Apparently the fact that our so-called Australian political "leadership" acts like a George W. Bush fanclub is not enough. Our opposition has been given a smack on the hand for daring to, well, oppose the government's view. Today's Australian newspaper reports that "The US is furious with the ALP for its lack of support for the deployment of troops to the Middle East and its targeting of George W. Bush in a parliamentary debate on Iraq." (For anyone who's confused, the ALP is the Australian Labour Party, not the American Labor Party.) It seems that the position the ALP takes, that the UN process must be followed, is unacceptable and only enthusiastic nodding is permitted - even from the opposition of a foreign government. I don't think I'm the only person who is totally disgusted with our lack of political independence - we're still part of the British Empire, but it's obvious that for Johnny Howard one foreign master isn't enough. What he doesn't seem to take into account is that while we have a strong alliance with the US (*phew*, no risk of getting the buggery bombed out of us) that only provides any advantages to us if there is absolutely no conflict with US interests. Lamb, anyone?

Update: There's a conflicting report in The Age now quoting the leader of the opposition: "The allegation that we have had a formal complaint about the anti-American statements and are harming the alliance is just not correct," Mr Crean told ABC Radio. Hmmm! Which journo to believe?

Just got the first comment... I was expecting to get hissed and booed by Americans of course, but it's a pity that the person seems to have totally misunderstood the point I am trying to make. This site has nothing to do with US foreign policy, the coming war or the fight against terrorism. It is not intended to be aggressive or militant, and it definitely isn't about "not liking" Americans - why would I bother? The point is that when you live in a country like Australia, there is a very real danger of being totally overwhelmed by the American presence, both in your economy and in your culture. Probably something not many Americans think about, which is fair enough, but my feeling is that for the rest of the world it *is* an interesting topic. If anything, it's a criticism of people in countries other than the US for relinquishing their own identity so easily.

We did the grocery shopping last night, which caused me a bit of anxiety as it's impossible to tell just from the label where the money is really going. We mostly buy fresh ingredients rather than prepared food so I thought we might be OK, but when we got home I noticed little stickers on the oranges that said "California". Oops. We had a longish discussion about a Nutella substitute as I'm not sure whether Ferrero has been bought by a US company yet or not. We end up going with Cottee's Hazelnut Crunch, which turns out to be yummier than Nutella because it has little crunchy bits - and owned by Cadbury Schweppes. I always thought that Cadbury Schweppes was a US company, but apparently it's UK based - phew!

Damn. I just got my daily Dilbert email... guess I'll have to unsubscribe :-(

Interestingly, when I return to Australia.edu to check my email, I can't log in to the account. Could this be the start of a conspiracy? Either way, it's back to searching for a free email provider - and I have a moment of pure joy when I discover that Fastmail is located in Melbourne, Australia. It sounds like a fantastic service and the site looks very promising - in fact, before I looked at the About page I was sure it would be American. Interesting bias considering I'm doing this site, don't you think?

I work in a professional capacity and on occasion deal with US companies. For this and other reasons, I am planning to remain anonymous, so my first challenge is to find a free email and weblog hosting service. I don't know a huge amount about weblogs but my first web search (in Google - oops!) leads me to blogspot. It wants an email address during the sign-up process so I quickly jump over to Hotmail and create an email account. Everything goes nice and easy, and I'm halfway through my first post when I realise that a) Hotmail is American and b) blogspot probably is, too. D'oh (ooops - Simpsons, American) I mean Crikey! (Who would ever have thought the Crocodile Hunter could be useful for anything?)

Right, back to square one. I'll try to find an Australian free email service, and a non-US weblogging service or at least free hosting. I go to Yahoo to do a search - and realise that this is going to take a lot of work. Try again. I try my hardest to think of an Australian search engine and go to www.anzwers.com.au - and get redirected to http://au.anzwers.yahoo.com/. Ouch. Hmmm. Webwombat? Looks OK so far but now I'm paranoid so I try to find out whether this site is run by an Australian-owned company. The About page says "Web Wombat Pty Ltd is a 100% Australian owned and developed company" - yay! And even better: "Web Wombat is already licensing its various search technologies within Australia and Asia and is negotiating with major Australian firms for similar licensing deals." Great, I hereby declare Webwombat (which now looks MUCH better than I remember) the official BoycottUSA search engine.

I decide to join Aussiemail for email. The name should be self-explanatory. When I get to the sign-up page, I have a classic "what the...?" moment - Rove would be proud. The drop-down box that asks me to select the state I live in lists AMERICAN states. Confusion is not a listed state. The next box down asks for "Province/Territory: (If Outside of U.S.)". Sigh. A bit further down is a drop-down box for country - Australia is not pre-selected. I'm starting to have some misgivings about Aussiemail but decide to stick with it.

For some reason, it wants to know my household income. The drop-down box lists income brackets in US dollars, and I've had enough. Sorry "Aussiemail", but Hotmail by any other name definitely doesn't smell as sweet - I'm going back to the search engine. I decide on a little detour to find out whether Aussiemail really IS Australian, and I'm glad I didn't sign up with them - the home page looks very dodgy and doesn't supply any answers.

The next option is australia.edu. Well, I guess I could stretch what I'm trying to achieve to include education, so why not? It's not very pretty, but at least it's patriotically coloured. Yay! It asks far fewer questions than Aussiemail and I'm happier already. It does have one of those teeny tiny boxes with lots of text you have to scroll to read all the terms and conditions, but I figure "she'll be right mate" and hit OK. Success! My alter-ego now has an online identity: welcome to the Matrix, boycottusa@australia.edu.

Hmmmm.

Australia.edu - not australia.edu.au. Uh-oh. I can't find any information about the company behind the site except for a Queensland address. I'll write an email to make sure, but in the meantime I'll keep going - and keep my fingers crossed.

Time to find myself a little home on the web. (Interestingly, blogspot won't let me delete my never-to-be-used account: "There is currently no way to delete your own account from Blogger.")

www.weblog.co.nz sounds promising but times out.

I spend two days looking, at first for blogging sites, then just for free hosting sites that would allow me to hack together my own blogging app out of a guestbook or something. Sometimes I think I get close, and there is a really promising looking site in Estonia but I don't speak the language, and neither does Babelfish or Worldlingo (and even if they did, they are both American...). So in the end, I tuck my tail between my legs and return to Blogspot. For now.

The USA dominates the world economy and Western culture. To me, Australia feels more and more like an outpost of the USA - we still have a very strong national identity, but American companies and culture seem to be taking over. So, is it even possible to live a normal life without it? How much research will it take just to do the grocery shopping, what will I do for entertainment and how on Earth will I buy new software? It's something I've been thinking about for a while, and current events have given me the final nudge. If the US decides it can do without the rest of the world, can the rest of the world also do without the US? I fully recognise the irony of hosting my blog on a US site but I'm sure it's a pattern I'll see often - sometimes, the only option is American.

I'm broke so instead of going out tonight (Saturday), I might watch some TV... but everything that's on is from the US. Maybe I'll read my book (by a US author). Maybe I'll just play with the cat.