31 January 2014 Thought for the Week:

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) a natural social crediter? Fabulous! “I'm reading Agatha Christie's autobiography. It's a wonderful reminder of a bygone era when people developed their character from the inside out rather than as a result of constant dosing with "culture" from mass media. She writes (pp. 133-4): "There seems to me to be an odd assumption that there is something meritorious about working. Why?.... The old nursery adage used to be 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do'. Presumably little Georgie Stephenson was enjoying idleness when he observed his mother's tea-kettle lid rising and falling. Having nothing at the moment to do, he began to have ideas about it... I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. [Her italics] That is the big secret that has brought us down the ages hundreds of thousands of years, from chipping flints to switching on the washing up machine…” - Robert Klinck, Canada 20/1/2014

“Didn’t know Agatha Christie was a Social Crediter! Probably most people are, or would be if not misled by inculcated false values, by nature, but just are not aware of the fact. I think that invention arises from natural curiosity or awe of the universe, which may or may not be quite independent of real or perceived immediate or future necessity - and quite rationally from applied intelligence so often maligned as “laziness” also. The universe is not a sweatshop but rather a playground for mankind’s exploration and psychological enrichment”. - Wallace Klinck, Canada 21/1/2014

May each and every one of us cultivate our natural Faith as in Confidence, Hope, Love and a strong sense of Grace, so that we may always be open to the truth of the goodness of the abundance of the earth and the accumulated value of the accomplishments of our ancestors. Let us appreciate, enjoy and make the most of the life that has been given us, and be humbly aware of these same qualities, rights and responsibilities in others. Amen. - Steve Hummel, ‘BenFranklinWasRight’ March 2013

OBJECTIVE, WORLD DOMINION: THE MEANS AND THE ENDS

The Big Idea by C.H. Douglas p.38 1942: “Like all undertakings which have been pursued to the stage of realisation, The Big Idea has firstly an objective, secondly a method of technique, and thirdly a dynamics by means of which the human individual can be made to conform to the technique so that the objective may be realised or attained.

The objective is World Dominion. The technique is centralisation by a graded executive, operating through Law and Finance. The dynamic forces are Fear and Desire. There are numbers of fairly intelligent people who accept the idea that the world is moving inevitably to Dictatorship of the type adumbrated by Stalin, in the same way that the drawing rooms of the mid-nineteenth century were filled with believers in the inevitability of "Progress". The two ideas are not unconnected – they are the direct consequence of the delirium of materialism – the acceptance of the dogma that the one end of man is gadgets, that he must at all costs be kept employed under discipline making more and more gadgets, and carrying the blessings of his gadget civilisation to the benighted heathen.
That this is not mere unconscious error is easy to demonstrate to anyone open to conviction.

There is not a large newspaper in the world which has not misrepresented the technological increase of production per man-hour as "unemployment", and as a failure of statesmanship. Not because things which ought to have been made, were not made, which may be true, but because of the determination, conscious and vicious, to keep unemployment and poverty synonymous. And that this misrepresentation is part of the Big Idea, is, I think, demonstrated conclusively by the dangerous nonsense being circulated by all the machinery of propaganda at this critical time (1942) in regard to the Russian Social and Economic systems.

To anyone who wishes to obtain an unbiased and objective view of Soviet Russia I can recommend the Russian section of Looking for Trouble, by the American journalist, Virginia Cowles, who took considerable risks to get away from the spoon-feeding which is the usual treatment of investigators. The following paragraph gives, I think, a clue to the real situation:-

“I saw nothing new. The factories, club-houses, and schools I was shown were third-rate imitations of Western progress. All this I had expected; but what I hadn't expected was that I should be asked to marvel at the most commonplace conveniences, as though I had come from a jungle . . . the misinformation and ignorance of the conditions in the outside world were grotesque. For a nation that sent its disciples abroad to convert the pluto-democracies to the leadership of Moscow, it seemed to have little to offer from a practical point of view, other than squalor and poverty. But far more disconcerting than the wretched conditions was the tyranny that gripped the capital. It was estimated that the purge, which had swept the country during the past two years (1936-7) had sent over six million people to concentration camps.”

Douglas continued: This seems to me to be a good, non-technical, description of the salient characteristics of a bureaucratic socialist state. The determination to obliterate standards of comparison, the use of every means of publicity to represent a retrograde tyranny as a marvellous advance, the espionage and the mass cruelty are all there. If this is the New Order that we are fighting to establish, then Flanders Poppies should be superseded by a crown of thorns…” Read further here…

QUEENSLAND A REPLICA OF RUSSIA’S POST-COMMUNIST CORPORATISM

by John Brett: Solzhenitsyn’s brilliant diagnosis of Russia’s plight was summed up in his 1997 article “What Kind of Democracy Is This?” We still cannot get Figs from Thistles, whatever is written on their shirt! Watch what they are doing with their hands, not what they are saying with their lips! Please don’t get back to me to tell me it is not happening in Queensland because we now have a Liberal/National Party government! All party members act the same way on the other side of the dividing voting wall, as they obey their common paymaster. Alexander Solzhenitsyn could have summed up Queensland’s situation in the unarguable sense of the word ‘democracy’. It means the rule of the people - that is, a system in which the people are truly in charge of their daily lives and can influence the course of their own historical fate. There is nothing of the sort in Queensland today.

This is no Tree of State grown up from its roots: The authorities operate on a moral imperative: We don't betray our own and we don’t uncover their wrongdoings. So the fate of the State is now decided by a changing oligarchy of over 100 people, which includes the nimbler members of the old Communist “Green” system’s top and middle ranks, plus their new rich underwriters. This is no tree of state grown up from its roots, but a dry stake driven into the ground, or as things now stand, an iron rod. The members of this oligarchy combine a lust for power with mercenary calculations. They exhibit no higher goals of serving our State and the people, while they abhor “The Rule of Law” in favour of their own corrupt, secret rule.

It could be said that throughout the last 12 years of frenetic reorganization our Queensland Government has not taken a single step unmarked by ineptitude and incompetence. Worse, our ruling circles have not shown themselves in the least morally superior to the government which preceded them. Queensland is being exhausted by crime, by the transfer into private hands of billions of dollars' worth of the State’s wealth. Not a single serious executive crime has been exposed, nor has there been a single public trial.

The investigatory and judicial systems are severely limited in both their actions and their inclination, as they slowly became compromised and neutralized with personal debt and pornographic libraries. “Innocent until proven guilty”, once the undergirding foundation of our freedom has been abandoned, and now we are back where it all started 2,000 years ago, where you were guilty until somehow you could prove your innocence from behind bars. Exactly as happened at Christ’s midnight trial. Was it so long ago that we thought there could exist no more absurd and unwieldy bureaucracy than that of the Beattie and Bligh regimes? But during the last 10 years, the bureaucracy has doubled and tripled in size, destroying the Public Service structure that took us further and faster and safer to success than any other nation before us. All this destruction at the expense of a State whose citizens are being reduced in silence to economic slavery.

When a people are deprived of local self-government and when rights are neither guaranteed nor defended, those with the most initiative and talent can find few outlets for their creative powers; stonewalled by bureaucracy and illegality at every turn of any constructive effort. The Premier’s proposed “Corporatisation” of the State’s assets will deliver into private hands the vast wealth of Queensland, leaving its citizens poorer and powerless over their own economic destiny. The economic health of the “State” now takes precedence over the economic well-being of its citizens, who will only be allowed to pick up the financial crumbs that fall from the millionaires’ corporate board-room tables.

A shadow is replacing the Tree of Life: Monopolistic producers, as elsewhere in the world, will be able to make food and consumer goods prohibitively expensive, while living in affordable luxury themselves. The destructive course of events over the last decade has come about because the Government, while ineptly imitating the former Soviet Union, and now modern Russia, has completely disregarded the country's creativity and particular character as well as Australia’s centuries-old spiritual and social foundations. Only if those paths are reopened, freed up and returned can Queensland be delivered from its near-fatal takeover by the world’s silent and all powerful elite. Solzhenitsyn’s original text can be read here....

A SOCIALIST VOICE FROM THE PAST?

An Editor’s Progress by A.R. Orage New Age Supplement No3 – November 22, 1934:
“Like every intellectual in those days – I refer to the earliest years of the twentieth century – I began as some sort of a Socialist. Socialism was not then either the popular or unpopular vogue it has since become; but it was much more of a cult, with affiliations in directions now quite disowned – with theosophy, arts and crafts, vegetarianism, the “simple life,” and almost, as one might say, the musical glasses. Morris had shed a medieval glamour over it with his stained-glass “News from Nowhere.” Edward Carpenter had put it into sandals. Cunninghame Grahame had mounted it on an Arab steed to which he was always saying a romantic farewell. Keir Hardie had clothed it in a cloth cap and a red tie. And Bernard Shaw, on behalf of the Fabian Society, had hung it with innumerable jingling epigrammatic bells – and cap. My brand of Socialism was, therefore, a blend or, let us say, an anthology of all these, to which from my personal predilections and experience I added a good practical knowledge of the working classes, a professional interest in economics which led me to master Marx’s “Das Kapital,” and an idealism fed at the source – namely, Plato.

It was inevitable that I should drift into socialistic oratory, labour politics, and journalism; and it was equally inevitable with this background that my line would be original. I well remember, indeed, my inward smile when it was assumed by everybody that The New Age which I bought in May, 1907, and began to edit in co-operation for a year with Mr. Holbrook Jackson, would naturally become the semi-official organ of the Fabian Society. Very little was anybody, including myself, aware of the course The New Age would take; but of one thing I was certain – no society or school or individual could count on my continuous support.

The whole movement of ideas, called Socialism, including, of course, the then burning question of parliamentary Labour representation, was in the melting-pot; and my little handful of colleagues and I had no intention of prematurely running ourselves into anybody else’s mould. The Socialists of those days were, in practice, individualists to a man.

It was not very long after beginning publication that the “old gang,” as the established constellation of Socialist and Labour lights was called, began to suspect that a new comet had appeared. The predominant question of the moment was the possibility of fusing the trade-union movement which served as the basis of the Independent Labour Party, with the Socialist movement; and many and strong were the advocates in the latter of a union of forces on the political field.
My friends and I, however, had quite a different idea. We had no objection to the trade-unions as such. On the contrary, our slogan that “the trade-unions are the hope of the world” was evidence that we attached even an exaggerated value to them – for reasons that will appear.
Nor, of course, had we any general, but only a particular, criticism in those days to make of the Socialist groups. But one distinction between Labour politics and Socialism seemed to us to be decisive – that whereas Socialism explicitly claimed to be nationally representative, the political Labour Party was avowedly based on a single class – that of the wage-earners or proletariat. To both sections, it appeared to us, the political Labour Party was making a false appeal.

Trying to Ride On Their backs to Personal Power
The trade-unions, it is certain, were originated in response to a purely economic motive; they numbered members of all the national political parties and were little disposed to make their occupation their politics. By appealing to them to support a parliamentary Labour Party, it seemed to us that the heads of the party were diverting them from their original object and merely trying to ride on their backs to personal power. It was too late, however, to protest against this; the evil had begun; and the system of judicious bribery of trade-union officials with the prospect of a parliamentary career seemed likely, moreover, to permit it to continue. It did not appear too late, however, to preserve the Socialist movement for a national politic; and when it came to a decision concerning the political fusion of the Fabian Society with the Labour Party*, The New Age, after vainly supporting the ingenious proposal of Mr Ramsay MacDonald to form a Socialist representation committee, repudiated the Fabian Society, and set out to plough a lonely furrow.

Avowed opponents of political labour in any shape or form, antagonists of the Fabian Society from the moment of its surrender to class-politics, our situation was, indeed, that of Ishmael. Our pen was against practically everybody of importance in all the political parties without exception, and against every Socialist and Labour organisation that was not minding, as we thought, its proper business… If we had nothing to say for any of the groups hopelessly mortgaged to bankrupt policies, we had, at any rate, plenty to say for ourselves, and concerning the two main elements in the total situation – the trade-unions and the community as a whole.

The Barren Fields of Politics
As we saw it, both were about to suffer a further injustice from the manoeuvre that had been successfully carried out. The trade-unions were to be led by the nose from the economic field where alone they could conceivably win any advantage for themselves, into the barren fields of politics; and the nation was to lose the criticism and advice of national, that is to say, non-class Socialism. Henceforward, but for ourselves, every political Labour organisation and every Socialist body, collective or individual, might fairly be held in suspicion by both trade-unions and the public at large. They all had a more or less personal axe to grind; and the expense would be borne by the trade-unions and the community jointly and severally…”

* Read “The Fabian Socialist Contribution to the Communist Advance” by Eric Butler, 1963

Eighty Years Later…
Michael Smith News, 21 January 2014. “I dedicate this year to Australia getting an answer to the question – why aren’t they in goal?” Michael Smith writes: “I don't want to be a part of Australia's media when it's capable of this - and incapable of reporting the more important truth… This isn't the fault of any one journalist, editor or publisher so much as it's a problem for us as a nation. We have allowed spin doctors and quick-buck merchants to deliver a feed of cursory, diverting tittle tattle stories without our call for the counterbalance of incisive and fearless investigative reporting on stories that matter. It's really important we see this for what it is”.

ARE THE MARCH, SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS ALREADY ‘FAILED’?

Mark Aldridge of the Australian Alliance believes they are.
“Massive Voting Fraud Exposed” “It takes time to get the true results of an election, well for the people, and even then it is never made public, seems it is best we don’t know what happens in our Democracy. The last SA state election was in March 2010, some of the true facts were uncovered in the court of disputed returns a few months later, but there was little to no reporting of the facts. Only a year later, facts on the huge multiple voting that occurred were published in a back room article, but the tens of thousands of missing ballot papers and the fact over 77,000 missed out on their vote, because their names went missing of the electoral roll, uncovered within a couple of months of the election is seemingly not newsworthy.
The electoral commission would have been well aware of such a huge mistake, but chose not it appears to make this fact public.

It is also not worthy of exposure that the court confirmed “regardless of the conduct or count of a general election, the results cannot be invalidated, something I find atrocious, let alone the many other hidden facts, like the governments own crown solicitors arguing that our common law rights of elections no longer apply to have my case struck out, even though they bloody well do and parliament had confirmed that! Read further here….

Contact Mark Aldridge: Independent candidate and spokesperson for the Australian Alliance (electoral reform division)

ARIEL SHARON IS NO MANDELA

Gilad Atzmon, 14 January 2014. “In spite of being vindicated by The Guardian AKA The Guardian of Zion, not a single head of state attended mass murderer Ariel Sharon’s burial ceremony. I guess that the meaning of it is obvious. The Jewish Lobby is losing power - and rapidly. As much as Israel and Jewish leaders insisted to present the veteran MP as a ‘man of peace’, not a single world leader was stupid enough to risk his or her reputation for ‘The Lobby’. I guess that the Jewish State has exhausted the window of opportunity that was given to it by the nations. Israel should anticipate a rough time ahead.”

Comment: One does wonder if the soul of Ariel Sharon is now ‘resting in peace’ – or are the souls of those who died in those Palestinian refugee camps haunting him?
Read further here…

LEAKED TPP ENVIRONMENT CHAPTER SHOWS CORPORATE AGENDA WINS

by Jon Queally, staff writer Common Dreams January 15, 2014:
US called main 'outlier' when it comes to strong protections. Leak comes as Obama tries to ram trade deal through Congress. Confirming the suspicions and fears of environmental campaigners and concerned individuals across the globe, Wikileaks on Wednesday released a draft version of the 'Environment Chapter' from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), exposing most of the so-called "environmental protections" as toothless policies that serve to protect corporate profit not Mother Earth. In its review of the chapter - which covers environmental issues related to trade, including climate change, biodiversity and fishing stocks; and trade and investment in 'environmental' goods and services - Wikileaks described the chapter as functioning like "a public relations exercise" and saying the text is most notable "for its absence of mandated clauses or meaningful enforcement measures."

"Today's WikiLeaks release shows that the public sweetner in the TPP is just media sugar water," said Wikileaks' publisher Julian Assange in a statement. "The fabled TPP environmental chapter turns out to be a toothless public relations exercise with no enforcement mechanism." The draft chapter, which was presented at the Salt Lake City, Utah round of negotiations that took place in November, contains language from the participating nations describing their positions on environmental protections that would be included in the final deal. According to Jane Kelsey, a professor of environmental law at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the leaked text of the agreement shows no balance between commercial interests and those of the environment. "Instead of a 21st century standard of protection, the leaked text shows that the obligations are weak and compliance with them is unenforceable...

The corporate agenda wins both ways." - Jane Kelsey, Univ. of Auckland
"Instead of a 21st century standard of protection, the leaked text shows that the obligations are weak and compliance with them is unenforceable," she writes in a public statement Wednesday. "Contrast that to other chapters that subordinate the environment, natural resources and indigenous rights to commercial objectives and business interests. The corporate agenda wins both ways." Kelsey's review of the draft also points out that the main outlier on environmental protections is the United States. She also notes that because the protections included in the draft fall short even of those contained in previous trade agreements backed by the US, passage of the deal will create a "particular political dilemma" for President Obama and other backers. She writes: The text falls far below the standards it has insisted are included in all US free trade agreements since May 2007, which resulted from a deal reached between the Democrat‐controlled Congress and President George W Bush.

The most fundamental problem for the US is the refusal of all the other countries to agree that the chapter should be subject to the same dispute settlement mechanism as the rest of the agreement. It provides for consultation at official and ministerial levels, leading to arbitration and agreement to a plan of action, but there are no penalties if the state does not implement the plan. Obama is going to find this a very hard sell to domestic constituencies. The timing of the leak could hardly be worse. On 9 January 2014 a Bill seeking fast track authority was presented to the Congress. The controversial fast track process requires the Congress to accept or reject the deal as a whole and imposes a strict time limit on debate. The numbers were already stacking up against the Bill, with Democrats especially critical of the erosion of their powers and the secrecy of the negotiations, as well as the reported content. This leaked environment chapter will further erode support among Democratic members of the House of Representatives who are up for re-election later this year. Obama is going to have to rely heavily on unfriendly Republicans.
Read Wikileaks' full press statement here and view the complete draft version here (pdf).

The secretive TPP trade deal between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations that has been negotiated with the backing of corporate interests but kept secret from the general public and even most lawmakers from the participating countries. (emphasis added…ed) Ilana Solomon, the director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, responded to the leaked draft by telling the New York Times on Wednesday that the language in the deal omits crucial protections against increased environmental destruction caused by globalized trade practices. “It rolls back key standards set by Congress to ensure that the environment chapters are legally enforceable, in the same way the commercial parts of free-trade agreements are,” Ms. Solomon said. “Confirming the suspicions and fears of environmental campaigners and concerned individuals across the globe, Wikileaks on Wednesday released a draft version of the 'Environment Chapter from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), exposing most of the so-called "environmental protections" as toothless policies that serve to protect corporate profit not Mother Earth.“ And here it is…..

IS SOCIAL ‘SCIENTIFIC’ AND MEDICAL RESEARCH ALL BUNK?

by Chris Knight: I almost threw this out: “Statistician Calls for Old-Style Estimation” John Ross The Australian 27 November 2013, p.27: “Following claims that the traditional research benchmark for statistical significance has been set way too low, an Australian statistician has called for a complete overhaul”. Dr. Geoff Cumming at La Trobe University is critical of the ruling paradigm of “null-hypothesis significance testing”. He says it should be replaced by “old-style classical estimation”.
Now I know nothing about maths, but I suppose that there are highly technical objections to a statistical method that has been widely used in the social sciences and medicine. Forgive me for asking, but if the ruling method is all wrong, what does that mean for the scientific soundness of tens of thousands of research papers in medicine and the social sciences?

1.2 BILLION REASONS TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT ASYLUM SEEKERS

by James Reed: Hello everybody out there in debt-and-economic-decline land. You may be interested in knowing, if you don’t know already, that there has been a $1.2 billion asylum-seeker processing cost black hole since Labor’s pre-election economic statement. Labor’s funding for offshore processing, in pre-election claims that no boat people would stay in Australia was false as offshore processing allowed only one in six illegals to be sent to Nauru and Manus. The $1.2 billion funding gap showed the holes in Rudd’s claims. It would be therefore good to know what the Liberals are doing, but now we have no media coverage and no information about what, if anything, is going on.

BRAZILIAN FARMERS FIGHT BACK: 5 MILLION TAKE ON MONSANTO

5 million Brazilian farmers vs Monsanto. The agriculture giant Monsanto says their mission is “improving agriculture and improving lives” but some farmers don’t agree. Monsanto, the world's largest producer of genetically modified seeds, has waged war on small farmers by suing hundreds of them over alleged patent infringement. But in Brazil, farmers are suing the company because they say that Monsanto claims unfair annual royalties for renewal harvest of their seeds. Source...

ROMANCING THE NORTH: THE FOOD BOWL FURPHY

Source Jun 27, 2013. David Adamson, Senior Research Officer in Natural Resources at University of Queensland
“We’re talking, yet again, about how lovely it is up north. The romantic idea of developing northern Australia has once more been thrust into the light, this time by the Coalition’s 2030 Plan for Developing Northern Australia. As I look at coverage of the plan I wonder, does the media have the memory of a pot-smoking goldfish? The argument that we should develop northern Australia is based on rent seeking, opportunism, romanticism and an ability to ignore countless studies stating the national economic, social and environmental folly of such an exercise.

In such an extensive “nation building” exercise, the major beneficiaries are those who supply the inputs. They get paid by the public, take none of the risk and are no worse off if it fails. The other beneficiaries are those demanding special tax rates or concessions to build their personal wealth. Trickle down benefits do not materialise, yet continue to be a mantra to mislead. In this case, the vested interests may be desperate cattle farmers, caught short by the end of live exports. Or it may be a neat move by the mining industry to continue subsidisation of their infrastructure.

In 1965, Bruce Davidson released The Northern Myth. This definitive study stated that not only was the land unsuitable for large scale intensive agricultural development but the economics simply didn’t stand up when compared to the benefits of allocating the money in southern Australia. In 2009, CSIRO’s Northern Australia Land and Water Science Review not only supported these findings but again highlighted the reasons why the expenditure is reckless. The soils are still poor. They easily erode. At best you could create a patchwork mosaic of cropping (assuming that those crops would at some point be washed away). A mosaic pattern like this in the vastness of the north would be incredibly expensive to subsidise; it would make subsidies for the car industry look sound.

Rainfall still occurs near the coast, where it is flat. This makes building dams a challenge. CSIRO’s 2009 analysis did find that 600 gigalitres of ground water is available and could irrigate 40-60,000 hectares. Let’s put this into perspective: Cubbie Station alone has about 460 gigalitres of water licences and about 96,000 hectares of irrigated and dry land at its disposal. Irrigation schemes still fail to provide positive economic returns on public capital investment. Politics and water are a dangerous mix.

The heady vision of a Utopian agrarian system where irrigation channels transform the desert has proven irresistible throughout the world. Davidson’s other classic work, Australia Wet or Dry, tracks the litany of failures in developing the Murray-Darling Basin. There, the constant over estimation of benefits and underestimation of costs has left a legacy that the public will continue to pay for.

In the north, Stage 2 of the Ord irrigation scheme has cost $300 million and adds over 13,000 hectares to irrigation. The entire stage 2 has been leased by the Chinese company Shanghai Zhongfu for the next 50 years. They initially proposed a $700 million investment to develop a sugar industry. They now propose planting sorghum to produce ethanol: a sugar monoculture was likely to attract pests that would undermine profits. But changing the crop won’t make a difference: planned profits from cotton in the 1960s quickly evaporated in rising costs from pesticides need to control an influx of pests. Sugar was no different and nor will sorghum be.

It would be nice to think that the hard lessons of previous failures in the Ord or lessons from other parts is Australia, for example the Goyder line in South Australia (where despite the biophysical limits for agricultural production being identified, risk takers strayed into zones that were not suitable for agriculture) could be ingrained into long term public consciousness. As a country we have just allocated over $10 billion to fix the mess created in the Murray-Darling Basin. Why would we want to create a similar mess in the north? The north is not suitable for intensive food production, it never has been, nor will it ever be. I simply go back to Bruce Davidson’s fundamental question: why would we open the public purse and spend billions on low or negative returns when there better returns from the expenditure elsewhere?”