> Let's be careful with this "you" stuff. Residents of First World
> countries, even career dole recipients in Tasmania, enjoy incomes ten
> to twenty times that of the world's poor because of a global
> hierarchy enforced by the U.S. Canadians, Western Europeans, and
> Australians get to mount a high moral horse while still enjoying the
> material rewards of Empire.
>
> Doug
High horse? It's more like mangy donkey. We sold the horse to buy some concentration camps for Afghan refugees. We're also doing a fabbo job of swindling the East Timorese out of their gas fields. Oh, and then there are the pacific island nations, which stand a good change of being sunk by our policies, but which vote with us in the UN anyway. They have to. They'd sink in bankruptcy if they didn't.
Australia, in the proud words of P.M. John Howard, is the US's regional lieutenant. This has proven to be a difficult task for him, since he appears to be a bit out of the loop when it comes to what the US Administration is doing. We are thus entertained by the spectacle of Howard treading softly until Cheney pops up on the news...then he quickly turns into a hawk...then Powel appears, and little Johnie backs downs. He tries to look on top of things, but the six o'clock news seems to be ahead of him.
T.O.
------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au