I drew a cartoon when fallujah was being bombed. .Not to laugh at this horrible tragedy but to show the parallel between Bush's actions and Hitler's determination... These days fascism has pervaded society as a sugar coated pill of anaesthetic... I know... I harp on a lot about that but this is what it truly is... So John I'd like to thank you for your true words that reclaim some of the emotion needed on our terrain of democratic reasons... Thank You...

A great letter John. The lies used to justify the continuing slaughter of innocent people in Iraq are a cancer eating the guts out of Australian society.

After WWII it was almost impossible to find a Nazi sympathizer in Germany. The ordinary German citizen had been hoodwinked by the Nazi’s and knew nothing of the crimes against humanity that had occurred under their very noses – or so they said. But of course this is mostly untrue. Many German civilians had to know what was going on and most of the rest knew in their heart-of-hearts but chose to bury their heads in the sand and know nothing and do nothing.

I suspect the same will be the case in Australia, the US and the UK, when history raises an eyebrow in askance and points an accusing finger, there will be few people who will admit to supporting the war in Iraq and the crimes against humanity which have occurred there, and continue to occur there, on a daily basis.

We will plead that we didn’t know! We were hoodwinked by our government! We trusted the media to tell us the truth! But history will not accept our protestations of ignorance, because we did know. We were all too ready to believe what our governments had to tell us. The truth was out there.

Any semi-informed person must know that the war in Iraq was less about WMD’s than it was about pumping oil from the veins of Iraqi children. Less about toppling the regime of the despotic Saddam than it is about the balance of power in the middle-east and securing Israel’s position in the area. Less about democracy for the Iraqi people and more about the blind and callous use of military force.

Does anyone truly believe you can spit democracy from the barrel of a gun?

By our silent complicity, we are accessories to all these horrendous crimes before, during, and after the fact.

But we can’t admit the truth. We can’t accept the onerous comparison between ourselves and the German civilians who “didn’t want to know

The Roman's directed the people's attention away from their invasions, empire building and intriguing with the Games. Maybe we could use this model to comment on our own society.

1. The Romans initially had a form of representative democracy which was slowly undermined by the Emperors. Initially the Games were only funerary practices until Julius Caesar saw their value as a distraction.
2. Television is a major problem in our society because as long as we have Big Brother or Home and Away each night we are happy. As long as we are able to get food in one minute from the local takeaway we are happy. Don't get me wrong, these are great things (hey I like fish and chips and Chinese as much as the next person) but they are comfortable things. While we are happily being given the answers to life's problems on television the politicians are left making the hard decisions.

I think our democracy is slowly being undermined by the power hungry who are brilliant at timing. Why else are elections held in school holidays or near Grand Final Day? People's innate nature is to be lazy. We have worked hard from the Neolithic Revolution to have more free time. Now we do and the pollies do all our decision making for us while we think about the footy.

The only way for people to begin to care again is when they are not feeling comfortable. But while the budget hands out tax cuts and interest rates are down and bread is on the table, the majority of Australians won't complain. A very good friend of mine voted for John Howard in the last election with the priceless excuse: Everything seems to pretty good at the moment so I voted to keep it that way. Maybe if it was her house under constant threat of attack or she had cholera coming out of her taps she may have seen things differently.

We need to come up with a strategy which gets people out of their comfort zone. We can whine and complain about what the Government is doing and how they can improve but that provides people with the answers and they continue being lazy.

Maybe we should just be asking the questions. If they are thought provoking enough people may consider them and come up with their own answers, or jump on sites like this to find them. We have to stop being lazy and letting TV and politicians do the thinking for us.

Maybe this is something we could do together on this site. It is something which is easily accomplished in a forum or chat set up.

What do you guys all think?

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. Robert M. Hutchins

I can agree with Naomi has said. During the recent federal election I was working at the Bathurst car races which were held on the Saturday that the election was held. During this time I was able to prepoll vote in the week before the election. I spoke to some of my fellow volunteers and was told by a couple of them that they did not vote and did not intend on voting because they did not believe that their vote would change anything. These people were under 25 and held the preception that the youth vote was not being seriously persued and in fact was even being ignored and discouraged.

On the issue of Big Brother and reality TVand campaigning a writer in the Sydney Morning Herald made an observation that the Schappell Corby case has brought out petitions and various campaigns to do things from boycott Bali to fundraising for her defence. The article claimed that some of these were based on the petitions and campaigns to bring Big Brother housemates back to the house etc. I feel that we may have to examine the way we campaign and push much harder. As I observed in my Forum topic on the Gunns 20, Gunns - the woodchipping company, the CFMEU and the forest products association outspent the Wilderness Society and the Greens. I feel that some sort of innovation needs to be used when campaigning against such financial muscle.

One has bit for Naomi in this modern history. The old ways still work.

‘Eight months after the second invasion of Falluja, there is hardly a street that does not still feature a building pulverized during the assault.

I had not been in the city since last July, when I was escorted out by three cars of mujahedeen - that's when things were still relatively nice - and though I had expected it, the destruction was still shocking.’

"We Regard Falluja As a Large Prison"

I wonder if this factor

... The men ... watched films - "especially those in which you saw women and children killed and exterminated by the English and American soldiers, or widows, mothers and daughters who were crying".

(as in Bomb suspects driven by Iraq rage)

will be selectively editted out of the reports in US media? 

... as of now, only four others, retrieved by searching on 'osman hussain children killed American soldiers' -

The Sunday Times, UK ; New Straits Times, Malaysia; New Zealand Herald; Hindustan Times, India