Area 51: The United States of Australia

HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE

I relocated from the midwestern USA to Australia in 1996 at age 34 to marry a woman whom I'd met initially via the Net and later in the skin in the USA when she visited. The relationship didn't last, but the Australian permanent residency visa and associated work permission did, so I stayed on in Australia.

I am quite cosy living in Sydney. I have absolutely no homesickness for the mudwestern USA. However, I do have a background in journalism and am a net news junkie as a result. I am very significantly better informed about US & world events than if I were a US resident. I eat 20 news sources everyday thanks to NewzCrawler and RSS feeds.



THE TIPPING POINT

The imperative to apply for Australian citizenship came when Shrub attacked Iraq in 2003. I was so intensely disgusted with the US government that I was very closely considering divesting myself of US citizenship entirely, but reconsidered at the very last minute. Hence, I am now a citizen of both the USA and Australia. I have voting rights in both countries, but only at the Federal level in the USA elections, where I am registered as a Democrat in the last US state I lived in before I moved to Australia.



BUSH UNITES THE WORLD - AGAINST HIM

Despite some years of thinking that my vote, particularly as an ex-pat, would be heartily ignored, I decided that my US citizenship had more to do with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than it did with the government of the day. My US citizenship is an avenue for me to change the US government if I choose to use it as such. Excommunication, albeit voluntary, would remove that ability from me. Xenophobia and withdrawal, even at a personal level, would not help my mother country to be restored to a position of international respect.

BAN SESAME STREET IN AUSTRALIA

All the same, I am now an Australian. Despite my retention of US citizenship, I am intensely dedicated to the sovereignty and cultural integrity of Austalian society, both that of Aboriginal and European origins.

In practise, I vehemently oppose the establishment of US military bases in Australia in any form. I also support Australian content restrictions and foreign ownership limits in Australian media.

When you raise kids on Sesame Street instead of Bananas in Pyjamas, they end up speaking ZEE instead of ZED. Australian kids should sound Australian and should not think of this wide brown land as inferior. We should not be invoking US cultural imperialism on kids.


MURDOCH IS NOW FOREIGN MEDIA

Australia should not be the 51st US state in anyone's mind. Since Rupe took his weird act offshore, all his holdings in Australia should be restricted per Australian foreign media ownershp regs.

-weez