Enjoy
"After a dinner of Peking duck, I'll sign anything." — US diplomat Henry Kissinger in Beijing in 1972, "late at night after a banquet of Peking duck and powerful mao tai liquor", according to a long-secret RAND Corporation study of how the Chinese out-negotiated US officials.
Overvalued
"Politicians are two bob a dozen" — NSW ALP MLC Johno Johnson.
No contest
"I've done more for women in this party than anybody else." — Johno Johnson.
Core value
The June 16 Far Eastern Economic Review carries a background report on the Philippine government's unsuccessful attempt, under Indonesian pressure, to block the Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor held recently in Manila. It quotes President Ramos's security adviser, Jose Almonte, as saying the first Indonesian approaches were made in October. "They asked us to scrap the meeting, but we told them we can't do that because it would go against our core democratic value, which is freedom of expression."
A few of us, anyway
"There's a lot of people out there working hard for a lot less amounts of money." — Gary Pemberton, president of the Sydney Olympic organising committee, expressing nervousness at the suggestion that a chief executive of the organisation might need to be paid $1 million a year.
It's not gardening
According to the US magazine Financial World, the world's best-paid executive last year was US hedge fund manager George Soros. (A hedge fund is a form of gambling on currency movements.) Soros got US$1.1 billion — more than the GDP of 42 United Nations member countries.