SWISS TO TAKE VOTE ON BASIC INCOME FOR ALL ADULTS

Switzerland will hold a vote on whether to introduce a basic income for all adults, in a further sign of growing public activism over pay inequality since the financial crisis. A grassroots committee is calling for all adults in Switzerland to receive an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs — about $2,800 — per month from the state, with the aim of providing a financial safety net for the population.

Organizers submitted more than the 100,000 signatures needed to call a referendum on Friday and tipped a truckload of 8 million five-cent coins outside the parliament building in Bern, one for each person living in Switzerland.
Under Swiss law, citizens can organize popular initiatives that allow the channelling of public anger into direct political action. The country usually holds several referenda a year. In March, Swiss voters backed some of the world's strictest controls on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a binding vote on compensation. A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on Nov. 24.

The initiative's organizing committee said the basic income could partly be financed through money from social insurance systems in Switzerland. The timing of the vote has yet to be announced, pending official guidance from the government. This article was originally published at MSNBC and RT

Wallace Klinck of Canada Responds to the News
This Swiss proposal for a "guaranteed" basic income is understandable but is technically unsound because it will be funded by taxes and/or public debt. It does nothing to address the defect in the price-system which causes financial costs to increasingly, and exponentially, exceed effective incomes (i.e., wages, salaries and dividends) in any given cycle of production. Read "Social Dynamics"here ...

This disparity arises primarily from the inclusion of additional allocated charges in respect of capital included in final retail prices--charges which increase price but not purchasing power. The proposal does nothing to reverse price inflation and to balance the price-system by substituting new debt-free consumer credit for the existing expanding consumer bank debt--so as to eliminate the overall need for consumer credit created as bank loans, which increasingly mortgage future incomes. Nor does the proposal consider the manner in which the financial system accounts real cost in financial terms, which increasingly exaggerate real cost in physical terms.

As technology replaces or displaces human labour a secondary source of income becomes increasingly necessary, but it must originate from outside the price-system and must not enter into the costs of production.

The Social Credit mechanisms of a properly constructed National Credit Account from which can be funded National (Consumer) Dividends and lower or Compensated (Retail) Prices at point of sale, are the appropriate means to distribute (not re-distribute) incomes additional to any earned in the modern age of automation.
The purpose of an economic system is to produce required and/or desired goods and services for humans with absolute minimal input cost - of which labour is one. It is not to create work through "full-employment". Any nation that requires over ninety per cent of it eligible work force to be employed must be considered very inefficient indeed.

For heaven's sake--in the days of Merry England, a relatively high point in British history, the population enjoyed, approximate, 150 holidays per year! Is this present modern "sweatshop" really representative of genuine progress? (emphasis added…ed)  

For realistic financial policy and economics search Wikipedia for "Social Credit".
Also go to SCRIBD at: https://www.scribd.com/doc/112942854/Introduction-to-Social-Credit-by-Dr-Bryan-W-Monahan

COMING TO A LOCAL COUNCIL NEAR YOU?

Lou Cook, the League’s national director writes:
“When I was on council, Numurkah Shire had a few outstanding rates and one councillor wanted to pursue the money and Shire Secretary said 'holdfast'. If we chase the money and the ratepayer is bankrupted we may only receive fifty cents in the dollar, however, the outstanding rates will continue to attract 'bonus' interest and eventually when the property changes hands ALL amounts owing to council MUST be paid BEFORE the property changes hands.

Now you can see why I am interested in local government and its financial management. Councils can't lose, and it is much worse since amalgamations because the administrators are divorced from the community... in the case of Moira Shire, hardly any of the managers live in the community. Some commute daily over 100 kilometres each way in council supplied cars. They live a life of anonymity within the Shire. That is another reason why 'small is beautiful!'  

LOCAL AUTHORITIES PLANNING TO SELL UNPAID TAXES TO CREDIT COMPANIES

From an activist in the UK:
British "Local Authorities, Our "Masters" are planning to sell unpaid British Council Tax to credit companies. It works thus. Householder fails to pay rates/Council Tax, the debt is sold onto Hedge fund concerns who build up property portfolio, then move in to seize houses, the bills over-inflated. This is already happening in America. My source tells me this will happen in UK, as Councils seek to maintain their "lifestyles".

These targeted properties, most of them fully owned by elderly owners, are treated as a form of "currency"- several homes to be seized, often from silly amounts but inflated by administration charges and lawyers fees, can grow into thousands of pounds. It is already happening in parts of the UK but is to become general policy. The "portfolios" of properties to be "seized" are sold on to Hedge Fund speculators, who also monetise the "interest" and "compound interest" too.  

TONY ABBOTT AND THE TPP

by Betty Luks
Having just come from the League’s National Weekend where such matters as the threat to the Australian people’s freedom from the very secretive Trans Pacific Partnership proposals was discussed, you can imagine my disgust on reading the headlines in the ABC News: “Abbott confident of getting free-trade deal with China in 12 months” VIDEO: Abbott plans to take a 'significant delegation' to China (ABC News)

“Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he is confident of securing a free-trade agreement with China within 12 months. Speaking to the media at the APEC summit in Bali, Mr Abbott said he was using the meeting to shore up free trade with other countries in the region, particularly China.
Mr Abbott met with China's president Xi Jinping last night and has confirmed he will travel to China in the first half of next year. "It would be wonderful if a trip towards the end of the first half of next year was consummated by an agreement here," he said. "Our intention is to move as quickly as we can. I would be disappointed if we couldn't conclude a significant free-trade agreement with China in 12 months."

Trans-Eurasia – A New Silk Road: A Sort of Mega Free Trade Zone
Now link Tony Abbott’s enthusiastic plans for Australia “securing a free trade agreement with China” and other countries in the region, with Pepe Escobar’s recent article from the Asia Times : “China stitches up (SCO*) Silk Rd” :
“While the whole world was terrified by the prospect of the Obama administration bombing Syria, Chinese President Xi Jinping was busy doing the Silk Road… Cue to September 7, in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, when Xi officially proposed no less than a New Silk Road in co-production with Central Asia.*SCO: acronym for Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

Continuing Pepe Escobar:
"Xi's official "economic belt along the Silk Road" is a supremely ambitious, Chinese-fueled trans-Eurasian integration mega-project, from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea; a sort of mega free-trade zone. Xi's rationale seems to be unimpeachable; the belt is the home of "close to 3 billion people and represents the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential"…”  

WHAT WILL THE ESTABLISHMENT DO WHEN ONE MILLION REFUGEES… COME KNOCKING?

by James Reed
The UN, that fountain of all things politically correct said that the number of children who have fled the war-ravaged land of Syria totals one million, and two million people have been displaced within its borders. The head of UNICEF, the UN’s kiddie agency said: “This one millionth child refugee is not just another number. This is a real child ripped from home, maybe even from a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend.” Translation: please take us!

Various Leftoid groups have protested in our capital city along the lines of “Let the refugees in” referring to the present asylum seekers, most of whom are people seeking a better place to live. But, using Leftoid ‘logic’, if it can be called that, the Syrian refugees surely have a worse plight than our present crop of asylum seekers. So, this commits us, under the UN regime, to being open, in principle, to all two million of these people. And why stop with Syria – there are probably over a billion people in just as bad shape across the world. Leftoid morality requires helping them all, and not arbitrarily discriminating against any.

This, of course, is impossible, and shows the moral absurdity of refugeeism. I contend that there is no moral duty to help these people at all. All – which is nationally suicidal – or none.  

OUT STEPS THE POPE FROM THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS

From Andrew Bolt’s Blog: 5 October, 2013

The tragedy is great, but the self-reproach seems absurd: 

Pope Francis has described the sinking of a migrant boat off the coast of Italy as a “disgrace”. The word disgrace comes to me, the Pope said during an audience, calling for prayers on behalf of the dead and their families. “Let us unite our efforts so that similar tragedies do not happen again. Only a decided collaboration among all can help to stop them.” …

There is much to admire in this Pope and much to regret in this drowning. But the Pope’s reaction reminds me of the Jean Raspail’s brilliant and brutally confronting 1971 satire (or indictment), Camp of the Saints, describing how Europe, frozen with self-loathing, greets an Armada of one million boat people sailing in to help itself to the riches of the West: 


“Then, after a while, there were too many poor. Altogether too many. Folk you didn’t even know. Not even from here. Just nameless people. Swarming all over. And so terribly clever! Spreading through cities, and houses, and homes. Worming their way by the thousands, in thousands of foolproof ways. Through the slits in your mailboxes, begging for help, with their frightful pictures bursting from envelopes day after day, claiming their due in the name of some organization or other. Slithering in. Through newspapers, radio, churches, through this faction or that, until they were all around you, wherever you looked. Whole countries full, bristling with poignant appeals, pleas that seemed more like threats, and not begging now for linen, but for checks (cheques... ed) to their account. And in time it got worse. Soon you saw them on television, hordes of them, churning up, dying by the thousands, and nameless butchery became a feature, a continuous show, with its masters of ceremonies and its full-time hucksters. The poor had overrun the earth. Self-reproach was the order of the day; happiness, a sign of decadence. Any pleasure? Beneath discussion. Even in Monsieur Calgues’ s own village, if you did try to give some good linen away, they would just think you were being condescending. No, charity couldn’t allay your guilt. It could only make you feel meaner and more ashamed. And so, on that day he remembered so well, the professor had shut up his cupboards and chests, his cellar and larder, closed them once and for all to the outside world. The very same day that the last pope had sold out the Vatican.

"Treasures, library, paintings, frescoes, tiara, furniture, statues — yes, the pontiff had sold it all, as Christendom cheered, and the most high-strung among them, caught up in the contagion, had wondered if they shouldn’t go do likewise, and turn into paupers as well. Useless heroics in the eternal scheme of things. He had thrown it all into a bottomless pit: it didn’t take care of so much as the rural budget of Pakistan for a single year! Morally, he had only proved how rich he really was, like some maharaja dispossessed by official decree.

"The Third World was quick to throw it up to him, and in no time at all he had fallen from grace. From that moment on, His Holiness had rattled around in a shabby, deserted palace, stripped to the walls by his own design. And he died, at length, in his empty chambers, in a plain iron bed, between a kitchen table and three wicker chairs, like any simple priest from the outskirts of town. Too bad, no crucifixion on demand before an assembled throng. The new pope had been elected at about the time Monsieur Calgues retired. One man, wistfully taking his place on the Vatican’s throne of straw. The other one, back in his village to stay, with only one thought: to enjoy to the fullest his earthly possessions, here in the setting that suited him best ... So thank God for the tender ham, and the fragrant bread, and the lightly chilled wine! And let’s drink to the bygone world, and to those who can still feel at home in it all!

"While the old man sat there, eating and drinking, savouring swallow after swallow, he set his eyes wandering over the spacious room. A time-consuming task, since his glance stopped to linger on everything it touched, and since every confrontation was a new act of love. Now and then his eyes would fill with tears, but they were tears of joy.
Each object in this house proclaimed the dignity of those who had lived here — their discretion, their propriety, their reserve, their taste for those solid traditions that one generation can pass on to the next, so long as it still takes pride in itself. And the old man’s soul was in everything, too. In the fine old bindings, the rustic benches, the Virgin carved in wood, the big cane chairs, the hexagonal tiles, the beams in the ceiling, the ivory crucifix with its sprig of dried boxwood, and a hundred other things as well ...

"It’s man’s things that really define him, far more than the play of ideas; which is why the Western World had come to lose its self-respect, and why it was clogging the highways at that very moment, fleeing north in droves, no doubt vaguely aware that it was already doomed, done in by its over-secretion, as it were, of ugly monstrosities no longer worth defending. Could that, perhaps, have been one explanation?” Book available here...

LABOR AND LIBERALS – BOTH PLANNED TO CONTINUE SELLING US OFF AND OUT

by Peter West
The Unions were right to unleash a pre-election $1 million ad attack on the Coalition, portraying it as intending to “massively expand” the 457 visa programme. (The Australian 19 August 2013, p.7) This is the Liberals “big thing” but Labor has not been far behind. Why would both parties give jobs to overseas workers while unemployment rots the heart of Australia?

Let’s ask another question first
Both Labor and the Coalition have plans to create a Northern Economic Exclusion Zone, with relaxed foreign investment rules, low corporate tax and of course, cheap foreign workers. Assets will be almost given to China. Why give away the country? What produces this national suicide? The only explanation of this support of the “other” over self, as with migration policy, is that some deep virus infection has occurred in the DNA of the body-social, some virus of the mind that causes the elites to hate home and love “not-home”.

It is a political pathology that not only infected Australia but has spread like a zombie plague throughout the West. Before us is the battle for our lives, but also for the legacy of Newton, Shakespeare and Keats. Our battle is against the financial/economic barbarians who seek to consume civilisation in their quest for profit.

DLP Senator John Madigan has organised a Petition to Stop Foreign Sellout:
To view and sign the petition go to www.wewontsellout.com.au  

WHERE DOES THE GROWING SENSE OF ANGER COME FROM?

by Peter West
US academic Robert Reich recently wrote an article “Why the Anger?” He observes that the US is more divided today than at any time in the past 80 years. Americans are “more contemptuous of almost every major institution – government, business, the media. They’re more convinced the nation is on the wrong track.”

Reich surfs around for reasons for the anger. He is himself a Democrat. Hence he decides that there are economic causes; the middle class is being hit, the median wage of male workers is lower now, adjusted for inflation, than in 1980.
This is only part of the reason and Reich doesn’t explore why this economic inequality is occurring, which would require a critical analysis of economic globalisation. Yes, people are angry because the money elites are essentially destroying their world. They have a right to be angry and I hope they get angrier.

POLITICS NOT SCIENCE – IPCC LOSES THE DEBATE

“Stop Wasting Money on the IPCC,” by Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition. 2nd October 2013.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian government to stop wasting money on IPCC activities – “no submissions, no delegates, no funds”. The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the repeated failures of the IPCC theories and climate models shows that the money spent on these activities would be better spent on disaster-proofing public infrastructure – “whatever we spend on IPCC activities is too much”.

Decades ago the IPCC proposed a theory that Earth’s temperature is controlled by the 0.04% trace of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• This theory was used to make predictions by at least 73 computer models.
• Thirty years of observations has proven every prediction wrong.
• Therefore their theory is wrong. That is how science works.

Now, faced with collapse of their theory and de-funding of their activities, the alarmist crew have switched to politics. The IPCC Summary document released last week with all the hoopla of a political convention is a political document produced by consensus.
It was negotiated by a faceless committee of international bureaucrats for their government masters, most of whom have a vested interest in proving there is a continuing problem needing international taxes and controls.
Consensus is the tool of politics. Public opinion is where the next climate battle will be fought. They will lose again. It is time to stop wasting money on a lost cause.

For a comical glimpse of the IPCC Consensus see:
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released their 5th assessment (big report) on how human activity (using fossil fuels to make energy) is causing global warming (that’s not happening). Actually the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) has been “leaked” for months. The SPM is a watered down version of the big report so that even politicians can sort of understand what it says.

The new report states clearly that with 95% confidence, humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming. The only difference in the percent of confidence from the previous reports is that the 95% figure is higher than all the other reports. This higher level of confidence is rather odd since they state that the climate system’s sensitivity to forcing from greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide is unknown! The report states that “No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies”. Without a solid understanding of what the climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide and other forcings is, the whole “dominant cause” statement has no meaning. It’s a statement designed to inspire confidence in what they admittedly don’t understand.

What they are saying is that they are 95% sure that humans are the dominant cause of global warming but that they are so unsure of how the climate system reacts to increases in carbon dioxide, they can’t give us an “estimate” of how much global warming it causes. Yea, that inspires confidence for sure. Based on that “high level of confidence” we should abandon what works (fossil fuels) and gamble our future and prosperity on so-called “renewables” that can’t survive without massive government support….

So although the IPCC admits they don’t know what the sensitivity of the climate system is to increases in carbon dioxide and they could not have predicted the current pause in global warming nor how long it will last, they are 95% sure that it is caused by use of fossil fuels and they know how to fix it. Well now, I feel much better!
For a while there I was worried that the United Nations plan to take one hundred billion dollars a year from the western countries, you know the ones that caused global warming, and give it to whoever they want, was going to fail. Now I feel 95% confident that the UN IPCC has all the answers and has our best interests at heart. A further read here... And here .... - See more at...

A WORLD SPIRALLING OUT OF CONTROL

by John Steele
It was, I believe US alternative journalist Mike Adams who coined the term “trickle-down tyranny” to describe the permeation of tyranny and oppression through Western societies from large-scale state acts of violence, which are then mirrored at the micro level. (Natural News.com 22 November 2011)

The macro scale of tyranny for the United States is dealt with by a masterful book by Michael Savage entitled, “Trickle Down Tyranny: Crushing Obama’s Dream of the Socialist States of America” and much has been reported at this site about threats to freedom in the West.
In a not so recent article Mike Adams (6 July 2013) reports on waves of militarised violence across the United States indicating that America is essentially an oppressive police state. Vehicles of innocent people have been shot up; pet dogs of people merely filming police have been shot; farmers selling raw milk have had armed police raid their farms; a teenager buying bottled water and cookie dough was swarmed by armed police who thought she had bought beer and an aged man was killed when police raided the wrong house. There are hundreds of stories like these.

The moral is clear: the police, army and “The System” cannot be trusted with their firearms. They need to disarm. Only citizens should have firearms. Let the police go back to the old British way of only carrying nightsticks! Let the armies fight with swords if they have to!  

WHY THERE IS NO INTELLIGENCE PARADOX

by James Reed
Controversy has again arisen with the publication of Satoshi Kanazawa’s “The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn’t Always the Smart One” (Wiley, New York, 2012). He is one of the few politically incorrect academics in Britain, clinging to his position, while publishing brilliant work. In this book he elaborates on his “Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis (S. Kanazawa, “General Intelligence as a Domain-Specific Adaptation,” Psychological Review Vol.III, 2004, pp.512-523).

Intelligence arose from dealing with novel events, not necessarily familiar ones. In his book he produces a mass of data to show among other things, that there is an inverse relationship between women’s IQ reduction and fertility; in general; the more educated and higher in intelligence a woman, the less babies she has. The paradox is that the intelligent will gradually be eliminated from society.

I think that Kanazawa is on to something here. Intellectualism itself may be dysgenic; at least in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, intellectualism has led to a mass of dangerous, socially destructive belief systems (e.g., Marxism, Feminism) and entire disciplines which are degenerate (e.g., sociology). Common folk are not deceived by phony arguments, especially regarding immigration and refugees.

Could it be that a modern university education is like catching a destructive mind-virus and that there is no “intelligence paradox” itself because modern education itself is so infected by the “culture of critique” that it has itself become nothing more than brainwashing and mind control?  

THE NORDIC (SCOTTISH) INVENTION OF THE WORLD’S FIRST CALENDAR

by Brian Simpson
Information about our Nordic (Northern European) past is important for overcoming the deracination that our people have been subjected to. One of the racially soul-destroying myths is that Northern Europeans were savages and that civilisation came from the Middle East, or, as it has been added in more recent times, Asia.

As discussed at the Westernspring.co.uk website (16 July 2013), archaeologists from Birmingham University announced that they have discovered a 10,000 year old sophisticated lunar calendar in Scotland. The calendar used, the article says, “12 carefully-sited pits, mimicking the phases of the moon and aligned with the lunar calendar over the year. There was also an alignment with the Midwinter sunrise to provide an annual astronomical datum point so the calendar could be kept accurate.”

Professor Vince Gaffney who led the project said: “The evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and the sophistication to track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year and that this occurred nearly five thousand years before the first formal calendar known in the Near East.”

Westernspring conclude that “yet again multiracialist propaganda ascribing all cultural advances to places as far South and East of Europe as possible is undermined. It is clear that the roots of the sophisticated indigenous North-West European civilisation that reached its flowering at Stonehenge before [ever] the first Pyramids were erected go back many thousands of years earlier.”  

GILLARD’S GRIM LEGACY

by Peter Ewer
Julia Gillard seems now to be securing her place in the history books. Why, soon she will take up her position as Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide, and generations of students will carry on her version of history. Ah, what a wonderful thing a university education is…

Ignoring the great sexism debates, I think her contribution to mass immigration puts her up there with the rest of them. She said after replacing Rudd that she was opposed to his idea of a “Big Australia”, an Australia of 35 million by 2050. However, she continued a mass immigration programme that will lead to Australia hitting 35 million long before that – maybe as soon as 2030, depending on the immigration rate. Feedback mechanisms now seem to be operating making increasing levels of migration unstoppable with “Business as Usual”. The migrants are of course majority non-white.

White Australians are thus likely to be an ethno-racial before 2030. Without organised action to fight this – which requires as in Europe an anti-immigration party – “Australia” is set to cease to exist. It will be The End of the World as We Know IT (TEOTWAWKI), coming to a street near you, sooner than you think.  

THE RELIGION OF ATHEISM

by Peter West
Tobias Langdon (“Dawkin’s Demon: The True Faith of Liberal Atheists” The Occidental Observer 30 April 2013) comments on the atheism of biologists such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould who believe in the notion of human equality, that “all human groups, despite their superficial physical differences, are equal in average cognitive ability – equal, in fact, on all psychological variables.” Thus black women, say from Africa, are quite capable of winning a Nobel Prize for physics. Only “racism” is holding them back.

Longdon points out that biological equality is impossible to explain on evolutionary premises. It requires belief in a miracle because there are thousands of genes affecting the human brain, existing in different frequencies in different populations. The average effects of all of these genes must remain the same over tens of thousands of years. That is so improbable that it has to be rejected.
Hence human equality requires a belief in miracles – or, as these folks are all atheists, they are simply incoherent! Equality is scientifically false and those believing in it have a religious not a scientific belief.  

THE INCREDIBLE COLLAPSING CATHOLIC CHURCH

by Chris Knight
Catholic Pope Francis, the first Third World Pope, has said that the Catholic Church could fall “like a house of cards” if there is continual “obsession” over abortion, gay marriage and contraception. It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time, he said. This comes from a liberal Pope who has called homosexuals “brothers” who has questioned whether he had a right to condemn them. After all, he too was a “sinner”. Oh, well, now I understand. Perhaps it is better that these issues are talked about all the time and the Church collapses. As a former Catholic, now Protestant, I say: let it be.

Editor’s comment: Chris, I am also a Christian, but do not have faith in any of the present leaders of the main organised churches. You would do well to examine closely just what the Protestant leaders are about. It came as quite a shock to me to learn recently that the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was Bishop for just one year before his present political appointment – his background history is ‘interesting’. Go to Wikipedia, type in his name and do a search.  

LETTERS TO THE PRESS

The Editor, The Chronicle, Toowoomba
Dear Sir,
Joan Broome (T.C. 26-9-13) is not the only one appalled at the confusion about democracy. The word democracy, like the word love, has come to mean different things to different people at different times for different reasons!
The democracy that Australia started with and is still in practice in community organisations, is an organisation where the members select and elect the executive. The chosen executive for the next twelve months, then carries out the policies of the membership, or resigns individually or in total. Briefly and deliberately, the membership controls the executive with their voting sanction.
The complimentary opposite of participating democracy is corporate government, where the executive is appointed, which pays and controls the membership, or dismisses its membership, but never itself! Members, or employees have no voting sanction.
Australia’s meteoric rise to success from its infancy as a penal colony to a fully industrialised free nation in a century, was when these two complimentary opposite organisations operated in the growing nation. Industry could only succeed as a corporate controlled mechanism and freedom could only flourish under a democratic organisation.
The ballot box used in all these organisations is a mechanism, or a means to an end. Like all mechanisms they are controlled by the designer and the operator! Our plight and the world’s plight is that corporate government has now replaced democratic government everywhere, except at the diminishing community level.
As Joan suspects, putting pieces of paper in a ballot box never delivers what we once had, or obtains what we now desire, for it is useless as a sanction.

- - Yours truly, John Brett, Highfields Queensland

Letter to Weekly Times re Recent Federal Election in Indi
To: Miranda, Miranda@theweeklytimes.com.au, P O Box 14755. Melbourne 8001. 5th October 2013
Dear Miranda,
A rural resident ratepayer in the Rural City of Wangaratta in the Federal electorate of Indi and State electorate of Murray Valley I comment on your article “People powers wins day” Weekly Times October 2, 2013.
Your article lacks background to the election campaign in INDI. The cooperation between so called Independent Candidate Cathy McGowan, the Labor party, Greens Party and National Party members needs to be acknowledged. Ken Jasper former NP member for Murray Valley and Tammy Atkins former member Rural City of Wangaratta Council and NP preselection candidate for State seat of Murray Valley and Senate both were very visible supporters of Voce4Indi Cathy McGowan.
Public acknowledgement that the Voice4Indi campaign management was based on the OBAM campaign in USA draws attention to organizations such as GET-UP and THE CIVIL SOCIETY, the development of Communitarianism in USA.
The action of Local Government Minister of the Coalition Victorian Government Jeanette Powell in dismissing the Rural City of Wangaratta Council is without precedence and could be legally challenged.
This council included members elected to oppose the proposed Rural Land Strategy and examine the financial accountability of previous councils. Their ability to overcome lack of cooperation from council staff and some councillors to pass a Council Plan, Council Budget and progress development of the Municipal Cattle Sale Yards was ignored by the Minister. WHY?
The Federal Governments led by Rudd and Gillard were progressing a plan to have Local Government recognized by referendum in the Federal Government Constitution. This was supported by the previous Council with no consultation with residents or ratepayers although it could lead to abolition of State Governments and value of Land Titles.
There are many reasons for people of all ages being informed and involved in political decisions.
There is every concern that the community manipulation shown by Hitler and his Black Shirts before the 1939-1945 war could be copied by the Orange Shirts of Voice4Indi.
Cathy McGowan did not commit to policies. I read the background of people mentioned in your article who support her and lack confidence in her representation.

- - Alison G Walpole, Whorouly South, Victoria  

LETTER IN THE PRESS

Indonesia’s land grab:
It would appear that Indonesia’s co-operation in stopping the boats will be rewarded with an agricultural colony on Australian soil. Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce appears to have muted his criticism of the Indonesian government’s proposed land purchase (“Jakarta beefs up Aussie land grab” The Australian 25/9), Treasurer Joe Hockey has taken a benign approach to the issue and Tony Abbott will be visiting Indonesia next week.
I could be wrong of course, assuming this is one big coincidence.
Once approved, the colossal beef farming enterprise would probably be administered by Indonesians and its profits sent back to Indonesia, its taxes might be avoided by transfer pricing — where the local operation sells at cost price to the foreign parent company. Put simply, there could be no economic benefit for Australia.
Having established their interests here, the Indonesians could then return to whatever boat-arrival policy they prefer. A blunder of historic proportions is unfolding.

- - Marco Fante, Katoomba, NSW  

TAKE ACTION! A TARGET FOR THE WEEK

The Victorian Minister for Local Government, Jeanette Powell, dismissed the democratically elected Rural City of Wangaratta councillors last week.
See https://www.wangarattacity.com/comments.

The week before Mrs Powell announced an independent panel chaired by Petro Georgiou A0, and released a discussion paper to stimulate ideas on how local government democracy can best work.
Victorians: You are encouraged to make a contribution and please don't be constrained by the limitations of the discussion paper. Make YOUR OWN points!

For more information, contact the Local Government Electoral Review Secretariat on 1300 736 075 or email lg.electoralreview@dtpli.vic.gov.au and ask for the discussion paper and any other information to help you with your submission.
Since the Kennett Government amalgamated Victorian Councils the administration has been given unprecedented power over the community and it is now ‘rule by bureaucracy’ with little input from the democratically elected representatives.

You are also encouraged to obtain a copy of the ’councillor code of conduct’ so you will understand the constraints placed on your representatives.
Whilst it will be argued these restraints are ‘necessary for good government’ it will also show how there is little room for the individual to play a role in ‘community governance’. ‘Team players’ only are required and rocking the boat of bureaucratic complacency is right out of the question; any who try are labelled as rebels and treated accordingly.

Be sure to send copies to your councillors and elected State representatives. Please be involved because there is absolutely no point in battling at Federal level if you cannot bring your council to order.
There is another aspect in this discussion which needs examination and it is the relationship between councillor and ratepayer.
If you write a letter addressed to a councillor ‘care of the council offices' then it will likely be opened by an officer and answered without the knowledge of the councillor.
Obtaining the addresses of candidates for office is also a difficult procedure and ‘privacy concerns’ are used to thwart your intentions to privately contact candidates.
If you stand for public office then to a degree you forfeit some of your privacy for electoral transparency. This is also a ‘cost in a democracy’.
Secrecy is also the ‘hallmark’ of bureaucracy and tyranny that is working against the best interests of ‘open government’.

When you read the discussion paper you will think of much more; get those submissions in and do not be afraid to make a personal appearance before the inquiry.