Never in a million years would i defend the treatment of aboriginals. Nor i assume would you defend the treatment of native Americans. Both of our countries have come a long way in that regard and still have a way to go yet. My original statement regarding slavery was a comeback to the reference about Australia being a country of convicts. That reference was both the first stone cast and first finger pointed. All the rest has stemmed from there.

On this point you are correct, my bad. As i said "correct me if I'm wrong".

Doesn't change the validity of everything else i said.

Actually, it does. Japan was in search of becoming an empire, looking to expand their boarders. Australia at the time was not very industrialized. Your nation relied on arms and supplies from Britian and the U.S. But let's remember that Britian was under constant bombardment from Germany and much of their industry was in constant ruins. The U.S. was fortunate in that even though we ended up in the war, we were isolated physically from the war (other than Pearl Harbor) and were able to build an industrial empire in a matter of months and kept the allies supplied.

So like Jeff said, you'd likely be sending taxes to Tokyo without the U.S. 😃

It's ok. We never asked for a thank you.

I often wonder -- in US, we have way, way too many TV channels.
How many TV channels (terrestrial, cable &/or satellite) do countries like UK, France, Australia & Japan have?

Btw, your nation implemented your gun control policies in 96. You had what qualifies as a mass shooting in 2011 (I believe only 3 were killed that time).

And you've also had several arson cases that have killed well into double digits in each case. Higher fatality rates in these fires than most public shootings have had in the U.S.

The slaves were treated far better in the North than in the South, where the plantation owners were damned if they were going to let any damn Yankees tell them what to do, who to whip or how much tax they should pay. The stupid thing about them having such a death grip on keeping their slaves is that they wanted them to pick and bale cotton when cotton was King, but within only a few years of the Civil War, they only needed a small number of people to pick, bale and clean the cotton- eventually, they wouldn't have needed slaves for much, other than keeping house and working the fields in some capacity.

BTW- since the US and Australia have many common ancestors who owned slaves, don't try to make the US look like the only ones who used them.

Ever count the shopping channels? They're one of the reasons cable TV is priced so reasonbly....um....er.....well, it would be a lot more expensive if they weren't in the lineup. At least we can block them.

We weren't as isolated as many think-

[Link: khou.com]

Now that's funny.

And a pretty accurate description.

It raises another point too. Your knowledge of Australia is pretty much on par with most Americans i think. Unless you happened to have something relating to Australia fall in front of you via TV, like Skippy, you don't know much else about us.

Besides all the commonly known stuff like deadly animals and a few tourist attractions, Americans know little about Australia and even less about us as a people.

Despite all the similarities (and there are many), we have vastly different attitudes on things as a people.
The most obvious to me is that American culture is much more about self promotion and getting ahead as an individual whereas Aussies are much more excepting of things that benefit everyone, like our healthcare system, gun laws, livable minimum wages and so on. Because of these things everyone gets medical treatment free of charge with surgery done on a priority basis but there is the option of getting additional health insurance if you want surgery on demand. The gun laws have been a spectacular success and all Aussie workers can expect to live on the wage they earn without having to rely on tips or second and third jobs to get by. All of these things are just accepted and expected because they are for the good of everyone.
If you look at a business owners card in Australia it will generally read his name and position (manager or managing director), look at an American card and it is just as likely to say his name followed by a book of accolades like CEO, President and Founder. To us this looks like big-noting and he is very likely to be told to get over himself and put his ego away, particularly if he is essentially a shop owner.
In essence Australia is a country where you can make a success of yourself just like America, the difference is you can't do it without looking after the people whose backs you are riding on and no one wants to hear you bragging about how important you think you are.
Donald Trump would last 5 minutes here before someone told him to check his ego.

I know that. But our factories weren't within bomber range.

Talk about clutching at some straws. One shooting in 15 years that killed 3 people. Where are your statistics for the US for the same time period?

We have 26 free to air channels with the advent of digital tv but it was only 5 prior. We have pay TV services called foxtel which can provide up to probably 60 or so channels and the newly introduced content on demand services but our overall range is much smaller. We get all the best stuff but don't but most of the crap programming. Most of the really popular prgramming in the states is available here one way or the other.

My point was simply that Australia as a country has never had a culture of slave ownership.

Again though, the only reason slavery was ever raised was because of the comments about us being a nation of convicts.

We have over 10 times more people than Australia does in almost the same amount of real estate. Comparing any criminal stats between the two is really grasping at straws. For example, I can't remember the last time we had a case of arson that killed 15 people. Different cultures and very different demographics.

That was a joke. Like the one you made in the other thread that got shut down immediately because someone took it too seriously and gave a serious reply.

Pot meet Kettle