MERRILY SKIPPING THROUGH THE RUINS

by Jeremy Lee
We have followed Prime Minister John Howard's recent foreign excursions with horrified fascination. He didn't actually kiss President Bush (although he did plant a hearty smack on the cheek of Italian President Silvio Berlesconi) but his genial bonhomie to all and sundry made many Australians queasy.

Some of his remarks were beyond reason and reality - for instance, his boast that the Australian economy was better than at any time he could remember. He might well make a journey through the ranks of Australian small businesses, or debt-laden households. He might ask why, for instance, Australia still loads its massive foreign debt with continued imports, which are well ahead of our exports. He might consider the future of our farming industries, faced with another drought and prices lower than the cost of production. He might have a look at Australia's health industry, with doctors and nurses on strike, and urgently-needed beds being shut down. And he might consider at length the despair amongst Australia's youth, fuelled by the lack of creative job opportunities, which has led to the massive drug trade and the tragic suicide figures.

But what does such evidence matter when you are hugging and kissing your way round the world like some Liberal Party version of Skippy the kangaroo, patting yourself on the back when someone doesn't do it for you? John Howard basks in the reflection of his self-created aura like a 'surfie' on a sort of global Bondi beach. And more and more Australians are picking it. If there was any sort of genuine opposition, Howard and his mates would be a 'goner'. But Meg Lees and Natasha Stott-Dispoja are no more capable of making a dint than Simon Crean. While they refuse to honestly criticize the debt system under which we operate, they can do no more than re-arrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic. What a sorry mess!

COOKING THE PUBLIC BOOKS

We can wring our hands at the accounting scandals now being revealed round the world as economies stumble and the gambling bubble bursts. But what about our public accounts? We have dealt in recent issues that the deceptive nature of the Costello budget. But it now transpires that he made two further glaring omissions. Firstly, there was no mention of GST revenue in the Budget. As it is going to the States, Costello claims, it is not really a Commonwealth tax! So the stated Commonwealth tax revenue is vastly understated.

Now comes evidence of some 'figure-fudging' over defence. Under the heading "COSTELLO 'LEFT WAR COST OUT OF BUDGET'", The Australian (11/7/02) reported:
"It was one of the more incredible claims of the 2001 election campaign - a war commitment that would not cost the federal budget a cent for the first eight months. "Now it has been revealed that the true cost, which would have sent the budget perilously close to a deficit just before last year's poll, was not investigated by the bureaucrats until after the election ...."

What's more, Treasurer Costello made false claims about the situation: " ....'If there are additional requests we would look at those at the time, but in terms of factoring all the military hardware and the hours and wages and all of that, that is factored into this budget,' he said. After the election, it was revealed the bill for 2001-02 would be $320 million, with the budget $1.2 billion in deficit ..."

One suspects that if Costello was an executive for HIH or Enron he would now be answering questions before some keen-eyed interrogators.

SMALL BUSINESS UNDER THE HAMMER

Even major media pundits are now questioning the glowing economic picture which is the boast of Mr. Howard. Robert Gottliebsen has written a couple of articles pointing out that Australian small businesses are facing a tougher environment than anything they have ever experienced. There are thousands of highly qualified IT specialists chasing non-existent jobs, despite the fact that the government is still wooing highly qualified IT experts as suitable migrants. Gottliebsen's columns in The Australian evoked scores of replies from small businessmen in desperate circumstances. Not a few blame the GST as a core reason for their crisis.

A wider survey by Peter Switzer (Australian Financial Review, 8/7/02) said the advertising sector, clothing, restaurants and catering, tourism and rural small businesses were all under threat. There had been a big jump in bankruptcies, which looked like escalating. The disaster was flowing over onto home owners.

Robert Guy (Australian Financial Review, 9/7/02) said: "The growing financial strain on many Australians has been highlighted by the latest bankruptcy data, showing a 166 per cent jump in the number of debt agreements over the past financial year .... Given recent record levels of household debt, including credit card debt, and in an environment of increasing interest rates, the danger signs from today's figures are ominous ...."

Household debt, in fact, has risen from $267 billion to $580 billion in the seven years to June 30th this year Every quarter-of-a-percent rise in interest rates puts an additional $1.4 billion in charges onto the backs of householders in Australia per year - or $28 million a week.

HOLLOW BUSH

With his popularity falling, and congressional elections looming closer, President Bush has been forced to address the growing corporate scandal in Wall Street. In the process he has left himself and Deputy-President Dick Cheney open to some uncomfortable probings. Bush made a high-sounding speech which was desperately short of specific action.

He said: " .... We've learned of CEOs earning tens of millions of dollars in bonuses just before their companies go bankrupt, leaving employees and retirees and investors to suffer. The business pages of American newspapers should not read like a scandal sheet. .... High profile acts of deception have shaken peoples' trust. Too many corporations seem disconnected from the values of our country. These scandals .... have hurt the stock market. And, worst of all, they are hurting millions of people who depend on the integrity of businesses for their livelihood and their retirement ...."

And much more in a similar vein. But while more and more Americans are asking whether Bush himself was one of the "greedy CEOs" he is now condemning, when he broke the law over the company Harken Energy in the early nineties, there is obviously more and more scepticism over his right to condemn others. More are also aware how Enron financed Bush's election campaign and the Republican Party.

It is now impossible for high-sounding words to halt the slide in the American economy. It is a question of chickens coming home to roost. As America slides it will drag others down with it. One of those will be Australia, with its massive debts, largely foreign-controlled corporate sector, and continually inflating trade deficit.
As an example, is Bush prepared to pursue, and punish if necessary, his own Vice President Dick Cheney? And how does he do so without exposing himself in public?

And there's another aspect, which also applies to Australia. It was put thus, by Thomas Bray, writing in The Wall Street Journal, 9/7/02):
When it comes to cooking the books, corporate America has nothing on the public sector. It would be interesting to see the reaction if the White House insisted that federal bookkeepers and executives were held to the same standards as those in the private sector ..... In the private sector, the workings of the marketplace at least exert a crude discipline on failed ideas. Its mechanism for doing so is called bankruptcy. In the public sector, lawmakers often reward failure with a redoubling of effort - and money."

MECHANISED MILKING

It takes a special person to be a dairy farmer. A cow waiting to be milked knows nothing about public holidays, Christmas breaks, head colds or hangovers. Come wind or weather, that cow is waiting to be delivered of her load. Now comes news that an entirely automated robotic dairy has been working successfully in New Zealand. Not only are the milking cups attached to the cow for the right length and time, but she is ushered into the dairy and out again onto controlled pastures. Transponders, like those that place surveillance on cars on Melbourne's toll-ways, survey each cow as she enters and leaves the dairy, and measures her milk supply and butterfat yield.

The process has involved the re-design of the dairy but, once in place, the movements of the cow regulate the response from the robotic process. Human beings still have to provide spasmodic maintenance and check the health of the animals. After a few days getting used to the new system, the animals were quite contented and placid, queuing up to enter the dairy at the right time. Eventually, each cow will personally decide her own time schedules to be milked. If applied commercially in New Zealand, it will displace some 25,000 workers in the dairy industry, saving about $200 million in wages.

The current argument
25,000 people thrown out of work into poverty. Government must "create new jobs" for people to continue living. Increase taxes on dairy owners to pay benefits to those out of work. The taxes result in higher, not lower, milk prices.

The Social Credit argument
There's just as much milk as before, with less effort in milking and processing. Surely, nobody should be worse off for this development, least of all the displaced milkers. It's a question of incomes - NOT jobs!
What about the "wages of the machine", re-shaped into a "dividend" for all New Zealanders? And NOT out of taxes.
(The article was in the IT section of The Australian, 9/7/02)

All of which leads to some very improper poetic thoughts

It's really rather scary!
No more kissing Mary, Down behind the dairy!
Robots milking Daisy Make us very lazy.
Has the world gone crazy? And if they make a "robot-bull", Life will then be very dull!
(Although a baby "robot-calf" Would give us all a hearty laugh!)

HOWARD'S MYOPIA

by Antonia Feitz
Nothing better illustrates the blinkered vision of ideologues than recent Australian governments' ultimately futile embrace of tree trade. In Europe recently John Howard whined to all and sundry that Australia had done the hard yards and that everybody else ought to follow suit. Mr. Howard said it was "unacceptable" that the EU subsidised its agricultural sector to the tune of a massive 35 percent. It might be, but it's a fact of life. Does Mr. Howard really think Germany's Gerhart Schroeder and all the other European leaders will suddenly see the light and remove the EU subsidies because Australia says they're being unfair? It won't happen. Ditto the US, which subsidises agriculture (big agribusiness) to the tune of 21 percent.

When Howard whines that Australian farmers only get 4 percent does he think Bush will be shamed and remove the subsidies out of fairness? It won't happen. Like the Europeans, the Americans look after number one. Eventually Howard must realise that maybe Australia will be left high and dry. As Colin Teese keeps pointing out, Australia's commitment to ideological purity has left her precious little to negotiate with.

THE ONE-ARM PARTY BANDITS

by Betty Luks
Why do I view the South Australian Labor Government's first Budget as 'one big yawn'? Why was I not surprised when we were told they had 'discovered' - surprise, surprise - just like Mother Hubbard, the Liberals had left the Treasury cupboards bare! Could it be that the same line has been fed to the gullible public, year in year out, for God knows how many post-election budgets? Could it be we know what is coming, just about word for word?

Being a Labor government they tell us some of the increases could be described as 'Robin Hood' taxes; they have taken from the rich to give to the poor - this time from the 'rich' poker-machine hotel owners!

It's just a dream I have
Instead of Kevin Foley, the SA Labor Treasurer, parroting the usual 'blurb' of why he was forced to raise taxes and cut government spending, but at the same time put such a 'spin' on it all that we 'plebs' should feel grateful to our masters for keeping us in servitude, what would have happened had he said something along the following lines:

"Our Party works very hard alongside Treasury officials to co-ordinate, with the least friction and best results, the government's policy with that of the financial monopoly. We are rather proud of our work. We have set up efficient mechanisms to confiscate the fruit of the people's labour. Oh! Yes! I know we actually diminish their abilities to escape their own private debts, but so be it. We of course, as the government of the day, have to service the State's debt. The debt that is issued by the bank-owned-financial monopoly, and we will continue to do so no matter what the costs are to the people. We know Social Services help to expand the State debt, and yes, this in turn requires higher taxes, and yes, we know that at the same time, these higher taxes make it harder and harder for the individual to have more personal choices in regard to basic needs. But, in this case, the International Monetary Fund has issued us our orders; we are to cut Social Services and pay off more of the Government's debt to them.
Yes, we know these debts are privately-created-bank-issued debts. Yes, we know it was once the prerogative of a government to create and issue a nation's own money supply but the 'big boys, the banks' are in charge now.
We are not going to place our careers on the line by trying to buck the Financial Monopoly. Taken as a whole, I think we are doing a good job on behalf of the Money Power."

Just a dream
Well of course, Treasurer Foley did not say the above things. What he did say was what we have all heard before: "I think the outcome of this Budget will demonstrate that as a Government we can make the hard decisions, the tough decisions and we can do what we think is right, not what is popular," he said. "We haven't done that for the fun of it, we did that because we had to do it." - Adelaide Advertiser, 12/ 7/02.

'Little sir echo, how do you do'!

LABOR WILL NEVER FIGHT FOR A BETTER MONEY SYSTEM FOR THE PEOPLE

The Australian Heritage Society has a little gem of a book in the pipeline for publishing in Australia. It centres on C.H. Douglas and the early days of social credit in the UK; the author is Anthony Cooney, Catholic Distributist and Social Crediter. It reveals why the Labour Movement have either ignored Social Credit or attacked it. It answers the question as to why Fabian Socialist Race Matthews could write about the guild socialists of the early twentieth century ("Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stake-Holder Society") and A.R. Orage in particular, and yet completely ignore Orage's links with and promotion of C.H. Douglas' proposals to rectify the fraudulent money system, and its chronic lack of purchasing power.

The philosophical basis of the Labor Party is international and centralist - it is at odds with the Social Credit philosophy of decentralization of power and the building up of a community from the Individual - not down from the State. The claim by Labor that they have 're-invented themselves' and are now the alternative 'third way' has a very hollow ring about it.

1922 LABOUR PARTY COMMITTEE

FOR OUR CRITICS' 'ENLIGHTENMENT'

At times, we are criticised for the stand taken on modern Israel and our criticism of the treatment meted out to the Palestinian people. Other times we are criticised for exposing what the elite within the USA and its Allies have done, and are still doing, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, one correspondent wrote:
"I wonder if your friends, the poor Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis will keep the world as free as we are right now, or will you trust the Germans with their Euro to do it. We battle not against flesh and blood."

It is not the Palestinians in their squalid refugee camps, or the Iraqi people struggling to survive in their contaminated bomb-scarred land, or the powerless Afghanis (who will not benefit from the 'wheeling and dealing' done by the local war lords with the military/oil/industrial elites of the US) who are threatening our freedom. The threats to our freedom come from those with a love of power, those pushing for a centralization of power, those who lust for domination. Those who lust for power for its own sake.

Benjamin Disraeli wrote of this underlying, designing, managing force
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

Douglas Reed drew our attention to the matter in "From Smoke to Smother" (out of print): "It means, to my mind, that men who seize power find 'a design' and 'managers' waiting and become the instruments of these; they are only allowed to rise so far because their usefulness in 'the design' is foreseen. Some of them, however, are privy to the design from the start and among these I would include the man Hitler, alongside those he pretended to hate, like Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin."

These men were but tools, instruments, in the hands of the designers, the managers. Does world-jet-setting John Howard really think he is of such importance in the scheme of things?

We have to reject power
We recommend critics such as BC read at least two books on the complex matter which may help them to 'see the wood as well as the trees'. Ultimately, the battle is spiritual, but the battle is for world control. The battle is about two kingdoms, the Kingdom of God (on earth) and the 'world kingdom' (ultimately satanic) planned by power-hungry men. The 'plan' goes back many centuries.
To my mind, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about the Battle for the Kingdom in his great drama "Lord of the Rings", and interestingly, he has the 'little people', the halflings such as Frodo, the hero of the great adventure, take on these satanic forces - by rejecting power. This to me, is in complete accord with Christ's teachings; this rejection of power or control over our fellow men. In effect, this makes us all free, self-governing, responsible and accountable human beings.

We recommend our critics read the Nesta Webster books or Douglas Reed's "Controversy of Zion" and "Far and Wide" .
Available from League Book Services.

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