SPIES LIKE US‏

Australian spooks spied on Indonesia

Do you remember the very funny hit film from the 80's, "SPIES LIKE US"?

Well if you do, then you can understand how I see this "international incident" as being just as funny and just as hyped up as the characters portrayed in that movie.

To think that there is any "surprise & shock" over the revelations that we would dare listen in on the communications of heads of government and defence related authorities in our region, AND let's not forget in this case, a nation that teachers its children that they have a birth right to the great southern land, a nation that spend billions of dollars of it's "foreign aid" on building it's military and a nation that has publicly admitted that strive to have an Defence Force greater & more powerful than ours, is a JOKE!

Diplomatically both sides do a great job of keeping the peace, and who would want anything to be different? BUT it must be understood that a huge part of the maintenance of regional peace is the agreed understanding of the fact that all major powers in this region DO and HAVE FOR A LONG TIME, monitored each other. It keeps people honest.

The hypocrisy here is not that the Indonesians are in shock of these spying revelation, because what they are doing is purely playing a domestic card that shows strength and a little defiance due to the local elections in that country,...NO, the hypocrisy here is that the events reported took place whilst the ALP/GREENS coalition were in Government and it seems to me that the leader of the Greens, Christine Milne is purely playing for political points from the usual suspects & loss supporters, because she would have known this was going on & that she said nothing then!!! I have yet to hear her ever say how much she respects & admires the privacy of the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono GCB in the past,  and in my opinion, I doubt she likes the SBY regime much at all.