SURE, WE WILL BE SORRY

by James Reed
When John Howard was captain of the ship, he got Crown Solicitor opinion about the legal consequences of an official apology to the so-called 'stolen generation'. The opinion was that this would be an admission of liability that would be used in court battles. Throughout the 1990s the court battles did occur, but none were successful. Academics from 'the right' hammered at the idea championed by the "Bringing Them Home Report" by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that 'genocide' occurred.

The children in question were usually mixed race and it was argued, in danger. They were put into faster homes not because the government wanted to breed out the Aboriginal race (the children were often as much 'white' as 'black') but to save them. One critic spoke of the 'saved' generation, not the 'stolen' generation.

There has recently been one successful 'Stolen Generation' case where a plaintiff has been awarded $525,000 for false imprisonment, pain and suffering. Lawyers/academics and many in the "industry" are now pushing for a compensation scheme for the 'stolen generation' to save expenses and time. So much for legal proof!

Sure it will happen in the Obama-Rudd new world disorder, for the tune of billions. Russ says that we are not having such a national compensation fund in conjunction with the apology - but that's what he says now. It will be 'forced' on him by the lawyers. You will see.

Will the punters who vote for the major parties ever be sorry? Perhaps like the citizens of Rome who enjoyed the bread'n circuses of the games, they will never be 'sorry' about where they put their numbers on the ballot paper. Perhaps they will, like the dinosaurs, never know "the end" when it hits them.

MR. MAN - THE LEGEND ?

by James Reed
Read any good books lately about Lu Kewen, Mr Man in the Chinese year of the rat? Well "Lu Kewen" is better known as our friendly PM Kevin Rudd. The Chinese translation of "Kevin Rudd: The Biography" by China's Fujl'an Education Press sees Lu Kewen's life as "legendary". That's enough to make a chill run up my spine.

Apart from climate change footwork, a "sorry" to the "stolen generation" - all in a political heart beat - what do you think that this good Asian citizen has in store for us over the next three years, or six years, or nine years? The numbers have the weight of a life sentence.

Nevertheless, as I argue in another article, we may be saved by global economic collapse: something to look forward to because it will be a golden opportunity to initiate social credit ideas and policies.

ROLL UP FOR THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TALK-FEST

by James Reed
Big Kev Rudd has come up with something even more exciting than a yellow rubber ducky at bath time: an April summit of 1,000 of the "best and brightest" to give radical solutions to Australia's top problems. The problems are real, such as the economy, population, the environment, rural communities, etc., but it is virtually certain that the solutions given will be standard politically correct ones. No such policies as immigration limitation, rejection of globalism or adoption of a social; credit, self-reliant economy.

And the 1,000 elites? These will be selected by a 10-member non-government committee. What I like about this is what seems to be the new Ruddy hand signal when you are at the helm". The Australian 4 February 2008, p.1 features Rudd with Professor Glyn Davis, vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne with both fists, lightly clasped, with the thumbs protruding. Is this the new sign of peace to replace the Churchill 'V' (which seems to now mean something rude)? Or is it some symbol from the ancient world?

I suppose if you hit anyone like that you would break your thumb, so it must be a peace symbol of sorts. There is no holding Rudd back, he's a real go-getter, full of body language. The white Obama or male Hillary?

FIRST SET UP THE REPUBLIC - THEN ABOLISH THE STATES

Source: David Flint's Opinion Column:
The next big social transformation this country needs, after" we've" sorted out the republic, is to abolish the States, declares Mr.David Dale in his prominent "Who we are "column in The Sun-Herald on 17 February, 2008.

Mr. Dale has let the cat out of the bag. We know the flag is the next cab off the rank for the republicans if they were ever to get some sort of republic. Mr. Dale confirms our suspicions that the States are next on the agenda. We suppose this will include the Senate: if you don't have States, how can you have a State House?

We should be grateful to Mr. Dale. The republican movement won't even tell Australians what changes they are planning to the Constitution. They just want a blank cheque. The fact is the republican agenda is clearly intended to make our country unrecognizable, something more like Argentina than the Commonwealth of Australia. Our Constitution, one of the world's most successful, is to be well and truly trashed. The exceptional work of our Founders, led by Sir Samuel Griffith, is to be undone.

Fixing the republic is almost too easy...
"Fixing the republic is almost too easy," Mr Dale says. He should have told that to Mr. Turnbull and Mr. Keating. All you do is to change the title of "our head of state" from Governor-General to title used in the territories, "Administrator."

"President" sounds scary...
He says the word "president" sounds "scary." True. That's why the ARM tried to have it removed, along with that other scary word, "republic," from the referendum question in 1999. And they claim John Howard fixed the question.

Mr. Dale thinks " president" sounds as if the republicans plan to set up an alternative power base to the prime minister. But Mr. Dale - some republicans want precisely that result. The problem is that the republicans are irreconcilably divided among themselves.

Mr. Dale's administrator would be chosen by the government. The Dale model is more of politicians' republic than the rejected 1999 model. Sorry Mr. Dale. Polling indicates this ultra politicians' republic is the most unpopular model.

Mr Dale says the next thing after getting a republic is to abolish the states. He thinks there's no better time now. A Morgan poll predicts Labor would get 62 per cent of the two party preferred vote. Why this should lead to an ultra politician's republic and the abolition of the States is not clear. We must assume Mr. Dale doesn't spend much time out of the Sydney-Canberra Melbourne triangle.

Further reading: "Freedom Wears a Crown," by John Farthing. Farthing examines three political systems. Marxism, the American Republic and Constitutional Monarchy. A limited number of copies are still available from Heritage Book Services and Veritas Publishing.

THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Brian Simpson
An interesting paper by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University appeared in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, July/August 2006. The title of the paper is "Is the United States Bankrupt?"

Professor Kotlifoff says that the US is fast going bankrupt and will be so unless there is radical reform of the financial system. By 'reform' Professor Kotlifoff means in conventional economic terms rather than social credit terms. Nevertheless his diagnosis of America's disease is revealing.

The "fiscal gap" is "the present value difference between all future government expenditures, including servicing official debt, and all future receipts." The US fiscal gap is an incredible $65.9 trillion - five times US GDP and twice the size of national wealth.
To get this debt down would require a doubling of personal and corporate income tax or a permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. If the US government prints money to pay its bills, under conventional economics, hyperinflation inevitably occurs.

The US is temporarily kept afloat by Asian countries supplying capital to the US through its current account surplus. But if China should sell its dollar-denominated reserves then the US dollar nose-dives.
Future obligations to the gangster bankers will not be met - and the nation is ruined. But China's wealth is based on a bicycle economy, selling to affluent Americans. If America goes 'down the tube' then so does China as well, inevitably. That is the logic of globalisation. Oh! And we go down with them…

The only chance for the world is the social credit alternative of national financial self-reliance and the end of globalism.

THE COMING GLOBAL CRASH

by James Reed
Veteran League writers have kept readers up-to-date on the present world economic crisis - an economic 'disease' sent around the world by, initially, the US 'sub-prime' mortgage mess. Asianist writer Paul Kelly in The Australian 26-27, January 2008 sees the American financial meltdown as highlighting "the declining role of the US world economy and the power of China and East Asia." But this is a colonial view. China is already being hit by economic shockwaves (The Australian 30 January 2008 p.1).
China itself is anxious about the impact a US recession will have on its economy, as it ought to in a globalised world.

As Americans must meet the gangster bankers demands for sub-prime mortgage repayments, American personal debt grows and the demand for Chinese consumer goods falls. China's 'bubble quivers' (The Australian 31 January 2008, p.11) and could burst.
Back in 23 February 2007, Mike Whitney wrote an article "US Housing Market Crash to Result in Second Great Depression," where he said, "Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency."

This global financial crisis, as Dominque Moisi argued in The Scotsman 26 January 2008,may finish off the "open, global and transparent world" of Davos globalism and return us to the world of the nation state.

If we have any sense, we must champion the exposure of the "banker's racket" and the social credit alternative with rigour. Even the IMF has said that the fallout from the global financial crisis will be long lasting. Could at last, the end be in sight to all this madness? If so - bring on the financial crash! Then will begin our time of renewal and rebuilding from the ruins of this diseased and depressing dis-order.

KEATING SHOWS US HOW TO DELIVER A SALVO

by James Reed

Desperate for media attention former PM Paul Keating launched a vitriolic attack on Paddy McGuiness in the pages of The Australian Financial Review only days after McGuiness' death. Bill Hayden gave Paul a serve back, and so it goes on. The Australian even had an 'on-line' "Hayden Vs Keating." It all reminded me of one of those 'debates' we are given every few years about some politically correct topic like immigration and multiculturalism.

When Suharto, former brutal dictator of Indonesia died, Keating described him as a personal friend who "devoted himself entirely to the development of social conditions." Surely Paul is writing literature, both now and in the past? The Senate is "unrepresentative swill," and opponents are pigs, frauds, crooks, harlots, dogs returning to their own vomit, and so on. What a wit! What a speaker! What a foul mouth!

When Shakespeare penned those famous lines about the world being a stage and life a play, he must have had clairvoyance and caught a future glimpse of Australian political and intellectual life.

SUHARTO - KEATING'S 'PERSONAL' FRIEND ?
Source: CorpWatch Special by Andreas Harsono 15th February 2008:
Burying Indonesia's Millions: The Legacy of Suharto
Former Indonesian ruler Suharto died last month a very wealthy man. In 1999, a year after he stepped down as Indonesia's second president, Time magazine reported his wealth at US$15 billion. "Not bad for a man whose presidential salary was $1,764 a month when he left office," the magazine reported…

Human Rights
Suharto has been accused of a wide variety of human rights abuses. In 1975, he ordered his troops to invade East Timor. The estimated death toll included up to 200,000 East Timorese, 100,000 in West Papua, and tens of thousands more in Aceh, Lampung, Tanjung Priok, West Kalimantan and elsewhere. Even while partnered with Liem and other Chinese tycoons, he systematically discriminated against the Chinese minority in Indonesia. The East Timor Action Network, a New York-based human rights group, called Suharto, "one of the worst mass murderers of the 20th century."

In his official biography, Suharto admitted that in 1983-1984 he had ordered "mysterious shooters" to kill between 2,000 and 3,000 thugs, thieves and robbers. This "shock therapy," as Suharto called the killings, earned him the nickname "Gali Pelarian Kemusuk" or "The Thug from Kemusuk."

Joining Thuggery and Profits
But Suharto was no ordinary thug. He was a business-minded one. Between 1971 and 1972, he and Liem set up giant wheat flour manufacturing plants. PT Bogasari Flour Mills, the foundation of Indofood, is now the world's largest instant noodle manufacturer. Liem also set up Bank Central Asia, one of Indonesia's largest private banks, in which Suharto's children owned shares.

Throughout his rule, Suharto has been implicated in systemic corruption and cronyism that distorted Indonesia's economy. When the economy boomed in the 1970s, along with increased oil prices, Suharto ordered his U.S.-trained economic ministers to issue regulations that included deducting small amounts of money from the salaries of civil servants for charity. The "donation" was automatically channeled to his Supersemar Foundation and Dakab Foundation and some of the funds did help the poor, provide student scholarships and build mosques. Suharto's Dharmais Foundation established one of the biggest cancer hospitals in Jakarta.

But from the 1980s, the recipients of the charity also included Suharto and his cronies who invested the money in dozens of companies. Later, his economic ministers issued regulations that granted monopolies to favored companies. Liem won government contracts to supply wheat flour and cloves. Hasan won millions of forest concessions and won the nickname "Raja Hutan" or "King of the Jungle."

George Aditjondro, who has tracked the family's fortune, wrote that Suharto established at least 40 foundations since the 1950s. The family owned shares in large companies, including in the cement and fertilizer industries, toll roads and oil palm plantations.
In the late 1980s, when Suharto's six children came of age, they joined the business, helped by "Uncle Liem" and "Uncle Bob." Hasan joined with Suharto's eldest son, Sigit Harjojudanto, to set up PT Nusantara Ampera Bhakti, a holding company in mining and telecommunications. Supersemar, Dharmais and Dakab also own shares.

The middle son, Bambang Trihatmodjo, established ties with the army-owned Kartika Eka Paksi Foundation, and shared ownership with Hasan in his international timber corporations. Hasan's paper mill, PT Kiani Lestari, received funds from Suharto's foundations. The youngest son, Hutomo Mandala Putra, also linked up with a Hasan operation, Sempati Airlines. When Suharto's wife died in 1995, "Uncle Bob" became Suharto's main advisor on the children's businesses….

Efforts To Regain The Wealth
Over the years there have been repeated efforts to recoup the money that critics claim Suharto stole from his country. In 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration filed a civil suit for US$1.54 billion against Suharto and one of the seven major foundations he established. State prosecutors alleged he had stolen $440 million from the government.

But even from beyond the grave, Suharto wields influence and loyalty. When he died in January at 86, President Yudhoyono immediately cancelled a scheduled appearance at a UN conference on retaking states' stolen assets. Instead, he went to the Suhartos' mausoleum to preside over the patriarch's burial ceremony. Like most Indonesian leaders, Yudhoyono was a Suharto crony. And like his predecessors in office since 1989 -- B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, and Megawati Sukarnoputri -- he was unlikely to be able to retake the stolen assets." Hmmmm… personal friend you say Paul?

IS THE WORLD HIS STAGE AND LIFE HIS DRAMA ?

Shakespeare may have written of the world being a stage and life a play, but 19th century scholar George MacDonald took the concept further in "The Imagination: Its Function and Its Culture" when he wrote:

"…Where a man would make a machine, or a picture, or a book, God makes the man that makes the book, or the picture, or the machine. Would God give us a drama? He makes a Shakespeare.
Or would he construct a drama more immediately his own? He begins with the building of the stage itself, and that stage is a world--a universe of worlds. He makes the actors, and they do not act--they are their part. He utters them into the visible to work out their life--his drama.
When he would have an epic, he sends a thinking hero into his drama, and the epic is the soliloquy of his Hamlet. Instead of writing his lyrics, he sets his birds and his maidens a-singing.
All the processes of the ages are God's science; all the flow of history is his poetry. His sculpture is not in marble, but in living and speech-giving forms, which pass away, not to yield place to those that come after, but to be perfected in a nobler studio.

What he has done remains, although it vanishes; and he never either forgets what he has once done, or does it even once again.
As the thoughts move in the mind of a man, so move the worlds of men and women in the mind of God, and make no confusion there, for there they had their birth, the offspring of his imagination. Man is but a thought of God…"