United States Of America

Wherever you look in our near region, the shadow of the elephant walking the room is everywhere.

How about that elephant behind you?

It may not always be voiced, but the US-China relationship and its future stability hang heavy across most discussions, whether at multilateral forums like ASEAN, the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum or within regional bilateral talks.

Every commentator of note has given voice to this challenge, some good, some simply nonsensical. I find myself on unfamiliar ground agreeing with Defence Minister Smith when he called on the two great powers to match their military dialogue with their economic engagement.

His is a voice of reason calling for engagement, and the Minister is on firm ground as his words match his actions.

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  • Scotchfinger says:

    05:15pm | 05/09/12

    the Chinese president is claiming, ‘yes Mr Obama, I can give you a new set of lungs, kidneys or whatever, fresh from a political dissident. Any age group you want!’ Barack is saying, ‘thanks, but we’re good, we also have the death penalty. More expensive, unfortunately, because we also have… Read more »

  • sunny says:

    04:52pm | 05/09/12

    “My Mahjong’s a bit rusty, but I hate to turn down a bet, so you’re on!” Read more »

 

Condemning Barack Obama from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last night (Australian time), Julian Assange found himself channeling the US president.

Thumbs up for disclosure! Picture: Getty Images

The Wikileaks founder’s statement to a throng of waiting press, police and protesters was Obama all over. In the hype the speech stirred, particularly among his London supporters, many of whom wore Guy Fawkes masks. Also in its flair for the dramatic (he left his audience, part of which was yearning to arrest him, waiting for a good half-an-hour).

The two men have more in common than you think. Both have been described, and criticised, as idealists.

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  • Ros says:

    02:44pm | 21/08/12

    JD what on earth are you talking about. What is this torn condom thing? It is not sufficient to just “google” You need to assess the reliabilty and the veracity of both the information therein and the site. I would suggest that the High Court of England and Wales meets… Read more »

  • egg says:

    02:41pm | 21/08/12

    @LostinPerth, are you aware that he already answered the questions when he was in Sweden, and now they want to question him again? Are you aware that he has offered to go to Sweden if extradition to the US is guaranteed not to happen, but Sweden has refused? Are you… Read more »

 

It’s a lonely and worrying business being racist. There are no signposts guiding the way to the Baptist church that is the headquarters of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in the backwoods of Harrison, in northern Arkansas.

Rachel Pendergraft, who gave the service

A local farmer says to cross a small bridge, turn left at a hump and then follow the dirt track down a few miles. “You won’t find any blacks around here,” he laughs.

Past a rundown farmhouse with a shiny new black hog parked outside, this is deep Confederate country. Probing further, past ratty chook pens, there are white-tailed deer grazing openly off the track, seeming to carry the conceited knowledge that hunting season doesn’t begin till September 15.

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  • icon archive says:

    03:56pm | 08/10/12

    I am sorry, that has interfered… At me a similar situation. I invite to discussion. Read more »

  • David says:

    08:47pm | 13/08/12

    No domestic act of terrorism carried out by an African American? Arent you forgetting the Washington sniper killings? Read more »

 

Images and video footage of Hillary Clinton greeting Phongsavath Souliylath in a rehabilitation centre in Laos this week have been splashed across papers, shared, liked, and commented upon by Lao people, aid workers, and international campaigners.


Phongsavath lost both hands and his eyesight when his friend passed him a “funny-looking object” that he found by the roadside as the boys walked to school. The unexploded bomb, a remnant of the Vietnam War, exploded in Phongsavath’s hands. It was his 16th birthday.

Reports of Phongsavath’s meeting with the US Secretary of State are being heralded as a monumental step forward for the tiny land-locked country and its people, and have elicited quite emotional reactions from people who have lived and worked in Laos.

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  • Robert Rands says:

    09:42am | 28/07/12

    Cluster bombs work? Yep, and the ones that didn’t work correctly on the battlefield keep on working, for generations afterward. Many Lao villagers are still faced with the choice between going hungry or growing rice and other crops in UXO-cointaminated land.  I know, because I have been directly involved, on… Read more »

  • Janet says:

    07:28pm | 14/07/12

    An inspiring and challenging article that highlights the impact of cluster bombs in the context of the personal and inspiring experiences of a young advocate.  The article clearly captures the impact of an atrocity in our time that is little known and even less understood. The challenge will be to… Read more »

 

On a highway in Arizona, south of Phoenix, a sign reads: DANGER — PUBLIC WARNING — TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED - Active Drug and Human Smuggling Area - Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed.

There are no such signs on the roads of Christmas Island, outside Villawood, or by the Curtin detention centre in north-west WA.

Australia’s and America’s immigration issues bear almost no resemblance, except that people die on boats from Java, and they die crossing the miserable mesquite plains of America’s south.

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  • stoneage liberal says:

    04:21pm | 02/07/12

    Sick of etc. I think you will find that colonisation is the correct term, it does not imply that there were not people before. To be honest I think you will find that the British were one of the lesser of the colonising evils around at the time. Take a… Read more »

  • marley says:

    01:00pm | 02/07/12

    @fml - if you go to the article “Parliament is Broken” and scroll down to Dobbo’s comment at 12:46 you’ll see the exchange: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/parliament-is-broken-time-for-an-election/ In a nutshell, while push factors are important, so are government responses.  And my comments in the link explain my grounds for thinking so.  In a… Read more »

 

Even in Chicago, they are puzzling over Labor’s long march to oblivion. In 1987, prior to becoming chief of staff to a president, Rahm Emanuel spent a fortnight with a couple of Australian nurses as he travelled up the east coast to Cairns.

... right up the wazoo! LOL. Pic: Supplied

The charismatic 52-year-old Chicago Mayor joked with me this week - his city was hosting the NATO summit - that it had given him a “great respect for the Australian healthcare system”.

“I told your previous prime minister this,’’ he said clearly amused as he relived a conversation with Kevin Rudd.

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  • http://paulsmithglasses.weebly.com says:

    01:40pm | 18/09/12

    My wife and i were so relieved Edward managed to do his investigation out of the precious recommendations he obtained through the web pages. It is now and again perplexing to simply choose to be giving for free guidelines that many others might have been trying to sell. Therefore we… Read more »

  • Dave says:

    07:03pm | 31/05/12

    What “direct action” ?  This will be nothing more than an excuse to dump a lot of taxpayers’ money on marginal rural electorates.  Nobody will bother reducing energy use while it is still so unrealistically cheap.  Whether you “believe” in AGW or not can anyone seriously argue that turning the… Read more »

 

As best I know, Australia has no true accounts of white people being kidnapped or rescued and raised by tribal Aborigines. In America’s West, punitive parties were always on the search for white women held captive by the feared Comanche tribes of Texas and New Mexico.


Repatriating stolen white women was a considerable political and military issue, so much so that it arguably contributed to the destruction of the Comanche people, the largest and most warrior-like of the native American tribes.

In Australia, stories of Aborigines raising whites really only exist in fiction. There’s Michael “Crocodile” Dundee, born in a Northern Territory cave and raised by a helpful tribe that schooled him in his broad Australian accent.

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  • Kika says:

    04:27pm | 30/04/12

    Where oh where did you get your research from? Far out! Here’;s a slightly more scholared take on the Comanches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche Read more »

  • qwerty says:

    11:19am | 30/04/12

    a fringe of leaves, patrick white? Read more »

 

Watching from afar, I noted a press release from a federal minister talking about a Brisbane suburb. It was headlined: “Making Sunnybank’s streets safer”. How can a place called Sunnybank possibly be unsafe?


But, you know, places can get that way. Or un-get that way. Which is what happened to New York. It got safe.

Recently, I re-watched the still-watchable 1979 film The Warriors, about a New York gang’s attempt to get home to Coney Island by crossing from the Bronx through the wilderness of Manhattan.

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  • Craig says:

    11:40am | 25/04/12

    We are long overdue for a feature story on how Rudy Giuliani took on New York’s Italian Mafia. I do realise they are still alive and making money today but he did take away some of their power. How ? Read more »

  • Joe says:

    07:45pm | 23/04/12

    At the end of the day, it is down to parents educating their children the rights and wrongs of things. If they see mumsy or dad jaywalking to take them to school, or double parking and even swearing on the phone (which reminded me of that funny ad on tv),… Read more »

 

Among the multiple emergency exits built into the mighty C130 Hercules is one in the forward half of the aeroplane helpfully surrounded with the words “danger” and “propeller” in huge red letters.

Part hope, part bravado

It invites an interesting dilemma in an idle passenger’s mind. How bad would things have to be in here, to make using that exit worth the risk? It is the kind of dark thinking that occurs as one stares blankly at the internally netted walls of the Herc’s cavernous fuselage.

This military transport is designed for function over comfort. The noise during flight into a mostly hostile Afghanistan is deafening. Literally. As well as full body armour, passengers wear earplugs and each is thus cocooned in a strangely solitary world of sound and thoughts.

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  • Social Submission says:

    04:52pm | 16/06/12

    dKDtgJ I cannot thank you enough for the blog article.Thanks Again. Fantastic. Read more »

  • void says:

    04:59pm | 13/04/12

    Steve, helping someone else is one thing, and it completely different from figuratively running into a brink over and over again.  The wall isn’t going to give and you’re only going to bloody your own nose.  This a country that has been ousting invaders for centuries.  This is an un-winnable… Read more »

 

Published in 1943 and given to every American serviceman heading Down Under to help with the war effort, the US War Department’s A Pocket Guide To Australia can be now be read in a different light.

Didjabringyagrogalong?

Almost 70 years on, the Pocket Guide appears to be a pretty accurate description of who we were. It may be quaint, but it’s a time capsule that says much about how we have changed as a people in outlook, ethnic composition, custom and language.

It tells of a mad gambling, umpire-hating people, who have strange ways of speaking, putting an ‘i’ where the ‘a’ should be. The booklet’s glossary of Australian slang contains words that have long since passed from our everyday usage.

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  • Mark/Fox says:

    08:48pm | 05/03/12

    What was the original true blue Aussie is long gone, reliable, honest and trustworthy. Nowdays we have multiculturalism, “Dog eat Dog”. They were the good old days where you could leave the keys in your car. Nowdays you sleep with a baseball bat under your bed and you cannot read… Read more »

  • Cynicised says:

    04:26pm | 05/03/12

    On reflection, your idea that this was the beginning of widespread TPS  in this country has merit if you accept Weber’s  contention that the acquisition of status is a zero-sum game, that is, in order for one person (or group) to rise, another must fall. On a group level the perceived… Read more »

 

Just looking at him, elderly Miami resident Pedro C. Alvarez is not the type who would be inclined to take in the scenery on Ocean Drive. It’s not his kind of place.

Discos compactos

There, on famous South Beach, along the row of deco hotels, including the one where they shot the chainsaw scene for “Scarface”, wild-looking babes endurance test the elastic on their overbrimming bikinis.

Coke dealers, or possibly dentists, or maybe they’re porn stars, drive their black Bentley convertibles at stall speed down the main drag. Miami’s a look-at-me place, until you leave its shiny edges.

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  • Cynicised says:

    07:20pm | 07/02/12

    Richard., I suggest the Irish between 1845- 1852 might have disagreed with you in regard to the benefits of laisssez-faire economic policy ala Trevelyan. Read more »

  • James says:

    06:07am | 07/02/12

    I bet he means that it was the “most advanced country in Latin America” for the 5% on the island who owned everything. All of Latin America is changing for the better, Cuba just had a headstart. Read more »

 

Across her neck, the contradiction of a permanent tattoo shackle that reads: “Freedom.” Across one forearm, a tattoo that reads, “Liberate All Beings.” On the other arm, “Inside Job,” a reference to her belief that 9/11 was carried out by the US Government.

You can take my dignity… but you'll never take my freedom tattoo. Pic: Paul Toohey.

Kanaska Carter is 26. She is a former hairdresser from Canada who came to the US to protest on the 10th anniversary of September 11 but got caught up in Occupy Wall Street, six days later. And now there’s the Google wars, another natural fit for a conditioned young protestor.

Kanaska has lived homeless on the streets of New York for five months. She makes some money busking and inking tattoos and knows various places about the city where she and her friends can get free dinners each night.

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  • rodney allsworth says:

    05:29am | 24/01/12

    it is very seldom that one can agree fully with the writer of any piece, however in this instance I must say I could not agree more with this -quote- They claim they’re liberating America but, really, it’s about liberating themselves- absolutly spot on. rod   qld Read more »

  • Bloggs says:

    04:38pm | 23/01/12

    I need your breakfast recipe too, please Craig.  Some things you guys eat should not be lot out of the kitchen!  I mean, jeez, just read what you write here! The world ain’t perfect, but with no laws and no business then we just revert to the 1200’s, or perhaps… Read more »

 

Gah. The Golden Globes. If you don’t like frocks, and can’t bear self-indulgent speeches thanking God, long-dead parents, a dog etc, you’d be forgiven for not giving the telly even the slightest glance this lunchtime. Except that is, for Ricky Gervais.

The future's looking bright!

Yep, the Brit funny man who made working in a drab back office in a west-London suburb hilarious, could save the Golden Globes. And all earnest, glamour-loving Americans. From themselves.

Tonight will be Ricky’s third time hosting the champagne and taffeta-fuelled, red-carpet fiesta. But after managing to offend nearly everyone in Hollywood last year, this year’s invitation surprised many.

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  • subotic says:

    11:13am | 17/01/12

    @John, I for one welcome our new reptilian overlords http://torrentchannel.com/Cathy_OBrien__Mark_Philips_-_Trance_Formation_of_America_MKULTRA_-_1995.pdf Read more »

  • The righteous one says:

    10:21am | 17/01/12

    ratings, pure and simple.  Most of them would not know to pucker their anus if there was a wind blowing up it Read more »

 

Sometimes you can meet a person and feel blessed. I don’t mean touched by the hand of God. I just mean you feel renewed, restored and pretty sure there’s goodness in the world. And that, in itself, is a blessing.

Ku Klux Klan burn crosses at Stone Mountain Rally, in Georgia, in 1989. Photo: New York Paid

The man in question is the Reverend Dr Thomas Lane Butts Jr, aged 81, retired pastor of the Uniting Methodist Church in Monroe County, Alabama. His older brother was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Rev Butts was not.

He battled the Klan for years, but particularly in the 1950s, when Alabama and neighbouring Mississippi were the Klan heartlands. They had always been a presence, but had in recent years been sleeping lightly. Their cause was fully awoken as the Civil Rights movement began its fight in the south.

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  • autoversicherung fahranfaenger forum says:

    07:18am | 10/10/11

    Quiet Grow,ear mechanism defendant avoid clear less send firm career place discuss high attend substantial prove on railway government cell she vast murder personal spring travel street father natural most role measure own later claim involve together damage brain formal park hurt independent refuse client holiday location do company build… Read more »

  • Anne Stocks says:

    10:00pm | 02/08/11

    Thank you Paul Toohey it was refreshing to hear an Atheist give praise to a Christian instead of slandering or abusing them, although to be fair I have encountered some others on Punch, although not in agreement with what I have shared have been respectful of my right to express… Read more »

 

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