Some important stuff here on 'economic warfare', Aboriginals are now stealing food from the Europeans (page 105), also destruction of European property, especially the killing of livestock (page 106);
Attacks on stations were often highly organized and devastating in effect leaving animals dead, everything moveable carried away and all else put to the torch
(page 106)
on this last point Reynold says "the surprising thing is not that fire was used as a weapon but that it was not used more often" (page 108). Reynolds makes sure to note that Aboriginal resistance was "ragged, sporadic and uneven" (page 109), the uneven expansion of the frontier in different times and places in Australia can easily be lost in a general history like this
Aboriginal attacks on property had devastating effects on the fortunes of individual settlers and at times appeared to threaten the economic viability of pioneer industries - squatting, farming, mining and pearling. There were occasions - as in Tasmania in the late 1820s, New South Wales in the late 1830s and early 1840s and Queensland in the early 1860s - when Aboriginal resistance emerged as one of the major problems of colonial society
(page 111)
there were other strategies than outright resistance... some aboriginals tried to negotiate (page 116-117), others were 'going in' to European society, either because of the increased difficulty of finding food in these new conditions (pages 113-114) or because they were genuinely curious about European society (page 114).
There was no neat or decisive end to conflict between Aborigines and settlers; neither armistice nor treaty; no medals, no speeches, no peace conference. Black resistance did not conclude when the last stock was speared although methods were modified and objectives altered. Sorcery was probably increasingly favoured over physical confrontation as a means of challenging white domination. Killing ceased but raids on European property continued. The most immediate motive was economic; blacks stole to survive. But there was always a political element in Aboriginal behaviour. They continued to believe that Europeans were under a moral obligation to share their abundance, both because sharing was so central to Aboriginal values, and to provide compensation for the loss of land, water and game.
(pages 117-118)
Now Reynolds gets into the difficult matter of the body count. He goes through state-by-state but i'll just focus on the national figures for now, with the note that Queensland was probably the worst (something to look into later maybe?). European deaths were better recorded and therefore easier to find a number.
It seems reasonable to suggest that Aborigines killed somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans in the course of the invasion and settlement on the continent.
(page 121)
For the continent as a whole it is reasonable to suppose that at least 20,000 Aborigines were killed as a direct result of conflict with the settlers. Secondary effects of the invasion - disease, deprivation, disruption - were responsible for the premature deaths of many more although it is almost impossible to arrive at a realistic figure.
(page 122)
Reynolds anticipates that some may think a figure of 20,000 is too low considering that there was a decline in Aboriginal population from roughly 300,000 in 1788 to about 50,000 in the late 19th century (page 123), he then discusses the impact of disease; "epidemic diseases were probably more lethal than punitive expeditions" (page 125). This was accompanied by a decline in the birth rate and high infant mortality because of "malnutrition, exposure, disease and especially V.D. in a variety of forms" (page 126).
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Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:Reynolds anticipates that some may think a figure of 20,000 is too low considering that there was a decline in Aboriginal population from roughly 300,000 in 1788 to about 50,000 in the late 19th century (page 123), he then discusses the impact of disease; "epidemic diseases were probably more lethal than punitive expeditions" (page 125).
btw 300,000 is now considered on the very very low end of estimates for pre-colonial Aboriginal population. at Reynold's time of writing in 1981 this 300,000 number was the orthodoxy that was just about on its way out, from the late 1970s onwards there been estimates that range from about 750,000 up to 1.5 million.
anyhow, just keep in mind im reading old stuff atm so a lot of its gonna get revised... i think its very useful to track these different historical ideas and i hope to eventually know enough about colonial australia that i can get these different interpretations 'in conversation' with each other. i had a bit of a browse of Skin Deep by liz connor which petrol mentioned and it had a big slam against Alan Moorehead in there, for example.
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Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:i managed to find "bringing them home: national inquiry into the separation of aboriginal and torres strait islander children from their families" in a second hand book store. its available online but i like physical copies. definitely going through that one sometime.
Nice.
The first part of this chapter is about the way that younger Aboriginals were more open-minded than the elderly and more able to take on aspects of European culture or even try to assimilate entirely. This chapter has some good shit on the attempted proletarianisation of Aboriginals by settlers...
We can assume that those young blacks who went willingly towards the Europeans fully expected to be able to participate in their obvious material abundance. Reciprocity and sharing were so fundamental to their own society that they probably expected to meet similar behaviour when they crossed the racial frontier. They presumably thought that residence alone would win them equality, that kinship and sharing would flow naturally from contiguity. Though Aborigines were accustomed to differences in power and status based on age and sex they had no experience of the extremes of wealth and poverty which existed in European society. {...} Those blacks who wished to live like Europeans can hardly have imagined that the desperate poverty of the fringe camp could sit so near the plenty of town or farm or station.
(page 129)
This part is subtitled "The Discipline of Labour":
The move from the bush into white society was not merely a spatial journey. Among other things it was a transfer from one economic system to another, from the domestic mode of production to the burgeoning capitalist economy of colonial Australia. When groups of blacks walked into camps and stations and townships they carried few material possessions. But their cultural luggage was very much richer and more important in determining their reaction to the new world. They came from a society where economic activity was geared to immediate use not to the creation of a surplus for exchange. Once the current needs had been met each day could be devoted to leisure - to sleeping, gossiping, sexual intrigue, to politics, ritual or ceremony. Like hunters and gatherers elsewhere the Aborigines do not seem to have spent more than three or four hours in the field seeking food. Each family unit had direct access to the means of subsistence and each embodied all the various skills needed for survival, if not sociability. This was the irreducible foundation on which the equality of traditional society rested. Thus Sahlins argued:
Primitive peoples have invented many ways to elevate a man above his fellows. But the producers' hold on their own economic means rules out the most compelling history has known: exclusive control on such means by some few, rendering dependent the many others
Europeans were quite clear as to the economic and social role appropriate to Aborigines who came in from the bush. Governor Macquarie argued that when they had given up their 'Wild wandering and Unsettled Habits' they would become progressively useful to the country either as 'labourers in Agricultural Employ or among the lower Class of Mechanics'. A generation later Governor Gipps gave his attention to the means by which the Aborigines 'could be induced to become voluntary labourers for wages'. Though 'by nature wild' he believed that proof existed that they could be 'induced to submit to the restraints which are imposed on ordinary labourers'. Numerous plans were devised to impose the required discipline on the Aboriginal workers. In Perth in the 1840s the Government issued a direction that blacks would only be admitted to the town if they were wearing a woollen shirt which had to be earned by labour, thus practically conveying the lesson 'of the value of acquiring property'. Education of the children was held out to be the great hope especially if they could be separated from their parents and brought up in institutions. A West Australian official put forward a scheme for the socialization of black children in 1840. He argued that an institution be set up to which the children be induced 'and even compelled' to go and enter upon a 'field of action which would gradually wean them from their present erratic habits'. This scheme was quite elaborate. He suggested the children should be taught to walk to and fro for a limited distance in 'Gangs merely to form a habit'. The next step would be to make each boy bring back any loose wood that might be lying about to be used for cooking. Subsequently they would be made to carry an axe to cut wood 'thus gradually bringing them on by steps to a habit of labour'. Other gangs would meanwhile collect ballast stones, grow vegetables, break up ground or make roads.
Several attempts were made to encourage Aborigines to become gardeners or small farmers and thereby 'feel the sweets of property'. In 1815 Macquarie endeavoured to settle a group of Sydney blacks on the shores of the harbour and provided them with huts, small patches of garden, rations, clothes and European assistant in order that they would learn to prefer 'the productive Effects of their own Labour and Industry to the Wild and precarious Pursuits of the Woods'. The failure of this and similar schemes has usually been attributed to the Aborigines' total lack of understanding of agriculture. Yet traditionally they did harvest root crops and wild grasses and often from the very same patches of soil appropriated by the settlers for agriculture. The big difference lay in the fact that they did not see the need to sit around and wait for the crops to grow. Confident in their knowledge of the environment and their ability to ensure, by appropriate ritual, its continued flowering they arranged their timetable to return to an area when a new crop had matured and ripened. Clearly there was a big gap between the productivity of Aboriginal foraging and European horticulture even in the crude colonial environment. But the crucial difference was not in the use of the land but in the institution of private property. Small European farmers and gardeners remained in one place not just to nurture their crops but because they owned the land and all it produced and residence was required to effect and affirm that ownership. During the first half of the nineteenth century there were numerous settlers who appreciated that the difficulty of 'bringing in' the blacks 'to a habit of labour' was due to lack of motivation rather than incapacity, to the 'difficulty of finding some inducement sufficiently powerful to excite them to continuous labour'. Samuel Marsden remarked in 1825 that he was pessimistic about the future of the the Aborigines. 'The time', he wrote:may come when they may feel more wants than they do at present - they seem to have all they wish for Idleness and Independence. They have no wants to stimulate their exertions and until they have, I feel they will remain the same.
Perhaps the clearest analysis of the problems of attempting to impose the discipline, punctuality and regularity of wage labour on Aboriginal society was provided by Jack McLaren in his account of his life at the tip of Cape York at the turn of the century. He set out to establish a coconut plantation using the local blacks for labour. Being a solitary European the option of force was not available to him and he was required to use patience and diplomacy to extract the amount of work he required. The blacks sought access to his trade goods but otherwise they could continue to survive independently. He provided an interesting catalogue of his problems. It was, he wrote, no easy matter to persuade the natives to work on succeeding days:We worked yesterday and are tired and would rest, they would say adding pointedly that in their habitual mode of life they worked not at all, and hunted only when the need for food was on them. Whereupon I would point out that in their wild life they had no tobacco, or flour, or coloured cloth, or tinned meats or tinned fish, or any other of the luxuries they coveted, and that the only way to obtain them was by working all day every day.
To his annoyance the blacks took a long time over their meals. Even their methods of eating appeared unnecessarily time-consuming. After the midday meal the whole camp would sleep and if McLaren did not wake them they would doze the afternoon through. Even while they were working there were constant distractions. When they came across food they would immediately down tools to dig the yams cut out the sugar bag, pursue the wallaby, causing disruption which might last several hours. Unless he supervised their work all the time they would sit down, smoke or go to sleep the minute his back was turned.
(page 140-143)
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a section entitled "Unwilling Wage Labourers"
The historical record bristles with colonists' complaints about their problems in trying to get Aborigines to behave as 'voluntary labourers for wages'. Governor Hutt concluded that black attitudes to labour were the 'chief and serious difficulty' which had hampered assimilation. They would not work regularly; would not settle; they were unpunctual. 'Every species of labour seems to be irksome to them', wrote the Commissioner for Crown Lands at Moreton Bay. 'Nothing', commented a woman settler from New England, 'can really repay them for performing any labour beyond that necessary to procure them enough game to enable them to exist from day to day'. Occasionally local blacks worked on her property but 'they all looked on working for us as a personal favour, and gave us to understand as much' {...}
But it was not just the habit of labour that had to be induced but also those concomitants the subordination of the servant to master and the separation of the worker from the means of subsistence and production. The second was the most difficult because it was hard to convince the Aborigines that they were working for their own benefit and not for white employers. G.A. Robinson explained to the Superintendent at Port Phillip that on the stations of the Protectorate the blacks were 'taught to feel that their occupation is for their own advantage'. E.S. Parker was even more acutely aware of the problems of convincing the Aborigines of the advantages of wage labour and imbuing them with the ideology of capitalism. In a report from his station on the Loddon he explained how it was essential to bring the blacks 'under the influence of Christian principles' which would provide the fundamental underpinning for the socially desired behaviour. Even then it was essential:that in all cases where they are employed they should be made to feel that their occupation is for their own benefit rather than for the advantage of the employer. They appear generally to feel that they owe us nothing and that they are under no obligation to work. If the suspicion therefore be aroused in their minds that they are working more for the benefit of the whites than their own advantage they will speedily recede from their employment.
It has often been assumed that the blacks were unable to acquire enough skills to compete successfully in colonial society. The evidence suggests otherwise. Aborigines displayed their adaptability within a few years of the settlement at Sydney Cove. Collins believed that if well treated they 'certainly might be made very servicable people'; in a number of occupations they proved themselves 'as handy and useful as any other persons could have been'. By the 1840s the catalogue of Aboriginal occupations had grown much larger. G.A. Robinson noted that:
as far as they have been employed, they have been found faithful guides, able Bullock drivers, Efficient Shepherds, Stockkeepers and Whalers, good Boatmen, Horsemen and Houseservants, Husbandmen, Policemen, Handicrafts and other useful employments.
When they had only recently arrived on the fringe of white society Aborigines must have found many European occupations incomprehensible. As they lacked any immediate rationale they may have been thought to have ritual significance. Yet many jobs in the colonial economy required only limited formal skills and in some the blacks had distinct advantages. In much of the rural industry they may well have been more immediately useful than new-chums from urban Britain. But while they were able to pick up the actual mechanical tasks associated with various jobs they were not willing to accept the social relations and cultural milieu in which they were set. While they might handle the tools of the labourer they were reluctant to accept the discipline that went with them.
(pages 143-145)
There's info in the chapter about Aboriginals being ripped off in trades (145-146), prostitution (146-147) and the fact that settlers were only really offering "the lowest rungs of society" to Aboriginals (page 148). Lower class settlers are paranoid about black labourers competing and lowering wages (page 148).
There's a weird bit right at the end of the chapter where Reynolds quotes two different sources which seem to be basically the same? It's like he screwed up some copy/paste thing in Microsoft Word and accidentally quoted the same thing twice? I can't be bothered looking up the source material right now, but its note 82 and 83 of this chapter. Very minor thing but its raising my hackles.
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:Reynolds anticipates that some may think a figure of 20,000 is too low considering that there was a decline in Aboriginal population from roughly 300,000 in 1788 to about 50,000 in the late 19th century (page 123)
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:btw 300,000 is now considered on the very very low end of estimates for pre-colonial Aboriginal population.
im sure we can all guess what other number here turned out to be too low, but ill get to that when i discuss Reynolds' more recent work....
spotted on twitter, from local trot paper
remember when red flag ran that abbott-getting-his-throat-slit cover that was a parody of some old agitprop and when the murdoch press kicked up a stink they actually apologised and withdrew it. trots lmao
First part of this chapter is encounters between Aboriginals and pastoralists - settlers driving Aboriginals away from land that has water and the stock animals drinking all the water and destroying local ecologies:
Cattle and sheep were destructive of the environment in other ways as well. Their close cropping of the vegetation destroyed native flora while plants growing in or around waterholes or lagoons were eaten or trampled under hard hoofs. A north Queensland pioneer wrote of the impact of cattle along the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline:
they trample out the signs of turtles found in dried up swamps, the trail of the crocodile to his nest; they eat the tops of yams, and eat and destroy the lillies, all of which make their (the Aborigines') natural food scarcer and harder to find
(page 158-159)
Aboriginals however adapted to a bad situation as best they could; they developed effective techniques to either kill or steal stock for themselves.
Aborigines reacted quickly and creatively to the setters' flocks and herds. They turned to good effect their traditional skills while accepting the need for innovation in both techniques and social organization. Ready access to large amounts of beef and mutton enabled groups to meet more frequently and stay together longer. Cooking methods were modified and diet changed with a probable decline in the collection and consumption of native plants. Yet reactions to cattle and to sheep were qualitatively different. When they pursued, killed and consumed cattle the Aborigines were still behaving like hunter-gatherers though they had modified traditional methods to cope with the introduced animals. But in their use of sheep many black clans had clearly traveled beyond the confines of customary experience. They had become effective herdsmen in their own right presenting a fundamental challenge to European pastoralists. All over the continent Aboriginal groups learnt to shepherd their sheep for long distances over difficult terrain, to train their dogs to assist rather than hinder their operations and to feed and water and corral their commandeered flocks
(page 165-166)
Of course, not all attacks were simply for food, some were carried out to inconvenience or intimidate the European settlers, like for example blinding sheep or driving them off a cliff, or decapitating a horse and hanging its entrails from bushes (page 166-167). On the other hand, some Aboriginals learnt various ways to disguise their raids to try to prevent massive retaliation from the settlers (page 168-169).
Some more stuff on integration of Aboriginals into the European economy, also kidnapping of Aboriginal women:
Most squatters were only too willing to exploit the labour of the Aboriginal camps. Within a very short time young men were working with the stock and women in and around station homesteads. It is probably that the blacks' eagerness to work for the Europeans varied widely. There are many reports of Europeans using force to recruit and keep their workers and all over Australia young women were forced into concubinage. The evidence for this is overwhelming. {...} A policeman based at Camooweal said that he felt sure:
that if half the young lubras being detained (I won't called it kept, for I know most of them would clear away if they could) were approached on the subject, they would say that they were run down by station blackguards on horseback, and taken to the stations for licentious purposes, and there kept more like slaves than anything else. I have heard it said that these same lubras have been locked up for weeks at a time - anyway whilst their heartless persecutors have been mustering cattle on their respective runs. Some, I have heard, take these lubras with them, but take the precaution to tie them up securely for the night to prevent them escaping
Young men were kidnapped too and taken to be 'trained up' for stockwork. But evidence of a voluntary acceptance of pastoral work can also be found. {...} Cattle stations probably provided more congenial work for Aboriginal men than any other European undertaking with the possible exception of the maritime industries for sea-coast peoples. There was considerable overlap between the old economy and the new. Local knowledge, the ability to track and to live off the land; all of these were carried over into the life of the Aboriginal stockman. {...} The pastoral industry provided many young Aborigines with a role in the European economy in which they could find satisfaction and scope for both traditional and acquired skills. That it was not conducive to greater Aboriginal advance was due to the pull of traditional society on one side and the power of white prejudice on the other. Aboriginal workers were given little incentive to increase their efficiency. They were typically underpaid, given no formal training, were rarely praised and often bashed and kicked and whipped. Even when consideration replaced brutality the paternalism remained
(pages 171-173)
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In this chapter sectors of the European economy other than the pastoral frontier are discussed. Really this chapter just serves as miscellany, a collection of things Reynolds' didn't put elsewhere. It's almost as if Reynolds is telling us that he is aware of these other issues, but due to the scope of the book he cannot really go in depth about them. It's probably the weakest chapter of the book, although I understand why he included it. The basic features are already familiar to us, the main question is are they even more disastrous than the pastoral frontier? Which ones were worse (e.g. mining)?. Or in what conditions was industry slightly more advantageous for the Aboriginals than the pastoral economy (e.g. coastal/maritime industry)? Here's some stuff on the mining industry and gold rush:
Of all forms of European economic activity mining was probably the most devastating in its effect on resident Aborigines. Numbers alone were of decisive importance. Hundreds of miners arrived en masse at sites of promising fields. Even on small fields the Europeans rapidly outnumbered local clans and prospecting parties fossicked their way into the remotest corners of Aboriginal territory. Innumerable sacred sites must have been desecrated as the Europeans scrambled across the ancient landscape in their frenetic search for mineral wealth. The impact of alluvial miners on the environment was massive and immediate - they gouged up the soil, polluted the streams, pillaged nearby strands of timber. The average mining camp had relatively few animals which could have compensated local Aborigines for the destruction of vegetable food and the shooting and driving away of indigenous animals.
{...}
Blacks in the mining areas were often forced into resistance from the earliest period of European intrusion. Violence did not escalate slowly out of personal vendetta as in many districts of older settlement; in many places it was open and indiscriminate from the start.
(pages 186-187)
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January 26th, 1938
in the 19th century whenever settlers/police/etc would shoot at Aboriginals they would call it "dispersal", even if Aboriginals were wounded or killed in the gunfire. as far as i know this widespread euphemism was even used in police reports etc as a way of downplaying violence. reynolds really needed to flag the word because obviously the quotes he uses from primary sources which mention "dispersal" take on a whole different meaning once you know how that word was used. if reynolds mentions this i missed it, i don't think he did.
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Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:I've been watching some Steve Keen videos (good bourgeois economist) and he's predicting a recession in Australia in 2017. He's been talking about the housing market bubble being about to burst since 2008ish though.
blind freddy could tell you the housing bubble is fit to burst. nice to hear at least one 'expert' says it matter of factly though
Petrol posted:Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:I've been watching some Steve Keen videos (good bourgeois economist) and he's predicting a recession in Australia in 2017. He's been talking about the housing market bubble being about to burst since 2008ish though.
blind freddy could tell you the housing bubble is fit to burst. nice to hear at least one 'expert' says it matter of factly though
yea its not particularly shocking info, keen is interesting because he was loudly talking about this stuff in ~2010 or w/e, then he sorta had to eat humble pie because the gov had that First Home Owners grant and the RBA propped the whole thing up. now hes confident again about his predictions it seems. i wish i understood a little bit more about the 'lingo' of bourgeois economics.
actually what i really need to learn about is central banks and shit like that.
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If there's anything that's been made clear from similar 'bursts' elsewhere (UK in particiular) it's that the bouge won't take anything on the chin and will claw back everything they possibly can from those who have the least to give.
On another note Peter Dutton's lost his Dog Whistle.
Accordion posted:On another note Peter Dutton's lost his Dog Whistle.
trust an ex-pig to smear an entire ethnic group based on a couple dozen charges, not even convictions (a minor point in the scheme of things but still, god damn)
been reading about the significance of the 1836 letters patent which established the colony of south australia. it's a unique document because it explicitly affirms the rights of "aboriginal natives" and their descendants to continued occupation and enjoyment of land. it's worth noting that the prior enabling act of the UK parliament in 1834 referred to the proposed south australian land as "unoccupied wasteland". the letters patent rights were, naturally, ignored by the commissioners who went on to direct the colonisation, putting every acre of land up for public sale (apart from roadways and certain other commons). the question today is what that means for the legal standing of the current native title regime.
i would argue, of course, that the establishment of the colony was entirely illegal, which makes these sorts of issues theoretically moot. however, this is potentially a novel practical tool for advancing First Nations sovereignty arguments in the realm of white law, and pushing for treaty.
anyone interested in this stuff should check out a good recent documentary currently available on SBS called King's Seal: http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/393168451950/kings-seal (straya only, requires registration, link may appear in secret mp4 subforum on request). it also covers the desecration of kaurna burial grounds during the construction of the seaford rail line extension in 2011 (not covered is the similar incident in 2013 during the doubling of the southern expressway)
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:anybody have any good reads on the australian housing bubble? books, articles, whatever.
actually i just remembered this https://www.prosper.org.au/2015/12/09/vacant-homes-up-22-despite-housing-crisis/
the speculative housing vacancy reports these guys do are great. think they just cover melbourne but they're based on actual water consumption rather than reported vacancy rates. and thry explicitly link it back to govt policy. hopefully the 2016 report will be out soon.
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tears posted:Just got done reading this whole thread, australia sounds like a big ball of shit lmao. anyway enjoy the depressingly predictable dopamine reponse all my upvotes will produce.
the weathers nice now so its ok
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However, Purpose’s original job listing for its Syrian Voices project boasted that “Purpose grew out of some of the most impactful new models for social change” including “the now 30 million strong action network avaaz.org.” In fact, The Syria Campaign’s founder, Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans, was also one of the original founders of Avaaz. As he told Forbes, “I co-founded Avaaz and Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.”
Just a tidbit that stood out when re-reading max blumenthal's white helmets articles since im always seeing Get Up shit on my facebook feed. he also mentions sophie mcneill of abc as one of white helmets "biggest boosters".
i only have access to my phone right now, I should do some proper reading on this later
theres also a clip on youtube where he talks about the malignant influence of homosexuals on the ABC, but its got muffled sound.
megathread has metastasized, patient not expected to survive.
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:
A newly declassified report obtained by Fairfax Media reveals Australia's role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was undertaken solely to enhance our alliance with the US.
No Shit Sherlock