"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
Edmund Burke
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"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they
grind exceedingly fine.
. . . though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all." Friedrich von Logan |
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July-August 2002, Vol. 24, No. 4
A Couple of Weeks of Half-Decent Government? A week before the July 27 General Election a group of Maoris in Hawkes
Bay announced they would march on Wellington. Their intention was to
use the election week to protest against the sale of the land called
Young Nicks Head. Everybody knows that Maori land claims usually take
years to settle, if ever, with a handful of lawyers and negotiators
raking in huge fees during the lengthy proceedings. But not so over
the Gisborne Maori claim. It was settled within hours. The planned march
was featured on television on the Saturday before the Election, and
had been dealt with by lunch time the next day. The Government denied
it had anything to do with the Election. "Not half", commented
N.Z. Herald writer John Armstrong (July 22). There were certainly some significant issues to come out of the Election and the campaign. The Election result almost perfectly matched the larger polls taken in the last few weeks. Prime Minister Clark had hoped for an overall majority for her Labour Party. But she hasn't got it. She must now come to some agreement with the smaller parties. She did not have an overall majority during the last term but she had the full support of the now obliterated Alliance. Compared to the past, the massive support for the small parties would seem to strongly indicate that a considerable segment of New Zealand clearly does not want any one party to have dictatorial power. Clark must now work with either the Greens, Peter Dunne's United Party, or Winston Peter's New Zealand First. She doesn't want a bar of the latter, so it has to be the Greens or United. Ideologically Labour and the Greens have more in common than Labour and United. United will be an unknown factor with a new team of nine, compared
to only one seat previously. United has drawn its support mostly from
the conservative and Christian sectors and they aren't Helen Clark's
cup of tea. It will be interesting to see what stands, if any United
take on some of the key issues. Although Peter Dunne began as a Labour
MP, he left on friendly terms to form his own party, and has since sided
on nearly every vote with the Nationals. In office, Labour and National have both acted contemptuously, especially
since 1984. They have ridden roughshod over the aspirations of most
people and have repeatedly betrayed the country's independence. It would
seem that some of their traditional voters, aside from the ones that
previously moved to Jim Anderton's Alliance and Peters NZ First, were
on the lookout for a better alternative. And Peter Dunne gave it to
them. It is interesting that many concerned people with Christian values
backed United but were not willing to support the Christian Heritage
Party, which may well now fold. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that concerned Christians who want
to save their country need, now, to discover mechanisms that can be
applied to influence Government policies, rather than attempting to
gain power for themselves. It is also a lesson that hopefully the Democrats,
once called the Social Credit Party, will now also learn, having lost
their two seats with the demise of The Alliance. Very likely, quite a few people gave one of their votes to the Greens over GE and the other (*) to NZ First over Immigration. But the professional political pundits seems quite blind to the fact that most people would rather have a say on an issue rather than have a group of elitists, irrespective of their ideological colouring, making all the decisions for them. Immigration and GE are two issues the government and the National Party do not want to discuss. Both support the Big Business proposition that GE is essential for the economy and that massive immigration is vital if we are to achieve that dangerous absurdity called "economic growth". But issues they did become, when the Greens campaigned solely on stopping GE and Winston Peters tackled immigration and the land rights issues. Helen Clark will be hoping these issues now go away. But the GE debate may have only just begun. She not only has to face the Greens, whose support she will hope to keep for at least three years, but the fact that GE opposition is also coming from what politicians call "entrenched" conservative circles, namely, the new group Sustainability Council of New Zealand, headed by former Federated Farmers President Sir Peter Elworthy. Even former Labour leader David Lange has suggested the country take a cautious approach. Expensive newspaper and television advertisements in the week before the Election has only further highlighted in many peoples' minds the fact that GE is mostly about benefiting a few large monopoly companies and does not have the backing of all in the scientific community. Despite not being able to get the media or the other parties to discuss immigration Winston Peter's has again shown that it is a concern for many. Three years ago he held on to his own Tauranga seat by less than 100 votes. This time he thrashed the closest contender (Labour's Marxist-leaning Attorney-General Margaret Wilson,) with a lead of over 9500 votes. At his public meetings around the county Peters spoke against globalism and in favour of nationalism. No wonder he is hated by the various shades of Collectivists. Despite the multiculturalists accusing Peters of being "racist" NZ First did particularly well in the Maori electorates, proving that many Maori do not want the destructive land rights nonsense. National has paid the price for its own treachery while in office, with its lowest support (21 percent) ever. Winston Peters is right when he refers to the Labour-National Party. He is right too when he speaks of their blind lust for power at all cost. Helen Clark has one advantage over Bill English. She has some basic sense of grass roots feelings or thinking whereas English is a technocrat. He may possibly be a better person, a family man, but his view of the world is one of figures and statistics. He tried to campaign on nothing more than waiting until the media revealed some issue people seemed interested in and then running with it, until something else grabbed the headlines then he'd have a go at that. The morally bankrupt Nationals were a disaster for the country during their last term in power. They pursued globalism even more hastily than the earlier Lange National Government; did more secret deals with monopoly businessmen; its leader, Bolger, did an about face and supported republicanism; they signed secret international agreements faster even than a Communist government could have, and generally acted with utter contempt toward the public. English was a senior member of that government. He must now watch his back carefully. He rolled former leader Shipley while she was out of the country and she had rolled Bolger in much the same style. Certainly their President won't be around for long. She hailed from the world of Big Business and she had tried to stack the party with fellow cronies from that same world of financial black magic. The country has said it doesn't want such people in government. The state of tension the Clark government found itself in during the final couple of weeks before the Election probably gave us the best government we have had in a long time. Witness the quick response over Young Nicks Head. The correct role of a government is to administer the policies wanted by society. It is not the correct role of a government to decide what policy should be pursued. Actually that is an unfair responsibility to put on the members of a government. If we had a sanction like the Swiss system of binding referenda, New Zealanders would then be able to give instructions to their political representatives. Those who say it wouldn't work conveniently, or blindly, ignore the fact that wherever power and decision making is more decentralised a society gets better results. Issues like GE, immigration and foreign takeovers, would be much more easily dealt with by an effective and honest system of binding referenda. It would even make politicians lives easier. If New Zealanders rejected foreign takeovers in a binding referendum then politicians' would not be faced with continually having to deal with special interest groups. It would be pointless for the global business monopolists to come knocking on politicians' doors, because even those politicians in favour of Big Business would not be able to do anything for them. The Clark government now ought to be coming to grips with the fact
that we are living in an increasingly unstable world. There is a strong
likelihood of a major war in the Middle East in the very near future.
The possibility of wars elsewhere must be considered. Her approach up
till now of accepting virtually every application for refugee status
or citizenship and of not discouraging future boat people may well be
a policy she can hold to over the next three years. At least if she
wants to be re-elected in 2005. * For the benefit of our overseas readers our voting system now allows
two votes. One for a local candidate and another for a party. We used
to get one. Perhaps in time they will give us three votes! * * "The very process of improvement in technique, in which we have
been indulging for years, has been the displacement of labour by machinery.
. . . You suddenly have the phenomenon of several million people for
whom you have no jobs. That has been created by the very improvements
you have been effecting. . . . I think we want to strip some of our
old ideas, and at last to get in the position we have not been in now
for over a century, and that is that we are not slaves of the machine,
but we are its master, that the office is not for us to work in, but
to provide a living. When I say 'a living', I mean something more than
going to an office. That machinery is there to provide us with leisure
and not to give us more work, that transportation is there to give us
more time, and not less." * * Water: A Gift or A Tradeable Commodity? 'Water is the last infrastructure frontier for private investors'.
It is a huge leap from corporate boardrooms and banker's dens in foreign capitals to houses and cowsheds in New Zealand. Probably the only thing held in common is the need for water. Imagine if some huge multinational corporation (s) controlled the world's water. Is there a plan in place that will permit governments to allow this? Tony Orman, writing in The Marlborough Express (30-1-95) quoted an article headed: "Tradeable Water Rights Fight May Become A Battle". His report outlined a looming struggle between giant corporations and the people for access to water. Some quotes from his article follow: -"Water, particularly that in rivers, is by law and tradition, publicly owned. However, freemarket forces are moving in, setting their sights on the target of water. Tradeable water rights have been likened to tradeable fish quotas which can be sold by the owner to the highest bidder. Those opposed to the concept say that in time the resource, whether it is fish or water, ends up being dominated by a few big players."- "The body that first promoted tradeable water rights was The Tasman Institute, a Melbourne based private organisation akin to The New Zealand Business Roundtable, and established in 1990. It is, in the words of a spokesman from its Australian office nonprofit making and dedicated to the public good". "So, what is there to worry about? After all, it's only for our own good! Tony Orman names four New Zealanders who are (or were when he wrote the article) on the board of The Tasman Institute; Sir Roger Douglas, deputy chairman; John Fernyhough, a director; Rod Deane, then CEO of Telecom; and Mr (now Sir) Ron Trotter of Fletcher Challenge. These men were all among the most prominent leaders of the privatisation plot which in a few short years saw the greater part of our public assets flogged of to New Zealand and foreign corporations. The method was by what Americans call "sweetheart" deals. Remember our railway network? It was sold to Fay Richwhite and an American firm. Then Prime Minister Bolger lent them $400 million of taxpayers money to buy the taxpayers asset! Let's not forget that Fay Richwhite was also the firm hired by Government to value the Railways. Let's also not forget the recent revelation that Fay Richwhite contributed at least $250,000 to the National Party during one year. Recall the Bank of New Zealand? Sir Michael Fay was on the board. His firm borrowed the money from the bank to buy the bank. Remember that the taxpayers have bailed out the Bank to the tune of $1.2 billion. Then there is Air New Zealand. Prime Minister Clark was a Cabinet Minister in the Labour Government which sold it off. Now, her government has had to buy a huge share in it to prevent its bankruptcy, at a cost to taxpayers of $880 million. In the meantime the airline's board had paid themselves huge salaries and bonuses and are not held accountable for the grossly incompetent decisions they made. What of our oil and gas fields in and off the shores of Taranaki? These were virtually given to Fletcher Challenge along with a $400 million bonus, by a government dominated by then Finance Minister Roger Douglas. Fletchers have now on-sold to Shell at a huge profit. The New Zealand people are in up to their eyeballs in debt to foreign financiers because of the Think Big schemes of the 1970s and 80s which were imposed by the late Sir Robert Muldoon and former Finance Minister Bill Birch. Birch promised the nation the billions spent would enable the country to become energy self-sufficient. Instead the gas to petrol plant was shelved and the gas squandered for short term government income. These days Birch is another supporter of Globalisation and global interdependence, and survives on a generous public pension and lucrative consultancy fees, including one for around $50,000 for six weeks work for the Auckland City Council. On his past record it is no surprise that its partial implementation has caused the council considerable strife. Roger Douglas was Finance Minister at the time Fletchers took over the oil assets. With the track records of Douglas, Birch, and the others mentioned above, may God help us if they and their types are to control the nation's water! Tony Orman went on to state: "Recently a Sunday newspaper disclosed a 'Secret Report' made by Investment banker CS First Boston, prepared for ECNZ [Electricity Corporation of New Zealand; CEO is John Fernyhough] and the Business Roundtable (whose members include Trotter and Deane) which recommends Ocorporation and privatisation of water". "Business Roundtable CEO Mr Roger Kerr denied the CS First Boston Report was being kept secret, saying, It will be made public in due course". He added: the report will look at all issues from structure to water quality, distribution, charges, corporatisation and other aspects". "The programme to take control of the world's water was first promoted by the World Bank three decades ago. The Bank has invested in irrigation, water supply, sanitation, flood control and hydro power, mainly in Third World countries over the years. It has closely collaborated with many United Nations organisations, such as the UN Development Programme and the UN International Union of Local Authorities. This latter is where many of the ideas behind our local body 'reforms' came from, including the forced amalgamations. In March 2001, negotiations started for implementing the World Trade organisation's (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This is one of 15 agreements adopted as part of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations which greatly expanded the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) The Urugury Round also created the WTO so as to enforce the agreements. Today 139 governments have taken their people into the GATS. GATS covers legal, accountancy, advertising, travel and media services, as well as municipal services such as sewerage, water and garbage, and other essential services like health and education. It also means deregulation of services at local, regional and national levels and subjecting them to the WTO's Global Rules which benefit only the huge multinational corporations. Early in 1997 the Business Roundtable and overseas water companies addressed a $1500 a-head conference at a plush Auckland hotel. Their aim was to promote the concept of public water systems being sold off, or at the very least their management and administration privatised. Following this conference the first significant step was taken by the Papakura City Council which decided to allow the 'franchising' of its public water supply. Papakura's water piping network has not yet gone, but its management has been sold, along with the rights to build any further components for the system. Any new assets will be privately owned for decades to come. Profits will flow away from Papakura, and mostly overseas. Unlike in the past profits will not go back into the community. Will the rest of the nation's public water be privatised? The company now running Papakura's water is United Water. It is owned by two foreign corporations, one being Transwater from Britain and the other the French firm Vivendi. Vivendi's board is headed by New York based Canadian Edgar Bronfman and his family are the major shareholders. Vivendi bought the Bronfman media and liquor empires two years ago. The liquor business included Seagrams Gin. Any Papakura residents partial to what has been called 'mothers ruin' will be paying the same foreign company for both the gin and water in their glass. When the Bronfman family moved their assets from Canada to the US several years ago they were permitted by the Canadian tax authorities to underestimate their worth by a huge amount. Many Canadians were scandalised and there were wide media calls for an investigation. However the calls were ignored by the Canadian government. United Water/Vivendi controls the water supply to the city of Indianapolis
in the USA, to Adelaide in South Australia and Ballarat in Victoria.
Australia is well down the road of privatised water services. Are we
to follow? An article in the Australian newsletter Strategy,
in August 1984 reveals that water reform was just one of the many reforms
laid out in the Amalgamation Treaty, from the aforementioned UN International
Union of Local Authorities. New Zealand¹s councils were arbitrarily
amalgamated two years later by the Labour Government led by Lange, Douglas,
Prebble, Bassett, Clark, not to mention Mike Moore who now head the
WTO. Did any of the politicians tell us that the forced amalgamations
were due to us becoming a party to this UN agreement, which is also
linked to the UNESCO 'Biosphere Programme' which purports to have the
control over all water catchments, farm dams, rivers, streams, soaks,
creeks, springs if they begin on farmlands and other sources. From a different source (Department of Local Government) it has been discovered that not only will rural users be slugged, but residential areas will be charged (taxed) on rain that falls on the quarter acre blocks. 'Gauges will be installed at strategic locations throughout local government areas so that falls of rain can be averaged in each area. Then a charge will be levied on ratepayers for the disposal of the surplus (storm) water. Of course, we have already paid for drainage in our water ratings. So the Drainage Charge (tax) will be a tax on rainfall, and you cannot escape the rain that soaks into your land because it is measured by gauges.' The New Times Survey (Melbourne, February 2000) had an article
by Mr G. Friend of Lockyer Waters, who wrote of a situation where a
farmer was presented with a bill for $15,000 for the water stored in
his own dam on his own freehold property. He refused to pay the demand
and consequently armed sheriffs confiscated his $58,000 wool clip. There
are reports that residents in country towns in Victoria have had their
own rainwater tanks disconnected and blocked internally to make them
connect up to their town supply. Another farmer, Julian Kaye from Elmhurst
was charged $30,000 by his local rural water authority for rain that
falls on his property. The authority claimed Mr Kaye's 45-megalitre
dam would trap water destined for "the authority's Wimmera river
catchment" and they should be compensated. Charges were set at
$636 per megalitre up front and yearly charges of $4 per megalitre for
all water used from his dam. Tony Orman's Malborough Express article was published over seven years
ago. He warned us that large multinational corporations were out to
control our public water supplies, and perhaps even to attempt to own
all water stored or used. Under the bureaucratic Resource Management
Act (RMA) which followed the amalgamation of councils, all water, it
is claimed, is vested in the Crown, regardless of whose land it is flowing
over or under. Since the RMA was made law as a result of the UN Rio
Environmental Summit, are we starting to see a gradual shift toward
dragonian laws dictating what one can or cannot do on one's own private
property. Environment Waikato was clear, said Graeme Trower, in its intention to apply the rainfall tax across most of its ratepayers so as to subsidise all the flood control schemes that they maintain. It has already started in the South Island. People that live near the Mataura River, near Gore are being charged a rain tax, and a farmer in Whakatane is taking a case against Environment Bay of Plenty against a similar rating scheme. The Waikato farmers took their case to the Court of Appeal and on July 10 were told they had lost and would have to pay the rainfall tax. A Dannyvirke farmer bought five hectares of 'scrubby bog' in 2001, which, unbeknown to him had been declared a 'designated wetland' ten years earlier. He drained the swamp at a cost of $12,000 and was then ordered to restore it, at an estimated cost of $80,000. After negotiation, the Tararua District Council accepted $20,000 from the farmer in return for not enforcing the land's restoration (The Dominion 17-1-02 and 1-2-02) In other words it was alright for the "designated wetland" to be drained so long as an acceptable bribe was paid. The Press (Christchurch 27-2-02) in one of a series of articles
on the management of the water resources in Canterbury quoted Neville
Bennett, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury, who put
the case for a 'water market'. He wrote: "Plenty of evidence exists
that New Zealand is not using its water resources in a sustainable manner.
The appropriate action would be to create a water market to ensure an
improvement in the environment and the efficient and equitable allocation
of water. A market mechanism that increased the real price of water
would close the gap in water supply and demand. The Resource management
Act is not proving effective in protecting the environment. Consents
are granted to many applications, which have 'minor' effects on the
environment. No one looks at the cumulative effect of the thousands
of consents granted on water resources." Haven't we heard this line so many times before in respect of all the public assets that have been flogged off? A month after nosy-parker Neville Bennett's article appeared in The Press, the Taranaki Regional Council announced it was going to closely monitor farmers using large volumes of water for pasture irrigation. Three weeks later the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) issued a report which said that water for agriculture in Hawkes Bay, Marlborough and Otago was close to reaching its estimated supply limits. There is no doubt that intensive farming is using vast quantities of water. One dairy cow drinks 70 litres a day, plus washing of the milking shed. That's probably about 100 litres a day per cow. A herd of 200 cows would require 20,000 litres a day. Over a year this amounts to 7.3 meglitres. In Australia that could cost the cocky $2409. Pasture irrigation and the odd cup of tea would be in addition to this. But are we really running short of water? It is one thing to argue in favour of minimising unnecessary waste, but much of what is being said concerning allegedly scarce water, is clearly directed towards the application of previously unthinkable water taxes and controls, and the creation of water bureaucracies, either by governments or government-backed private monopolies. Is the constant reference to water as a 'resource' designed to soften us into believing that we face a future of constant shortages? And if this is the case, how come the same sorts of 'experts' keep telling us that the country is under-populated? If the Aussie charge of $330 per megalitre for dairy farmers was introduced here it would create a market worth around $34 million a year. Add to that the sheep, beef and deer farmers, the horticulturists and the orchardists, plus homes and industries. No wonder the multinational companies have their hearts set on controlling privatised essential services. But would our politicians really be silly or treacherous enough to
permit all our water to be so controlled by a foreign monopoly? Perhaps
so, considering their recent record. Consider this from the New Zealand
Herald of May 4, 2002: How does this agreement affect a family that may be living off its own rain water tank? Or a poor farmer who scrapes a living on a few acres and has relied up until now on God's Providence? Probably such people will barely even register as statistics on the computers of the company accountants working out of air conditioned offices on the other side of the world. Let us all be warned. With a Parliament stacked with Members of Parliamentarians for Global Action, and most of them sold out to big party agendas, the stage may be getting set for another secret agenda once the Election season is forgotten. Most politicians, irrespective of their political shade, have swallowed the line that New Zealand must have ever-continual "growth", and that we must follow every economic trend presented by consultants, monopoly businessmen, and representatives from groups like the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. But is this the only course open to us? During the 1930s Depression two representatives of the Bank of England came here advocating even tighter economic restraints, and the creation of a Central Bank to be owned by the private banks. But in 1935 the newly elected Labour Government of Michael Savage rejected most of that advice. Instead it made use of the newly formed Reserve Bank to provide credit for helping dairy and other farmers. Credit at 1 percent interest was made available to the Ministry of Works for the building of roads, bridges and a series of hydro power stations. The result was that New Zealand emerged from the Depression before most other countries. By 1938 we were reported to have the second highest standard of living in the world. This was achieved largely by making sensible use of our own credit so that New Zealanders could get access to the abundant natural wealth and resources for their everyday needs. It is nonsense for politicians and their economic advisers to claim we cannot do this today. We could do it even more easily now if we just used a little bit of honest common sense. How stupid will future generations think we must have been that we did not know how to run our own water systems, or empty our own rubbish bins, without the help of a foreign company whose management would barely know where New Zealand was, let alone anything about us. Comment, Ed. On Target: In regard to the above attention is drawn to the June issue of Ian Wishart¹s magazine, Investigate. Wishart publishes correspondence leaked to him which include letters from Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable to various Ministers of the Crown over the past decade. It reveals, beyond dispute, that Big Business has been directing government policies in respect to asset sales, the open immigration policy, and social legislation designed to make NZ more "attractive" to foreign investors. Let it also not be overlooked that these identical policies are promoted by Helen Clark's friends at the Socialist International, and by the UN-based Parliamentarians for Global Action, of which Clark and many of her Labour and National colleagues are members. Extreme free marketer and globalist Richard Prebble used to represent PGA in New Zealand. He has supposedly gone from being on the "left" to now being on the "right"; not such a difficult manoeuvre when we consider that the extremists in both camps have the same Collectivist philosophy and globalist objectives. * * The League's Web Site We remind readers of the web site for the Australian League of Rights.
It is www.alor.org/. Current issues of the journals of the Australian,
New Zealand, Canadian and British Leagues are posted on the site, as
well as a list of available books, information on Social Credit and
the Social Credit solution to today's problems. Occasionally books available
in Australia are not stocked by the NZ League. The web site now also
has information about the outstanding American Social Credit-Distributist
journal, Triumph of the Past, published by Michael Lane of Ohio.
Mr Lane has brilliantly mapped out the history and lineage of the early
Social Credit movement, highlighting the social, economic and political
environment of the period, and tracing the several streams of thinking
that lead to Douglas' analysis and suggestions. * * Foreign Control: Key Facts Foreign direct investment (ownership of companies) in New Zealand increased
from $9.7 billion in 1989 to $49.3 billion in 2001 Statistics * * Immigration What if we are wrong? What if different kinds of people just plain
don¹t want to live together? What if federal bullying, stamping our
feet, and holding our breath and turning blue won¹t change things? A
powerful current in today's compulsorily appropriate thought is that
hostility between groups is anomalous and remediable, an exception to
natural law that it results from poor socialization, defective character,
or conservative politics. If only we understood each other we would
then love one another. Such is the theory. But we don't love each other.
When the desired affections fail to develop, which is the usual outcome,
we try compulsion. People must love each other, under penalty of law.
Any expression of displeasure with another group is punished. We brainwash
our children with an almost North Korean intensity to persuade them
that groups should cuddle and value one another.And still it doesn't
work. If one looked around the world, one might reasonably conclude that
different groups should be separated, not coerced into proximity. Note
that most of the internal violence that afflicts nations occurs between
ethnic, racial, and religious groups not between rich and poor, between
those who bowl and those who golf, or between capitalists and socialists.
Would it not make sense, when possible, to separate disparate populations?
In the United States, serious violence riots, burning of cities, not
to mention a heavy (and carefully disguised) element of interracial
targeting in crime takes place along the black/white/Latino fault
lines, with occasional black/Jewish fighting in New York. Again, race,
religion, ethnicity. Different kinds of people don't get along. The pattern is universal. In France, horrified fluttering recently
arose when Jean-Marie Le Pen, a very anti-immigration sort of fellow,
got 17% of the vote in presidential elections. How surprised should
we be? France has some five million North African Mohammedans. Antagonism
is predictable. When the French were in North Africa, the North Africans
didn't like it. Now that the North Africans are in France, the French
don't like it. Tension is high in Germany between Germans and Turks. In India, Mussulmans
and Hindus riot bloodily. In Ceylon, Tamils and Sinhalese; in Iraq,
Kurds and Iraqis; in Ireland, Protestants and Catholics, in Yugoslavia
Sin Burundis. Canadians and Quebecois are not killing each other, but
they think about it. Given that the mixing of disparate peoples leads
with remarkable consistency to trouble, and that the price of the trouble
can be high, might it not be reasonable to take this into account when
making policy? Might it not be wiser to permit, or even to encourage,
people to live with their own? For some it is too late. The United States has lost control of its
borders and lacks the political will to do, well, anything. We amount
to a dead whale decaying on the beach of civilization. Other countries
may yet have time. We are, of course, unendingly told that to favour
separation is to be racist, hateful, and reactionary. It is always easier
to call one's questioners names than to answer their questions. But
need one be a racist to favour a comfortable distancing? Originally, racism* meant a belief that one race was inferior to another, usually one's own. The street definition is a dislike of another because of his race. I do not regard myself as racially superior to, say, the Japanese. I certainly don't dislike them for neglecting to be white. I've spent time in the Japanese hinterland, crawled the mountains, eaten in remote noodle stands. I like the culture and the people. Passing through Tokyo last week, I reflected (as always) at their superior efficiency and civility. I have no racist notions, by either definition, of the Japanese. But do I think we should encourage heavy immigration of Japanese (assuming they wanted to come), or they of Americans? No. A very bad idea. Antagonism would result. The differences are too great. It works this way. Suppose that you are a considerate traveller, American, and go to a foreign town pick your country -- unaccustomed to outsiders. The likelihood is that you will be treated with courtesy and some degree of curiosity. Should you attempt to learn the language and take an apartment, the people will be flattered by the former and unconcerned by the latter. Should other Americans come (or Germans, or Chinese), the locals will be unconcerned at first. The early arrivals will per force adapt to the local culture However, as the numbers reach a certain point, visitors will begin to be seen as invaders. They will cluster together, come to constitute an alien enclave and then, without intending it, to impose themselves on the natives. The ways of the immigrants will inevitably conflict with the ways of the natives. As an example, Americans are noisier than most Orientals, prefer informal camaraderie to formal courtesy, and have different notions of proper manners in public. Behaviour that is informal and friendly in one society is oafish in another. It isn't a question of right or wrong, but of expectations. Soon interests will diverge, hostility appear, incidents occur, and retaliation follow. Us-agin-them thinking is natural to people. Note that in the United
States, when blacks move into white neighbourhoods, nothing happens
- at first. When the proportion of blacks reaches a certain point
thirty percent is a figure I've often seen - the remaining whites flee.
The same happens in reverse. When white gentrifiers move into the black
city, they clump together. When they become conspicuous by their plenitude,
resentment arises among the black population. By contrast, when groups
have their own territory and do not too much come into contact, feelings
improve. Neither side feels in danger of being dominated by the other.
Thus homogeneous countries tend to be happier countries. All of this
is obvious. And yet we follow policies sure to cause unending trouble,
certainly cultural suicide, perhaps catastrophe, because of bullheaded
insistence that things be as we wish, not as they are. The spirit of
Marxism is much in evidence here the view that people are amorphous,
anonymous, barely sentient putty to be shaped by soulless theoreticians.
(Can there be a more contemptuous word for humanity than "the masses'?)
For all of this, I think, we will pay a price. * * Mass Immigration and Culture "The prevention of a rising tide of illegal immigrants from gradually swamping the precarious civilisations of the West will soon become the most urgent of political priorities. With the gathering momentum of the South to North movement - further energised by increasingly profitable and powerful criminal organisations - the British people can no longer afford to think of immigration in terms of bygone traditions. We should be thinking more realistically of our prospects for survival as a nation in an already tight little island set in a world of expanding population and mobility - and if not as a nation, at least as a haven of relative civility and security in a 'global village' becoming increasingly grasping, frenzied and savage." - Ezra Mishan, former Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, who now writes on economic, political and environmental issues. Quoted from Right NOW! ". . . We had already said that the only thing that defines us as a people is non-discrimination toward other peoples; we thus had no justification for saying that maybe it's not such a great idea to import people adhering to radical Islam or Mexican nationalism into the United States. Having cast aside our own culture, we had no choice but to yield, step by step, to the elevation of other cultures. This is how America, through an indiscriminate and unqualified belief in individualism, ended up surrendering to its opposite - to multiculturalism. ' . . . What has been said up to this point will offend many conservatives, particularly Christians. For one thing, the Christian church consists of people of every culture and race, so why can't a nation? The answer is that the church is a heavenly organization, it is not responsible, as a nation is, for the defence and preservation of a particular earthly society. Mexico and Nigeria, for example, are largely Christian, but in cultural terms are radically different from the United States. "To believe that all peoples on earth should join our country is the very idea that God rejected at the tower of Babel. God said he did not want all men to be united in one society, because that would glorify human power. If I may presume to say so, God had a more modest idea of human life on earth. He wanted men to live in distinct societies, each speaking its own tongue, developing its own culture, and expressing God in its own way. This is the true diversity of cultures that constitutes mankind, not the false diversity that results from eliminating borders and coercively mixing everyone together, which destroys each country's distinctive character. Consider how today's multicultural London has lost much of its Englishness, and increasingly resembles multicultural New York. 'So I would respectfully suggest that when Christians translate the spiritual idea of the unity of people under God into the political ideology that people from all cultures should be allowed to come en masse to America and other Western countries, that is not the traditional teaching of the Christian church, that is a modern liberal idea, that is the Religion of Man, which has been infused into the Christian church over the past fifty years. "But if this is the case, how can we reconcile our spiritual unity as human beings under God with our actual cultural differences? The answer is that in individual and private relationships, people of different backgrounds can relate to each other as individuals, without discrimination of culture and ethnicity. But on the group level, on the level of entire peoples and nations and mass migrations, cultural differences do matter very much and cannot be safely ignored. "It would therefore be a tragic error to limit our thinking about immigration to technical matters such as law enforcement against illegal aliens and security measures against terrorists, as vitally important as those things are. Beyond the immediate threat of mass physical destruction, we face a more subtle but no less serious threat to the very survival of our civilization. ". . . as I've tried to demonstrate, we cannot hope to stop or
significantly slow that immigration unless we abandon this contemporary
idea that America is defined by nothing except individual freedom and
opportunity - the idea that America has no particular culture of its
own that is worth preserving. Rethinking these beliefs and rewriting
our immigration laws accordingly will not be easy, but if we fail to
make the attempt, we will simply continue sliding, slowly but surely,
toward the dissolution of our culture and our country." * * Weeding Out the Truth Sometimes, what you don't do sticks in people's minds more than what
you do do. Two years on from 'Are the Experts Lying?', The Ecologist's
80-page indictment of what we called the cancer industry, the fact that
we did not mention the role of tobacco is still the cause of regular
correspondence. Why, people still ask, did we avoid what is in most
peoples' minds the single greatest cause of cancer? One commentator
has even suggested we were in the pay of the tobacco industry. Smoking
undoubtedly causes lung cancer. The link is long established, and only
the tobacco industry itself would still deny the obvious. But because
the link between smoking and lung cancer is so well established, it
has become convenient for other industries to blame virtually every
form of cancer on smoking. Sir Richard Doll for instance has said that
cancer increases of late 'can be accounted for in all industrialised
countries by the spread of cigarette smoking'. But of the dramatic rise
in cancer incidences since 1950, 75 per cent have been in sites other
than the lung. And among non-smokers, the incidence of lung cancer has
more than doubled in the past few decades. What's more, studies have
shown that Chinese smokers are less likely to contract lung cancer than
their American counterparts. According to Dr Chris Busby of Green Audit, 'lung cancer correlates with air pollution generally. In a recent study of 104 wards around Hinkley Point nuclear power station the highest relative risks for lung cancer followed the tidal rivers, indicating that there's a strong component of radiation exposure from inhaled particles in the aetiology. These particles are looking more and more likely to be the culprits.' What characterises modern society more than almost anything else is the level of contaminants surrounding us. There are more than 100,000 man-made chemicals in use today, of which barely a fraction have been tested, and not properly by any means. We surround ourselves with nuclear plants whose radioactive emissions are carcinogenic, despite claims by the industry to the contrary, and we persist in sending plutonium-powered satellites into space that, if an accident were to happen, would spray radioactive particles of Plutonium-238, hundreds of times more radioactive than plutonium used in atomic weapons, over the entire planet. The cancer epidemic is caused by numerous factors. Smoking plays a very major role, but cannot account for all cases. In a sense, tobacco has become a scapegoat for all the other cancer-causing industries. It is a sacrificial lamb, but because of the nature of the industry it will not die. We all know smoking causes cancer, yet we continue to smoke. They are hopelessly addicted to nicotine, and the tobacco market is somewhat assured in the Western world (not to mention the Third World where markets are only now being prised open). The same however does not apply to producers of DDT, Dioxin, BGH and other known carcinogens. If the establishment finger were to point at them, all hell would break loose. People are neither addicted to them, nor do they benefit from their use. An honest campaign against such influences, at even half the level of the anti-smoking campaign, would trigger almighty ripples through fundamental modern sectors, not least the chemical, pharmaceutical, nuclear and plastic industries. In short, it would not pay for the establishment to play such a game. Finally, campaigners have failed to distinguish between tobacco and the industry behind the plant. Yes, smoking causes cancer. But a quick look at some of the ingredients in a modern cigarette reveals some unpleasant truths. One organic tobacco company in New Mexico for instance provides a comparison between their own tobacco, whose ingredients include tobacco leaves and nothing else, and that tobacco marketed by the tobacco giants which commonly contains up to 600 different additives. Could it be that the latter varieties greatly increase the risk of smoking? Judging by the ingredient list, too long to include here, it seems more than likely. In which case, the villain of the story may not be tobacco per se, but rather the monsters that have come to dominate the tobacco market. It is they who have corrupted the plant with countless additives, pesticides, and other man-made chemicals, not to mention their biotechnology plans. And the result is that among the long list of the tobacco victims, we must include the traditional cultivators who have with great skill and difficulty, maintained small tobacco patches on the same land for generations without depleting the soils and the smokers, who are not only poisoned needlessly by increasingly squalid tobacco, but whose personal freedom to smoke is undermined by a backlash that is unable to discriminate between good and bad. (end of Goldsmith article) - We are reminded of a comment from Australia's Eric Butler some years ago. He recalled a well-known Australian naturopathic doctor, Dr Ian Brighthope of Melbourne, telling him he had a hunch that the connection between cancer and smoking had became a significant factor after WWII when chemicals were used in the growing of tobacco. The late Dr Kitty Little of Britain maintained there was a strong link between increased cancer and increased use of diesel. Dr Little came to the conclusion after observing increases in lung cancer rates in Rhodesia following the increased use of diesel vehicles and machinery. We have seen a manual for a modern John Deere tractor which had a printed warning inside the front cover from Californian health officials saying diesel or its emissions was 'known' to cause cancer. Some honest research should be able to establish the truth or otherwise of these factors, but we are unlikely to see this in the near future. * * Bankers and Bilderbergers . . . New Zealanders suspect they are being milked. . . by a conspiracy of the banking network. Not surprising that from a population slightly under 4 million, the overseas-owned banks admit to repatriating $1·4 Billion in 'dividends' last year. . . In the wake of the recent defection of the [Reserve Bank] Governor to a life in politics, the reputation of the Bank cannot help but be harmed. . . Many New Zealanders will need to be forgiven for concluding that the New Zealand economy is fast becoming the equivalent of a provincial outpost for . . . the offshore owners of the vast bulk of its capital resources. Bilderbergers A.G.M. In Washington . . . This year about 120 Bilderberg delegates will meet at the plush Westfields
Marriot hotel, just seven miles south of Dulles International Airport.
High on this year's agenda will be how to further exploit Bush's "war
on terrorism" to increase their control of the much desired "world-without-borders"
while, as ever, generating immense wealth for themselves. There will
of course be journalists and publishers there, but they won't be writing
about it. The real point of their presence will be to prepare readers
for policies already decided upon by the One World moguls. (end of Aida
parker quote) * * Dr. Vandana Shiva Speaks Out At Porto Allegre where the World Social Forum was conferencing, one
of the keynote speakers delivered a hard-hitting paper which delivers
hope in some ways, and bruises to the status quo. . . . To quote: In my view that is a philosophy of bankruptcy. It is an ethically bankrupt world-view. It is also an economically bankrupt world-view and the bankruptcy of Enron and Argentina tells us that. Even on their own terms they cannot deliver. The only reason it works is because there is political bankruptcy to support economic bankruptcy. Free trade cannot run without holding the White House captive. A captive White House that is telling us now in India that we should bail out Enron in India because they are going bankrupt in the United States. . . Comment by Electronz: Clifford H. Douglas wrote that money was the most efficient mechanism for turning human beings into slaves, so to those who have some understanding of monetary system philosophy it is no surprise that the central instrument in the globalisation operation is not just money, but the ability to create it, multiply, and destroy it entirely at their own discretion, to achieve their own secret agendas and policies. Until at least some countries, such as Godzone, bring their national money supply and system under democratic control the world will slide deeper into the mire. . . * * Mugabe's Continuing Terrorism Speaking on May 8th at the RAF Club in London, [former Rhodesian Prime
Minister] Mr Ian Smith told us that President Mugabe's motorcade includes
four armoured Mercedes with darkened windows. No one knows in which
vehicle Mr Mugabe is travelling! It may be that Mr Smith has been overtaken
by events. For the President has now received a new state-of-the art
limousine which is the most expensive car in the world to run. This
new Mercedes, with yet more armour than its predecessors. . . chews
up petrol at two litres per kilometre. It weighs five tonnes and contains
office facilities, TV, internet etc. It cost not less than £657,000
[over NZ$2 million). At least it was well known, until the cataclysmic events in the Holy
Land and on the Asian subcontinent swamped the marginal publicity which
was beginning to draw the world's attention to the Zimbabwe disaster.
That publicity is now virtually non-existent. The truth is, however,
that since the rigged presidential "election" in March the situation
in the country has careered from bad to worse. The courageous efforts
of persecuted journalists in Zimbabwe to get the truth across place
them among the unsung heroes of today's unfolding tragedy. The British
Foreign Office knows all this, cares little and does practically nothing.
(The exception is the granting of refuge to African asylum seekers.)
Zimbabwe normally consumes two million tonnes of food every year.
This year's harvests are forecast to produce 750,000 tonnes. The government
is trying to ensure that such food as is available goes to its own supporters.
. . . The seizure of the commercial farms is now nearing completion.
The so-called "war veterans" and Mugabe's new youth militia (both government-paid,
of course) have done their worst. But many of the new African settlers,
put in place by the government, are today suffering the fate of the
former farm employees: they themselves are being moved off to make way
for the new masters. That these people have just begun to scratch together
some sort of new life - build huts and hoe land - is of no account.
A bulletin such as this contains no space to detail the escalating
political violence against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change:
the beatings and the torture, and the endless harassment and assaults
(and imprisonment) of journalists. It is not even possible to give all
the facts about the latest, and twelfth, white farmer to be murdered.
Mr Charles Anderson at Dumnagies Farm at Glendale, 50 miles north of
Harare, was shot dead in June. We do not know what has happened to his
wife Cindy. The farm has been "awarded" to Ngoni Masoka, permanent secretary
in the department of Land, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. What
we do know is that the media have allowed the whole event to disappear
into a black hole. It is not news any more. Maybe someone at the Foreign
Office made a routine note? The BBC's Fergal Keane wrote earlier (in
the UK Independent, May 4th): * * George Bernard Shaw and the National Dividend ". . . Another difference between the Old and the New Economists
might be put in this way -- that the Old knew what was wrong, whilst
the New have found how to put it right. The Old pointed with magnificent
indignation to all the crying scandals, the industrial horrors, the
unfairness, and the greed, and having done so in the teeth of an opposition
grown fat on a policy of laissez-faire, they are entitled to take their
bow with honour and the thanks of humanity. It would be unreasonable
to expect them, especially one of their number so unmathematically minded
as Bernard Shaw, to grapple in the evening of their lives with momentous
conceptions such as the Just Price, or with the implications of the
discovery that 'the cost of production is consumption.' Nevertheless,
with only common sense and a feeling for justice to guide him, Shaw
arrived for ethical reasons at one of the major conclusions reached
by New Economists for technical reasons: namely, recognition of the
necessity for what is called the National Dividend. "On this matter he can only generalize in a woolly way. Thus in the second Fabian Essay (Shaw's first, by the way) he declares that 'a life-interest in the Land and Capital of the nation is the birthright of every individual born within its confines.' Later and elsewhere he talks of 'an equal share in the National Industry.' And again (in 1933): 'Every able-bodied and able-minded and able-souled person has an absolute right to an equal share in the national dividend.' Until he explains just what he means by a national dividend and, even more important, from what source it shall be derived, he remains a sentimentalist beating the air or an underground purveyor of some pernicious scheme to pay Paul by robbing Peter. Where is the money to come from? That is the question. And it is a question Shaw has never answered. But others have. It is interesting to wonder what would have been the outcome had Shaw lived a generation or two later and his interest in economics been set alight by C. H. Douglas instead of by Henry George. Would he have swallowed Social Credit as voraciously as in fact he swallowed Socialism? It is not unlikely: about both doctrines there is a missionary flavour well calculated to win a born meliorist like Shaw. Be that as it may, if Shaw had not been too old to learn by the time the full implications of the Power Age became apparent to Douglas, he could have learnt from the latter where the money could come from. It could, and can, come from where the wealth it would represent now is, ready and waiting: namely, the common stockpot. For the national dividend is nothing else than the nation's unearned increment of association divided up; at present lying unrecognized and unsung. Once recognized for what it is, it will be found to be as real as a round of beef, and the only steps remaining to be taken will be, first, to assess the increment, and second, to monetize it. Difficult? Yes: but for a nation hardened to formfilling, not too difficult. Where there's a will there's a way. Then, duly assessed and monetized, it can be distributed as a national dividend, equally and therefore ethically, with justice to all and malice towards none. . ." * * The Ellis Case The Ellis case, where a man was convicted and jailed for alleged multiple
sexual assualts on children in his care, has received wide publicity.
Most of us can only wonder at how conflicting and changing stories by
the mostly children witnesses led to the police and courts being so
certain that Ellis was guilty of so many charges. Later, when even some
of the childrens' parents changed their minds about the guitly verdict,
the prosecution and court system seems to have been inflexible, and
more concerned with legal procedures rather than justice. We obviously
don't know if Mr Ellis is guitly or not of any of the charges but clearly
there is no justice when some evidence is ruled admissible and some
evidence is continually ruled inadmissible. It does seem very likely
that an innocent man may have served a long jail sentence. * * Globalisation and New Pests Over a large part of the Southern United States it is not always a
wise thing to lie in the grass on a hot afternoon or sit down under
a shady tree. There are the traditional problems of snakes and a few
species of poisonous spiders, but the outdoors adventurer faces a new
plague - fire ants. Some reports say they have come from Latin America
but more likely they have been introduced from Asia or Africa in imported
timber or other goods. Each year the fire ant spreads a few dozen more
miles to the north. Stepping through the grass near a fire ants nest
can easily result in anywhere between a couple and 30 or 40 bites. The
bite is instant upon contact. A couple of hundred of the more susceptible
of the human species have died in the U.S. from the bites. Fortunately
for most of us a few days of itching is usually the worst effect. * * "You can't get away from advertising any more. . . You know those weird plastic isolation bubbles they keep people in who don't have immune systems, so bacteria won't eat them? I'm going to get one, and live in it. It's because I'm sick of looking at footage of snow storms, and hearing about how some dismal deodorant will fill me with the purity of nature. Or how if I drink Pepsi I'll turn into a grinning New Age wimp with a waxed chest, and hot babes will chase me like ants after a sandwich." - Fred Reed, (fredoneverything @yahoogroups.com), July 15, 2002 * * Our Fraudulent Electricity Reforms Ever since the so-called power reforms in NZ were, like everywhere
else, forced into Parliament by stooges for the Washington Consensus
there has been a continual suspicion that the stated objective of reducing
power costs was simply a deliberate smoke-screen. The suspicion is that
it was part of the insidious pressure toward globalisation, and was
a backdoor method of letting overseas corporates buy ownership of a
large slice of NZ's highly efficient hydro-backed power industry. This
indeed is exactly what has happened, so, from total NZ community and
state ownership, it is admitted that several billion dollars worth of
the industry is now overseas owned. The only sector in Godzone which
has enjoyed any reduction in power costs is the large businesses, many
of which - like the power companies - are also now overseas owned. By
contrast, electricity costs to domestic consumers (which were in the
world's four lowest) have only been climbing ever since Utilicorp came
to town. Chris Daniels (NZ Herald) quite correctly described the situation: "An Electricity Governance Establishment Committee chaired by former Labour Minister David Caygill must now alter its planned 'rulebook' before it can proceed. Setting up a governing body is one of the dreams of Energy Minister Pete Hodgson, who has so far been content to let the industry organise its own affairs. The Commission decided that the proposed board structure could allow too much domination by the industry's big names - those 'vertically integrated' companies that generate and sell electricity." Comment by Electronz: The first NZ Labour Government [1930s] used the financial policies of the then Douglas Social Credit Assn., including backstopping crown initiatives with Reserve Bank credit, to achieve a remarkable burst of economic development which included a chain of highly efficient hydro-power generators. It is sad to watch the treasonable actions of another so-called Labour Government dismantling them and hacking off pieces to foreign power corporates corporates which, right now, are indulging themselves in hiking up power prices to the hard-working and hard-pressed Kiwis who paid for their power-generating assets in full over the years with their taxes. * * Briefly: Auckland city council owns 25 percent of Auckland Airport
which it plans to sell. 97 percent of the 2343 submissions it has received,
including a 7515 signed petition, oppose the sale. Councillor Victoria
Carter proposed a motion for a public referendum which was opposed by
12 Council votes to 8. Opponents of the sale should keep a list of how
councillors voted on the referendum motion and publicise it prior to
the next elections. This is plutocracy, not democracy. Letters: "I read Winston Peters' speech in the Herald.
The questions he raised should be considered. Although I am an Asian
migrant, I don't like to see heaps of new immigrants coming here with
major language or financial difficulties. Our goal is to attract young
people and professionals. The other fact is that a legal migrant will
help up to six people to come to New Zealand in five years - they may
be his family, friends or classmates. That's a time bomb. . . You may
say, I'm selfish. At least I say it for all of us here. . ."(Oliver
Li, New Lynn. N.Z. Herald 1-7-02) To Australia During August New Zealand League director, and On Target editor, Bill Daly, will be addressing a number of meetings at the invitation of the Australian League of Rights. Our next issue will carry a report from him. The meetings, covering parts of Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, will focus on the state of the world in the light of September 11th, the escalating threat of war, oil politics and globalisation, and the Social Credit response to this greatest of all monopolies. |