Zinni was right. So was Gen. Merrill A. McPeak. So was Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan. So was Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf. So was former Navy Secretary and much-decorated Marine veteran James Webb. So was Commander Maj. Gen. Patrick Cordingley. So were a host of other top officers, both retired and active duty

"How do you do it?" they asked their hosts. "In our country, to achieve this, we throw people in prison; we tear out their fingernails. Here, there’s none of that? What’s your secret?"

Throughout 20th century imperialism, the authorities of Britain, Belgium and France gassed, bombed and massacred indigenous populations from Sudan to Iraq, Nigeria to Palestine, India to Malaya, Algeria to the Congo. And yet imperialism only got its bad name when Hitler decided he, too, was an imperialist.

A Czech friend, a novelist, told me; "You in the West are disadvantaged. You have your myths about freedom of information, but you have yet to acquire the skill of deciphering: of reading between the lines. One day, you will need it."

Why is there no public discussion about this? The answer is that Australia has become a microcosm of the self-censored society. In its current index of press freedom, the international monitoring organisation Reporters Without Borders lists Australian press freedom in 50th place, ahead only of autocracies and dictatorships. How did this come about?

Today, of twelve principal newspapers in the capital cities, one man, Rupert Murdoch, controls seven. Of the ten Sunday newspapers, Murdoch has seven. In Adelaide and Brisbane, he has effectively a complete monopoly. He controls almost 70 per cent of capital city circulation. Perth has only one newspaper.

the three most significant political developments of the twentieth century were, "the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

In 1983, the principal media in America was owned by fifty corporations. In 2002, this had fallen to just nine companies. Today, Murdoch’s Fox Television and four other conglomerates are on the verge of controlling 90 per cent of the terrestrial and cable audience. Even on the Internet, the leading twenty websites are now owned by Fox, Disney, AOL, Time Warner, Viacom and other giants. Just fourteen companies attract 60 per cent of all the time Americans spend online.

George Orwell wrote: "Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip."

For those members of our small, privileged and powerful elite, I recommend the words of Flaubert. "I have always tried to live in an ivory tower," he said, "but a tide of shit is beating its walls, threatening to undermine it." For the rest of us, I offer these words of Mahatma Gandhi: "First, they ignore," he said. "Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."