Now trying to sneak in a carbon tax under the sentiment generated via natural disasters

I would have thought that an Australian Prime Minister, on visiting the USA, would stand steadfastly behind Australian interests throughout the world.
Australia is a proud nation with its own identity and, as such, we should be setting an example to the world.
On Q & A last night I was surprised to hear Julia Gillard say that the topic of Julian Assange did not come up in her talks with officials on her recent visit to the USA. You would have thought that Julia Gillard would be out there protecting Australian citizens against the highly charged threats against the life of an Australian by Washington officials in the USA.
The other amazing revelation was that Julia Gillard admitted that she did not know anything about the Vietnam war as she was only small when that happened. From that comment it follows that any conflicts before that event have also slipped under her radar which includes the history of the Israeli take-over of Palestinian land by brute force and which also explains her lack of empathy towards the people of Palestine.
Add to that her reply to Julian Assange that she did not know anything about his asertion that her government was exchanging intelligence with foreign powers about Australian citizens working for his group.
''I honestly don't know what he is talking about,'' was her reply. Any responsible Prime Minister would have added "but I will certainly look in to the matter as it is of great concern to me that classified information about my citizens is being peddaled abroad without their consent.
I am afraid Julia Gillard has lost me. Julia Gillard does not appear as Fair Dinkum, she is leaving us in the dark about too many happenings that are of vital concern to us.

Brendan's final comment sums it up with Howard almost beating the US to attack Iraq and then Afghanistan, so anxious was he to be seen as a strong supporter of one who turned out to be the most incompetent President in the history of the USA.
The cunning operators in Washington would have quickly picked Howard as an "all the way witth Georgie Bush" and used his fawning attitude to their advantage as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan and with the US Free Trade Agreement, of great benefit to the US and a great disadvantage to Australia.

But the worst aspect of this visit is the fact that although not mentioned in public, Gillard would have offered Australia as a site for a US base of some kind, a further compromise of our independence and ability to make our own foreign policy decisions. As well, how would this be seen by China, our largest ever trading partner and likely perhaps to stay that way as they emege as the #1 superpower after the US, now morally and financially bankrupt, sliding further down the hill towards Zionist control.

The danger is that an Australia of 24 million people has neither the funds nor the inclination to be e major power in the world and our future is best guaranteed by being a friend to all countries rather than be aligned to the terrorist nature of the US whose march for hegemony and the pursuit for oil is never ending. Being a friend means being aware of how we are viewed by others. Right now, thanks to the Gillard theatre last week, now viewed as a sycophantic nation anxious to do the bidding of the US, because "the US can do anything".

Thanks, Gillard. You have lowered yet again the opinions by others of our worth as a nation.

So this is the now the outcome of having naive and egotistical Prime MInisters let loose on the world stage in perhaps the most orchestrated performance ever seen in Washington but largely ignored by the US people.

They've seen it all before.

Gilliard wants to be a deputy sheriff

this is hilarious!

A Labor PM channeling a Coalition PM .. delicious!

I am not surprised at the ignorant anti Americanism displayed by journos and the people on this thread. I used to be a trendy lefty myself, sprouting anti Americanisms because I thought it was what "intelligent" people did, and I was desperate to display my social aspirations by mouthing the party line.

I started haranguing my mum with a lot of anti Americanisms from a book called "Thanks to the Yanks", when mum finally exploded and gave me the facts of life.

She told me that she was in Brisbane when the first US troops arrived in WW2, and she said it was like "the second coming of Christ", THAT was how grateful Australians were for the yanks saving our asses. You got that? The Yanks saved our asses.

When Darwin was bombed and most of the Australian garrison ran away, it was the American fighter pilots in Darwin, and the US navy in Darwin, that stood their ground. Their men fought and died for us.

There were trendy little people in the USA in 1942, just like the ones we have on OLO today, who did not want the USA to aid Australia, for exactly the same reason why they do not want the USA to help Iraq or Afghanistan. They are compulsive naysayers. But Roosevelt said, "we can not in all conscience abandon Australia."

If it wasn't for the Yanks, half the world would now be singing the 'Internationale" or "The East is Red", and the Grenadier Guards would be goose stepping around Buckingham Palace.

Both Germany and Japan were invaded by the USA to get rid of their dictators, and look at them now, the strongest economies on Earth. It looks like the best thing that could happen to any country is to be invaded by the Yanks.

When Britain joined the Common Market, New Zealand was left on a limb and its economy stagnated. So, the Kiwi's formed the "Silly Party", which advocated declaring war on the USA, surrendering the next day, and reaping the benefits of US occupation.

It is hard to believe that someone actually wrote these comments

juliars 'standing ovations'..prove 4 things

even in the both houses
there is no member upstanding

or that only money
[or earmarks..get them excited]

even a woman?
wispering sweet nothings in a choking emotional voice
cant get a rise out of a dead system

they take the red pills
not the blue pill

it was sickening
almost as bad as her addressing the juwish alliance
or visiting old rupert...[not the other way round]

it shows who has the power
and who dont

if only the anzacs ..got the emotional bit
that was the topic..

instead it was the fake moon landing
that got the emotion...

she should have spent her time with el presidento
not teaching him foostsy-footy
but hearing dikk cheeney
repeat his words about it not happening ...as was presented

but she drank the coolaid
clearly she is not alone

lego, its not too late to get help!

Raise the Dust, Julian is a play thing.

Aw gee, Brennie, thank you for your deep and insightful analysis, and for your well reasoned argument.

If you want to justify your illogical and fashionable hostility to the yanks to any impartial reader of this thread , then you had better do a better job than just tossing insults and sneery one liners.

C'mon boy, stop parrotting the slogans of the inner city graduate caste that you admire so much, turn on your critical analysis circuit, and start thinking objectively. Do a bit of research. Check a few facts yourself instead of simply accepting that the people who's ranks you aspire to join are telling you the truth.

Who knows? It may eventually percolate through your overly thick cranial cavity that what anti everything nonesense that your peers are conditioning you with just ain't necessarilly so

Even if you fail to see the light, at least it may unscramble your thinking enough to give you the confidence to parry your opponents with a well reasoned argument, instead of resorting to spitting bile at them.

Well, whatever. But I am glad that people like your good self who are completely unable to justify their own passionately held anti American views are on my opponents side, and not embarrassing me by being on my side.

Gadaffi looks like a good Australian green labor state premier considering his supporters past and vacuously present.

Lego - perhaps it is too late to seek help!

Don't hold your breathe here lego, most think they are essential services.

I don't see that Howard/Gillard and Keating/Rudd were/are much different from each other. At the end of the day they're all about protecting the firm. They're all all-about the same corrupt business, just different styles. The difference comes down to the scars of childhood. Keating and Rudd have bigger egos (troubled childhoods) and imagine Australia (narcissistically, an extension of themselves) somehow relevant (apart from hyperbole) in the world. Howard and Gillard are more modestly contented (in the Menzies vein) and happy to play the part of sex-toy to the big players (the endless procession of megalomaniac US presidents. Thank God for two terms and you're out!). Rudd, like Keating was, is just "out of control" (code for he believes his own bulldust).
Howard was always an obsequious little toady to the US and Gillard's the same. Meanwhile the "Aussie battlers" (sic) bear these ghastly "misrepresentations" phlegmatically..
The main thing is that the illusion that it all makes sense (for the voting majority with shares in the firm) is maintained.