POLITICAL LYING

When President Franklin Roosevelt contested the American Presidency in November 1944, his closest associates knew that he was an extremely sick man. He died not long after the disastrous Yalta Conference early in 1945, where Stalin was given everything he demanded in both Europe and Asia.

Guiding the dying Roosevelt was the Communist traitor, Alger Hiss, top State Department official. But the Roosevelt presented to the American people in 1944 was a man in robust health. He even drove in an open car through a snowstorm to show how healthy he was. What the American people did not see were the elaborate precautions to keep the sick President warm and as comfortable as possible.

Even more revealing than the stories concerning President John Kennedy's s sexual exploits, is the revelation that John Kennedy was kept alive for the last fifteen years of his life by drugs. A recently published book "The Search for JFK", by Clay and Joan Blair, produces what appears to be irrefutable evidence that the Kennedy myth was no more substantial than the Roosevelt myth. Kennedy suffered from Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands, and required a daily dose of hormone cortisone. Cortisone treatment can give a puffy look about the face, as it did in the case of Kennedy.

According to a well-known American authority on the subject of cortisone, George W. Thorn of Harvard Medical School, it produces a markedly increased sense of well-being approaching euphoria. The Blairs write: "The impression was given that Jack was a robust young man. As we have seen....the exact opposite is true. Second, the impression was fostered that Jack was a dedicated and brilliant scholar. Here again we believe the exact opposite to be true." The Blairs show that Kennedy's Harvard thesis was turned into a successful book, "Why England Slept", with the help of famous journalists.

The Blairs ask the important question, "Do these omissions and distortions in the Kennedy legend matter?" Their answer is most disturbing: "We believe that they constitute overwhelming evidence that shrewd manipulation of the media can make a man President of the United States. We think that matters."

But manipulation of the media not only takes place in the United States; it takes place in all countries. Television has aggravated the problem of how electors are to know the real candidates contesting elections. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was first elected Prime Minister of Canada in 1968 because the media refused to discuss his long pro-Communist background. Politicians are now "sold" by high pressure "image makers" in the same way that soaps or cigarettes are sold. The financial cost is so enormous that there are suggestions now that party financial expenses at election time should be met from a Government fund.

Political lying has become a major crime against responsible voting and genuine democracy. It can only be curtailed by electors insisting that they know much more about political candidates before voting for them. And when government is kept closer to the people, the character and history of candidates can be much more easily ascertained.

THE REAL MEANING OF THE MEDIBANK STRIKE

The Fraser Government's medibank problems were inevitable from the moment that Mr. Malcolm Fraser promised, before the last Federal Elections, that medibank would be continued. The Whitlam Government's concept was, of course, socialistic. The Fraser Government has taken the concept over and introduced some modifications. But the underlying concept of everyone doing as Big Brother demands has been maintained.

Mr. Fraser has a strange idea of freedom of choice. The individual must either take out insurance with the private funds, or he will be forced to pay his contribution to the Government scheme. Large numbers, perhaps the majority, of electors have become most confused about the claims and counter claims over medibank.

The Left wing Trade Union leaders shrewdly decided to capitalise on the confusion and the fact that A.C.T.U. President, Robert Hawke appeared to have obtained no concessions at all from the Government. The superficial observers claim that the Communists have gained nothing from the medibank strike. To the trained Marxist the medibank question was merely a convenient issue upon which to bring most of the Trade Union movement together for a political strike, which they see as a major trial run for further general strikes.

The Fraser Government's finance-economic policies, which are steadily increasing unemployment and causing alarm amongst the very private businessmen the Government claims to represent, are providing the ideal conditions in which the Marxist revolutionaries can operate. While we are convinced that a much more satisfactory health insurance scheme could be evolved then that being offered by the Fraser Government or by the A.C.T.U., all insurance schemes are eroded while inflation continues. If inflation were removed, most other problems could be much more easily solved.

MR. ANTHONY COURTS THE COMMUNISTS

"Canberra - The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Anthony, said yesterday that political considerations would not affect his trade talks in Moscow this month. Speaking before leaving for the Soviet Union and Rumania, he said Australia sold to anyone around the world if the price was right." The Age, Melbourne July 9th.

Anyone with even the most elementary knowledge of Communist warfare knows that trade end economics are regarded as major features of conflict by Communist strategists. Mr. Anthony's naive views must delight the Soviet leaders. Mr. Anthony says that the Soviet Union is one of Australia's important trading partners. He said that he was going to the Soviet Union with goodwill and "to explain Australia' s attitude. And if they have any distorted points of view, then I want to correct them."

The essence of the Fraser-Anthony Government's "anti-Communism" is that having told the Soviet that its military and naval build up is threatening, the Soviet can rest assured that Australia will continue to help providing the economic blood transfusions without which the Soviet could not sustain its aggressive policies.

If Mr. Anthony and his colleagues argue that it is imperative that Australia exports to the Communists, otherwise the Australian economy will collapse, then they have surrendered to the Communist philosophy of economic determinism. They have been defeated.

It is of course, obviously absurd to suggest that if the whole Communist world disappeared beneath the sea tomorrow, the non-Communist world would be ruined because it had nowhere to send its surplus production. Faced with such a situation, the peoples of the non-Communist world could enjoy a much higher standard of living with less productive effort. This would require a change of present financial policies.

These policies can be changed NOW, and the non-Communist world would then start to apply real pressure to the Communists to force them to release the Captive Nations and to cease their policies of external aggression. Every Communist leader from the time of Lenin has made it clear time and time again that there can be no permanent peaceful co-existence between the Communists and the non-Communists. Complete power is what all Communists seek.

As for truth, Lenin wrote, "Marx' s theory is the objective truth...." and "what does not give power...is false." How is Mr. Anthony going to have any meaningful discussion with Communist leaders who preach that the only "truth" is that which gives them more power?

BRIEF COMMENTS

Premier Hamer of Victoria should be congratulated for making an effort to end the use of jargonese in official statements, letters and documents. Perhaps he can persuade the Commonwealth to follow his example, so that electors do not receive letters from the Foreign Affairs Department stating that an anti-Rhodesian policy is necessary because of the views of the "international community". A community is a group of people bound together by a common culture and the same basic interests. There is no such reality as the "international community". This meaningless term is used to justify attacks on real communities.

Without in any way reflecting on the brilliant Israeli military operation, which freed Israeli hostages being held by hijackers in Uganda, we draw attention to the fact that once again it has been demonstrated that Africans, by themselves are not capable of effective military action. Only in an African state could the Israeli raid have been carried out so successfully. This is why the Rhodesians treat with disdain military threats by African politicians. But, of course, the Rhodesians must not emulate the Israelis by eliminating with commando raids terrorist training camps in Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia! This would be the signal for U.N. military action.

Well known American author and authority on Communism's global strategy, Mr. Anthony Harrigan, has recently commented, "It is difficult for Americans to comprehend that the decisive chapters in the history of the twentieth century may be written in Southern Africa." South Africa provides Western Europe, the U.S.A. and Japan with their most important minerals, including uranium. One quarter of the Free World's uranium supplies comes from South Africa. Between them Rhodesia and South Africa possess the greatest source of under developed mineral wealth in the world. Soviet strategists want that wealth, as well as control of the Cape sea route over which the bulk of the Free World's oil supplies will be moved within the next few years.