Cook
Banned
I think the paranioa has dissappeared since we went to Timor in 1999.
On that.
I remember walking through the Perth just after the Referendum in E. Timor, when the TNI were burning down Dili and going past a rally where The Greens, the far King Greens of all people were demanding Australia go into East Timor immediately and force the Indonesians to leave!
I remember thinking “You miserable, ignorant mob of far king Wayne Kerrs, you’ve been campaigning against defence spending all these years and now…”
Not sure where this attitude exists. My perception is that
1) There are a enough non-white people in Australia that it can't be considered a 'white' country.
Yaus, we all have lovely tans; it’s that beach culture; and the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
2) There are considerably less than 300 million people in Indonesia.
238 Million. Picky, picky, picky.
3) Few Australians consider Indonesian Muslims 'radical' since they aren't Arab or Pakistani.
More to the point they aren’t radical. Bakar Bashir is an aberration in a country where the village women of Java used to go topless.
4) A large number of Australians probably don't even know Indonesia is predominantly Muslim anyway.
Assumes a level of ignorance more likely in America.
5) There isn't a feeling of paranoia, just an awareness that they are the most likely source of foreign invasion, even if that likelihood is very low. If we were paranoid surely there would be defences on the beaches and more bases in the top end.
Well unless we are going to be invaded by penguins anyone on their way here is going to come through the Northern Archipelago.
It took three months for the last lot to go from Saigon to the doorstep of Darwin and Port Moresby so a reasonable degree of defence preparation is just common sense.
Or we could all sit around singing “Kum ba ya”. Wait a minute; that was what the far king greens were doing right up till ’99 when they started seeing red and screaming “Kill, kill, kill…”!
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