At the Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures 2005: Lecture Five, Shared Destinies: America, Asia and Australia on Sunday 5 June 2005 Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani posed some provocative challenges for Western and Eastern societies alike.

As our world is smaller and more linked than ever before, economic prosperity, political stability and environmental survival are all deeply enmeshed.

One of his themes was that perhaps our greatest challenge lies in coming to terms with some profound cultural differences; differences that still separate Western and Eastern cultures. Acclaimed author of "Can Asians Think?" Kishore Mahbuban was not holding back in being pro-American... which was not a problem for me since I am not anti-American as some people would believe. Hey, there are at least half of the population in the US that do not believe the crap dished out by the Bush administration...

In a letter to the editor, Richard Cox suggested the Sydney Morning Herald did a feature for a week on Darfur and the terrible state of affair in that region.... I could not agree with you more, Richard ...... And there are many other places in Africa where similar problems have happened and are still happening. For example "Western Sahara" that was liberated by its own people fighting the colonial Spanish in the 1970s were mostly reoccupied by Morocco soon after...