REAPING WHAT WE'VE SOWN

by Jeremy Lee
As the miserable convoy of dead and injured are brought home from Bali, the question is whether we have learned from this tragic experience. Ever since Prime Minister Howard's unequivocal commitment to anything the Bush administration planned in its Middle East policy and the potential war against Iraq, it has always been likely that terrorism would target Australia. As far as Islam is concerned, Australia has trailed its coat aggressively. It was only when Howard ran into a growing anti-war sentiment in Australia that he toned down his belligerence.

Indonesia is a different proposition to Iraq or Afghanistan. There are no wide open spaces that lend themselves to an aerial war. Instead, 14,000 islands, within reach of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and the considerable Muslim population in Australia, make up the most populous Islamic nation on earth. It is a nation that has been traumatized by financial crisis and the Timor conflict. Its centralized and corrupt administration is an easy prey to fundamentalist Islamic groups. Evasion from efficient intelligence is probably easier in Indonesia than anywhere else on earth.

Among the many 'gripes' Islam has with the West, the Israel-Palestine conflict is first. The blatantly pro-Israel position of the US, and the fact that many of the spokesmen and envoys it sends to the capitals of Arab nations are Zionists has not been lost on Islamic leaders. The pulverized ruins of the Occupied Territories have been compared to the rubble of New York's World Trade Centre, and the partiality when it comes to sympathy and sorrow wryly noted.

The attempt to portray Iraq as a major threat to the security of the West is absurd. Even hawkish Israelis scorn the gross exaggerations. Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Eliezer recently stated: "One should not overstate the Iraqi threat. True, Baghdad has certain capabilities in the strategic sphere that could combine surface-to-surface missiles with chemical and biological capabilities but, as far as can be assessed, the number of transport platforms – planes or missiles – is not big." (Australian Financial Review, 9/10/02)

FEARFUL POLITICIANS

What is so disturbing is the apparent fear among all Australia's party politicians to address the real issues. Take this report on the debate in the Parliament over Iraq, which appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald (21/9/02):
"A total of 115 politicians debated Iraq in the national Parliament this week – 84 MHRs and 31 Senators. Sixty-six were Labor and nine minor party or independent. That left 40 who spoke for the Coalition – far fewer than half the Government's numbers. That melancholy fact said all that needed saying about the Prime Minister's contempt for the debate and, with it, for the Parliament as representative of the Australian people. John Howard did not speak, walking out after the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, led off the debate ..... And in the House, where NSW's Peter Andren (Independent) moved an amendment asserting Australian troops should not be involved in any way in war with Iraq without a UN mandate, just two of them – Andren and Tony Windsor, NSW's second Independent in Ian Sinclair's old seat of New England – voted to support it. Two in a House of 150!

Even the Labor Party squibbed it, despite spirited speeches by some of its own people (Carmen Lawrence, Lindsay Tanner, Janet Crosio, Daryl Melham, Harry Quick, Arch Bevis, Tanya Plibersek, Laurie Ferguson and Anthony Albanese). An ultra-cautious Opposition leader, Simon Crean, wanted to become 'flexible' Labor did not support Andren...... "But it was Andren who laid into US policy with a sledgehammer.

An excerpt: "US interests in the Middle East are two – oil and Israel. Israel, of course, has also a nuclear capability, but that is apparently OK, is it? It does not have a destabilizing effect on the region, does it? From a purely Western perspective that may be the case, but I wonder what the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Syrians, the Iranians, and indeed the Iraqis might think of that Israeli capacity. At last count, Israel was estimated to have somewhere between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. The US has adopted a three wise monkeys approach to Israel's nuclear arsenal ....."

During the same debate Labor's Lindsay Tanner highlighted the double standards: "There are many evil regimes in the world – Burma is a good example. Its military regime enslaves its own people. And last night we were here [at a parliamentary dinner] applauding and lauding a man widely acknowledged as one of the architects of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, which surely would have to be at least comparable with Saddam's gassing of citizens in Iraq. And we as a nation stood silent (for 25 years) while approximately 200,000 Timorese died on our own doorstep at the behest of the Suharto regime in Indonesia ...."

But note the difference between Peter Andren and Lindsay Tanner. Andren, as an Independent, can vote where his conscience lies. Tanner, despite his accurate description, is shackled by all the party constraints which turn him from a representative into a party hack, voting as his bosses – both political and financial – tell him. And so, until courage, truth and honesty begin to prevail among those who shape Australia's destiny, the sad bodies will be brought home to grieving and bewildered families – perhaps next time from a disaster within Australia itself.

WHAT IF?

Two Professors, Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fischer, both directors of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network (www.transcend.org) in a powerful argument for an alternative to military force as an answer to international problems, concluded their article with the following proposition (4/9/02):

".... If the USA had limited itself to a military campaign, leaving policing to the UN Security Council and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, without US bases and leaving rights to oil pipelines to the Afghan people, they might even have won their war. Now it is lost. The Islamic fundamentalists' long-term goal seems to be respect for religious sensitivities. The US seeks free trade and military protection. Trade with basic need priority, including religious sensitivities, could achieve both.

Imagine Bush had said
Fellow Americans, the attack yesterday on two buildings, killing thousands, was atrocious, totally unacceptable. They have to be captured and brought to justice by an appropriate international court, with a clear UN mandate. But my address tonight goes beyond this. There are serious flaws in our foreign policy, however well intended. We create enemies through our insensitivity to the basic needs of the peoples round the world, including their religious sensitivities. I am therefore taking these steps:
• withdraw our military bases from Saudi Arabia;
• recognize Palestine as a state, details can follow later;
• enter into dialogue with Iraq to identify solvable conflicts;
• accept President Khatami's invitation for the same with Iran;
• pull out militarily and economically from Afghanistan;
• stop our military interventions and reconcile with the victims.

'That evening 1.3 billion Muslims would have embraced America, and the few terrorists left would have no water in which to swim. It would have taken a speech writer half an hour, and ten minutes to deliver it; as opposed to, say $60 billion for the Afghanistan operation. Psychologically, this is not easy, but the benefits are immeasurable."
(JUST Commentary, International Movement for a Just World, PO Box 288, Jalan Sultan, Selangor DE Malaysia, www.just-international.org)
In view of the almost certain disasters ahead, it is surely worth trying.

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER SPEAKS OUT

YOU'RE BETTER OFF WALKING

The Victorian Bracks Government – the "friend of the people" – has raised to new levels the fine art of extracting money from the populace. According to Tim Blair (The Australian, 10/10/02):
".... According to Victorian shadow transport minister Geoff Leigh, in three years the Bracks Government will have pocketed $720 million in driving fines, up from $292 million during the last three years of the Kennett Government. Chanting the 'speed kills' mantra, this week the Bracks team is proposing to further increase fines ...."

Any connection with road safety is now highly questionable with such punitive fines. It is widely and cynically accepted that the process is now another form of taxation, raising revenue for the party in power. Isn't it about time fines were withheld from politicians and diverted into a form of incentive for responsible motorists? Reduction on driving and vehicle licenses, a bonus for each year without offence, even a system of "consumer price discounts" on petrol and diesel for drivers who have earned a "gold card" for good behaviour? A government with a policy of punitive bullying will, in the end, earn the enmity of ordinary people, particularly so when it is such an obvious form of taxation.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW

by Antonia Feitz
What the world needs now is a reversal of the earth's magnetic poles. With war between the United States and Iraq imminent what the world needs now is more than Burt Bacharach's "love, sweet love" as the old song said. While it might sound a tad desperate, what the world needs now is a sudden reversal of the earth's magnetic poles! Why? Just look at the effects as predicted by Ian Plimer: "There would be no television, no radio, no telephones, no computers and no satellite communications. Methods of accurate time keeping would not exist, electricity could not be transmitted and none of the comforts of modern life would work. There could be a mass collapse of Western society. In fact, if there were a geomagnetic reversal, the large affluent population centres would be far more affected than places such as outback Australia and third world countries.' (Ian Plimer, A Short History of Planet Earth, ABC Books, 2001, p.15)

Yippee! With a geomagnetic reversal the US's and every other nation's military technology would be rendered useless. If they wanted to fight they'd have to do it the old fashioned way and it's highly unlikely any modern army would have the skills – let alone the stomach – for slogging it out in long campaigns of face to face combat. Killing Iraqis from 30,000 feet via remote control from Tampa, Florida, is very different to killing Iraqis face to face. According to Ian Plimer such a geomagnetic reversal has previously happened in as few as 15 days though they may take up to tens of thousands of years. There's hope yet.

THINGS BUSH & HOWARD SHOULD KNOW ABOUT AL-QA'EDA

The following excerpt was taken from our sister publication, the British On Target, July 13th & 27th, 2002. For the full article tap into the League's website: www.alor.org/ or type in League of Rights and look under 'On Target Britain'.

"Before going into the causes of the India-Kashmir threat there are things President Bush should know about al-Qa'eda which neither he nor the American public have ever been told. Al-Qa'eda is a global force made up of a patchwork quilt of national organizations painstakingly put together by native or immigrant Moslems in countries while citizens slept. A communications system perfected over the years kept immigrants without national loyalties in contact with Moslem lodges making up the whole.

At the bottom was Jamiat, an Arabic and Turkmin word for organisation. In America it was formed in the '40s. In countries where the language has regional changes Jamiat is deformed. In Indonesia it is Jamiyaa Islamiyaa. The earliest branch I have found of Jamiat al-Islam in America is the California order founded by Ahmed Kamal in the '40s, though there must have been many others.

Ahmed Kamal, born Cimaron Hathaway, in Denver, Colorado, should have attracted American attention in Peking in August of 1945, when he was seeking to establish contact with leaders of China's forty million Moslems, known as the Hui-hui. General Pai Chung-tsi, the Generalissimo's chief-of staff, was a Hui-hui and one of China's finest generals. Hathaway was of partly Turkish origin and a Prussian tutor is said to have given him his ideas. He became a Moslem and legally changed his name to Ahmed Kamal. Some years before the war he went to the Turkic region of North-West China, married a Russian woman and became an authority on the Turkic nations surrounding the old kingdom of Tashkent, famous for its apple orchards and irrigation system. When the war came he was interned by the Japanese but was never tortured as a spy, as an American would expect to be in an area where the Japanese saw no other reason for his being.

After V-J Day he and other internees were brought to Peking where dignitaries of the Sarts and the Uigers and other tribes in the Turkic region between China and south-east Russia had come with Prince Teh of the Mongols, to negotiate treaties with the Chinese victors. In mid-October Kamal was taken to Shanghai on the troop transport MS Lavaca and successfully boarded a ship for America before consular services were fully re-established. Never lacking for money he founded Jamiat al-Islam with an office in San Mateo, California, and a base in San Francisco where Mrs. Rauza I. Rogard was the Organization's Secretary-Treasurer.

Where Jamiat al-Islam got its backing has never been established and large sums passed through Kamal's hands after the Algerian revolt started in November 1954. America was still following the Roosevelt policy of anti-colonialism and Washington backed the Algerians, though Algeria's Bashagha Bualern, the hereditary Lord of the Oursenais, was President of the French Senate and thirty thousand of his followers were massacred for preferring French rule and employ. Roger Paillat, on page 71 of his book Dossier Secret De L 'Algerie, disclosed a meeting in Geneva in 1955 where Kamal gave 25 million francs (approximately $75,000), to the rebel leaders, Ferhat Abbas and Ben Bella. Frank Taylor, one of America's most popular syndicated columnists, reported that Kamal was bringing money from behind the Iron Curtain on another passport to fund the Algerians' rebellion. The report was true but Mr. Taylor could not call on a foreign intelligence service to back his statements and Kamal (who may still be alive), threatened a libel suit. Mr. Taylor's syndicate was terrified, fearing an immense award to the plaintiff. Kamal, knowing publicity would end his game, settled out of court for a thousand dollars.

Robert Kennedy's assassin a member of Jamiat al-Islam
Time passed, the Kennedy era came and advance organizers brought California students to a frenzy, convinced that Robert Kennedy was unstoppable on his way to the White House. Putting a yarmulke on his head to speak in a synagogue Bobby told what he would do for Israel and a young Arab named Sirhan Sirhan shot him. The number of impacts suggested there may have been more than one gunman.

The files of Bernard Fensterwald's Committee To Investigate Assassinations, in Washington, carried details of Sirhan's membership in Kamal's Jamiat al-Islam, the name of the family he lived with during his training period in Egypt, and details of his having been trained by Algerian terrorists in the Middle East. None of this appeared in the investigations into Bobby Kennedy's death but since September 11th of last year one must ask if Sirhan Sirhan's assassination of the candidate who pledged support for Israel was the work of a lone fanatic, a militant commanded by Kamal and Jamiat al-Islam or a member of even a higher group.
It is time to ask if America's Jamiat al-Islam still exists and how many other such organizations were set up in the years while Moslem immigration was rising."

The India-Pakistan struggle
"Meanwhile, it is time to move on to another trouble spot which will produce rancour and hate until justice is perceived to have been accorded: the India-Pakistan struggle. Before outlining that problem in simple words which the most uninformed will understand, let us quote Nidal Firhat, the 30-year-old bomb-maker for the terrorist organization, Hamas, whose interview occupied a half page in The Times of London on June 9th. In a single common sense paragraph Firhat put terrorism's cards on the table.
'The source of terrorism is Israel, the United States and the western world, he said. Give us back our rights, freedom and land, and the suicide attacks will immediately cease. It is that simple.' (emphasis added... ed)

Granted, the Moslem nations were bent on destroying Israel when 68 percent of Palestine was taken from the people who lived there, to give those of another faith a home. Had Israel not embarked on her policy of expansion and colonization by settlements, other Arab states would have followed Egypt and Jordan in accepting the new nation. Employment and fair treatment would in time have brought peace and relocation of those whom the new arrivals drove out. President Bush is an intelligent man and a fine President but he can only go as far as Senators and Congressmen obedient to a biased press and a multitude of America Israel Political Action Committees will let him.

After spending June 7th in Camp David with Ariel Sharon, the paper which carried Nidal Farhat's declaration reported: 'Rebuffing calls from Arab leaders, he (President Bush), refused yesterday to set out a political timetable for the creation of a Palestinian state. We are not ready to lay down any specific calendar, except to say we have to get started quickly, he said.'

"The Financial Times' comment of June 13th was: 'Mr. Sharon says he will not return to the 1967 borders. At some stage Mr. Bush will have to stand up to the Israeli Prime Minister if there is ever going to be a compromise... Without a peace process the present violence will never be halted... The time has come for a clear lead from the White House.'

"With that discouraging note we leave the Middle East for the conflict, in Kashmir." Andrew Roberts, who wrote an excellent book, The Great Churchillians, stated in The Sunday Telegraph of June 9th: "Two of the most dangerous crises facing the world today can be traced to a single cause. Both the India-Pakistan nuclear stand-off and the continuing Middle Eastern conflict stem from decisions taken in 1947-48 by Clement Atlee's post-war (Labour) government..."

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Mrs. Luks, We were delighted to read and digest your short article "Just for the Record" in the September 13th issue of On Target. We have great respect and admiration for Mr. Reed's work and those people that have seriously studied and accepted his tremendous gift and Christian insight in matters of religio/political history. Your article is really a fundamental, in-depth summing up of the evil, ancient symbolism we and the world face in our time, and the League is doing well to highlight this.
Sadly, we hear of few, even in League circles, that have read and understood the important message Reed gives us in "The Controversy of Zion", etc. It is with great pleasure that we can add one more person (our numbers must be miniscule) who has knowledge and understanding of Reed's incomparable work. Were he alive today, we doubt that he would be surprised as to what is happening and the calibre of the people behind this insane (almost open) anti-Christian power conspiracy.
With literacy declining, can the Australian League of Rights hope to maintain, replace or increase its supporters, especially with younger people?

Another pertinent matter is that of giving a generous forum in League literature to people that may feel that the League's basic Christian principles must be changed to suit those particular individuals' obscure reasoning. To be a Monarchist is very commendable but hardly tenable at the expense of Christianity. We would much appreciate your comments without you compromising yourself. Yours sincerely, G.W. & F. B..., Devonport, Tasmania, October 14th, 2002

Editor's response
Dear G.W. & F. B.........., of Davenport, Tasmania. Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns, which summed up are:
• the miniscule numbers who have knowledge of Douglas Reed's incomparable work.
• the League giving 'a generous forum' to Monarchists at the expense of Christianity.
• can the Australian League of Rights hope to maintain, replace or increase its supporters, especially with younger people?

First, Douglas Reed's incomparable work, "The Controversy of Zion". Yes there are too few who have read it. If more had done so, and understood it, we may not have seen the rise of Judaeo-Christianity, especially in America; maybe we would have seen more people going back to their own historical roots and discovering traditional Christianity.

As for the Monarchist's 'forum at the expense of Christianity', I would encourage you to read at least two books the League Book Services carry – "The Australian Heritage Series" and "Responsible Government in a Free Society". Both books deal with the corresponding, intertwining growth of Constitutional Monarchy and Common Law and the outworking, that is, the practical application of the Christian Faith. Whilst reading Geoffrey Dobbs' essay, "The Church and the Trinity" please look afresh at your own nation's history. C.H. Douglas put it this way: "It must be insisted that Christianity is either something inherent in the very warp and woof of the universe, or it is just a set of interesting opinions..." In which case, we have to think as closely as we can, and as practically as we can, along the true grain of the universe.
At the recent League Weekend in Albury, NSW, I sought to re-state some of the truths to which the League leaders endeavour to be faithful: To promote service to the Christian revelation of God; this includes the importance and understanding of the organic growth of Kingship/Constitutionalism in the British Isles and the 'transplantation of that growth' to this land. The British peoples did not 'write' a Constitution, they 'grew' a tripartite Constitution; it was an organic growth. There was trial and error, and at times they lost their way and made the wrong decisions or choices, they then had to retrace their steps and find the direction, the right path, to continue on the journey. We have to retrace our steps as they do, once again.
The Christian revelation of the Trinitarian nature of God teaches us God is not a monopoly, He is a Trinity; at the very centre, the very heart of the Godhead, there is mutual love and co-operation. If that is how the relationship works within the Ultimate Reality, the Godhead, (e.g. mutual love and co-operation) surely that is the only way human relationships, human associations, will work in the long-term? All systems, all institutions, all functions, are but a 'means to an end', as is the institution of Constitutional Monarchy. Our Queen's personal relationship with God is outworked (as Queen, as Sovereign) in and through the framework of the institution of Constitutional Monarchy. When a people lose sight of the true purpose of a 'means' and make the means an end in itself, they are in deep, deep, trouble.
In his tremendous paper, Phillip Benwell MBE, of the Australian Monarchist League, spoke of the Queen now being fettered by law. In which case, it behoves us all to look to who has fettered her and in what way. We the people, have our responsibility, our part to play, within our Constitutional Monarchy.

The Challenge
Geoffrey Dobbs challenged us all when he wrote, "If in practice to stand up in church and announce: 'I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost' leads to precisely the same social policy as announcing 'I believe that God does not exist and the Holy Trinity is a load of pernicious, mystical nonsense', there is really no point in making these religious noises."

Be encouraged
As for the younger generation learning these truths, please be encouraged. The numbers 'tuning in' to our website (the younger generation) are growing in leaps and bounds every month. The 'word' is going out. Remember, one plants (the 'word') another waters, (keeps the 'word' alive) but it is God who gives the increase!

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

AUDIO TAPES OF NATIONAL WEEKEND NOW AVAILABLE

The speakers were brilliant, informative, challenging! The 56th New Times Dinner – "Celebrating the Year of Jubilee":
• Toast to the New Times by Bill Daly, New Zealand National Director of the League
• Toast Seconded by Michael Lane of America
• The Loyal Toast to the Queen by Edward Rock
• Dinner Address by Phillip Benwell MBE.

Seminar: • Opening address – Betty Luks, National Director, Australian League of Rights
• Speaker Nigel Jackson, writer, schoolteacher and author; "The Queen's Justice and the International Criminal Court"
• Speaker – Michael Lane, writer, author and editor of Triumph of the Past; "One Successful Experiment would do more than $Millions in Advertising"
• Speaker – Phillip Benwell MBE, National Chairman, Australian Monarchist League; "Our Developing Democracy"
• Speaker – Jeremy Lee, political commentator, author and editor of the New Times Survey; "The Crunch and the Critical Moment"

Six tapes posted for $30. Single tape $6 posted. Order from:- MEA Tapes, Box 248, East Caulfield, Vic., 3145. Phone/Fax: (03) 9576 0105