Thanks. I knew I was talking to a professional of some kind. Its great that you join us online at freerepublic. Do come back again to offer your most unique perspective. What you have lived sounds book-worthy, presuming you would be allowed that indulgence.
I’m just another conservative - joined FR because I welcome its perspective on many issues. This just happens to be something I know about, and it is fairly specialised knowledge, so when I see it come up from time to time, I often post on it. But more of my posts tend to be intended to try and bring issues that have arisen in Australia to wider attention - though our countries are different in many ways, there’s a lot of similarities as well, and things in one country influence the other.
We’ve got Al Gore over here at the moment trying to tell our conservative federal government what to do about environmental issues, for example. He’s getting lots of media attention - but, fortunately, little attention from the actual government so far.