The keyboard is mightier than the machine gun... The political, philosophical and general outpourings of a troubled soul living in Australia and blogging his Vietnam veteran's head off.
Nothing in this blog can be believed. If you think that anything in this blog is true or factual, you'll need to verify it from another source. Do you understand? No? Then read it again, and repeat this process, until you understand that you cannot sue me for anything you read here. Also, having been sucked into taking part in the mass-murder of more than 3 million Vietnamese people on behalf of U.S. Big Business "interests", I'm as mad as a cut snake (and broke) so it might be a bit silly to try to sue me anyway...
posted by The Editor at
8:05 PM
The counter shown below displays the number of Israeli military personnel refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. I applaud their integrity and their strength of character. To me they are heroes of peace and humanity.
6 Comments:
From the Canberra Times 8/10/2011:
Australian diggers are being used as "blood sacrifices" to pay for the American alliance, a Canberra academic has said.
Michael McKinley, of the Australian National University's Department of Political Science and International Relations, said Australia's presence in Afghanistan had "nothing to do with that country's security and everything to do with our own".
The 29 lives lost to date could be considered a downpayment on the American lives that would be lost if that country had to come to Australia's defence in the future, he said.
Dr McKinley said the transaction, often buried beneath the rhetoric of nation building, was obscene and immoral.
He might be right, but he didn't offer an alternative. The ADF is manifestly inadequate to fend off an attack by a world power, or even a second-rate power.
Is there an alternative to ANZUS?
Who said we need an alternative to ANZUS?
What we need is to wake up to some facts.
Fact 1: The US will only defend us whilst it is in their strategic and/or economic interests to do so. Therefore they are not a true friend but merely an exploiter happy to exploit us for all we're worth.
Fact 2: New Zealand has defied the US since 1984 by:
(a) Not allowing US nuclear warships into its ports.
(b) Only sending a small token reconstruction team of 150 soldiers to Afghanistan.
(c) Only sending a small team of army engineers to Iraq and withdrawing them in 2004.
No-one has invaded New Zealand, or punished it economically, for defying the US.
Fact 3: Indonesia is about the only country even remotely posing a threat to Australia (and I don't think it does pose a threat), and since Indonesia is both oil and gas rich, and these are commodities the US will kill to get access to, I doubt they'd stand in the way if Indonesia did decide to annex us.
Fact 4: China understands that economics is a far better way to achieve its goals. Its military is only being cranked up because of the US's continuing military ambitions.
We don't need ANZUS. It's turned us into a vassal state of the US. It feeds old white supremacist Anglo-Saxon racism. We're gutless xenophobes whose identity is still tied to that racism, and we therefore fear the very concept of standing alone without some white Anglo_Saxon nanny superpower to hide behind. We will never mature as a nation with such warped attitudes.
Your 'Fact 1' isn't a fact at all. It isn't even a factoid. It's a speculation about future events. Hopefully we never find out whether it is a correct prediction.
Your 'Fact 2': New Zealand is being hyocritical. They're refusing to help the Americans much, but they haven't repudiated ANZUS (just in case). Serve them right if, when the Klingons invade, the Americans send a token submarine to 'observe'.
Your 'Fact 3': concur. There is presently no remotely credible military threat in our immediate neighbourhood.
Your 'Fact 4': this isn't a fact at all. It's speculation. Furthermore, history tells us that nations which build up large armies invariably use them.
That aside, I agree with everything you said in your last paragraph. I would like to think that we could contemplate repudiating ANZUS and adopting a position of suitably armed neutrality similar to that of Sweden.
If it walks like a fact, talks like fact, looks like a fact... ;-)
I would love us have the guts to take a neutrality stand. But that would mean refusing to take sides.
We're just too close to the Yank/Brit Anglo-Saxon White Supremacist axis of evil to ever think of not taking sides.
We're still so immature that we can't conceive the idea of letting go of the apron strings...
Goodness me, all this debate but not one mention yet of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Follow the $$$...
cheers y'all
Yep, Phil, It's always about $$$ at the end of the day. It's what the US Empire and the Anglo/Aust lapdog thing is all about. But an empire needs to throw plenty of muscle around or its vassals start to dream of independence...
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