EMPLOYMENT ON A DOWNER

by Jeremy Lee
Behind the smalzy talk about "the national interest", and the "sovereignty of Australia" it is quite clear that our politicians are working on a different agenda, and the double standards occasionally slip through. Take our redoubtable Foreign Minister Alexander Downer - sometimes referred to unkindly as "Alexander Eiderdown". Where his true allegiances lie is anyone's guess. But he should be thoroughly ashamed of this news, which was carried in The Herald Sun (4/12/01):
"A Government report has recommended local businesses employ computer workers in India rather than Australia to cut costs. "The taxpayer-funded report, launched by Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer yesterday, encourages Australian bosses to make the most of India's vast supply of low cost, technologically skilled labour to meet their IT needs. It includes graphs suggesting employers could save about two-thirds of their labour costs by employing Indian computer programmers and analysts rather than Australians. 'With living standards and salaries low by global standards and alternative employment prospects for these graduates limited, India has a considerable cost advantage in software engineers compared to the rest of the world,' the report says..... "

The ANZ Bank is cited in the report as an example of an Australian company which has outsourced IT jobs to India. According to the report, ANZ employs a team of 450 IT workers in Bangalore and plans to expand this number to about 500 by the end of 2002 ...."
This sort of news can only be balm to the souls of the 'down-sized'. Apart from anything else, India is a recipient of Australian foreign aid - about $19 million in 1999-2000. India is the fourth-largest military power in the world, with a large navy and nuclear capabilities. It's crazy. And it's betrayal of the interests of the Australian people.

THE CRISIS IN ARGENTINA

Almost unnoticed behind the war-driven headlines in the global media is the crisis in Argentina, now unravelling in a welter of desperation. The Observer (UK, 18/11/01) gave this picture of the human side of the catastrophe:
" .... In the past year Argentina has lurched from one crisis to another as the government of President Fernando de la Rua battled to save his country - the seventh richest in the world a century ago - from bankruptcy. The big fear on the markets is that any day now Argentina may fail to pay the crippling interest on its $132 billion public debt.
But for many the country is already socially in default. Some teachers, doctors, dustmen and policemen have not been paid for up to five months and the banks have stopped providing loans. Since the beginning of November, social security benefits for the elderly have dried up, reducing health cover to emergencies only, and leaving most of the four million subscribers stranded and scared.....
Argentina has long prided itself on being an oasis of European living standards, with a large middle class, in a region dogged by poverty. But unemployment is now at 18 percent, another 15 percent are 'underemployed' and just under a third of the country's 37 million population live under the poverty line.
Horse-drawn carts have appeared on the streets of the capital, Buenos Aires, used by hundreds of families who travel from the surrounding countryside to scour the pavements for old, reusable junk. Many shops and restaurants are boarded up: the grand avenues that cut through this elegant capital city, often described as the Paris of Latin America, are almost deserted at rush hour.
Cash-related crime is soaring, with shootouts reported in the city center almost daily. Some 42 policemen have been killed this year alone and armed bouncers in bullet-proof vests guard supermarkets, pharmacies and restaurants.
On average there are two armed bank robberies a day and people are frequently abducted in broad daylight, in taxis or on the streets, and forced to withdraw their savings from a cash point....."

As December opened the design behind the tumult became clearer. Argentina appeared to be the latest country to lose control of its own currency in favour of the $US. The Australian Financial Review (6/12/01) reported:
"Although Argentina took a giant leap this week towards embracing the US dollar as its only currency, such a move will probably not rescue the country's ailing economy or prove to be an easy switch. There are still huge political and financial barriers to full dollarisation, which will take the Argentine peso out of circulation entirely ..... Greenbacks have circulated in Buenos Aires for a decade, thanks to a 1991 law that pegged the peso one-to-one with the dollar and freed up Argentinians to use either one. Hoping to squash growing fears that the currency peg would come unlocked, Argentina's economic chief Domingo Cavallo decreed over the weekend that all new bank loans would be in dollars, and that existing peso loans could be switched to dollars at no cost. He also partially froze cash withdrawals to halt a run on the banks ...."

In other words, the deal has already been done. No government, obviously, can issue loans in the currency of another country, and convert its own currency to that of another unless the outside entity has already gained control of the treasury. With this financial coup almost completed, the bankers have sent in their bagman, the International Monetary Fund, to ensure that every drop is screwed out of the situation.

One day later The AFR (7/12/01) reported: "The Argentine crisis took a turn for the worse yesterday as the International Monetary Fund effectively blocked a $US1.264 billion ($A2.445 billion) disbursement, and Moody's Investors Service said new currency controls ended convertibility between the US dollar and the Argentina peso...... Moody's said Argentina did not have enough dollars with real claims on New York bank accounts or the Federal Reserve 'to make good on the one-to-one parity embedded in Argentine law' ....."

So how will Argentine be required to make up the shortfall? It will be debt-for-equity swaps on a grand scale before lowly Argentinians are given permission to earn their daily bread by use of the Almighty Dollar. We are watching a global takeover of nations by Mammon which is satanic. Argentina would not be the first country to abandon its own currency for the United States dollar - but certainly the biggest so far. El Salvador and Ecuador have already surrendered their currencies, and trade in notes with the US Founding Fathers printed on them. East Timor has now been forced onto the Greenback. Some countries in the Balkans, such as Kosovo and Montenegro have been forced onto the Deutschmark. What will be the currency in Afghanistan once the lordly US has "liberated" that country?

In the Argentine, according to The AFR (6/12): " .... Some 70 percent of Argentinian bank deposits are already in dollars, and nearly all long-term loans and business transactions are dollar-based ...."
Of course, there's always the unthinkable question - what if the US dollar itself falls to pieces?
A new, yet-to-be-heard-of global currency? They'd never do THAT - would they?

NOTHING INEVITABLE - SAVE DEBT AND TAXES

This thought-provoking gem appeared in The Observer (UK, 4/12/01):
"Taxes will have to rise to fund the Government's belief in a 'new world order' and maintain public spending on hospitals, schools and relieving poverty, according to senior public figures in Downing Street. One of Number 10's most senior policy advisers has revealed that the public must be prepared to pay more if they really believe that problems around the world are to be solved. 'We have to get over, and the public have to understand that all these changes that are being talked about come at a price,' the official said. 'The only way that they can be paid for is tax increases.'
The adviser - one of the closest to Prime Minister Tony Blair - said that work now had to be done in preparing the ground for the increases to avoid a public backlash against new taxes......"

Take note, Australia. We have already been served notice by the incoming Minister for Defence, Senator Robert Hill, that "cost-blow-outs" in the defence budget threaten what remains of Costello's budget surplus. The international bankers insist no nation may go into a budget deficit. So what's left if the surplus runs out? Tax rises, of course. The new situation would allow the Howard Government to renege on its promise that the GST would never rise past 10 percent. "Never, ever" is the new euphemism for "watch out".

As C.H. Douglas predicted, events themselves would finally force some concentration on the flaw in the debt-driven money system, which forces nations and citizens alike into bankruptcy and loss of freedom and sovereignty.

"As darkness flees at morning's light, So truth sends error into flight."

THIS IS JUST NOT CRICKET!

by Phillip D. Butler
I have to confess that I am a sports' devotee, as is my immediate family. One son plays for Australia in World Championship In-Line Hockey (ice-hockey on roller blades) and another represented Australia at his age level. I sit up till the wee small hours to watch Australia play cricket - wherever I may be. I have had the privilege of playing representative cricket in Canada. Yes, they do play cricket! In fact I have just won the last spot for the World Cup in South Africa in 2003. Three of the players from British Columbia come out of a junior development scheme put in place and funded by a number of us in 1989. It therefore saddens me to see the state of the game today. I witnessed signs of the breakdown during two warm-up games in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, in 1976. The Australian team was captained by Ian Chappel.

As Secretary of the British Columbia Cricket Association I was responsible for the billeting and entertainment arrangements for the Australian team and officials. This was when money and big business started to intrude into cricket. Now we find politicians taking direct control along with money and big business. 'Political correctness' has now entered the game. Both South Africa and Zimbabwe through 'affirmative action' insist on the quota system, whereas, inclusion in the team was once strictly on skill and ability. After a recent second Test in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, six Indian players were disciplined by the Match Referee and the disciplined players demanded the referee be removed from the Test. The players had been reported by one umpire from South Africa and the other from Zimbabwe!

I have got to know the referee in question (a former captain of England) and have found him a straight shooter. According to The Age, October 24th, 2001, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent the "South African President Thado Mbeki put pressure on the nation's cricket board to take whatever action necessary to ensure that the country's team took the field in a match against India, 'a match' that has been stripped of its Test status by the International Cricket Council. In response, to Mr. Mbeki's demands, "South Africa - under pressure from its government to stage the match for commercial reasons (Mbeki in another report had stated that he wasn't going to allow sport to get in the way of trade) and diplomatic reasons - locked Denness (the umpire involved in the fiasco) out of the ground."

Disgraced former captain of South Africa Hansie Cronje admitted his downfall was the result of the LOVE (Greek, phileo: Contains the meaning of, the preference for above all other considerations) of MONEY. Cricket was the last bastion of sporting ethics; of 'playing the game'. There is now too much 'political correctness' and too much MONEY at stake for any of those little niceties!

TERRORISM: A 'ONE WAY' STREET?

by Betty Luks
Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D, "Exporting Terror: East Timor and the US", presented his findings on the United States' long history of responsibility for slaughters, e.g., in Indonesia and East Timor by observing, "we live in an age, not just of atrocities, but of atrocities exploited to achieve political ends..." "This fact," he wrote, "tends to be both under-reported and under-registered in our minds, for the whole topic of atrocity is so distasteful that we prefer to avert our eyes. The biggest atrocities of this century have not arisen primarily from spontaneous behaviour... They have been managed atrocities, outrages provoked and exploited by state powers within the so-called civilised world."

'Political ends' of current 'war on terrorism'
The political ends of the current "War on Terrorism" are becoming clearer day by day; the attack on the World Trade Centre was but the excuse to initiate it. John Pilger, The World's Biggest Terrorist State, November 23rd, 2001, reports: "The present Washington gang are ... heirs of John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles... who, in the 1950s ran the State Department and the CIA respectively, smashing reforming governments in country after country - Iran, Iraq, Guatemala - tearing up international agreements, such as the 1954 Geneva Accords on Indochina whose sabotage by John Foster Dulles led directly to the Vietnam war and five million dead... The parallels are there in Cheney's (America's Vice President...ed.) threat to "40 to 50" countries, and of war that may not end in our lifetimes."

We 'ease' our conscience
We avert our eyes, shut our ears and ease our conscience by convincing ourselves these barbaric, uncontrollable, irrational acts are not of our making or of our concern. But, pause for a moment, listen to the western leaders claiming the 'high moral ground' - on your behalf - as they pursue their 'war on terrorism'. They pontificate on terrorist acts, warning "terrorism begets terrorist retaliation" and in the next breath justify the horrific bombing of the people of Afghanistan - and for a purpose other than what they are telling us.
The horrendous killing and maiming of the innocents; the young, the old, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, is dismissed as 'collateral damage', whilst the reporting of American service casualties is personalised - we know they are American soldiers, they have an identity, they are persons, human beings. Aren't the Afghans human beings? This is all part of the mind conditioning we are subjected to, in order that we accept what these warmongers are doing in our name - in the name of the Western World - in the name of 'civilisation' - in the name of 'Christianity'!

WHAT OF THAT UNHAPPY LAND OF PALESTINE?

Ariel Sharon has now declared 'war on the Palestinian terrorists'. Remember, this is the Israeli Prime Minister who has been summoned to a Belgian court to answer questions over his role in the 1982 Sabra and Chatilla massacres in Lebanon. ("Sharon Expected to be charged with War Crimes", BBC report, November 19th, 2001). An Israeli investigation in 1983 found him indirectly but "personally" responsible for the deaths, and he was forced to resign as defence minister.

The reality of 'war on terrorism'
But just to make sure Australians are under no illusions as to what this 'war on terrorism' is, I am including a brief description of the atrocities uncovered by journalist Robert Frisk in those Lebanese refugee camps in 1982. Robert Fisk documented what he saw in his book, "Pity the Nation". The following are brief excerpts from the book:

What we found inside the Palestinian camp at ten o'clock on the morning of September 1982 did not quite beggar description, although it would have been easier to re-tell in the cold prose of a medical examination. In the panic and hatred of battle, tens of thousands had been killed in this country. But these people, hundreds of them had been shot down unarmed. This was a mass killing, an incident - how easily we used the word 'incident' in Lebanon - that was also an atrocity. It went beyond even what the Israelis would have in other circumstances called a terrorist activity. It was a war crime.

Jenkins and Tveit were so overwhelmed by what we found in Chatila that at first we were unable to register our own shock. Bill Foley of AP had come with us. All he could say as he walked round was "Jesus Christ" over and over again. We might have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies, killed in the heat of combat. But there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey. Where were the 'terrorists'? Where were the murderers? Or to use the Israelis' vocabulary, where were the 'terrorists'?

When we drove down to Chatila, we had seen the Israelis on the top of the apartments in the Avenue Camille Chamoun but they made no attempt to stop us. In fact, we had first been driven to the Bourj al-Barajneh camp because someone told us that there was a massacre there. All we saw was a Lebanese soldier chasing a car thief down a street. It was only when we were driving back past the entrance to Chatila that Jenkins decided to stop the car. "I don't like this," he said. "Where is everyone? What the f**k is that smell?"

Just inside the southern entrance to the camp, there used to be a number of single-story, concrete walled houses. I had conducted many interviews in these hovels in the late 1970's... Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines. The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and coloured shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat...

Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror. "...

As we stood there, we heard a shout in Arabic from across the ruins. "They are coming back," a man was screaming, so we ran in fear towards the road. I think, in retrospect, that it was probably anger that stopped us from leaving, for we now waited near the entrance to the camp to glimpse the faces of the men who were responsible for all of this. They must have been sent in here with Israeli permission. They must have been armed by the Israelis. Their handiwork had clearly been watched - closely observed - by the Israelis who were still watching us through their field-glasses.

When is a massacre not a massacre? "When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Or, put another way, how many killings make a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel's friends rather than Israel's enemies? (emphasis added... ed).

No Western agency would have wasted its time
"That, I suspected, was what this argument was about. If Syrian troops had crossed into Israel, surrounded a Kibbutz and allowed their Palestinian allies to slaughter the Jewish inhabitants, no Western news agency would waste its time afterwards arguing about whether or not it should be called a massacre. But in Beirut, the victims were Palestinians. The guilty were certainly Christian militiamen - from which particular unit we were still unsure - but the Israelis were also guilty. If the Israelis had not taken part in the killings, they had certainly sent militia into the camp. They had trained them, given them uniforms, handed them US army rations and Israeli medical equipment. Then they had watched the murderers in the camps, they had given them military assistance - the Israeli airforce had dropped all those flares to help the men who were murdering the inhabitants of Sabra and Chatila - and they had established military liaison with the murderers in the camps..."

When is a 'war crime' not a 'war crime'? When it is committed by the Israeli's or the Western world? Want to know more about the real motivation behind this 'war on terrorism'? Send for the Oil-Afghanistan Information Package from any League Book Service. $5 posted.

CHRISTIANITY CANNOT BE 'DISCRIMINATED' AGAINST?

Are you aware only those classified as 'ethno-religious' groups, such as Muslims, Jews and Hindus, can approach the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board and claim they have been 'discriminated' against? (Sydney Morning Herald, November 28th, 2001). Only the 'ethno-religious' groups are 'protected' by the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1977. According to Mr. Chris Puplick, the president of the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW, "Religions with no ethnic dimension were excluded by the then premier, Neville Wran at the insistence of a vocal Catholic/Anglican group."

This little bit of legal 'double speak' came to light when a proposed ban on campus preaching at the NSW Southern Cross University was challenged by a group of Christian students. The Anglican Bishop of Sydney, the Right Rev. Robert Forsyth, has condemned the policy of banning the preaching as an example of political correctness gone mad. But the campus' 'Christian' chaplain, the Rev. John Kidson, defended his support of the proposed ban saying it was a "precautionary measure against potential threats to multiculturalism." As a result of deliberate (Labor) government policy it is lawful to discriminate against people on the basis of their being Christian in the State of NSW!

WHAT CAN I DO?

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GOLDEN JUBILEE

WEST AUSTRALIA TO CELEBRATE GOLDEN JUBILEE IN NEW YEAR

SOUTH AUSTRALIA TO CELEBRATE GOLDEN JUBILEE IN NEW YEAR

BETTY LUKS FOR SYDNEY CSC IN NEW YEAR

BOOK