THE VICE TIGHTENS

by Jeremy Lee
John Howard, in the middle of his rural PR tour, can hardly have welcomed the latest interest-rate increase. The half-percent rise will heap another $200 million interest costs on the backs of battered primary producers. The average homebuyer with a mortgage will face an extra $32 a week in interest charges. Anyone expecting the National Party to come out fighting for rural Australia had better think again. With its pie-in-the-sky trade policies shredded at the WTO Seattle fiasco, the Nationals have given up.

Before he entered Parliament as a Liberal at the last election, Mr. Ian McFarlane, then-President of the Queensland Grain growers' Association, wrote: "The seriousness of the situation now faced by Australia's primary producers cannot be overstated. By basing our entire trade strategy on a successful outcome to GATT (i.e. the World Trade Organisation's predecessor - Ed.) our leaders in Canberra have left Australia's primary producers naked and defenceless to the trade holocaust that may now be unleashed. It's surely time to rid ourselves of the idealism that has dominated the trade debate in Australia for more than a decade. During that period we have seen rural Australia lose almost all basic assistance and protection.
In return what have Australians gained from the long-term pure example we have set for the rest of the world? Local industry, particularly clothing, footwear and motor vehicles still enjoy high levels of tariff protection. International trade has continued to be subsidised while Australia has become the dumping ground for the world's primary products (some of which have been shown to be sub-standard). And still our exports face trade barriers from countries like the USA and Japan...." (Queensland Grain Grower, 28/ 10/92)
We haven't noticed Mr. McFarlane speaking out in such terms since being elected to the Federal seat of Groom!

Just after the Howard Government was elected, a 'rural summit' was held. The Australian, 3/7/96) reported: "....The Minister for Primary Industries, Mr. Anderson, who will open the summit this afternoon, said he was determined to halt a situation where 30 farmers a week were leaving the land.... 'The cost of transport, processing, regulation, finance and the costs of employing people have all got right out of control." Mr. Anderson said only 20 percent of Australia's 120,000 farmers were debt-free. 'The remaining 80 percent owe $18 billion,' he said...."
Brave words!

By the next rural summit, in 1999, Mr. Anderson said woefully there was no answer to rural Australia's continuing decline. What he should have said was that the National Party was not prepared to risk its parliamentary salaries, perks and superannuation to fight for the sort of policies that would save the bush.

In the early seventies Queensland's National Party President, Sir Robert Sparkes, publicly advocated that his party should fight for "long-term, fixed-interest rate finance, below 3 percent". How many departed farmers would still be on the land if that had happened? And now interest rates are rising again. The Reserve Bank couldn't even get the announcement right. It released the news "unintentionally" by E-mail before the official announcement!
The Australian Financial Review (3/2/2000) said: ".... An e-mail announcing the rate increase was sent to 64 investment banks and other institutions at 9.24am, six minutes before the official announcement. It enabled some traders to make windfall profits worth millions of dollars and enraged those who had missed out. Traders aware of the information aggressively sold bank bill futures and three-year bond futures, with traders on the other side of the transactions unaware that the RBA was about to announce a higher than expected rate rise. The major winners were believed to be large investment banks such as Macquarie Bank and Salamon Smith Barney. Commonwealth Bank was also alleged to have made a windfall of nearly $500,000...."

It has all the hallmarks of a classic 'sting'. Will heads roll at the Reserve Bank? They certainly should, in this institution that can make or destroy the lives of ordinary people.

FOREIGN-MADE OLYMPICS

CONFLICT OF INTEREST???

We are indebted to OZNEWS, produced by John Cumming's Austand. for the following article
"The Prime Minister's brother sits on the board of more than 20 companies, including one whose parent was contracted to provide services during the last Federal election. This very interesting snippet of information appeared in Business Review Weekly (September 21, 1998), and below, we share some of the main points from the story with readers.

"Stanley Howard is 68, he is a partner at law firm Mallesons Stephen Jacques and a company director. The American CSC Group won a $160 million contract to provide IT services to the Commonwealth in March 1998. The contract covered a range of governmental work including the management of the national tally room's voice and data communications on election night.
The annual accounts of CSC Financial Services, an Australian subsidiary of the CSC Group, list Stanley Howard as a director of CSC Financial Services. The contract was awarded to CSC after an 'initiative' by Finance minister John Fahey, that federal agencies should outsource work where it would be more effective than using the public service.
CSC Financial Services is only one of more than 20 companies in which Stanley Howard exerts influence. The Report in BRW specifically states 'BRW has not suggested and does not suggest that Stanley Howard played any role in CSC's winning of the Commonwealth outsourcing contract'.
Stanley also chairs GIO insurance and road toll company Hills Motorway. He is also director of St. James Properties and also of property company MEPC.
According to the BRW report, he also exercises an impressive range of influence away from the corporate world. He has served on the board of St Luke's Hospital Foundation, the Australia Day Council (NSW), where a fellow member was John Fahey; and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (a charity organisation).
In a formal reply to the BRW article, Stanley Howard said 'as to the issue of conflict of interest, my long standing legal experience affords me good insight into this potential problem, and I am not aware of any conflicts. However, let me point out that conflicts can always arise, and the real question is not whether a person has a conflict of interest, but how that conflict is handled'."
(Source: "The many hats of Stanley Howard" by James Kirby, published in Business Review Weekly, September 21, 1998)

TOWARDS JOB SATISFACTION

by Alfred King
The results of several recent surveys show that more than half the workforce would like to change their trade or profession if they were able to. Some respondents think that a change would enable them to earn more money, but the overwhelming majority are seeking greater job/life satisfaction. Even doctors show a high propensity to change. Long hours needed to be worked; poor rates of pay and poor working conditions and job satisfaction are cited as reasons.

C.H. Douglas discovered the truth (reality) that there is a defect in the way that money is created. Contrary to what many believe, Douglas was not concerned only with the money question. Many before him had highlighted the problems in the financial system. Douglas differed in that he was interested in achieving the correct relationship between individuals in society. Financial credit is issued against the real credit of Australia, i.e., the productive capacity. In our society, an individual can only gain access to his own credit under the conditions stipulated by those who hold the monopoly for its creation.

Monopoly of any kind, whether public or private, is anti-social. In a fair system, the 'Big 4' clearing banks may still be allowed to produce the financial credit, but only under the conditions laid down by the political representatives of the people to whom the credit belongs. Eric Butler has correctly pointed out that every policy is the product of a philosophy. The current debt-finance policy is the product of a philosophy of enslavement - that we are mere animals to be worked and milked for the benefit of a small, self-styled 'elite' group of people.

Social Credit is a policy, which is the product of the philosophy of freedom. Once the individual has economic freedom, he is free to decide what he is going to do with his life. It is popular among contemporary British politicians to talk of trying to recreate the days of 'Merrie England'. In 'Merrie England', the people had a better perspective on the true relationships in life. Work was kept to the minimum required to produce enough to live. The purpose of production was consumption. Time after that was spent on higher more creative pursuits.

Today the productive system is based on a different philosophy. The purpose of production is to make a profit. Progress can only be achieved by 'growth' or producing more. The question must be asked what do we use this production for? Usually we have to employ clever marketing campaigns to force it on people who don't really want it, in competition against several other firms who also have excess production. If we don't do something worthwhile with the excess production, then this is not progress.

A far bigger problem today than the unemployment problem is the employment problem. So much activity is useless and even destructive, that it would be better for all of us if the people engaged in it were not working at all. Yet most of us are tied to this system to get an income. To cover up the shortage of purchasing power created by the debt-finance system, we are forced to continually increase production to keep the whole system going. It follows that employees have to work longer and longer hours in more boring jobs. This is commonly known as 'the rat race'.

We desperately hope to be able to pass this production onto evil, murderous, communist countries, for example, while they hope to be able to pass their production on to us. (This is known as 'free trade'.) In doing so, we condone their practices. The premise of the debt-finance system is that the individual is not to be trusted with his own freedom. Yet we are made to be free. Restricting us to only unproductive output destroys our very being.

The only real decision an individual makes is when he freely makes it. Social Credit is moral in that it works in practice. Life is more enjoyable for all. The spirit of the law is most important. After feeding themselves, what most people are looking for, is some way they can make a constructive contribution to society.

GST-THE DEVIL IN THE APPLICATION

GST REVOLT GATHERING MOMENTUM

THEY'LL BE PLAYING THE G-8 SONG...

by Tom Fielder
According to an article in The Straits Times, Singapore, 25/1, the Japanese PM has asked one of Japan's top pop-music producers to pen a theme song for "The Group of Eight" summit to be held in Okinawa later this year. "Write a song that everyone will love," the producers were told. The G8 summit, previously known as the G7, consisting of people from Japan, United States, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, recently enlarged to include Russia, meet to make plans that affect the lives of countless numbers of people worldwide. People will not love that song.

Who are these people that have power to make such far-reaching plans? Were they elected by the people of their own individual nations? Will they report back to their countries of origin? Will they report in detail of all decisions taken?
The G8 has been described by some as The Evolving World Government, the political arm of a recurring dream of many elitist groups down through the centuries. The G8, now gaining political muscle through its financial arm the International Monetary Fund, of which Federal Treasurer Peter Costello is a Governor (The Sunday Age, 26/7/98, p.2).

Mr. Costello equates his role as Governor of the IMF at the same level as his number one membership of the Essendon Football Club. However, a football club is not involved in world financial politics. The IMF has become the 'debt policeman' of the world, imposing harsh conditions on many nations including the infamous GST. Australia is soon to experience the burden, the administrative nightmare and inconvenience of this new tax system' that Mr. Howard declared "never ever". But it seems that Treasurer Costello, Governor of the IMF, has the power to override a Prime Minister.

The sheer audacity and arrogance of people acting for unelected power groups outside their national homeland, boggles the imagination. Members of Parliament are elected to represent the best interests of the people in their own electorate, not to perform on a world stage. The famous International Banker, James P. Warburg, told the US Senate (July 2nd, -'50); "You shall have World Government whether or not you like it. The only question is, whether World Government will be achieved by Conquest or Consent."

Proponents of Globalism or any one of the half-dozen euphemisms for World Government claim that national sovereignty has to be first diluted then dissolved. They claim that their goal is inevitable. We can acquiesce and take our medicine, or have it shoved down our throats. The question is how will it come into being: Cataclysm, drift, more or less rational design, or whether it will be totalitarian, benign or participatory? Perhaps we will be scared into surrendering our freedom and independence by outbreaks of violence, international arms races, the food, population and environmental imbalances as well as large-scale serious injustices which will need disarmament and of course, a 'world police force' to control all arms.

DAVID IRVING 'BEAT-UP'

by Betty Luks
Me thinks the media doth try too hard in an effort distract people's attention away from the Irving/Lipstadt libel trial now taking place in a London courtroom. The 'beat-up' in the Herald Sun of 'Irving using his daughter in a new visa attempt' just doesn't hold water. He may have plans to visit his daughter at some later date but at the present time he is fully occupied with a trial that is expected to last for three months - and conducting his own defence into the bargain! If Irving had taken Lipstadt to court in the USA, the burden of proof in the libel case would have been on him. He would have had to prove that not only were Lipstadt's criticisms untrue, but also that they were made with 'knowledge of falsity or with reckless disregard of the truth'. In Britain the burden of proof is on the defendant. It will not be enough for Lipstadt to point out that even though certain historians pay tribute to Irving's energy as a researcher and to the scope and vigor of his publications, and yet find his views on the 'Holocaust' 'obtuse and quickly discredited'; Lipstadt will actually have to discredit them. She will also have to show that the evidence is so clear-cut that only a willful misreading or conscious distortion of the facts could account for Irving's positions.

In his witness statement to the court David Irving says among other things. "I consider myself to be an expert on the careers of the principal Nazi leaders, including specifically Adolf Hitler. Hermann Goring, and Dr. Joseph Goebbels; the archival and documentary evidence for assertions about those careers, and the part they played in the Third Reich, the current state of research into the German and other wartime persecution and liquidation of the European Jewish communities: the conflicting views which have emerged on that history, including but not limited to the so-called Historikerstreit; further, on the perceived role of the Jewish people in directing the Soviet revolution, managing the Soviet police state, and running the satellite nations in the Soviet empire until its recent collapse, with special reference to their role in the AVH (Alamvedelmy Hatosag), Hungarian secret police, before the Budapest Uprising of 1956 on which I published a well-received history, partially based on Central Intelligence Agency materials, in 1981..."
"I have also become perforce an expert as a writer, international lecturer, and publisher of the problems of establishing, publishing, printing, and disseminating controversial and often distasteful minority views which run counter to the prevailing or received opinions of the majority: and on the methods used by specific international organisations to attack the fundamental, and in many countries including Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia, chartered, human rights of individuals including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of thought..."

OECD WARNS OF PENSION 'CRISIS'

by Betty Luks
Make no mistake, our 'beloved leaders' are 'testing the winds' of public opinion: what would be the reaction to the idea of increasing the working age in the developed countries? The question is never asked can we produce enough for ourselves - without all of the adult population working - in this age of automated-computerised-technology? Not only did the industrial age replace men with powered machines but now automated-computerised-technology has replaced many, many men.
But we have been warned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - and international economists meeting during a 'break' from the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, that workers in OECD countries "will have to retire later to avoid bankrupting state retirement plans". (The Age, 2/2.)

For those who have been wondering, the OECD is an economic policy panel run by 29 of the world's most-developed countries. Secretary-General Donald Johnston thought that "rather than lowering the retirement age to 60, the retirement age for workers in Germany should creep up towards 70 to preserve a balance".
"Over the next 25 years, 70 million people will retire in OECD countries, to be replaced by 5 million new workers. This compares with the past 25 years, when 45 million pensioners were replaced by 120 million workers."

The message from the institutions including the World Bank and the United Nations is that the world could be heading for a pensions crisis if populations continue to age without countries taking corresponding measures to reform state pensions. Other 'solutions' put forward included shifting more to private insurance and company-based insurance plans, increasing social-security contributions and reducing pension amounts. All meant to keep the populace in the workplace and under control. Forcing more 'private insurance and company-based' schemes would mean even less take home pay for the already cash-strapped family provider.

If we are going to reform the pensions systems, let's begin with the fat-cat former politicians and bureaucrats, and their pension lurks and perks. There is no long-term answer to the present woes that does not take into account reform of the money system - Mammon.

"The control of money by private interests is the greatest swindle of all times, and it has brought about an incalculable number of disastrous consequences: economic depressions, wars, etc. One will never be able to figure out how much harm the present crooked financial system and the chronic money shortage has done to souls." Pope Pius XI 1931 (quoted in the Michael journal).

Almost every political problem is, above all, a money problem. All other issues come up against the money problem. The true foundations upon which a society should be built must be continually stated.