BRITAIN BACKING OUT?

by Jeremy Lee
I listened to ABC correspondent Matt Peacock reporting from London this morning, where besieged PM Tony Blair was humiliated by a Labour Party revolt, in which 199 members of his party put forward an amendment that a case for war against Iraq had not been made. Blair managed to stave off a final defeat with the help of the Conservative Opposition, which remains myopically committed to the Bush/Blair line of "war at any cost". What has really happened in Britain is that Labour members have begun to grasp that their electorates are more important than party 'solidarity' if they want to survive in the polls. There is, apparently, a spate of resignations from Labour Party membership sweeping across the country. This, following the huge demonstrations that have swept Britain and Europe, has put 'identikit' politicians at odds with the voters as never before. There is no ambiguity in Britain; people are opposed to the war. Will the government heed the opinions and desires of electors? If not, the democratic process is in danger.

President Bush looks agonized whenever he appears in public – as though he had a political hernia. His few remaining allies are paying a heavy price for sticking with him on an Iraqi war. Despite the war rhetoric, he must be conscious of the million or so peace demonstrators who walked through New York, and others who marched in over 100 American cities. What if the cries for peace grow louder? There is something of the greatest moment happening across the world. There is a questioning of accepted norms – especially whether or not we have reached a stage where we finally accept that wars create far more problems that they solve.

THE GOOD DOCTOR PRESCRIBES

I must admit to being a fan of Dr. Mahathir in Malaysia. An authoritarian figure, he nevertheless makes more sense than many western politicians. Speaking at the Non-Aligned Forum recently, his summation of the world situation was masterly. He said:

"The world now lives in fear. We are afraid of everything. We are afraid of flying, afraid of certain countries, afraid of bearded Asian men, afraid of the shoes airline passengers wear, of letters and parcels, of white powder. The countries allegedly harbouring terrorists, their people, innocent or otherwise, are afraid too. They are afraid of war, of being killed and maimed. They are afraid because they would become the collaterals to be killed because they get in the way of the destruction of their countries. The preparations and the measures taken to ensure security go on frantically. Trillions of dollars are spent by the world for new weapons, new technology, new strategy, the deployment of forces and inspectors worldwide. The world is in a terrible mess, a state worse than during the Cold War. .... Surely at some stage we must ask ourselves why this is happening to the world. Why is there terrorism? Is it true the Muslims are born terrorists because of the teachings of a prophet who was a terrorist?..... The Christians too were terrorized, not by Muslims but by fellow Christians who condemned them as heretics. Seems the Muslims did not have a monopoly on terrorism. Surely at some stage we must ask ourselves why this is happening to the world. Why is there terrorism? Is it true the Muslims are born terrorists ....? Frankly, I do not think so. I think it is because of a revival of the old European trait of wanting to dominate the world. .... If we care to think back, there was no systematic campaign of terror outside Europe until the Europeans and the Jews created a Jewish state out of Palestinian land. It is the struggle of the Palestinians to regain their land that has precipitated, first conventional wars, then civil protest and violent demonstrations. The Israelis demanded European support to atone for European crimes against them in the past. In desperation, the Palestinians finally resorted to what is described as acts of terror. Rightly, this is condemned by the world. But the world does not condemn as acts of terror the more terrifying acts of the Israelis; the massacres in Sabra and Shatila, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes while the occupants are still in them, the helicopter gun-ships. This blatant double standard is what infuriates Muslims, infuriates them to the extent of launching their own terror attacks. If the innocent people who died in the attack on Afghanistan, and those who have been dying from lack of food and medical care in Iraq, are considered collaterals, are not the 3,000 who died in New York and the 200 in Bali also just collaterals whose deaths are necessary for operations to succeed? Actually, the life of any human being is sacred, no matter if the person is a friend or an enemy. That is why war is not a solution..... It is no longer just a war against terrorism. It is a war to dominate the world. We are now being accused of harbouring terrorists, of being 'axis of evil', etc. Fortunately, many of their people are also sick of war. They have come out in their millions to protest the warlike policies of their leaders. We must join them. War must be outlawed. That will have to be our struggle for now. We must struggle for justice and freedom from oppression, from economic hegemony. But we must remove the threat of war first ....."

Although Mahathir goes to the root of the problem, there is no western leader so far with the courage to say what needs to be said. And there won't be until enough ordinary people demand something better from their representatives. Then we might see spines become backbones.

PARTY LABELS DIVIDE

A group of 120 Australians recently met outside the offices of Federal Minister Larry Anthony, in protest against the war in Iraq in Tweed Heads. They had a good deal going for them, as evidenced by the massive marches across Australia. Mr. Anthony finally agreed to meet a delegation of five in a discussion that went for an hour or more. A description of the protest with front-page photographs appeared in the local Daily News (22/2/03). An On Target subscriber was among those who met Mr. Anthony, subsequently saying that the protesters had squandered a golden opportunity. Protesters spoiled their cause by holding party placards aloft, reading "Greens" or "Democrats". They were thus depicted in the paper as a minor party rump, which was not the case.

Secondly, they believed they could achieve something by trying to persuade Mr. Anthony to change his mind. Naturally, to no avail. Their mission should have been much simpler. They should have told Mr. Anthony that he was being paid to represent the electors in his electorate. In doing so, he should first find out what the majority of his voters wanted – and then represent their wishes in parliament. To do so it might well be necessary to set his own views aside.

Does Mr. Anthony represent his party? His own views? Or his electorate? Arguing on any other issue with a politician is a demoralizing waste of time. The adage "Parties divide! Issues unite!" is becoming more obvious all the time. If those 120 people devoted their energy to running a carefully-worded poll through Mr. Anthony's electorate – perhaps by "voting slips" in the local paper, or by polling towns and villages – they could accumulate evidence as to what the majority of Mr. Anthony's electors REALLY wanted. Which would put him in an awkward position if he continued to follow the party line.

TELSTRA'S TAIL TWISTED

Despite warnings, Telstra's Ziggy Zwitkowski has managed to lose almost $1 billion at the hands of Li Ka-Shing in Hong Kong. Why must a successful Australian corporation believe it can out-best the rest of the world on the global hustings? Telstra decided it would expand into the telecommunications industry in Hong Kong, and Li-Ka Shing, son of the wealthiest man in Hong Kong, was ready, willing and able to receive the money Telstra wanted to invest. One or two gurus warned of the risks involved, to no avail. And surprise! surprise! The money's all disappeared – a write-off.

There is, of course, no such thing as an independent Hong Kong. Telstra was playing with the Communist Chinese government, sitting on the biggest technological boom in history. It is hardly likely to allow an Australian 'minnow' to strut its stuff in China's communications industry. No, it won't come out of Ziggy's pay-packet. It will be paid for by Australia's long suffering taxpayers and small shareholders. One billion dollars could have saved an awful lot of farmers.

PETROL TAX

ONE LAW FOR US, ANOTHER FOR THE REST

A battle royal is looming in the US Congress over its trade policies. A World Trade Organisation finding has determined the Byrd amendment is illegal. The Australian Financial Review (26/2/03) said:
".... The essence of the Byrd amendment – named after Democrat Senator Robert Byrd and enacted by Washington in 2000 – is to give the cash proceeds of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties to US companies. For a host of American industries - spanning the spectrum from giant steel firms, ball-bearing makers, pasta makers, sparkler manufacturers and crayfish farmers – it has been almost too good to be true..... The process is relatively simple. The US Customs Service collects duties on products found by the US International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce to be unfairly subsidized or dumped in America at less than "fair market value". The money accumulates in separate accounts for each industry, and then once a year is distributed to US companies that have put out their hands for the proceeds of fines against their competitors ...."

Sounds like good sense! So far about $US500 has been handed out, and has probably saved a few industries that would otherwise have gone to the wall. But the WTO has branded such action as "illegal".. So the question arises as to who makes the laws for the US – the Congress or the WTO?

The AFR article continued:
"...Senator Byrd attacked the WTO ban, saying the decision wrongly challenged the ability of Congress to enact laws and flew in the face of US constitutional authority. 'The WTO appellate body has rubber-stamped a ridiculous finding that was made by a misguided panel last summer. That panel decided that the WTO – and not Congress – has the authority to determine how America's tax dollars are spent. The Byrd amendment is a matter of simple justice for workers and companies hurt by unfair foreign trade practices'....."

What a quaint old fashioned notion – that the US Congress, elected by the people, should make the nation's laws! If only a few Australian politicians would heed the principle. The matter is about to come up in Congress. What if the majority vote against the WTO? All Bush's "free trade" rhetoric will be out of the window! Could they, in all honesty, vote that the WTO is a superior legislative body to their own elected government?

LIBERAL INTELLIGENTSIA

by Betty Luks
Queensland correspondent J.B. of Toowoomba, found Roger Marwick's attack on Martin Amis book, Koba the Dread ("To Thine Own Self be True" in OT Bulletin, 7/2/03) 'very interesting'. Having just completed an essay on "Ideology", drawing on Solzhenitsyn's explanation of why men can rationalise the most evil deeds they do (The Gulag Archipelago), J.B. of Toowoomba thought Marwick's position was a warning for us all.

Roger Marwick's slanted review is typical of those who will not come to terms with the role played by the western intelligentsia in the imposition of Soviet-style Communism upon hapless peoples of other nations. He had taken author Martin Amis to task for "venting his spleen against all those intellectuals... who were foolish enough to identify with the Soviet experiment". Identify is hardly the word to describe the role of these western intellectuals, and their disciples – they promulgated, and continue to promulgate, the ideology. Still ensconced in their ivory towers, the intelligentsia fear the foundations of the towers are starting to crumble – and they might come a cropper!

As the Manchester Guardian's Moscow correspondent during the 1930s, Malcolm Muggeridge saw first hand the results of the 'social experiment'. His wife Kitty was the niece of Sydney and Beatrice Webb and his father had been an early member of the Fabian Society, so Muggeridge was no stranger to the ideology of Fabian Socialism. In conversation with them, Mrs. Webb had assured the Muggeridges, "You'll find that in the USSR Sydney and I are icons." He wrote: "As a matter of fact they were, Marxist icons." ("The Great Liberal Death Wish") He wrote of the disillusionment he experienced: "It is difficult to convey to you what a shock this was, realizing that what I had supposed to be the new brotherly way of life my father and his cronies had imagined long before, was simply on examination, an appalling tyranny, in which the only thing that mattered, the only reality, was power... "

The thing that impressed me, and the thing that touched off my awareness of the great liberal death wish, my sense that western man was, as it were, sleep-walking into his own ruin, was the extra-ordinary performance of the liberal intelligentsia, who, in those days, flocked to Moscow like pilgrims to Mecca... Clergymen walked serenely and happily through the anti-god museums, politicians claimed that no system of society could possibly be more equitable and just, lawyers admired Soviet justice, and economists praised the Soviet economy. They all wrote articles in this sense which we resident journalists knew were completely nonsensical."

He suggests anyone looking for a good subject for a thesis couldn't do better than turn to a study of books by the then Dean of Canterbury, Julian Huxley, Harold Laski, Bernard Shaw, and the Webbs who wrote about the Soviet regime. "In the process," he cautions, "you would come upon a compendium of fatuity such as has seldom, if ever, existed upon earth."

'WAR ON TERROR', NEW WORLD ORDER, TAKE YOUR PICK

by Betty Luks
There are many who simply can't understand their political leaders' attempts, by lies and propaganda, to justify their push for this war of aggression (not defence); knowing full well, thousands of innocent civilians are going to die, and the nation's infrastructure, with the American 'weapons of mass destruction' will be blasted into oblivion. Having lived through the Soviet regime, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's explanation will help us to understand why our political leaders seem hell-bent on unleashing the evil forces, once again, upon the world:

"Just how are we to understand...the act of an evildoer?" he asks. " What sort of behaviour is it? Do such people really exist?" (pp172-176, Gulag Archipelago). "We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren't any. It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past – Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens – inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shade. It seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception.

It is the 'do-gooders'
"The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black... To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions, Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology spurs the evil-doer on
"Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors... Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed... Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago."

Solzhenitsyn tells of the rumour 'doing the rounds' that the Petrograd Cheka didn't shoot all who were condemned to death during the famine, but fed some alive to the animals in the city zoos. Their justification? They couldn't take the food out of the mouths of the working class to feed these 'enemies of the State', and the enemies were going to die anyhow, so why couldn't their deaths support the zoo economy of the Republic, and at the same time, assist the great march into the future? "Wasn't it expedient? That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear..."

THE TALE OF TWO CRICKETERS

by Betty Luks
One couldn't help comparing the characters and lives of the two cricketers who featured in the news this last week. One was cricketer Andrew Flower of Zimbabwe and the other Shane Warne of Australia. Adam Gilchrist wrote of Andy Flower's courageous act of wearing a black armband, as did his fellow countryman, Henry Olonga, in the opening match of the World Cup in their country; both knowing full well that when the world spotlight was turned off at the end of the tour, there would be repercussions. Wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist writing in The Australian, 27/2/2003, confessed,
"While keeping behind Andy Flower during his innings in our pool match against Zimbabwe, I found my mind wandering from the job at hand and wanting to halt play. I wanted to ask all I could about his countrymen's difficulties and what made him so courageous as to make one of the strongest stands seen on a sporting field in wearing a black armband in their opening World Cup match."
He went on, "Flower is a gentle man, fairly quiet by nature but obviously of strong opinion and high morals. The thought of a strong stance had milled in his mind for some time and finally he felt he had an opportunity to help millions of his fellow citizens."

As for Shane Warne, who now obviously enjoys the fruits of his cricketing career – and good luck to him – he was "defending what remains of his integrity in the wake of a damning judgement by the ACB anti-doping committee, vowing to take his one-year ban "on the chin," according to the same newspaper. One wonders does Shane really know what a vow means?

Flower spoke of his fears for the future
Gilchrist continued: "I am glad the Australian cricketers chose to go to Zimbabwe, if only for the sake of the Zimbabwean peoples' morale." He reported, "After the match, Flower spoke of his fears for the future, particularly after the focus of the World Cup is gone and reality returns. I sensed a fear for his safety and a deep concern for his partner in protest, Henry Olonga, who has already been sternly dealt with by the local cricket authorities."

I would like to think Australians such as Adam Gilchrist will take up the cause of the Zimbabwean people, and the defence of Andrew Flower and his fellow countryman Henry Olonga. The atrocities inflicted upon the peoples of this sad little country are not very different to what has happened to 'the enemies of the state' under any one of the Marxist/Communist regimes of the last century. It is very important Mugabe and his henchmen are aware that the eyes of the world are still upon them – and no harm must come to these two brave cricketers, Andrew Flower and Henry Olonga. Please take up pen and paper, phone and/or email and send a message to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, insisting Australian authorities pressure the Mugabe regime and insist on the safety of the two men. Write care of Parliament House, Canberra, ACT.

The role of the World Council of Churches and Australian Council of Churches was
In a telling letter to the Gippsland Times, December 21st, 1978, Mr. Alan Boyd, the father of murdered nurse Jennifer Boyd wrote: "My late daughter Jenny who in her vocation of caring for the underprivileged of all creeds and colours in Rhodesia always told us never to give any money or donations to the World Council of Churches as it is being used to support the terrorists to murder and plunder." Mr. Boyd concluded his letter by quoting from one of the hundreds of letters he received at the time of his daughter's death; it was from a doctor who had made two trips to Rhodesia during those terrible times: "They (the Rhodesians) are fighting the whole world on the question of whether armed communism will be allowed to overrun Rhodesia. If this should happen it will be due to the blindness and or lack of courage of politicians in England, in America and here in Australia." What has changed?

Appeal should also be made to the present leaders of the World Council of Churches and the Australian Council of Churches. Both groups could begin to redeem themselves by examining the historical roles their organizations played in the betrayal of that brave little nation into Marxist hands. Ask them to take up the present cause of all Zimbabweans now suffering under the Marxist regime of Robert Mugabe.

OH! HOW SILLY OF US, AND WE THOUGHT IT WAS A RECENT PLAN!

A REALISTIC VIEW OF HISTORY

In a review of an address given thirty or more years ago, "The Moral Implications of Centralised Power," English social crediter, Anthony Cooney, wrote: "C.H. Douglas cited several schools of historic thought in his examination of "The Big Idea". He dismissed the theory that results are unsatisfactory because men are either stupid or venal, castigating it as "The Village Idiot School." Another, perhaps more insidious, he dubbed "The Episodic School." It is a view which holds that events "just happen," without cause and without reason.

Douglas proposed that "History is the crystallisation of politics" (i.e. 'policy'). "History happens because some power group plots and plans for them to happen." Douglas' view of history is here close to Hilaire Belloc's, "History must be effectively caused." Cooney explained Eric Butler dealt with, and effectively dismissed, the other main theories of historic causation, the cyclical theory of Oswald Spengler and the progress theory of Marxism.

What then is the imposed policy which has had such catastrophic results, and the evil of which is not yet exhausted? It is the policy of the Will-to-Power wrote C.H. Douglas. "Its modern roots," says Mr. Cooney, "lie in the alliance of Bismarkian power worship and German socialism." Time for some realistic history lessons!

TRIBUTE TO A FREEDOM FIGHTER

COMING UP – INVERELL FORUM

BASIC FUND

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS

From the Victorian State Director
Local Government elections are being held in some parts of Victoria during the next month or so. Where possible, every candidate should be asked if they will work to have Citizens Initiated Referenda (CIR) implemented in the Shire during their next term of office. A stamped and self addressed envelope should be included for a reply. CIR has been adopted by Burnie City Council (PO Box 973, Burnie, Tas., 7320) and North Sydney Council (PO Box 12, North Sydney, 2059). A stamped and self addressed business envelope should be included if seeking information.

North Sydney call their system "Public Participation and Direct Democracy".
Tauranga District Council, Private Bag, Tauranga, New Zealand also has a form of CIR. These can be used as examples where CIR is successfully operated by Local Government municipalities.
Election comment is authorised by B. Luks, 145 Russell Street, Melbourne, 3000