1. China has artificially kept it's currency low, creating a trade barrier to the US. Further, it has failed to enforce intellectual property rights, disallowing possibly billions of lost revenue dollars. The US balance of trade would be significantly better with China if these things were addressed. Hate and fear movies are always with us.
2. Julia Gillard did the same as any other pro US Australian party leader would have done, most certainly Tony Abbott. The Greens are another story, but in matters of diplomacy hardly experienced nor politically realistic. In world terms we are a pimple on an elephant and that elephant is the US.
3. Agreed. But the US have always been bad sports.
4. Agreed, but McEnroe may have been misquoted. He may have meant all time in US history. Maybe not. Who cares?
5. Whatever.
6. Check your history, it might not be all that readily available but anything by Henry Reynolds is pretty reliable.
The Aboriginal people have been exterminated in parts of Australia, eg. Tasmania. There were massacres in various places including Myall Creek and even one at Flagstaff gardens in Melbourne. US brought in slavery but it was against their interests to exterminate, they needed workers.
Aboriginal people have been nomadic people and they have been told to stay put and their hunting grounds taken. Conflict arose when they did the logical thing and killed our cows and sheep. What happens is they have no healthy diet, due to no longer having the ability to hunt and gather as they did. Land is locked up. They are given land which is degraded. The conditions they live in is appalling and way below the minimums in most places in first world countries.
forced separation means many are traumatised. many are demoralised and no wonder they have addiction problems and health problems. However the success stories are rarely spoken about either.
Learn about what we have done to disadvantage them instead of making uninformed claims.
Either way, the blackface segment was in bad taste. Had Connick not said anything about it, the segment would have followed him back to the US with him as approving via youtube or whatever and he would have been vilified in the US as racist. Nothing surer. He HAD to denounce it. Get a clue.
7. whatever. You think the Chinese are not arrogant? It manifests differently, that's all. Culturally they believe they are superior. I'd rather live in a nation that allows free speech, if even in a qualified sense, that's for sure.
Yes the US is inward looking and arrogant. But they are also a mass of contradictions and an interesting nation of people. They are brilliant innovators. I wouldn't write the US off by a long shot.
