22 July 2005. Thought for the Week: "Considered
as a means of making people work (an aim which is common both to the
Capitalist and Socialist Party politics) the existing financial system,
as a system, is probably nearly perfect. Its banking system, methods
of taxation and accountancy counter every development of applied science,
organisation, and machinery, so that the individual, instead of obtaining
the benefit of these advances in the form of a higher civilisation and
greater leisure, is merely enabled to do more work. Every other factor
in the situation is ultimately sacrificed to this end of providing him
with work, and at this moment the world in general
is settling
down to a policy of intensive production for export, which must quite
inevitably result in a world cataclysm, urged thereto by what is known
as the Unemployment Problem
Considered as a mechanism for distributing
goods, however, the existing financial system is radically defective
"
Clifford Hugh Douglas in "Warning Democracy," 1931. |
QUALITIES THAT TRANSCEND by John Brett |
LONDON BOMBINGS - 'WE ARE ALL 'by Felicity ArbuthnotFelicity is a freelance journalist stationed in London. 11th July 2005. 'Guilty until proved innocent' is a new facet to British justice. "The innocent always bear the scars, suffer the ultimate sacrifice, of mistaken political policies. However, the sadness of the deaths and casualties of 7/7 have been compounded by the reckless language of lawyers who should know better. Prime Minister Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw near instantly pointed the finger in intemperate language, at Islam. The pieces, the injured, the bodies and body parts were still being treated, accounted for and retrieved - there is no evidence as to who committed these acts (as at 11th July ed). Today a white tent has been erected at the side of the Thames, in Embankment Gardens and designated a Memorial Garden. Flowers have been planted and white bouquets left by Ministers and Church dignitaries and a book of condolence opened. 'We are all Londoners today', we were told on the day of the tragedy. To those to whom "in our name": A white tent is often erected at Muslim mournings, of course. So may we add also the humblest and most inadequate of apologies to those to whom in our name, the same unimaginable grief has been visited. There is a countless humanity who are not alone 'all Londoners today'. Today, we are also 'all' Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, the forgotten of the Balkans war. We are also all from the seventeen other nations, forgotten victims of American aggression, since the 'liberation' of Europe in 1945 - China 1945-46, 1950-53; Korea 1950-53; Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69; Indonesia 1958; Cuba 1959-61; Congo 1964; Peru 1965; Laos 1964-73; Vietnam 1961-73; Cambodia 1969-70; Lebanon 1983-84; Grenada 1983; Libya 1986; El Salvador 1980s; Nicaragua 1980s; Panama 1989; Sudan 1998. Any human heart bleeds for any tragedy, anywhere. And that is the key. Humanity shares tragedy. John Donne, British thinker and poet, dead nearly four hundred years is as poignant, now as then. He truly speaks for our common humanity which transcends race, language, location, colour - 'No man is an island, entire unto itself, Every man is a piece of the globe - A part of the main. Any man's death diminishes me, I am involved in Mankind, And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.' |
BLACK IS WHITE AND "BLACK" IS VERY ANGRYby James ReedCould it really be? At last I have found the ultimate reduction to absurdity of identity politics, 'We're Black and Proud, Say "Whites,'" The Weekend Australian, 25-26th June 2005. A group of people who claim they are Aborigines, the Lia Pootah (Little River) nation, are not recognized by the Tasmanian Office of Aboriginal Affairs as being Aboriginals. Consequently they are missing out on all the fringe benefits including government benefits, land council elections and special sites. Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre's legal adviser Michael Mansell (remember him, the blue-eyed Tasmanian activist?) says that they are "fakes" who "don't have a single drop of Aboriginal blood in their veins." Long live DNA testing! The Tasmanian State Government put through legislation, which has now been passed, tightening the definition of "Aboriginal". Under the new test, one must demonstrate: · Aboriginal ancestry · Identify as an Aborigine · Have communal recognition from the Aboriginal community. Those who identify as Lia Pootah say the test is much harder for them to satisfy than it is for Aborigines known as "Palawa'. They describe the Palawa "as those Aborigines whose forbears were taken to Bass Strait islands by missionary George A. Robinson in the 1830s, or by European sealers who kidnapped Aboriginal "wives". Whereas the Lia Pootah, they say, are descendants of those who remained on "mainland" Tasmania as maids and "wives" of Europeans, or in pockets of surviving tribal groups. Legislation amounts to "genocide": A Lia Pootah spokeswoman, Kaye McPherson claims the new three-point test strips 14,000 people of their Aboriginality and the recent legislation amounts to genocide and have lodged documents with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Ms. McPherson says her great-grandmother was an Aborigine and insists that such relatively distant family links are relevant in today's Tasmania. They hope that the UN will intervene in the same way that they did in forcing changes to Tasmania's anti-homosexual laws in the 1990s. Editor's note: A number of years ago the Heritage Journal published an old photograph of a group of Tasmanian Aborigines who looked nothing like the mainland Aborigines. Neither did they look anything like the earlier aborigines known as the Negritos or "little people" who, so it appears, were nearly wiped out by succeeding waves of other 'aborigines'. One can't help but wonder - just which group, or groups, have been here for all these 'thousands of years'? |
THE WAGES OF ASIANISATIONby James ReedDaniel Sweeseang Kwok, Jenny Lai Chin Ong, her son Raymond Aik Tong Tan and Hosea Prayudi Saputra Yoe are being tried before judge Robert Keleman of the Downing District Court on sex slavery charges "Sex Slaves Forced to Work Off $45,000 'Debts'," The Australian, 1 July, 2005. Eight women had been brought to Australia from South East Asia, some believing that they were to work as waitresses. These women were kept under lock and key in an apartment and had no choice about the sordid life of prostitution that they were forced into. They were forced to have sex with 900 "clients" to pay off a contracted debt of $45,000. The women arrived in Australia on tourist visas but had their passports and other documents taken away by the Asian criminals. The criminals then made applications on their behalf for refugee status, reasoning that it would take years for a case to work its way through the refugee appeal system thus allowing the girls to work. This is the true face of "Asianisation," something the Founding Fathers of Australia in devising the White Australia Policy, hoped to avoid |
THE VALIDITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTby Ian Wilson LL.B.In various seminars and Freedom Movement publications, you may have come across the following argument for the invalidity of local government. Premise one: Australia became an independent Sovereign Member nation State of the League of Nations following the ratification by both the Senate and House of Representatives of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, 1 October, 1919. Members of the League of Nations, and later the United Nations, agrees not to use, alter or tamper with the laws of another Member State: Premise two: Therefore by assuming executive authority and assenting to any law, the Monarch of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is breaching international law. Therefore any law assented to by, say, Queen Elizabeth II or her appointed Governor in Council cannot be legally valid. There fore local government does not legally exist in Australia, e.g., the Local Government Act 1989 (Victoria) is not valid. Such an argument, if sound, would demolish all post 1 October 1919 Australian laws, not merely local government acts. As most State courts, especially Supreme Courts were established by post 1 October 1919 statutes, all such common law decisions would be invalid too. This type of argument is similar to a radical kind of argument put to the High Court by Aboriginal activists some years ago in Coe: the laws of Australia are in a sense "invalid" because Australia was not founded in accordance with international law. However, international law is not a "supra-national" entity, but ultimately dependent on the agreements made by states as actors. "Tampering" with the laws of member States of the UN does not relate to issues of Royal Assent. If Royal Assent, however that was viewed was part of the pre-existing law of the signing Member Nations, then by definition it can't constitute tampering. In fact, there is a counter argument which mirrors the "anti- local government" argument which says that if the Royal Assent mechanism was changed by the Monarch, then "tampering" has occurred! Clearly the anti-local government argument is wrong. Beware of bush lawyers. I have noticed a dangerous tendency in the Freedom Movement for bush lawyers to attempt to help people in need through supplying legal strategies which involve absurdly radical arguments. Remember: courts are not places where philosopher-gods objectively decide issues. Courts are also political entities. Decisions are made often on "public policy considerations" and other pragmatic criteria. No court would ever take seriously any quasi-legal/philosophical argument which invalidated the existing totality of pre-existing law. Even Mabo, perhaps the High Court's most radical decision which revised the doctrine of terra nullius revised part of Australian property law. The idea that Australian sovereignty was in question was rejected by the Court as non-justiable, meaning beyond the power of a court to decide. The argument considered here would be rejected by High Court, without question. (Please note: This article is also published in July, 2005 The Newtimes Survey to ensure wider circulation). |
BIG BROTHER - ABOUT BIG BROTHERby James ReedMuch has been made about the nudity and other forms of cultural degeneracy in the Channel 10 TV show "Big Brother". Three episodes of the programme are to be investigated by the Australian Broadcasting Authority. I saw some episodes of last year's show where a Black man with a red-haired girl friend won the show. If last year's show was about the joy on interracial sexuality this year's theme is even starker. The theme tends to be separation of the sexes and the celebration of lesbianism. Is this show a threat to the young? I feared so, until I spoke to many young people watching the show. The results surprised me. Most of the young people in my sample thought that the boys were "wankers" and the girls "bitches". They watched the show to laugh at their most despised character. They were not troubled by the "sex". "What sex," I was told, "these people are just B-grade actors talking big basically a bunch of losers". I am feeling optimistic about the future. The libertarian ideology of the 1960s is dead. No amount of TV hype can resurrect it. The young are realists and at last we have the chance to reach a generation through the internet and on-line news. |
FURTHER TO 3RD WORLD DEBT 'FORGIVENESS' AND 'AID'by Betty LuksWhilst reading the following article by Aiden Hartley keep in the back of your mind Clifford Hugh Douglas' words penned in 1931. You still can't get figs from thistles no matter what label you may put on them. Those who pull the strings behind the scenes keep forcing a wedge between those people who consider themselves 'left' of centre and those who see themselves as 'right' - but who all desire to live in peace and security with their fellow man. C.H. Douglas wrote: "Capitalism
has,
in fact, evolved, for the express purpose of still further fettering
the individual in the toils of the economic system. With the exception
of the fact that a higher standard of technical ability has been applied
to their organisation, the large Government Departments, such as the
Post Office, the grouped railway companies, or the huge industrial organisations
such as, for instance, Imperial Chemical Industries, are indistinguishable
from the ideals of State Socialism, at any rate, in its more finished
stage, and it is significant that Fascism in Italy, which was the Capitalists'
reply to Communism, is practically indistinguishable to the unprejudiced
observer from the so-called Bolshevism of Russia, which is at present
our only avowedly socialistic commonwealth." Now read on
|
WHAT A 'SWAP'by Betty LuksI recently heard the discussion on an ABC Radio morning programme. The people on the group of islands known as the Maldives bore their share of the brunt of the Tsunami as it swept across their islands carrying all in its path out to sea. The islanders lost all; not only their homes and means of livelihood, but also the tourist dollar when the holiday resorts were also washed out to sea. But worse was to come. Their sewage, usually directed out to sea in one particular direction, was washed back upon them, fouling and contaminating everything, including and especially their drinking water. But the mercantile spirit came to the fore and the Japanese made a good 'swap'. What was the swap? Flat screened TVs in return for the fish the local fishermen harvest from the generous waters around them. How do I know this? A Rotarian explained it over the radio programme- having recently been out to the Maldives to assess the peoples' needs, such as a water-purification plant, he was astounded to find that in each make-shift tent home was a flat-screened TV! The islanders were provided with temporary Arab tents for shelter - but the tents took in water, so, above the tents were placed tarpaulins. But his biggest surprise was to discover that all had flat-screened TVs in their makeshift shelters. Here are a people who lack the most basic needs of permanent shelter and clean water and yet it is a private charity - Rotary - that has to come to their rescue. We won't ask what happened to the millions of dollars the people of the world donated to the Tsumani appeals. |
LETTERSTo the Editor of The Age, 10th July 2005:It is regrettable that the Government has agreed to facilitate the extradition of 83 year-old Perth pensioner Charles Zentai to face a war crimes charge in Hungary ("Police hold alleged Nazi war criminal", 9/7). Sixty years on it is too late to prosecute people on such charges. Memories will be unreliable and evidence from very aged witnesses untrustworthy. It is also inhumane to treat an octogenarian in this way. The claims against Zentai depend upon testimonies delivered in a communist court in a post-war context of hysterical opposition to Nazism. Documentary evidence that might exculpate him may well have been destroyed or lost. Senator Ellison's argument that Australian law has been satisfied is hollow. In 1999, after several Australian cases against alleged Nazi war criminals had failed, our war crimes legislation was amended so as to remove the important safeguard whereby a foreign country seeking extradition had to provide a prima facie case that a relevant offence had been committed. It is unlikely that Zentai will receive justice in Hungary, where the legal processes, originating in communist courts, will heavily favour the prosecution. In 1948 the US authorities in Germany refused a request from Hungary to extradite Zentai. If he was to be tried, he was entitled to due process then. Our Government's decision now raises concerns that Australian citizens in the future, in different contexts, may no longer be adequately defended by their own government from extradition to satisfy ideologically-based campaigns. Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic. |
SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUBThe next SCSC will be held on Thursday, 28th July 2005, and guest speaker will be Emeritus Professor David Flint, his subject will be "Malice in Media Land," which is the subject of his latest book. David Flint, a former Dean of the UTS, Head of the Press Council and a former member of the Broadcasting Authority has many and varied interests. Cost of attendance, $5 and the venue is: The Lithuanian Club, 16 East Terrace, Bankstown, approx. 500 metres from the Bankstown Railway Station. Come early to browse through the books available for sale. |
SAVE TELSTRA SELL JOHN!Hasco has launched a great "message-card campaign" against the sale of Telstra. The theme is "Save Telstra and Sell John!" with the following message:"A government which persistently and deliberately defies the considered will of the people on a single issue destroys the democracy which gave it office in the first place." The cards are aimed at all sections of the community (appealing to them to join in the battle) - Radio, TV, business leaders, community organizations, your political representative - the receiver limited only by your imagination. Send for your supply, with cheque or money order to: Hasco, Box 642, Nanango, Qld. 4615. Prices range from 10 for $4, 20 for $6, 50 for $12 and 100 for $17 and prices include postage. |
PT. LINCOLN MAYOR CONTINUES TO OPPOSE TELSTRA SALEAnd calls on all Australians to shoulder their responsibility in the battle to save it.During Senator Helen Coonan's visit to Elliston today (6/7/05) Mayor Peter Davis conveyed the following reasons for opposing the full sale of Telstra. TELSTRA HAS A COMMUNITY SERVICE RESPONSIBILITY
TO ALL AUSTRALIANS. Yet, Telstra consistently refuses to honour its
responsibilities to isolated rural Australians based on poor financial
returns to the Company. It has stated in its annual reports that it
will not invest in assets returning poor profitability. |