TRAGEDY AND HOPE

by Jeremy Lee
Welcome to 2003, and a Happy New Year to all our readers!
On Target exists to summarize a massive amount of news each week into a concise format that serves those without time to traverse the world's media and internet. If it has a bias it is towards freedom and peace between nations and individuals. It would be nice to report that peace and freedom are expanding across the world. Unfortunately, they are under attack as never before. The complexity of the technology at the disposal of tyrants increases their potency.
In material terms the future for mankind looks bleak. However, there is no technology that can eliminate hope and the individual initiative which is sharpened when threatened.

Towards the end of 2002 a landmark case in the Australian High Court opened a Pandora's Box. Mining magnate Joseph Gutnick sued Dow Jones for an article published in the United States in October 2000. The article appeared in the financial magazine Barrons, which has five subscribers in Victoria. The article also appeared on the Internet, and about 100 Australians are believed to have downloaded it. The Court ruled that any material appearing on the Internet is liable to prosecution in the country and under that country's jurisdiction, where it is read.

Mark Day, commenting on the case in The Australian (11/12/02), said: "...The decision means publishers must take responsibility for their words in every one of the 300-odd legal jurisdictions around the world. Any defamations in the published material occur where the material is downloaded and read, not where it is uploaded onto an internal server ...."

The Hong Kong-based Asia Times commented: "Australia's highest court has paved the way for China and other oppressive governments to apply their home-grown standards to anything published anywhere in the world. That ruling will help the world's autocrats sleep better, while keeping media companies and reporters awake and their lawyers busy ..."
Suggestions have already been made that a new international treaty is required to cover the situation.

THE SLAVERING DOGS OF WAR

All through 2002 the pressure for war against Iraq, relentlessly pursued by Israel's Likud and the club of Zionist-oriented hawks within the US State Department was increased month by month. Looking back, several "D-Days" were canvassed by the media, and people were supposed to accept the inevitability of war. Speed was essential to a successful outcome. But one hitch after another kept postponing an invasion, which allowed time for two things: firstly, more and more information, largely from the Internet, reached the public through the chinks and cracks in "official" news coverage; and secondly, in country after country an ever-growing resistance to war began to emerge with, in some cases, huge anti-war demonstrations.

Prime Minister Blair in Britain found the support for his war rhetoric ebbing drastically. President Schroeder in Germany managed to bolster his slipping popularity in the polls by a strong anti-war campaign. Grudgingly, the US was forced to accept a United Nations role and the return of weapons inspectors. But it made it obvious that the outcome would make no difference to its war intentions. So far a very big team of inspectors with the best technology money can buy has found no sign of "weapons of mass destruction". Presumably, it was briefed, before going to Iraq, on any and all evidence in the files of western powers as to details and locations of suspected weapons.

As 2003 opens, President Bush's finger - or the unseen powers that are holding his hand - is on the biggest arms build-up and troop deployment the world has ever seen. There is enough fire-power to blow the Middle East to pieces. The United Nations has warned of an expected 900,000 refugees from any Iraq war, to add to the millions already dislocating borders and facilities round the world.

Ordinary people are also taking note of the seemingly-different reactions to different countries. Why no threat of a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, whose nuclear programme is far in advance of Iraq's (if the latter exists at all)? North Korea is supplying arms to such countries as Afghanistan and Yemen. Yet George Bush is conciliatory against a country with the potential to retaliate. Only the powerless are legitimate military targets it seems.

Israel, Pakistan and India, and obviously China, are all capable of nuclear aggression. Yet no gun is currently pointed in their direction. It is the 'reconstruction' of the Middle East, both in regard to oil and the festering sore of the occupied Palestinian territories, that is really on the drawing board of global war.

BURNING THE CAMPS

The Christmas period in Australia saw a co-ordinated spate of arson in Australia's refugee camps. High quality facilities were torched one after the other, causing millions of dollars damage. There seems little doubt that there was outside assistance in the organization behind this sabotage. The aim is to allow any and all refugees, whether illegal or not, immediate facilities in Australian communities.

The Weekend Australian (14-15/12/02) told us that 14,000 illegals, whose claim for refugee status had been denied, had gone underground in Australia: "Almost 14,000 failed asylum-seekers are on the run in Australia after having their refugee claims rejected, immigration authorities say. "An investigation by The Weekend Australian suggests that many absconders are being supported by an increasingly sophisticated underground network providing accommodation, medical care and financial support ...."
If that is the situation now, imagine what would happen if a further 900,000 Iraqis fled from an imminent war in their country; and Afghanistan bogged down, as seems to be the case, into a resumption of civil war with a resurrected Taliban and Al Qu'ida.

BE ALARMED - AND ALERT

$15 million dollars will be spent on the advertisement campaign which has started with Steve Liebman telling us to report suspicious incidents and to "be alert but not alarmed". Like many others, I have wondered what's behind it. It looks suspiciously like a tax-funded electioneering advertisement. There's no doubt, war, terrorism and the refugee crisis between them are, if played deftly, election winners. The Coalition may well have the pretext for a double dissolution in the next six months.
The Senate has rejected Darryl Williams' ASIO Bill. There is no doubt it will be put forward again. A second rejection could provide the trigger Howard wants for such a move. Any war moves in Iraq, any terrorist incident such as Bali, plus the anger over the torching of the refugee detention centres would provide the very psychology for another Howard victory. Crean and his cronies would be annihilated. Flushed with a third straight victory, Howard would probably leave office within a year, leaving a bloated Coalition to the tender mercies of Peter Costello. This is, of course, sheer speculation. But what are these expensive advertisements really all about?

Former NSW Auditor-General, Tony Harris, writing in The Australian Financial Review (7/1/03) said: " .... One of the explicit values the advertisements promote - that we should be alert - is incapable of sensible action. How many Australians will ever be in the position to notice the preparations made by terrorists? .... When the Commonwealth government asks its people to participate as anti-terrorism vigilantes, one has to be suspicious of its motives, because the untrained looking for the unlikely will consume considerable resources for nothing of value...."

FINANCIAL FURORE

The front page of The Australian Financial Review (2/1/03), as the world's stock markets opened for the first time in 2003, summed up the current outlook for the world's financial system: "Global financial markets open trading today dogged by fears about the health of the American economy and the possibility of war with Iraq, after Wall Street ended 2002 suffering from its third year of consecutive losses and its worst annual performance since the mid-1970s..... "

A total of about $US2.8 trillion was wiped from the value of America's listed companies in a year marred by accounting scandals, terrorism fears, escalating conflict with Iraq and a US economy that weakened in its second half.
"Other key global sharemarkets also notched up sharp losses. The UK's FTSE100 was down 24.5 per cent for 2002, its worst annual loss so far, while Japan's Nikkei 225 Index fell 18.5 per cent. Australia's S&P/ASX200 fell 12,1 per cent ...." A lot of commentators are pretending it's going to get better. Wishful thinking

THE CHERIE ON TONY'S CAKE

PETROL AND BIOFUELS

by Antonio Feitz
Yesterday I asked a mechanic whether ethanol is harmful to car engines. In reply he told me that he's been swearing at the TV over the current ethanol scare. He thinks the government is trying to demonise biofuels when according to him, methyl alcohol - not ethanol - is the best fuel for cars. It's non-polluting, kinder on engines, gives better performance, works at lower temperatures - his list went on and on. I asked, if in fact, the internal combustion engine runs better on methyl alcohol than petrol, why the hell aren't we growing our own fuel? Why aren't we designing engines that run efficiently on biofuels - methyl alcohol and vegetable oils - that we can grow? Imagine the benefit to regional Australia - or Canada, or Africa or wherever - if nations became self-sufficient in fuel.
Farms, not city-based oil refineries, would power nations. Nations wouldn't have to rely on imported expensive oil.

In reply, the mechanic said that there's no way any government in the world really wants self sufficiency. There's no way any government really wants sustainability either, he added. When I looked blank he said, just consider the tax revenue from petrol: governments can't AFFORD to go green! He's right. That's why there are so many carrots such as 3-year warranties for people to keep on trading in their cars every few years. There are sticks too to 'encourage' people to consume oil. As he said, it's getting harder and harder to register older cars - for 'safety' reasons of course. But there's a catch to upgrading, and it's more than the sinful waste of energy and natural resources to produce a 'throwaway' product. According to the mechanic, older cars can "with very little modification" be converted to run on biofuels. Newer cars with their computer fuel injected systems can't. So once you're hooked into ever-trading up you're a 'gonner' as far as biofuels go.

He also told me that years ago somebody invented a ceramic engine block. Unlike today's engines, it would never wear out. It never saw the light of day because our economy is based on waste and inefficiency. Instead of weeping at the felling of renewable trees isn't it time the greens established some cred with regional Australia? A campaign to introduce home grown, non-polluting biofuels in Australia would surely be a winner.

FORCE, FREEDOM AND THE STATE

by Joseph Sobran
The following snippets are from Mr. Sobran's speech to the George Orwell Free Speech Seminar Canada, November 2002, and were sent to us by Friends of Freedom newsletter - Douglas Christie's newsletter. We are sure many Australians will remember Doug Christie coming to Australia to warn us about the proposed 'war crimes' legislation.

"A few years ago it seemed inconceivable that freedom of speech would come under attack in Western civilisation... Today free speech is very much in danger... The enemies of freedom never wanted free speech, except for themselves. Now that they have achieved considerable power in the West, they are trying vigorously to deny it to their enemies. Their pretext? "Hate". That is, "hate" as they define it, "hate" speech only applies to their enemies. Apparently their own speech no matter how vitriolic, malicious and libellous, is "love" speech. Speech is deemed hateful not by the intention of the speaker, but by the reaction of the hearers, especially organised minority groups who enjoy the privileged status of officially certified victims: Jews, Negroes, Indians, homosexuals and any others who want to claim to have been "offended" by others' speech - except white Christians of course. They are presumed "haters".
But I wonder if it isn't a mistake, after all, to talk of free speech as if it were an essentially different thing, in a separate category, from other freedoms.

States have gone bad
When states have gone as bad as those of the US and Canada, maybe the problem isn't one of speech, but of the state itself... So far, the problem is much worse in Canada than in the United States, where it is largely confined to college campuses... even a foreign observer can see how seriously the Anglo-American tradition of free speech has already been eroded in Canada, as witness the criminal trials and legal harassment of those charged with "hate" speech... The same is true in Europe, Australia, and Israel, where people can be - and are - fined and imprisoned for expressing heterodox opinions. Alias "hate".

In a high-tech version of book-burning even Internet websites have been ordered to shut down. To us in the US, with our strong constitutional protections under the First Amendment, all this seems baffling. We can hardly believe it is happening in our sister democracies, because to us democracy seems inseparable from the right of free discussion. If people can't communicate freely, how can they vote freely? How can you have an open debate with a gag in your mouth? To us, freedom of speech is very nearly a sacred thing. It isn't just one of our freedoms, but the sovereign freedom - the one on which all others depend...

The first great American 'anarchist'
What's really going on here? The deepest changes in society often creep in unnoticed. As G.K Chesterton said: "Men can always be blind to a thing as long as its big enough."... The first great American 'anarchist' was Lysander Spooner, who died more than a century ago. His argument was simple. There is a natural and unchangeable moral law, which forbids slavery. No man has the right to force others to do his will. The state not only claims such a right, but claims a monopoly of force - the right to force its subjects to accept its laws as morally binding ... To say that society requires the state amounts to saying that human social life depends on granting some men power to kill and enslave others, rather than on freedom, love, co-operation and production. By this logic, the Soviet Union should have been the most prosperous of societies. But it was just the opposite. Ruling with uninhibited terror, it killed, enslaved, and impoverished millions, never producing so much as a new egg-beater or can-opener. Force is the mortal enemy of creation..."

DR. FRED TOBEN TO APPEAL FEDERAL COURT WEBSITE DECISION

A SNIPPET IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

"Visitors to the New England region with an interest in fringe political movements might care to visit the Australian League of Rights Collection at the University of New England. A fiercely anti-communist organisation, the League bases its principles on the 'social credit' theories of C.H. Douglas, a rabidly anti-Semitic British economic theorist. The university collection comprises a range of League publications. Today, 9am-5pm. Karl Schanide Special Collections Room, Dixson Library, University of New England, Armidale..." 8/1/2003.

Editor's note: I wonder how many viewed the Collection? Remember the Adelaide Constitutional Museum Exhibition the League held a number of years ago? The rabble rousers and rent-a-crowds had Spike Milligan as their chief spokesman against us. But just quietly, we think the Museum authorities were pleased with it all. We heard on the grapevine the Museum had more people go through their doors during our exhibition than at any other time up to then!

"HOUSE" TACTICS LEAVE VETERAN FARMER AMAZED

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Australian, January 7th. 2003:
Ready for war
Much has been written about the correlation between the US role in the Gulf and that country's central role in the global politics of oil. However, there has been no more striking illustration of what is ultimately driving this descent towards war than your report from the Detroit Motor Show (Motoring, 9/1/2003). While the rest of the world is producing more fuel-efficient vehicles, US manufacturers are heading in the opposite direction with gas-guzzlers. General Motors has unveiled a V16 Cadillac limousine, Ford a V10 sedan and Chrysler a massive V10 motorbike. What can rationalize this extravagance? A car culture based upon cheap plentiful gasoline. Plentiful and cheap gasoline for the US is modern history's equivalent of free bread for Rome's citizens 2000 years ago. Both represent a spiralling political catch-22 that once instituted in times of plenty cannot be extinguished in times of diminished resources or enlightenment. President Bush declared early in his presidency that "America would not change its way of life". And so it won't. But at what price? ...... Rohen Conners, Cheltenham, NSW.

G-G is the commander-in-chief
In his article (Opinion, 3/1/2003) concerning the office of governor-general, Professor George Williams mentions that most of the functions of the governor-general are symbolic and do not involve the exercise of political or legal power. He made no reference to the exercise by the governor-general of "the command-in-chief" of the armed forces. Because the Defence Force soon seem destined to become subject to the exercise of that "command", some discussion of this aspect seems warranted.
Former governor-general Sir Paul Hasluck discussed this in the notes to his 1979 booklet The Office of Governor-General, concerning the use of the armed forces. Hasluck postulates the prime minister has decided to use troops to deal with an expected outbreak of civil disorder, requiring the governor-general, before accepting that advice, to satisfy himself that all necessary arrangements have been completed. But here is Hasluck's punch line: "As in so many other areas of government, the governor-general is the final check against ill-considered or precipitate action." This is germane to the situation Professor Williams raises. The public hears nothing of the functioning or otherwise of that office, particularly as to this final check aspect. Yet this final check is far from merely a symbolic function. ......
John D. Pratt, Kings Park, SA.

BASIC FUND

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

APPOINTMENT OF LEAGUE OFFICIALS

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

Independent member for Hammond, Peter Lewis, is working very hard to give South Australians a say in the performance and accounta-bility of Governance in this State. Of particular interest is the proposal for Citizen's Initiated Referenda which is on the agenda. This is a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity for South Australians - but it is not going to happen if they let the opportunity slip through their fingers! Invite Peter Lewis to speak to your local community! Make the opportunity available for him to explain to your community what he seeks to achieve - and give your local community the chance to tell him what they want.

Submissions called for
The public has been invited to make submissions about the issues. Have your say. Don't say you weren't given the opportunity. Now is the time! On Target readers have been reading about CIR for more years than we would like to count. Circumstances have never been so favourable as they are now to see it instituted. For more information or for sending in a submission contact:
Constitutional Convention, PO Box 464, Adelaide 5001. Phone: (08) 8204 1310; Fax: (08) 8204 1336;
E-mail: convention@agd.sa.gov.au
Website: constitutionalconvention.sa.gov.au

SENATE INQUIRY INTO GATS AND US-FTA

General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement Submissions due March 21st, 2003. For further information on the Senate Inquiry please contact smitchell@piac.asn.au or visit www.piac.asn.qu

The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee invite individuals and organisations with knowledge and information relevant to the inquiry's terms of reference to lodge submissions by Friday, March 21st, 2003. The Senate has decided on the terms of the Inquiry which the Public Interest Advocacy Centre lobbied for.
These terms of reference are: On December 12th, 2002, the Senate referred the following matters to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee for inquiry and report by November 27th, 2003.

Send submissions to: The Secretary, Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee Suite S1.57 Parliament House, CANBERRA, ACT, 2600, or E-mail: fadt.sen@aph.gov.au

It's no use complaining AFTER the GATS treaty is signed and is costing you and your family dearly!