Hi Keith
I'm in agreement with you in relation to the Opposition; under the leadership of Mr Beazley, "Opposition" is almost an oxymoron as far as International Relations is concerned.

However, I'm really pleased to say that some Canberra Church leaders have proclaimed the need for an immediate cease fire on 31 July ( http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1576#comment )on behalf of Lebonese and Israeli people. I thought this was a brave move on their part, individually and institutionally. Institutionally, as the Coalition Government has threatened charitable organisations with having to pay tax should they try to publicly try to provide moral and political leadership in the community.

At least the ALP is providing leadership in relation to "Work Choices"

Keith Antonysen

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838437,00.html

There are ugly posts on blogs all over the world supporting the Israeli's early position that Qana was a fraud perpetrated by the Lebanese.

This now takes on the children overboard flavour with this information that the video released was two days old, had no evidence that any civilians were ever used and says pretty clearly that the IDF lied through their teeth. This takes on Haditha as a deliberate massacre of civilians I think and the tragedy is that it was Israeli "intelligence" that was largely relied on to blow up Iraq.

The tragedy is of course largely for Israel because who on earth will ever trust them again when it comes to their outdated intelligence systems?

Not only that the Olmert government is lying to the entire northern population of Israel, sounding alarms when none are needed and then using that to blow up the entire Lebanon.

One woman’s experience in the Iraq war lead to sexual abuse, imprisonment & dishonourable discharge, for her. Did any one hear of this through usual news outlets?
http://www.suzanneswift.org/
“Spc. Swift's arrest on June 11 sparked a national outcry from all walks of life, both military and civilian. Veterans of military service and those who believe in basic human rights have organized to demand that the Pentagon protect the dignity of our soldiers and implement the changes the Pentagon's Joint Task Force on Sexual Abuse in the military recommended in a report to Congress in 2004.” [end of quote]

Something Bush & Co. wish to discourage, make dishonourable, is the conscious objector, found at
http://www.iraqpledge.org/nov18.htm

News we not see on regular news outlets..

Historic times we are living in! We put people who are seeking a safe haven from war and persecution in concentration camps. We accept with minimum comment, laws controlling our work status, that gives us a living. We accept laws of sedition. We accept each law that is currently passed.
Why? Well for me it appears we have become a very selfish society. It has nothing to do with the immigrants over the past years. It is how we Australia make sure we look after "me". "A colonial supermarket".
Botany Bay repeats itself. Historic times!

Yes Kipp when we look after ourselves we look after only one person out of 20 million; the man at the top.
We live in a hierachy of power so we look after ourselves according to the power alloted to us. The people at the bottom have little power, the people in the middle have some and the man at the top is looked after by all of us when we look after ourselves.
The PM is the only one not out of petrol,. not out of water or even suffering under increased interest rates when he has a mortgage on The Lodge.

Hmmm, stodgy ol’ Ludwig really is on a different wavelength to everyone else on this thread. Oh well, he will continue holding a conversation with himself then! (:>|

So, along comes the internet…. and forums such as OLO become the new tool for public expression. Wonderful??

Yes, to a fair extent.

One of the big advantages is that your message gets out to a potentially very wide audience and in an unedited form (unless you is a rude twit dat uses naughty language or slander).

As a former long-time writer of letters to the editor of various newspapers, I was frequently disgusted by letters being edited, sometimes grossly inappropriately or not printed at all. It also became apparent that certain subjects were pretty much taboo. Debate was also difficult, with usually several days between letters, and readers not having the letter that was being responded at hand.

One taboo subject was compulsory preferential voting. After numerous attempts with several newspapers, none of my letters on this subject were printed. Very interesting that was. My main subject of comment on this forum – population growth as it affects sustainability, was also not well liked by editors, although early on I did get a good run locally (?until the big end of town told the editor to shut me down?).

But with online forums, we still have the same old problem of lack of free speech, as expressed in my last post. These forums also promulgate the situation of being heard but not seen - it is much easier to get your message out there now, but no easier to be recognised for it. That’s not the fault of this sort of outlet or the administrators thereof, it’s just the nature of the beast.

But at least the message is getting to where it can be appreciated….. and hopefully the powers that be will now see just how different that message is in many ways to that in the highly compromised vehicles of letters to newspapers and magazines, talk-back radio and the like.