Well! I feel like Dave Hughes on the ABC Glass-House: "Er... I'm Annnggggrrry-y-y... Well... not really-y-y..." There're people out there who believe this web site is for anarchists!... Sure... Hey, as a cartoonist for over 54 years, I'm one of the first people to resent authority and such, but there's a strong need for clarification here... NATURAL SYSTEMS OF SURVIVAL There are many ways animal species organise themselves to survive. Bees and ants even have a genetic code to that effect, a precise code that creates a fertile "queen" amongst zillion clones. Chimps live in groups of several often related "families" with pecking order and unavoidable squabbles and challenges to this order. In these groups, individuals learn behaviour within the scope of their genetic ability (including memory). Even dolphins live in organised groups and killer whales pods develop different social traits in different environment. Many birds pair for life and attend specific duties to ensure survival not only of themselves but for the species. Anarchy, although quite a very idealistic and interesting way to live individually, is not efficient in providing survival of species, especially in large numbers. It tends to discount the important underlying factor of "belonging". A factor in which we learn to recognise our own species and differentiate from others. But even in smaller numbers of individuals, in the long run, the essential protection and raising of babies, infants and young, demands a basic structure, like a family, a tribal group and such in which there are control mechanism to minimise trauma... It's all about relationships and minimising conflicts... In humans, a species that still has complex animalistic trends on which complex learnings are grafted upon, the need for a minimal stylistic control system is essential... Even in the evolution of communication, one has to realise that language is a strongly structured assemblage of symbols, as anyone who does (or does not) understand another language can verify... Symbolism has thus become an essential and integral part of human activity. Should we have no such ability to express and understand symbols, we would still be living in trees. One can argue that would not be such a bad thing but we're not swinging from branch to branch anymore. We buy our food at the supermarket or the corner store... We hardly pick our own. We hardly walk anymore... we drive cars or take a "public" transport system which is a very structured accepted concept whether it's efficient or not. In some ways, present anarchistic beliefs can appear selfish as they could be construed as absorbing benefits of a social construct without putting anything back into it. We can't all be gurus on top of hills without destroying ourselves... We need to eat and defecate, make love and raise kids. Facts of life. And all these activities need a structured behaviour so we do not piss in our plate of chicken Marengo (an activity we're doing in our atmosphere but it's harder to see). WHAT IS DEMOCRACY ABOUT? Democracy is what the majority of people accepts presently as the best control mechanism for the group. We could have oligarchy, despotism, tyrants, kings, priests, queens and all that for that matter. Or we could have anarchy but as already shown earlier this would lead to a swift demise of the human species, unless everyone is so completely altruistic that we'd be sharing without questioning or even communicating... In your dreams. WHAT'S IMPORTANT IN A DEMOCRACY People. People are more important than the system but without the system people cannot survive. Within democratic structure there are sub structures. Family (and I include relationships of same sex couple - not as unnatural as it may seem), groups, tribes, villages, local governance, countries... Symbols are used to define our belonging to this or that group... If we're lucky we get born get in a country like Australia... If we're unlucky we're born in Rwanda... or in an Iraqi family whose house has just been bombed by an American pilot on amphetamines. Even there, language and symbolism still apply. PITFALL OF DEMOCRACY We're a guilable lot... We prefer illusions to reality often because reality can be painful and demands complex comprehension and acceptance of others. Illusion involve someone else to do the trickery for us and it just happens painlessly... Less thinking work, more fun. We survive on beliefs and these can be manipulated. We're suckers for advertising... As E. T Gundlach writes in his fascinating book (published 1931) "Fact and Fetishes in Advertising" : is it a profession, a religion or a game?... Even then, a couple of years after the 1929 crash, Advertising was a 2 billion dollar industry in the US. Our governments (the people we delegate to maintain the system) can become corrupt or shifty, and use propaganda (one-sided information stream, true or false, in which other information is supressed). out of their own beliefs or for profit - either financial or glorified. The D system has got checks and balances but like anything else they are efficient to a point. We need to be vigilant to arrest the rot in our democratic relationships. WHAT IS THIS WEB SITE ABOUT As I understand it, this web site is about helping more people realise to which extend their beliefs have been manipulated in that Democratic context, and what can be done about it to protect and advance a more equitable form of democracy For example we all know here I hope that John Howard has been lying "a few" times. Why? Hey, he was "called" Honest John in the eighties because most people, even in his own party, knew he was shifty. It was a reverse-sobriquet... He got the top job by deceit... Clever deceit but deceit nonetheless. His manipulation of subconscious fear in the public at large is masterful but in the long run it hurts the true democratic purpose rather that advance it. This is why Margo Kingston was fantastic in her exposition (NHJ) of the tricks Johnnee has used and is using to create too many people's illusions of himself and his policies. Strangely enough I would suggest too that some people would agree Johnnee is crook, lies and deceives but they accept it as okay because it does advances their own agenda and they also ascribe to similar practices themselves, although they would not publicly admit to it... They might call this the "law of the jungle" or "market forces" or "the user pays" principles... That is dangerous in a human society where most of what we do is based on trust. Trust can be manipulated. Trust is being eroded fast. We have been sold porkies by the truck-load to this effect. In regard to the law of the jungle, it is often misunderstood ... In fact, there are very strict bio-mechanisms that rule species interaction with the environment, otherwise survival is threatened (specific mathematical equations relating to this have helped the development of the "Chaos Theory"). When the majority of people can't see past their pay packet and leave the running of democracy to the most devious, because it appears to bring the most, many of the important issues are buried. We are seated on a warm comfortable sofa, without realising our house in on fire. So I got the pips when someone started to demonise the concept of the flag at the top of the site... Hey I'm only human and live in a relative world. I accept that someone can like or dislike the image. I don't mind if someone says it's not really representative... But when the underlying concepts of symbolism are not understood, nor their necessary importance in our relationships between each other, I dispair... Gus Leonisky