On (24 Mar 95) Bob Lawrence wrote to Keith Richardson...



 BL> Very preceptive, Bill. A duopoly is better than a monopoly,

 BL> even if both are American with no feelings for Australia.



 KR> the americans are not guilty of having no feelings for

 KR> australia, just of being totally unaware of it's existence

 KR> 



 BL>   (grin) I saw Paul Hogan after his trip the America (when he was

 BL> scouting the market for Crocodile Dundee), and in his inimitable style

 BL> he said the same thing.



 BL>   "Jeez, you guys speak good Amurrican..."



 BL>   "We have very good schools in Australia. Even little kids can speak

 BL> English."



 BL> The Asians root us intentionally.



 KR> its not that the asians are out to root *us*, they are out for

 KR> revenge on the white part of the world as a whole.



 BL>   ROFL! That's alright, then. so long as there's nothing personal. I

 BL> thought it was *me* they were after.



well - that too  (:



 KR> its just that we are one of the easier targets. its taken the

 KR> chinese a long time to get revenge for the opium war etc, but

 KR> revenge is all the better for being a long time coming. i'm not

 KR> sure that i blame them after what the british did to malaya,

 KR> and burma, the french did to indochina, the yanks did to

 KR> indochina also, and to japan (and i'm not talking about ww2),

 KR> and everybody did to china.



 BL>   This is all bullshit, keith. The Chinese know less about Australia

 BL> than America. They just do what they do, shaped by their slope-genes

 BL> and their background of killing female babies. I you are happy to

 BL> strangle your own baby, what does it leave for us?



dont you believe it bob, i've been both to china and the us in the last

18 months, and i do not perceive that chinese ignorance of australia to

be any more than yank ignorance. you are letting your emotions show, the

yanks are more like us so they must be better. the chinese may have

killed their female babies at one time, they may even still bind their

feet (but probably not), but the yanks shoot each other for the

flimsiest of reasons, and seek to impose their view of the world on all

sorts of people who dont want it. of course they dont do it by the

unacceptable means of terrorism (at least not directly) but nicely and

cleanly with helicopter gunships, and smart missiles.



 KR> if you think that the yanks consider us to be "one of theirs"

 KR> then you are in for a sad disillusionment



 BL>   Not so. They really do understand oput sense of humour. They like

 BL> us. I had a fascinating insight when I was working for Astec. We were

 BL> dealing with Maytag in Ohio, designing here, manufacturing in Hong

 BL> Kong, and selling to the US. After Maytag had been to Hong Kong and

 BL> got the Chinese runaround, they were ready to toss the whole thing in.



you weren't dealing with the average yank, i spoke to dozens at least,

few knew where australia is, the only australian known to them is

crocodile dundee (not paul hogan) (except for one taxi driver who was

a professional golfer who had heard vaguely that greg norman had once

lived in australia before he became famous), the only towns that anyone

knew were sydney, and alice springs. a charming couple that i spent 13

hours sitting next to on the plane back, were farmers from ohio, on a

fact finding tour. their knowledge of australia was matched by mine of

outer mongolia, they professed no knowledge that the us is subsidising

wheat into our markets, and this is from people interested enough to

come over here. us humour can be judged from their tv shows, anything

more subtle than tom and jerry will go completely over their heads, the

only reason that the social comment in "the simpsons" gets away with it

is that no-one there understands it.



 BL>   It was a strange cultural symbiosis. The yanks thought we were

 BL> funny, and capable. They got nothing out of the Chinese and the

 BL> Pommies made them nervous. We understood the Poms and the yanks, and

 BL> the Pommie bastards could make the Chinese work. We were interpreters.

 BL> As long as they worked through us, everyone was happy.



well, the the poms make half the world nervous, and the rest angry  (:

the poms at least do understand other cultures, they use this knowledge

to exploit them. the yanks dont understand them and seek to replace them

with their own.



 BL>   This is what I meant when I said the yanks consider us "one of

 BL> theirs." We don't seem foreign at all, and neither do they.



oh yes we do, sorry i should say oh yes i do. they found it hard to

accept that i was different from them, the germans, and dutch that i was

with were easier for them to understand as having different ways, after

all they spoke foreign, but for some-one who spoke approximately the

same language to have different thought processes was hard to accept.



 KR> , we were a convenient place for them to beat the japs single

 KR> handed from, a marginally profitable market for some of their

 KR> goods, and a bystander caught in the crossfire of their trade

 KR> wars with the ec.



 BL>   Who cares about WWII? You are right, but it's ancient history.

 BL> More recently, they *intentionally* stole our wheat markets and gave

 BL> us bullshit in bags.



i believe that those who dont understand history are doomed to relive

it. the yanks didn't wish us any more harm than the vietnamese peasants

who were between them and the vc, but we are between them and the ec,

and the minigun is the only weapon that they understand.



 KR> it's still hard yakka on the farm, and in the mines, and

 KR> waiting table for our esteemed foreign guests that keep this

 KR> country in some semblance of being afloat. the rest of us thee

 KR> and me included are merely deckchair arrangers on this titanic

 KR> of ours. 



 BL>   Exactly! But there is no need. We import all the wrong things. We

 BL> should be exporting food and minerals, and importing technology.

 BL> Everything else should be made here, at a loss if necessary. If the

 BL> price of a computer doubles, who gives a shit? They are too cheap

 BL> anyway. Everyone talks of a "global" community and it is
crap. Never

 BL> was, never will be. The big fish eat the little fish, and the tigers

 BL> don't give a shit.



there are all size fish in the ocean, each fills it's niche in the

scheme of things, thats what we need to do - find our niche and fill it

well, see an opportunity  and exploit it.



 BL>   If we are not to go down singing "Nearer my God to thee..." it's

 BL> time we give Asian manufacturing the arse, live within our means no

 BL> matter how much it hurts, and start thinking about what happens when

 BL> we can no longer borrow the money to finance our profligacy. 



the world has gone beyond that, there is not point in whining that the

world is not the place it used to be, and seek to wind back the clock.

if others now do what we used to but better, we'd better find something

that we can do better than them, and fast. you are right though about

the borrowing bit, one day there has to come a reckoning.



                        Keith



... I have a memory, I just forgot where I put it.



--- PPoint 1.88