Dear Margo,

I think John Thompson (

Dear Margo, having just finished reading your book with my husband, I wanted you to know the extent to which your work has been important to us. We are the 'insignificant citizens' who live in the small villages around Australia and are forgotten by people like Howard.

My husband is a recipient of the Disability Allowance and I am his carer. He has been chronically ill for over 13 years. He worked for Telecom ( pre-Telstra) and was made redundant upon its changes and his illness. I have been an activist full time home maker and carer and our children have only just left home. So at 50 years of age we are on the ' dust-heap' of this great and prosperous nation.

Ever since Howard has attained power we have been made to feel in succession, thankful, guilty, shame, sorrow, useless, guilty, useless, unimportant, lazy, guilty, bludgers, takers, guilty, depressed, lonely, sad, guilty, alone, poor, struggling and, yes, guilty. This as well as dealing with poor health an

I read the book in one sitting last night, what a depressing read...From a middle class aspirational voter who is earning 100k plus and has been in a union for the last 20 years you would expect that I would be loving JWH's warm and comfortable Australia; far from it - I am very worried for the future of our young Democracy.

John Howard takes Aussies good natured lack of public activism too lightly. If the Peace Rally in Canberra had been full of Czechs or Bosnians or Indians, they would have stormed the Parliament house and tossed him out on his bleeding ear for ignoring 200,000 pissed-off citizens. That he could have marginalised almost a million of his constituents Australia-wide by implying that they didn't represent the views of the 'silent' majority was a cynical swipe at a marvellous display of public activism - it was broad based, well behaved and constructive.

What would I have liked to see in the book?

Why did JH want this war so badly? He isn't a stupid

NHJ continues to connect with readers around the country. Our mounting emails tells us this, so please keep sending your events, actions and ideas.

In just-in book chart news:

Abbey's Bookshop - Sydney. Bestsellers for July - number 3, non-fiction behind Paul McGeogh's Quarterly Essay & Bill Bryson in paperback.

Better Read Than Dead, Newtown, Sydney. July bestsellers - number 4, all books. (no separate fiction and non-fiction)

Gleebooks, Glebe, Sydney. Bestsellers for July - number 1, non-fiction!

John Howard was right. We cannot blame flawed military 'intelligence' or under-resourced agencies for getting things wrong on the presence and potency of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The blame rests on John Howard's shoulders. And he readily accepts the responsibility for committing Australian defence personnel to an invasion of a sovereign country that was no threat to Australia.

What is most alarming about these events, in our recent history, is just how easy it was for Mr Howard to dance to George W Bush's tune and join this barbaric assault on Iraq. It seems that Australia was committed by John Howard to this invasion, the ongoing conflict, the human tragedy, the environmental destruction, cultural vandalism and financial burden to Australians without needing the consent of the Australian Parliament.

Why was it so easy for our Prime Minister to commit us to a war against a country that did not threaten us?

If the Constitution gives him

I've just returned from a preview screening of a wonderfully inspiring new documentary, The Corporation, made by the same team that brought us Manufacturing Consent.

It tells the compelling story of the rise of the corporate entity around the world, how it has overtaken the role of governments in so many areas of our lives and how people and groups are fighting back. It's very NHJ!

Check out the website. The film is funny, insightful, chilling and strangely heartening. Featuring interviews with numerous well-known talking heads, including Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman and a host of CEOs, whistleblowers and brokers, even the Economist, that bastion of capitalism, brought itself to say the following:

'People on both sides of the globalisation debate should pay attention. Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, The Corporation is a surpri

Dear Margo - I enjoyed your book over the weekend. But I reckon you do better on critique and analysis than on solutions (that said, you do better than most journalists). However, a book I really thought had some great solutions is: IMAGINING AUSTRALIA: IDEAS FOR OUR FUTURE, by four young Australian blokes. I'd be interested to know what you thought of it, and whether you agreed with their ideas. I'm recommending it to all my friends who liked your book, but finished it wanting more.

NHJ!(JR): Dunno about Margo, but I haven't read it yet, although it sounds very enticing - albeit (as my lefty scone understands fings) IA generally imagines Oz from a pro-market perspective (but hey, w/o the blessed market-beasty-thingy I 'spose NHJ! wouldn't be shifting so many units so fast, so go figure...). Besides, anything with the words 'imagine' and 'Australia' in the same sentence at this national juncture has got to be a winner.

Check out the 'Imagining Australia' website arced

A Canterbury Tale. Faster than Renee Rivkin More powerful than hydrogen sulphide Able to leap into ANY war Look, up in the sky.. Is it Nelson Mandela? Is it Kofi Annan? Is it John Travolta? No, it's just John Winston Howard On another quest For truth, justice and the American way.

Where can I get stickers here in Melbourne.? Michelle Grattan mentions tee shirts in her article in 'The Age' Is there a range of merchandise available? Good luck with your campaign. The man is immoral.
Margo: Send your postal address to defendingourdemocracy@yahoo.com.au and we'll send you some stickers. Re the T-Shirts, the John Valder led 'Not Happy John!' campaign against John Howard in Bennelong is producing them now, and they'll be available soon. Stay tuned.

I can only read one chapter of each section in a day of your Not Happy, John. I want to cry, in fact I have cried nearly each day I read a little piece of this book. I have cried for all Australians in what we have already lost and the true democracy we lose little by little every day.

But I cannot put your book aside for too long - my hand reaches out again and again to read and my mind to comprehend the enormity of the deception that is John's democracy.

I look at every news item a little more closely now.

Have just put down 'Not Happy, John'. Congratulations on such a strong piece of work. You've shifted me out of the smug, 'Coonawarra Red', 'I didn't vote for the little blighter' avoidance and elitism (that had been becoming so bloody uncomfortable) back to thinking about specifics and looking for better ways. Thanks.

There's one step that I'm thinking about adding to your 'What to do' list at the end of the book. Buying shares. Not many. Just enough Fairfax and NewsCorp shares (and other media companies - IF I CAN FIND ANY) as will permit me to turn up to any of their AGMs and ask 'interesting' questions. Given the demographic of your readers, I'm sure they can scrape together a few hundred bucks to take back their media.

This isn't about profit, it's about democratising media and other large companies. It's not just my ABC ...

PS - I've taken the liberty of recommending NHJ to some dissident friends in the US.

Hi. I'm back from Switzerland and in Brisbane. Strangely enough, I am wondering if this is our winter of discontent. The last time I was in Australia was for not much more than a week at Christmas. It seemed to me that everyone was happy and at least on the surface a picture of contentment. This time though all I hear is grumbling. My friends and family are not necessarily a barometer of the population but I can't help but feel Christmas was an illusion. The biting reality of winter has arrived.

Of course winter in Queensland is a reasonably warm and sunny affair so none of it seems much like the British Winter of Discontent in 1978-1979. That winter heralded the end of Labour rule. What will this winter mean for us?

I am hearing the same tune where ever I have been this past week. People are tired of the way that institutions are treating them. In one sense that seems like nothing new. We've been hearing that for years. People have lost faith in institutions

Margo, I'm currently making my way through Not Happy, John! and I have to say it's bloody brilliant. You're one of the only people out there that's actually taking the country by the neck and shaking some sense into it with a deadly fact-based dressing down. Good one.

It kind of puts my own book Dear John,also pubished by Penguin, to shame! It's a collection of letters I wrote to John while living in London for the past four years. I don't have a political journalist's background or much of an understanding of the game so I did the only thing I know how to do and that was to take the piss! The response was quite good over there among young Aussies living away from home who probably would never have discussed the leadership of their country otherwise.

Now I'm starting on Mark Latham, counting on John losing the election and him getting in. Well, I hope Not Happy, John! is selling like cakes that are hot, and most of all scaring the wits out of a few people.

In the letters page of the SMH yesterday, I noticed a letter related to the ALP and the Free Trade Agreement with the US. Sister Sheila Quonoey of Springwood seems to have been reading NHJ!

'We were ready to believe Labor was going to be the 'real' Opposition. Now it is following behind Howard and the Liberal Party and leaning to signing away Australia into the hands of the US. Not happy, Mark.'

Dear Margo,

I suspect that voters will often vote on some gut feeling. What you've done in NHJ is to give Australians a sense that: they are being made fools of; that they are being lied to; and that they are being dispossed (of Parliament House, an opportunity to have a choice to select the media they want to buy, no more NGOs etc). A 'sense of indignation' is what will mobilise Australians into becoming citizens and voting John out.

We need to maintain this sense of indignation.

NHJ! (JR): John's spent the last 20+ years doing NGO/development work in SE Asia. If he can remain revved about Oz politics from there, the rest of us have no excuse...incidentally, for all those Expats - especially those in remote areas without embassies/consulates - if necessary y'can go to this AEC page as a start point in the process of:
a) making sure you're properly enrolled;
b) sussing out who your ca