Well this is, uh, a little different. The Australian bureau of the New York Times has officially kicked into gear today – bringing reporting about Australia and the greater pacific region from Sydney – courtesy of new editor Damien Cave.
The first big news feature is about the United States military in Darwin, and the future of Australia’s alliance with the U.S. in the age of Trump. It’s certainly worth a read. But I’m not here to give you a breakdown of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance. I’m here to give you the good stuff.
According to the report, despite a fruitful and positive relationship between Australian and U.S. soldiers in Darwin, there was one issue which raised some eyebrows:
Still, there have been challenges. In a discussion last year about the cost of the Marines in Darwin, the Australians came in with a data-heavy presentation asserting that United States Marines eat more than typical Australian soldiers, and therefore strain sewage systems more, and argued that the Americans should pay more of the costs of improving wastewater lines on military bases. The proposal stunned even the lead Australian negotiators, who quickly dropped it, according to American defense officials.
Folks, it’s something we’ve already known to be the case, intuitively: Americans do huge and frequent turds which punish our sewage system infrastructure. Australia’s pipes were not built for American-size meal portions. I am desperate to get my hands on that PowerPoint and to deeply scrutinise their data collection methods.
Regardless, one thing is clear: the Americans must pay for their turds.
Source: New York Times.
Photo: Full Metal Jacket.
