GOVERNMENT RUNS OUT OF PLAUSIBILITY

by Jeremy Lee
There is the desperate air of a car salesman trying to flog a vehicle without wheels about the statements of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer this week. After all, how do you explain the latest low in the dollar, under 48 cents, as "good for the economy" when you were slamming Labor for a 70-cent dollar when in Opposition? It is all redolent of the "Animal Farm" scenario, where "bad is good" and "good is bad". In other words, "you can't fool all the people all the time".

Mike Nahan, executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs, writing in The Australian (4/4/01) clarified what On Target has been saying for well over a year; it was the corporate world that forced Howard's back-flip on the GST. Nahan said: "Corporate Australia, through its associations and individual leaders, has spearheaded the push for tax reform and the GST. It pushed John Hewson to Run with a GST in Fightback! It led the campaign to convince John Howard of the merits of a GST, and it has been intimately involved in the development of the Coalition's new tax system.
Although it has been active behind closed doors negotiating the detail, it has been silent in defence of tax reform. Most pointedly, it has said nothing about the benefits that have flowed to corporations.
Corporate Australia, specifically the BCA (i.e. the Business Council of Australia - ed.) was the originator of national competition policy. Yet again, except for a few submissions to inquiries, it has sat by reaping the benefits of reform ......"

There is something odious about a political party going through the motions of representing the public will, while accepting the policies and the cheques of huge and mainly foreign owned corporations out of public view. But events are now catching up. In a survey of 20 economists conducted by The Australian Financial Review, details of which were carried in its edition of April 2nd, 17 blamed the GST as the main reason for the current recession:
".... An overwhelming majority of economists surveyed by The Australian Financial Review said implementation of the new tax system was the most important factor contributing to the economy's slowdown in late 2000 ....."

If Opposition leader KIM beazley would adopt a new slogan - DON'T ROLL IT BACK - ROLL IT OUT! - he'd score as big a swing as Peter Beattie in Queensland. But then, the big foreign-owned corporations, not to mention the IMF, wouldn't like it, and might slice their contributions to his campaign.

ANOTHER ELECTION FUNDING RORT

GRIM OUTLOOK

As if the insanity of Australia's domestic situation was not enough, the news is now breaking that we are on the edge of another Asian meltdown. Michael Richardson, reporting from Singapore in The Australian (4/4/01) quoted one Asian leader in the electronics industry, Sim Wong Hoo, as saying
".....he has never seen such savage conditions in his 20 years in the often turbulent electronics industry ....:" Richardson went on: " .... Nearly four years after the East Asian financial crisis erupted the region's economies are again being severely buffeted, but this time from the simultaneous weakness of two markets, the US and Japan, which together absorbed more than a third of Asia's exports last year ....."

Florence Chong, writing in the same issue under the heading HAUNTING SHADES OF 1997 AS CURRENCIES TREMBLE, added:
"There is a sense of near panic in East Asia today. The reason? A fresh round of currency selldown almost reminiscent of the 1997 crisis. International currency traders are dumping Asian currencies for the mighty greenback as sentiment towards the region worsened in the past couple of days. The worst hit currencies are the Japanese yen, Thai bath, and the Korean won. Even the usually resilient Singapore dollar has tested a new trough in the past 48 hours....... Only the Malaysian ringgit, pegged at RM3.80 since 1998, and the Hong Kong dollar, at $HK7.80, have not been tested ...."

There must be quite a few Asian leaders listening more and more closely to Malaysia's Dr. Mahathir.

SOUTH AFRICAN CRISIS INTENSIFIES

The official figures for the South African economy show "growth". But the unemployment figuresd are staggering. Depending on the interpretation of the figures produced by Statistics South Africa, unemployment is between 26.7 and 37.3 percent. Unemployment in the black community is between 31.6 percent and 41.2 percent. In the coloured and Indian communities it is somewhere between the two. Unless the Thabo Mbeki regime can provide the opportunity for ALL races in South Africa to thrive economically, the future is a powder keg.

GLOBALISATION - A PROCESS?

by Betty Luks
I'm sure many Australians would've been interested to hear Peter Costello's address to the Sydney Rotary conference as reported by Michelle Grattan in the Sydney Morning Herald, March 23rd - "There's no turning back on march to globalisation, says Costello". The Federal Treasurer told his audience that railing against 'globalisation' is like 'railing against the telephone', although, he added, "both sides of politics agree that 'globalisation' is at the heart of much electoral anger". "One of the things worrying people was the effect of globalisation on the nation state. Many things are now influenced by decisions taken at an international level, for example in the areas of finance and the environment... Governments seem to have less room to manoeuvre and if they have less room what hope have individuals? This leads to a sense of powerlessness."

Mr. Costello believes 'globalisation' is a process, not a value. He said it described what was happening, "But globalisation is not a value any more than a telephone is a value," he told the Rotary conference. And what is more they are not reversible." Not quite so Mr. Costello! 'Globalisation' may be the process by which the power-hungry elites of this world are striving to centralise all power and control into their hands - but it is not a valueless policy! A telephone had an inventor and a designer - just as this push for 'globalisation' had an inventor, an originator, a designer - it stems from a philosophy. It is a concept that had its beginnings in a philosophy of how the world should be organised and controlled. It is diabolical - and anti-Christian.

In all of these plans one wonders does Mr. Costello, ever make room for the things of God? Is he not aware of the development of the concept of human personality and of freedom which had its roots in the teachings of Christ? Has he ever striven for Christian political principles (values) during his time in office? After all, he claims to be a Christian.

What about the original Liberal Party's "Statement of beliefs" of 1949?
The stated principles were in harmony with the Christian concepts of national sovereignty and individual sovereignty and freedom - and freedom loving Australians generally. Those who continue to blindly vote Liberal would do well to compare the following 'statement of beliefs' with the actions of their present Liberal politicians.
. We believe in Australia, her courage, her capacity, her future and her national sovereignty, exercised through Parliaments deriving their authority from the people by free and open elections.
. We believe in the Individual. We stand positively for the free man, his initiative, individuality, and acceptance of responsibility.
. We believe that the 'class war' is a false war. The real conflict of our time is not between 'classes' in the old sense, but between the iron discipline of autocracy - whether Communist or Fascist - (or Globalist...ed) and the self-imposed discipline of the free man. The spirit of man must prevail.
. We believe that Liberalism means flexibility and progress. Its principles and its spiritual and intellectual approach enable it to meet and deal with the new andchanging social and economic circumstances. By elevating the Individual it meets and defeats the terrible doctrine of the all-powerful State...
. We believe in the great human freedoms: to worship; to think; to speak; to choose; to be ambitious; to be independent; to be industrious; to acquire skill; to seek and earn reward.
. WE BELIEVE THAT NATIONAL FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC POWER AND POLICY ARE NOT TO BE DESIGNED TO CONTROL MEN'S LIVES, but to create a climate in which men may be enabled to work out their own salvation.

Many years ago a very wise man observed that the push for world control would eventually fail. Why? Because every move taken towards this centralised control contains its own seeds of destruction. The push for world power by some human beings goes against the very fabric of the universe. But, of course, those who value their freedoms must take their stand in the battle to regain them. They have to exercise their freedom!
If Australians continue to blindly vote for the political parties who have betrayed them then they deserve everything dished out to them!

Every sitting member, every candidate at the next federal election should be assessed. Don't take their word for it either. Ask around - if they are local people they will have a track record. Remember, you will not get 'figs from thistles'. They need to know now that you will campaign against them if they continue to follow the 'party line' and not represent the electors. But you will support them if they take a stand for their fellow Australians.

Remember, you cannot have your freedoms if you do not exercise them - freedom to worship, to think, to speak, to choose, etc.

RESCINDING UN TREATIES

by Antonia Feitz
If the White House has asked the US State Department to establish how the US can legally withdraw its signature to the 1997 Kyoto treaty (Courier Mail, 29/03/01), why can't Australia or any other country do the same? It's time we rescinded those UN treaties which are undermining our national parliament and domestic laws. The Teoh case was a perfect example of the abuse. In 1995, a High Court overturned a deportation order against a convicted Malaysian heroin importer named Teoh. Why? Because the government department which handles deportations hadn't taken into account the 'rights' of Teoh's Australian child under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). What a farce! Who among us ever imagined that the CRC would be used this way by globalist judges to undermine national sovereignty? We had been led to believe the UN Convention was to protect children's rights, not scummy foreign drug dealers' rights.

Worldwide, people have had a gutful of this politically correct globalist nonsense. In response to that outrageous High Court decision, even the then Keating "Labor" Government drafted legislation which would require Parliament to pass specific laws to give effect to treaties and consequently to kill off the "implied law" globalist clap-trap.

The Administrative Decisions Bill - generally known as the Teoh Bill - is currently before the Senate. Seeing as the likes of the unDemocrats are incensed by the Bill, it must be good news. It is too: Amnesty's Heinz Schurmann-Zeggel claimed the UN Human Rights Committee has said the proposed law would put Australia in breach of her UN Civil and Political Rights Convention obligations (ABC Radio AM, 28/3/01). Good. A Leesite Senator, Brian Greig, said his party will oppose the Bill because it's "part of the Hanson agenda". He said, "It's clear that beating up on the UN and criticising international treaties is popular amongst the more conservative voters and something that Pauline Hanson has been going on about for some time" (ABC Radio The World Today, 28/3/01).

It's just too bad for Greig that the criticism is only going to get louder as more people wake up to what's going on. Typically, the Beazleyites' shadow Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, described the Bill as "this horrendous piece of anti-human rights legislation". You wouldn't expect anything less from Beazleyite control freaks.

BASIC FUND

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THE FTAA AND THE WTO - THE META-PROGRAM FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE RULE

Mr. Costello would do well to read the following report from Professor John McMurtry of the University of Guelph Ontario Canada - he has the measure of the Costellos, the Howards, the Creans, the Beasleys and the Lees (Meg - not Jeremy!) of this world.

"The "Free Trade Area of the Americas" (FTAA) is the latest major campaign for the occupation of the planet by the global corporate system. Like its predecessors, it will not respond to resistance, or move beyond dictation of more of the same. This is because its program is structured to be life-blind. Only the rights of non-living corporations are recognised. Only further extension of these corporate rights is in fact implemented - whatever the latest propaganda about "consulting civil society", or the crocodile tears about "losing efforts" in Paris and Seattle.

All the new public relations packaging means is that the propaganda about "inevitable change" and "global prosperity" has failed, and so it is time to calm the people by agreeing with their concerns, and carry on instituting and enforcing the program just as before. The world, however, has woken up to the global corporate coup d'etat, and people are taking to the streets, now in Quebec City in April 2001. Yet the corporate media will continue to block out the life-and-death issues at stake, focus on the saleable spectacle of a large public confrontation, blame and trivialize the thousands of opponents who are assaulted for putting themselves on the line, and return to selling other images and distractions once the violence entertainment is over.

Meanwhile the deepest and most systemic threat to civil and planetary life the world has ever faced will persist and increase. Behind the unfolding disasters of regional economies and planetary ecosystems melting down, the threat is driven by an underlying meta-program, in terms of which every decision, every policy, every regulation and implementation is demanded and instituted by servant governments.

The meta-principles constituting this mind-set are robotic, much like the mind-set of a fanatic cult. But because they are presupposed by the corporate party and its media and political servants as the given order of the new world, they are never exposed as a deranged program of mind. Only fragments and partial themes are discerned, not the underlying structure as a dictatorial whole. The invisible prison of this agenda for world rule always conforms to the following meta-principles.

(1) The ultimate subject and sovereign ruler of the world is the transnational corporation, operating by collective prescription and enforcement through the World Trade Organization in concert with its prototype the NAFTA, its European collaborator, the EU, and such derivative regional instruments as the APEC, the MAI, the FTAA, and so on. Together these constitute the hierarchical formation of the planet's new rule by extra-parliamentary and transnational fiat.

(2) Individual transnational corporations are the moving parts of this global corporate system. They are non-living aggregates of dominant private stock-holders who, as individual persons, are made legally immune by "acts of incorporation" from any liability for corporate harms done to societies, to other individuals, and to the environment, as well from accumulated corporate debts or offences against national and international law. This is the legal armour around the agents of the global corporate system which affords them unaccountable impunity for whatever damage or crime they impose on individuals, societies or environments around the world.

(3) Transnational corporations acting in concert through the WTO and its related supranational constructs prescribe to and are represented by financed national government parties which act in these matters solely on behalf of transnational corporate access to foreign markets and resources with no barriers. This private corporate rule over governments everywhere is evident from the general facts that no binding regulation yet protects any right but that of transnational corporate investors, and not one article of any already signed international covenant or treaty protecting human rights, labour or the environment is binding on any part of any one of these unprecedentedly enforced "agreements". Indeed, the Kyoto Treaty on climate-altering gases, the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting chemicals and emissions, the Basle Convention on transboundary pollutants - as well as the entire body of established international solemn agreements and covenants on human and labour rights have been consistently overridden by transnational corporate practices or the explicit judgements of WTO trade panels.

(4) All such treaties and agreements obliging compliance with transnational corporate rights are proposed, negotiated and finalised behind closed doors and wide perimeters of armed force, with police pepper spray, shackles, harassment or surveillance for those who publicly protest. All these agreements, moreover, rule out any other public participation in or appeal against their decrees by anyone except corporate or state representatives, and adjudicate all disputes in secret before unelected authorities and tribunals, with no public or elected observers of these proceedings permitted, and with no record of their proceedings published for public view. Yet publics across the world are obliged to pay all the costs of negotiating, instituting and enforcing these absolutist prescriptions to the world's nations, and are forced also to pay all the fines and trade penalties imposed on their own elected governments for legislating democratic or environmentally protective policies which are deemed to conflict with this unaccountable transnational regulatory regime. This Orwellian arrangement is known as "investor-state dispute resolution".

(5) All executive authorities within individual corporate bodies are all the while bound by the "fiduciary duty" to maximize monetized returns to their corporate stockholders (including in particular themselves) as the overriding obligation of decisions and actions, thereby compelling them by corporate charter prescription to minimise all expenditures on protecting human and non-human life by worker pay, social benefits or environmental regulation. In this way, it becomes a violation of legally binding corporate morality for its operations to take account of the life interests of employees, surrounding communities and environments, or even the future life of the world ahead of shareholders' continuous maximisation of money profit.

(6) The system's universal principle of "rationality" is, in consequence, to externalise all costs onto other individuals, societies and environments so that no form of human existence or responsibility such as "citizen" or "person" or "respecter of other life" is recognised by the corporate calculus or its state servants. Only self-maximising "profitable enterprises" and their "consumers" exist to the mindset. This form of life is then everywhere prescribed as "inevitable" for all peoples, and is proclaimed by its agents to offer societies across the world "no alternative".

(7) "Consumers", in turn, are not co-extensive with human beings or even the majority of human beings. This is because only humans with sufficient money-demand to purchase corporate products are recognized by this global system as possessing any right to access any good - from food and water to housing, health-care and whatever else can be privatised for profit. What can be "privatised", or in reality, corporatised for profit, is accordingly assumed to include ever more of the conditions of planetary existence without any limit. Genetic structures, the body's most basic means of life, the elements of nature, and publicly funded knowledge are all now being rapidly disassembled, restructured and appropriated by transnational corporations for their maximum private control and profit.

(8) Any alternative mode for production or distribution of any priceable good - socially owned or controlled, publicly subsidized or assisted domestically, self-sufficient or co-operative, or declared without genetic modification or corporate additive is made illegal under transnational trade regulations. If any society or government is resistant, its economy is denounced through state finance and trade offices and global mass media as "non-competitive", "protectionist", "monopolist" or "communist", and attacked on the ground by every means available to the global corporate system, including transnational trade embargo and armed invasion in abrogation of international criminal law. This is the true and grave meaning of "global market freedom" in the corporate system.

(9) Consumers and investors with sufficient money-demand to exchange within the global market are, in fact, the only bearers of freedoms recognised by this system, and are axiomatically assumed to have no upper limit to their commodity consumption or their demand acquisition, even if an increasing majority of their fellow citizens or humanity have few or no means of existence. This is the "non-satiety" principle of neo-classical economics. It is also the unstated meaning of "equality of opportunity" in global market doctrine and practice - the equality of money demand for those who have it, and no one else.

(10) There is within the global corporate system no requirement of any kind, theoretical or practical, to recognize any life need of any individual (eg. nourishing food) or society (eg. non-toxic air) as rightful, or as a priority, or as an issue of choice within this system, however massive and extreme the gap between life-deprivation and over-consumption grows. As a few hundred "investors" exponentially increase their money demand to more than the total income of the majority of the world's population with their "investments" irreversibly stripping the world's ecosystems at the same time, no policy is even mooted by the UN to regulate this planetary disaster. The UN Secretary-General, on the contrary, has instituted in 2001 a UN "Global Compact" to require all UN agencies to enter into "corporate partnership" with the world's richest transnational corporations.

(11) Whatever pollution, degradation, overloading, exhaustion or destruction of local or planetary ecosystems occurs, and however irreversibly devastating in consequences to human and biodiverse life these damages from corporate extractions, effluents, and commodities are, there is not one binding article in any transnational trade treaty or agreement (excepting intra-European) which protects or seeks to protect any human or environmental life condition or good. All "scarcities" thus arising are assumed, with no scientific evidence to substantiate the assumption, to be correctable by market price mechanisms alone. This is why the US Congress refuses to comply with the Kyoto Treaty until it makes all pollution abatement measures conform to a system of saleable pollution credits - which have never reduced pollution, but which accord instituted corporate rights to pollute which can be sold as new and free equity, and which can be profited from at another, new level of the global market.

(12) However many millions or billions of society's or the world's human population are misemployed, underemployed or starvation-waged with not enough to live on, and however life-destructive and chronically debilitating their hours and conditions of work are - a majority of the world altogether - there is no principle, norm or standard in neo-classical market theory or global market practice which recognizes or can recognize any of these depredations of human life as an issue or a problem. On the contrary, this life-blind paradigm can only compute these strippings of most of the world's people as a new "flexibility of labour supply" and a multiple "opportunity to reduce the costs of labour" by exercise of new transnational corporate rights to produce in the lowest-cost zones of the world and sell in the highest-scale markets with no "barriers to trade".

To be continued

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB 2001

Tuesday Evening, April 24th, 2001. Guest speaker: Mr. Kerry Spencer-Salt, B.E., LL.B. (Hons). Subject: "Our Constitutional Legacy" Venue: The Estonian Club, 141 Campbell Street, Sydney. Meeting commences at 7.30pm. The usual excellent supper will be provided. Entrance is $4.00 per person. A wide selection of books will be available for purchase.

Dates for your diary - Sydney CSC: Tuesday, May 29th - Mrs. Betty Luks, National Director, Australian League of Rights. Subject: "Implications of the Racial Vilification Legislation" Tuesday, June 26th - Mr. Graeme Campbell, Founder of Australia First Party Inc. Subject - "Is There a Way Out for Australia?"

COMING DATES FOR YOUR DIARIES - STATE WEEKENDS

QUEENSLAND: May 26th-27th, 2001, to be held in Toowoomba.

WEST AUSTRALIA: August 11th-12th, 2001, to be held in Perth.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA: August 18th-19th, 2001, to be held in Adelaide.