Ghengis John said:
It is not my intention to argue with you. If you want links to articles I can provide them and you can take it up with them. Surprise though, your country actually has problems like everywhere else. That shouldn't be a shocker. Now, let me just wish you the best without going "we don't need you to yank, piss off and by the way we're better than you!".
Actually, I would like to see those articles, because I don't agree with your concerns over Australia's defence and I can't find any articles where worry of an invasion is expressed.
As this: http://www.rsimpson.id.au/books/tomorrow/explore/invasion.html#4
little article points out for me, an invasion of Australia right now is a highly unlikely thing. Not only do we have the strongest defence force in the Southern Hemisphere, but we are positioned in such a way that any invasion would be a drawn out affair even against the more technologically advanced Armies, Air-forces and Navies. Every single population centre in Australia provides some sort of major obstacle for an invading force to overcome that serves to discredit any invasion theories.
Not to mention that the probable reasons for invasion, our large quantity of resources, are sold to pretty much anyone, as this is much cheaper then an invasion everyone would rather buy our resources then take them. Now doubt a lot of people would like to take them, if they could, but they can't. To try to do so is doomed to failure, Australia is too involved in International politics for an invasion like this to go unanswered, to say nothing of the large amounts of Uranium and other resources numerous politicians leaders would want to be made secure.
But suppose the USA, or a combined force, did decide to invade us an no allies stepped into save us, it is likely Australia will be conquered. But can't the same thing be said of every single country in the World?
It's true that Australia doesn't have any nuclear weapons, which does put us at a certain level of risk, but I don't think that right now we can start to build nukes without terrifying a lot of different nations. We have no great reason for them, and us building them will appear as more of a hostile action then defensive one to many of our neighbours and I don't think that anything good can come from that.
It is also true that the Australian environment for farming is a harsh mistress, I've seen it first hard, and many areas do need aguifers and bore water is the only source of water for thousands of kilometres (except for the odd bit of water you pick up in your rainwater tank). However Australia is still the largest exporter of Beef, Wool, Barley and Raw Sugar in the World, so if anything we aren't completely failing at farming. We do have to take certain measures to ensure this though, we can't support as great a population as the USA right now because we don't have our environment under control.
Anyway, I am Australian and I think it's pretty good. One problem though is the racism, it's starting to get annoying. I think we're in this odd position were our racist tendencies aren't as powerful as they are in other nations, but we make a point of ignoring them rather then calling ourselves out on them. For example, in Arizona (in the USA) there is a law the requires all "immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there's reason to suspect they're in the United States illegally (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-23/politics/immigration.faq_1_arizona-immigration-law-reform-sb1070?_s=PM
OLITICS). This is the sort of length I can't see Australians going to, but we do have random people flapping their mouths about how they're worried all these "boat people" are going to blow up their kid's school. Now, a large number of people in America are strongly against that Arizona law and let that be known, but when Australians see racist things going down our response is near non-existant and usually "well that's how things go" and most people tend to ignore it.
A similar parallel can be drawn between the British National Party and The One Nation party. Both are fairly similar, but I get the distinct feeling that British people don't sit down and take the BNP's existence as an inevitability. I could be wrong about this though.
The Cronulla riots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronulla_riots) caused a large amount of controversy for a short time, but most people blew it off as "well what do you expect from Cronulla" and refuse to accept that racism occurs, or that's it racism at all. We go to absurd lengths to deny any sort of racism and this, I think, has to stop. We need to wake up, smell the bogans, and tell them to fuck off.
