Originally Posted by kiwi_child (Post 4917475)

Blatant materialistic attitudes, superficial thinking, pretentiousness, smugness and arrogance (OZ is simply the best place on planet earth. We're right and everyone else who differs from our mainstream thinking is unaustralian).

-The moral minority dictating what values are acceptable.
- A focus that fills our screens, airwaves, electronic and print media with US culture, fashion and trivial dribble and promotes this as journalism
-The rip your fellow citizens off culture
-Lack of empathy and compassion for the disadvantaged and govt policies that continue to marginalise them while at the same time branding them all lazy bludgers
- A society that is disengaged from itself and others and sees the economy and the dollar as God almighty and hides itself in the sand by allowing itself to be drowned in AFL and other sports to the point it's actually a religion
-A society that worships the car (and continues to plan infrastructure to serve the auto deity) and has a shocking to poor standard of public transport services
- The bigger is better mindset covering everything from sporting stadiums to fast food
-An unwillingness or inability to share of oneself beyond a superficial level. Very much a mask wearing society (worse than the US on this I think)
-Focussing on what car people drive, what burb they live in, what they do for a living, and using this info as some type of measuring stick instead of just focussing on what kind of person they are.
- People in the media making fun of peoples sexual identity or sexual orientation or labelling them as perverts or lepers of some sort. Laws and business practices that still discriminate agst these people. Only heterosexuals are normal in OZ you know! By contrast the UK is very gay, les and trans friendly, accepting that we are indeed a diverse people.
-Parents who wrap their kids up in cotton wool, eg, driving them to school for Godsake for paranoia about child predators.

I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them at the moment.

Originally Posted by LauraC (Post 4917527)

You've just described Britian. Also I don't think Britain (or at least where I live) is gay friendly at all, plenty of homophobia here. I think plenty of countries are exactly as you have described.

Originally Posted by Tableland (Post 4917507)

Come on Vash, Truman's decision to drop the bombs wasn't a war crime at the time. It has become a war crime over time. It's not fair to judge yesterday's acts by today's cultural values. Nuclear weapons became a monster through the Cold War and not before. There *was* concern about their use at the time but back then there was nowhere near the stigma attached to them as there is now.

Also, the use of these weapons had several functions. First, they saved an invasion of the Japanese homeland which would have cost by most conservative estimates 500,000 men's lives. Second, they showed the Soviet Union that the US had this power and would use it, and third, they expedited the surrender of the Japanese before the Soviets could invade the north. If this had happened Japan today would be like the Korean peninsula with a buggered-up north and a democratic south.

It's OK for us to say it was a war crime, but I'm not sure the residents of Hokkaido would agree hadthey spent the last 60 years making soup out of their own sandals and being shot for their political opinions while those in the south played with their iPods.

Originally Posted by kiwi_child (Post 4911858)

Coming from NZ, I couldn't believe how Americanised OZ was. It really took me by surprise. I was looking forward to being exposed to Aussie culture as is often promoted. Instead I found a superficial, insecure and overly materialistic society, much to my disappointment. And with the passing of Slim Dusty the other year, I feel there is now virtually nothing of true Australian culture left to experience. That guy was an icon, a legend, and embodied something very special about what and who Australia once was.

Originally Posted by kiwi_child (Post 4917475)

Blatant materialistic attitudes, superficial thinking, pretentiousness, smugness and arrogance (OZ is simply the best place on planet earth. We're right and everyone else who differs from our mainstream thinking is unaustralian).

-The moral minority dictating what values are acceptable.
- A focus that fills our screens, airwaves, electronic and print media with US culture, fashion and trivial dribble and promotes this as journalism
-The rip your fellow citizens off culture
-Lack of empathy and compassion for the disadvantaged and govt policies that continue to marginalise them while at the same time branding them all lazy bludgers
- A society that is disengaged from itself and others and sees the economy and the dollar as God almighty and hides itself in the sand by allowing itself to be drowned in AFL and other sports to the point it's actually a religion
-A society that worships the car (and continues to plan infrastructure to serve the auto deity) and has a shocking to poor standard of public transport services
- The bigger is better mindset covering everything from sporting stadiums to fast food
-An unwillingness or inability to share of oneself beyond a superficial level. Very much a mask wearing society (worse than the US on this I think)
-Focussing on what car people drive, what burb they live in, what they do for a living, and using this info as some type of measuring stick instead of just focussing on what kind of person they are.
- People in the media making fun of peoples sexual identity or sexual orientation or labelling them as perverts or lepers of some sort. Laws and business practices that still discriminate agst these people. Only heterosexuals are normal in OZ you know! By contrast the UK is very gay, les and trans friendly, accepting that we are indeed a diverse people.
-Parents who wrap their kids up in cotton wool, eg, driving them to school for Godsake for paranoia about child predators.

I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them at the moment.

Originally Posted by kiwi_child (Post 4912024)

What pissed Aussies and Kiwis off was that some useless whisky drinking generals in London farked it up at Gallipoli and that cost the lives of many, many ANZACS. Also in WW2, the UK Top Brass hassled the OZ PM (Curtin) to keep his men in the middle east theatre when they shoudl have been sent back to OZ to defend their home country.

Infact, if it hadn't been for the yanks we'd all be speaking Japanese nowadays. On that score The Americans deserve credit. And the Allies would also have lost WW2 if the Americans hadn't come to the party.

Originally Posted by kiwi_child (Post 4912024)

What pissed Aussies and Kiwis off was that some useless whisky drinking generals in London farked it up at Gallipoli and that cost the lives of many, many ANZACS. .

Originally Posted by BadgeIsBack (Post 4921715)

Similar leadership pissed off British Tommies in the Trenches.

Originally Posted by Tableland (Post 4921954)

This is true. The British failure to gather accurate intelligence prior to Gallipoli was a disaster, but British soldiers died as well. Much hatred against the British for Gallipoli started in the 1980s, which may or may not have had anything to do with the 1981 film Gallipoli which was pretty heavily biased against the British.

Originally Posted by Amazulu (Post 4916482)

It was logistically impossible. Say the Japs had managed to take New Guinea. At best they would have been seriously depleted and basically, knackered. Their supply lines were huge. It would have taken months to get back in to shape. By then the Aussie Imperial force would have been back in Australia, combat seasoned and ready to fight. US Army and Marines would have been here too. The Japs would have been continuously harrassed from the sea and air. Say they had managed to get ashore at Darwin. Then what? There was nothing there. Anything they needed to capture was 1000's of kms away. They would have been under constant attack. If they had tried to move down the East Coast to invade Queensland they would have been hammered from the air and sea. They would have needed all their carriers which would have been very vulnerable to land-based airpower. The US Navy would have had the Battle of Midway off Australia instead. Even without the USA it was never going to happen, just like the German invasion of Britain was never going to happen. We now know that Germany and Japan were never really serious about invading the UK or Australia anyway.

Originally Posted by BadgeIsBack (Post 4922075)

I think the Japs would have stuffed themselves getting to Sydney certainly.

I'm assuming that the Australian govt had a fallback line for political and planning purposes but with the technology of the 1940s, nuclear notwithstanding, Australia was a hard option.

Even now, a barrage of long range missiles say firing from New Guinea at Sydney or Melbourne (memories of 1991, anyone) could be negated by Aussie SAS units taking out launchers.

Originally Posted by Tableland (Post 4922216)

As for the missiles thing, this is why Australia needs to choose the Gibbs & Cox ships next week rather than the Spanish contract. The G&C have the capacity for missile defence systems. Some of those and a few nuclear submarines and Australia is a fortress.

Originally Posted by Vash the Stampede (Post 4917353)

Incidentally, this thread is about the Americanisation of Australia - but nobody's posted any examples yet.

Nu-Shooz has referred to "the roads" (is there such a thing as an Americanised road?) and "the buildings (is there such a thing as an Americanised building?), while worzel has mentioned the size of the country and the heat (neither of which constitute Americanisation).

kiwi_child was predictably negative: "Coming from NZ, I couldn't believe how Americanised OZ was. It really took me by surprise". But again, she gave no examples.

In 2006, jadnrich once told me that Australia had changed so much that I wouldn't recognise it when I returned. I dismissed this as a load of cobblers, and I was right to do so. On arriving in Australia for a 3-week holiday in August last year, I was delighted to find (as I had expected) that almost nothing had changed. Certainly, I saw no more evidence of Americanisation than I had when I left home in January 2004.

Speaking for myself, I believe that Australian TV has become increasingly Americanised. That's my example.

Does anyone else have one - or more? :)

Originally Posted by annqldau (Post 4912370)

Depends on part of Au I think as QLD does have an American feel with all the Bill Board type flat shops etc. but they don't do bigger is better as well as the yanks.

Originally Posted by annqldau (Post 4923751)

Also the obsession with traffic lights is more like big town/city America bring in the roundabout and ease congestion.