THE GOLDEN AGE OF 'SPIN'

The latest incredible portrayals of falling statues, ecstatic crowds of liberated Iraqis and humble western politicians is a modern mixture of Aesop's Fables and Hans Christian Anderson's fairy stories. Gradually, the whole emphasis of the war has been shifted from "weapons of mass destruction" to "liberation". It's only a matter of time until the leader of 'the three musketeers' (George Dubya) makes the grand journey to Main Street, Baghdad, to stand with one foot on a fallen statue of Saddam, and one of the "li'l chil'ren" of liberated Iraq in his arms, from whence he will regale us all once more about how he stands for "peace 'n freedom". And, of course, the other two musketeers (Tony and John) should be in close attendance, heroes of the hour, with disclaiming smiles of denial on their honest faces as they acknowledge the plaudits of the world, (and of course, the "li'l chil'ren" of Iraq).

If you wonder sacrilegiously what the final statistics are on the number of people dead or missing, the families destroyed, the injured in hospital, the homes in ruins, you've missed the whole point. All the damage was a necessary part of the liberation, and was kept to the minimum! Besides, the more damage, the fatter the contracts for global reconstruction companies already jostling for post-war contracts in Iraq. Didn't you know? Big wars and massive collateral damage are good for the economy!

And Saddam Hussein? Has he already entered the land of legends? There is intense speculation on his whereabouts - blasted into thin air, hiding in an underground bunker, or spirited away across some border - Iran or Syria, or perhaps even Libya - which means, of course, he will have to be followed to ensure the "peace 'n freedom" of the countries sheltering him. Future foreign policy, of course, needs its rogues' gallery for sustaining the cause of "peace 'n freedom'.
The Saddams and Osamas of this world, with the odd Kim Jong Il are the necessary demons to galvanize "the forces of good" into action.
How long can this propaganda pageant be sustained?

Of course, its what the mums and dads round the world want to see. They want to know the game is over, with a clear-cut home victory; and they are not eager for anything that might mar such a comforting image. "I am not going to use the "V-words" ("Victory" and "Vindication")", quoth our venerable Prime Minister. "But we have won, and we're right to send our troops", he added. His obedient and compliant party members breathing collective sighs of relief, the Opposition rendered inconsequential by the plaudits of the moment, and the peace demonstrations - again for the moment - having melted away, Prime Minister Howard has every reason to be satisfied.

As the last of our Hornets fly south, and our troops - who have carried out a hard, dangerous and distasteful job superbly - safely home again, what a time for a Federal election! But then, the Liberals and the Nationals are far too lofty to take advantage of their momentary popularity to 'cash in' - aren't they?

THE TRUTH IS DIFFERENT

Without the global monopoly media 'rah-rah-ing' every bomb and crater, this story would not prevail. Indeed, there are signs that the more experienced journalists find it all a little too much.
Veteran Paul Kelly (The Australian, 11/4/03) commented wryly: "… This was the moment, so Howard took it. He compared the upheaval to the implosion of the Soviet empire, a false but effective analogy. The demise of Iraq's tyranny is the point of maximum support for a war that was divisive in its inception and will be divisive in its aftermath. "We wish the people of Iraq well for the future," Howard said. He did not mention the civilian deaths, the hospital toll, the humanitarian crisis. Nor did Howard lay claim to victory. He had another purpose - to seek moral justification for a war seen by many as an illegal act of aggression and to which he had committed Australia without UN sanction. Howard wants the image of celebrating Iraqis, not mothers weeping over dead children, to frame this conflict in history's lens and Australia's memory …."

So engrossed has the US become with its own moral and military superiority that it is already talking about further wars. The leading front-page article in the same Australian proclaimed: "After sweeping away three decades of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime in just three weeks, a buoyant Bush administration yesterday warned other rogue states it was prepared to repeat the 'spectacular' success of its blitzkrieg in Baghdad …"
To "bring peace" and liberate "li'l chil'ren" of course.

Peter Hartcher (The Australian Financial Review 11/4/03) offered this sobering assessment: "…. How many Middle Eastern countries are ruled by tyrants, or harbour terrorists, or both? Only Israel is a democracy. All the others - including US friends such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt - are ruled by autocrats. And several, most notably Iran, Syria and Lebanon, harbour terrorists. Cheney is calling for nothing short of region-wide revolution ….. All indications are that the toppling statues of Hussein mark the beginning of a long and difficult new American revolutionary project for the remaking of the Middle East and an early phase of World War Four - the war on terrorism, according to former CIA director James Woolsey, a tireless advocate of war on Iraq.
That is a much less reassuring thought. And that is just how America's neo-conservative cheerleaders - who support the Bush administration from the outside, and have written the script for its foreign policy to date - want it."

Just a little amplification: While Israel is a multi-party State, its other claims to democracy are illusory. Its Arab-Palestinian peoples are, in essence, second-class citizens, denied many basic rights that potential Jewish immigrants have before they even arrive. It has all the hallmarks of apartheid. For "neo-conservatives" in America, read "dual loyalty, Israel-oriented Zionists." It contains the 'movers-and-shakers in Bush's war cabinet. Israel's dominance over US foreign policy is so complete that Israel increasingly emerges as the real victor. Without deploying any of its own troops it has seen a major threat and financial supporter of the Palestinians brought to its knees.
Syria and Lebanon, major thorns in Israel's side, are now under direct threat from the US. Israel, it seems, has only to point a finger and a blind and suppliant Caliban, in the form of the US, is only too keen to send its own sons and daughters to fight and die in the Israeli cause.
Under the global distraction with the fighting in Iraq, Israel has busily continued its destruction of Gaza and the West Bank. More than anything, this has been Israel's war.

WHERE DOES IT END?

JUST A LITTLE HOMELY CELEBRATION

THE AMAZING PARADOX

from William Barclay's commentary

The Fourth Gospel was the one written to present the truth of Christianity in a way that the Greeks could appreciate and understand; and it is natural that in it the first Greeks to come to Jesus should find a place. Hardly any passage in the New Testament would come with such a shock to those who heard it for the first time as this. It begins with a saying which everyone would expect; and it finishes with a series of sayings which were the last things anyone would expect.
"The hour has come," began Jesus, "when the Son of Man should be glorified." It was clear that things had been building up to a crisis and that crisis had now come. But Jesus' idea of what that crisis involved was quite different from anyone else's. When he talked about the Son of Man, he did not mean what other people meant. To understand the shocking nature of this short paragraph we must grasp something of what the Jews understood by Son of Man. That term took its origin in Daniel 7:13. In that passage the Authorized Version mistranslates. It has it that one like unto the Son of Man came to the Ancient of Days, and received a kingdom, a glory and a dominion that were to be universal and for ever. The correct translation is not the Son of Man, but a son of man as the Revised Standard Version has it.

Symbols of world powers: The point of the passage is this. In Daniel 7:1-8 the writer has been describing the world powers which have held sway, the Assyrian, the Babylonians, the Medes and the Persians. They were so cruel, so savage, so sadistic that they could be described only under the imagery of wild beasts -- the lion with the eagle's wings, the bear with the three ribs between its teeth, the leopard with the four wings and the four heads, and the terrible beast with iron teeth and ten horns. These were symbols of the powers which had hitherto held sway. But it was the dream of the seer that into the world there was going to come a new power, and that power was to be gentle and humane and gracious, so that it could be depicted under the symbol, not of a savage beast, but of a man.
This passage means that the day of savagery would pass and the day of humanity was coming. That was the dream of the Jews, the golden age, when life would be sweet and they would be masters of the world. (emphasis added).
But how was that age to come?

It became clearer and clearer to them that their nation was so small and their power so weak, that the golden age could never come by human means and human power; it must come by the direct intervention of God. He would send his champion to bring it in. So they thought back to the picture in the book of Daniel, and what more natural than that they should call the champion the Son of Man? The phrase which had once been merely a symbol came to describe a person.

Between the Old and the New Testament there arose a whole series of books about the golden age and how it was to come. Amidst their troubles and their sufferings, in their subjections and their slaveries, the Jews never forgot and never gave up their dream. One of these books was specially influential -- the Book of Enoch and it repeatedly speaks about that Son of Man.
In Enoch The Son of Man is a tremendous figure who, as it were, is being held in leash by God. But the day will come when God will release him and he will come with a divine power against which no man and no kingdom will be able to stand, and smash the way to world empire for the Jews.
To the Jews the Son of Man stood for the undefeatable world conqueror sent by God. (Their Messiah…ed)

So Jesus says: "The hour has come when the Son of Man must be glorified." When he said that, the listeners would catch their breath. They would believe that the trumpet call of eternity had sounded, that the might of heaven was on the march, and that the campaign of victory was on the move. But Jesus did not mean 'by glorified' what they understood. They meant that the subjected kingdoms of the world grovel before the conqueror's feet; 'by glorified' he meant crucified.
When the Son of Man was mentioned they thought of the conquest of the armies of God; he meant the conquest of the Cross.

The first sentence which Jesus spoke would excite the hearts of those who heard it; then began a succession of sayings which must have left them staggered and bewildered by the sheer incredibility, for he spoke, not in terms of conquest, but in terms of sacrifice and death. We will never understand Jesus nor the attitude of the Jews to him, until we understand how he turned their ideas upside down, replacing a dream of conquest with a vision of a Cross. No wonder they did not understand him; the tragedy is that they refused to try."

TO LEAVE RELIGION OUT OF ONE'S FACTORING IS FOOLISH

There are those who think On Target should leave religion out of the equations, the discussions; after all, the letters say, we are really dealing with politics and finance. The implication being religion is of no consequence in these affairs. Not so!

People act according to their beliefs - whether they believe in a spiritual dimension of Life or not. We cannot possibly understand what motivates George Bush, Tony Blair, or John Howard, or those around them, without understanding their beliefs. We need to know who have programmed the three 'leaders'. If your group, community, sect, or whatever, held the belief it was to rule the world and that it would be accomplished by financial, political and military might, wouldn't you be about making sure you were in control of finances, politics and the mightiest military machine of the age? Wouldn't you be doing just what the 'Coalition of the Willing' (COW) are now doing?
They are acting according to their beliefs - their religion.

What if there be only a God of Sinai and no God of the Soul of Man?
We are now going to find that out with great cost. Over the centuries, through much trial and error, the English-speaking peoples rested the great weight of their social order upon the belief that free, creative men, men of goodwill, through their institutional representatives could insist on that which is fair, that which is just. The weight of that social order, the British-Christian culture, came to rest on relationships based on mutual love and co-operation.
Over this most holy time of the Christian calendar we encourage our readers to consider what we have written.

The aim of the Australian League of Rights, (a movement of the mind and spirit) is to stir up that spirit within you; to challenge you to join the battle for the hearts and minds of the men and women of this land, and to defend what remains of our heritage of a British-Australian Christian culture.

THE GREAT WHORE OF BABYLON

Whilst pouring over a map of modern Iraq, I was struck by the fact it was in that region the first recorded civilisation - of which we have knowledge - sprang up. The Land of Sumer, the Sumerian civilisation. It is to that region that the ancient biblical "Great Whore of Babylon" can be traced. Babylon was then the religious/financial power which became known to New Testament readers as 'Mammon'.

As an aside, Saddam Hussein had the ancient city rebuilt - as any tourist to Iraq can verify. I wonder does it still stand after the recent mass bombing in Iraq?

In his brilliant paraphrasing of chapters 17,18,and 19 of the book of Revelation, author Peter Lock explains for us the Great Whore of Babylon, and helps us to understand that the Great Whore was not a person but a symbol for an international financial power. A power which had, over time, prostituted the role, the true purpose, of money. He writes:

"The Grand Madam of Babylon was drunk and in maudlin mood. She sat on her throne beside the meeting place of the abundant waters from many rivers. All peoples, all nations of every language congregated here in submissive obeisance to her. All the kings and rulers of the world had come to her and committed fornication with her. All the dwellers of the earth had offered tribute to her and become drunk with the wine of her dalliance and adulterous deceit… Once more she would ride out into the desert and survey the wilderness her greed and financial follies had created…"

David Astle wrote of the ancient power in his book The Babylonian Woe. He concentrates on the priest-kings, because they had 'played the harlot' with the Grand Madam, they had come to forget they were responsible to their Heavenly Father, for the maintenance of right(eous) relationships and peaceful associations of their peoples. They had forgotten that the foundations of their true power were the laws of the distribution of surpluses (tithing system, payment in kind) as written on the scribe's tablet. The scribes had resorted to 'cooking the books of the national accounting systems. No longer did they keep true records.

The Grand Madam: The seductive power of the Grand Madam had usurped the law of the priest-kings (just as today) previously exercised towards the well being of their people. The law itself was now an empty shell, a symbol, raised before the eyes of the people, in order that they might not look down and see the evil gnawing away at the roots of the Tree of Life itself.

C.H. Douglas (Programme for the Third World War) believed there was still in existence, somewhere, a baked Chaldean tile which has inscribed on it an almost perfect prototype of the modern Bill of Exchange - the basic document of international finance. He thought the technique probably came via Egypt from Chaldea.

Once again she "stakes her claim': We reported last week - Brian Whitaker's email "Beyond Baghdad".
"Meanwhile, Iraq's government-in-waiting, which the US is setting up under great secrecy in Kuwait, is beset by political turmoil. Pentagon hardliners appear to be mounting a coup d'etat even before the government has any territory to control… One of the first concerns of this government-in-waiting is what to do about Iraqi banknotes which - horror of horrors - carry a picture of Saddam Hussein. Their solution, according to the Washington Post, is to scrap the Iraqi dinar and replace it with the US dollar. This will doubtless be viewed by all Iraqis as conclusive proof of America's imperialist intentions."

The insignia of the Grand Madam's "New Social Order" appears on the reverse of the American dollar. Those Iraqis who have studied the Grand Madam's ancient order will recognise the insignia. William Guy Carr wrote about it in Pawns in the Game.

[Further reading: Nesta Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements; Peter Lock, The Great Harlot; William Guy Carr Pawns in the Game; C.H. Douglas, Programme for the Third World War. Books available from all League book services.]

MAKING THE WORLD SAFE - FOR BANKERS

It took about 100 years to rediscover the dark secrets of the Modern Grand Madam, but discover them we have. Internet journalist Henry Makow Ph.D. wrote: "International bankers live in fear. Not of starvation, disease or war. These are the concerns of children in the third World. Bankers are terrified we might object to paying them billions each year in interest for money they create out of nothing, guaranteed by our taxes. (The Federal Reserve Board, a private cartel of mostly foreign banks, finagled this monopoly in 1913.)
Editor's note: In England it was the Bank of England founded in 1694.

The bankers are:-
· Frightened that, like the homeless man's dog, we might say, "I can do this myself."
· Scared the government might go even further and 'default' on trillions of make-believe 'debt'.
· Frightened of losing control.

In order to sleep more soundly, the bankers have taken 'steps'. These precautions help us to understand the world we live in, why it is becoming more bizarre for everyone else. First people with money machines tend to have a lot of friends. The bankers helped their friends establish monopolies in oil, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, transportation, media, etc. and took a healthy stake. As you can imagine, these people are thick as thieves (they are thieves! …ed.) Lawyers, journalists and intellectuals all vie for a piece of the action. (Serving this cartel of cartels is what passes for success these days.)… The bankers use the government and media to convince us that religion, nationalism and nuclear family are unfashionable, and we want what they want…"

UNFINISHED 'BUSINESS IS BUSINESS'

According to a report published by the US watchdog "Centre for Public Integrity", at least 10 out of 30 members of the Pentagon committee are executives or lobbyists with companies that have tens of billions dollars' worth of contracts with the US Defence Department and other government agencies. Most decent people's feelings were summed up by Vacy Vlazna in the The Australian "Letters to the Editor", 5-6/4/03:

"It gets worse - the sickening sight of business jackals fighting over who will get the reconstruction of Iraq pickings."

Shame on the 179 Australian companies who it was reported wanted to profit from the Iraqi peoples' misery.

MILITARY/INDUSTRIAL/FINANCIAL CLIQUE HAVE GAME SOWN UP

Push for a war between two nations - from a safe distance of course. Make sure others' sons and daughters do the fighting and dying for you. Have the government declare war on the 'offending' party (nation). Have government raise the funds for the war through the parasitic banking system. Finance both sides in the conflict through the international banking system. Banking system will create the new money out of nothing and loan it to the government - with interest charges of course - great profits to be had here! All new money comes into existence as a debt to the banking system, therefore, for every dollar created there will be an equivalent dollar debt somewhere in the system. Someone, somewhere, will have to find that dollar equivalent to repay the parasitic banks.
Bomb and blast the defenceless people and the physical structures of the 'offending' party (nation) into oblivion with the most sophisticated 'weapons of mass destruction'. Accuse them of committing the 'crime'. Wars are great for future employment - no more stockpiles of old 'weapons of mass destruction'. Creates more 'employment'. Make the taxpayers pay back the banks the-created-out-of-nothing-money, with interest charges of course.
Thereby, the people, the dupes, are made to cover the costs for the war.

Australia's 'cost' we have been told is around $1billion - not including interest charges. Military/industrial/financial clique then 'tee up' contracts with the government for the lucrative business of 'reconstructing' the physical and social structures of the offending party (nation). The Iraqi people will have to pay for the 'reconstruction,' the damage done to their country by these warmongers, via payments of oil for food and reconstruction - let alone any International Monetary Fund loans.
SBS News 11/4/03 reported the cost to the Iraqi people for the 'reconstruction' of their country was estimated to be about US$500 billion.
Oh! What a lovely WAR!

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE WITH YOUR OWN MONEY?

BASIC FUND

LETTERS

The following letter was received by Edward Rock of Cape Paterson in response to a letter he sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It is self-explanatory.

Dear Edward, Thank you for your letter about debt and money issues. I have just come from a meeting with the leadership of Christian Aid in which we discussed these matters, and I have meetings with some people in government this week on the same question. Many of us here are strongly committed to advocating change, and to the vision you speak of; it is depressing when Christians treat money as an issue outside morality.
Do you know the work of Bishop Peter Selby on this, especially his book, Grace and Mortgage? I hope you will continue to remind the Church of these priorities. In Christ, Rowen.

Edward Rock comments: We may be on the threshold of a major breakthrough. Our task is to pray without ceasing that all those ordained in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost will come to know the mind of Christ concerning the creation and control of money, and use that gift to release Christ's flock from the power of mammon. Good as it is, Peter Selby's book does not cover that key principle. Your friend in Christ. Edward Rock, Cape Paterson Vic.

For those who would follow Edward's example, the Archbishop's address is: Lambeth Palace, London SEl 7JU United Kingdom.