Posts by Bob Munro
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Roger Ebert, battling with cancer and now laid up with a broken hip humanises the Clintons with his musings on what the movie would be like as they contemplate the end of the line
Hillary and Bill are both intelligent, experienced political creatures. They've both been running for something since grade school. They are fueled by the desire for high office and public recognition, but fueled also by the process itself. They're good at it. Considering their apparent depression on Tuesday night I realized that, yes, as late as that, they really did still think Hillary could win, even after the CNN "panels" were running out of ways to say farewell. They believed it right up to the end, because they had to, they needed to, in order to keep on running at all.
Yet there must have been private moments of despair. The two realists, as able as anyone to read the trends, must have spoken privately about their shrinking options. And on Tuesday night, as Hillary's double-digit lead in Indiana dwindled to very small single digits, there must have come a time when one of them said, "We've lost this thing."
What were those moments like? What kept them going between themselves? Did they encourage one another, or was there an unspoken pact not to voice the unspeakable? Was there blame when Bill had one of his unwise moments? Did their shared past, of success and scandal, enter into it, or were they absorbed in this moment?
In answering those questions, there you would find the movie. It would be more introspective than audiences would probably prefer, and less sensational. Smarter, too. There would be a limited budget, because you wouldn't need a stadium filled with thousands of people so much as you'd need lots of lonely hotel rooms after midnight. The climaxes would come as one old comrade after another abandoned them for the Obama camp. There would be a desperate, clinging love that had survived all the years, because it was based on shared experience and memories and goals, not so much any longer on passion.
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Live feed here.
The filming is probably from microwave cameras on the helmets of presumably the Tibetans (the only guys who will be able to multi task above 8000m.)
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And of course 24 of these Tibetan locals make up the 36 strong party taking the Olympic flame to the summit in the live broadcast that is about to begin. Carrying the loads and laying the trail just as they have done for the nationalist ambitions of various countries since 1921 including ’loyal little New Zealand".
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From page 4
Given that most Chinese can't watch CNN and BBC World,
From recent experience, and per the web links I posted elsewhere, this simply isn't true anymore. The data both in the hotels, and in the publicly available information is nowhere as censored as we in the west are led to believe.
Chinese authorities do seem to be making concerted online attempts to disrupt critical expression. Explorers Web reports in some detail about it’s recent experience
To be honest I’ve wished to do a bit of spamming on this website myself as it takes a holier than thou view on a lot of things including regular denigration of New Zealander Russell Brice who is largely responsible for the development of mountain guiding on the northern (Tibet) side of Mt Everest and the employment of large numbers of locals there.
Nevertheless they do highlight what seems to be fairly determined efforts to interfere with them.
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Thanks for all this Seamus. I hope Russell is putting a little bit of the translation work your way?
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Just briefly, I'd like to consider the different tack taken in Autonomous Inner Mongolia. Rather than try to Han-norm the place, the Chinese seem to have deliberately played to the Mongolian identity, paying for the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan
Yes I was wondering about that too. But I see that 80% of the population is Han Chinese with only 17% Mongol so maybe that explains it. There is no longer an ethnic majority to suppress?
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One of the locomotives currently in service was commissioned in ... 1951.
As was Graham Reid I believe. He seems to be still ticking over pretty well.
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(I hope those much promised electricity blackouts haven't started by the time I get back. But if we don't have them -- won't you be just a teensy bit disappointed after all the advance publicity?)
Here’s the New Zealand daily hydro lake storage graph so we can decide ourselves how many candles we might need.
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And what are people with Tibetan friends meant to do?
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Bob, I'd also thoroughly recommend Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones which I'm finishing at the moment.
Thanks Jolisa. Up to chapter 3. Completely absorbed already. It's like a good novel, richly detailed and slowly unfolding, but heading to knows where?