Banjo

"Bronwyn, I can tell you why the pirates in Somalia act as they do. Money and greed, nothing more. They are not forced to be pirates."

No, they are not forced to be pirates and I don't condone what they're doing, but I do understand why they're doing it.

Perhaps this excerpt from a report by Johann Hari, columnist for the London Independent, will make it a little clearer to you too.

"In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: 'Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.' Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to 'dispose' of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: 'Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.'

Continued

"At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: 'If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters.'

This is the context in which the men we are calling 'pirates' have emerged."

'http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/13-6

Yes, Banjo, greed is the root of the problem, but whose greed are we talking here?

Leigh...
Do you even know what the word racism means? Are you saying your last post was not racist?
Lets look shall we.
"the Chinese don't get het up about race
they just know that they are better than everyone else.
by calling Westerners racists to gain an advantage."
So you have met all 3.9 billion of them and have asked them and they all answered the same way did they? Remarkably homogeneous society.

I might be "wet behind the ears" but you sir are a racist.

Banjo
That is just insane. As horrendous as the fires in Vic were if you remember most of QLD and Nthn NSW was experiencing floods at the same time. Did you know that 75% (15.1 million) of Australias population lives in urban areas which hardly ever get burned in bushfires. Did you also know that a lot of our mineral resources are in arid and desert areas also not prone to much burning?

We are not under threat and it is not likely to happen in the near future. We have the best and most efficient armed forces in the world and they have been trained in our conditions and know the ground unlike any invaders. We have nothing to be afraid of and if we dont go airing stupid, racist suspicions and offending our neighbors it will stay that way.

We need defense forces but only focused on defending Australia. Not invading and attacking other peoples countries.

It's racist to discuss the military build up in China?.

hahahaha Yeah ok, and you sing "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" too?.

One thing's for sure, time will tell. Obviously they aren't a direct physical threat to Australia. They just don't have those sort of capabilities. It would take a sustained war from Indonesia - (as in the land) - to be able to do it. We'd know WAY before it happened that it was going to.

What you will see is nations out-growing their resources. China is picked out because they are the biggest, most aggressive, and ACTUALLY expanding their military. Why?. Why would they need to expand their military when no one is a direct physical threat to them as a land mass?. Do you see China in a starring role in Afghanistan or Iraq.

An article from YESTERDAY

"Beijing, Apr 16 (PTI) China today unfolded a massive naval expansion plan to give its warships longer reach capabilities, announcing that it will build new generation of seacraft including stealth submarines, supersonic cruise aircrafts and longer range missiles."

and

"China has developed a wide array of naval ordinance and may be discussing licensed production of Russian 53-65KE wave-homing anti-ship torpedoes. The navy operates about 400 aircraft, mainly 40-year-old Russian designs, but also about two dozen cutting-edge Sukhoi SU30MKK fighter bombers.
Such expansion has been made possible by two decades of near-annual double digit increases in defense spending. Earlier this year, China announced a 14.9 percent rise in military spending in its 2009 budget, to 480.68 billion yuan ($70.36 billion)."

It is not racist to discuss China or anything about China including military spending. It is racist to make generalisations about the Chinese people and say things like they ALL do this or that or all the Chinese think this or that. There are 3.9 billion of them. They are not all slanty eyed warmongers you know. Someone mentioned the fact that many Chinese who live here are wealthy as if that was somehow evil or dangerous to us. This is racism. Once again I ask you to stop it.

StG Maybe the Chinese are upgrading more than expanding their military. You yourself posted about their minuscule and outdated airforce. $70.3 billion? What about the US and its $711 billion in military spending? 10 times more. Maybe the Chinese are scared of the Americans.

Calling for Australia to increase/change its defense forces in response to increases from China is called an arms race. A race we cannot win and should try our hardest to avoid.

Mikk,

It is natural for you to want to defend your position, no matter how ridiculous that position is.

No. I do not know all Chinese; but, unlike you, I do read a lot written by people who are experts in Chinese culture. Many of these experts are, themselves, Chinese.

I suggest that you are the one who does not "know what the word racism means". If you did you would not use it so loosely and uselessly. You are typical of ignorant people who use the word to put down people with whom you don't agree. You try to stop debate.

Well, feel free to call me a racist if it makes you feel that you are achieving something. But, be assured, I am one of those people who doesn't care what uneducated people call him, and I will not be stopped from saying what I think.

I notice, with some amusement, that you refer to Chinese as not all being "slant eyed war mongers". Perhaps that was a Freudian slip. Nobody in this thread has referred to Chinese as such.

Far from critcising anyone else, you should be explaining how it is that you feel able to dub people you know nothing about as 'racists'.

You won't look inward, of course; you are a naive fool who thinks that racism is the domain of white people only. It is to be hoped that you are never exposed to black or yellow racism and have your pathetic delusions ruined.