DEVILS’ ADVOCATES IN THE COUNSEL OF ROGUES

by Ian Wilson LL.B.
“The perennial problem of the lawyers”. Against the Lawyers Series:
Since the dawn of civilisation, lawyers have been hated. Andrew Roth and Jonathan Roth in “Devil’s Advocates: The Unnatural History of Lawyers”, (Nolo Press, 1989), point out that even in ancient societies where people defended themselves in law courts, there were still “lawyering tactics” – suggesting the emergence of a lawyering class behind the scenes. The ancient Egyptian “Instruction of Amen-em-opet” (late 7th Century BC), protests against such tactics, indicating that proto-lawyers may have been lurking behind the scenes to help individuals argue for a fee.

Ancient Greece swam in law suits and this was satirised by playwrights like Aristophanes in “The Clouds” and “The Peace”. Socrates (469 - 399 BC) father of Western philosophy, also protested against the lawyers and sophists as did Plato (c.427 – 347 BC). In ancient Rome, people also called on legal experts, advocati, in assisting with their cases. In the second century BC the advocatus were permitted to speak on another’s behalf in court and the legal profession never looked back, even in the Dark Ages.

Jesus said to the Pharisees, the lawyers of his day, in Luke 11:52: “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.” Lawyers prospered from the misery of others through the deliberate creation of “burdens”.
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) said that lawyers were “a society of men bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black and black is white according as they are paid.”

Dick in Shakespeare’s Henry VI (part 2, 4.2) went further:
“The first thing we’ll do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Indeed, the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 in England saw more judges and lawyers killed than persons in any other type of profession. In London one observer described how the lawyers fled from the flames: “It was marvellous to see how even the most aged and infirm of them scrambled off with the agility of rats or evil spirits” (Richard Du Cann, “The Art of the Advocate”, Penguin Books, 1980, p.14).

The English poet Keats (1795 – 1821) concluded:
“I think we may class the lawyers in the natural history of monsters.” Journalist and cynic H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) agreed: “Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow…we would be freer and safer and our taxes would be reduced by almost one-half.”
The very good reason for this is, lawyers as “hired guns” go where the big bucks are - and that is to big business and finance.
American financier J.P. Morgan (1837 – 1913) summed it up thus: “I don’t want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do; I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do” (for more see Frank Cramer, “The Case of the People Against the Lawyers and the Courts: Interviews with an Outdoor Philosopher” (2009) at Google books, online).

In a nutshell, lawyers according to the standard conception, may act in representing and defending clients, in ways that would be immoral outside of the professional role of lawyering. Lord Macauley asked how “it be right that a man should, with a wig on his head and a band around his neck, do for a guinea what, without these appendages, he would think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire?”

The standard answer to this – as articulated by Time Dare in “The Counsel of Rogues?” (Ashgate 2009) - is that the professional role itself makes a difference as lawyers have a special moral obligation to their clients, which permits them to act in ways which would be immoral outside of this professional capacity. It is important to have these obligations to ensure that the overall justice system works as if it was not so some people would not get any legal defence.

On the other hand, Ysaiah Ross in “Ethics in Law” argues that the amoral lawyer raises the difficulty that professional codes are more vague than legal codes and do not cover many situations. Morality is inescapable. However, morality and a theological dimension is lacking from contemporary law so there comes to be something of a moral vacuum in legal practice.

The problem of the lawyers is thus part of the general theological/existential crisis of our society which pursues secular/materialist goals over spiritual ones. Lawyers represent the crude nuts and bolts workings of an essentially spiritually bankrupt social order.
The hatred of lawyers is perhaps our instinctual recognition of this void at the centre of our lives, caused by the creation of a system that puts money before man. Only by resolving these financial and economic problems can we hope to transform, decentralise and re-humanise society and deflate the role of the lawyering class. In other words, what looks like a philosophical problem has a real, economic, social credit solution.  

PUBLIC BANKING

Source: socialcredit@googlegroups.com:
What has happened in the last number of years is that banking regulations have been dismantled to the point where shyster operators, working for the largest banks such as Goldman Sachs, have been bending whatever rules are left as hard as they can to generate as much money for themselves as possible… The result of all this activity is that a lot of banks have ended up with so called "assets" on their books that don't have any value because nobody wants them any more. So the book keepers pretend that they have a value so that the balance sheets of the banks are not wrecked, showing the huge losses that are there. As a result of all the speculative activity that has taken place, there is a loss of confidence in the system by the very people who operate it and the size of risk factors in bankers' equations have increased significantly… [They] deliberately, through fraud, and whatever means available, are stealing our collective wealth. They are using the banking system to that end.

Last night I attended the Annual General Meeting of our local Chamber of Commerce and got to meet the new manager for our branch of “… Financial”. His name is ……, he grew up near Stalingrad in Russia and came to ... as a 21 year old. Now, at the rather tender age of about 30, he is the local bank manager and speaks excellent English.

Anyway, his parents still live in Russia and I asked him about developments there when the Soviet Union collapsed. He told me that there are now two classes of people in Russia: The filthy rich and the poor, nothing much in between. When the Soviet Union collapsed the political bosses simply gave themselves ownership to Russia's productive resources. There was no organized citizenry to stop them. This is exactly what our bankster friends want to do here by expropriating for themselves the tickets to wealth that belong to us collectively. That is why we need to organize on the ground before it is too late - and take back the commons. Public banking will be an important piece in that mosaic.  

WHAT OTHER DANGERS ARE LURKING IN THE SHADOWS?

by Betty Luks
The Lavoisier Group (www.lavoisier.com.au) did the Australian people a great service by producing the tract “Back to the 19th Century: Australia under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Act 2009”. (Can be downloaded at: https://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/climate-policy/science-and-policy/backtothe19C.pdf)

Brought out last September 2009 it warned Australians of the consequences should the Labor ETS legislation be passed. The Senate did reject the Labor legislation prior to the Copenhagen Conference, much to Mr. Rudd’s chagrin, but it has since been re-introduced. Not to be outdone, the Coalition has introduced into federal parliament its own ETS version.

The Lavoisier Group tract states:
“The EM is a collation of fantasy and deceit, coupled with an ambit claim for political power which is unprecedented in Australian history and which justifies the use of the term 'coup d'état. The discretion which is vested in the minister is breathtaking. The use of regulation rather than legislation to impose the will of the salvationists upon the people brings back the ancient claim of kings 'The law is in my mouth'.

The Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority:
At the heart of the new power structure is The Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority, shortened prophetically in the EM to the Orwellian term 'The Authority'. This body will administer the emissions trading scheme, the reporting regime, and the renewable energy target. It has, for example, the power to issue free permits to coal-based electricity generators, so that they can keep operating. But, on the other hand, the Minister has the power 'to make a determination withholding those permits, in the event that the Authority finds that the provision of assistance under this Part is likely to deliver a "windfall gain" in respect of a particular generation asset…

Further very serious inroads into the rule of law occur in clause 300-1 where the right to silence is abolished, and the right not to incriminate oneself is not allowed. The onus of proof is reversed in clause 336-3 and privacy laws are set aside since The Authority has the right to pass on private information to practically anyone, including the UN and foreign governments (clause 48-1).

A characteristic example of The Authority's power is set out in Para 6.138, which deals with permits issued for reforestation.
6.138 The Authority will be able to use a computer programme to determine whether forest stands established and maintained for the purposes of the forest maintenance obligation will achieve an amount of net greenhouse gas removals that is equivalent to the net total number of units that have been issued for the project. 6.139 The forest maintenance obligation will cease when:
• The penalty payable under clause 2867 of the bill in respect of the carbon sequestration right holder's failure to comply with the relinquishment notice is paid in full, including any late payment penalty; or
• the forestry right holder relinquishes the net total number of units issued in respect of the eligible reforestation project; or
• at the end of 130 years after the first occasion on which an Australian emissions unit was issued in relation to the project…

The first reaction to this document, and to the legislation which it purports to explain, is one of awe. How many thousands of hours of bureaucratic endeavour have gone into the creation of this huge structure of regulation and control? For how long have the global warming enthusiasts now entrenched within the Department of Climate Change been refining their ambitions?...

As it became clear that what was being planned was going to be extremely harmful to major industries, lobbyists were appointed and consultants engaged to try at least to seek a delay in the execution warrants for those industries which could no longer exist in the new carbon-free world which would come about with this great project of salvation.

The complexity and ministerial-bureaucratic discretion which is intrinsic to this project is the consequence of seeking to achieve something in real life which can only be accomplished in the fantasy world of the economic models of Treasury and Professor Garnaut…
As soon as our climate prophets impose salvation upon us by imposing new and unpredictable taxes, under whatever label, so that we are forced, through the weight of taxation, to use less and less electricity, and less and less petrol and distillate, with all the growing upheaval and uncertainty which follows, then the political consequences will be immediate and certain.

The only way in which salvation can be made secure against slipping back into sin is through the construction of a tight and effective political cartel, which can successfully hold the line against any new political entrants, such as Family First, into the market for votes. This cartel must be strong enough, and wealthy enough, to impose huge economic dislocation, manifest in reduced incomes, higher costs, and growing unemployment, on the Australian people, and still retain power. This salvation project, then, has been built from the beginning on fantasy and deceit…

Recently, a growing number of economists have discovered that the Emissions Trading Scheme, under which tax receipts, euphemistically called 'emission permits' can be traded, just as taxi-cab licences can be bought and sold, is not the most efficient way of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide when compared with a good old fashioned tax, as in the excise on cigarettes and alcohol. In particular, the opportunities which will be created for 'shorting the market' and creating a 'carbon bubble' will seize the imagination of the traders and speculators in the new 'carbon' market, and cause great uncertainty and volatility in a market which was advertised as providing 'business certainty'

To counter this prospect, the Bill provides the minister with the authority to issue new permits to prick such a bubble whenever she feels the necessity to do so. The problem with all bubbles is how to distinguish them when they arrive… These 'tax-not-trade' economists are doubtless well meaning, but they have… certainly forgotten the full page advertisement which was taken out by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in The Australian Financial Review on 2 May 2007, at the time when the Howard Government had lost its nerve and was planning to surrender on this issue… The key sentence in this letter, which urged the government to adopt an Emissions Trading Scheme, was this:
The emissions trading scheme ... would also have the added advantage - as against for example a carbon tax system-of establishing tradeable property rights with respect to permits, thereby building a support base for maintaining the system going forward within the corporate sector.

It does not require a crystal ball to predict that the relationships between the financial institutions which will trade these tax certificates, and the regulators who will staff The Authority, will become close indeed. Both parties will need each other.

At the heart of this great project of salvation, then, is the creation of a powerful rent-receiving and rent-seeking alliance of banks and other financial institutions who will make billions from trading the emissions permits and who, once the emissions trading scheme is established, will be able to spend hundred of millions in ensuring, as best they can, that repeal is politically impossible. T
he money changers sitting at their tables in the temple at Jerusalem (Matthew Ch. 21) could not have dreamed of such rents…” (emphasis added… ed)  

WHEN CARBON BECOMES CURRENCY

by Betty Luks
While the climate change scam is becoming more and more apparent, you can be sure the ruling elites are not going to relinquish their plans willingly. You will notice the ‘climate change chatterers’ are continuing on as though the sceptics had not exposed them (listen to ABC Radio or watch the ABC TV for blatant examples). But then, ask yourself, would you easily give up on such a grand scheme if you had been working on it for decades? Patrick Wood of The August Review (27//1/2010) has perceptively hit upon what is most likely the other purpose of ‘carbon credits’, etc. Mr. Wood’s article took my attention because the terminology reminded me of Charles Ferguson’s early social credit terminology in such books as “The Religion of Democracy” and “The Good News”. Mr. Wood’s full article is in the February 2010 edition of the New Times Survey – “A One-World Carbon Currency”?

Some key points: “Technocracy, a movement started in the 1930's, has been hijacked by the global elite and now seeks to implement the New World Order through energy-based accounting and a universal Carbon Currency… The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production and consumption), instead of price… Unfortunately for individual people living in this new system, it will also require authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave…”

Not enough purchasing power in the hands of consumers:
“Simply put: there is not enough purchasing power in the hands of society in general to allow the proper interaction of supply and demand. The pricing mechanism is broken and maladjusted…

Distribution Sequence adapted to a modern technological society.
To facilitate this equilibrium between man and nature, Technocracy proposed… Energy Certificates are issued individually to every adult of the entire population… The record of one’s income and its rate of expenditure is kept by the Distribution Sequence, so that it is a simple matter at any time for the Distribution Sequence to ascertain the state of a given customer’s balance... When making purchases of either goods or services an individual surrenders the Energy Certificates properly identified and signed…

Two key differences between price-based money and Energy Certificates are that:
a) money is generic to the holder while Certificates are individually registered to each citizen
b) and money persists while Certificates expire. The latter facet would greatly hinder, if not altogether prevent, the accumulation of wealth and property...

The Modern Proposal: Because of the connection between the environmental movement, global warming and the Technocratic concept of Energy Certificates, one would expect that a Carbon Currency would be suggested from that particular community, and in fact, this is the case.
• In 1995, Judith Hanna wrote in New Scientist, “Toward a single carbon currency”: “My proposal is to set a global quota for fossil fuel combustion every year, and to share it equally between all the adults in the world.”
• “In 2004, the prestigious Harvard International Review published “A New Currency” and stated, “For those keen to slow global warming, the most effective actions are in the creation of strong national carbon currencies… For scholars and policymakers, the key task is to mine history for guides that are more useful. Global warming is considered an environmental issue, but its best solutions are not to be found in the canon of environmental law. Carbon’s ubiquity in the world economy demands that cost be a consideration in any regime to limit emissions.
• In 2006, UK Environment Secretary David Miliband spoke to the Audit Commission Annual Lecture and flatly stated, "Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bankcards that store both pounds and carbon points. When we buy electricity, gas and fuel, we use our carbon points, as well as pounds…
• In 2007, New York Times published “When Carbon Is Currency” by Hannah Fairfield. She pointedly stated “To build a carbon market, its originators must create a currency of carbon credits that participants can trade.”
• Finally, on November 9 2009, the Telegraph (UK) presented an article: “Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance.’ …
• Technocracy’s Energy Card Prototype: In July 1937 an article by Howard Scott in Technocracy Magazine described an Energy Distribution Card in great detail. It declared that using such an instrument as a “means of accounting is a part of Technocracy’s proposed change in the course of how our socioeconomic system can be organized. The certificate will be issued directly to the individual. It is non-transferable and non-negotiable; therefore, it cannot be stolen, lost, loaned, borrowed, or given away. It is noncumulative; therefore, it cannot be saved, and it does not accrue or bear interest. It need not be spent but loses its validity after a designated time period.”…

Carbon Market Players: The modern system of carbon credits was an invention of the Kyoto Protocol and started to gain momentum in 2002 with the establishment of the first domestic economy-wide trading scheme in the U.K… Graciela Chichilnisky, director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management and a designer of the carbon credit text of the Kyoto Protocol, states that the carbon market “is therefore all about cash and trading – but it is also a way to a profitable and greener future.” (See ‘Who Needs a Carbon Market?’) Who are the “traders” that provide the open door to all this profit? Currently leading the pack are JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Bloomberg noted in Carbon Capitalists on December 4, 2009: “The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.”…” Australians must get serious about the further centralisation of power into the hands of the one-worlders.

Essential reading:
“Globalisation: The Demise of the Australian Nation” by Graham Strachan Price $15.00 plus postage
“Charles Ferguson: Herald of Social Credit” by Michael Lane. Price: $11.50 plus postage
“Tom Robertson: Human Ecology” by Michael Lane. Price: $9.50 plus postage  

SOCIAL CREDIT AND ECONOMICS – THREE ALLIED ACTIVITIES

What is the real purpose of the planned ‘carbon currency’? It is clearly stated in the above article: “The new currency… is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production and consumption), instead of price…”
But who is going to control the new system?
Why of course! The same people who devised the scheme for their own benefit and centralisation of further power into their hands! “Technocracy proposed that citizens would receive Energy Certificates in order to operate the economy: Energy Certificates are issued individually to every adult of the entire population…
The record of one’s income and its rate of expenditure is kept by the Distribution Sequence, so that it is a simple matter at any time for the Distribution Sequence to ascertain the state of a given customer’s balance...

Economics from a Social Credit viewpoint:
“Economics may be defined as the study of production and distribution of goods and services of a nation - the national housekeeping. The proper goal of all economic activity is to satisfy the needs of Man and not to accumulate wealth for wealth's sake. The real object of production and distribution is consumption.” So far so good.
Any student of high school economics would say that an Economic System consists of three allied social activities: Production, Distribution and Consumption. So the real question here is who is going to distribute the production for consumption and upon what basis?

The Common Good:
As the common good sets the general rule, so also does it authorise the exception. In a modern money economy, money and credit are the very life-blood of the economic organic structure. If there is one thing that should not be left to the control of private persons without danger for the common welfare, it is certainly the monetary medium. The monetary medium - the financial system of a nation - is a social function and should not be in the control of private persons. It is a function that rightly must be reserved to the Civil Government since it carries the opportunity of economic and financial domination to those private persons who now control it.

Whether it is the Labor version or the Coalition version of the Emissions Trading Scheme BOTH versions must be defeated by the Australian people. If nothing else, politicians know how to count, i.e., votes, and they need to know in no uncertain terms that such a further sell-out of our freedoms IS JUST NOT ON. Tell your local member unless both versions are thrown out, they will also be job searching sometime this year!  

SENATE DELAYS ETS VOTE UNTIL MAY

The federal government's planned emissions trading scheme is now on the parliamentary backburner after the Senate on Wednesday refused to debate the draft laws until May. Labor failed to gain the numbers on a procedural motion which would have allowed debate to begin. The Opposition and Family First senator Steve Fielding teamed up to defeat the motion. The defeat means the legislation cannot be debated until May at the earliest, effectively removing the opportunity for the government to make the legislation a double‐dissolution election trigger.

The government has until August 11 to dissolve both houses of parliament and call an election, leaving the Senate insufficient time to reject the current package of bills a second time. But its original legislation for an emissions trading scheme, twice rejected by the Senate last year, remains a trigger.

Further reading: Introducing Social Credit booklet series.
“Part 2: Economics: Three Allied Activities” : “Part 4: Distinguishing Between Means and Ends” : “Part 5: Distinguishing Between Money and True Riches”. Each booklet is $4.50 plus postage.  

A KICK-IN-THE-HEAD FOR SANITY

by James Reed
“Desperate” Afghan boatpeople were “abused and kicked” by Australian defence personnel, according to Corporal Sharon Jager, an RAAF medical assistant. She “broke down” as she recounted this incident in the SIEV 36 Coronial hearing. Two men were kicked in the head in order to save her (The Australian, 18/1/2010, p.1).
Newspaper reports indicate that she seems to think that this behaviour was inappropriate. Perhaps then it would have been better to leave her clinging on her piece of timber and save the aliens, perhaps letting her die or be eaten by a shark?
Is that what is required by the moral criticism of saving Australian service personnel before aliens? Remember, the boat people set off a petrol bomb aboard SIEV 36 and should be held responsible. But in politically correct, degenerate liberal culture, the reverse of this occurs: fair is foul and foul is fair.  

TERRORISM AND MULTICULTURALISM

by Brian Simpson
You heard the news: five Australian Muslim men convicted of plotting to commit jihad (violent holy war) in Australia, gaoled and being given sentences ranging from 23 to 28 years. What was not emphasised in the print media was the discovery, along with explosives, firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition, was the graphic images of hostages being beheaded. A large volume of other Islamic extremist literature was also found. The men smiled as they received their sentences, regarding this as a badge of honour.

Perhaps Australia’s multiculturalism is not as advanced as the UK or US. One wit at www.jihadwatch.org summed it up nicely: “If these guys had been sentenced in the UK or US, they’d have gone scot free and their accusers been sentenced to years of sensitivity training to cure them of their debilitating Islamophobia”. Nevertheless, many on talkback radio believe that these sentences are still too light and the terrorists should have been given life sentences.

THERE GOES GREECE!

by Brian Simpson
Watch what happens in Greece! This is a society where bribery is endemic, maybe worse than in Asia. Red tape strangles business. Businesses cheat on their taxes. The government faces fiscal and financial and almost every other type of crisis. Just around the corner lies the financial collapse of Greece, which may have a knock-on effect on Spain, Portugal and Italy, shaking the shaky foundations of the EU.
Let us hope that something like this occurs soon to further damage the foundations of the new world order. The Greeks would then be doing the noble philosophical task, perhaps in honour of Socrates drinking the hemlock, of taking one for the team – in this case, humanity.