Thursday, September 6, 2007

Near neighbors

In today’s newspaper there is an article reporting a large arms deal between our close neighbor, Indonesia and Russia. The deal is worth $1.2 billion and is to purchase 2 new submarines, 22 helicopters and 20 tanks. Let’s hope that most of it is to keep any internal strife under control…but what are the subs for?

I have always thought of Indonesia as a relatively poor country…and it seems that the Australian government also thought that with a large annual aid package given to them. This year’s aid totalled $328,000,000 and the next financial year it will be boosted to $460,000,000.

Indonesia has the largest muslim population of any country and a military of 396,150 persons. Australia hopes to boost our ADF force to 57,000 over the next ten years. Methinks that we should be nice to the U.S. and remain a staunch ally. It worked in WW2.

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