Today is my 43rd birthday - I share it with my sister Nola who is 16 years older. There never were two lives more different in one family. I got the love, the looks, the brains, the talents, the love, the respect and all the fabulous stuff that comes from being free, white and over 21 in a capitalist country.

She was dopey, dizzy, the drudge: who married badly, gambled, had kids too young, lived on Social Security all her life, and never has 2 halfpennies for a penny.

But she's the happy one - she wanders around in Salvation Army stores, mumbling to herself, unearthing little treasures in the trash, paying 20 cents for an old doll or a book or a bit of junk jewellry she hopes might be real and living in a world where the worst that can happen, happened. Repeatedly. Ages ago.
"War? Oh, I don't understand things like that! Don't worry - no one's coming here, forget it."

I'm living in comfortably-appointed anguish, trying to understand why all the things I believed in, attended marches and sit-ins and rallies for: why all my do-gooding work for the poor, the homeless, the politically disenfranchised - has just been tossed in the trash by cynical politicians, lazy journalists and my fellow man.

86% of my countrymen didn't want any part of a war. We took to the streets, we marched, we wrote to the papers and we were completely ignored. The government lied, and just went ahead and sent in troops.

My fellow Australians became so enthralled by the war pictures on CNN and Fox and God knows what else that they did what Australians always do - looked around to see who was likely to win - and joined them.

Iraqi's died by the dozen, then the hundred, and no one was interested. Every TV channel shows that one damn scene with the Statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down - and nobody bothers to say that all those men are Kurdish nationals. No one has found and WMD's - and nobody cares...for Heaven's sake, Ari Fleisher is beginning to look irritated that we haven't got over asking the question yet.

And now my government - which promised faithfully to "finish the job and come home," has just announced that we're going to stick around as 'peace keepers' to 'aid in the reconstruction' and not one single media person cried FOUL, or LIAR, or even said, "Excuse me Prime Minister, but didn't you say a month ago that..."

I want to take my daughter to her first-ever rally on Easter sunday - a rally for peace in Brisbane's King George Square. But someone I work with says I ought not - that it could be dangerous - that the mood has changed - that we'll seem "unpatriotic" - and there's a chance of violence on that account.

Does anyone remember the one about patriotism being the final refuge of the coward? I was born in this country, so I'm not a 'citizen' (what an insidious work that has become in the hands of right wing conservatives).

I'm a native. I don't HAVE to be patriotic - I AM the country. I embody all of its rights, privileges and obligations. I don't have to prove anything to anyone or to explain myself to anyone. But apparently I do. Apparently even reasoned dissent is unpatriotic - which is now a synonym for seditiousness.

Yet my government won't accept legitimate refugees from the country its just helped to conquer. They say its now safe to go back to, and that these are not refugees, but 'economic migrants' - which is a synonym for thief.

Well I've had it with having these arguments with the TV set - I want a chance to call a spade a spade, not a bloody 'agricultural entrenching implement'. I'm going to keep track of the lies, the spin, the falsehoods, the prevarications and all the rest, and we can all watch as simple truths become dangerous lies when placed in the hands of politicians.

So...here's one for us all to start on....
That 19 year old American soldier, Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch, 'rescued' in a 'daring raid' after 'heroically fighting off then enemy' is a really classic case of spin exposed, but absolutely ignored - presumably becasue it'll ruin a good story (soon to be a major motion picture.)

C'mon guys, you must remember. A 'source' told all of us how Private lynch heroically returned fire as her comrades fell, until, out of ammunition and riddled with bullets, she was taken prisoner.

When she was rescued she had mysteriously been healed of her bullet wounds and was suffering broken bones and bruising. She was not out of ammo: she'd gone down under the weight of numbers.

Now I'm absolutely NOT offering any insult to this soldier. She did her duty, was captured, was rescued and I am very glad she's going home in one piece.

But I'm FURIOUS with the 'source' who made up a pack of lies which sounded like one of the cheesier ideas from'Wag the Dog', to add drama and get the public on-side. I have tried hard to track down Mr or Ms Source, but they have so far eluded me.

I'm not a chump - I understand the utility of propaganda and feel-good stories in a war, but this kind of lame-assed attempt to put spin or a perfectly ordinary and sound story is beyond me. For crying out loud, we can all SEE the war from 20 different angles on 27 stations - who does Mr Source think he's fooling?

And WHY am I foaming mad about this silly little 'scene from the front'? Because:
a) No one spotted it, commented on the lie, or could be bothered following it up; and
b) Becasue a Jordanian civilian watching the 'statue' scenes from Baghdad told an English journalist that the pictures weren't real - they'd been filmed in Basra and faked up by the U.S. at gunpoint.

When ordinary people on any city street anywhere in the world can say with a straight face that they can't believe their own eyes becasue the media and politicians always lie, and this whole war is just another one, then the world has gone to hell in a hand-basket...

...and I know who sent it there.