WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM - THE TANGLED WEB

by Jeremy Lee
The old proverb "Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive" has never been more evident than in events surrounding the World Economic Forum in Melbourne's Crown Casino. A small minority of journalists have picked up the dimensions of the anti-globalism coalition. Others, who haven't bothered to do their homework, appeared mystified.

Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on September 12th, Guy Rundle had this to say: " .... The globalisers now know themselves to be on the defensive in the war for hearts and minds and their strategies have changed. President Bill Clinton set the tone at Seattle last year when he welcomed the presence of the protesters, merely wishing that he could bring them 'inside the tent'...... The globalisers have finally achieved their goal of a free-trade world, with harsh measures for tariffs and protection measures ..... The Clinton brand, softly softly approach is designed as a holding pattern until they can think of something else, possibly a global crackdown on the lines of the new Australian laws or, something like the Blair Government's move to charge protesters under the wide-ranging Prevention of Terrorism Act, rather than through existing 'disturbance of the peace' legislation. "Instead, wages are restrained, our exports are booming, we have strong productivity and healthy corporate profits. "Why, then, when we are doing so well, is the Australian dollar bouncing around post-float lows?...." These are the questions from the nether-world of statistics which bear no relation to reality.

Meanwhile, back at the Forum, about the only entry into the building was by helicopter, and later, by boat. Alan Mitchell described the dilemma in The Australian Financial Review (13/9/2000): " ..... AFR editor Colleen Ryan, Stephen Wyatt, Stephen Koukoulis, I, some foreign journalists and several dozen conference delegates, spent the following hours circling the Casino precinct in a police-escorted convoy of buses in the hope that the demonstrators would let down their guard at one of the Casino's road entrances.
It was well into the afternoon before the police finally accepted that the only way in was by boat. "A secret wharf, a rendezvous with a little boat that looked like the African Queen and off we chugged. " However, success was not to come easily. It soon became obvious why the police had chosen such a small boat. The tide had come in and anything much bigger than a canoe could not squeeze under Melbourne's lowest bridges. "At first not even our boat could do it. But a rather portly European delegate and associates had also tried to get to sail up to the Casino. Their boat was even less able to get under the bridges than ours, and on our run up the river we found them sitting miserably by the banks. Our police escort immediately took them aboard. With our boat lower in the water and the tide already turned, we just scraped under the bridge and made the casino steps ....."
What a marvellous film it would all make - a sort of global version of Dunkirk!

INSIDE THE 'HOLY-OF-HOLIES'

One result of the three-day confrontation was that those allowed to represent the anti-globalist cause inside the Forum actually received some publicity. Naturally enough the world's richest man, Bill Gates, got his share. Bill Gates, a sort of global version of Kermit the frog from the Muppets, insisted that globalisation was the answer to world poverty - a bit like saying matches extinguish fires!

Protesters outside circulated the following letter as an expression of their protest: "The reasons for being here are many but centre on our concern for the increasingly unchecked corporate dominance which defines the world we live in .... The World Economic Forum does not need to be a decision-making body to affect our lives and the lives of all people round the world. The WEF represents corporate interests, not the interests of the people they employ or the state of the land and resources they exploit for their financial gain.

We are children, mothers, fathers, workers, unemployed, environmentalists, from religious traditions, indigenous people among others. We are blockading because people across the world are suffering under corporate-defined globalisation ....
We are continuing our non-violent protest today and we will be here tomorrow. We are part of a worldwide movement demanding justice before profits. We are not going away ...."

Inside the Forum ACTU President Sharan Burrow pointed out that 1.3 billion people round the world lived in extreme poverty, and even in Australia - a rich country - more than 800,000 children were living in poverty.
The courageous director of India's Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, Dr. Vandana Shiva, gave clear examples how free trade was destroying village agriculture in under-developed nations. She spoke clearly, moderately and unanswerably. In conclusion, this was one more setback for the globalists, and an opportunity to create new liaisons, circulate material and direct attention to the money system as the root cause of world unrest.

FUEL RORTS

by Selwyn Johnson
Independent candidate for the Federal seat of Blair claims multinationals rorting the system - again
"At a time when hundreds of thousands of Australian Small Businesses and millions of ordinary Australians, are struggling to understand or cope with the imposed 'Goods and Services Tax', one would be forgiven for thinking that our Government would 'give us a fair go'.
WRONG!
"The self-serving party politicians are allowing the multinational Oil Companies to dictate fuel prices to an already struggling Australian population. It seems unbelievable, but, research to date has found that at least 2 (two) bulk fuel shipping tankers, with capacities of 35,000/40,000 tonnes each, one Australian registered with an Australian crew, the other an internationally registered ship with an international crew, are supplying imported diesel fuel to Australian based multinational, non-oil companies at a price varying from 10 (ten) to 14 (fourteen) CENTS per litre! YES, 10 (ten) to 14 (fourteen) CENTS per litre! And, they pay no government excise, no import duties, no taxes, no nothing, on countless millions of litres of diesel fuel.

In some regions a multinational, non-oil company, is on-selling the diesel fuel to selected service stations at profits exceeding 400%! And no tax is payable on the enormous profits as a result of the 'International Tax Agreements Act of 1953'.

The Australian Prime Minister stated on national television that he would not remove or reduce the government excise on fuel, as it would affect 'Health, Education and Defence' and that 'oil prices are out of my control as they are determined by the OPEC countries'." Mr. Johnson calls for: "Immediate repeal of the 'International Tax Agreements Act of 1953', and immediate removal of Australia's signature from the 'OPEC Agreement'."

He is willing to make available "Details of this massive multinational 'rort', including the names of the shipping tankers and oil companies involved," the information "will be made available to an appropriate entity that is open to scrutiny and that is accountable to the Australian people."

A MANIFESTO OF CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM

by John McMurtry
While Professor McMurtry is writing about the Canadian scene just insert Howard in place of the name Blair and the story is the same for Australia.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain is cast by the corporate press which spawned him as a man of "the third way" between extremes. But we would do well to listen to what this "moderate pragmatist" himself says on corporate globalization. "These forces of change driving the future don't stop at national boundaries. Don't respect tradition. They wait for no one and no nation, They are universal"(1)

We need to lay bare the logic of Blair's revealing statement to understand the programme of power that it urges us to submit to. On first blush, Blair's statement is the political rhetoric of a British leader keeping his working-class party in line. But there is a deeper layer of meaning which goes beyond Britain itself to identification of a "universal" condition to which all people everywhere have no choice but to submit. Blair's statement reveals by its sweep of assertion the invasive forces of which he is a spokesman. His words are very clear. Their structure deletes the subject of every sentence as nameless, inhuman, without definition, accountable to nothing. They affirm with no moral qualifier an occupation of societies everywhere by "Forces" which will stop at no borders of national or cultural identity. All that was once secure in historical time and place is declared powerless against the transnational tide.

Prime Minister Blair reveals without knowing it the totalitarian nature of what he is awed by. The powers of corporate global revolution by which all that he sees has been swept up and carried are, he implies, beyond any possibility of democratic or legal control. Even he is helpless in their face as British head of state, for they overrun all historical limits of "tradition" and "nation." The referent of his words could be a Hun invasion writ large. Blair is admitting an overwhelmed sense of submersion in power, precisely the state of mind and emotion that every totalitarian movement must project onto its believers and audience as its ground of internalisation. The nation-overrunning forces are a given, not just what his fellow Englishmen must yield to as unstoppable, but what all everywhere must surrender to as "universal" and "driving the future".
Zeus raping Leda to implant in her his destiny of might resonates as the trope of globalisation.

One might think that Blair's statement is a rhetorical conceit. But is it, in truth, the missing key to every act of his office? What act in his record is inconsistent with any part of it? When has Blair, or Chretien or Clinton, ever not acted in conformity to this belief in inevitable corporate globalisation - "waiting for no one and no nation," trampling all who do not jump into line with its omnipotent advance. They are not, in fact, national leaders, but obedient expressions of these forces of corporate globalisation. Once we understand that, we see into the directive logic of current historical events otherwise myopisedas "clashes of political will" and "party politics."

We understand why Blair from the beginning denounced and isolated anyone who represented traditional working class positions in his own party. We understand why he fought against the governments of the major states of Europe if they tried to institute the economic rights of governments or working people, or if they sought to require these transnational forces to respect tax obligations or human rights.(2)

One might think from this explanatory standpoint that Blair is specially odious, merely a smiling toady to the transnational corporate system. But again one needs to search for evidence of any head-of-state leading on behalf of the common weal of his people in any of the world's nations. Prime Minister Chretien, for example, symptomises the same awe of the "universal forces" in his defining diplomatic role as leader of "Team Canada" permanently roaming the globe seeking more contracts for transnational corporations, and engaging in "mutually profitable relationships" with any murderous dictatorship which might buy atomic energy reactors, electronic infrastructure, helicopter engines, oil servicing equipment, or open up mineral deposits for foreign corporate looting.(3)

As apparently all ministers of state in the no alternative order, there is a new presupposed norm of political exchange: to receive media praise and electoral funding for "sound government" in return for privatisation of government as a corporate servant. Blair's prime ministerial catechism to the inevitable forces of the global juggernaut reveals to us the character of this system as perceived even by its client politicians. We can identify the defining features of this new order's [New World Order - NWO] authority by diagnosis of Blair's own words.
(1) The forces of corporate global restructuring are without meaning or value in their direction. For they are external "forces" not what we care about intrinsically, and they "drive the future" as the forces of combusted gases drive pistons or the forces of gravity move the tides. They are to be submitted to not because they confer meaning or give us a moral direction, but because they are all-powerful and we cannot resist them.
(2) The forces of corporate global restructuring are lawless. They "don't stop at national boundaries", as all lawful agents are obliged to do. The first principle of domestic and international law, to respect the boundaries of others, is overridden by these forces as the destiny of the world's future.
(3) The forces of corporate global restructuring are unaccountable. There is no electorate or standard of behaviour or anything else that they answer to or have to answer to for their domination because "they wait for no-one and no nation" and "drive the future."
(4) The forces of corporate global restructuring are nihilist. For they "respect no tradition" ethical, legal, or cultural - and there is no exception. Civilisation's highest tradition of life-protective order itself cannot, and as powerless to resist, ought not to try to regulate these forces.

As we unpack the inner meaning of Blair's representative statement, we need to ask what political leader has not acted in conformity to the demands of these transnational corporate forces? What "democratic" political or legal leadership yet seeks to make accountable, or hedge in by enforced law, or raise any other power above, or in anyway morally question the transnational corporate agenda which these forces express?(4)

The sad fact is that our leaders demand that we accept what they themselves describe as lawless and unaccountable - like the changes of the seasons, between which there are now in fact disturbing connections.

NOTES
(1) Madelaine Bunting 'Stop the Wheel, I Want to Get Off,' Guardian Weekly, December 2-8, 1999, P. 13.
(2) Blair has as I write, for example, successfully resisted taxes on foreign-registered stockholders of British stock, and reversed the French-German project for a charter of human rights to include economic, social and gender rights, and monitoring of environmental protection data. He has done all this to ensure against "new costs to business" (the sanitised report in 'Blair Claims Victory on EU Tax,' Guardian Weekly, June 22-28, 2000, p.8).
(3) Prime Minister Chretien's captaincy of team Canada is an illuminating case. As the Canada Export journal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs puts it, this is "the one-stop shop, TeamCanada Inc." which "use(s) governmental status to sign and guarantee sales contracts on behalf of Canada [sic] exporters' (CanadaExport, January 2000, p.16 and Message - From the President).
(4) The courts seem as supinely collaborative with the "universal forces" of global corporatism as corporately financed political parties. In response to the constitutional initiative of Canadian lawyer Connie Fogal and supporters of the Defence of Canadian Liberty Committee, the Federal Court of appeal in a June 12, 2000 ruling sidestepped the legal challenge to Cabinet's right to make decisions in secret and bind Canada to overriding transnational trade treaties with no consultation with, or input from, Parliament. The Federal Court ruled in a Kafkaesque decision to avoid decision and continue passing on legal responsibility to higher authorities, with costs and fees for the long journey to discover whether Canada's government can lawfully be handed over to foreign powers in secret without Parliamentary approval being wholly borne by concerned citizens.

John McMurtry is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, On., Canada. Copyright © 2000 Reproduced by permission of COMER Publications. www.comer.org.

SECRET US GOVERNMENT CABLES ABOUT "SYSTEMATIC ISRAELI TORTURE" PUBLISHED 21 YEARS AGO

TORTURE BY ISRAEL - September 10th, 2000
On Sunday, CNN, the world's most Israeli-centered TV network, finally did a story about torture in Israel. But it wasn't a story about the decades of brutal torture to which quite literally thousands and thousands of Palestinian have been subjected - with the world (and CNN) always looking the other way. It was a story about one American, detained and relatively mildly tortured. And all this is more of the old ongoing story whereby one American gets mistreated and its headline news, thousands and thousands of people get historically raped and physically tortured far worse, and that story is never quite honestly reported or put in proper perspective. Plus there's the simple matter that with this torture in Israel story CNN is some 21 years late! It's another case of much too little, much too late, much too misreported.

Secret State Department documents detailing "systematic torture" in Israel were first uncovered and published by now MER Publisher, Mark Bruzonsky, years ago. Bruzonsky, then Associate Editor of WORLDVIEW Magazine and credentialed to the State Department, obtained the classified documents from serving State Department officials who were aghast at what Israel was doing and wanted to make it known to the world.

The story of how these documents were set in type and scheduled to be the front-page article in THE VILLAGE VOICE newspaper - the top editor and Bruzonsky working intensively over a long weekend to make this possible - and then at the last moment the presses were stopped by persons associated with the Israeli/Jewish lobby, and the article spiked...this is a story never yet told publicly.

Bruzonsky was also at the time the Interview Editor for THE MIDDLE EAST Magazine in London. He immediately flew to London and the full text of the classified State Department cables detailing the "systematic use of torture" by the Israelis, carefully documented by US government officials, was published for all the world to read quite a long time ago. For those interested, it's the April 1979 issue.

As for CNN, now that they've got their toes wet with this major story, why don't they do it right, including exposing why and how the US has been complicitous in all this for decades, knowing in detail what, how, and where, the Israelis do their tortuous deeds.

CANBERRA CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

WEST AUSTRALIAN SUPPORTERS TAKE NOTE

NATIONAL WEEKEND

Plans are now well under way for the Annual New Times Dinner, Seminar and Action Conference. See you there!

New Times Dinner - Friday, September 29th, 2000. Bookings are essential and must be accompanied with payment: $37.00 per person (includes GST). To be held at The Victoria Hotel, 215 Little Collins Street, Melbourne. The dinner commences with pre-dinner drinks at 6.30pm, and everyone seated by 7.00pm. Guest of Honour this year is Dr. Ziema McDonell and the title of her address is "My Philosophy of Health".

Seminar - The Victoria, 215 Little Collins Street, Melbourne. Saturday, September 30th, commences 1.00pm: Theme is: "Choosing Paths to Quality of Life: Individually and Nationally" Life is all about making judgements and choices; in the home, the community and the nation. This year's seminar is designed to help you with some choices. Opening address and welcome: Mr. Phillip Butler Speakers: National Director, Mrs. Betty Luks - "The Individual and Social Well-being"; Dr. Ziema McDonell Ph.D. - "The Health of Our Cells: Personal Well-being" . . . the good doctor runs a Clinic for Alternate Therapies from Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast; Mr. Stephen Lloyd - "The Electromagnetic Smog: Is It a Fact? . . . Stephen is an Environmental Engineer; Mr. Jeremy Lee - "Social Credit in the Twenty First Century" . . . Jeremy says, "New generations are catching their first glimpse of Social Credit, the suppressed solution that is part of the regeneration so badly needed."

Action Conference - Runnymede, Panton Hills. Sunday, October 1st. The Action Conference will commence at 10.00am with a short Divine Service conducted by Mr. Edward Rock. For League actionists and supporters. It is such an opportunity to hear more from Dr. McDonell that we have organised for her to speak on the Sunday morning as well:- "Take a Look at Cancer" - Probable causes: 10 Things You Must Do: Avoiding Osteoporosis; "Men's Prostate Problems" - What You Can Do and How to Avoid the Problems. At the South Australian weekend Dr. McDonell was so bombarded with questions and so willing to help, time got away and she nearly missed her plane back to NSW.

JEREMY LEE VICTORIAN MEETING