AN ECONOMY FOR REAL PEOPLE AND THE PLANET

Video Vandana Shiva:
A video featuring Vandana Shiva, author, scientist, writer and activist has come to our attention. She is warning the world of the same threat – now far advanced – as did C.H. Douglas nearly eighty years ago. One would think she had studied Douglas, but the truth of the matter is, anyone who studies the real economy as opposed to the ‘fictitious economy’ of finance/economics and wanted freedom and democracy for his/her people, would come to the same conclusions. The wise Indian lady expresses words of wisdom and insight that are especially relevant at this time…

She speaks about the illusions of our economic system and globalisation: "Money used to be a medium of convenient exchange. It was never meant to be worth something in and of itself. It was a promise to pay the bearer... we have to come back to the economy of real goods and real services. The more we can remove money from our lives the more we will have real prosperity." She speaks about the current economic system going further and further out of whack with reality. "You can multiply money fictitiously, but a tree will only grow at it's own pace and the false growth of the economy is destroying the real growth of the planet, of people and culture."

She further underscores her point about destructive globalisation by talking about the 200,000 Indian farmers who have committed suicide since Monsanto came to India. That number is from 2006, and counting. Watch:

IT WILL BE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO PAY IT BACK: GREEK PM IS RIGHT

Plebiscite on Greece’s ‘bailout’: Plebiscite on Greece’s ‘bailout’: The headlines were screaming at the Greek president. He wanted to put the matter before the people before placing the nation further and further into the clutches of the money lenders. One would have thought that was the way to go in a genuine democracy. Do the Greeks have the power to take back and create their own money system? According to the latest news, it seems the dark forces have forced him to ‘reconsider’ having a referendum of the people.
“Markets slide as Greek gamble appals EU chiefs”, Charles Bremner in Brussels, Sam Coates and Jenny Booth.

The latest news is “Democracy’s birthplace won’t get a vote on the EU deal” Andrew Bolt – 4/11/201:
So the people won’t be asked and a mandate won’t be won: Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has dramatically scrapped plans for a referendum on the proposed European bailout... The American-born premier is not intending to quit, and will instead hold talks with the opposition over their calls for a transitional government and early elections.
“The referendum was never an end in itself,” Mr Papandreou told an emergency meeting of his cabinet. “… I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum."
The Greek drama overshadowed the opening of the G-20 summit in Cannes, on the French Riviera. Meeting ahead of the summit, Europe’s leaders made plain to Papandreou that they had reached the end of their patience with Greece, demanding that the beleaguered nation declare whether it wants to stay in the euro currency union - or risk going it alone in a dramatic secession.

Listen to Nigel Farage: talking about United States of Europe’s Insane Politics

THE EUROCRATS’ RESPONSE? THEY ARE TERRIFIED OF DEMOCRACY!

"Financial crisis: Eurocrats are terrified of democracy" - Telegraph 3/11/11 11:45 AM
"Greece’s prime minister George Papandreou is in the doghouse only because he dared to offer voters a choice” writes Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for South East England:

Shall I tell you the truly terrifying thing about the EU? It’s not the absence of democracy in Brussels, or the ease with which Eurocrats swat aside referendum results. It’s the way in which the internal democracy of the member states is subverted in order to sustain the requirements of membership.
George Papandreou, the luckless Greek leader, is the latest politician to find himself being chewed up because he stands in the way of the Brussels machine. On Monday afternoon, Papandreou announced a referendum on whether to accept the EU’s bail-out terms. He had evidently had enough of the antics of the opposition party, New Democracy, which kept insisting that Greece remain in the euro, while opposing all the austerity measures necessary to that end – an outrageous stance given that New Democracy ran up the deficit in the first place. Papandreou hoped to force his opponents off the fence: in favour of the spending cuts or against euro membership. Perhaps he also hoped to put pressure on the EU to offer more generous terms.

I wish I could convey the sheer horror that his proposal provoked in Brussels. The first rule of the Eurocracy is “no referendums”. Brussels functionaries believe that their work is too important to be subject to the prejudices of hoi polloi (for once, the Greek phrase seems apposite). Referendums are always seen as irresponsible; but, at a time when the euro is teetering on the brink, Papandreou’s proposal was seen as an act of ingratitude bordering on treason.

Across the palaces and chanceries of the continent, Euro-elites closed ranks. Nicolas Sarkozy’s spokesman described Papandreou’s announcement as “irrational and dangerous”, Angela Merkel’s called it “irritating”, Silvio Berlusconi’s “negative”. Such phrases, in the mouths of government officials, suggest purple, choking rage. The Athens establishment lined up with them. Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, vowed – with splendid disregard for his party’s name – to prevent a referendum “at all costs”.
Constantine Michalos, the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, called the proposal “an act of political blackmail”. All these insults were provoked by the suggestion that people be allowed to determine their future through the ballot box. Further reading here..

Australians would do well to take note of their own prime minister’s call for Australia to boost its contribution to the IMF to keep the global financial system from teetering over the edge. What is needed is a Responsible Government in a Free Society!

AUSTRALIA FOR SALE! (WHAT! HASN’T IT BEEN SOLD YET?)

by James Reed
South Australia is home of the foreign ownership of farms for the states; according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics over 12 percent of South Australian farmland is overseas owned. Next in the sell out stakes is Queensland at 11.8%, Western Australia at 8.5%, Tasmania with 5.6%, New South Wales with 2.7% and my state of Victoria with 0.8%. Victoria, listen to Uncle James, you are supposed to be the “treason state.” What is wrong with you, letting South Australia beat you! South Australia has been able to destroy 1000 farm businesses in the last three years alone! (The Advertiser, September 10, 2011, p.1)

The Foreign Investment Review Board essentially doesn’t exist as millions of dollars float away offshore. And the Northern Territory (a state) beats even South Australia with a proud 24% of foreign ownership. Right on, NT!
The goal of our “leaders” is for 100% foreign ownership of not just agriculture, but everything, including government. The Anglo Saxon core of Australia is being replaced, daily, by mass migration and feminist-fuelled crashing birth rates and a diseased “mass culture”. In China any foreign investment over $1 would be scrutinised, but they are not deracinated… are they?  

ON PLAYING THE MANNE

by James Reed and Brian Simpson
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but still my enemy. We intensely enjoyed seeing Jewish intellectual Robert Manne in his “Bad News” essay take on The Australian and we have also enjoyed The Australian media-machine taking Manne “apart”. With masses of journalists attacking one, how could any essay not fall “apart” especially when one approaches matters from Manne’s world view? Manne goes from conservative right to left and then back to the right and then to the left so fast few people can keep up with him! Even Bertrand Russell didn’t change his position so quickly. Manne would no doubt argue that he is a free thinker and is following the argument where it leads, but we think another explanation is that the theoretical positions which he embraces are flawed and conceptually unstable so that he has no secure foundation to his thought.

The claim by Paul Kelly that Manne “throws truth overboard” (The Australian, September 14, 2011) in the case say of the stolen generation claims of genocide, is understandable in the context of the theoretical inadequacy of his work. Thus as one letter-writer to The Australian put it, Manne “during his tenure as editor of Quadrant… was obviously obsessed with his perception that the bulk of English speaking settlers who arrived before World War II – and their descendants – were morally delinquent in not sharing his concern with the horror of the Holocaust…
He and philosopher Raimond Gaita found the proof of this moral degeneracy by coming up with a definition of genocide so wide that anyone who did not self-flagellate about the effects of settlement on Aborigines was, ipso facto, guilty of supporting the genocide that Manne and Gaita claimed had occurred.” (The Australian, September 15, 2011, p.15) When this concept of genocide was subjected to a reduction ad absurdum (or alternatively a “radicalisation”) in a work such as "Pauline Hanson: The Truth" (compiled by the Pauline Hanson Support Movement in 1997), Manne was a critic of the claim that mass immigration, multiculturalism and Asianisation, also constituted “genocide”.
Given though his “wide” definition of “genocide”, it is not clear why the argument should not be cornered in this direction, even as a thought experiment. Lacking from Manne’s Quadrant pieces on the stolen generation in our opinion was a robust, first principle, foundational defence of the central concept of genocide. Manne’s critique of "The Truth" was ironically published in The Australian.

Neither Manne, nor The Australian deal with the core issue that topics such as Asian immigration, multiculturalism and multiracialism are essentially now “out of intellectual bounds” and The Australian certainly does not permit any challenge to the new politically correct status quo. Even the issue of the limits of population growth, let alone economic growth, is seldom mentioned in The Australian and to our memory, Dick Smith is the only one to have published an article in recent times criticising immigration-fuelled population expansion in The Australian. Manne could have developed a critique of The Australian from this basis, but on the immigration/Asianisation question he seems to take the same politically correct line as The Australian. We therefore take the view that the bitter Mane vs The Australian debate is pretty much a family feud.  

FACEBOOK AND THE RISE AND FALL OF IQ

by Peter Ewer
A recent study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, allegedly shows that the number of Facebook friends one has is correlated to larger, denser areas of the brain that process social perceptions. The brain areas are the right superior temporal sulcus, left middle temporal gyrus and entorhinal cortex. Again, all this shows is that people with a bigger ‘social brain” are more sociable and in an electronic age have more cyber-friends. Once upon a time they probably would have had more person-to-person contacts. Those brain areas process social perceptions such as procuring a person’s gazes and facial expressions.

Maybe these brain areas would be even bigger if normal-to-normal facial communications occurred rather than the alienated cyber-communications of today. If those scientists are right who see solar activity frying electronic circuits in 2012, then a lot of young people will go over the edge of sanity. What life would they have after texting? Of more interest S. Ramsden (et. al.), “Verbal and Non-Verbal Intelligence Changes in the Teen Brain”, Nature doi:10.1038/nature.10514(2011), found that IQ is not stable across one’s life and for adolescents can vary by as much as 20 IQ points.

Adolescents tested by the team had brain scans via a MRI. It seems that the human brain and IQ can change in response to learning events. As I see it, with the present dumbing-down that is occurring in our education system, in a few years, many of our teenagers would have reverted to the level of base savages, perhaps ultimately drinking blood out of a skull! (Grumpy old men of the world unite!)  

ASK THE ASIAN PHILOSOPHER SOUTHPHOMMASANE

by Peter West
Resident philosopher for The Australian Tim Southphommasane, answers deep and profound questions each week. Or at least The Australian seems to think so by featuring an “Ask the Philosopher” column. In The Weekend Australian October 22-23, 2011 p.24, there was the question: “Does supporting a republic mean repudiating our British heritage?” the Asian philosopher asks. The question, as he sees it is “whether Australians are best served by having our head of State the British monarch rather than one of our own citizens?”

So are we then given the jurisprudence of constitutional law or an analysis of “best served”? Are we told why we should be “nationalists” in this sense rather than internationalists – for even if (falsely) the Queen is regarded as “British” (she is our Head of State, both British and Australian, so the premise is false) – then why not have a “foreigner” as monarch? Doesn’t that symbolise migrant Australia?

In fact Southphommasane appeals to radical nationalists such as Henry Lawson, which is ironic because Lawson opposed Asians coming to Australia. But passing over that, Southphommasane says that “Australian republicanism” has stalled because it … continues to be defined by its anti-British flourishes”. Rather, a republic should be a “popular government for the common good… an anti-despotic, balanced and representative form of self-rule”. Well, if that is what is needed Tim, how about binding Citizen’s Initiated Referendums as a real test of democratic maturity?  

PAUL KEATING: A GIFT TO THE MONARCHIST CAUSE

by James Reed
The media are promoting Paul Keating’s book “After Words” (released 30 October 2011). On 21 October 2011 The Australian gave a front page coverage to Keating telling Her Majesty the Queen that she was an anachronism in 1993; an old news item. What is more interesting is Labor Party ‘numbers man’ Graham Richardson writing on Labor’s “real mess” and how switching to Rudd won’t solve it.
Paul Keating, himself an anachronism, should reflect on the fate awaiting his Labor Party, something he has been through before. As for the Monarchy, 55 per cent of Australians want to keep the system as it is, and only 34 per cent want to cut ties with Britain.

Nigel Jackson (The Australian 21 October 2011, p.15) admirably summed it up: “The monarchy offers us a unifying image of glory, dignity and nobility, as well as reminding us of the wisdom and heroism of past generations over 11 centuries”.
“It helps to keep power out of the hands of self-interested business and political elites. It embodies the principles of authority and justice which are a much better guarantee of peace, security and stability than a foolish and headless egalitarianism”.

Keating has locked republicanism into a “headless egalitarian” direction and as such has actually contributed to the monarchist cause. He has illustrated – forcefully - that republicanism represents anti-British sentiment.

CHILD SACRIFICE IN AFRICA: ON CULTURAL DIVERSITY

by Peter West
Today’s lesson, boys and girls – or should I say ‘comrads’ – is about multiculturalism or cultural diversity. As a progressive teacher, I, Ms Snozzgrass embrace this ideal with enthusiasm! Indeed, the more the better! That’s why I am dismayed by little Bill Smith’s essay about child sacrifice in Africa.
Bill read the BBC News Africa article “Where Child Sacrifice is a Business”:
The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda’s capital, Kampala, are gripped by fear: He summarised the details correctly: in Uganda’s capital Kampala, with a booming economy, witch doctors are abducting children for the purposes of child sacrifices.
He quoted thus:
“The mutilated bodies of children have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of human sacrifice. Many believe that members of the country’s new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth…
At the Kyampisi Childcare Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called ‘Heal Our land, End Child Sacrifice’. To hear dozens of young voices singing such shocking words epitomises how ritual killing has become part of everyday life…”.

Bill was obviously upset by this and in his essay condemned the practice of child sacrifice. But it is one thing to feel sympathy for children who are decapitated and disembowelled, but quite another to condemn a cultural practice and to view it outside of its unique historical context.
Bill Smith’s essay was Eurocentric and racist. I fear that unless this sort of thought is nipped in the bud now, Bill will grow up in his racist beliefs. That is why, even though he is only nine years of age, he will be dealt with as those such as Andrew Bolt have been dealt with. Source Here...

UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF DEBT: SOCIAL CREDIT AND “FILTHY LUCRE”

by Peter Ewer
The Bank for International Settlement has warned that, shock, horror, Australia’s level of household debt may cripple economic growth. The economists propose that the level at which household debt can cripple economic growth is 85% of GDP and Australia’s household debt is now 113 % of GDP, almost a third into the danger zone. (The Australian, September 19, 2011, p.6)

Having no sooner seen that gem forecast I came across Joseph Heath’s" Filthy Lucre: Economics for Those Who Hate Capitalism", (Scribe, Melbourne 2009). Heath is a philosopher at the University of Toronto and has written three other economics-style books: The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed (with Andrew Potter), Communicative Action and Rational Choice and The Efficient Society. Filthy Lucre attempts to debunk economic myths on both the Left and the Right and as far as it goes, Heath does a relatively good job. But not so when we come to the question of credit creation.

First, although not mentioning the A+B theorem of Major Douglas, he says that it is impossible for consumers to lack “the means of payment” to purchase all of the consumer goods which have been produced and he brings John Stuart Mill to his defence. According to Mill: “Those who think so, cannot have considered what it is which constitutes the means of payment for commodities. It is, simply, commodities. Each person’s means of paying for the productions of other people consists of those which he himself produces. All sellers are inevitably, and by the meaning of the word, buyers. Could we suddenly double the productive powers of the country, we should double the supply of commodities in every market; but we should, by the same stroke, double the purchasing power.” (p.203)

The same idea was espoused by the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say and has come to be known by the orthodox economic clergy as Say’s Law: “goods constitute the demand for goods”, “supply creates its own demand,” “supply is demand”, all because the seller of one good is the buyer of some other good. In criticism, the seller X of a good G1 may or may not be the buyer of some other set of goods H1, H2…H12. It is logically fallacious to conclude that supply therefore creates its own demand. Supply and demand even in terms of orthodox neoclassical economic theory are conceptually distinct and have sui generis laws (allegedly).By way of a counterexample consider a 19th century hide-seller in the American frontier, who is largely self-sufficient but sells some furs to stockpile money “just in case.” In no stretch of the imagination is “supply equal to demand” in any non-tautological sense.

There can be too much of all commodities, so that, contrary to Mill and Heath, consumers lack the means of purchasing all commodities on the market. Mass production using machines, robots and cheap Asian labour (Chinese prison slave labour if necessary) has resulted in a flood of commodities whose means of production is disconnected from the salaries of consumers. A sale price is put on items cheaply produced, which is not related to classic supply and demand concepts, but to what the capitalist thinks the market can bear and what he can get away with. The megaprofits are made and the surplus commodities junked. The rubbish bins of the megashops are kept firmly locked.

Heath, to his credit, admits that banks do not “actually take the money that is deposited and put in a vault somewhere down in the basement. They turn around and they lend it to someone else. This person either spends it or puts it in another bank, which turns around and lends it to someone else. The only reason this process doesn’t continue indefinitely is that banks have to put aside a certain percentage of each deposit [known as the in “capital adequacy ratio” of fractional reserve banking, although Heath does not use these terms] in order to make sure they have enough cash on hand to cover withdrawals.” (p.205) To his discredit, Heath then says that Major CH Douglas founded “the somewhat nutty “social credit”” movement based upon a fallacious understanding of the relationship between savings and credit.” (p.205)

On the contrary, nothing that Heath has said justifies his typical mainstream economic remarks about social credit. But for a refutation, consider a rejection of orthodox banking for a “green economics” position. Ted Trainer in "The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World", (Envirobook, 2010) says about the creation of credit ex nihilo by banks that “the process whereby it is done in our economy is outrageous, farcical and incredible… The most astounding part is that after the banks have created the money they are allowed to own it and to lend it back and get interest on the loans. This is just the same as getting a printing shop to print out bus tickets and then allowing it to own the bus rides the tickets represent, that is, to sell the tickets for bus rides and keep the money received.” (p.66)

Not only is this socially and morally wrong but as the social credit movement has shown, all new money entering the economy is coated in debt that has to be repaid in interest. This creates an infinite regress of debt and ultimately the unbearable weight of debt that much of the world struggles under. Among other things, social credit aims to liberate us from this suffering world of debt.  

SURE, SORT THE ASYLUMS ONSHORE: THE JAMES REED WAY!

by James Reed
Ok lawyers, you win! Ok High Court, you win! Sure, sort the asylums onshore. But make it really onshore. Do it in a big detention centre lobbed right on Parliament House Canberra. And in each capital city put another big detention centre. Put each in the “spooner” parts of town, where the elites live.
You know the real nice leafy suburbs with expensive houses. Buy every posh place that comes on the market – or better yet – have compulsory acquisition of the fine homes of lawyers and corporate elite. Fill these homes with asylum seekers. The more that come in, the more elite homes should be acquired.

Let these poor oppressed people – as the Left at unis describe them – have the homes of the chattering class. And let them have the uni places that would have gone to the chatterers’ children. See how strongly refugeeism is supported when the bleeders have to pay a cost! 

LETTER IN THE PRESS

The Editor, The Ballarat Courier 30th October 2011:
Dear Editor,
Debt is ubiquitous. Under orthodox finance it is the lubricant on which business and governments depend to keep the economy functioning. The European debt crisis imposes some urgency on the need for reform in the manner in which money comes into existence.
Half the Greek sovereign debt is to be waived but will Greece be able to continue to function without further borrowing while simultaneously repaying the other half of the existing debt?
It is only a few short years since the international money power imposed restrictions on Argentina. Subsequently, despite the country being a net exporter of food, their own people were starving because the conditions of paying off the debt at that time meant all production had to be devoted to exporting. Argentina’s debt was an accumulated trading deficit being different from Greece, Italy et. al., only in manner. In either case the pain comes back to the people.

- - Yours truly, Ron Fischer Sebastopol Victoria.  

JUST HAD TO INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING FOR A GOOD LAUGH…Ed

Email received from old friend:
There has been a delay on the previous announcement. Due to a Tony Abbott Challenge on the validity of such a move please note new date of implementation.
BREAKING NEWS …
"To save the economy, on 30 November, 2011: The PM will announce that she is ordering the immigration department to start deporting old people (instead of illegals) in order to lower Social Security and Medicare costs.
Old people are a lot easier to catch and with the GFC most have lost their life savings so won’t be able to afford the boat trip back, let alone remember how to get back home anyway!"

I started crying when I thought of you. RUN, YOU OLD BUGGER, RUN!! Well.... Someone sent it to me and I'm not going alone.