DARE WE LAUGH AS OUR SHIP GOES DOWN? July 2004

The Struggle To Sound The Alarm

It has all been said and written before. The burden of producing a regular newsletter is considerable. A constant flow of material on a range of important topics must be collated and stored properly if it is to be accessible and usable. As well as incoming material, information has to be reproduced and circulated to those who need it and are best able to use it. If not, the inward flow of information essential to a newsletter is likely to cease. A newsletter must be carefully edited before the work of printing and circulation can begin. This takes time, money and effort. Few of those who sacrifice much of their private lives are on any payroll. Many newsletter writers are "one-man-bands". In the past two years we have lost at least three important publications, each produced by an individual whose knowledge over many years has been unique; that irreplaceable factor of hands-on experience. We have lost Hilaire du Berrier along with his HduB newsletter. Hilaire du Berrier knew pre-war Europe, participated in the Spanish Civil War, had a vast knowledge of the Far East in war and peace, and of the early post-war influence of the United States through groups like the Rockefeller Foundation behind machinations to prepare the ground for an European Union. Ed Cain's Rocca Report was one of the most informed and balanced newsletters on Southern Africa. With Aida Parker's death we lost the APN newsletter. Aida had a unique knowledge of South Africa, its politics and the influence of Communism there. As a former financial journalist, she also had a great depth of knowledge, and many contacts, in the field of global economics.

Was it, and is it indeed, all worth it? What, and whom have we influenced or changed? On rare occasions one might read a newspaper item or listen to a radio broadcast and ponder "I could have written that!". Has something we published found its tenuous way into the mainstream media or even registered with some politician? We have often pointed out that mere knowledge is not enough. At the very least the message has to be spread amongst others. Those with the time must maintain relentless pressure on politicians and the media, especially via the local press and local radio. A single letter is soon forgotten and is too easily dismissed. It is vital to stimulate a flow of correspondence, as does Bob Wydell in the columns of his local newspaper(1)(2). A vigorous opponent of European Union, its political wiles, bureaucratic oppression and corruption, Bob Wydell has created a considerable following - for and against - and stimulated on-going interest. This also sells the newspaper! If not, what if we cannot be bothered in our materially comfortable existence? For those more concerned with their golf handicaps, will they begin to worry, too late, when they suddenly find that they can no longer afford to renew their golf club subscriptions? Will those more interested in Coronation Street only wake up when the bailiffs arrive to seize their television set? For such people the alarm bells are ringing too late in the case of collapsing company pension schemes, corrupt pension misselling by the City of London and the diminishing value of state pensions.

Talking Heads And Superficial Illusions

On 6th July this year we listened to an interview on the B.B.C. Radio 4 early morning "Today" programme. This was by John Humphrys, one of the more skilful and penetrating presenters, and Ann Clwyd, M.P., "New" Labour's Special Representative on Iraq. Yet Humphrys apparently did not know that Ann Clwyd is a fellow director with Dr Ahmed Chalabi on the board of Indict Limited, a company formed six years ago in 1998. Chalabi has long been an Iraqi émigré, divorced from the on-the-ground reality of his country, and a refugee from serious fraud charges in Jordan. His family quit Iraq for England in 1945, whence Ahmed Chalabi went on to the United States as a student of mathematics. He was C.I.A. controlled and was the United States placeman sent to run the interim administration in post-war Iraq. What credibility does this give Ann Clwyd, or the B.B.C. and its presenters for giving her unqualified airspace on the subject of Iraq? It was at this time that our attention was also drawn to an article in the New Statesman of 5th July, 2004. "The powerful get an easy ride", by David Edwards, examined the quality of journalism in the hands of leading figures of the journalistic establishment. Here are some extracts:

* "It is a bitter irony . . ." the historian Walter Karp once noted, "that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the 'best' sources." The servility is hidden behind a specious assumption that prime ministers and presidents are to be afforded unlimited respect bordering on reverence. To raise their responsibility for mass death would be "disrespectful", even "irresponsible". In his recent B.B.C. interview, Bill Clinton told David Dimbleby: "The way I kept score in my presidency was: Did more people have jobs or not? . . . What was our record in the world? Did we advance peace and prosperity and security or not?" Dimbleby said not a word in response to the man who, according to 70 members of the United States Congress, had presided over "infanticide masquerading as policy" in Iraq. . . . Clinton suggested the focus should be on whether, as president, he had "brought a million [people] home from Kosovo". In fact the mass exodus from Kosovo began after Clinton and Blair began bombing on 24th March, 1999. In the summer of 2000, the International War Crimes Tribunal reported that 2,788 bodies had been found in Kosovo, including Serbs, Roma and combatants. Dimbleby said nothing. In discussing Iraq, Clinton declared how, in December 1998, "Saddam kicked the inspectors out". Tony Blair made the same claim in a Newsnight (B.B.C.2) interview with Jeremy Paxman in February last year. Unfortunately for Blair, MediaLens [<www.medialens.org>] readers had bombarded the interviewer with scores of e-mails urging him to challenge Blair on exactly this issue. Paxman pointed out that the inspectors had been withdrawn ahead of the Desert Fox air strikes, not thrown out. An aggrieved Blair responded that this was "ridiculous" because, anyway, the inspectors "couldn't do their job". In fact, in the weeks leading up to the withdrawal, deliberate United States provocation caused difficulties with five out of 300 inspections, at a time when Iraq had been disarmed of 90-95 per cent of its weapons of mass destruction. Air strikes began two days before the date scheduled for Clinton's impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky affair, and were called off two hours after the vote. Three weeks earlier, United States government sources had told the chief Unscom weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, that "the two considerations on the horizon [are] Ramadan and impeachment". Apparently innocent of these facts, Paxman, like Dimbleby, said nothing. Elite politicians are protected by journalists. Elite journalists are protected by a corporate media system locked into a status quo serving corporate interests - profit over people, profit over truth.

Generally, observations of "establishment" and "general purpose" journalists in the political and foreign affairs fields suggest a lamentable lack of research or depth of knowledge, and a sycophantic approach by establishment journalists to the moral corruption of the political leadership. Former President Bill Clinton has been on tour to promote the publication of his memoirs. He was a fraud whose foreign policies, arguably along with some 40-50 percent of his administration, were strongly biassed towards Israeli interests. He continued pro-Israeli policies marked by Oslo Agreements I and II, that offered little but a cloak for the continued oppression of the Palestinian people, and which were roundly condemned by Professor Noam Chomsky(3). Clinton presided over the continuum of 12 years of quite extra-ordinarily ruthless, almost paranoid United States-United Kingdom-driven sanctions. This precipitated the resignation of three very senior United Nations officials in succession. Despite official prevarication and attempts to divert attention to Saddam Hussein's own brutality, these sanctions caused the deaths of 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi people, including 500,000 children, in a country riddled with cancers as a result of the 1991 Gulf War. We saw the contrived invasion by the United States and United Kingdom, this time in the guise of Nato, of the Balkans in 1999, in which Clinton was also implicated. We saw the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, the deliberate destruction of the Yugoslavian civilian infrastructure, and the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs. Arguably, the real motivation for this episode behind "humanitarian" concern for the alleged Serbian genocide of the Kosovar Albanians was to force the last remaining Communist state in Central Europe into the Western economic "mosaic". Where was Dimbleby's or Paxman's research on these issues? Research that might have established the fate of the resource-rich Trepca mines in Kosovo, the involvement of international financier George Soros, and the establishment of an American military base in the region(4). Why were no questions asked about the peregrinations of discredited "New" Labour Party politician Peter Mandelson in the region, or the connections with Lord Rothschild?

We have pointed out that Prime Minister Tony Blair is not only a shallow, inexperienced fifth form Walter Mitty figure; he is an accomplished liar. Typical of provincial newspaper correspondence columns, one writer expressed the view that "Blair is not really Labour. He is a consummate actor, a thorough careerist blessed with a winning smile". We would certainly contest the last point! From a fabricated "dossier" of evidence on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, to the absurd, except to any impressionable schoolboy, "45 minute" threat, Blair had constantly prevaricated and shifted his ground with each exposure. It is a wonder that he dare appear before any self-respecting investigative reporter. Jeremy Paxman is no Correlli Barnett. He is no Noam Chomsky, John Pilger or Felicity Arbuthnot. Billed as a much-travelled journalist, one was not told where in the book that Paxman co-authored in 2002 with fellow journalist Robert Harris on the history of chemical and biological warfare(5). Both are very much television figures and, as such, entertainers rather than foreign affairs specialists, military analysts or strategists. Their book may be regarded as a critical compendium of known information, but its line reflects the prevailing orthodoxy of recent times; the villains are largely Islamic states and include Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. No critical mention is made of Israel, or Israel's concurrent nuclear strength outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nor is any mention made of Western complicity in providing equipment and weaponry for the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, or of Western complicity in the gassing of the Kurds at Halabjah. So the bias was already built in at interview time.

In reading the book by Harris and Paxman, one recognises certain moral and historical convolutions in contemporary society. The involvement of Winston Churchill in chemical warfare in both the 1914-18 and 1939-45 Wars is chronicled. But we came across no mention of Churchill's advocacy of the use of chemical weapons against the rebellious tribesmen of Mesopotamia in the early 1920s. Many commentators have moralised over this. However, the use of gas with all its attendant horrors, had become an established tactic of warfare at that time. Reference to Mesopotamia comes a mere five years after the end of the 1914-18 War. This was no more than the same period after the 1939-45 War, in the last stages of which the United States had atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the loss of 154,000 lives in one fell swoop, to say nothing of the radiation injuries to follow. The atom bomb was becoming the established tactic of contemporary warfare. In today's enlightened world of Human "Rights", supported by the major powers through the United Nations, the United States and United Kingdom have employed Depleted Uranium (D.U.), ammunition and cluster bombs, not simply on the battlefield, but against innocent civilians. Unlike the gas of 1914-18, the massive implications of radiation on humanity and the environment have yet fully to materialise. In Churchill's early days, too, rebellious tribesmen were just that - "natives", in societies that had yet to develop, but were even then sitting on resources vital to Western interests. Western investment upon which a return may be expected notwithstanding, we see the colonial principle applied; perhaps more accurately, re-applied, in its various forms in today's democratically enlightened world. Have Dimbleby, Paxman or others of their ilk worked this one out yet, or indeed have they the will to level such challenges at the political interface?

DRIFTING TOWARDS DISASTER AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY

A Fool's Paradise Of Sums That Simply Do Not Add Up

One might add to this subtitle "Until it is too late"! Why worry? We are all living comfortably, are we not? Or are we? Contemplate the mind-boggling range of goods in any supermarket or Do-It-Yourself emporium. Many such operations, often on out-of-town sites, have swamped and suffocated perfectly good local stores. All teem with customers, especially on the Sabbath in a so-called largely "Christian" society, but one which is forced to pay homage to other, burgeoning cultures under the pressure of Political Correctness and political expediency. We are now largely a godless, materialist society - and it shows! Visit any large garden centre; once known as "nurseries" where one could purchase a few plants. The almost wanton excesses of a self-indulgent society become starkly apparent. Here we find not products like food, essential to life. We find food for ornamental fish. We find every conceivable bauble to embellish house and garden; many items we used mostly to make for ourselves, with a little effort and ingenuity. We find every conceivable tool, fixture and gadget, every conceivable treatment for every conceivable plant for house and garden. The bait to establish this way of life is invariably the "creation of jobs". Read any local newspaper as the battle for planning consent is waged; often over "green" land. But for how long? What other jobs will be lost as a result? Do we know? Do we care? We wait months for hospital treatment. We die like tethered goats of cancers and other ailments at an accelerating rate because we stand by while our environment is polluted by toxins, by ever-denser traffic fumes, by industrial waste and agricultural chemicals, inhaled or ingested. Meanwhile our politicians prate and promise on the basis of economic sums that simply cannot add up. Think of this as an economic "sausage balloon". Squeeze any part and the other parts will expand in compensation. But the overall volume remains constant. The danger is that our balloon can leak. It can also puncture!

Is this a wake-up call? Public information and the involvement of the public is at very best superficial and cosmetic. Domestically we are lied to by politicians of all parties on the basis of false promises as political leaders shuffle for short term electoral advantage. At the risk of putting the cart before the horse, we list a few essential, basic references to under-standing the economic scenario and the way our lives are being eroded beneath out feet at the very time we are being assured that exactly the opposite is the case.

* The Money Bomb, by James Gibb Stuart(6). This book might be regarded as a "primer" on the subject of money .. Written in James Gibb Stuart's clear and explicit style and published in 1983, it is said that this book, brought to the notice of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, alerted her, too late, to the grip and realities of "Money Power".
* Fantopia (Why only in Fantopia?), James Gibb Stuart(7). A short, witty and descriptive book on the creation and circulation of money. In this a banker, a politician, an economist and a journalist are brought together under the chairmanship of a neutral observer; an antiquarian.
* The Grip of Death - A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics , by Michael Rowbotham(8). This may be regarded as a definitive analysis of the debt-usury system of money creation and its grip on us all; hence the allusion to mortgage debt, which now become more oppressive by the day.
* Goodbye America! Globalisation, debt and the dollar empire, by Michael Rowbotham(9). This book takes us deeper into the global application of Money Power.
* When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten(10). For the ultimate answer on a computerised, global system of money "creation" virtually out of control on a path to economic "Armageddon".

In a modern world we also have to face moral sums that do not and cannot add up. We live in a domestic economic climate of almost obscenely duplicitous proportions yet we cannot, or cannot be bothered to, recognise it. This has little to do today with our particular party-political stance; be it Left, Right or Centre. The first essential is to attempt once again to identify "British" interests; those interests from which we all theoretically benefit. This was formerly based on a history of overseas exploration conquest and colonisation which led to the creation of the old English and European empires; the trading blocs of old.
After the 1939-45 War the United States, with its explosive manufacturing potential, was determined to continue the pre-war process of muscling in on these historic markets. As we have seen in the case of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, those subject peoples of the empires who have since evolved as Nation States in their own right, deny at their peril the continued access of the Western - First World - Powers to those natural resources upon which they have come to depend. Hereby lies the dilemma for the present British Conservative Party, the party of "Capitalism and capitalist interests", as it flounders around desperately seeking its raison d'être in this context.
We may see this assume the guise of international "aid" and the machinations of the World Trade Organisation (W.T.O.). For example, when Jose MacDonald, founder of Farming and Livestock Concern (U.K.), an expert on Genetically Modified (G.M.), agricultural products personally advised the Zambian Government against the cultivation or import of G.M. crops, Zambia was immediately placed under immense pressure to accept the import of "humanitarian" supplies of "aid" in the form of G.M. grain - from the United States! This masquerade was in reality the need for the United States to foist its domestic over-production on to a reluctant Third World country. This form of exploitation is carried out on a global basis. But for this, a fair exchange for what we export would be, for example, the £10 price of a single banana or orange, or £500 for a pair of "trainers" from Indonesia.
In the case of oil the exchange is more equitable thanks latterly to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.C.). The problem here is more one of access and control. The economic balance is found largely in varying and often draconian rates of domestic taxation on oil-based fuel, as one knows only too well in the United Kingdom. We do not need to take any party-political line to understand the elementary crisis of failing to distinguish moral right from moral wrong, other than to read John Pilger's The New Rulers Of The World, then take a good look at ourselves in the mirror!(11) In any case the governments that we elect - as we turn away once more to resume our golf, and television-watching - break all the "humanitarian rules set by the United Nations and signed up to by all the leading First World Nations, using military force, corporate takeover, and punitive financial loans through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.), at will. We may take just two examples from the oil industry. In the Guardian Weekly for 18th - 24th June, 2004, we read of the operation of Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria:

The full extent of environmental devastation to areas around Shell's Nigerian oil interests is revealed in a new series of pictures showing contaminated land, forests, lakes and communities in the immediate vicinity of Shell's refineries and pipelines.

In the BP Amoco Annual Review for 1999, we read under the "Environmental and Social Review":

BP Amoco's Business Policies are the foundation on which we build and conduct our business. Everyone who works for us is expected to live up to them. This section reviews progress to fulfilment of our business policy commitments on: ethical conduct; employees; relationships; and health, safety and environmental performance. . . . Good H.S.E. [Health, safety and environment] performance and the health, safety and security of everyone who works for the group are critical to our success. Performance improved through 1999, but we continue to achieve our goals of no accidents, no harm to people and no damage to the environment.

The humanitarian, moral, environmental gloves come off when it is a question of securing vital oil supplies in the Caspian-Black Sea region, and when competing pipeline projects are under way to gain strategic control over oil supplies. The Independent of 26th June reported the environmental risks that were being taken by a consortium headed by BP Amoco. Here is a brief extract:

They [Objectors] say the project will worsen the already polluted Caspian Sea, where sturgeon numbers are reckoned to be collapsing. In Georgia, the project will clear areas in two dense primary forests, cross the buffer zone of a protected national park, and could badly affect several rare and endangered species. . . . The route crosses two sites protected under national legislation, including a wildlife protection area for the Caucasian grouse, a threatened species. There are two critically endangered plant species and 15 bird species with nesting pairs numbering 500 or less within the corridor. Campaigners say legal agreements make BP the effective governing power over the corridor, over-riding all environmental, social, human rights or other laws, present and future, for the next 40 years. . . . The four whistleblowers who contacted The Independent all said the way the pipeline was being built failed all international standards. This included incorrect materials being supplied, work being started before the land had been surveyed, and the pipe installed before it had been inspected.

One Of The World's Richest Economies For Whom?

The five books to which we have referred may be regarded as definitive and complementary for our purposes. Read these and we should have the overall economic picture. Many more critical books have, of course, been written. Of these a large number were published before the 1939-45 War; titles that even included one by V.C. Vickers, a Director of the Bank of England from 1910 to 1919(12). They were written long before the internationalised, computerised smokescreen of what money is really all about came into play to conceal the truth from an increasingly anaesthetised public. They were written when it was realised that ordinary people were being artificially impoverished in a world of ample natural resources - including human resources - by the deliberate use of money as a regulator; the bankers' "valve" by which they controlled our access to these resources for their own profit, and so controlled, and continue to control, our prosperity, or lack of it. Hence the term "Poverty amidst Plenty"(13). Some simple fundamentals need first to be established. Money is basically a token for the movement and exchange of goods and services. It could, and should, be created to meet this requirement. It is not properly or logically a commodity to be traded in its own right. Next, debt generally chases its own tail in that globally it can never mathematically be repaid. From establishing a business, financing and refinancing a major corporation, or for the individual mortgage and a "never-never-land" of hire purchase and credit card finance, we are mortgaging future income to finance current production. The faster we run economically, the more we are likely to stand still in the face of that debt. We may usefully quote the aphorism that "there are no free lunches", save for those with the power to exploit the situation at the expense of the rest of us. Then, in a ruthlessly competitive global economy when productive industry declines, we see the trend in the United Kingdom and the United States towards "service industries"; in other words a retraction. But the United Kingdom has a problem. It imports more than it exports, even after allowing for the exports derived from the various service industries. If we paid a true and fair price for many Third World imports, where mainly multinationals are engaged in exploitation, the balance of payments situation would be even worse. Under the current perverse economic rules the only way out is to invent some other "activity" or "service" and sell that to the rest of the world - whether they want it or not! - to balance the UK's books. Another alternative is for the U.K. to continue to go further into debt internationally.

In the United Kingdom we exist in a world of the most remarkable economic and financial double-dealing and double standards; one might justifiably say, of criminal proportions. This is compounded by political duplicity as well as ineptitude at the hands of career politicians, few of whom seem to have the remotest grasp of the mechanisms and realities of finance. We are informed that the economy is "booming", or "strong"; that the economy of the United Kingdom is the fourth largest economy in the world. The Sunday Times "Rich List" for 2004 reveals a bizarre preponderance of a thousand largely parasitic occupations - property, sporting, entertainment, fashion and the rest - the so-called "celebrities" - with the litigation-happy faction of the legal profession nibbling at the edges of the list. But how many hardworking consultant hospital surgeons to whom many owe their lives and well-being; often criticised for turning to the private sector to make money - in practice no more than "Mickey-Mouse" cash relative to those of the Rich List"? This year the weekend press also published a list of the richest in business associated with the City of London. We have followed the recent obscene scrabbling for City fund raising for the control of the Marks & Spencer store chain between Chief Executive Stuart Rose and Philip Green, the Monaco-based billionaire owner of British Home Stores (B.H.S.). We learned, during the process of debating Green's "final" offer of £9,100,000,000, surprise-surprise, that the Marks & Spencer pension funds had not been accounted for! ("Green faces £1.6bn pension fund shock in bid for Marks & Spencer", The Independent on Sunday, 11th July, 2004). One wonders just how much power, how much greed will satisfy such people as the shares play "yo-yo" in the financial market for other carrion of the City to make fortunes out of the dispute? Nice work if you can get it, as City advisers pocket "a £50m bonanza" (The Independent on Sunday, 18th July, 2004), and Green flies off for a six-week holiday in his own Gulfstream G550 jet.

Three hundred years have passed since the Tonnage Act of 1694 led to the foundation of the Bank of England and the origins of the rapacious National Debt; as we regularly remind our readers, interest bearing debt on money necessary to finance public requirements, raised by borrowing our own "money" at interest to private bankers upon which the interest is paid through public taxation. One privileged elite, the landed aristocracy, and the later Victorian industrial entrepreneurs have simply been superseded during a Twentieth Century of growing social justice and enlightenment by another elite; that of Money Power, an ultimately trans-national Power that owes little or no loyalty to the Nation State. This Power produces not so much as a carrot to sustain life, instead it controls the carrots others grow and consume, for its own profit. We may recall the plunder of the Maxwell Communications Corporation pension funds by the late Robert Maxwell to finance his Israeli Mossad operations(14). Well known City of London names were implicated, several of whom continue to function in the City of London; one or two almost certainly in the House of Lords. As Maxwell pensioners struggled to recoup a few crumbs from this massive fraud with virtually no help from Government, how many of these names have been excised from the City and languish in prison? Exactly! In 1999 the Daily Mail reported "Spend, spend, spend - City bankers splash out big bonuses in orgy of reckless extravagance". At about the same time we learned that so much money was being made by the banking fraternity on Wall Street, in banks that have been fast taking over in the City of London, that they simply did not know how to spend it all! We read in the Daily Mail five years later of "Banks on the gravy train" as "Huge profits are rolling in for the three High Street banks that have a stranglehold [by ownership and leasing back to the operators] on the supply of Britain's trains". Yet the railways are now so broke and chaotic that the State is to re-assume control. So "joe public" will no doubt pick up the bill; not least for a lucrative killing in compensation, and payments for the transition back to public ownership. On the 13th February, 2004, the Daily Mail reported "Bank profits rise to £26bn as customer debts soar". So we can now see how a small exclusive elite is subsidised by the rest of the Nation. On the 2nd March, 2004, The Daily Telegraph wrote that "Five H.S.B.C. bankers share £37m of spoils - Chairman announces £7.8bn profit and defends payments to colleagues". You bet he did! So from whom have H.S.B.C. Chairman Sir John Bond and others of his ilk in the City of London sucked out these riches as the gravy train rolls on?

In a Politically Correct, litigation crazed society, the banking sector continues to pay out multi-million pound compensation to women, still relatively young, for various permutations of sex discrimination offences. All things are relative, maybe, but a few cancer patients on lengthy Health Service hospital waiting lists, and a few servicemen stricken by Gulf War Syndrome, officially cheated of any formal investigation and compensation, would welcome a few quid in their direction. We can close a few loops here. In 2000 The Sunday Telegraph reported that National Health Service hospitals were "set for £1bn debt crisis". In February this year we wrote of the closure of our local district hospital as a cost compensating measure(15). The Deputy Editor of On Target has now seen his post-operation review cancelled for the second time in two months by a renowned National Health Service Orthopaedic Hospital Trust reported to have an accumulated £3,500,000 debt. Max Pemberton, in The Daily Telegraph, wrote with particular reference to private Health Care that the Public Finance Initiative [P.F.I.] is "the brainchild of a brainless government". By this arrangement the government passes the buck - sorry, delegates management - to the supposedly more efficient and entrepreneurial private sector in a "shared" responsibility to run, inter alia, Education, Security and Health Care. As hospital wards and operating theatres are closed to save costs, that is, to ensure profits to the P.F.I. companies, The Observer of 4th July, 2004, reported, under the heading "Scandal of city tycoons' £170m hospital profits":

A select group of city banks and building firms have reaped more than £170 million in windfall profits from building four flagship hospitals under the government's controversial Public Finance Initiative policy, . . . The disclosures sparked outrage from unions and backbench M.Ps., who described it as a public scandal. They have demanded an independent inquiry into P.F.I., under which private firms are used to develop public buildings such as hospitals, schools and prisons. An Observer investigation has discovered that while new hospitals struggle with mounting debts and building faults, private contractors reap huge financial rewards using sophisticated methods to "refinance" the original P.F.I. deals.

In The Guardian of 6th July, 2004, we learned of serious concern about the viability of construction giant Jarvis, of Potters Bar railway disaster fame, but now no longer involved in railway maintenance. ("M.Ps. call for schools contingency plan as fears about Jarvis grow"). This followed a profit warning on rail contracts. The following extract from The Guardian suggests the prospect of another re-run on the lines of the reversal of rail privatisation; another loop on the City of London-Government financial gymnastics for which the public will eventually pay:

"Dozens of schools and universities around the country will be left in the lurch if Jarvis goes bankrupt," Mr Gable (Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman) said. . . . Brighton City Council described work on a £105m contract to develop and manage four of its schools as "unacceptable", while it failed to complete on time five out of eight schools being improved on Merseyside.

Living A Lie - A World Of Fiscal And Financial Duplicity

Thinking members of the electorate from all social groups, those not conveniently diverted from reality by commercialised sport, televised entertainment and tabloid tittle-tattle, must wonder if they inhabit the same planet as the super-rich of the City of London and their army of functionaries. It is a world divided by an army of expensive lawyers, astute accountants, establishment networks, overseas residence and tax havens denied all but the most powerful. In the United Kingdom the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, pronounces more like a "home" prime minister whilst the slithery manikin Prime Minister Tony Blair eludes censure for the incompetence and duplicity of his Government with a succession of foreign perambulations and meaningless, but deftly timed domestic "initiatives". Assuming the accuracy of press reports, Brown pronounces, for example, on Defence, and domestic environmental and building policies, apparently over the heads of appointed Ministers and even the Cabinet itself. Much is made currently of an incipient "pensions" crisis. Government expenditure, along with social engineering tactics, is conveniently and consistently aimed at the soft target of the "Middle Classes", without the slightest definition socially, financially or economically of what exactly this grouping encompasses. What is clear, however, is that both the Conservative and Labour Parties are in the grip of the City of London. Conventional economics are enforced, and a revolving door clearly exists between the Treasury and the City. This maintains conditions of debt-slavery for the mass of the population. These truths are conveyed in this extract from a Left Wing source, Prawn Cocktail Party, by Robin Ramsay(16):

This book is about the rise to power of the financial sector, the City, with help from their friends overseas, and its struggles en route with Labour and Conservative Governments. It sounds complex and it is not. At one level it is relatively simple: one section of society, chiefly concerned with moving money, has cheated the other sections. . . . It is remarkable politically. After all, everybody hates their bank - or knows someone who hates their bank. Most people would not need too much instruction to see that the billions of profits made by banks have come from their pockets; two to three million people were fraudulently sold private pensions in the 1980s.

The phlegmatic British people are slow to stir, to anger; as Karl Marx recognised 150 years ago when he decided to attack Great Britain and the British Empire indirectly through the Irish problem. Broadly speaking, the rich economies of the Developed World should logically bring to the people the well-being of comfortably secure prosperity for all. If not, where does all this income, the "money" from these riches, go? We offer a selection of press headlines and bylines that reflect various aspects of the current situation, with our notes where necessary:

* "As the D.T.I. [Department of Trade and Industry] prepares for its crisis summit on lending, Susan Emmett asks whether debt is spiralling out of control". (The Times, 21st October, 2000).

* "There can't be many M.Ps. who aren't aware by now of the plight of thousands of workers whose pensions have been devastated by the wind-ups scandal. But incredibly, 300 Labour members have failed to back a move to help them. The outrage is growing. And now there's . . . No hiding place for the ostrich M.Ps." (Mail on Sunday, 4th January, 2004).

* "Bankruptcies soar to 10-year high as consumer debt rises". The Independent, 7th February. 2004).

* "Pensions blow as Labour shrinks inflation shield - New threat to millions of workers in company pension schemes". (Daily Mail, 13th February, 2004).

* "O.A.Ps. 'Should pass tax bills on to heirs' - Inheritance - Pensioners should be allowed to 'bequeath' council tax liability to their children, says leading Blair ally" (The Independent on Sunday, 15th February, 2004). [Straight from the Communist Manifesto and the elimination of private property and inheritance with the Inheritance Tax threshold already at a punitively low level, except for the super-rich who have access to the necessary mechanisms to reserve their position].

* "£1 trillion and rising: British households pass debt milestone". (The Independent, 3rd July, 2004). [As the costs of mortgages and property prices , for example, escalate beyond the range even of working couples, and people are encouraged to spend ahead into debt - the credit card syndrome. This is part of the suicidal global economic debt-usury growth model that drives both business and individuals].

* "I went to jail rather than pay tax for inept police" (Daily Mail, 5th July, 2004). [Another situation in which reality, commitment and vital public funding simply do not reconcile in practice, in which burglary and robbery are out of control in the face of wholly inadequate policing. Dr Richard North is a distinguished public figure who reacted in "contravention" of the anaesthetising Politically Correct mores of International Socialist, "New" Labour Government. The conduct of the West Yorkshire Police and the Bradford Magistrates appear to have been redolent of the Geheime Staats Polizei (Gestapo), of pre-war Nazi Germany.].

* "Pensions crisis will cause rift in society over benefits , warn Tories - David Willetts talks of a threat to generations of pensioners" " and "Tory plans 'would not solve pensions crisis". (Financial Times, 5th & 6th July, 2004). [Cheap party-political manoeuvring in an area fundamentally flawed and misrepresented by the prevailing debt-usury system of money creation. David Willetts, M.P., is a Conservative Party economics spokesman. In November, 1993, Willetts was reported in The Independent on Sunday as stating that pensioners should liquidate their assets to finance a retirement income rather than leave an inheritance for their children(17)].

* "Businesses urged to fund local policing" (Financial Times, 10th July, 2004). [This, and other private security enterprises, such as closed circuit television systems, are a brazen form of indirect taxation for Law and Order services for which taxation has already been levied by central Government].

* "Middle class face council tax bombshell - Better off homeowners to be punished in Labour's local finance shake-up". (The Sunday Telegraph, 18th July, 2004). [As announced, this sweeps in by implication undefined levels of property-owning society in a typical politically motivated Middle Class "collective" to the reaches of seriously wealthy profes-sionals and others of the higher reaches of the Middle, and Upper, Classes].

* "C.B.I. calls to raise retirement age and state benefits" (Financial Times, 19th July, 2004). [Already postulated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that people should work on to the age of 70. This is a remarkable contradiction in a period of out-sourcing manufacturing capacity and service industry overseas, and shrinking productive capacity at home. The problem is attributed to an increasing life-span. In truth it is a consequence of the escalating debt-usury spiral generally and refusal of governments to "create" their own money to satisfy public expenditure, as in the case of Health Care, Education and Law and Order].

These are but a selection from such reports that could fill several pages. To compound this fiscal "felony", a Financial Times investigation published on 21st July, 2004, has shown that banks and major corporations are legally cheating the British people of tax revenues ("Counting the cost of globalisation: how companies keep tax low and stay within the law - Research shows that corporate yields are being dramatically eroded. Multinational groups use complex strategies to pay their dues in the most favourable way"). Names include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Nestle, Toyota, Wal-Mart, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, General Motors, Orange and Powergen. Strong connections exist between Goldman Sachs and close advisers to Chancellor Gordon Brown, so who pulls the strings behind what is this de facto Government-condoned robbery of the British taxpayer, who already massively subsidises through interest payment for loans on private bank created Government money - that is, on the National Debt?

Even as we write, another surreal dimension caught our eye in The Daily Telegraph of 20th July, 2004; involving lavish funds that appear to circumvent any concept of more basic public requirements. Along with the imprisoned Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Yukos Oil and Boris Berezovsky, the fugitive Russian media magnate granted sanctuary in the West, Roman Abramovitch, now the owner of Chelsea Football Club, is one of the Russian "Oligarchs" who made vast personal fortunes out of the Russian economy during the sell-off of State assets in the post-Communist era. These and other oligarchs have exported their wealth and are buying up assets in the West. Modern league football clubs, with their foreign ownership and players, in any case bear little more than nominal resemblance, as commercialised entertainment, to the towns and cities whose names they take. We now read of Abramovitch's £195,000,000 "spree" on players for Chelsea. This is tantamount to financial obscenity even if it is nigh impossible to relate the movement of such sums to the mechanics and requirements of public expenditure. Early Day Motion (E.D.M.) 323 tabled in the present session of Parliament, replaced E.D.M. 854 from the previous session. When we read the terms of the Motion we may better understand the disparity with financial greed and profligacy, in which ordinary people are forced to go abroad for elementary Health Care, or why many more like Dr Richard North are vulnerable to inadequate policing, in which large numbers of people are deprived of dental services, the eternal debt burden of student and university funding and so on:

* That this House notes with concern the contrast between the enormous expansion of private credit and the growing debt burden that this imposes on society; further notes that public credit, as measured by the proportion of publicly created money in circulation, has fallen from 20 per cent of the money supply in 1964 to three per cent today; believes that using public credit and increasing the proportion of publicly created money should be used to cut the costs of, and to boost the quantity of, public investment and to allow the Chancellor to fulfil his golden rule without further borrowing; further believes that this can be done without any impact on inflation; and, therefore, urges the Treasury to commission an independent review of the benefits of using the public credit and increasing the proportion of publicly created money.

The role of the Bank of England has been described in an extremely revealing paper, from which we reproduce an extract below, by money system reformer, Richard Greaves. In this he shows that 97 per cent of the national - government - money supply is based on interest-bearing loans from commercial banks. This compares with the 20-80 per cent ration in 1964, referred to in E.D.M. 323, and a 50-50 per cent ration after the 1939-45 War. The £68,000,000 in cash and coin, broadly that required "on the street", is but a Mickey Mouse figure in the current overall sums. At least in part this reflects the gradual transition from government-issued hard cash in the pay packet of 60 years ago to the cheque book and automated systems of today in the hands of the commercial banks. At every stage we are adding to the virtually irreversible growth of an unrepayable national Debt that has its roots in the Tonnage Act of 1694.

Nationalising the Bank of England in 1946, which might at first sight seem to be a far reaching socialist measure, made little difference in practice. Yes the state did acquire all the shares in the Bank of England - they now belong to the Treasury and are held in trust by the Treasury Solicitor. However, the government had no money to pay for the shares, so instead of receiving money for their shares, the share-holders were issued with government stocks. Although the state now received the operating profits of the Bank, this was offset by the fact that the government now had to pay interest on the new stocks it had issued to pay for the shares. However, it is much more significant that whilst the Bank of England is now state owned the fact is that our money supply is once again almost entirely in private hands, with 97 per cent of it being in the form of interest bearing loans of one sort or another, created by private commercial banks. Indeed this is where the real power resides - with commercial banking. The Bank of England is now essentially a regulatory body that supports and oversees the existing system. . . . Most of its profits come from what is known as the "Issue department" - the department of the Bank which is responsible for printing and distributing bank notes and coins. These are purchased by the high street banks to meet their customers' demands for cash and the various banks have their accounts at the Bank of England debited accordingly. Basically, the profits from this operation belong to the state and are transferred to the Treasury, thus being added to the public purse. This money is available for spending on public projects and services and represents an interest free supply, albeit at £68,000,000 for the year ending 28th February, 2001, this was very small. Nevertheless, although owned by the state, the Bank is however largely controlled and run by those from the world of commercial banking and conventional economics. The members of the Court of Directors who set the policy and oversee its functions, are drawn almost entirely from the world of banks, insurance, economists and big business, with the notable exception of Bill Morris, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union [Thus the token Trades Union representative - Ed.].

The following extract from a letter of 13th March, 2004, from Physics Professor David Flower of Durham University in answer to an article in the Financial Times, takes the pension question a stage further. The securities - the 97 per cent to which Richard Greaves refers - are those on which interest is paid through public taxation. If commercial pension schemes come to be based on these securities, with handling charges and profits extracted in the process, investors in these schemes are being effectively charged twice over; first by public taxation, secondly by these extractions. This can only constitute another form of fiscal and financial exploitation, of which any government must be fully aware.

Philip Coggan notes that "government bonds are simply a claim on future tax revenues". In the context of pension provision, notably private pension provision, this comment seems to me to be very significant. The recent moves of insurance companies out of equities and into bonds in effect transfer the costs of providing pensions to the taxpayer, as noted by Philip Coggan in his article, this process seems to defeat the objective. Indeed, giving money to private insurance companies that then take their (considerable) cut, only to invest the money in government bonds, is a singularly inefficient way of providing pensions cover. It is rather like paying commission to an agent to settle your bills on time.

Early Day Motion 323 at least shows that a few politicians are conscious of the serious nature of debt-usury money creation in the context of the inability of governments to pay for their commitments. Theoretical divisions are automatically assumed between the "capitalist", hence City-oriented Right, and the old Labour tradition of the Left. As Robin Ramsay has shown, this is palpable nonsense today(18). It is nevertheless no surprise, therefore, that a public wake-up call for economic democracy came in an article in the Left Wing New Statesman of 7th April, 2003. By David Boyle, a senior associate of the New Economics Foundation, the heading said all that needed to be said, short of reading the entire article: "The strange rebirth of a forgotten idea - Why is the country so short of money that we can't even rebuild the London Tube? Because we allow the banks a monopoly to create it, and they charge the earth".

Pay-Back Time - Economic Consequences For National Security

Canon Peter Challen, Chairman of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice, and a leading member of the Bromsgrove Group for Monetary and Economic Reform (referred to in the New Statesman article), issued a statement on behalf of himself, James Gibb Stuart, a founder of the Bromsgrove Group, and Alistair McConnachie, publisher of the monthly Newsletter Prosperity(19). This was a prelude to a meeting in Parliament scheduled for the 25th February, 2004, intended to win the support of M.Ps. for monetary and economic reform. This extract is relevant here:

Voters and politicians alike are not very familiar with the mechanisms of creating money and the power of controlling the money supply. The Government's share of the supply (cash and coin), has fallen from 20 per cent to 3 per cent since 1964. 97 per cent of the money circulating is interest-bearing, created by the banks as credit. No wonder that 5 of the top 10 companies on the FTSE [Financial Times Stock Exchange] 100 are banks. For what does it cost them to create the "product" they "sell"? The Government's budget equals 40 per cent of all the money in circulation. This budget includes interest on the National Debt, every year the interest is comparable to the annual cost of Education, Health or the Military. While personal and corporate indebtedness is increasing and student fees are to finance Higher Education, it seems paramount to make voters and M.Ps. more aware of the underlying causes (Emphasis added).

Our attention was drawn to a brief report in October, 2003, that the Defence Medical Services had a trained strength of 414 doctors, 241 below the requirement and a shortfall of 37 per cent. We were not surprised. At the heart of this is a game of consequences which is rooted in what has fast become the arbitrary power of the Treasury during the second "New" Labour Government; secondly the drive to impose Politically Correct sociology. It was always clear that the Armed Forces would face severe reductions and reorganisation following the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1989. The fundamental requirement in accordance with the immutable principles laid down by General Carl von Clausewitz is that military power is a continuation of political policy by other means. It has therefore always followed that the political commitment must be a prerequisite to defence planning. Vested interests, such as the preservation of existing structures and the sensitive question of civilian manpower, clearly exist as in any other environment, but the Armed Forces have long lived with successive studies, especially to reduce the size of the logistic tail. In time of peace politicians have always found it expedient to take risks. This has involved what is known as "salami slicing", a process of paring away training, stores, equipment, maintenance and supporting services, often beyond danger point. Conditions of "overstretch" have prevailed for years in the full political knowledge each time that the Armed Forces would "put up with it", would "manage" whatever the internal repercussions.

Passage of time means that virtually no contemporary politician has any familiarity with the Service ethos; certainly with no experience of combat or seeing blood shed, much less themselves having shed, blood, in battle. Contact is maintained by the few with military experience, such as Michael Mates and Tam Dalyell. Since 1999 Prime Minster Blair has committed British Forces excursions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and the Middle East. He also continued the costly - and illegal - unilateral United States-United Kingdom overflying and bombing of Iraq. In the latter two campaigns Blair and his clueless Defence Secretary, "Geoff" Hoon, have committed ill-prepared, ill-equipped military resources with the insouciance of children playing with lead soldiers and Dinky Toys. The then Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, stood his ground in 1992, and was retired prematurely. As recently as the 3rd July, 2004, the Daily Mail reported that the Black Watch, morale at "rock bottom", were being forced to borrow desert combat gear before returning to Iraq. To compound a predictable situation, the "lean-mean" military ethos has been compromised by the Politically Correct imposition of women in the Order of Battle. Apart from well-publicised extra-marital affairs and implications for the morale of home-based families, 83 servicewomen have been returned home pregnant. Prime Minister Blair will undoubtedly slither away from serious censure as he currently basks in the aura of the whitewash of the Hutton and Butler "Inquiries", and in the face of a political opposition that seems to have no principles or philosophy on any issue. But behind all this lurks the supreme power of the Treasury and Chancellor Gordon Brown. Money has always been found to finance war but, in a time of relative peace, the overriding priority has been an election-oriented budget strategy, whatever the cost to the life and limb of the Armed Forces. Incredibly, Brown has negated the proper planning process with arbitrary cuts in Defence Expenditure, even to the point that recruiting to already under-manned Service units has been forced to cease. As resignations escalate and career structures and security are undermined, it is unthinkable that any sensible individual would contemplate such a career.

BOOK REVIEW

New Rulers Of The World, by John Pilger. Verso, 2002. Now obtainable through the Bloomfield Books Stock Price List, in hardback, price £12.50.

There is something special about John Pilger for he is an uncommonly honest man whose investigative journalism and now his growing impact as an author rests upon his willingness to be where the news is and not be prepared to sit in an hotel room and await the information that comes to him. I have in mind here his readiness to go to bombed-out villages in Afghanistan, drive along the Baghdad-Amman road and to meet face-to-face with James Rubin in which he tears him apart intellectually and reveals the lying nature of the State Department's policy over the bogus Oil-for-Food Programme in post-Gulf War Iraq.

Pilger's book covers areas of great global concern. The chapter The Model Pupil deals not only with the brutality of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, but also with the brazen complicity of America and Britain in installing Suharto as its president in the first place and then countenancing an oppression against his own people as well as against the East Timorese in which over a million people died. It was Pilger who got hold of the Time-Life Corporation's sponsored conference in Geneva where companies carved up Indonesia's resources as if they were slicing bread. It was Pilger, too, who went behind the cover of so-called Indonesian respectability to examine the factory conditions of Indonesian women working as slave labour for Western companies whose cheap labour meant great profits for sales of clothing and sports equipment. Pilger also reveals how Western companies whilst denying the sale of arms to the unsavoury Suharto, also had the gall to persistently deny their involvement.

But, nonetheless, it is over Iraq that Pilger trenchantly exposes the duplicity of the Western powers, notably America and Britain. America has shown no remorse in its quest for control of Iraqi oil, which after all is why the Coalition is there now. Policy over Iraq since the discovery of oil at the end of the 19th century has been a scandal. From its occupation by the Turks to the Gulf War and beyond, Iraq has always been targeted by Western policy makers and their oil industry satraps. In the process a civilized state has been deprived of its pride, its infrastructure and now its independence. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, amongst whom were half-a-million children, and when faced with this all that Madeleine Albright, then American Ambassador to the United Nations replied: "I think it is a very hard choice (the killing of children), but the price . . . we think the price is worth it." Incidentally, Albright was a victim of Nazi attacks against Czechoslovakian Jewry. And then Pilger refers to the depleted uranium used in weaponry in the Gulf War, something the Western alliance will never admit to, along with its furtive use of cluster bombs to add to this scandal and so the sorry story portrayed by Pilger is put into print in this book and yet hardly gets a mention in news dispatches and how curious it is that reputable whistle-blowers such as Denis Halliday after 34 years with the United Nations had had enough of its submission to American policy, and resigned.

The most important and penetrating part of the book comes under the title "The Great Game" for in it with all its cynical realpolitik is the story first of all of Britain's role as an imperial power to dominate and benefit from its global colonies and then to Britain's replacement in this role by America. Since the stakes are now higher and since global corporations, mainly under American control or ownership, allied to international bodies such as the I.M.F. [International Monetary Fund], the W.T.O. [World Trade Organisation], the World Bank and the United Nations itself, all within the orbit of American domination or influence. Lord Curzon's comment about the great game for world domination now has even greater significance. One does not have to look very far to realise what this means to nations and people who get in the way of the great corporations and Pilger displays this fact brilliantly when describing how the Rockefellers meet up with the oil-rich Bush-Cheney dynasty in their search for a pipeline through Afghanistan to develop the new oil Eldorado in the Caspian region. In this connection, Pilger describes how the bombing of defenceless villages in Afghanistan, America's pumping of dollars to buttress some unsavoury states bordering the Caspian Sea are part of this plan. Against such a background Pilger acidly comments that in 2000 the United States Senate approved $75,000,000 for the poorer countries of the world - no more than the cost of one tenth of a B52 bomber, one of those which might have unleashed its load of death in Afghanistan and elsewhere. In short, if anyone doubts America's global reach in the Great Game one has only to witness the use of terrorism of the Al Qa'eda variety in justifying her own "terrorist" interventions when Pilger reveals that United States Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld openly stated that America was planning actions against "forty to fifty countries"!

Pilger ends his book in his own backyard - Australia - where the whites are now the new rulers having invaded and occupied the land of the native Aborigines. His chapter "The Chosen Ones" describes how the Aborigines have been marginalised in what is now an Australian white society, done Pilger asserts by a process of legal attrition. Nowadays the new rulers such as Ruddock, Keating and currently Howard have continued and expanded upon policies aimed at depriving the Aborigines of their human rights. The result has been of a people ghettoised, deprived of employment opportunities, living in squalor and collectively being denied proper health treatment. Pilger writes of this as a tragedy unknown to most of the world and even in the run-up to the 2002 Olympics held in Sydney, it was White Australia's aim to cover up this racial blot on their landscape. Pilger wonders what kind of Australia its leaders have in mind when the landless Aborigines have as their near neighbour a certain Kerry Packer who is Australia's seventh largest landowner.

The book is the result of years of investigative journalism and serves as a warning to those rulers whose greed is fostering global discontent and misery amongst a major part of the world's population.

REFERENCES

Note: Prices are shown where available from Bloomfield Books, and represent only a selection relevant to the theme of this edition of On Target. A wide range of reading may be found in the Stock Price List (S.P.L.), which may be obtained post free on request from the address on the last page. Books temporarily out of stock are annotated *. Out of print, or older works, may be obtained through the Book Search Service, or the Second-Hand Book Service, both of which are operated by Mr. T.G. Turner, for which details are available as for the S.P.L.

(1) On Target, Vol. 31, Nos. 24 & 25, 1st & 15th June, 2002. The European Flytrap.
(2) On Target, Vol. 31, No. 26, 29th June, 2002. Bob Wydell Rides Again.
(3) Chomsky, Noam. World Orders Old And New. Pluto Press, 1997. £16.75.
(4) On Target, Vol. 30, Nos. 4 & 5, 12th & 26th August, 2000. Power - The Drive For The New World Order.
(5) Harris, Robert & Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form Of Killing - The Secret History of Gas and Germ Warfare. Arrow Books, 2002.
(6) Stuart, James Gibb. The Money Bomb. William Maclellan (Embryo) Ltd, 1983.H/B £10.00; P/B £6.00.
(7) Stuart, James Gibb. Fantopia (Why only in Fantopia?). Ossian Publishers, £3.00.
(8) Rowbotham, Michael. The Grip of Death - A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics. Jon Carpenter, 1998. £17.95.

(9) Rowbotham, Michael. Goodbye America! Globalisation, debt and the dollar empire. Jon Carpenter, 2000. £13.25.
(10) Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World. Kumarian Press and Berrett-Koehler Publisher, Inc., 1995, revised 2001. £16.75*.
(11) Pilger, John. The New Rulers Of The World. Verso, 2002. H/B, £12.50.
(12) Vickers, V.C. Economic Tribulation. John Lane The Bodley Head, 1941. O/P.
(13) Tankerville, The Earl of. Poverty Amidst Plenty. Record of a lecture given in Stockholm in May, 1924. First printed, 1934. Currently published in Great Britain by Bloomfield Books. £2.00.
(14) Ostrovsky, Victor. The Other Side Of Deception - A Rogue Agent Exposes The Mossad's Secret Agenda. HarperCollins, 1994. H/B £20.00*, P/B £8.95*.
(15) On Target, Vol. 33, Nos. 16 & 17, 7th & 21st February, 2004. Get Wise! Why A Large Market Town Has No Hospital.
(16) Ramsay, Robin. Prawn Cocktail Party - The Hidden Power Behind New Labour. VISION Paperbacks, 1998. £11.95.
(17) On Target, Vol. 33, Nos. 16 & 17, 7th & 21st February, 2004. Op. cit. For full details of this episode, including Willetts' explanation, see pages 12(244) - 14(246).
(18) Ramsay, Robin. Op. cit.
(19) Prosperity is a four-page monthly newsletter. The annual subscription is £20.00. Enquiries should be made with Prosperity at 268 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR; Tel: 0141 332 2214; Fax: 0141 353 6900; E-mail: <admcc@admcc. freeserve.co.uk>