A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE

by Jeremy Lee
In recent weeks we have referred to the issue of conscience for elected representatives, remarking on the absurdity of one man, the Prime Minister, giving permission for the luxury of a "conscience vote" in Parliament. Somewhere between 250 and 300 bills are voted on each year in the Federal Parliament, where all party members are instructed how to vote by the Whips. And then one comes along where the Prime Minister – who, incidentally, is not even mentioned in the Constitution – gives them permission to use their consciences! Immediately the standard of debate lifted, and faceless party hacks became individuals with personal viewpoints they dared express. Shouldn't they be voting on conscience on every issue?

Who gives anyone the right to instruct your representative how to vote?
Back in 1910 a British Court case defined the duty of an elected member thus: "Parliament is summoned by the Sovereign to advise His Majesty freely. By the nature of the case it is implied that coercion, restraint, or money payment, which is the price of voting at the bidding of others, destroys or imperils the function of freedom of advice which is fundamental in the very constitution of Parliament."

The debasement of this ideal led to the comic description in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado:
"When in that House MPs divide,
If they've a brain and cerebellum too,
They have to leave that brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to."

The major parties in the early days of Federation were not like this. While tied to some extent by philosophical agreement, individuals were allowed to cross the floor on matters of conscience. They did not lose their endorsement for doing so. Debate was of a much higher standard, and a better type of person sought election. The payment of big salaries, with even bigger benefits and pensions, has corrupted, as it has in so many fields, personal integrity. Acknowledging this sad state of affairs the Clerk to the Senate, Mr. Harry Evans, said in 1991 it was not the institution of Parliament that was to blame for deteriorating standards, but political parties which had become
"factionalised, undemocratic oligarchies... They have become narrowly-based, factionalised, undemocratic oligarchies .... Controlled by too few people, closed to public view but open to manipulation and outright corruption ...." (The Australian, 10/3/91).

Not only does power corrupt those who have it, but also those over whom it is exercised, who become subservient.

LIP SERVICE BY THE NATIONAL PARTY

Back in the last Queensland State election, which saw the rout of the Coalition parties, the National Party published a remarkable promise called the "Electorate First" Option. In it they paid lip-service to the points made above. The statement said: "The National Party's innovative 'Electorate First' option will help National Party MPs stand up for the people of their communities.... 'Electorate First' means that a member of the Parliamentary National Party may exercise a free vote on any issue that impacts on his or her electorate – except on money supply and confidence. In other words, if an issue is important enough locally, a National Party MP is free to vote with his or her community instead of for the party line .... It means that if you have a National Party MP representing your electorate, you'll have someone in Parliament – in a major party that CAN form government – who really will be able to put YOU first...."

The statement is as much an admission as a promise. It says that, until this statement was made, NO MP could put his electorate first; which, of course is the truth. It made no difference to the National Party's (mis)fortunes. Only one-in-a-thousand voters read pre-election promises. If they ever see them at all, they classify them as "junk mail". Voters now judge by results AFTER elections – not pre-election promises. But the promise is a party confession about previous sins and omissions – far too late to do the National Party much good, but perhaps the starting point for a gradual awakening in the electorate about the hi-jacking over many years of their right to genuine representation. We don't even know if that promise – made while Rob Borbidge was still leader – still stands. Whether or not it does, it means nothing until electors actually see it in practice.

BLACK CLOUDS? OR A SILVER LINING?

Mesmerised as the world is by the intense global grab for power, and the strategic positioning for control of fossil fuels, we forget that thousands are turning away in the search for small communities, cleaner fuel, local decision-making and sustainable futures. Hidden in the wings are many innovations that could empower individuals and small groups, unhooking them from the mechanisms of centralized control. The Bulletin, 12/11/02, contained an article on a new type of flying machine, the FanWing, invented by Patrick Peebles, a Britisher living in a farmhouse near Rome. Instead of wings the plane has rotating fans like the old-fashioned push lawnmower on each side, which lift and propel far more quietly and economically than a conventional plane. It can hover, or move forward, almost silently.

Peebles has managed to find an aeronautical solution that's eluded three generations of engineers out to create their own helicopter-aeroplane hybrids. 'The fact is that it works,' says Mike Graham, head of aeronautics at Imperial College, London, where promising air-tunnel tests were recently completed. 'People have often asked about similar techniques, but I had never seen one succeed.'....Peebles talks of a time when fan-powered aircraft could shuttle commuters between airports across city skies, where noise restrictions currently prohibit helicopters. Then again, the FanWing might find a future as a crop-duster, a firefighter or an airborne truck. Peebles reckons an ultralight model would creep along at only 100 km per hour – but the latest tests suggest that with a mere 100-horsepower engine the FanWing could lift a 2-ton load, easily beating the helicopter in efficiency....."

The development of the Fuel-Cell, which produces immense quantities of hydrogen capable of powering vehicles, transport systems, small or large-scale electricity generation, or water desalination plants without pollution is now here. Commercial coaches manufactured by Mercedes Benz and one or two Japanese manufacturers are daily demonstrating the possibilities. The crisis of 'global gases' could be resolved simply by changing from fossil fuels. George Bush would not even have to annihilate Iraq!

If the money spent on huge world conferences talking about pollution and the Kyoto Protocol were diverted to opening up the already-existing alternative forms of energy and transport on a small scale within the reach of decentralized communities, what a world it could be. But first, it seems, the energy-imperialist, who thinks in terms of cornering the world's energy and controlling those who need it, will have to fall flat on its face. What destruction will occur in this process is anyone's guess. Much depends on those motivated by the will-to-freedom in their resistance to those motivated by the will-to-power. Such huge and expensive developments as the Alice-Darwin railway could be obsolete before they're up and running. Finding a new, economic freight system that travelled by air would eliminate much of the clutter and massive infrastructure of our roads. And what could a few dozen economical FanWings, capable of carrying 2 or 3 tons, do for our Fire-fighting defences? Or for coastal surveillance? Or even for loading and unloading ships a few miles out to sea? Thinking small opens up a myriad of possibilities.

Change from disaster to regeneration will inevitably start slowly. It will never be initiated by government. The inertia of centralized thinking in the corridors of power is too strong. It starts with a change of thinking in the community. Even the most avid 'greenies' need to change direction from their belief in international treaties and more controls to small, innovative developments at local level. The most outstanding example is that of the inventor of Permaculture, Bill Mollison, who was once a demonstrator, but soon concluded he could do more good by building a practical alternative than shouting slogans.

The biggest alternative idea of all is Social Credit. It starts at ground level, with the individual. It ends by challenging the biggest monopoly of all – the Monopoly of Credit. When Social Credit meets true organic environmentalism and the small, sustainable community, great things will happen. The immense, materialistic monopoly which thinks solely in terms of control will give way to the flowering of freedom and the sanctity of the individual who can only find his true potential in communion with his fellows and with God. The events of our times are waking many people up. Let us be thankful for that, even when we don't see many rays of hope. It's when we think there's no hope at all that the breakthroughs begin to come.

LIKE TOXIN IN THE BLOOD

by John Chuckman – YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
Like acrid fumes seeping from a chemical dump long thought dormant, attitudes of an unmistakably fascist nature are drifting through American society. One catches whiffs of the dreadful stuff on almost every breeze from America. Just the day before the recent Congressional elections, the CIA laid claim to the assassination of six men in Yemen. The men were, of course, described as associated with Al Qaeda, and may, for all I know, have been so, but just when did bragging about the public murder of six people by a government agency become acceptable practice to Americans? No charges, no trial, no evidence - just murder.

That act was in keeping with the spirit of America's treatment of prisoners from its stupid, disastrous war in Afghanistan. First, many hundreds of prisoners were murdered under American auspices. Second, thousands were illegally detained and abused. Many were tortured. Hundreds remain prisoners in cages thousands of miles from their homes with no legal rights. A scholastic nonsense about these men being held away from the rights-protected soil of America appears adequate to make their treatment acceptable.

The murder also is in keeping with the alliances and interests America has been forming abroad. Perhaps the most murderous elected leader in recent memory, Mr. Sharon, responsible literally for the deaths of thousands and for keeping an entire people hopelessly crushed into apartheid-style camps is called a "man of peace". His works of assassination and destruction are blessed and supported more cordially than I remember support for America's old friend, the Shah of Iran, who smiled at dinners in the White House while his secret police, Savak, pulled out the fingernails of screaming opponents and suspects.

Russia's Mr. Putin wages the most devastating small war of recent times, a relentless, murderous effort to hold a people who do not want to be held, reducing their towns and farms to burnt-out wasteland, and he, too, is regarded as a partner for peace and an opponent of terror. I wonder how many Americans caught the little-noted fact that not one Chechen left the theatre in Moscow alive, despite all having been knocked out by gas. I'm not objecting to an effort to free hostages, only to the clear fact that every Chechen was summarily murdered in scenes that must have recalled the old NKVD's bullet to the back of the head. I wonder was the old Soviet practice of charging relatives for a cartridge followed?
A military dictator in Pakistan is regarded as an ally against terror, as are bestial warlords in Afghanistan.

Working towards the Fuhrer – the tenor of the times
The Attorney General of the United States tells Arab Americans they are fortunate not to be treated the way Japanese Americans during World War II were – that is, fortunate not to be thrown into concentration camps and have most of their property seized, never to be returned. More disgusting yet, coming as it does carefully wrapped in robes of reasoned debate, are the words of an American lawyer on the need for establishing legal procedures governing the proper use of torture in the country. It does suit the tenor of times in which US border officials have been routinely photographing, fingerprinting, and grilling visitors from certain countries for hours even though they may have taken up a new citizenship.

Prize-winning Canadian author Rohinton Mistry, a man born in India and whose religious background is a form of Zoroastrianism, about as far removed as you can get from being a Muslim Arab, cut short his American reading tour after being stopped and interrogated every time he caught a plane... It's the kind of activity Germans in the 1930s used to call fondly "working towards the Fuhrer", that is, guessing what action might please the leader. There's been a lot of "working towards the Fuhrer" lately in America. It seems to come quite naturally to a significant number of people...

CAPE YORK ABORIGINALS 'TELL IT HOW IT IS'

WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER

I think the Pearson brothers might find it hard to believe that Betty Luks, national director of the Australian League of Rights means it when she says: As a fellow Australian I do believe we are in this battle together. Before you dismiss me, let me explain. In the 1980s the League published a book "Red Over Black" by former communist Geoff McDonald. Geoff did his best to expose the machinations of the Communist Party and the long-term objectives behind the 'land rights' and related Aboriginal issues.

The League warned
The Aboriginal people were being used for 'other purposes'. For our 'sins' we were demonised and branded as 'racists, and the tribal Aboriginal people were isolated and marginalized in their 'land-right ghettos'. (In South Africa it is called apartheid.) Their hopes and dreams didn't materialize because there was no real foundation upon which to build and those in power had another agenda'. George Orwell's "Animal Farm" shows how its done.

First the propaganda
The Pigs in Animal Farm, through their unrelenting propaganda (mass-opinion mind-manipulation) stirred up discontent against Farmer Brown and his system (Free Enterprise, Private Property 'Capitalism'). The Pigs sowed discontent. We should have 'equality', they cried. They didn't point out that no two Animal groups are alike; each group is distinct, is 'different'. Horses don't understand Sheep that well, and Mother Hens like to scratch in the soil and lay eggs in a nest – not catch the mice as do farmyard Cats. What the Animals forgot was that working relationships require that each group was given its own 'space,' for them all to be who they are. Yes, there were problems with Farmer Brown's management, but surely they didn't need to destroy their home and livelihood in order to resolve the problems, the injustices.

You are being exploited!!! – whispered the Pigs into their ears. What's needed is a Revolution! We must turn the present system on its head. All Animals must be 'equal'. The rest is history: Differences were exploited and exaggerated; disharmony and dissatisfaction was generated, and mutual trust and reciprocity broke down.

The Revolution having begun, the farmyard 'rules' were changed. Work-horse Boxer now had to produce enough for the packs of Dogs (bureaucracy) and the Pigs luxurious life style (the ruling elite) – AND Mr. Whimper appeared on the scene. Ah!!! Mr. Whimper. Who is he? Where does he fit into the scheme of things? Mr. Whimper carries on 'business' with any system, whether Farmer Brown's system or The Pigs' system. "Business is business' to Mr. Whimper; whether the Free Enterprise Capitalism of Farmer Brown and/or the Socialism/Communism of The Pigs. Mr. Whimper is Super-Capitalism, the Money-Power. In fact Noel, you did say "Money is King', but I don't think you really understood in what way 'Money is King'! You need to look into Mr. Whimper's background and his past history.

Noel – a question: Is your community's land freehold? Do you and your people own the land freehold in the same sense as most Australians understand freehold title and private property? I have asked a Constitutional lawyer that question and his reply, based upon studying the Land Rights legislation was: "It is not clear." Didn't I once see you on TV complaining Aboriginal communities couldn't raise bank loans? The reason being, there was no one person who could be held responsible for the mortgage debt? In which case, isn't it a matter of "What The Pigs have given, along with the collusion of Mr. Whimper, the Pigs can take away? " That is, when the Revolution has finished running its course; but mark you Noel, Mr. Whimper will still be 'on the scene' to do business with whichever Pig takes Napoleon's place!

Noel and Gerhardt Pearson, for what it's worth, the Australian League of Rights joins with you and your communities in the heartfelt desire for a resolution of the problems between us and those we have in common. But in doing so, I believe we have to tackle The Pigs, their Dogs and Mr. Whimper. Farmer Brown's system wasn't working as well as it could have, but after 80 years of experience we now know it sure beats the hell out of the others.

AUSTRALIA'S INIGO JONES

by Anne Crosson
From an entirely different perspective on how planets affect our weather patterns, comes research carried out by Australia's famous long-range weather forecaster, Inigo Jones. Jones developed an interest in the subject of weather through his father- a civil engineer, educated in London by Faraday, the founder of electromagnetism, and Admiral Fitzroy, who devised the first system of weather stations leading to the establishment of the British Weather Service. His research which began in the late 1800's, extended over a 66-year period, where his skills at being able to forecast the great Australian droughts made him famous and pretty much a legend.

Some of Jones forecasts were extremely long-range and continued to be successful decades after his death in the 1940's. The most impressive prediction Jones ever made, and one I heard about back in the 60's, was of a severe drought that would devastate Australia in the early 1980's. He warned that many of Australia's great rivers could dry up during this time and foresaw this terrible drought as possibly being the worst in living memory. Jones prediction happened right on cue when the most severe El Nino of the century formed in the Pacific of 1982/83, and Australia did suffer the worst drought of the century. Rivers began to dry up, just as Jones had foreseen.

The National Geographic magazine, at the time, featured shots of catastrophic weather disasters from all over the world including Australia. Graphic shots of Australia's severe drought showed hellish scenes of thousands upon thousands of slaughtered animal corpses being burned in huge mounds and of starving sheep and cattle too weak to stand from lack of food. And of distraught, teary-eyed farmers standing helplessly by watching their stock and livelihood disappear before their very eyes. The big droughts that Inigo Jones predicted were in fact, due to the El Nino phenomenon, never heard of, back in his day.

Jones maintained that the whole solar system is simply a vast electromagnetic machine, which is automatically controlled by the magnetic fields of the planets acting on the corpuscular energy in space which itself is an emanation of the stars or galactic field around us. He saw the Sun as being part of the star-field having a fairly constant magnetic field, noting that the cycles of sunspots waxed and waned and drew back to the Sun's waistline in tune with the similar period that Jupiter takes to revolve around the sun itself.

Observing too, that any of the major planets, especially Jupiter, crossing near the Solar Apex in Sagittarius (the galactic centre) towards Vega in Capricorn, so positioned between the Sun and the galactic centre, tended to obstruct the magnetic stream from the star-field, resulting in a pronounced affect on weather patterns and Australia's severe drought cycles. (Much like the solar wind that is blocked or totally cut off during a total eclipse of the Sun)

Conversely, when major planets crossed the Solar Vertex (Gemini/Cancer) in opposition to the galactic centre and positioned on the far side of the Sun with the Sun now in between the galactic centre and the planets, wetter weather and great floods seemed to follow. (La Nina phases) Researching historical weather disasters i.e. floods, droughts, disasters and rainy years dating back several thousand years. Jones noted that all these events were linked to planetary combinations, in front of the Sun's forward path, or behind that path. Planets revolving around the Sun in large orbits, all dragged along in the Suns' huge northerly orbit, around an ever-shifting centre of gravity somewhere in the star cluster, overtaking and dropping behind one another in orderly succession throughout the centuries. Only at intervals of thirty odd years do Jupiter and Saturn get into line to exert a combined sunspot and weather effect. At much longer intervals Uranus and Neptune also get into line with them singularly and all together. In the year 2007, Jones warned (so many years ago), Australia would once again suffer another severe drought when Jupiter crosses the Solar Apex together with Pluto in Sagittarius.

Long-range weather forecasting is space weather
The only known way of forecasting weather long-range is through the medium of the sun/moon/planets. Long-range weather forecasters come from such varied backgrounds and disciplines, yet all have come to the same conclusion, that our weather patterns are an integral part of the sun/moon/planets connection. Astronomers throughout the ages such as Brahe, Kepler, Ptolemy and Galileo, expounded upon and refined planetary weather forecasting skills since its humble origins some 400 years BC in Greece, when Aristotle wrote The Meteorologica – the first-known treatise on planetary influences on the weather.

Not that you'll read about it in history books, but in 1704 Isaac Newton, who specialized in the study of ancient sciences, announced that in February 1750, when the Moon and Jupiter would be at perigee (closest point to the Earth) together during a solar eclipse, fierce storms and earthquakes would ravage England. Almost 23 years after his death, Newton's prediction hit right on target when gale-force winds and rolling quakes devastated London.
Joseph Goodavage – Our Threatened Planet.

Over 2,000 years of research into planetary effects on weather meticulously documented by the ancient astronomers and those who followed, went into what finally became the basis for establishing the Almanacs, and more recently – The Farmer's Almanac. (From Neil Baird's e-mail.)