HOWARD'S BACK FLIP DEMONSTRATES ITS TRUTH

THE WORLD IN CHAINS

It is nigh on eighty years or more since Clifford Hugh Douglas got the attention of many of his countrymen in the United Kingdom by insisting: "We are starving in the midst of plenty" and suggested that rather than the banking system have a 'monopoly of credit', the solution to the problem of DISTRIBUTING THE PLENTY was for a dividend -- A REGULAR DISTRIBUTION OF CREDIT, i.e., PURCHASING POWER -- to be issued to every citizen of the nation as part of his/her cultural inheritance.

In "The World in Gold Chains" in the Manchester Despatch he wrote:
"The greatest factor in the creation of real wealth is the cultural inheritance of civilisation - scientific knowledge, tools, processes, organisation, and so forth. A second factor is that of raw materials, and especially solar energy and a third factor, of diminishing importance, is that of labour. This cultural inheritance is beyond dispute the birthright of the community (that is each and every one within the community …ed) and not any section of it."

Summed up he insisted:
· The crisis, the poverty, the mental and physical stress of these times are in a certain sense artificial.
· Many are starving in the midst of plenty.
· It is not goods and services which are lacking, it is the money with which to buy the goods and services.
· The 'problem' is described as an unemployment crisis, whereas a little consideration will make it clear that our scientists, our organisers, and our engineers have been engaged for hundreds of years, and successfully engaged in producing this so-called 'unemployment' crisis.
· The 'unemployment problem' is really the successful transfer of economic labour from the backs of men on to the backs of machines.
· That is what we have been trying to do, for centuries, and that is what we have succeeded in doing. The machines are capable of making the goods, but the unemployed cannot buy them BECAUSE THEY LACK MONEY.
· A situation which should be one of freedom and leisure, appears disguised as one of economic catastrophe.
· The actual and potential wealth of the world is demonstrably beyond all the requirements of the highest standard of living for the whole of the population.
· What do our politicians and 'inspired' press keep harping on? That we cannot afford even our present standard of living, that our taxes must be increased.
· That we must work harder and our social services must be curtailed. That the wages of labour must be cut down. (This sounds very familiar! Yet it was written eighty years ago!…Are the politicians political dinosaurs or are they political dinosaurs? …ed)
· Which means, in effect, we have less money to spend on our personal requirements and draw less upon the real wealth of the country.

Two claims - but which one is true?
First, on the one hand, that the world is rich and getting richer (which is the claim of the engineer and the scientist).
And, on the other hand, that it is poor and getting poorer (which is the claim of the financier and his protagonist, the orthodox politician) cannot at one and the same time be true.
In spite of every hindrance put in the way of him understanding these facts, the man in the street is arriving at the conclusion; the scientist is right, and the financier is wrong!

BRAZIL INTRODUCES BASIC INCOME GUARANTEE

It was encouraging to read the "Federative Republic of Brazil has become the first national government to introduce a basic income guarantee (BIG). On January 8th, 2004, President Lula signed a law decreeing the gradual introduction of a universal basic income for all Brazilian residents. The phase-in will begin in 2005, starting with those most in need by consolidating existing federal income support programs. Many of the details are yet to be worked out, but the bill was signed as it was originally proposed before both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies by Senator Eduardo Suplicy (who has fought for BIG in the Brazilian Congress for the last 15 years).

A real 'day of glory'
"Philippe Van Parijs, who came from Belgium to attend the signing said, 'A real 'day of glory' this was for Eduardo (Suplicy) and, by the same token, for basic income - even though the road is likely to be still long and tortuous from the expanding means-tested income support scheme to a universal citizen's income."

The groups have been looking into the Alaska Permanent Fund
"The Alaska Permanent Fund distributes a share of Alaskan oil revenues to every state resident in the form of a basic income guarantee. Everyone gets the same share--rich and poor benefit alike--but this modest guarantee gives the poor a small but badly needed cushion. The program has proven so successful that Alaskans are seeking to expand it and economists are looking at it as a possible solution for the 'resource curse' in countries like Nigeria and Iraq."
Taken from -- U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network and Citizen Policies Institute.

FROM THE NATION'S CREDIT - NOT THE PEOPLE'S DEBT-RIDDEN TAXES

Although the move to a means tested Basic Income Guarantee is a step in the right direction - it is an acknowledgement, a recognition, that all people need the necessities of life, the money must come into existence as a real credit and not as a debt. At present the nation's money supply is created out of nothing by the private banking system, claimed as its own, issued as a debt, to be repaid with interest (once known as usury) thus keeping the people forever in a form of debt-slavery.

Douglas wrote in "The Nature of the Present Crisis and Its Solution" (1932):
"To put the matter in technical language, the capitalistic system is a system of organisation designed to use real capital, by which I do not mean money, but tools, land, scientific knowledge, administrative ability, and many other things, so as to produce something which we call the "unearned increment of association." I want you to get this idea very clearly in your mind, as it is probably the most important idea that you can possibly assimilate at the present time.

In my opinion, Socialists have made a colossal mistake in arguing about the distribution of what they have called the "product of labour." The produce of labour is becoming increasingly unimportant as compared with the unearned increment of association…the product of the machine.
Now, it is this unearned increment of association out of which profits, not merely to the capitalist, but to so-called "labour" are paid, and we do not know of any method by which these profits representing the unearned increment of association can be paid, either to labour or capital, except by something called "money".

And if, as is most unquestionably the case, there is an enormous and increasingly unearned increment of association and yet on the whole, the community is not only not making profits, but is, in a money sense, definitely becoming poorer, we are, I think, inevitably driven to the conclusion that this breakdown of capitalism has nothing whatever to do with the organisation of production, but has everything to do with the money system.
I am not suggesting that the organisation of production is perfect, because I am sure it is not, and I think that by its aggregation into large, unwieldy units it is becoming worse rather than better, but I am quite confident that it is not in the organisation of production that our difficulty lies, and that no reorganisation such as, for instance, nationalisation in place of what is commonly called 'private ownership,' would in itself affect any change for the better, and might easily result in a very definite change for the worse.
The failure of the present economic system is not in production, it is in distribution."

DEMOCRACY IS CLAIMING ITS SPACE

In the 1990s SBS-TV featured a programme on the International Monetary Fund, in which a 1990 presidential candidate, Luis da Silva, criticized the policies and programmes of the IMF and World Bank, promising to suspend payments to the IMF in order to develop programmes for his own people.

During the campaign, in which he was narrowly defeated, he said, "It is easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle than for a banker to feel sorry for a child dying of starvation… But, I believe that people can invert this process and I believe that people can change things if they start to become aware and if they become active citizens."

In the same report another Brazilian, Marcus Arruda of "The Institute of Alternative Studies" vowed: "Sooner or later democracy is going to claim its historic space".
It looks like the Brazilians, through many years of hardship and suffering are continuing their battle to claim their democracy's historic space. Bravo to the Brazilian people!
But they must carry the battle right up to the money lenders, this time in the form of the IMF and World Bank. They too must do what was done two thousand years ago -- whip the money lenders, Mammon, out of the halls of power, out of the Temple of Faith! So must we.

HAS HOWARD SOLD US OUT -- YET AGAIN?

IT'S A WHITEWASH, BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

AND NOW THE U.K. WHISTLEBLOWER

The Australian intelligence officer Andrew Wilke was not the only one concerned that the 'two-and-a-half mouseketeers' were exaggerating the WMD threat posed by their former 'buddy' Saddam Hussein, and by speaking out, Mr. Wilke placed his career on the line.
An internet human rights group, "Our World Our Say" (seems to have links to The Guardian newspaper) has taken up the cause of U.K. whistleblower Katharine Gun, who faces two years in prison under the Official Secrets Act.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Katharine, a GCHQ translator, leaked documents to the Observer showing that US intelligence were asking their British counterparts to help spy on diplomats on the United Nations Security Council. This involved bugging phones and intercepting emails from friendly countries such as Chile and Mexico who had the power to decide if the UN would back the war against Iraq.

In a defence of Katherine Daniel Ellsberg, himself a former whistleblower wrote:
"Back in the 1960s, I served three US Presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - who lied repeatedly and blatantly about the reasons for entering Vietnam and the risks in our staying there. For the past year I have seen history repeat itself. I believe that George Bush and Tony Blair lied - and continue to lie - as blatantly about their reasons for entering Iraq as the Presidents I served did about Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers:
In 1971 I released to the press what became known as the Pentagon Papers: 7000 pages of top- secret documents demonstrating that virtually everything four American presidents had told the public about our involvement in Vietnam was false.
I am writing to ask you to help Katharine Gun, a courageous GCHQ translator, who faces prison for exposing an illegal spying campaign. You can help her now by going to www.owos.info/katharine.php - she has a pre-trial hearing at the Old Bailey on 25th February.

U.S. & British clandestine connivance:
In the weeks leading up to the war, at a time when the UN was still considering whether to pass a resolution authorizing war, Katharine disclosed to The Observer that the US National Security Agency had asked the British government to help in a surveillance operation focused on the six delegations holding the balance of power in the UN Security Council. This involved bugging home and office phones and intercepting e-mails of diplomats from friendly countries such as Chile and Mexico.
I urge you to contact Tony Blair and your local MP asking that the case against Katharine be dropped.
In the autumn of 2002, I hoped that officials in Washington and London who knew that our countries were being led into an illegal, bloody war and occupation would consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965, years before I did, before the bombs started to fall: expose these lies, with documents.

I can only admire the more timely, courageous action of Katherine Gun, who risked her career and freedom to expose clandestine actions to win support for an illegal war, before that war had started. Her disclosure of secret efforts to manipulate Security Council votes may have been critical in denying the invasion a false cloak of legitimacy. That did not prevent the aggression, but it was reasonable for her to hope that her country would not choose to act as an outlaw.

She did what she could to save lives, in time for it to make a difference, as indeed others should have done, and still can. I have no doubt that there are thousands of pages of documents in safes in London and Washington right now - the Pentagon Papers of Iraq - whose unauthorized revelation would drastically alter the discourse on whether we should continue sending our children to die in Iraq.

(Not just sending our own sons and daughters to die Mr. Ellsberg! Surely all life is precious? Pity the innocent Iraqi people as well, please…ed)

Those who reveal documents on the scale necessary to return foreign policy to democratic control risk prosecution and prison sentences, as Katharine is now facing.
I faced 12 felony counts and a possible sentence of 115 years: the charges were eventually dismissed. Exposing government lies carries a heavy personal risk, even in our democracies. But that risk can be worthwhile when a war's worth of lives is at stake.

For U.K. residents: Please go to www.owos.info/katharine.php to contact Tony Blair and your own Member of Parliament today asking that the charges against Katharine Gun be dropped. You can also write a message of support there for Katharine, which OWOS will forward on to her.

INFINITE INGRESS - CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST?

Excerpts from article appearing in LA Times by Lee Green
An article about one of the most productive nations known to recorded history. Why is the state of California in such a sorry 'state'? For answers? Priority reading is C.H. Douglas' "Economic Democracy" in particular the Chapter "The Delusion of Super Production."

"Come to California," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged the world more than once in his State of the State address this month. But most residents are not happy about this trend. A human wave is breaking over California, flooding freeways and schools, bloating housing costs, disrupting power and water supplies. Ignoring it hasn't worked.
By birth, by foot, by automobile, from other states and other countries, legally and illegally, people have arrived in California for decades in unrelenting swells, human surf breaking steadily on a vast shore. Occasionally a big set rolls in and harasses state and local officials trying to determine how many new classrooms to build or where to bury the trash, but Californians take it in stride. You can complain, but what good would it do? You can complain about winter, too, but it comes anyway.

Infrastructure?
Overshadowed by the state's long-term fiscal quagmire is the less publicized neglect of aging infrastructure that wasn't designed to serve current population levels, let alone a population projected to be nearly two-thirds larger within 36 years. The state relies on a staggering array of dams, canals, pipelines, pumping plants, levees, reservoirs, highways, bridges, parks, forest fire stations, agriculture inspection facilities, prisons, crime labs, mental hospitals, colleges and universities to maintain social and economic order.
One would hope that the state would protect this investment of hundreds of billions of dollars, but the Legislative Analyst's Office reported just over a year ago that "appropriate maintenance ... has been a chronic problem," resulting in "deterioration of facilities and an accumulation of 'deferred maintenance.'"

Water?
The state should have no trouble keeping its head above it -- because there isn't much. For the past three decades, California's population has severely outstripped the state's ability to store water. Maurice Roos, chief hydrologist for the California Department of Water Resources, claimed three years ago that the state lacked sufficient storage capacity to get through two consecutive dry years.

Power?
"The electricity crisis [of 2001] should be a wake-up call for all of us with respect to water in California," Feinstein says, implying that water rationing is no less plausible than power shortages. "We will not have enough water unless we begin to build the necessary infrastructure, the desalination, the recycling, the conservation that's really necessary for 45 [million to] 50 million people."
The Association of California Water Agencies warns that as early as 2010, yearly demand could exceed supply by 4 million acre-feet, an amount equal to what 20 million residents use in a year. You won't be reduced to drinking from your rain gauge, but your water bill may get your attention, and green lawns, clean cars and full swimming pools could become a rare sight. And that's in a good year. Even now the Colorado River, a prime source for Southern California, is so thoroughly tapped by seven states and Mexico that its waters rarely reach the sea.

Growth?
During the last half of the last century -- an epoch encompassing most of the baby boom and, a generation later, all of the boom's echo -- the state's population grew by more than 24 million. The next 24 million… will arrive more quickly, inflating the total to nearly 60 million within 36 years…The 2020s will witness the greatest 10-year increase in state history, and the numbers in the 2030s will be greater still.
But to what end? Shall we just paint ourselves into an overcrowded corner and then see if we can figure a way out?"

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The following letter was sent to The Age, 4/2/04.
Sir, Professor John Warhurst, chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, believes ('The Age", 3/2) that "the Queen has ceased to represent who we are."
Australia remains an English-speaking nation of predominantly British stock with constitution, laws and customs largely shaped by our British origins; so there is a very great deal of Australia that she - and the Crown - most certainly do represent.
The majority of Australians believe in a divine being, although they worship in varying traditions: and the Queen's sovereignty is vested in sacred authority, so that is another way in which she truly represents us.
We are a free people who believe in equity ("a fair go"). The Queen is pledged to uphold justice and the rule of law - the very institutions which most surely guarantee our freedom. She represents us in that way too - and most profoundly.
Finally. Her Majesty is the living representative of an 1100 year-old tradition of royalty which brings the glory of history and the beauty of ancient ceremony into our national life. In this respect, she represents our collective memory and our heart.
How small any proposed republican president would be by comparison!
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic.

The Howard regime's guilt needs some perspective
The writer of the following letter certainly wrote with 'tongue in cheek'!
Since when did it take a further evil to overcome a present or previous evil? 'Australia' (read politicians..ed) was in complete agreement with the horrendous sanctions placed on the people of Iraq. The West's one-time crony, Saddam Hussein, lived the high life whether under UN sanctions or no UN sanctions!

The Editor, The Australian, 19/2/04
Sir, Do those who bewail the human cost of the Iraq war and the ongoing insurgency ever stop to count the cost of what went before?
Two thousand Iraqis died each week, a total of one million civilians in a 10-year period. And that is not counting the tens of thousands killed by the regime.
It is the million killed by the UN, by sanctions and a corrupt distribution system which diverted oil money away from food and towards military programmes and propping up the regime.
UN workers, international aid organizations and informed observers all agree on the figure - 1 million deaths, mainly children - from the sanctions. The war put an end to the genocidal horror inflicted by the United Nations.
S.W. Manley, Toowong, Qld

BRIEF COMMENTS

by Thomas Dolling:
Dutch 'tolerance' has worn thin
"Holland's 30-year experiment in trying to create a tolerant, multicultural society has failed and led to ethnic ghettos and sink schools, according to an official parliamentary report." Between 70-80 per cent of Dutch-born members of immigrants import their spouses from their home countries. In fact, asylum seekers who have had their applications for residency refused are now to be deported.

The Weekly Telegraph Issue No.653
Political correctness robbing us
Sir Bernard Ingham, a former press secretary at No.10 has said: "The country we once knew is no more - and in our considered view, has gone to the dogs - our very thinking is being sanitised by a sanctimonious, self-selected clique who think they know better and seek to impose their daft notions on the rest of us." As he noted, "One of Britain's crowning glories was its sense of fairness. It is no longer even-handed."

International Express 27/1/04
Just who is slacking?
The new Leader of the Opposition Mark Latham calls for "Australians to work harder" (Letters to Editor, The Age 2/2/04). Doesn't he know "the OECD released a report last year showing that Australians work the longest hours in the developed world."
Along with his other Fabian Socialist colleagues, Mr. Latham places too much emphasis on the Marxist doctrine of more production and expansion - rather than what is really the answer - distribution. Mr. Latham is attempting to represent himself and his Fabian Socialist party as a 'new' Labor, something along the lines of Tony Blair's 'new image' in the U.K. Blair has only recently dropped such phrases as, "The Third Way" and 'A Stakeholder Society" - terms Latham seems to think he can adopt to his advantage in Australia.

BASIC FUND

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

ADELAIDE CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

Conservative Speakers' Club, 1st March, 2004. Guest speaker will be Mr. Eric Cummins and the title of his address is: "The Latest Development in the anti-Republican Fight: with particular reference to the Senate Committee Inquiry." Mr. Cummins has spent 30 years as a journalist, covering politics and the Federal and State Parliaments. He runs his own publishing business and is currently editor of an Australian Monarchist League magazine. Eric always manages to inject his own brand of humour into what can at times be a rather dry field of reporting.
Dinner, $18 per head, from 6.30pm. Public Schools' Club, 207 East Terrace Adelaide. Dinner bookings to be in by Thursday 26th February, 2004.

For this month only: Phone: 8395 9826 UP TO AND BEFORE the 23rd. Phone: 8322 8665 AFTER that date. There will be a wide selection of books, audios and videos for purchase. Come early and browse. Mayo Tape Library will tape the message as usual.

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