THE OIL STRIKE

"The Federal Parliament is to be called into emergency session on Friday to ratify the Government special powers to deal with the national oil strike. An announcement by the Prime Minister, Mr. McMahon is expected today after he again consults with senior Ministers for the fifth time in seven days. Alan Ramsey in The Australian, August 1st.

The tangled web of the events leading up to the present most serious oil strike throughout Australia is practically impossible for the man in the street to unravel. All parties to it lay their charges and counter-charges. It is true that all parties have their own point of view; unionists want more money to keep pace with inflation. The oil companies want to keep their nice profits rolling in. Mr. Hawke and the A.C.T.U. have their barrow to push. The Government has its "line" too, and so, most certainly, does the Communist apparatus in the background.

We are sure that the ordinary unionist wants to get the thing over and done with and get back to work as quickly as possible. The oil companies want to get their products into the trade outlets without giving away too much to "Labor" or unionism. Any excessive loss can be costed well and truly into prices of product. We believe that Mr. Hawke doesn't want the issue to get out of control as he has his own political ambitions, and he would want a good A.L.P. victory at the polls this year for use as a springboard to drive into politics in 1975.
An A.L.P. defeat, again, this year, although it is unlikely, could throw his political strategy right out of gear.

The Government rightly sees the absolute necessity of maintaining the integrity of the Arbitration System, and also, we suspect, the opportunity to regain much-needed electoral support. The Communist apparatus, deftly maneuvering the issue its way under the direction of that smart operator, Laurie Carmichael, has at least two probable aims a "dry run" for the time (not too far distant) when the whole of the Australian industry is to be brought to a halt - and an attack upon the Arbitration System itself.

All that could replace the Arbitration System would be Collective Bargaining, as is much the practice in the U.S.A. This system inevitably means higher and higher wage demands as unions become richer and stronger; and this in turn means higher and higher costs; and this in turn means the promotion of monopoly as smaller industrial units are squeezed out of existence by an escalating cost structure, just as the farmers are experiencing right now.

As we have warned before, the "turn" of secondary industry is coming - they will before long be told to "get big or get out", exactly as the farmers are, being told now. The destruction of the Arbitration System will hasten this process; and the Communists know it. There is no industry more certain to transmit its inflationary pressures throughout the whole economy than the petroleum industry; transport costs are welded into the price structure of every conceivable commodity than modern man requires for his existence. The Communists know this too!

THE PHONY POVERTY ISSUE IN ACTION FOR WORLD DEVELOPMENT

"The Poor are Poor Because They Are Poor" is a heading in the Action for World Development basic study book "Development is for People."

The succeeding paragraphs tell us how the poor have not enough to eat, cannot afford education, are slaves of their illiteracy and their children are born into poverty, malnutrition, disease etc on the Misery-Go-Round. Then to add insult to injury, no matter how they sow, harvest, crop, or mine their minerals we pay them the smallest price. We are on their back and won't get off; we own their plantations, mines etc and look to our profits before we consider their wages.

This type of propaganda is so dishonest and so typical of similar Marxist revolutionary propaganda calculated to stir the unthinking masses, that it is difficult to believe it is acceptable to Christian churchmen. We can only conclude it results from the intensive brain-laundering process which now makes sections of the Christian church under the leadership of the left-wing Australian Council of Churches a ready vehicle for the dissemination of Communist propaganda.
As Father Aruppe reminds us, the anti-Christ has breached the walls of the church. (All churches.)

Lack of natural resources has never been the cause of low standards in any of the so-called underprivileged countries. The basic cause of the poverty and disease has been the ignorance, superstition and lack of a driving spiritual force that lifts men above the grime of this world. This basic ignorance is evident in both Western and Eastern countries; more so in the East, but in both instances the ignorance is manipulated by a power structure to the detriment of the welfare of all.

In Action for World Development those who have ruthlessly and cynically exploited the poverty issue find in gullible churchmen and Christians, ready agents to push on towards the destruction of all freedom and national sovereignty. The guiding principle behind Action for World Development is to make Government the vehicle for taking more of the substance of the so-called rich, to put it to the benefit of the so-called poor. It is to be organised on an international scale with the United Nations the administrator of the funds, forcibly taxed and distributed with "no strings attached."

Every experience we have had of this type of irresponsible world centralised control is unending graft, waste and corruption. But the main purpose is the destruction of national sovereignty. Space makes it impossible to give details here, but the "war against poverty" racket up to date has elicited millions of dollars for the use of Communist countries when administered by the U.N. Within weeks of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba the U.N. had given Cuba $1.6 million American, and similar grants to Czechoslovakia who supplied Castro's arms, not to mention other grants to Yugoslavia and Hungary.

To fortify their arguments the publishers of Development is for People use three well-known Fabian Socialists, two of who are "world authorities" on the economic theories of Lord Keynes, whose close association with the Fabians and other Communist tools like Harry Dexter White are now becoming widely known. The three are George Bernard Shaw, John Kenneth Gailbraith and Barbara Ward. Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson) is useful because of her neo-Catholic standing, but has been mixed up in the war against poverty racket on behalf of her international socialist friends for years.

Readers sufficiently interested in how she was used to break down the resistance in the Roman Catholic Church should read Fabian Freeway (2-00 post free) from Box 1052J-G.P.O. Melbourne. 3000

VICTORIAN EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

"School principals may be given wider powers to expel lazy and uncooperative students under new regulations being discussed by the Victorian Education Department". The Age (Melbourne) August 1st.

The report has it that this suggestion was made in a letter to principals of technical institutions in Victoria. The Victorian Labor Party's spokesman on matters of education, Mr. Val Doube, sees great dangers that this discretionary power will be abused and that certain students would be the victims of discrimination. This can't be dismissed airily, of course, but, on balance, we would have far more faith in the principal, a man who has shown by example that he has the ability to attain the senior responsibility in an educational institution, than a "student" who doesn't want to be a student.
We are of the opinion that "education" has become something of a sacred cow; it has become like a prestige commodity, such as a Mercedes-Benz; something it is wonderful to "get". The realities are that not every person is fitted, or suited, to "absorb" higher education.

We are of the opinion that there are many men and women in the professions who would be far more suited to other endeavours, and as a consequence are not good doctors, solicitors, teachers etc. We feel that there are very many men and women who were not able to gain the examination results necessary to win a scholarship nor gain a place in the restricted entrance into various university faculties who would have made excellent professional people, because they WANTED to become a member of one of these professions and to give service.

In our view the man who has the quickness of mind and intelligence to whip through examinations and enter professions, particularly the high-income professions, for this obvious reason, is not often the best type of man for this profession, and the standard of his profession will sooner or later fall. What we are saying, in short, is that many people are being educated beyond their natural ability; even if the intelligence is there to absorb and understand the discipline, the character, to master and guide this discipline in the service of others, is missing. The basis of Education has become perverted; people are chasing "education" for the wrong reasons, and the New Education follows on from this.
(The New Education, by Gary Allen, price 37 cents, post free, from Box 1052J, G.P.O., Melbourne, 3000)

DOES COMMENT OF ECONOMIC WRITER SIGNIFY PRESCIENCE?

"... the Governor of the German Central Bank, Dr.Karl Klasen, was asked how much longer the Germans could go on taking dollars sounding more like a riverboat gambler than a respectable German banker, Dr.Klasen replied: "The sky's the limit it's our paper, or theirs". Leonard Silk, New York, in The Age, Melbourne, 29th July.

Dr. Klasen was speaking of the hundreds of millions of "hot" dollars, which had been pouring into Europe, and into Germany in particular, in anticipation of another dollar devaluation. These would "hold" their former value against the devalued dollar, and the speculators would "make a killing ". Apparently Dr.Klasen was bluffing, because Silk says "the tide of dollars receded".

Under the rules of the Money Game these dollars are converted into Deutschmarks which when fed into the German economy would send it soaring into an inflationary spiral if continued long enough. Silk mentions that the U.S.A. is painfully short of monetary reserves to "defend" the dollar; around $45,000 Million in fact. The "problem" to be overcome is that of relieving the U.S.A. (and this could apply to other nations in balance of payments "deficit) of this "overhang". But we suspect that there may be more to it than just this; Silk may be giving the game away for those gentlemen of International Finance.

Silk continues:- "This could be done by transferring the foreign dollar holdings (Eurodollars) to the International Monetary Fund in exchange for Special Drawing Rights - so-called "paper gold" bearing some appropriate rate of interest S.D.R.s, not dollars, would then become the key money of the world - the standard value in terms of which all currencies, including the dollar, would be defined."

This would be a very neat operation, and it would enable the Masters of International Finance to strengthen their grip, already powerful, over the economies of member nations of the Fund; and this means just about all the major trading nations in the world.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the finance-economic systems of the West are breaking down. The recent gold crisis, the various devaluations forced upon nations; continual balance of payments difficulties; all signify that the world's trading nations have economies which are delicately balanced - under the rules of the Money Game. It is, of course, much more accurate to say that the major trading nations of the world are strong in real wealth - raw materials; the sources of energy for industry (coal, oil, water etc., etc.) the abilities and skills of their peoples, the character of these peoples; and so on. It is the financial system that does not properly reflect these powerful forces in control over it.

Instead of the world's financial system being merely a barometer of the real economies of nations it has been allowed to regulate the economic "weather". It is analogous to the situation that would obtain if some Master Magician from Outer Space were able to swing the barometer needle around, this way and that, and so change the actual weather according to the position of the needle.
The movement of huge sums of money by speculators and manipulators from one country to another is some very small indication of the power that lies in the hands of those able to get away with this.

Leonard Silk advocates the continuous growth of S.D.R.s to fill the need of a substantial increase in monetary reserves in order to make the monetary system secure within a pattern of fixed though adjustable exchange rates. What he is putting forward is the factorising of International debts by the International Monetary Funds that could be the World Money Barons' answer to continual and worsening economic crises. The next International Finance Conference will be interesting.

ON TARGET BULLETIN

The Creation of Money

The goldsmiths were the forerunners of the modern banking system. As will be seen, modern banking is based on the convention that for every dollar of legal tender - money created in the form of notes and coins by Government authority - possessed by the banks, they can create and issue approximately nine dollars of credit money in exactly the same way that the goldsmiths issued more receipts than wealth deposited.
The modern money system has made the modern complex economy possible, and has been a great boon to man. The fact that it developed by fraudulent practices does not alter this fact.

Up to the beginning of the First World War the convention prevailed that bank notes and cheques could be cashed at any bank in exchange for gold sovereigns. There used to be a lot of bank failures when people suddenly decided all at once that they wanted to draw out of the banks the tangible wealth, which they believed, was available.