Back from Chinatown

Three coachees today. The one from Hunan Province (though now Australian) tells me he is the rear end of a Lion Dance. In that guise he is off to Canberra for the torch run next week, to protest the protesters. No, I didn’t “heavy” him about that, except to mention that it was all very odd as the Dalai Lama was for going to Beijing and against violent protest, which he agreed was true.

In passing: one of the frustrations about blogging is that if you raise a topic most readers read that post only, unaware of what you may have said before, or the qualifications you may have explored. Take two from the previous post: Chinese and China and Islam have both had quite a bit of attention here, and earlier/later on Old Lines from a Floating Life — I put it that way as Old Lines covers April 2006 to November 2007, while this blog now includes some earlier entries from the pre-WordPress days back to 2005. I hate having to repeat what I have already said; it’s a problem.

News comment spot — non-ranting…

Well, perhaps…

The great debate on Islam and democracy took place in Sydney last night. Ancient Greece aside –and there the idea was limited to a short time in only a few city states and excluded slaves and women — the idea of democracy, we would do well to remember, is of recent origin, and economic democracy is to this day practically unknown. The boss is still the boss. Nor should Christians congratulate themselves on the democratic tone of their religion; just look at the histories of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, for a start, and even Anglicanism was hardly a great banner-waver on behalf of the Chartists in the 19th century. All that said, the debate would have been an entertaining if frustrating experience.