BEHIND THE BUSH VISIT TO AUSTRALIA AND ASIA

by Eric D Butler
As I read a report from South Korea, that President George Bush had arrived to press the long-time Asian ally to help overcome the American products, my mind went back to 1976 when I attended a World Anti-Communist conference in Seoul. Although the military situation was still tense, the South Koreans had demonstrated their capacity to build a modern industrial State after the devastation of a war which ended in an uneasy truce backed by a strong American military presence.

In studying the history of Korea, I was interested in the claim that Koreans had been the first to build iron ships. Whatever the truth about this claim, it was clear that the South Koreans were demonstrating an outstanding capacity for mastering modern industrial technology as witnessed by the establishment of a sophisticated car industry. During a tour of inspection of the new industry, I asked a South Korean official what they proposed to do with their cars. The answer was instant: "We plan to export most of them." Not surprisingly, it was not many years later that the Japanese, who had helped the South Koreans to establish their car industry, were complaining about competition from South Korean cars!

Nothing so graphically demonstrates the distorting effects of finance-economic policies which drive nations to seek to solve domestic economic problems by export drives, than the spectacle of the United States of America trying to persuade South Korea to open its markets to American production, while almost threatening the Japanese that they must do likewise.

Australian farmers should note that their fellow farmers in both South Korea and Japan are protesting violently against other countries. Rice growers in both countries are strongest in their opposition to foreign imports. South Korean and Japanese farmers are much better represented by their leaders against the threat of foreign imports, than are Australian farmers, whose spokesmen have demonstrated their appalling ignorance of finance economics by creating the impression that they have achieved worthwhile results as a result of their recent talks in Canberra with President George Bush.

If the National Farmers' Federation officials genuinely felt that they were going to achieve any relief for Australian farmers by appealing to President Bush, they have demonstrated just how naive they are about the American political scene. George Bush is fighting for political survival this year, and he desperately required media reports from Australia, South Korea and Japan that he was putting the interest of American producers, both primary and secondary, ahead of all other producers. President Bush spelt it out loud and clear when he addressed Australian Parliamentarians in Canberra: "I will safeguard the interests of American farmers", he said. Yes, said George Bush, he understood how the American subsidy programme was hurting Australian farmer.
A past master of diplomatic double talk, George Bush said he was both "grieved" and "embarrassed".

National Farmers Federation leader Blight and his colleagues sought to console their supporters by, claiming that at last the Americans had a better appreciation of the problems of the Australian farmers. But Prime Minister Hawke made repeated representations to Washington and in a typical Hawke emotional address to the American Congress, stressed the problems of Australian farmers. American policy makers are not primarily concerned with the problems of Australian farmers, who do not vote in American elections. American primary producers are the victims of the same type of finance-economic policies destroying Australian farmers, and American politicians, particularly Republicans, are not going to be seen failing to protect American primary produces against primary production from other countries.

The greatest damage being done to Australian farmers is not by American subsidy policies, but by the policies of debt and inflation imposed by Australian governments. Orthodox debt financial policies have forced Australian primary producers to keep on increasing production, often at the expense of sound farming practices. The National Farmers' Federation studiously ignores the debt problem and any suggestion that a policy of debt moratorium would be the quickest way to provide genuine relief to the Australian community.

While appealing to President Bush to do what is politically impossible for him, those making the appeal endorse the internationalist policy which results in cheap foreign food flooding into Australia at the expense of local producers, along with former Prime Minister Hawke and new Prime Minister Paul Keating. National Farmers' Federation Rich Farley, a constant critic of the League of Rights, has appealed for a continuation of the policy of internationalising the Australian economy. There is to be no change of direction under Mr. Paul Keating.

It is now over 70 years since C.H. Douglas demonstrated beyond all argument that no industrial nations' industries distribute, over any given period of time, sufficient purchasing power to meet total costs.
The test of true science is correct predictions. Douglas, followed by others, including British Chambers of Commerce, warned that the system could only be sustained by constant "growth", enormous economic sabotage, progressive debt and social disintegration. Progressive inflation was inevitable, as was the growth of Monopoly, both national and international. Attempts to merge nations into bigger trading blocks merely aggravate the underlying problem.

President Bush justifies the American policy of subsidising exports by the policies of the European Economic Community, which now seeks to solve its problems by suggesting that the EEC be further enlarged by absorbing the member States of the Former Soviet Empire. The whole world is on a disastrous treadmill, and all attempts to run harder to keep pace, can only intensify the growing convulsions right around the world. What is left of Civilisation is going to be saved only by one nation, for a start, deciding to get off the international treadmill.

President George Bush's visit to Australia and Asia has demonstrated, to those with eyes to see, that Australia's basic problems can only be solved in Australia, by Australians. Only when Australia has corrected its own finance economic problems can it enter into realistic trading arrangements with other nations of the world. The necessary corrections will not be applied by any of the major political parties in Canberra today. A new type of political representative must be sent to Canberra.
How to achieve this is the most pressing issue confronting the Australian people today. Australians must face the reality that in the absence of some unforeseen miracle, 1992 is going to witness a further retreat from Christian Civilisation. Growing trade conflicts reflect the basic flaw in the anti-Christian debt financial system. Regeneration depends upon that system being changed.

THE FINTA TRIAL

BRIEF COMMENTS

The desperate plight of the Federal Labor party has been highlighted by the decision to replace Mr. Bob Hawke with Mr. Paul Keating, the former Treasurer who implemented the depression, which he said the nation had to have. Like his predecessor, Paul Keating is a man with a highly inflated ego. He has recently provided the glowing self-assessment, "I understand the problems of the country better than anyone else in it… My judgment on major political events has been impeccable."
While Keating was the principal architect of the policies contributing to the worst depression since the 1930's, it should not be forgotten that Hawke presided over the implementation of those policies. The Hawke and Keating supporters in the Federal Labor party, almost equally divided, are all responsible for what has happened to Australia. Keating offers little more that a few cosmetic changes, but no major policy shifts.

We feel that Mr. Danny Johnson and his supporters are making a major tactical mistake with their proposed blockade of the Federal parliament in February, if the Prime Minister does not agree to their demands within 24 hours of them being made. We endorse many of them, such as the re-regulation of the banking system and the use of long-term low interest credits, but we fear that what is proposed will prove yet one more example of political futility contributing to a further lowering of community morale. While neither supporting nor opposing Danny Johnson when he led tens of thousands of protestors into the streets of Melbourne, we applauded his sentiments and intentions. "Hats off to Danny Johnson", we said. But just as the Melbourne rally early last year resulted in no political or economic changes, neither will a blockade of Federal Parliament. The control of Federal parliament requires effective electoral control of the individual members of that Parliament. Any grassroots movement, which is going to be effective, requires that individual Members be subjected to every form of pressure possible. A constant stream of protestors to Members' electoral offices would be far less expensive and more effective that attempting to blockade Canberra.

SA LEAGUE DIRECTOR WRITES ON WAR CRIME TRIALS

Mrs. Betty Luks South Australian State director of the League of Rights, courageously led a team of protestors who held up their placards outside the Adelaide court when Australia's first war crime trial got under way. Former South Australian Lt-Governor and distinguished former Australian Ambassador, Sir Walter Crocker, joined the protestors on the second day of the trial. The widespread publicity resulted in one Zionist apologist, Mr. Jeremy Jones, attempting to misinterpret what the protestors were saying. Mrs. Betty Luks, responded in the following letter, which appeared in "The Australian" January 6th:

"I was one of the protestors at the Adelaide war crimes trial Jeremy Jones wrote about (Calculated To Incite Hatred, The Australian 31/12). He obviously doesn't understand what we meant when we called for Christian justice - no vengeance. He writes, 'Using the protestor' logic, we should disband police forces, courts and the entire judicial system on the grounds that punishment for crimes....rests....with God.' Let me enlighten him. "The War Crimes Act violates general principles of the Rule of Law"
1. The law must be promulgated, that is, it must be sufficiently announced and made known beforehand to those upon whom it lays obligation. Without knowledge of a law, a person cannot be guided by it in his human acts. The War Crimes legislation violates the Rule of Law; it is retrospective. We protested about that.
2. A law is made either by the society, which it binds, or its imposed on that society by the public personage who has charge of the society and authority to rule it. "The War Crimes legislation is extra-territorial. The persons charged were citizens of other countries at the time these alleged acts took place and Australian law - even if there had been War Crimes legislation at the time - had no jurisdiction over them. Not only that, they were bound by the laws of the country they resided in. We protested about that.
3. Law is an ordinance of reason for the common good of persons in a society all citizens are 'under the law'. "The War Crimes legislation is selective; it does not cover the Japanese theatre of war '... (whether not involving Australia or a country allied or associated with Australia in so far as it occurred in Europe in the period beginning on September. 1, 1939, and ending on May 8, 1945') War Crimes Act 1945. "Japanese soldiers committed terrible atrocities against our own Australian soldiers and yet are exempt! We protested that the legislation was selective. "Following orders is no defence and yet our own soldiers were liable for punishment if they did not follow orders - what humbug!

As Canadian barrister Douglas Christie warned us when he was out here recently, 'In order to constitute the war crime, the orders that were given had to be unlawful and therefore all others that followed similar orders (or that were involved, even by omitting to resist similar orders) are tarred with the same brush. "The legal process identified the whole of the ethnic community with the commission of international offences. It is a very big mistake to think it is just an attack on the individual. The public perception will gradually be created that all those in the country where the crimes are alleged to have been committed and were not communists and were not resisting government orders of the day, all will be tarred with the same brush and liable to be charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity. After all, they carried out different parts of the same legal process! "The choice of prosecution is strictly political and our stand was taken to bring attention to the injustice of the war crimes trials."

THE HIGH COST OF IMMIGRATION