Honouring the Anzacs once a year may not be a bad thing but perpetuating untruths about them certainly is! So it would be nice if schools, politicians and media commentators stopped recycling the nonsense that they fought for our freedom or that they were defending Australia.
There was absolutely no threat to our freedom in World War 1 (except from our own government if your name happened to be Germanic, and least of all from Turkey) and far from defending us they were making an unprovoked attack on a country with whom we had no quarrel (just as with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan).
There is no doubt many individual Anzacs displayed great bravery (as presumably did the Turks defending their soil). We honour that, but it doesn't make Australia's unprovoked, aggressive invasion of Gallipoli something we can be particularly proud of.
If we have to honour the Anzacs' tragic and futile sacrifice by telling our children untruths about them, then it's surely best we forget.
David H Lewis,
Hervey Bay, Qld
OUR KOKODA FREEDOMS
It would be more appropriate to celebrate the soldiers on the Kokoda Trail who really were defending Australians' freedom from unprovoked aggression than the Anzacs, who were attacking a country on the other side of the world that was never a threat to us.
However, perhaps we should reflect that the freedoms they fought for have been undermined so much that government now intrudes into every conceivable corner of Australian life taxing every transaction, dictating what light-globes we can use in our own homes, and even taxing farmers for rain.
To be really worthy of their memory, perhaps instead of celebrating war, we should regain our freedom and then celebrate that.
Justin Jefferson,
Kybeyan, NSW
BEER AND VETERANS
The RSL broadly gives as its reason for existence the health and well-being of ex-servicemen and women, which is laudable. One does wonder, then, why its national executive has entered a three-year agreement with VB to promote that product in its Raise A Glass campaign when it is well known that alcohol consumption is one of the major problems facing ex-diggers.
Vic Adams,
Reid
IS TASMANIA IN AUSTRALIA?
The Wellington AP item ''NZ islands never legally named'' (April 22, p4) surely has an Australian parallel.
Australia is the name of a continent and the name of a country. In Tasmania we used to say we were going to visit ''Australia'', then it became ''the mainland''. Now it is referred to as ''the North Island'', as shown on Tasmania passports.
Tasmania is the name of a state of Australia and the name of an island. But what's the name of the big island to the immediate north of Tasmania? North Island?
John Milne,
Chapman
LAWYERS MORE EQUAL?
Why should lawyers receive the special treatment of anonymity until found guilty (''Lawyers shy away from all reports'', April 23, p3) not enjoyed by other members of the community? The excuse by the Law Society president could apply to anyone in business. Equality before the law? I think not.
Greg Cornwell,
Yarralumla
ABS WAKE-UP CALL
The current events at the Australian Bureau of Statistics should serve as a wake-up call to those who still believe the ABS mantra that people are its key asset. They might escape this round of cuts but there is always next year.
If true to form, management will trot out the bogey that the loony left unions are running some political agenda and spreading misinformation.
Well, guess what? So will the ABS. It is the nature of our adversarial industrial relations system.
ABS staff will need to show a lot more resolve than they have in past agency bargaining if they want a fair outcome in the current bargaining round.
Time will tell if they've got the bottle.
David Groube,
Weetangera
CHRISTIANS AND ST JAMES
Why don't Christians talk more about Jesus Christ's brother, James?
ABC Radio National's Life and Times, aired over Easter, cited numerous sources about Jesus's brother, James the Just. There is no mention of him in the authorised canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
There is plenty of mention given to him in the Dead Sea Scrolls and by historians Josephus, Clement of Alexandra, Eusebius, by Paul in his Letter to the Galatians, in the Acts of the Apostles and, a century later, by Hegesippus.
Professor Robert Eisenman of California State University and John Paynter from St Mark's Theology Centre, Canberra, postulate that scripture is subject to rewrites, like everything else, and that James the brother of Jesus was omitted from the Gospels as being too inconvenient. All sorts of theological problems arise with the existence of James. Was James the older or younger son of his mother, the Virgin Mary? If James was the successor of Jesus as head of the Christians, this challenges the claim of the Roman Catholic Church that Peter was Christ's successor and first Pope.
Frank Boddy,
Lyons
RUDD AND HIS JUDGMENT
I found myself nodding at the Nicholas Stuart article about the Rudd stumbles (''Stumbles boost Liberal hopes'', 21 April, p11). To asylum missteps and the vastly expensive ''nation-building'' National Narrowband Network, Stuart could add: fobbing off the pensioners to the point they are angry; mean-spirited environment cuts, since reversed; job-limiting workplace changes, just as the recession starts to bite; stimulus payments that aren't working; and cutbacks to services to fund the stimulus payments that aren't working. Rudd is starting to run up judgment questions.
M Gordon,
Flynn
HOW EVOLUTION EVOLVED
Robert Willson's review (April 11, Panorama p16) of the book by Sean Carroll brought to light the significance of people who contributed to early evolutionary investigations. Carroll is a geneticist who shows that large changes in organisms may occur quickly by major genetic changes (gene regulation) that are subsequently acted upon by natural selection. The relevance of natural selection as promulgated by Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker, promoted by Davies and Kinmonth (Letters, April 15), is reduced to secondary importance in the overall pattern of evolution.
From this review Willson could hardly be said to be an Intelligent Design member. We infer he would agree that natural science is developing a broad understanding of evolutionary processes. He mentions the words ''accident'' and ''God''. This produces unjustified responses from ''fundamentalist scientists'' (as strong an obscurantist group as the ''fundamentalist'' religionists). Your two letter writers should refer to a work by Tom Frame, dealing with Darwin's work and religion (Panorama, April 11).
Ken Campbell,
Campbell
WHO ARE THE PIRATES?
My thanks to Gordon Williams (Letters, April 18) for suggesting I join the Somali pirates. As Lenin wrote, the main enemy is at home and I will be here fighting against Australian capitalism in particular and Western imperialism in general.
But the same logic might apply to Williams. Since he seems to support the US and other Western military responses to the situation in Somalia can I suggest he join the Marines?
The question of the havoc the West has wreaked on Somalia is an important one.
For example, the Ethiopian invasion in 2006 was the US in drag.
It is Western companies which have dumped toxic waste off the Somali coast because that is cheaper than disposing of it properly in Europe. The West which has fished out the stocks off the Somali coast. Out of our wars, toxic waste, disease and destruction of traditional fishing area comes one obvious response hijack Western boats and demand ransom.
These are not just the rantings of a mad socialist. I suggest William read Al-jazeera, Times Online and the UN Environment Program, for example, to understand the criminal horrors the West has imposed on Somalia. My blog has the references.
John Passant,
Kambah
JUVENILE PIRACY
Trying a 15-year-old as an adult, how could he have known it was naughty to practise piracy? Just like those innocent 15-year-olds who hold up banks and bash little old ladies! How could they know?
Barry Smillie,
Duffy
BE STIMULATED
What a happy soul! (Ric Hingee, Letters, April 23). With his economic credentials he presumably budgeted for water, sewerage, electricity etc., so the $900 stimulus money would be available to give him and the economy a little lift.
Patrick Ryan,
Turner
OUR BUSES ARE GOOD
A new youth ambassador says the Canberra public transport system is unreliable and dysfunctional (''Young ambassadors want green action'', April 23). By contrast, this old regular user of Action buses for years has found them reliable, punctual, clean, cheap and staffed by courteous, helpful people. If more people used the buses, the service could be further improved. Try them for yourself.
Hugh Dakin,
Griffith
NARCOTIC CIGARETTES
Roger Dace asks (Letters, 22 April) why not sell legally a cigarette that contains a fixed percentage of a suitable narcotic which will provide comparable relaxation benefits as moderate alcohol consumption. A suitable narcotic?
Dace correctly states there are alcoholics, but alcohol is not banned. But there are speed addicts on the road, and we don't ban cars. Should we?
Cigarettes and narcotics kill an estimated 20,000 Australians annually. Most of this number believed they used moderately. But hospitals bring a different reality.
Colliss Parrett,
Barton
PARKING SPACE
I had been feeling low until Wednesday, when an article about Sunday parking fees really gave me a good laugh. In the ''Space Race'' column, the ACT Government said vacancy figures, midday on a pay week, were just 60 per cent for Belconnen major centres. If that included Westfield and the ACT Government pay-parking behind it I must have been driving round and round in the wrong location.
Paul O'Connor,
Hawker
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