THE TYRANNY OF UNJUST TAXATION

by Jeremy Lee
Prime Minister Howard was once asked which of the legacies he would leave Australia he was most proud of. He answered, "Tax reform and the GST".. One might just as well have asked Nero about his greatest achievement; and heard about the quality of his fiddling while Rome burned! Our bland and super-confident future Coalition leader Peter Costello no doubt shares the glory of our taxation system – while it collapses round our ears. If it was a mess before, it is nothing to the unequal, corrupt mess of today. The troubles of the Democrats did not start with the jostling over the leadership, but with the action of Meg Lees and her colleagues in letting the GST through against the wishes of hundreds of thousands of Australians. Now, very late in the day, and as a sign of the almost limitless patience of the people, the signs of a tax revolt are appearing. We might well record that most of the historical revolts of the English-speaking Professor Owen Covick, Flinders University economist, recently re-stated the fact that the omission of the GST figures from Costello's last Budget was dishonest.

The Australian Financial Review (30/8/02) reported: " ...In an analysis of the 2002-03 Budget, Professor Covick says the government's insistence on treating the GST as a state tax makes it impossible to assess whether the Coalition is keeping its promise not to increase the tax burden from its 1996-97 level.
'In law, the GST is a Commonwealth tax. It exists because legislation was passed by the Commonwealth Government,' Professor Covick's paper says. 'Any changes to the rate or to the base which were to be passed by the Commonwealth Parliament ... would take effect whether the parliaments of the states and territories liked that or not."

'The question then arises: is it compatible with budget honesty for the Commonwealth Government to publish budget papers which pretend none of the above is true? ....The Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Auditor-General have both said that under government financial reporting standards, the GST should be classified as a Commonwealth tax .....If PM Howard is so proud of its introduction, why so reluctant to publish its results?

ACCOUNTANTS SPEAK OUT

BLEEDING FROM GST WOUNDS

Commenting on the revolt, Robert Gottliebsen (The Australian, 3/9/02) noted that many small businesses are being further hampered because accountants are rejecting new clients due to the GST work overload:
"Many smaller enterprises which can't get accountancy services may be forced to use the cash economy. I cannot recall a crisis such as this, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants' chief executive Stephen Harrison believes it is so serious that, last month, he gave the Government 70 days to announce plans to start rectifying the flaws before his members return to lodging business activity statements on paper. There are about 50 days left in the Harrison ultimatum, but the Government believes that Harrison is bluffing and that it can dispose of the accountants with a few comforting press releases. ...."

So how much was raised by the Goods and Services Tax, which the Commonwealth Government pretends it has nothing to do with? About $32 billion, or over $1,600 for every Australian.

A NEW TREATY ON THE WEB

Whatever else is said about the World-Wide-Web, with all its vulgarities and excesses, it has enabled an exchange of information usually censored that has been a thorn in the side of autocratic government. Politicians have been forced to defend their actions over matters which would never have come to public attention before the Web made it possible. Alliances of concerned people in different nations are now discovering each other and working together.
Now we have on the horizon an international treaty arising from the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments, which aims to establish enforceable international protocols for handling "international violations" of the Web, especially where national laws are in conflict.

The Convention's 52-member nations would agree to enforce each others' commercial laws. A company, Internet Service Provider or individual could be held accountable for violating a foreign law, even though it is permissible in his home country. The web, says the treaty, makes it possible to break a law from thousands of miles away. Thus, Germany's 'Truth in History" laws, which make it a crime to question details of the Holocaust, could be applied to the citizens of other countries where no such bans exist. All it would require is for a German citizen to pick up the website and make an official complaint, and someone the other side of the globe, acting in conformity with the laws of his own country, would face prosecution. Who would adjudicate in such cases? The World Court? The International Criminal Court? Or a new international tribunal yet to be established?

The invasion of international law, through treaties that over-ride the Constitution, has become an avalanche. Back in 1988, when the danger was already apparent, the Editorial in The Weekend Australian (11-12/6/1988) said:
".... A decision in the High Court five years ago (i.e. the Franklin Dam case - ed.) brought down as the result of a successful action of the present Federal Labor Government, has meant that the surest way for Canberra to extend its power is to reach an agreement with a foreign government. And, once that agreement has been obtained, the Australian people have lost the right to resist the will of the government in power to bend the Constitution in its favour ..... all but a few Australians have remained in blissful ignorance of the loss of guarantees that they thought the Constitution gave them.
Australians have been taught that they and only they can amend their Constitution, the basic law that governs our political system and with which all our other laws must comply. Yet for the past five years this belief has been a delusion. If a government in Canberra signs a treaty with a foreign government and that treaty is ratified, it can have the effect of tearing down what appeared to be the most solid and substantial constitutional principles on which our democratic federal Commonwealth is based. The treaty that could change our Constitution could be with fellow democracies like the United States or Sweden or Ireland. It could equally be with Chile or Cuba or Chad or any other government in any part of the world.
There are few, if any, democratic nations whose constitutions contain more safeguards of the citizens' rights to change or refuse to change their constitutions than Australians have believed their Constitution to contain. The Constitution provides that there can be no constitutional amendment unless a referendum to that effect is carried by a majority of voters in a majority of the States and by a majority of voters in the Commonwealth as a whole. This necessarily stringent requirement has become all but valueless because of the Franklin River Dam decision ....."

That Editorial was correct and prescient. Its warnings were echoed by Coalition politicians, at that time in opposition, including the current Treasurer, Peter Costello, who was forthright in condemning Labor's use of treaties to circumvent the Constitution. But it's amazing how things change once an Opposition becomes the Government. So the real battle in Australia in the 21st century is not to preserve our Constitution, but to retrieve it from the intrigue and manipulation of politicians prepared to jeopardize their nation by playing with international treaties for a little short-term power.

WALL STREET WOES CONTINUE

Another big drop on Wall Street, followed by a minor bounce. We still have a long way to go. Robert Gottliebsen (The Australian 5/9/02) said ominously:
" ...The analysts are beginning to understand the extent of the layoffs planned by big US companies and the effect this will have on consumer confidence. They also realize that their largest bank, Citigroup, is getting into more and more hot water over apparently doctored client share advice to win merchant bank accounts. The resulting writs could be enormous.
Later, they will realize that the greatest threat of all is that ordinary people in South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina may have given up on the system. Others may follow....."

Gottliebsen suggests that Australia won't avoid being hit. No wonder George Bush is frantic for a war as soon as possible!

JUST FOR THE RECORD

by Betty Luks
Following the WTC Bombing last September 11th, 2001, internet journalist Israel Shamir sent out an alarming warning (around 13/9/01) that 'great slaughter of the innocents is imminent'. Those with the power to do so, he predicted, would take revenge for the bombing and he even set some dates when it would occur. He referred to the vengeful spirit displayed by prominent people in the American press at the time: former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, CNN, 11/9/01; Steve Dunlevy, New York Post 12/9/01; Rich Lowry, Washington Post, 13/9/01; Ann Coulter, New York Daily News, 12/9/01.

The warning prompted me to look up Douglas Reed's Controversy of Zion, in particular his references to the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, and the timing and delivery of those judgments (p.401). There was no doubt in Reed's mind that the judgments were executed according to the Talmudic calendar: "I have a description, from a person who was present, of the manner in which the Nuremberg judgment came to be delivered on September 30 and October 1, 1946 (between the Jewish New Year, September 26, and the Jewish Day of Atonement, October 5), and was executed immediately after midnight in the morning of October 16, Hoshana Rabba, the day when the Jewish god, after an interval during which he considers his verdict on every single human being, and may still pardon sinners, delivers his judgment..."

Although not into the 'numbers' game, some of us made the effort to calculate, according to Reed's reckoning, just when the WTC vengeance would begin. We calculated the bombing of Afghanistan would commence on October 8th – which it did. It was reported in Australian newspapers on October 9th. The first anniversary of that event is nearly upon us and George Bush is strutting the world stage, again, talking up war against Iraq. According to the 2002 calendar, the Jewish New Year falls on September 7th, and Hoshana Rabba will fall on September 27th, the day when the Jewish god, after an interval during which he considers his verdict on every single human being, and may still pardon sinners, delivers his judgment. Again?

MARK VALE MP – HE JUST DOESN'T GET IT!

by Betty Luks
Determined to impose the legislation on the Australian people, the Coalition are busy trying to shore-up support for the proposed GATS treaty. I have received copies of the form letter the Minister for Trade, Mark Vale, has sent out to Local Governments promoting the policy. Mr. Vale asked his department to prepare information which would counteract the "consistently misleading and inaccurate media reporting of the intent of the GATS and what it means for Australia".

The truth of the matter is our manufacturing industries have been so 'gutted' by traitorous political parties and governments, a large (and growing) share of what is left to 'export' (thus helping to pay off foreign money debts) are services such as telecommunications, finance, tourism, and education. As for mining and agriculture, Australia's real wealth, the minerals and foodstuffs, this wealth is bought cheap and sold dear by the fat-cat-monopolists who control the commerce and trade. The farmers and producers are meant to be thankful for the crumbs thrown to them. How many farmers have you heard complaining "they cannot survive much longer because costs and overheads are greater than the prices they receive for their production"? They are in fact subsidising the export markets through their losses, and the nation as a whole is sustaining physical losses – the real wealth of the nation, that which remains of our manufacturing, the minerals and foodstuffs exported for 'money'.

Readers might be interested to know
Mark Vale writes: "Services exports accounted for 20 per cent of Australia's total exports, or $31.2 billion in 2001. Four out of every five workers are employed in service industries, many of which have an export focus. Since the mid-1980s, Australia's services exports have grown more rapidly than agriculture, mining and manufacturing exports."

The tourist 'industry' is now bringing into the country $17.1 billion a year... this means we 'import' tourists to eat our food, sleep in our beds, and we provide entertainments, roads and transport systems, so they in turn will bring in (import) enough money, so that we can be paid to service them, to buy the goods we produce ourselves.

Readers may remember the letter Mr. Joe Bryant wrote to Mark Vale on the GATS. It is worth repeating a portion:
"As I understand the GATS was signed in 1994 with a ten year implementation period which suggests it comes into full effect in 2004-5. GATS involves calling world-wide tenders for services provided to the Australian people. I understand that you, minister, and the present administration are willingly going down the GATS road to national disaster; and that all involved in this treachery are saying that it is not compulsory, in a blatant attempt to hoodwink the Australian people into believing that the administration has no intention of calling tenders for services in Australia, when the opposite is the truth. If this is not the case then why was GATS signed in the first place?
I recall the Lima Declaration, when it was said by the Australian administration that it was not signed, it was not binding, and it was not compulsory; while all the time this deception was being promoted by government of all political persuasions who worked feverishly to ensure that the programme laid out in the Lima Declaration was implemented, bringing about the destruction of our Australian manufacturing industries, the collapse of our dollar and the loss of millions of jobs and a long list of other hardships.

Based on past performance and your current, continued insistence that there is nothing compulsory in the GATS, I know of no reason to trust you or the administration. In fact, we have every reason not to trust you or the administration... It is unbelievable that a Commonwealth of Australia Parliament would even contemplate handing over control of our internal affairs to an international body, in particular one that is the instrument of international cartels. Why, as the world is shaking off imperial colonialism, are we willingly signing up, in an even worse form of the same concept, with world trade pirates at the helm? It is also unbelievable that such a treacherous decision was made, and continues with the full support of the parliament and the administration, virtually in secret.

I am not prepared to accept the utter bull about needing GATS to increase exports. As this is your, many time repeated, stand, it shows me that you have no idea whatsoever about the essentials for fair trade; or alternatively you and your parliamentary associates are purposely deceiving the Australian public... Trade is about five things, demand, price, reliability of delivery, quality and neutrality. It has nothing to do with bi-lateral agreements, as is repeatedly exposed by major powers complying with GATT only when it suits them.

What it seems is not understood, is that Australia is the only country that honoured the GATT and our economic situation has been devastated as a result. With this experience it is totally incompetent and an act of treachery against the Australian people to enter into the GATS, as this will be compounded by continuing to participate in the GATS negotiations, and in fact by not rejecting GATS totally. GATS is designed to open up Australia and other countries to cartels operating from low wage (slave wage) countries; the level playing field, a bowl of rice a day for the workers lucky enough to have a job.

What we need is a Minister, and an administration with common sense, guts and the best interests of Australia as their goal, not a gang of compliant big-business lackeys; but an administration that will immediately, totally reject GATS."
Joe Bryant, St. Marys, NSW

Editor's note: Older On Target readers will remember a former politician, in a stinging reply to a supporter's letter about the New World Order, claiming the NWO "was a figment of the imagination of the Australian League of Rights"!

IAN PLIMER – GLOBAL WARMING DISSIDENT

by Antonia Feitz
In last Wednesday's Higher Education Supplement in the Australian (28/8/02) Jim Buckell reviewed Ian Plimer's "A Short History of Planet Earth". As a geologist, University of Melbourne's Ian Plimer has examined 4000 million years of geological evidence for global warming and has found it lacking. Not only that, he claims that "The Armageddon we humans face is not a pleasant greenhouse warming but a bitter prolonged icehouse." Plimer says while there are cycles of planetary heating and cooling, the long term trend to cooling has been evident for hundreds of thousands of years and within the next few hundred years we'll be entering a big freeze. We know that Vikings settled Greenland, grew crops there in the 10th century but were forced out by 1450 as the "Little Ice Age" set in. Clearly Earth's climate isn't fixed but dynamic. According to Plimer, "There have been enormous climate fluctuations since the last Ice Age finished 14,700 years ago. Temperature rises have been far greater than the worst doomsday scenario of today."

He thinks the slight increases in temperature since 1976 could be due to other factors than increased CO2 levels
"Climate change is just not simply humans putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The past is telling us that and it's very difficult to believe that the present is going to be any different." Plimer thinks that extraterrestrial factors including supernovas, sunspot flaring, comets and meteorites are the main causes of climate change. Buckell reported that the Little Ice Age from the 14th to the 19th century coincided with reduced sunspot activity. Terrestrial factors in climate change include volcanoes throwing up vast amounts of gases and ash, changes in sea level, continental drift, earthquakes and wobbles in the earth's orbit. Another factor is the (currently expanding) Antarctic sea ice. Plimer said while warm times bring growth and abundance, cold times are hard times bringing crop failures and disease. He said we may have reason to fear the drift away from diversity to monoculture. And if the earth experiences a significant climate shift in the colder times ahead due to something like a volcanic explosion we mightn't survive.
Buckell drily commented, "That does put concern about global warming into perspective." Indeed.

In his review Buckell noted that Plimer is the man who took on the creationists. Now he's taking on the environmental activists over global warming. Bravo.

Note
Non-scientists can't fully evaluate Plimer's views but his viewpoint is persuasive to the intelligent lay mind. If he's right, the public policy implications are enormous. As are the implications for lots of egg on prominent people's faces. Is there any point in reducing greenhouse gases if there's an Ice Age on the way? Has anybody convincingly refuted Plimer? How many other scientists agree with him? We've previously reported that over 20,000 people, 17,100 of whom are basic and applied US scientists have signed Frederick Seitz's anti global warming petition. Some 2,660 signers are physicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists – people whom one would think are qualified to evaluate the effects on CO2 on the earth's atmosphere and climate.

I spoke to an Australian academic in earth sciences who is a friend and colleague of Plimer. He too was sceptical of the hysterical claims being made about imminent ecological catastrophe. But like stem cell research, there's money and careers in the environmental armageddon. He thinks that the CO2 increase due to the Industrial Revolution is a blip among much bigger forces. He also said sea-level rises have been "miniscule". It seems that the much-touted claim of scientific consensus about global warming is so much hot air.

And you really have to wonder about people who regard catastrophes as "useful" in their propaganda wars. A recent editorial in Science said: "Communicating the fact of climate change is a complex process involving political leadership, science, public pressure, and even perhaps a useful catastrophe or two to illuminate the issues." (2/8/02, p.737).
The word 'illuminate' was a strangely revealing choice when 'illustrate' would have done. It has religious overtones, very appropriate to the deep green ecology movement that worships Gaia. For them, Armageddon is a matter of belief and doesn't need facts.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA – CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

NOW'S THE TIME TO MAKE PLANS FOR THE NATIONAL WEEKEND

From Friday, October 11th (New Times Dinner) through to and including Sunday, October 13th, 2002. It promises to be an outstanding event... make every effort to be there!

"NEW TIMES" DINNER – "Celebrating the Year of Jubilee": Friday, October 11th, 2002. Dinner Guest Speaker is Mr. Phillip Benwell, MBE, and his address is entitled: "The Queen on her Jubilee". Venue is Main Function Room, The Hume Motor Inn, 406 Wodonga Place, Albury, NSW, 2640. Dinner price: $27.00 per person for a buffet style 3-course meal; bar facilities available. Dinner bookings no later than Friday, October 4th, 2002.

SEMINAR – "Heralding the Year of Jubilee": Registration from 12.30pm. Commences, 1.15pm, Saturday, October 12th. Admission to Seminar: $15.00 per person. Four excellent speakers have been invited for the weekend. Seminar speakers: Nigel Jackson, Melbourne writer, schoolteacher and author of "The Case for David Irving". Nigel will focus on, "The Queen's Justice and the International Criminal Court". Michael Lane, editor of American social credit publication "Triumph of the Past", "One Successful Experiment Would Do More Than $Millions in Advertising". Phillip Benwell, MBE, National Chairman, Australian Monarchist League. He observed "we have gone from despotic rule to an elective dictatorship!" The title of his paper is, "Our Developing Democracy". Jeremy Lee, authority on the New World Order, writer, author and lecturer will be speaking on "The Crunch and the Critical Moment". 2002 is also the fiftieth year since the death of C.H. Douglas, which we will also commemorate – another 'jubilee' event. Whilst the situation looks grim, Jeremy Lee reminds us of Douglas' observation, "Every aspect of evil appears to be in the ascendancy..." His implication is that when every hope of a breakthrough is lost, the momentum of evil exhausts even itself. At that moment a lever applied in the right place by an absurdly small number can help change things!

DIVINE SERVICE & ACTION CONFERENCE

Sunday, October 13th: It is planned the Sunday will be a full day for those who can stay on. Make every effort to do so. Plan to travel back home on the Monday. Michael Lane is making a special effort to be at the weekend – all the way from the USA! We will give him extra time on the Sunday to further develop the ideas he is keen to present. New books to be launched: Another League initiative! A number of 'hot off the press' books will be launched at the weekend, including two of Michael Lane's. Venue is the same as last year: The Hume Inn, 406 Wodonga Place, Albury, NSW.

No more time-wasting and frustration trying to find parking spots in busy, hectic Melbourne. Good reports were received from those who attended last year. A wide choice of accommodation is available in Albury, plenty of service clubs for good meals, and the food, facilities and accommodation at the motel very satisfactory. We have 'block booked' a number of rooms for League people at the motel – The Hume Inn in Albury, NSW. Phone early and make your bookings: Phone (02) 6021 2733 or Fax (02) 6041 2239.

HELP YOURSELF TO GOOD HEALTH