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Probably Making the best effort of any country with regard to addressing climate change. Compare to Trump who says it's FAKE. Nev

There was a Large number of Dutch Nationals on that MH Plane. GON, I also went to Granville tech doing Organic chemistry for one Year. Nev

Eye yam wall ross cuckoo cashew --- I am the walrus, coo coo cachoo -- The Beatles.

GON, it wasn't a KLM plane, it was a Malaysia Airlines flight, MH17. And your mates name is actually spelled Gerry. It was a very sad event, made worse by the lack of acknowledgement or responsibility for downing the aircraft, on the Russians part. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-15/victorian-mh17-victims-formally-identified/5672970 Why didn't you go back to fitting and turning at Hawker-DeHavilland after you did your NS? It was obligatory for businesses to hold job positions open for their employees doing National Service. QUOTE: "Under the National Service Act 1964, employers were legally obligated to hold positions open for employees who were called up for compulsory military duty. Key Details of the Mandate: Reinstatement Obligation: Employers had to restore servicemen to their previous positions (or an equivalent role) as soon as practicable upon their completion of full-time service. Terms and Conditions: The returned employee was entitled to the same salary, status, and seniority they would have achieved if they had not been conscripted. Eligibility Rules: To qualify, the employee typically needed to have been employed by the business for a set period prior to their call-up."

The western hope in admitting China to WTO was that it would become more democratic. That didn't work. Globalism has failed. The reason China did so well is they bent the WTO trade rules when it suited them and have large subsidies from the government. Now they are weaponising that success.

All western nations outsourcing their manufacturing to the "third world" and hollowing out their manufacturing capabilities and therefore being vulnerable to supply chain issues and other governments that weaponise trade. It's our fault too. We like cheap goods. But globalism has failed.

They have an economy Managed by the State which exists in a free trade World.. (in theory) which cannot cope with China's success and efficiency. No Place in history has been transformed so completely to lift wealth and facilities and with a large Population as well. It would still be Likely the way the West has treated them has NOT been forgotten and why would it? Nev

Trump is supported by utterly incompetent imbeciles such as J.D. Vance, who the Iranians have played like a fiddle at the peace talks in Switzerland. The Americans arrived early, and went in first to the negotiating room, giving the Iranians the pyschological edge. As seasoned negotiation veterans have said, the losing party is the first to enter the room, the victors enter last. Then the negotiations have stalled at every turn, with the Iranians knowing full well they're playing with a handful of aces. When asked if the U.S. was demanding a full and total end to Iran's nuclear programme, Vance only said, "Oh yes, we'll be negotiating an end to their nuclear programme" - like it was now of secondary importance. If the U.S. really were the winners here, they'd demand the end to Iran's nuclear programme as a primary and non-negotiable demand. Vance is a totally incompetent f****** loser, he couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag.

The saga of the green reflecting pool is classic trumpfook. First he personally gave the repair contract to a buddy. Then he insisted it painted a darker colour in spite of the known fact that dark = warmer = faster algae growth. Then within 10 days the water turned warm & green and they tipped insufficient Hydrogen Peroxide in. Then the blue Epoxy paint started to peel off & float about in the green water. Then we hear about another contract to fix all this.... the National Park Service contracted not only the coating and painting of the pool under a no-bid contract, but also an additional $1.7 million contract for a water purification system. That no-bid contract went to a firm whose ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by Trump donor John J. Cafaro, whose wife chaired the 2017 International Red Cross Ball at Mar-a-Lago and who lives near Mar-a-Lago at a mansion that is listed as the water treatment company’s address in Florida corporate records. The name of the firm is Greenwater Services. What? He hired Greenwater Services?.... If only he'd thought to hire "Bluewater Services"......

It will be more than just a price rise in prices of premium chips. The world cannot afford to give up Taiwan. At Davos, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: "I would say that the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan," Bessent told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He described a potential blockade or destruction of the island's manufacturing capacity as an "economic apocalypse," emphasizing Washington's efforts to relocate semiconductor production to American soil." A blockade of these chips would send the world into the tech dark ages and we would certainly lose the AI arms race against China. As I understand it, it would take decades to build the ecosystem required to produce these high end chips.

I rather think that is because America didn't plan their logistics properly. They designed and sold a product they couldn't supply in a required timeframe. Also the Australian government didn't look ahead enough. And was silly enough to accept a trade-off deal of an obsolete product. When China takes over Taiwan, the only difference for us will be a likely rise in prices of prrmium silicon chips.

The main reason for the subs and indeed, the increase in Australian defence spending and mobilisation is the threat of China taking Taiwan. The reason we got second hand ones was America can't make them fast enough. $5 billion dollars each I believe. America needs to make 2 a year but can't keep up. Probably cos China has a stranglehold on critical minerals for the development of defence assets, along with a hollowing out of manufacturing like most western countries. Australia, like the rest of the developed world, will enter a technological dark age if China takes Taiwan.

is there any advantage to owning a sub these days. i would have thought money spent on multiple missile defense systems would give us more protection.

Australia being able to defend itself is a definition of Impossibility no Matter how Much we spend. It was Abott and Morrison who stuffed up the Subs deal and alienated the French and tied us to AUKUS. I'd like to have seen that all investigated.. Nev

Three subs, whether used or not, don't seem enough to provide an effective defence, even if we eventually get them. You could barely maintain one consistently on station. I assume we're hoping the US will locate some of theirs here once we've built the necessary facilities. On the other hand the AUKUS design, if it ever gets built, is massive and will take years to get all the bugs ironed out of it. We'll probably be the ones stuck with doing most of the testing. Being designed jointly between Australia, the UK and the US it will probably not suit anyone. Reminds me of an old joke about what a camel is - a horse designed by a committee.

We are only getting the used subs as a stop-gap measure until the new subs are built. But I still reckon the subs will be totally obsolete before they're even half built - leaving us with more monstrous Defence expenditure losses.

I guess that's better than the original promise - of probably no subs at all

I don't think anything has changed since WW2. America only ever sees Australia as a convenient Southern base to protect its national and corporate interests. During 1942, the Americans moved in and took over a lot of Australian real estate, built a substantial number of airfields on land they didn't own (and the Australian Govt was very slow to compensate for land losses during WW2, not making reparations in some cases until 1947 and 1948. And even then, the compensation was poor), and set up "joint forces" command groups - where the Americans had virtually all the say. That was because they had an Army, Navy and Air force, that dwarfed ours. We built three new hospitals and turned them over to the Americans for their exclusive use, for their injured and sick military men. That grated on a lot of Australians who had to go without medical assistance during WW2, simply because it wasn't available. We both built and requisitioned vast amounts of military accommodation for American servicemen during WW2. Some of the those installations held up to 20,000 American troops. We supplied about 90% of the food the American servicemen consumed in the South East Asian region. At the end of the War, the bills were totalled (with "Reverse lend-lease" included, where Australia supplied goods and services for American military use), and the final result was that the Americans got more from us, than we got from them. The only real gain Australia made was the purchase of all the remaining U.S. military equipment left in Australia after the War. This was purchased at a value of around 5% of its manufactured cost, and it was nearly all sold at the Commonwealth Disposals Commission auctions held between late 1945 and early 1950, and these CDC sales reaped a very substantial profit for the Australian Govt. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69591061

The Soviets got 440,000 trucks during WW2 from the Americans. They received nearly 2000 locomotives, and tens of thousands of railcars. They also got the manufacturing machinery to build a lot of American machines and equipment. Entire factories in the U.S were dismantled and re-erected in Russia - such as complete tyre factories. They received tens of thousands of machine tools, vital for manufacturing and repair of equipment. America provided almost half of the high octane aviation fuel used by the Russian Air Force during WW2. Even Stalin admitted privately, if it were not for American equipment and logistics assistance during WW2, Russia would have been overrun by the Germans.

Wille, what you are saying is that we must continue to get involved in the US conflicts as we have done in the past, in the hope that they MIGHT come to our aid in the highly unlikely event of us being invaded. The US has not historically behaved in the way that NATO (for instance) has a binding defense agreement to come to the aid of invaded members. Meanwhile we have repeatedly rushed to the aid of US involvrment in other wars. But none of those were cases of US being invaded. Do they owe us anything? I wouldn't count on it. I do not believe the US would do a great deal to help us if we really needed help. The US once said they would help Ukraine if Russia threatened it. Look how that turned out.

Aside from military assets, the US is heavily invested in Australia with more than 1,000 US companies operating here. 1.6 trillion in bilateral investment between the two countries, 70 billion annual bilateral trade, the US is our biggest foreign investor at about a quarter of our foreign investment, so there's plenty of interest here for them to help us defend the place. It wouldn't all be about military asets and bases.

The ANZUS alliance is non binding and doesn't mandate automatic armed intervention. What that means is if we didn't have U.S.assets here that are in their interests to defend, we'd be rooted in the event of a capable force attacking us. That means it's in our interests to allow them to have defendable interests here. The situation is that Australia is militarily weak, the U.S. is not a charity, and we need to give them something if we're asking for something.

I don't have a problem with it at the level and numbers it is now. They're our major defence ally and it would be a bit rich to tell them we don't want them on our soil but still expect them to spill blood for us in the event we are attacked. Any defence alliance is a two way street and has to be mutually beneficial with all parties paying their dues. The U.S. has bases all over the world and the amount we have here is buggar all compared to a lot of other countries. The reality is we don't have the capabilities to defend ourselves against a major adversary, hence the alliance with the U.S.. We have to pull our weight in the alliance and not expect to bludge off them.

We are fortunate in our relativly isolated geographical location. However, we collectively accept law being used to suppress whistleblowers, and accept subservience to powers such as the USofA. We should be outraged but unfortunataly our collective apathy dilutes our ethics. My own apathy has diluted my own anger to the point that I couldn't be bothered writing a nastygram to a polly any more.