"As far as the war in Ukraine goes, I don't buy the American line; 'Ukraine GOOD!, Russia BAD!' there is a lot more to it than that."

Agreed;
But as everyone knows I support Russia in this situation,
- Because I don't support using money or trade as weapons and overthrowing other countries.
- But I don't certainly like seeing innocent people suffering.

Conscripted Ukrainian boys -> retirees being used as cannon fodder for a proxy war by NATO,
Russian mums thinking their boys are off to military exercises - never to come home again.
I don't like any of it.

"I believe Australia should be a non-aligned country, and take a stance for peace, rather than blindly supporting America, sorry their proxy in this case Ukraine."

- I've been saying the same thing.
I wish we had a nuclear deterrent, and could remain neutral non-aligned and a voice of peace and sanity in a crazy world.
I'm starting to think the only real policy worth supporting is unity in self sufficiency,
- Everything else seems to just be divide and conquer.

I don't like the 'green agenda', but it's not because I'm against doing things that are better for the environment,
- I just oppose foreign treaties and being ruled by unelected foreign bureaucrats.
I support good polices that are better for the environment,
- but I don't think we should cut our noses off to spite our faces.

"...then a simple bribe in the form of a political "donation" works wonders"
Yes also agreed, voters never seem to matter as much as political donors do.

Hi AC,

I think you and I share some common ground on some issues.

I don't agree that having nuclear weapons is much of a deterrent, India, Pakistan, likely nuclear targets from each other. Iran and North Korea, again although developing their deterrent, it doesn't make them any safer from their prospective, from nuclear attack. Should Australia possess such weapons, I think we would go up a couple of notches on China's hit list. Plus nuclear proliferation simply allows every tin pot country justification to develop nuclear weapons, if we had such a capability, why not Indonesia, Philippines etc.

On the voice issue; Given aboriginal a voice to government.

A hypo;

Proposed Law One; Uluru is to be broken up and used for road base.
Proposed Law Two; A mining tax of 20% on all minerals.

The Aboriginal voice would be up in arms about Law One.

The Mineral Council would be up in arms about Law Two.

Both listened to by government.

A few big miners donate $1 million to the party in power, for listening to their voice. The Uluru mob give the PM and the Aboriginal Minister shiny new boomerangs, for listening to their voice.

Next week the 20% mining tax is dead and buried, but there is now plenty of road base for the taxpayer funded 6 lane highway to the new worlds biggest asbestos mine in WA. All had nothing to do with dosh or boomerangs. Although the PM thought at least his boomy would have been made out of solid gold, given his self importance!

Kudos Armchair Critic.

Hi paul1405,
I suppose I can't really argue with you there,
Whilst having a nuclear deterrant may provide some kind of buffer against invasion / war by more powerful countries.
(i.e the US is less likely to invade or overthrow)
Nuclear weapons can not only be a deterrent, but offensive in nature as well or a means to bully others, which in turns creates a need for those smaller nations to want want to possess them too.

I'd like to think that having such capabilities would allow us to be non-aligned and neutral, but in reality things seldom seem to work out the way you plan.

Pauliar,

Ukraine was a non-aligned country threatening no one until Russia invaded.

Armchair Critic- Yes the genie is out of the bottle all we can do is take care of ourselves and try to gain allies. Fifty nukes isn't going to really give us offensive capability anyway. China and India and Pakistan didn't follow the rules either and no one did anything. The reality seems to be there is always dominance over the sandboxes. Sometimes the only was people play nice is by forcing them to. But the more complexity the more instability as James Gleick implies in his book Chaos. Part of the stability of the world is predicated on the non-aggression of the permanent members but with an aggressive China all bets are off. Time to start arming. Notice that Socialist groups don't criticize China. Remember the Hong Kong Anti-China Protests- the Socialists came out on the side of China.

As far as the Ukraine goes Hillary Clinton and the Democrat (Socialists) seem to be heavily involved with the coup. But Russian's obviously have Communist Socialist roots too. What side Putin is on- who knows. Seemingly two types of socialism are in opposition to each other- is this real or fake controlled opposition. One would suspect that China would stay behind the scenes pulling the levers of power on both sides if it is controlled opposition- and maybe even if it isn't.

Impressive and terrifying in scale.

What are the other players doing- Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Britain, Catholic Church, Wealthy Elites, other religious groupings.

If a conflict breaks out who will side with who in WWIII.
China's not going to back down