CEYLON AND THE SOVIET

"Russia's decision to send planes, crews and instructors to Ceylon has profound long-term significance for her expansion in the Indian Ocean region". - T.S. Monks in The Age, April 22.

Mr. Monk's statement could be the understatement of the 70's as history may well reveal within a short time. A glance at the map in the Ceylon area reveals a great deal. Across the Bay of Bengal to the east are the Straits of Malacca and the Andaman Islands in which Intelligence sources reveal the Indian Government have already given the Soviet concessions for shipping and naval activities. The Straits of Malacca are an essential waterway for Japanese shipping plying to the Persian Gulf to obtain that essential commodity, oil, which keeps Japanese industry ticking over. And of course the same straits are the essential strategic lifeline to Malaysia and Indonesia.
In Ceylon itself the deep-sea port of Trincomalee is recognised as a naval base of outstanding quality. The Soviet navy build up in the Indian Ocean must have access to such facilities.

There is a great deal of evidence to indicate that India's ambitions under Mrs. Gandhi, the daughter of Fabian socialist Pandit Nehru, are the same as those of the Soviet. The Soviet and Mrs. Gandhi are combining to safeguard their interests in Ceylon. Both are supplying arms and support for Mrs. Bandanaraike to safeguard their assets in the area.

Paul Scott's authoritative report in The Wanderer, March 4 gives interesting comment on Mrs. Gandhi's chief advisors, Messrs. Ganesh, Yadov, Reddy and Mrs. Satpati, all of whom are either communists or have been communists. While encouraging increasing Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean, Mrs. Gandhi objects to the joint British-U.S. communications complex proposed for the island of Diego Garcia. Just as she, and her father before her always support the Soviet line in the United Nations.

With Soviet MIG's being built in India, and Soviet supplying units of the Indian Navy as well as instructors, and the aforesaid factors mentioned there should be no doubt in the minds of Australians and the Australian Government where the sympathy of the Indian Government lies. Therefore when India combines with the Soviet to pull Mrs. Bandamaraike out of a hole, why does our "very anti-socialist, and very anti-communist" Prime Minister rush in with an offer to supply arms to Mrs. Bandanaraike? To say the least it would be an unholy alliance at the most and more likely, a gross betrayal of future Australian generations who may labour under the control of Communist tyranny.

CAPITAL INFLOW : THE SELLOUT CONTINUES

Financial columns of the press of all papers on April 22 remarked on the flood of overseas financial capital in the last month, some $220 million.

For $220 million of capital inflow we should read, "Outflow of Australia's national asserts worth $220 million".

Present financial policies imposed by the Treasury at Canberra have left the Australian community bereft of financial capital to invest in their own assets. There can be no objection to paying for outside know-how, or initiative to improve our productive capacity if that is necessary. Selling our national asserts by the hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars because of deliberate policies of financial sabotage initiated by the Treasury is an entirely different matter.

The policy, which is keeping domestic funds in short supply, is devilish in many ways. While maintaining cost inflation at one end of the economy, deflation through excessive and crippling taxation is pursued at the other end. Both the individual and corporations are robbed of both savings and purchasing power. In the circumstances, how can either make available money for investment?

Other side effects are ominous. There has been a mushroom growth of merchant banking in Australia. These are little more than investment houses trafficking in money, obtaining it from wherever they can get it. Foreign ownership of such banks is becoming a big factor. The biggest merchant bank Australian United Corporation is a case in point. The international banking houses of Warburg and Morgan recently bought interests in A.U.C., as did also a Japanese industrial bank. It is argued that merchant banks cannot expand their credit structure, as do trading banks. But when in partnership with banks such as S. G. Warburg and Co; Warburg-Brinkmann, Wirtz & Co. and Effectenbank-Warburg AG which under the name of the European Australian Associates (EAA) own 10% of AUC, while the Morgan Guaranty International Finance Corporation own 21% and the industrial Bank of Japan own 4%; then such merchant banks have access to a direct source of credit which challenges the established banking structure of Australia.

The local banks are hamstrung by the Treasury in such a way as to ensure they are unable to accommodate local investment. The result is increasing "capital inflow" and takeover by foreign interests.

WELFARE STATE MAJOR FACTOR IN NORTH AMERICAN COLLAPSE

Mr. Eric Butler sent the following report on the eve of leaving Canada for the United Kingdom

California's Governor Ronald Reagan recently described California's welfare system "a $3 billion moral and administrative disaster" and announced that he was going to implement a plan to make it tougher for people to obtain welfare payments. Governor Reagan listed a number of incredible abuses of the State welfare system, including the mailing of cheques to recipients in Peru and other foreign countries.

A study of the Canadian press reveals an increasing number of indignant Canadians drawing attention to the more blatant abuses of Canada's welfare system. A woman describing herself as a hardworking widow, rather bitterly asks why she should be maintaining her dignity while high school students over 16 years of age can leave their homes, live together in a common law relationship and draw substantial welfare payments. Another person complains that he cannot see why he should pay substantial taxation so that women can leave their husbands, live with other men, and then be entitled to draw welfare payments. One might be excused if one thought that the Canadian welfare system was specifically designed to produce social disintegration.

Any suggestion that the Federal Government might tighten up on welfare payments to exploiting the welfare system is met with the statement that "the State is not going to pry into the bedrooms of the Canadian people". However, the financial, apart from the moral costs, of the Canadian welfare system are becoming so astronomical that obviously a determination to continue the system in its present form must lead to major disasters.

It is not surprising that the revolutionaries on the North American continent have been using every possible method to exploit the welfare system to further their objectives. Now coming striking confirmation of the manipulation of the welfare system in a book, Teachers of Destruction, by the eminent American writer Alice Widener, who produces irrefutable evidence that the strategy of the revolutionaries is to overload the welfare system, sap the health of the production system and alienate the poorer sections of society. According to Mrs. Widener the tax-exempt "Socialist Scholars" organisation, founded in 1965, is one of the founts of left-wing activism in North America, composed mainly of "teachers of destruction, not peaceful reformers working for the gradual improvement of our society".
She charges that the "formula" of using welfare as a weapon to destroy the U.S.A. first appeared in the writings of Professor Richard Cloward of Columbia University's School of Social Work.
"More than any other Socialist scholar, it is Richard A. Cloward…. who, during the past four years, has adversely affected the pocketbook of every American taxpayer through promoting welfare strategy which is, in reality, a conspiracy".

As far back as 1966, in an article in the Socialist publication, The Nation, Professor Cloward stressed that by deliberately recruiting people to make every possible use of the welfare system, the U.S.A. could be thrown into a "profound financial and political crisis." Writing like trained dialecticians, Professor Cloward and a co-author, Dr. Frances Pewen, also of Columbia, argued that if welfare payments were to rise sharply. there would be strong reaction from taxpayers and "group conflict" would then result.

In 1965, the year before the "welfare strategy" was launched, welfare expenditures in the U.S.A. were $77 billion. In 1968 they had risen to $112 billion and by 1969 they had soared to $127 billion - $48 billion more than the total U.S. Defence Department expenditures, these including those for the Vietnam War.

Mrs. Widener, a woman noted for her concern for the poor and needy in society, including the military veterans, stresses that the greatest mistake Americans can make is to believe that soaring welfare payments go to those genuinely requiring assistance. Mrs. Widener provides first hand information on how the welfare strategy was given a further "bite" when in December 1968, poor people were manipulated into going into department stores, picking up $100 of goods and then attempting to charge them to welfare. As inevitable arguments developed, agents provocateurs among the shoppers started to agitate, police had to be called in and a free-for-all developed with plenty of publicity.

The bureaucratic army being erected to service the rapidly expanding welfare system in the U.S.A. is welcomed by the Marxists. Almost as if to demonstrate that his Government is determined to match the American rush down the welfare road, Prime Minister Trudeau has announced grandiose welfare payments for Canadian students wishing to travel across Canada during the coming summer. At the same time the Government is helping to subsidise the importing of West Jamaicans to work on farms.
Speaking in the House of Commons at Ottawa on March 23, Prime Minister Trudeau said that Canadian students would not take farm work. They have little incentive to be more self-reliant with the lavish welfare support of the Trudeau Government.

A recent Canadian cartoon shows two hippie students walking along, with the following underneath; "I'll run over and pick up unemployment cheque and then drop off at the University to see what's holding up my cheque on the Federal Education Grant and look into my research grant cheque. You go to the free VD clinic and check on our tests; then go to the free health centre and pick up my glasses and after that go down and pick up the food stamps and slide by the food market and we'll meet at the Federal Building at 12.00 for the mass picketing of the stinking establishment".

A society which does not take adequate care of its sick, its aged, the disabled, particularly those disabled in fighting for their nation, is a sick, anti-Christian society. But a society, which permits a system of destructive welfarism to be used to undermine individual responsibility, is on a suicide course.
Reversing the "welfare strategy" of the Marxists and their dupes requires a challenge to the finance-economic policies, which make it increasingly difficult for individuals to co-operate successfully in modern societies. Australia should carefully heed what is happening in North America and take appropriate action to ensure that the "welfare strategy" is not used to help destroy the nation from within.

PETROL PRICE JUMP A SAVAGE BLOW

"Primary industry leaders in Queensland are angry over the 11/2 cent a gallon petrol price increase throughout Queensland". - Queensland Countryman, April 15.

There is a great deal of argument over oil company profitability and whether they needed the latest rise. We don't discuss that aspect here except to say there is a continuous rise in costs taking place, which must force higher prices of all commodities. What is of concern is how one branch of industry cannot see, or if it does see makes no move to help, the plight of another industry. It is obvious that those in primary industry are being crucified by a combination of higher costs and lower incomes. In the last budget the Government increased the tax on petrol by 3 cents a gallon, a crippling blow to primary producers. With the tremendous political leverage the oil companies have, they should show some long sightedness, and just good old plain concern and charity, and bring all the pressure they can to bear on the McMahon Government to see that the excise charges are reduced by that three cents to bring some alleviation to the Australian community. In the meantime the demand petition circulated by the League of Rights asking that this be done should be used to the greatest extent possible.

POLITICIAN-CLERIC ASSAULTS WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

"A Government M.P., who was also a Presbyterian minister, last night said that the executive of the World Council of Churches was so naive it is dangerous" - The Age. Melbourne, 28th April.

Mr. Lucock (C.P., N.S.W.) said he was disgusted with the W.C.C., and some of its executives on its attitude to apartheid in South Africa. The W.C.C. is giving funds to terrorists in Africa.

We are also disgusted, but we disagree somewhat on the 'naivety' of the W.C.C. We think that there are executives of questionable allegiances in the W.C.C. who know exactly what they are doing.