TIGHTENING THE NOOSE

The financial world has been watching over the last few weeks to see whether Brazil can get itself off the debt hook. Its foreign debt is $US 90,000 million ($A 102,000m.) and there is no way it can avoid default. At the end of June it was anticipated that the International Monetary Fund could come up with some package, which would postpone the inevitable for a little longer. But the terms demanded by the I.M.F. were so draconian that they sparked riots and demonstrations throughout Brazil. So the I.M.F. is withholding promised loans, and Brazil has consequently ceased almost all imports, this in turn crippling export industries.

The Australian (August 2nd) said: "The IMF negotiations are still going on and the most realistic expectation is that the country only will be able to count on the extra resources it needs to pay off arrears and rebuild an essential margin of liquidity as from the last quarter of the current year," the Government said. It called the controls 'temporary'.
Economists said one immediate effect was likely to be that many foreign suppliers would shy away from the Brazilian market when importers became unable to guarantee prompt payment. This in turn was likely to lead to increased industrial smuggling and to a new leap in the currency black market which last week was pricing the US dollar some 50 percent over the official rate…"

International Business Week (July 25, 1983) gave a more graphic picture: "Brazilian workers struck at a government owned oil refinery outside Sao-Paulo in July, joining thousands of others walking out of nearby Ford, General Motors and other auto plants. The Unions were protesting wage cuts ordered by President Joao Baptista de Figuero to satisfy demands by the International Monetary Fund to curb inflation in exchange for emergency loans. In Argentina, workers threatened by similar conditions from the IMF are expected to vote the popular Peronists into power in the upcoming elections. A strong group within the Peronists pledges to declare a moratorium on Argentina's $19.6 billion debt to Western - mostly American - banks once the party takes office.

In Mexico, unemployment is soaring, crime is rising, and the exodus of illegal immigrants to the US is up sharply as government measures to clamp down on the economy - again, demanded by the IMF lead to lower growth and the decline of the private sector.... Everywhere in Latin America, the choice between social stability and economic restraint is becoming a heated political issue. Caught in the middle is the global lender and financial cop, the IMF, headed by Jacques de Larosiere…" All of which leads one to ask: "How does President Reagan expect to win a war in central America, when Latin Americans are being squeezed into starvation in order to repay the Wall Street Bankers?

MORE POWER TO THE COMMONWEALTH

"In declaring the Victorian Government oil pipeline tax invalid, the High Court has, in barely a month, concentrated more power in the hands of the Commonwealth. The decision strikes at the heart of the States' existence: fiscal independence." - Editorial, The Australian, August 8th.

As we remarked a few issues back (July 8th) it was the late Dr. Herbert Vere Evatt, Leader of the Federal A.L.P. Opposition for some years, who saw that it was possible to extend the power of the Federal Government over the six States by the use of legislation based on the 'external affairs' powers of the Australian Constitution. Dr. Evatt was, of course, a Fabian Socialist; hence very much the centralist.

There have been others who have seen that the Australian High Court could be used to by-pass the Constitution, traditionally changed only by proper national referendum. We have before us a photostat of an article published in The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) of March 27th, 1969 which discloses that (then) Professor Zelman Cowen saw clearly the implications of the foregoing: "Because of repeated failures at referenda, the days when governments tried to change the Constitution were gone.... "Formal amendment of the Constitution is a dead duck..."
"Professor Cowen said that once a proposed constitutional amendment became remotely contentious there was no prospect of it being approved by referendum .... "Professor Cowen said Australia would have to rely on the High Court for its constitutional changes - although the great days of the High Court was over. He did not want to talk in detail about what he meant by this. (Our emphasis ... On Target).

"Mr. Neville Crew told the forum Australians who were concerned with decentralisation too often ignored 'the simple fact' that centralism and the reduction of State rights and State autonomy had developed rapidly during the last 20 years of Federal Liberal and Country Party Government. "Education was becoming centralised because of its domination by the Federal Government under the guise of standardisation and uniformity and even university education was controlled by the Federal Government through its control of finance."

This new High Court decision has thrown a question mark over the validity of other States' taxes: Victoria will now be forced to refund some tens of millions of dollars to those bodies taxed. Whether this tax was just or not, the point of significance is that this most recent High Court decision is yet another attack on the sovereignty of the States. Why? Because it makes the States even more dependent on Canberra for revenue - "The man who pays the piper calls the tune."

The Australian rather naively, in our opinion, comments that "It is now up to the Commonwealth to reverse that trend (of centralisation) and restore the Constitution to the people". The very last thing, which the Socialists/Communists would do, would be to decentralise political and economic power into the hands of the people. Their ''religion'' (a political philosophy held with a religious zeal) has its high priests preaching that political and economic centralisation is in the nature of reality for man and therefore most desirable for him. Rubbish, of course; and quite evil. This is an anti-religious view of Man, holding that Man should be subservient to great political and economic forces.

Our own view of Man is that all organisations should exist only to serve the individual! "The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath."

We make the point that the political and economic centralisation that has come about (with much more to come!) is not coincidental: it is intentional the direct result of a policy. (Read "Centralisation - The Policy of Satanism", Price: 0.55 cents from all League bookshops). It is pointless for The Australian to editorialise that "The Commonwealth must restore what the High Court has taken away". Of course it should, but it won't, unless and until the people make the Commonwealth do it.

The so-called non-socialist politicians (Libs and Nats, and some Chippocrats) will be scared stiff of reversing the effects of recent High Court rulings (Koowarta, Franklin Dam) as such would throw them into an anti-United Nations stance: They know they could be cut to pieces by the mass media, slavishly devoted to the U.N. and its works. What politician will stand out against the United Nations? Once again, only enough individuals who know what to do, and how to do it, can have any hope at all of stemming the centralist flood now engulfing us.

Brief Comments

The Sun (Melbourne), August 8th, reports that a 'Financial adviser", Dr. Merv. Lincoln claims that the Government's compromise on superannuation tax was a "victory for the ordinary worker". Let us take a look at this "victory". A worker who retires at the age of 55 and over on $50,000 will now pay $7,500 tax, whereas previously he would have paid $2,500, hence he now pays an extra $5,000 in tax. This is the "victory" for the ordinary worker. What do those universities do to people when they get hold of them? We doubt very much if Dr. Lincoln would be worried about the availability of his next meal.

The "grey eminences" of the world's movie industries are at it again. We have only just seen the much-advertised movie - "Heat and Dust". It is an excellent production: acting of a high standard; excellent photography; background music to fit like a glove onto the various moods of the story and the scenery; period reproduction(s) clothing, speech, manners, etc., etc., clear and accurate. All very fine indeed. BUT, the movie is, like "Ghandi", an attack on the British in India. The book on which the film is based, was written, we understand, by a Jewish, Polish woman who is married to an Indian. There are two inter-twined plots running throughout: the plot set in the thirties has the beautiful young English wife of a junior British Indian civil servant having an "affair" with an Indian Nawob (Prince), falling pregnant, and the ensuing scandal and drama. The other story line has a most attractive descendent of this girl (Julie Christie) having an affair, all casual, with an educated Indian, falling pregnant, visiting the scene of her ancestor's retirement from the world after her scandal, where she decides to, quite joyously, have her baby. Film ends.
The message is that the society of the thirties, which prohibited affairs between young wives of British Indian civil servants and Indian princes was definitely regressive, stuffy, unenlightened. The "new" society of the seventies and eighties which tolerates (even encourages) chance affairs between English girls and educated Indians is progressive, tolerant, enlightened.
We are not treated to the quite inevitable human problems, which would sprout like mushrooms after the film end - if the story were true. However, the message is the thing - and that came over loud and clear; and that's what the millions of dollars spent in the movie production are all about.

Senate Should Uphold the Constitution
The following letter was published in the Doncaster and Templestowe News (July 19th) over the name of a "Leo Brown" of Doncaster. This person seems to have grasped the salient points of the Senate debate;
"An article by Gordon Feeney (July 5) refers to the newly-elected A.L.P. Senator, Olive Zakharov, and her aims and thoughts as a politician. "I would especially like to take Mrs. Zakharov to task over her 'unequivocal support of A.L.P. policy to scrap the Senate', and her statement backing the Keynesian theory of economics as a way back to recovery. "Always have I held the idea that a Senator's role under the Constitution is to uphold the role of the Senate as representative of the States, not party interests. "The Senate is the key to the protection of the Australian people. The prime purpose of the Westminster system of government is that it protects us from concentrations of political power. "The Crown is one of the three branches of Parliament, just as vital as the other two (Representatives and Senate). A monarch serves to remind us that the political and economic issues that divide us are of far less importance than the ties of history that unite us. "As long as the monarch or her/his representatives function, the aspiring dictator can never gain total power.
"Mr. Hawke visualised a new style of government requiring the end of the monarchial system and federalism, and a new type of economy not unlike that which was operated by the National Socialists in Germany. "Mr. Hawke's Boyer lectures spelt out clearly his aims: a "democratic socialism" in Australia, a completely centralised political system with the abolition of the States. "Surely Mrs. Zakharov would not blindly follow such a course as that spelt out by Karl Marx addressing the German Communists in 1848: 'democrats will seek to establish a federal system of government. You (the Communists) must fight against this because only by complete concentration of power in a unitary system can you hope to achieve control of Germany. "Hitler was a Republican and the major lesson to be learnt from Hitler's role in history is that centralised power is always evil irrespective of whether it is called fascism, nazism, bolshevism, or 'democratic socialism'.
"I think the admission by Professor A. Walters speaking at Monash University on July 27th, 1971 (ignored by the mass media at the time!) would answer Mrs. Zakharov's conception of Keynesian economics: 'the Keynesian programme has been tried and found wanting ... I believe that over the past few years economics has experienced a humiliating failure'. "None of our affairs can be put right until there is a much wider consciousness of the natural relationship between the individual and his institutions. Not until then will a type of statesman appear who will recognise that brilliant maxim of social and political organisation: 'if any would be the greatest among you, let him be your servant."