THE CHAMPION OF REDUCED INCOMES

by Jeremy Lee
When enterprise bargaining was first introduced by the Howard government under then-Minister Peter Reith, great pains were taken to claim that this would not result in lower wages. In fact, the first claims introduced showed higher individual wage-contracts. The whole was an exercise to break the power of the Unions and the long established practice of collective bargaining. Now the truth is coming out.

Under the heading LOW PAY MAKES JOBS SAFE: ABBOTT, The Weekend Australian (2-3/3/02) reported:
"Low-income families would be better off without a large pay rise this year because it would make their jobs safer, the Howard Government said yesterday as it confirmed its plans to re-vamp the wages system. "'Excessive wage rises are an efficient way of increasing poverty by reducing the labour demand, especially for low-skilled people', the Government said in its submission to the safety net pay case .....

"Employment Minister Tony Abbott is considering a plan to use tax credits to encourage people to move off welfare and seek employment. The theory is that by keeping the wages paid by employers low, the poor will be offered more work. And a tax credit is said to be a greater incentive for the poor to work rather than to remain on welfare....."

The proposal has, apparently, caused division within the Labor Party, with Simon Crean supporting the idea. The article went on:
" .... But Deputy Opposition leader Jenny Macklin said Mr. Abbott was asking workers to accept lower wages on the promise of tax credits the Government could not afford because of budget constraints. Labor could not afford to offer tax credits at the last federal election after using them as the centrepiece of the 1998 election."

However sincere he might be, Tony Abbott's thinking belongs in the 19th century. Obviously, the lower wages are the happier employers will be - except those very few who can see the bigger picture. Government regulations and employee awards have already made employing people a legal minefield. Payroll taxes alone are inhibitive of employing extra people. Add to this tax such things as holiday loadings, maternity leave, health and worker insurance, etc., plus unfair dismissal laws, and it usually costs an employer an extra dollar in benefits for every dollar directly paid in wages. So, if he has thought no further, he will support the Abbott proposal.

On the other hand, the lower end of the wage scale is the scene of widespread poverty and hardship. The days of a family living on one wage disappeared long ago. At the lower end the two-wage family finds it increasingly hard to make ends meet. The ever-increasing dimensions of household debt testify to this. Without using tomorrow's purchasing power for today's need, many would not eat. And how much lower should wages go to make us all happy?
Who can forget the Chinese delegate at the World Economic Forum held in Melbourne who expressed his incredulity at the West's belief it could compete with Asian nations in a world free-trade system? He told his audience that they must be mad!. China alone could undercut the West, as far as wages were concerned, by as much as 20 times!

The key to the conundrum lies in the fact that labour is a decreasing factor in the economy. Technology is a new labour-force competing successfully and increasingly with human effort. This is not new. In fact, it has been increasing exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. The arrival of the machine created the need for Trade Unions, to prevent the total exploitation of workers. But, as steam and coal gave way to gasoline, mechanization, electricity, computers and robotics, Unions were hard put to it to prevent 'down-sizing'. The world has been downsizing for decades, but never on a scale like the present.

Committed to full employment as a goal, the governments of the world have been forced into the Welfare State, where those working are forced to subsidise those unemployed. Taxes increase as industry down-sizes. To alleviate the budget-strains incurred in this process, governments have been further forced into the role of employers themselves, with huge bureaucracies all engaged in the process of empire-building, and now the final indignity - '"work-for-the-dole". It is all a frantic effort to put off the final admission that a technological 'labour-saving' economy is incompatible with a full-employment policy. So we have an idiotic paradox; a new mechanised work-force which says, "we will save you labour by doing the job for you!" against an outdated government election policy that the only way a man and woman can live is by having a job!

The late C.H. Douglas, an engineer with wide industrial experience, said in 1923: " .... One-tenth of the available labour, working short hours but with the whole of its attention directed solely to the objective of the most efficient production, could supply all the general demands of the population of this country, either by direct production, or by exchange of proper methods for the production of other countries, in respect of articles which cannot reasonably be produced at home; in other words, production, as a problem, has been solved long ago .... The problem we have to solve is the problem of distribution ...."

But if distribution is to be confined solely to "full employment" - now dependent solely on the hope that a nation's producers will "employ" the rest of the workforce - tragedy threatens! That tragedy has been with us for some time, resulting in the myopic policies of Peter Reith, Simon Crean, Tony Abbott and all major political parties in Australia.

Move forward to the publication of the Book "The Global Trap: The Assault on Democracy and Prosperity", by Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann in the mid-nineties. The authors described the 1995 meeting of 500 corporate chiefs, leading politicians and academics in San Francisco, to discuss the global economy of the 21st Century. This gathering of the world's power elite unanimously agreed that, with the new generation of automated machines, which they had as yet hardly begun to apply to industry, they would soon need only twenty per cent of the world's labour force. The remaining 80 percent would simply not be required to keep the world's economy going.

How do we tackle such a gargantuan problem? Do we have 80% of workforces on the Tony Abbott "work-for-the-dole" idea? Or do we just keep reducing wages in the pitiful hope that the world's productive giants will take pity on us, and keep giving us ever-lower-paid jobs rather than replacing us with technology? It's either Social Credit - or a world slave state.

THE STREETS OF LONDON TOWN

New York, Chicago and Johannesburg have long been notorious for their levels of street crime and violence. But now London is fast catching up. Throughout the city yellow boards, to be read by pedestrians and commuters, mark the spots and details where the burgeoning number of unsolved crimes were committed. Bruce Wilson, reporting from London (The Herald Sun, 9/2/02) commented:
"...Where I live in south London, a 10-minute drive from the Houses of Parliament, I passed four such signs on my way home the other day. They are now commonplace. I doubt many read them. "The other word that is common to most, when they describe the suspects, is 'black'. Scotland Yard had to seek senior legal advice before it could say 'black' on its yellow boards .... 'Black' is a key word, and there is no getting away from it..... The Government is promising action, but what? Londoners know what should be done, put the coppers back on the beat. "Home Secretary David Blunkett makes aggressive noises. But the yellow signs proliferate. And they will grow and grow until someone addresses the real problem: forming a society in which social ambition does not involve violence and theft and murder."

To which could be added that the multicultural idea is unworkable. It is an ingredient for such violence, despite all the protestations of idealistic liberals. Enoch Powell was right. Britain's streets have already seen bloodshed, and may see more, as out-of-control illegal immigration and the build-up of large ethnic minorities which openly express their refusal to accept traditional social values, create an explosive situation. Attempting to stop any realistic discussion of the problem adds to the danger.

STOPPING PAYMENTS TO THE PIPER

Former British Cabinet Minister Lord Browne, currently chief CEO for British Petroleum, has announced that the company will no longer make political donations anywhere in the world. Last year BP donated $1.9 million to parties and candidates in the United States. The Australian Financial Review (1/3/02) said " .... BP has often taken a lead in international corporate governance issues and the decision, to take effect from April, could set a precedent for other multinationals as the Enron scandal continues to unfold in the United States." "We have to remember that however large our turnover might be, we still have no democratic legitimacy anywhere in the world,' Lord Browne said ...."

We can't say we are holding our breath that there will be a rush of other multinationals to follow BP's lead. Enron was the biggest donor to Republican Party funds in last year's presidential elections, and it is apparently hard to sort out the difference between that corporation's administration and that of the US. While we're about it, what does the phrase used in the article "international corporate governance" mean? If today's mis-use of the English language means anything, this should be translated as "world corporate government". Shouldn't it? It's not something any of us had a chance to vote for, or against.

AUSTRALIAN WHEAT ON THE NOSE

The AFR (1/3/02) reported: "In a potential blow to Australia's reputation as a wheat exporter, one of its most important markets, Japan, has rejected a 20,000 tonne shipment because it was contaminated. "A spokesman for monopoly wheat exporter AWB Ltd. confirmed yesterday that the cargo, shipped from Kwinana in Western Australia, had been rejected by the Japanese Food Agency ...."

Apparently the wheat had been contaminated by barley treated with a food colouring additive. This is not the first such case. Korea recently rejected a container of feed barley after it was found to contain unacceptable levels of pesticide. As a customer who buys about one million tones of wheat a year from Australia, Japan ranks as one of our five biggest customers. The incident confirms the dangers of high-chemical farming, and particularly the dangers of genetically-engineered crops to which Japan and other Asian nations are especially sensitive. A shift to organic farming over a period of time, rather than through a last-minute panic crisis should be a national objective, with incentives from government as is the case for home installations of solar technology.

Over the Christmas period I visited a cane-farming family near Mackay who this year made over 300 tonnes of organic compost to replace chemical farming. Already the benefits are beginning to appear. This is the sort of vision needed throughout Australia. This country is home to two Australian ideas with world-wide application; the first is Bill Mollison's Permaculture concept for small-scale self-sufficient and naturally-balanced production. The other is P.A. Yeoman's Key-Line system, designed to "catch rainfall where it falls", using a natural land-flow system to enable flood irrigation. In one of the driest continents in the world, this concept, which has been tried and proved, is a viable alternative to the mass-pumped irrigation schemes which are wrecking the Murray, raising the water-tables and increasing salinity. Large-scale man-made disasters are seldom cured by large-scale multi-million-dollar solutions. The development of the Yeomans' Key-line system in salt-threatened areas would do much to solve what looks like an otherwise insoluble problem.

COSTELLO ON THE TREASURY CASINO

RIGHT TO THE POINT

The following letter appeared in The Ballarat Courier in early February
What presidency, whether elected, selected or borne on the barrel of a gun, can match the stability that the Commonwealth has enjoyed over the fifty years of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II? All things being equal her son, Prince Charles, will succeed her on her death with the utmost equanimity. A generation down the track and succession will pass to his son without the ballyhoo, expense and division of presidential elections. Pomp and ceremony, certainly, but no ballyhoo. And, in the worst-case scenario, should Charles reign for only a few months before his death his successor is already known. The nation of a monarchy is never without its head. .....
Yours etc., Ron Fischer, Talbot, 3371

These sentiments need thinking about as the Queen departed from Australia, where she met nothing but goodwill and affection. The Editorial in The Weekend Australian (2-3/3/02), a declared republican paper, nevertheless started with these words: "Lined up against John Howard, Peter Hollingworth, Rob Kerin and Mike Rann, as she was upon her arrival in Adelaide, Queen Elizabeth comes off well. A distant figure who has no day-to-day involvement in Australian affairs, the British monarch is nonetheless widely respected and trusted, which is more than could be said for those in her greeting party. With her deep sense of duty and dedication to her job, she has remained above Australian politics since she ascended the throne 50 years ago. She is held in high esteem by monarchists, many republicans and those who are indifferent to our constitutional arrangements .....The Queen has receded from our public culture, yet she also represents much of what is good about our past. The rule of law and contracts, and the parliamentary system of government - the bedrocks of our democratic system - we have inherited from the British....."

And so say all of us! So why think of exchanging it for something inferior?

BOSSI ATTACKS "NAZI" EUROPE

from European Foundation Newsletter, March 7th
The Italian minister for Devolution and leader of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi, has used terms at which even a Tory Eurosceptic might blanche, to lash out at the European Union and all its doings. In a two-hour speech, he called for "civil resistance against the invasion of EU laws"; he attacked "the domination of the technocracy"; he spoke of "a rootless bureaucratic machine" and of "a questionable process which is endangering our liberty". "Whoever wants a Europe without states wants a superstate. He wants a Soviet Union designed by Stalin. He wants a supreme judicial power superior to the sovereignty of the people. He wants a Jacobin Europe which purges sovereignty with the supremacy of judicial power."

Bossi even said that whoever moves away from parliamentary democratic rule is "a new facist". "The new fascism is the refusal of popular sovereignty." Any Europe which does not respect its peoples would therefore be a fascist Europe. "We (i.e. the League) don't want the Jacobin Europe of the Communists and of high finance," said Bossi. "We do not want a federation but a confederation of nation-states." Bossi said there had to be a referendum on future decisions about the EU. "Sovereignty belongs to the people, not to Bossi or Berlusconi," he said. [La Repubblica, March 3rd, 2002).

SWITZERLAND JOINS UNITED NATIONS

The Associated Press, March 4th, 2002, GENEVA (AP)
European countries on Monday applauded a decision by Switzerland to join the United Nations after 57 years on the sidelines ...The referendum reversed a 1986 vote in which the Swiss over-whelmingly rejected moves to join the world body at the height of its Cold War divisions. The government pushed the latest initiative, believing that the political climate has changed and that it was time for the 7 million Swiss to play a full role in the world. Although Switzerland was a member of the League of Nations, the UN predecessor, it had steadfastly refused to join the United Nations since its creation at the end of World War II. The decisive vote came from the picturesque canton of Lucerne in the Swiss heartland. It often votes in harmony with more conservative neighbouring cantons, but this time 51 percent of the voters put Lucerne in the pro-UN column - a margin of 2,282 votes. The Swiss have practised forms of neutrality on and off since the 13th century, but the principle was laid down formally in the 1815 Treaty of Paris that ended the Napoleonic Wars. ......But the government does have a longer-term goal of joining the European Union, which is expected to encounter even tougher resistance.

Billionaire industrialist Christoph Blocher - a nationalist politician who led the opposition this time - said he "deeply regretted'' the outcome. "It will lead to the weakening of Switzerland,'' Blocher said. "Freedom and the rights of the people will be limited, and neutrality will at the very least be deeply damaged."

ISRAELI SPY NETWORK DISMANTLED IN THE UNITED STATES

by Sylvain Cypel Le Monde, March 5th, 2002 - translated by Malcolm Garris

It is undoubtedly the largest affair of Israeli spying in the United States that has been made public since 1986. In June 2001, an investigative report details the activities of more than one hundred Israeli agents, some presenting themselves as fine arts students, others tied to Israeli high-tech companies. All were challenged by the authorities, were questioned and a dozen of them would be still imprisoned. One of their missions would have been to track the Al-Qaida terrorists on American territory, without informing the federal authorities of them. Elements of this investigation, taken up by American television Fox News, reinforce the thesis according to which Israel would not have transmitted to the United States all the evidence in its possession on the preparations of the September 11th attacks.

A vast operating Israeli spy network on American territory was dismantled, revealed in the latest delivery of the Online Intelligence Letter, publication specializing in questions of information. It is the biggest affair blaming Mossad (the Israeli external security agency) activity against the United States since condemning to life in prison for Jonathan Pollard, an employee of the US Navy, in 1986, for spying for Israel's benefit.

Which was the real scale of this network? The facts evoked by an American report/ratio of investigation do not indicate if it could reach information of first command, or if the authorities dismantled it in its initial phase. According to the chief editor of Online Intelligence, Guillaume Dasquié, this "vast network of Israeli intelligence agents was neutralized by counter-espionage services of the Department of Justice". The Americans "would have apprehended or expelled close to 120 Israeli nationals". M. Dasquié gives a report on a "61 page review article" from June 2001, given to the American justice department by a "task force" made up of agents of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and some INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents "with which were associated the FBI and the office of investigation of US Air Force".

Questioned by Le Monde, Will Glaspy, of the Public Affairs department of the DEA, authenticated this report/ratio, whose DEA "holds a copy". It is not the first time that information relating to Israeli espionage appeared in the United States since the Pollard affair. In June 1999, the review Insight had lengthily evoked a "secret" investigation of division 5 of the FBI regarding Israeli phone-tappings targeting the White House, the State Department and the National Security Council. After the attacks of September 11th, very little detailed information had come out about the arrest of some sixty Israelis.

Finally, from the 11th to the 14th of December 2001, the Fox News television channel aired an investigation in four parts into Israeli espionage in the United States, in the broadcast "Carl Cameron Investigates". The embassy from Israel in Washington immediately indicated that it did not contain "anything true". American Jewish organizations - JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), AIPAC (America-Israel Political Action Committee) and others - denounced a "machination". Fox withdrew from his Internet site, one day and half after its posting, all the material related to this investigation. Le Monde requested three times with Fox News to provide a tape of the broadcast. It was never done. February 26th, Fox answered our correspondent in New York that sending it posed "a problem", without being specific. Le Monde however took note of the whole script to this investigation.

Carl Cameron evokes "a vast secret investigation held there" relating to "140 Israelis made to pass for students of the University of Jerusalem or Betzalel Academy of Arts [which have] unceasingly sought to come into contact with civil servants and, according to a document, targeted and penetrated military bases, dozens of buildings of the DEA, FBI, and others". His investigation focused on two aspects. One: could the Israelis have preliminary knowledge of the September 11th attacks and not have informed Américans? His sources, explains Carl Cameron, tell him: "the principal question is 'how they could have not known?'."

On the screen, his editor-in-chief tells him thus|
"Certain reports confirm that the Mossad sent representatives to the United States to warn them, before September 11th, of the imminence of a major terrorist attack. That does not go in the direction of an absence of warning."

Cameron's response
"the problem is not the absence of warning, but the absence of useful details" compared to those which American services suspect Israel of having held.

The second round of the investigation touches at Israeli companies providing administrations or American companies, which would conceal information. Aimed at the manufacturer of Amdocs software, placed on Wall Street, which lists, for the 25 major telephone companies of the United States, all the calls passed on, to and originating from American territory, as well as the companies Nice and Comverse Infosys, the latter providing of the data-processing programs to American agencies authorized to proceed to listening. Comverse is suspected of having introduced into its systems of the "catch gates" in order to "intercept, record and store" these listenings. This hardware would render the "listener" himself "listened to".

Question to Cameron
"are there reasons to believe the Israeli government is implicated?" Answer: "No, none, but a classified top-secret investigation is underway."

The broadcast had been shown beforehand to the highest persons in charge of the CIA, the FBI, the NSA (the agency in charge of phone-tappings), the DEA and the American Justice Department, which had not uttered an objection to its airing. The report submitted to the American Justice Department, to which Le Monde had access, shows that many of the "fine-arts students" suspected of illicit activity have a military past in the information or the advanced technology units. Some entered and left the United States on several occasions, remaining each time for short periods. Several are related to the Israeli companies of high-tech Amdocs, Nice and Retalix. Challenged, a "coed" saw her guarantee of 10,000 dollars paid by an Israeli working at Amdocs. Questioned, two others recognize being employed by Retalix.

Le Monde obtained other information not contained in this report. Six of the intercepted "students" had a cellular telephone bought by an Israeli ex-vice-consul in the United States. Two others, at an unspecified time, would have arrived to Miami by direct flight from Hamburg to go to the residence of an FBI agent, to propose tableaus to him, to leave again for the Chicago airport, to go to the residence of an agent of the justice department then to take again the plane directly for Toronto; all in one day. More than a third of these "students", who, according to the report, moved in at least 42 American cities, stated to reside in Florida. Five at least were intercepted in Hollywood, and two in Fort Lauderdale. Hollywood is a town of 25,000 inhabitants to the north of Miami, close to Fort Lauderdale. However, at least 10 of the 19 terrorists from September 11th were residing in Florida.

Four of the five members of the group having diverted American Airlines flight number 11 - Mohammed Atta, Abdulaziz Al-Omari, Walid and Waïl Al-Shehri. - as well as one of the five terrorists of the United flight 175, Marwan Al-Shehhi, resided all at various times in Hollywood, Florida. As for Ahmed Fayez, Ahmed and Hamza Al-Ghamdi and Mohand Al-Shehri, United flight 75, like Saïd Al-Ghamdi, Ahmed Al-Haznawi and Ahmed Al-Nami, of the United flight 93 which crashed September 11th in Pennsylvania, and Nawaq Al-Hamzi, of AA flight 77 (fallen on the Pentagon), they have all at one time resided at Delray Beach, in the north of Fort Lauderdale.

This agreement can be, inter alia, at the origin of the American conviction according to which one of the missions of the Israeli "students" would have been to track the Al-Qaida terrorists on their territory, without informing the federal authorities of them.

Two enigmas remain. Why the Israeli network "plugged" in priority of drug enforcement agents? An assumption: the DEA is the main American agency inquiring into the money laundering. A network such as Al-Qaida used "dirty" dies, and the Taliban's Afghanistan was the primary exporter of opium in the world. Why this astonishing "cover", of false students canvassers for poor tableaus? The Israeli network seemed to hold lists of names. Its members knew at which office or which private residence to go. The objective was apparently to make contact, even for a short time. According to an Israeli specialist in espionage, "this story is a joke ridiculous, not serious". Contacted, the services of the Israeli Prime Minister still did not have, Monday evening March 4th, answered our questions. The American Justice Department indicated to us that "a dozen" of these "students" would always be imprisoned, the others all would have been released or deported. The FBI indicated to us that it will not make "any comment at this stage."

The CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the INS, the NSA, the Justice Department and the Pentagon have all designated an investigator on this file.

BASIC FUND

SYDNEY CSC

JEREMY LEE

JEREMY LEE will be addressing a number of meetings on the NSW north coast in March
March 16th and 17th Mount Tamborine contact Blair, (07) 5545 0486
March 23rd Ballina contact Bob, (02) 6687 8320
March 24th Wauchope contact Harold, (02) 6582 1168
March 25th Newcastle contact Sherry, (02) 4961 6880
March 26th Morrisett contact Bob or Meg, (02) 4973 1093
March 27th Sydney Conservative Speakers' Club contact Roy, (02) 4358 3634