Apropos the topic...I found this hilarious.
http://tiny.cc/qnl4001

"Australians aren't seen as British by Britons. "

Why do you find that interesting? I've been visiting England on business since the 1980s and never been thought of as British nor thought of myself as British. I think you're way, way, way out of date.

The only comment on ethnicity I ever got was that I couldn't be Australian because I didn't sound like the people from Ramsey St.

While we aren't British, we are part of the greater Anglosphere - Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. People with a common language, common heritage, common religion, common legal systems, common adherence to free speech and rule of law, and democracy. In short a family of nations who inherited the benefits of British development from Magna Carta to the Industrial revolution.

And that's what we need to preserve, even as the British themselves seem intent on frittering it away.

Indeed Haze.
As usual in this subject the point is missed.
The one group, the moslems are brought up from childhood that the Koran
is the superior source of wisdom and LAW !
Sharia law is superior to the law of the land.
They accept that the law must be complied with, but only reluctantly.
The problem is that the Koran is fixed truth and can never be altered
and interpretation is rigidly controlled.
There was never a new testament in the Koran. There was never a
reformation in Islam.
So we have a book, sold and published in this country that has content
which if published in any other name would bring down the law on it
and the publisher.
It advocates the killing of Christians and other non-believers.
It is those verses that are used by the Islamic attackers and killers
to validate their crimes.
In Europe some 20,000 islamic attacks are made in a year.
Two churches a day in France alone are attacked or vandalised.
In Africa hundreds of tribal villages & churches and Christians killed.
And we bring in thousands of moslems unchecked from Gaza !
There must have been dozens of ex Hamas. Did anyone check to see if
any of them had what look like battle wounds, gunshots etc ? Oh NO !
That would be Islamaphobia !
I know, I know Foxy, I am on my soap box again, so I aplolgise for
bringing reality onto your screen.
BTW Belly seems to be quite well although I have not managed to speak to him.

Talking about the "Anglosphere?"

Here's an old article that's still relevant today:

"The Anglosphere Illusion."

http://aspistrategist.org.au/the-anglosphere-illusion/

"nostalgia isn't what it used to be".

.

Dear Foxy,

.

My etymology dictionary tells me that xenophobia comes from the Greek words xenos (which can be translated as either "stranger" or “guest") and phobos (which means either "fear" or “flight”). There are a large number of words in English which are based on phobos. Xenos has given us far fewer words; words from this root include xenocentric (“oriented toward or preferring a culture other than one's own”) and xenial (“of, relating to, or constituting hospitality or relations between host and guest and especially among the ancient Greeks between persons of different cities”).

I understand that xenophobia is a natural phenomenon that we humans share with many, if not all, life species, including our closest brethren, the chimpanzees and bonobos with whom we share a common ancestor. Nature has endowed us humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, and probably all other animals, with a hormone called oxytocin, often referred to as the “love hormone” because it promotes social cohesion and social bonding but also promotes out-group hostility and in-group preference”.

In a recent publication of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, an international team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the French National Centre for Scientific Research reviewed decades of findings and research carried out on several wild chimpanzee and bonobo populations to investigate premises of parochial altruism in our closest living relatives.

The authors propose a new model of non-kin cooperation - applicable at a smaller scale than in humans - called the parochial cooperation model, in which, given the consequences of warfare on reproductive success, group-level cooperation is needed, displayed, and reinforced during out-group conflicts. Out-group conflicts promote out-group hostility and out-group hostility reinforces in-group favouritism.

This scheme functions in a reinforcement feedback loop in which repeated interactions among individuals of the same community and established social ties forge the cement by which collective actions and group-level cooperation can take place.

It seems some of us have a little more oxytocin than others !

Here is the link to the research report :

http://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2021.0149

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Strategic_Policy_Institute

"In February 2012, the Minister for Defence Stephen Smith (ALP) announced the appointment of Peter Jennings as ASPI's new executive director, effective in May 2012."

It seems that the ASPI is a mouthpiece of Defense and Defense Industry Partners and needs to be taken in that context. I wouldn't expect the Defense establishment to have an in depth understanding of political and cultural philosophy. But the ASPI is probably better and less politically influenced than some Australian institutions.

The ASPI seems to have a low opinion of the management of Chinese spies in Australian Universities

I just picked up on the fact that Foxy's article was written by Gareth Evans- yes the one from the ALP, seemingly ostensibly of the unity faction, and now Chancellor of the ANU, I shudder to think.

Of course the ALP will discredit the idea of an Anglosphere. Some of Evans comments such as the impact of UK's membership of the EU are relevant (perhaps overstated).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Evans_(politician)

I see the ALP as Marxist (and probably Maoist), as did B.A. Santa Maria. The ASPI needs to be seen as bipartisan, even if the Overton Window pulls political discourse wildly to the Socialist side.