A Controversial Little Comment

[Dagabond]

And a hell of a lot more to do with the Al Gore road show and him blowing his own trumpet than the climate crisis....

Had a link in my sig after looking at the site and reading a lot about it......then I watched the film.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Yup I got suckered by the flash....

It does have its merits but could do without Gore bleating about himself all the way through it.

[phantomchic]

time australia cleaned up its own back yard

increase the population --- pfft this country can't look after its aged and youth as it is.

remove religion - you can't rewrite history.

republic and new flag -

nukes - that's a negative

bring on conscription - improve oz's position to protect itself and get the unemployed doing something productive

have a nice day

shaz

[Blonk]

  Dagabond said:

And a hell of a lot more to do with the Al Gore road show and him blowing his own trumpet than the climate crisis....

Had a link in my sig after looking at the site and reading a lot about it......then I watched the film.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Yup I got suckered by the flash....

It does have its merits but could do without Gore bleating about himself all the way through it.

←

Agreed.... But he was actually voted to be the the american president and I can understand he is dirty..

Wonder how world events would be now if he took his rightful position..

I never bothered going to the website... But before veiwing that I thought global warming was a crock of crap... Have a different opinion now..

[cobrav8]

  TurboDewd said:

In 1975 five Aussie journos were killed by the Indonesians when they invaded East Timor.  East Timor was a tiny nation that posed zero threat to Indonesia and during WWII the East Timorese were our allies, they helped us fight the Japs.

blah.blah,blah

but masters of the sporting one - we can be both. 

←

Not sure about all that - but I like your avatar!

[Rob (F6)]

OK, my contribution: Having lived in England, the USA and Australia, it is a privilege to be allowed to live in Australia, and I look forward to earning the right becoming a citizen.

The USA has it's faults, particularly with international politics, and excessive self interest. However, it is the primary power defending the western culture.

Have a think about what the minority Islamic fundamentalists are trying to achieve, both here and internationally. This is not a situation where we can pretend that it isn't happening, or that it will go away. The current efforts may or may not work, but 'let's hope they will leave us alone' is a suicidal attitude when faced with an enemy that is actively working to destroy our way of life.

Australia's policitians have a primary duty of care to ensure that its citizens are kept safe from internal and external threats. Personally, I think Mr Howard has done a good job, and that Canada and New Zealand should be ashamed of themselves. Leaving the problems to someone else, and sniping at their efforts is not the moral high ground, and whilst North Vietnam and quite possibly Iraq are failures, WWII showed very clearly how much of a disaster appeasement was and is.

[TurboDewd]

  Rob (F6) said:

...Personally, I think Mr Howard has done a good job, and that Canada and New Zealand should be ashamed of themselves.  Leaving the problems to someone else, and sniping at their efforts is not the moral high ground, and whilst North Vietnam and quite possibly Iraq are failures, WWII showed very clearly how much of a disaster appeasement was and is.

←

Howard did what any Australian PM would have done, follow the US lead. I'm not US-bashing per se, just remarking that what Howard did is unremarkable.

Canada ashamed of what???

Not invading a country to exercise control over oil (Iraq)?

In case you didnt notice, the big countries on the planet manipulate the little ones all the time for their benefit. that's why Saddam was liked by the West until he got too big and the US decided to take him down several notches in 1991.

The world is like a giant boardgame of Risk.

Edited 03/02/07 05:00 AM by TurboDewd

[Telionis]

Sorry for reviving an ancient thread... though you'd like a yankee's perspective (though actually here in VA, "yankee" is quite a dirty word, they're still ticked off about the civil war).

  ZAP_F6 said:

George W should be impeached and jailed for crimes against inteligence and common sence

The USA are self appointed holy crusaders with a hidden agenda and a lot to answer for.

George Bush should be jailed for much more than just that. He's caused more damage to the US than Osama could have with half-a-dozen Soviet nukes. Worse than that, half (almost exactly half) of America still doesn't realize that.

If we have a hidden agenda, it's hidden from the population also. I've very often wondered what the f-ck Bush was thinking attacking Iraq? There is no justification.

People say, "

Saddam was an evil bastard.

" True, but there are many more evil regims in the world, and many nations in more need of outside help. Look at Congo, Liberia, Sudan, all of them are in chaos, genocide is rampant and ongoing. While Saddam was a bastard, he was certianly not the worst. Yes, he killed 1500 Kurds 25 years ago, but at the time, we were well aware of it and turned a blind eye (so wrong of us, bad Reagan),

now

we decide to do something? At the same time, the Sudanese government is supplying militias with machetes and telling them to go murder all the blacks. Well, the way we roll,

I

guess in 25 years they'll be in serious trouble. -

So that can't be the reason

.

People say, "

Saddam didn't disarm and we had to disarm him.

" Well, while Saddam

may

have been playing with bio/chem weapons (as if everyone else in the area wasn't doing so already) – but North Korea 100% was building nuclear weapons. So how can we say, we must disarm Saddam, when more dangerous regimes, ones that have actually threatened us like North Korea (

which said it would purposly seek out and supply terrorists with nukes if we harassed them

), are building much more dangerous weapons. Furthermore, if we're so interested in disarming the world and enforcing nuclear non-proliferation, what were we doing while India and Pakistan were building bombs? Pakistan's A.Q. Khan is known to have supplied nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran and was in a process of selling materials to Al Qaeda when he was stopped. Yet we're still buddies with Pakistan, and instead invaded Iraq, because Saddam may have some unstable Sarin gas... -

So that can't be the reason

.

People say "

we invaded to remove a terrorist haven

" - but those people are just retarded. Nobody actually believes that Saddam had any connection with Osama (though at first Bush really tried to play it that way and fooled 75% of the US). As far as we know, Osama tried to assassinate Saddam several times, and while Saddam probably did hate us, his nation was hardly contributing as many terrorists as our good buddies the Saudis. Furthermore, a child could see that invading Iraq would create more terrorists than it would stop. Well, a child… so

I

say 50/50 Bush realized this. -

So that can't be the reason

.

People say "

we invaded for oil

" - but that's rediculous also. Furthermore, oil prices have never been higher, production was decreased due to our damage of the Iraqi infastructure, and the Arab world is even more pissed off at us (and quite willing to raise prices even higher). - So

So that can't be the reason

.

So why? I have no idea... none whatsoever... I mean, I honestly spent quite a lot of time thinking about it and I think I have eliminated every possible explanation. The only possibilities left are that Bush thinks God told him to do it, or that he was mental and obscessed with Saddam. As I said, if there is a hidden agenda, it is very well hidden.

_______________________

The position we're in now sucks. Do you guys know how many of our soldiers over there are Reserves and National Guard (they latter are not supposed to ever leave the country, hence the name). One of my best friends from high-school just came back from Iraq. He joined the Reserves as soon as we both graduated. Shoot, I almost did the same because Clinton was still in charge and I was thinking, “come on, it’s the USA only World War 3 would require us to activate our reserves, and in that case, I’ll certainly want to fight.” Can you imagine three years later being activated, leaving your home and job, and patrolling the deserts of Iraq, all the while the whole world sees you as the invading badguy.

The base he was at had a radar tracking system that would detect mortars. It could predict the trajectory of the mortar and would only sound an alarm in the section of the base that was going to be hit. (This was to save the rest of the base from 1000 alarms a day). As such, if you heard the alarm, you knew that you were within the 100 x 100 foot square that was going to get hit. He said, even then, it went off so often, that when it would wake him, he would just turn around and go back to sleep hoping it wouldn't land near him. They had a phalanx system, but weren’t allowed to use it if there were any planes of any kind in the area (95% of the time). I’m glad he came back, but many don’t. :( His barracks and all his stuff got destroyed one day, but everyone happened to be out doing stuff thankfully.

  DBOSS said:

To many media stooges, without the USA we would be f*cked, turn the 6pm news off and open your minds and take the good with the bad

I have never ever heard that sentiment from any non-American. It's very refreshing to hear that our reputation wasn't entirely destroyed by our recent idiocy.

Edited 16/04/07 04:00 AM by Telionis

[tab]

Ultimately the only reasoning was retaliation, the USA needed to flex their muscle and all of their allies really had no choice but to go along with it.

Very good to hear your point of view though

[Telionis]

  TurboDewd said:

I theorise that Australians are happy to be very minor players on the world stage, we are happy not to call the shots. The shots are called from Washington.

If you call the shots, you're blamed whenever something goes wrong. Plus, everyone hates the boss, regardless of what kind of job he's doing (especially if he's meddling in everyone's business). How I wish we could go back to the isolationists we were before WWII. Now all our old allies hate or at least think very poorly of us, the Chinese think they might have to fight us one day, and the Muslims literally think we're Satan. I wish we could just say: " you want to buy our stuff, good, sell us stuff, good, otherwise sod off."

  Quote

We should occasionally disagree with Washington because I feel they totally take us for granted. (Yanks dont even know we were in Vietnam)

I consider myself an educated American (oxymoron ), but even I didn't realize that. Sorry. Were you guys there for the duration, or just in the beginning?

What you guys need, is to make a blockbuster movie about Australians in Vietnam. That way, most Americans will actually know about it. (BTW, yes, now 85% of Americans think that Xerxes the Great was an 8' tall body-pierced freak of a Persian that sounded like the bad guy from Stargate, but hey, at least they now know he invaded Greece and the Greeks owned him).

BTW, that super climate radar system you guys invented that can detect Stealth bombers (apparently, it can't see the bomber, but it is sensitive enough to see the turbulence the bomber causes when flying), pissed Washington off quite a bit. So at least you've got that. (Expect Chinese visitors soon).

  Quote

We should consider our own nukes so that we dont need the US or UK.

Nukes are good for almost nothing. When would anyone use them except to retaliate for being nuked (which probably happened because you had nukes)... well I guess you need them because if someone like Hitler had nukes and nobody else did, the world would be in deep sh-t. But you don't need nukes to kick ass, look at Italy, Germany and Japan today, the latter two aren't even supposed to have armed forces, yet they are undeniable world powers (militarily also). You guys are in fact in an envious position. If it comes down to it, you've got the US, France and UK to confront the enemy and prevent them from trying to conquer the world with nuclear force, and you guys can stay out of the a nuclear stand-off part of the confrontation entirely.

  Quote

And, hey, why not throw in a republic (although I kinda dont see a huge need for one).

Uhh... complete ignorance on my part, but in what way are you guys not a republic? I know you're not governed by Queen Elizabeth!?!

Edited 16/04/07 04:33 AM by Telionis

[Chooka]

  Telionis said:

Uhh... complete ignorance on my part, but in what way are you guys not a republic? I know you're not governed by Queen Elizabeth!?!

Ummm, actually she is our head of state

Pretty much has no say and is just for tradition but she very much is it........

Good read from you too

And yes we were there for the duration of Nam....

Chooka