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Australia, the 51st state?
<b>LINK</b>
Quote:
<b>Australia primed to be yanked into US</b>
Tess Livingstone, higher education editor
16jul03
AUSTRALIA has been urged to seriously consider becoming the 51st state of the US.
And American-born historian Dr David Mosler told a Brisbane audience yesterday there was a 20 per cent chance of Australia becoming an American state in the next 50 years.
The visiting research fellow at Adelaide University, who has lived in Australia since 1971, said the chances would increase significantly in the event of a major Al-Qaeda attack on Australia or if Indonesia became a fundamentalist Islamic republic.
Dr Mosler told the 2003 Fulbright Symposium at Griffith University yesterday that he decided Australia was "an unreformable society" after the loss of the 1999 republic referendum.
Australians, he said, had no flag of their own; a weak sense of nationhood; no prime minister in the Lodge, with John Howard living in Sydney; no national bushfire or water plans, even with the worst drought in history; and no "broad knowledge of nation in public discourse or popular culture". Australians had replaced "Empire with Yanks" after 1942, and the country retained a "quasi-colonial status".
He said Australian governments, attuned to the British, Americans, Japanese and global capital markets, had "sold off the farm" – electricity, water, ports, airports, resources, manufacturing – while Australians were not offended by such "treasonous behaviour".
He said Australia's passage to American statehood would not be difficult under its Constitution.
He listed the advantages of American statehood for Australia as:
• Access to the world's best higher education system.
• Large savings on embassies.
• Being part of the world's most effective defence system.
• Merger with the world's strongest currency.
• Being part of the world's biggest economy.
• A constitution bringing a republic and a Bill of Rights.
• Fielding teams in the US national basketball, baseball and gridiron competitions.
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Statements like this from a fellow Yank make me uncomfortable. I'd like to apologize for this dickhead, but he actually left the US for Oz during the Nixon administration and hasn't been back. Good riddance, but sorry you got him.
Personally I like Australia more for the way it differs from the US, than for how it resembles it. The last thing I'd like to see is this guy's idea of US global domination come to fruition. Besides, it would fuck up our flag. ;-)
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