GOVERNMENTS NOW THE ROBBERS

"Mediaeval systems may not have eliminated robbery and oppression; but it is certain that they did not legalise it… A Cabinet can pass laws confiscating, under the name of taxation, the work of a man's lifetime or the land his family has dignified for centuries; but it cannot avoid the consequences.
The crucial issue is, what will those consequences be? Or to put the matter slightly otherwise, is there a moral 'law' connecting political transgression with national punishment? Contemporary Governments clearly think that there is not; that they are free to legislate in a moral vacuum.

Can anyone point to a pronouncement of the Church of England, [or any other 'moral' authority for that matter…ed.] as such, which contests that idea? Assuming that so-called nationalisation of this or that has any virtues, which is far from self-evident, has the Church ever criticised the methods by which it has been achieved?"

- - "The Realistic Position of the Church of England," by C.H. Douglas 1948.

AUSTRALIANS' COMMON LAW PROPERTY RIGHTS UP FOR GRABS

Anyone keeping up with the League's repeated warnings to their sleep-walking fellow Australians over the last sixty years could not be surprised to read that the centralisers think Australians are now ready for a greater Marxist-Corporatist 'push'.
Having read the following make sure you link it in your mind with what is happening to that other former centre of western culture, now Marxist-governed South Africa.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Harvey Grennan 19/4/08 writes:
The State Government plans to give its agencies and councils power to compulsorily acquire private land to re-sell to developers at a profit - or, if they choose, at a reduced price so the developers make even more money.
Legal authorities describe as "quite remarkable" a section of new planning laws flagged by the Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, to acquire land by force to onsell to private developers. "A man's home may no longer be his castle, but it could well end up being somebody else's castle," said Anthony Whealy, a planning expert with Gadens Lawyers. "It will certainly be welcome news to many in the development game.
"Under the current law, the minister is not able to re-sell land which has been acquired or transfer it to another person. The new scheme expressly allows that, and makes it clear that it may be done as part of a profitable proposal by a private developer."

Mr Sartor insists the law will only be used to ensure developments for the greater public benefit cannot be blocked, but the Greens - who have helped to expose the extent of developers' donations to the Labor Party - say it could invite corruption.
"Given the whole stench surrounding developer donations, it lends added weight to the view that this Government is introducing the most developer-friendly laws ever seen in this state," the Greens MP Sylvia Hale said.

A similar US state law to transfer land from one private owner to another for an urban renewal plan in New London, Connecticut, caused national uproar several years ago.
In 2005, the US Supreme Court upheld the law by the narrowest of margins but it was widely criticised as a gross violation of property rights and 42 states passed laws to limit the impact of the court's decision. (Please take note of how important is the separation, division and balance of power.…ed)

A provision in the draft bill released by Mr Sartor last week arises from similar circumstances. Last year Parramatta City Council sought to compulsorily acquire three properties, with Mr Sartor's approval, to allow its $1.4 billion Civic Place redevelopment. The land would have ended up in the ownership of the developer Grocon.

The Land and Environment Court upheld an appeal by the two owners against the acquisition. Now the minister wants to override that ruling and give himself the power to acquire land to transfer to another private owner, and to delegate such power to councils and state agencies such as Landcom, for the purposes of urban renewal and land releases.
The power would extend to land that "adjoins or lies in the vicinity of" such projects. It could be sold "whether for profit or otherwise" with the only constraint being that in the opinion of the designated authority there is a "net public benefit". But Gadens says this is not defined anywhere on the legal statutes. "Inevitably this will lead to a purely subjective determination of whether a proposal amounts to a net public benefit," Mr Whealy said.

Favoured 'son waiting in the wings' would benefit
Alex Davidson, who owns land suitable for subdivision on Sydney's outskirts at Glenorie, is fearful of the proposed law. "That provision, if enacted, will end any pretence that owners actually 'own' land in NSW. It will enable the Government to force a landowner to sell … then sell, perhaps cheaply, to a favoured son waiting in the wings," Mr Davidson said.
"It is an absolutely unacceptable elevation of state power over private property rights and will greatly exacerbate the potential for corruption. It is an abuse of power for the Government, when faced with being unable to get their way because the judge upheld ownership rights, to simply change the law so they win next time."

Mr Sartor's spokeswoman said it followed two court cases that might have frustrated good planning. The first concerned Parramatta's "award-winning" Civic Place project.
"In the second, City of Sydney Council's existing provision that removes cars from Pitt Street Mall may have been jeopardised through the inability to acquire an adjacent easement to allow vehicle movements into a proposed development site."
The ability to compulsorily acquire land for "important public outcomes" had been a longstanding, accepted practice for Government.
"It is also established practice to offer for sale any residual land which may be left over after the completion of a project, such as a new road or railway line.
"Importantly, the acquisition of land for such purposes would only be authorised after all other avenues have failed and after appropriate public exhibition and consideration." Anyone could challenge any determination by the minister or the acquiring authority, including on the issue of net public benefit, in court.
<https://www.smh.com.au/news/national/state-can-sell-your-home/2008/04/18/1208025479556.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1>

LITTLE BATTLERS FIGHT THE MOVE

Urban Affairs Reporter Jano Gibson of the Sydney Morning Herald 19/4/08 tells the story of one of the little battlers fighting the move:

"Soon before Pino Pellizzeri died several weeks ago, he advised his son, Robert: "Don't let the mongrels take it for nothing." The old man was referring to the family's Parramatta hairdressing business on Darcy Street, which they have run for almost 30 years.

Now, in echoes of the film "The Castle", the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, has proposed a change in the law that threatens to strip the Pellizzeris - and potentially thousands of other landowners - of their land rights so government agencies can on-sell the land to developers.

Amendment grossly unfair
Critics say the amendment, buried on page 126 of the draft planning reform bill, is grossly unfair and could be open to abuse and corruption. In the case of the Pellizzeris, their land could end up in the hands of the developer Grocon as part of a complex financial deal with Parramatta City Council, which wants to build a $1.4 billion civic centre on the site.
"It obviously seems the movie mustn't have meant much because now the legislation [could be] changed completely," said Robert Pellizzeri, 51, who runs the salon with his mother, Luciana. "Where's the little bloke's rights? He hasn't got any anymore."

The Pellizzeris were told in 2006 that their land was being compulsorily acquired by the council. They did not have the means to challenge it in court, but two other local businessmen, Michael Winston-Smith and Ray Fazzolari, whose properties were also seized, did.
Last year, the Land and Environment Court found that the council could not take their land to pass it on to Grocon. The council appealed against the decision.

Many more landowners in same predicament
Under the draft amendment, many more landowners could find themselves in the same predicament. The planning minister, or a council, would be able to compulsorily acquire land for urban renewal projects or urban land releases that offer a "net public benefit". The seized land could then be sold to a third party, such as a developer, "for profit or otherwise".

The Opposition spokesman on planning, Brad Hazzard, said property owners should be outraged. "It opens the door for any council or government body to decide they want to grab your land and the only test appears to be whatever Frank Sartor decides is in the public benefit.
"The second diabolical aspect is that it opens the door to corruption. If a local council or government body gets your land it can on-sell it, with or without profit."

The Mayor of Parramatta, Paul Barber, said: "The Civic Place development will deliver a city centre which is a more attractive, dynamic and creative place in which to live and work."
Mr Winston-Smith, whose property has been owned by his family for almost 90 years, said he challenged the council in court out of principle. "If it was for a railway station, or a bus interchange, it would be for the greater good of the people of Parramatta. In this case, it's just really for the greater good of the developer and Parramatta Council."

Mr Pellizzeri said the court victory spared his family the indignity of being forced from their business. "We would have just gone through the acquisition, getting ready for the executioner," he said. "That's basically how you felt because you just basically take what they were going to dish out."

NSW PLANNING MINISTER LINKED TO DEVELOPER:
Andrew Clennell State Political Editor in the Sydney Morning Herald 19/4/08 explains to his readers the alleged cosy relationships between a Local Council, the NSW Minister for Planning and private Developers.

Under the heading "Little blokes fight move to grab family land" he writes:
It is alleged "Five months after he is alleged to have telephoned the developer Stockland to ask that the company attend a fund-raiser for him, the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, contacted the general manager of Wollongong City Council to intervene on the company's behalf."

The ABC TV's Stateline raised the matter and reported that after the intervention, the council's charge to Stockland for building a road to its development at Sandon Point was reduced from $4 million to $700,000.
Mr Sartor told Stateline the commission had already investigated the valuation and had decided not to investigate.

One group that was not satisfied with Mr. Sartor's explanation is the NSW Greens who have referred the new allegation to the Independent Commission Against Corruption A fax to Mr Sartor from Stockland's head of strategic urban planning, Deborah Dearing, on 6/7/ 2006 shows the Sandon Point development was discussed by Stockland and Mr Sartor at an architects' awards dinner on July 5.
"During the evening you asked how Stockland's Sandon Point project was proceeding. As I mentioned, in a general sense the project has been proceeding well and our interactions with the Department of Planning have been professional and productive,"Dr Dearing wrote.
"However, " he continued, "in the past two weeks, negotiations with Wollongong council have taken an unexpected and unsatisfactory turn."

The SMH articles continues
"A margin note on the fax shows Mr Sartor referring it to his director-general, Sam Haddad, asking him to "please investigate". Both Mr Sartor and the former Wollongong council general manager, Rod Oxley, who during the sex-for-development inquiry this year admitted breaching the council's code of conduct, agreed yesterday they later had a conversation on the matter.
" Mr Sartor told Stateline his actions were appropriate: "I get complaints from parties all the time about the other party and I often mediate, or my department does, or I do. This side issue was potentially going to delay the whole processing of this [development] application [for the site]."

Mr Sartor said he would most likely have referred the complaint to Mr Oxley and asked the council to follow proper processes. Mr Oxley said he had a vague recollection of Mr Sartor's phone call but "Frank never put any pressure on me in relation to any council matters".
Mr Sartor said: "I'm pretty sure, I'm absolutely certain I didn't tell Oxley to back off anything … I have since received advice from the administrators at the Wollongong council that the … original valuation was incorrect. Probably in this case the developer was justified in raising concerns."

Mr Sartor has said he does not recall a phone call Stockland's managing director, Matthew Quinn, to see if his company would purchase a table at a "Re-elect Frank Sartor dinner" in February 2006.

SOUTH AFRICA : UNDER MARXISTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS TO END

Naked Communism Shocker: Private Property Rights in South Africa to end in July 2008

This is probably one of the most serious, if not the most serious issue of all. In the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe property rights was the biggest fight of all. In South Africa it was also a huge issue. Now, finally, with no further pretence, we have naked Communism. This does not mean the ANC will take your house today. They have slipped this in the back door for future use. One day, this will give them the same powers as Mugabe - to come and seize your house. This, folks, is 100% Bolshevik communism - gunning for the landowners.

The original article appeared in Afrikaans. We believe it to have been checked for accuracy.
Rapport newspaper writes today that from July 2008, all SA private property can be expropriated (verb (of the state) take (property) from its owner for public use or benefit) by the ANC-regime after July 2008, when the new Expropriations Act goes into effect.

Expropriations Act - end of property rights in South Africa
Any private property - not only land used for agriculture -- can be appropriated by the South African state's ministry of public works. Effectively, this marks the end of capitalist-style private property rights in South Africa. And all private-property owners will just have to accept any price offered to them by the government under this new law - unless they are willing to engage in expensive law-suits to get the market-related price for their properties. Effectively, this new law thus ends all private-ownership rights in South Africa. It includes all properties countrywide: if the ministry of internal affairs wants land for housing 'previously disadvantaged residents', they can and undoubtedly will expropriate land owned by churches, banks, individual home-owners or commercial businesses.

Already the country has no agricultural land left in the legal sense since all agricultural land now falls under the jurisdiction of municipal boundaries countrywide. In 1994 when S.A. still exported agricultural products on a massive scale, it had 85,000 farmers using less than 7% of the total land surface.
At the moment, less than 10,000 commercial farmers remain, raising crops on less than 0.75% of the total land surface. The country is now facing serious food shortages for the first time in its entire recorded agricultural history since the mid-1600's.

Source URL: https://www.news24.com/Rapport/Nuus/0,,752-795_2296578,00.html

BANKERS ARE STILL BASTARDS

by James Reed
The younger readers may not remember it, but about 15 years ago The Bulletin unloaded on the banks with stories like, "Why the Banks are Bastards", "Bank Chaos - Have the Bastards Learnt Anything?" and "Why the Banks have to be Bastards".

Back in the misty days of 1992 Senator Paul McLean (Democrats, NSW) and lawyer James Renton published "Bankers and Bastards". This was an excellent study of banking malpractice and corruption.
At the time and earlier, Jim Cronin and his mates on the farms in South Australia formed "Bankwatch" to not only 'watch' the foul deeds of various banks, but to help people whose worlds were at a financial end. It was a tremendous effort by great Aussie down-to-earth blokes that shows what people power can do when the wills are strong enough.

Time has moved on. Stories of bank corruption await to be told. But from a social credit perspective bankers have always been "bastards". The reason is that through the corruption of our leaders they have stolen the financial backbone of the nation, the capacity to create credit. They have created a financial system ultimately based upon pyramids of debt that cannot but collapse. And they gloat about their grand theft, financial.

The Rothschild Brothers of London in a letter to New York bankers in 1863 said:
"The few who understand the [banking] system will either be so interested in the profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."

Educate yourselves and others on the money question. The League is well equipped to offer you the right material.
Unravelling the Mysteries of Mammon
A financial system should be simply a nation's accounting system; an honest record, an honest reflection of the real wealth of the nation and its just and honest distribution - and the private banking system should be able to charge for nothing more than its services!

BOOKS:
"The Money Bomb," by James Gibbs Stewart.
Gibbs Stewart writes: Recessions and depressions are an inevitable consequence of the debt structure, making nonsense of the accepted economic wisdom. AUS $20.00 posted.
§ "The Story of the Commonwealth Bank" by D.J. Amos, $8.00 posted.
§ "The Money Trick" by The Institute of Economic Democracy. $13.00 posted
§ "The Saga of a Peoples' Bank" by Peter Lock $3.00 posted

Video and/or DVD viewing:
§ "The Money Masters"- William Still, 3½ hours of video viewing, $16 posted;
§ "The Money Game"- Jeremy Lee, $14 posted
§ "The Root of all Evil"- Eric Butler, $14 posted
§ "An Alternate Money System"- Charles Pinwill $14.00 posted

Videos and DVDs: From Heritage Book Services, P.O. Box 27, Happy Valley S.A. 5159.

GLOBAL WARMING, THE NEW RELIGION OF HOT AIR

by James Reed
Professor Don Aitkins upset the academic applecart by declaring that global warming may not be first among humanity's problems (Good Science Isn't About Consensus" The Australian 9/4/08 p.14). "If warming is occurring it is not by much or in an alarming way."

This is a brave thing to say at a time when global warming has become the new religion of hot air. Yet, a research team led by geophysicist Vincent Courtillot, director of the Institute de Physique du Globe in Paris, have concluded that cosmic events, particularly cosmic rays and variations in the earth's magnetic field are primarily responsible for temperature variations.

Coutillot said: "If we are proven to be right, this will seriously backlash on scientists' credibility." Indeed ! And it will not be the first and only time.

PROPAGANDISTS CAUGHT OUT !

"I've proved it often: The Age won't tell the full facts on global warming," wrote Andrew Bolt in his Herald Sun column. "Now its own reporters admit they were forced to be biased," he reported to his readers in the Herald Sun, 16/4/08.
"What a sad insight into how media salvation-seekers and carpet-baggers are whipping up panic about a warming that actually halted in 1998. And a warning, too, of what can go wrong when the media adopts global warming as a cause."

'Turn Lights Off for an Hour' propaganda push
In a statement of protest last week, 235 Age journalists confirmed that their coverage of last month's Earth Hour had been, in effect, propaganda. "Reporters were pressured not to write 'negative' stories and story topics followed a schedule drafted by Earth Hour organisers," they said.

Embarrassing email and ABC's Media Watch
That confession came after the ABC's Media Watch released an embarrassing email sent by the green group WWF to The Age editor-in-chief Andrew Jaspan under the creepy header Re: Any last requests?
In it, WWF staffer Fiona Poletti replied she indeed had more requests, and told Jaspan to run three more puff pieces for Earth Hour, a stunt in which readers were told to help save the planet from global warming by turning off lights for an hour.

Here's one writes Andrew
'We would love the fashion story to get a good run. This has been given to Orietta and is about the fashion industry's unified support for Earth Hour.' WWF ordered, Jaspan obeyed. The Age dutifully ran that story, under the headline: 'Fashionistas no dummies when it comes to be switching off.'

WWF's request for a second story on businesses backing Earth Hour? Also obeyed. On cities around the world joining in? Obeyed. In each case Jaspan had journalists writing, albeit unwittingly, to a green group's script. Jaspan has form for pushing a deep green agenda…"

MEET "THE FAMILY"

from Len the Cleaner
I wrote to you from here in Adelaide about the Mulligan commission (O.T. Vol.44 No.14 18/4/08) and concluded with some remarks about possible links to the notorious "Family" murders.
A number of young men were killed and their bodies skilfully cut into pieces. The body of Neil Muir was found, cut into pieces inside a plastic bag in the Port River, Adelaide on 29 August 1979. This is the sort of thing that Hollywood horror movies are made of. There was a trial of one man, who was acquitted.

The Weekend Australian (5-6/4/08 pp. 1-2) said: "the policing of paedophile activity in South Australia is not just a law-and-order issue, but one of acute political sensitivity."
Why? Because many people believe that the "Family" killers are still out there and are being protected by people in high places. But why? If not but because those people in high places are involved?

The Advertiser of 5/4/08 p.16 said:
"South Australian judges, magistrates and police officers were among the paedophiles who frequented homosexual beats and sexually abused boys at drug and alcohol-fuelled parties, the Mulligan inquiry was told."
Evidence was received from senior police officers, government officials and adults who were abused as children, while in State care, at these parties between the 1970s and late 1990s. And so it goes on.

Do you still think Adelaide is the "City of Churches"? And what is the Rann government doing about it? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing - as far as I can see. Why not?