly much anything for money. There needs to be something that will incentive things... There need to be incentive structures. Not for meaningful work... But precisely for things that aren't meaningful work at all. The real value of it... You have to keep self esteem pretty low, indeed, because it's hard to overestimate just how sick so many people really very genuinely are...
>
>
>
>
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 21:28:52
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:12:14
> >The MEK sounds interesting.
>
> Too much more mention of them and the MSM may have to mention the Iran - Iraq War.Good lord! There is a limit to what I can read or catch up on. Sigh. I'm very much ignorant of Middle Eastern politics.
What surprise me was learning in a podcast that Trump had private business dealings with Iranian Revolutionary Guard before and during the election despite national sanctions. Here's a short article.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-iran-business-ties-trump-didnt-disclose
Posted by sigismund on August 8, 2018, at 22:27:36
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » alexandra_k, posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 21:16:16
When the land had been recently stolen and the stealing had been explained away and forgotten yet the land remained in quantity, we were fine. As were all settler societies. The limits bumped up against corresponded with neoliberalism, therefore no public housing.
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 22:37:05
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on August 8, 2018, at 22:27:36
> When the land had been recently stolen and the stealing had been explained away and forgotten yet the land remained in quantity, we were fine. As were all settler societies. The limits bumped up against corresponded with neoliberalism, therefore no public housing.
>
>That happened here too :(
Posted by sigismund on August 10, 2018, at 0:31:43
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 22:37:05
Posted by alexandra_k on August 10, 2018, at 22:53:54
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on August 10, 2018, at 0:31:43
so true.
we are having troubles over here.
it's become very fashionable to go 'that's racist' as a way of shutting down... anything that calls into question the present (racist) status quo.i once said to the speaker after a seminar that Maaori seemed to be doing better in Australia and so perhaps we should look into that since this country seems to be so very toxic for them...
and apparently that was racist.
Don Brash said that funding (for public health and education) should be based on 'need not on race'. he was opposed to this capitated funding model where schools or clinics got more money for having more Maaori (as opposed to poor, for example) kids enrolled.
apparently this is racist because it fails to acknowledge the burden of being maaori - which is over and above the burden of being poor.
and of course it would be racist if health insurance companies didn't charge higher premiums on health insuring Maaori. i mean... if you are talking about distributing the risk of being maaori in a way that's non-racist you need to have some version of capitation - right?
the whole thing makes no sense.
I have been reading about the Tuskagee study which observed African Americans natural Syphilis progression in the name of 'free healthcare'. Something something about how hospitals for poor people make poor hospitals.
I think about how we enrol people (Pacific Islanders, preferentially) in clinics in the name of 'cheap healthcare' in order to observe the natural progression of their rheumatic fever (without antibiotics), faulty heart valves, heart failure.
and so on... so very many cases of it. the miniorities and poor people bearing the brunt of... rich people's stupid kids going gung ho (because their own people won't let them anywhere near them).
I joined this clinic and it looked legit. A non-church alternative that was friendly for Maaori and poor people...
Only now the former dean of med admissions turns out to have a lot to do with it. He got a bunch of extra money, you see, for enrolling however many Maaori patients.
I think of the forms I've been asked to fill out in virtue of enrolling in there... Most of them don't have anything to do with my healthcare. It's just data collecting... Data collecting... In the name of cheap healthcare...
pressure for cervical smears and so on and do forth screenign programs.. collecting blood and biopsy samples to oberve...
For the good of???
Are any of these people given treatment (as opposed to being randomised into groups)?
Do any of these people ever give informed consent (or are they told they can take what they are offered -- or leave it)?
NZ doesn't have a health system.
Just a bunch of psychopathic bullies.
Sigh.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 10, 2018, at 23:03:21
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on August 10, 2018, at 22:53:54
i can't decide if the biggest threat to us is from within, or without.
i was worried, before, about our computer software being largely foreign. all the health administration records. all the administration records around patients and problems and prescriptions. all the administration records around financial details for start-up companies (so they can be undermined swiftly so they never become genuine alternatives / competitors).
i was thinking it was a way of foreign interests keeping us down and kicked back.
but not i'm starting to think actually the biggest threat is closer to home. seeing some of the new zealand developed software and it's just awful. you have decision tree structures that prevent you filling in the forms honestly (and if you are found to lie you null and void whatever it is you have applied for). ones that will not progress until they judge you have filled out fields correctly. basically forms where you can't say what you want or what you need or what you are looking for...
i do feel i need to be a refugee from nz. nz will not give me the things i need in order to have a life i consider worth living. it never has done so. i see why i've felt so much guilt and shame throughout my life. i've been targeted precisely because i was easy to control in that way.
i'm fed up with the nasty. the incompetent / psychopathic who have been given positions of power... the ones who saw fit to give them power.
i read the newspaper and people seem incapable of... what i know with my own experience sufficiently mature 16 year olds are capable of... basic empathy and ethics...
i know people are laughing themselves all the way to the bank. managers and executives and chairpeople and the like...
i don't understand what they do. except take most of the resources for themselves.
if you can't get sufficiently away from them...
i see that's why they keep the prisons full. so there is no room for them... the true criminals.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 10, 2018, at 23:12:28
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on August 10, 2018, at 22:53:54
protests at university. students not letting people speak because of some outcry that the speaker is racist.
not in a hate speech against anyone who is not aryan...
i mean...
in upsidedown and backtofront land...
when someone expressed concerns about a treaty grievance industry that genuinely was getting to the point of first born son of tribal chief says give us xxx amount of dollars to lift the mythical monster ban on the site before you can build here obstruction to development...
when someone expressed concerns about that...
concerns about the idea of capitation (which puts a dollar figure on the burden of being Maaori)...
where these ideas are written off as 'racist' without any attempt, at all, to understand the points of concern.
what people simply will not acknowledge is that Maaori are people, too. people with human rights, I mean.
I think the law thing he said wasn't quite fair because the job of the lawyers is to press the judges by bring forth tricky cases (well, i don't think we quite say it like that)... But the job of the judges was to make wise rulings. to have sensible things to say about where we should draw the line on fair payment vs extortion and on acknowledging and respecting spiritual beleifs vs being held hostage to what chiefs say spiritual beliefs are in a way that is expedient for them with little other basis...
But we can't discuss these things like intelligent people when the level of dialogue is 'that's racist!' and name calling and yelling and not letting people speak...
thats the point of things like fetal alcohol effects (which we don't believe in - it's 'normal') and so on...
keep the people stupid...
universities are just... not even what high schools used to be.
horrible... horrible... horrible...
bass thumping for quite a lot of today. doesn't bother other people, apparently.
thinking of how many millions of dollars i need to live in a suburb where people are just bothered by it and where it doesn't happen / where it gets shut down quickly if it does.
i didn't ask to be born.
Posted by sigismund on August 11, 2018, at 1:59:35
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by alexandra_k on August 10, 2018, at 23:12:28
>i didn't ask to be born.
Maybe that is what Eliot meant?
'Let us go then, you and I'.
No. I liked what Frieda Kahlo said in the movie, 'I hope when I die it will be joyful, and I hope I don't come back'.
Posted by beckett2 on August 12, 2018, at 0:46:00
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on August 11, 2018, at 1:59:35
I feel overwhelmed and pessimistic. The past few days were hazy from fires to the north. There are fires to the south, but currents keep that smoke southeast.
A judge ordered a flight to be turned midair and return a woman and child who were being deported before their asylum hearing was finished. Their premature deportation was illegal. The judge threatened Jeff Sessions (the attorney general) with contempt if the pair were not returned immediately. There is worse happening as well. Our admin has said human rights will not be an obstacle to our ends.
Earlier, I know I said the AU was smart to be careful of it's borders. Please forgive me. I just can't imagine where everyone, including my family, will go. The Guardian showed men in Shanghai sleeping on the streets because it's too hot in their apartments. I think about this every day, how the most people can be made as comfortable as possible.
There must be climate issues driving refugees in addition to the nightmarish crime, from Central America.
Our cool nights make sleep comfortable. I can't imagine unrelenting heat.
Posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 14:25:07
In reply to born, never asked, posted by beckett2 on August 12, 2018, at 0:46:00
I don't watch TV anymore or read daily papers, so it was not quite apparent, until I looked into it, that the first dog cartoon was simply what was in the news. They are all real places and people and events.
Well, we ain't seen nothin yet, especially with the politics of it all. I'm quite certain how that will go, well, perhaps not quite, every so often a combination of circumstances and personalities (FDR?) can break a vicious circle. And if the next generation ever understands the wicked frivolity of it all? Revenge being the engine of politics? Like my surgeon (no socialist) said to me when I looked at his family photos 'They won't put photos of us up, they'll be using ours for dart practice'.
There was a discouraging climate thing on TRNN where Michael Mann (I think) was talking about how the humidity and heat may make the area between Beijing and Shanghai unliveable, not to speak of food production. It is to be expected and almost amusing that our governments use this either as a wedge issue somehow, or as, more boldly with yours, as a justification for more institutional vandalism. Our worst was the exPM, Abbott, the one who gave a knighthood to Prince Phillip, who wants to use government money to open new coal mines so we can burn it a loss to generate electricity. And help the poor people, the children in India! So he can win a culture war? That is Murdoch's specialty. Trump is bolder than that. But what happens when we need the government knowledge that has been destroyed? There is a method in it somewhere. I suppose with Trump it is like his bankruptcies.......in the chaos he escapes unscathed. There is a lot of misdirection in this.
Ohh, what is behind that curtain? Yes.
Posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 14:34:18
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 14:25:07
Una vez mas..........
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 15:05:51
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 14:34:18
Imagine if you had been Russian.
Posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 15:35:25
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 15:05:51
Well, I suppose this is it.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-useful-idiocy-of-donald-trump/
Posted by beckett2 on August 13, 2018, at 17:41:15
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 14:25:07
Useful idiot indeed.
I've been eyeing Canada. Yesterday, the Guardian discussed a constitutional congress being pushed by conservatives.
There isn't place that will be untouched, however, I despair being tethered on a ball and chain to a substantial group of citizens and businessmen. My folly thinking the US was different in this respect. I like countries that don't have as much power to fight over.
Relocating at my age with a dependent child seems impossible. And heartbreaking under the circumstances.
Posted by beckett2 on August 13, 2018, at 18:46:12
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2018, at 14:25:07
An ex-republican operative referred to Newt Gingrich as the 'Typhoid Mary' of the current diseased party.
Posted by sigismund on August 13, 2018, at 22:04:17
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by beckett2 on August 13, 2018, at 17:41:15
> I like countries that don't have as much power to fight over.
NZ, AFAIK, does not have a coal industry, and therefore seems not to have the think tanks (more than familiar to you) such as the Institute of Public Affairs. They have lost the argument but........you know the words?
Their last retreat is moving slow
They burn their bridges as they go
Posted by sigismund on August 13, 2018, at 22:07:49
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by beckett2 on August 13, 2018, at 18:46:12
Was he the one who sacked his wife by email? One loses track of which wife was sacked for having cancer, being too old, being in the way, not dying quickly enough.
How come the right got to own family values? They are more shameless, isn't that it?
Posted by alexandra_k on August 14, 2018, at 6:48:51
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on August 11, 2018, at 1:59:35
> >i didn't ask to be born.
> Maybe that is what Eliot meant?
> 'Let us go then, you and I'.
Oh, my, I haven't heard that in a while. I used to know... Most of it.
With the ... evening(?) spread out against the sky
Like a patient anesthetised upon a table....
Let us go through certain half deserted streets
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights
In one night cheap hotels
With sawdust on the floors and oyster shells....
And something about mermaids underneath the sea...
(That always got me thinking of 'not waving but drowning' by Stevie Smith
...
And a disconnect of meaning.
What made you think of it, I wonder.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 14, 2018, at 7:02:19
In reply to born, never asked, posted by beckett2 on August 12, 2018, at 0:46:00
> A judge ordered a flight to be turned midair and return a woman and child who were being deported before their asylum hearing was finished. Their premature deportation was illegal. The judge threatened Jeff Sessions (the attorney general) with contempt if the pair were not returned immediately.
At least there was a judge who ordered it.
We were supposed to have judges to make wise rulings, too. I don't think our laws have developed in that way, though.
> Earlier, I know I said the AU was smart to be careful of it's borders. Please forgive me. I just can't imagine where everyone, including my family, will go. The Guardian showed men in Shanghai sleeping on the streets because it's too hot in their apartments. I think about this every day, how the most people can be made as comfortable as possible.
Yeah. It turns out people can adapt pretty well to working in the cold. But not so well to heat. Athletes adapt to cold. They don't adapt to heat, though, their body proteins just cook at the temperature they cook at, and nothing much can be done about that. Global warming... Sweat shops etc...
I went to a seminar where this group was trying to help get air conditioning installed into sweat shops in vietnam or... I don't remember where, honestly. The people running the sweat shops were all about 'we can't afford it'. But turns out there was a bunch of things they could do to improve conditions for their workers at little to no cost to themselves. For example, they could paint the roof white instead of black, and so on.
But they... WOuldn't. Didn't want to. Seemed to resent being told what to do, or whatever. Even when offered free air conditioning for one of the two buildings they turned it down. Apparently that 'wouldn't have been fair to the other workers'.
People... Like to oppress others. Some of them. Get a genuine kick out of it, or whatever.
And, what are you gonna do?
MOst people just running scared, I think. Just so much awful...
I don't know that having nothing to protect or defend or whatever brings out the best in people, at all.
NZ is a destination for people to retire to... Come here and they own the town with their American Dollars etc - right? How much do you think it costs to buy a NZ election?
That's what drives the prices up, I suppose.
Posted by sigismund on August 14, 2018, at 14:37:26
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on August 14, 2018, at 6:48:51
Alex, I did have an inkling at the time, but it has gone now.
I always liked this.......
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the beds edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
Posted by sigismund on August 14, 2018, at 14:39:25
In reply to Re: born, never asked » beckett2, posted by alexandra_k on August 14, 2018, at 7:02:19
>People... Like to oppress others. Some of them. Get a genuine kick out of it, or whatever.
Oh sh*t yeah. 10/10.
Posted by sigismund on August 14, 2018, at 15:12:53
In reply to Re: born, never asked » alexandra_k, posted by sigismund on August 14, 2018, at 14:39:25
Why, for example, do we and our brave allies in the war against terror need to cause cholera outbreaks here?
Envy?
Posted by alexandra_k on August 15, 2018, at 3:18:25
In reply to Re: born, never asked, posted by sigismund on August 14, 2018, at 15:12:53
cholera is usually about human or animal sh*t contaminating drinking water.
because you have an explosion in population (e.g., urbanisation) or because of disruption to the sewerage system, or something like that.
i read a paper fairly recently about some or other disease that was more exotic. one of the 'tropical diseases' that rich American med student tourists or whatever want to go do 'helping you' stuff to get to see... and turns out most of that exotic sh*t spreads much the same way all the other sh*t does... literally... sh*t contaminating the drinking water. because people in Fiji, etc don't have flush toilets / sewerage system. It goes to a drum, or whatever, and the drum corrodes, and the contents leak. The contents leak into the fields that are being farmed for lettuce, or whatever.
There is a lot we can do...
Those plastic f*ck*ng drums that will be here a million years from now they won't have biodegraded at all (or similar). Make pretty great drinking water containers in these tropical countries where rainfall really isn't a limiting problem...
Biodegradable / compostable toilets. Don't ask me... Ask an engineer. Sigh.
There's a lot that could be done.
But people prefer to keep their minions weak and sick... Yeah.
They mostly do.
Those who devote their lives to getting in there and taking what they can get and the pursuit of power.
I mean...
If you see power as desirable because you can take more things in virtue of it... YOu are likely to really get in there and fight for it.
If you see power as undesirable because you have a responsibility to take less things in virtue of it. You have duty of care to others, now. You are less likely to really get in there and fight for it.
It's just a process of realising the best of options... The best of a bad bunch, or whatever.
There aren't many good leaders. Good leaders are reluctant leaders. And there is no shortage of psychopaths fighting tooth and claw to be in charge.
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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
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