Anzac Day has been appropriated by those who manipulate the cult of state violence - militarism - in order to satisfy a psychopathic deference to foreign power and to pursue its aims. And the "legend" has no room for the only war fought on Australian soil: that of the Aboriginal people against the European invaders. In a land of cenotaphs, not one stands for them.

The modern war lovers have known no street of screams and despair. Their abuse of our memory of the fallen and why they fell, may be common among all servitors of rapacious power, but Australia is a special case. No country is more secure in its strategic remoteness and the wealth of its resources, yet no Western elite is more eager to talk war and seek imperial "protection."

Australia's military budget is A$32 billion a year, one of the highest in the world. Fewer than two months' worth of this war bingeing would pay for the reconstruction of the state of Queensland after the catastrophic floods, but not a cent is forthcoming. In July, the same fragile flood plains will be invaded by a joint US-Australian military force, firing laser-guided missiles, dropping bombs and blasting the environment and marine life. This is rarely reported. Rupert Murdoch controls 70 percent of the capital city press and his worldview is widely shared in the Australian media.

In a 2009 US cable released by WikiLeaks, the then Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who is now foreign affairs minister, implores the Americans to "deploy force" against China if Beijing does not do as it is told. Another Labor leader, Kim Beazley, secretly offered Australian troops for an attack on China over Taiwan. In the 1960s, Prime Minister Robert Menzies lied that he had received a request from the American-created regime in Saigon requesting Australian troops. Oblivious, Australians waved farewell to a largely conscripted Army, of whom almost 3.000 were killed or wounded. The first Australian troops were run by the CIA in "black teams" - assassination squads. When the government in Canberra made a rare complaint to Washington that the British knew more than they about America's war aims in Vietnam, the US National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy replied, "We have to inform the British to keep them on side. You in Australia are with us come what may." As an Australian soldier once said to me: "We are to the Yanks what the Gurkas are to the British. We're mercenaries in all but name."

WikiLeaks has disclosed the American role in the Canberra "coup" in 2010 against Rudd by Julia Gillard. Lauded in US cables as a "rising star," Gillard's Labor Party plotters have turned out to be assets of the US embassy in Canberra. Once installed as prime minister, Gillard committed Australia to America's war in Afghanistan war for the next ten years - twice as long as Britain. Gillard likes to appear on TV flanked by flags. With her robotic delivery and stare, it is an unsettling tableau. On 6 April, she intoned, "We live in a free country ... only because the Australian people answered the call when the decision came." She was referring to the dispatch of Australian troops to avenge the death of a minor imperial figure, Gen. Charles Gordon, during a popular uprising in Sudan in 1885. She omitted to say that a dozen horses of the Sydney Tramway Company also "answered the call," but expired during the long voyage.

Marching for Anzac in the 51st State