Books: Just World Campaign -- Social Justice, Economic Democracy
American Torture -- from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, 2007, Michael OTTERMAN.
Sleep deprivation. Induced hypothermia. Forced standing. Water boarding. Sexual humiliation.
George W. Bush calls them an 'alternative set of procedures', vital tools needed 'to protect the American people and our allies'. By any definition, these techniques are torture.
In American Torture Michael Otterman reveals how torture became standard practice in today's War on Terror and how it was refined, spread and legalised. Long before Abu Ghraib became a household name, the US military and CIA had used torture with impunity both at home and abroad. Billions of dollars were spent during the Cold War studying, refining, then teaching these techniques to American interrogators and to foreign officers charged with keeping Communism at bay.
As the Cold War ended, these tortures were legalised using the very laws designed to eradicate their use. After 9/11, the practices were revived again for use on 'enemy combatants' detained in America's vast gulag of prisons across the globe, from secret CIA black sites in Thailand to the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
American Torture shows how the road to Abu Ghraib leads back through US military survival schools, Latin American military assistance programs, Vietnamese counter-terror operations and, finally, to the USSR and Communist China.
Torture violates more than international law and fundamental human rights – it radicalises enemies, undermines credibility and yields unreliable intelligence. Above all, the practice does not make the world a safer place.
Michael Otterman is an award-winning freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker. He was a recent visiting scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University of Sydney. He has covered crime and culture for an array of publications, including Melbourne's Is Not magazine, the Sydney City Hub newspaper, and Boston's Weekly Dig. He lives in New York City. His website is americantorture.com . This website has the full version of the "Human Resource Training Manual, 1983" of the CIA.
DETAILS: Melbourne University Press, Carlton, ISBN 978-0522 85333-9; 286 pp, soft covers, 15.5 x 23.5 cm (6 x 9 1/4 in), index, bibliography, endnotes.
OTHER LINKS: www.mup.uni melb.edu.au/ (Sighted March 16, 2007)
Book review by Dennis Altman, The Age,
www.theage. com.au/news/ book-reviews/ american- torture/ 2007/03/02/ 11723388 61375.html, March 2, 2007
DEFINITION: "CIA" means the Central Intelligence Agency (of the United States of America).
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/books.htm
Unlocking the Riches of Oz: A case study of the social and economic costs of real estate bubbles (1972-2006), 2007, Bryan KAVANAGH.
"Economic rationalism" has been little more than 30 years of government acquiescence in the private plunder of Australia's natural resources. The environment has suffered greatly as a consequence. (see p 7)
LAND price is now the greater part of residential property values in Australia. A greater public capture of annual land values has much to commend it on at least four fronts:
• Reducing land PRICES, or at least dampening SPECULATIVE price increases by imposing a holding cost on speculators.
• Providing scope to redress a Mad Hatter's tax regime that penalises work and employment, while pardoning speculation.
• Establishing a citizens' claim to Australia's natural resource values.
• Assisting to foster a natural job shift, away from further intensive urban agglomeration, towards cheaper and more decentralised locations. (see p 3)
In a recent UK book, Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback Scam, Fred Harrison points out that London has a parasitical dependence on the far-flung areas northwards to Hadrian's Wall.
(see p 5)
A "property" bubble is really a land bubble. The capture, for public purposes, of even HALF the rental value of land (a gift of nature) would permit the reduction of taxes that feed into prices, thereby reducing inflationary tendencies, so allowing more accommodating monetary policy and internal interest rates. (see pp 19-20)
Accommodation for industry, business and homes would become more affordable, because the public capture of site revenue would mean that owners would be financially encouraged to find a productive use for land, or sell it. (see p 20)
The elimination of land price "bubbles" would eliminate the slowdown of the economy that occurs during and after the collapse of these bubbles. (see p 20)
Property owners, too, would probably gain additional spending power because of the cuts to other taxation, and these affects on the rental and resale value of their properties. (see p 20)
(An interesting question is: How much of existing "investment" is speculative? Some people who gain windfall profits from land had no intention to "invest" at all, but merely inherited or bought a farm, farmlet, or house to use. The growth of urban sprawl, or for example the building of a railway, highway, or port, then raises the value – and the rates and taxes
– above the expected growth measured against the cost of living index of the land, which if and when sold or bequeathed gives someone an "unearned increment.")
When people had cheap access to land, and paid the then-new federal land tax, Australia experienced the highest standard of living in the world. (see p 23)
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/books.htm
DETAILS: Published by the Land Values Research Group (Melbourne, Vic., Australia) www.lvrg. org.au, printed by The Print Press, Australia, 2007; 32pp, soft covers, 17.5 x 25 cm (7 x 9 7/8 in), references, pictures, cartoons, graphs, tables.
ISBN 978-0-909946-03-6, Dewey 333.332'30'994; AUD$5.00
Who Gets What? Analysing Economic Inequality in Australia, 2007, Frank STILWELL and Kirrily JORDAN.
Why have the incomes of corporate executives dramatically outstripped those of other workers? Do people's income and wealth reflect differences in their contributions to the Australian economy? Do big economic inequalities damage productivity and social cohesion? Why isn't Australia a more egalitarian society?
Who Gets What? explores questions like these. It looks at recent trends in income and wealth in Australia and examines the economic evidence in a way that makes fascinating reading for both general and specialist audiences.
The book looks at who is rich and who in Australia still lives in poverty - and why. It explores the causes of economic inequality and the possibility of making our society more equal. Ultimately, the authors offer their own solution to these problems, with policies which could redistribute income and wealth more equitably.
In Australia since the mid-1970s there has been a long-term redistribution of income away from labour and towards capital. (p 21)
It means more work for (relatively) less pay (quoting M. Pusey 2003, The Experience of Middle Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 6-7) (p 23)
The John Howard (Liberal-National) government's decision, in 1999, to reduce capital gains taxes also had a markedly regressive effect on income inequalities -- it halved the tax on income from capital relative to income from labour. (p 205)
The income tax cuts in the 2005-06 federal budget were worth $42 a week to someone on $80,000 or more, but only $7 p.w. to someone on $50,000. (p 205)
Landowners capture unearned income at the expense of everyone else, by benefiting from rising land values that are, typically the product to social processes, and this contributes to income inequality. (p 207)
Land values being higher where land price inflation is more pronounced, a more comprehensive land taxation on site values would assist decentralisation. (p 208)
Using such revenue to substantially increase the supply of public housing would help redress the economic and social stresses in the housing market. (p 209)
The authors also discuss the possibility of a citizens' dividend, to largely do away with the complicated rules of the welfare safety net, and so to free up people for more social purposes.
Frank Stilwell is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Kirrily Jordan is a research assistant in political economy at the University of Sydney.
DETAILS: Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne and New York, 2007; 266pp, soft covers, 15.5 x 23 cm (6 x 9 in), contents, index, bibliography, graphs, tables.
ISBN 978 0 52170 032 0,
Dewey 339. 220'994; AUD$34.95.
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http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/books.htm#who_gets_what
[2007]
Who Owns Britain; The hidden facts behind landownership in the UK and Ireland, 2002 (orig. 2001), Kevin CAHILL.
WHO OWNS BRITAIN
"It is hard to believe that we've waited for a hundred years for this book... a vital and illuminating study of great political significance."
ANDY WIGHTMAN, author of the best-selling WHO OWNS SCOTLAND
A startling piece of research, and a searing critique of both the landowning aristocracy and the Land Registry, WHO OWNS BRITAIN is an eye-opening
examination of the nation's most valuable asset - its land. Cahill argues that our present system of landownership is of material detriment to the vast majority of homeowners in Britain, while many of the nation's wealthiest landowners pay no rates and actually receive money
in the form of grants and subsidies.
WHO OWNS BRITAIN is relevant to every resident in the UK. It is a vital piece of investigation that should lead to a closer examination of our land laws
and regulations.
"A book of prime - even sublime - importance."
IRISH TIMES
"Every library should have a copy of this book."
BUSINESS A.M.
"In this brave work, Cahill makes a plea for the last great social reform, land reform, already high on the political agenda for Scotland... Cahill has called his book WHO OWNS BRITAIN. He might equally well have called it WHO RUNS BRITAIN."
THE TIMES
JACKET DESIGN BY JAMES HUTCHESON
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DETAILS: Canongate Books www.canon gate.net , Edinburgh ; 2002 (first published 2001), ISBN 1 84195 310 5.
466pp, soft covers, 19 x 26 centimetres (7 1/2 x 10 1/4 inches), contents, index, endnotes, (£16.99.)
[2002 (orig. 2001)]
• Hijacked Inheritance; The Triumph of Dollar Darwinism?
Hijacked Inheritance; The Triumph of Dollar Darwinism? 2005, Philip DAY.
Hijacked Inheritance is an angry expression of concern at the decline of mateship and community and the pervasive greed, self-interest and inequality of wealth and influence in our increasingly violent society.
Dr Phil Day, a lawyer, town planner and respected public administrator and academic, challenges the mindless consumption of the planet's resources in the frenetic pursuit of development and economic efficiency regardless of the social and environmental consequences.
Hijacked Inheritance compares the public revenue potential of charges upon the consumption of natural resources with the punitive taxation of labour and capital and the production of goods and services.
It exposes the enormous revenue forgone through the private appropriation of the unearned increment in community land values.
Challenging a seemingly immutable mindset, it asserts that the sanctity still associated with land and land-owning derives from nothing more noble or pre-ordained than the fact that in the later Middle Ages, following the erosion of feudal obligations, Anglo-Australian culture was shaped by parliaments dominated by baronial land-owners, elected by land-owners.
For a nation pausing uncertainly in the aftermath of a divisive election, this is an important book whose Australian message deserves to be spread throughout western society. (Back cover)
Dr Day gives an excellent history of how humanity had moved from instinctively knowing that land was a community asset, to allow it to become a mere commodity able to be "cornered" and charged out for whatever its scarcity value could make.
Many will be delighted to learn that an excellent study in taxation reform was undertaken by the Brisbane City Council, which in its September 1989 unanimous report stated that, in principle, the unimproved value of land was a logical and appropriate bases for revenue-raising irrespective of the level of government. The committee noted that a tax on land value was:
• Virtually impossible to evade.
• Represented a contribution by every member of the community either directly as a property owner or indirectly by way of rent or board.
• Simple and inexpensive to administer.
• Encouraged the use of city land for its best and most intensive permissible use. (pp 103-04)
Dr Day claimed that the report argued that land was NOT in fixed supply, so a same-percentage charge on it would not affect the free market allocation of resources. (p 104) This sentence overlooks the fact that local and State governments have zoning and other prohibitions to prevent willy-nilly development, and so the amount of land AVAILABLE to users is, in a sense, "fixed" – until some clever operators move in and "arrange" through political and bureaucratic contacts to have it freed up for their speculative advantage. (Something of this sort seems to have been going on in Western Australia in relation to Coogee and Smith's Beach, if the WA Corruption and Crime Commission exposures up to around October 2007 are on the right track.)
Reformers ought to enjoy the excerpts from Winston S. Churchill's speech in Edinburgh on July 17, 1909, while he was going through his "reforming" phase. "... every step in material progress is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for himself ..." (pp 180-81). (Quoted from Hill, M., 1999, Churchill: His Radical Decade, Othila Press, London.)
AUTHOR: Philip Day, LL.B. (Qld), Dip. TCP (Sydney), Ph.D. (Qld), Life Fellow Planning Institute of Australia. (p. i)
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http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/books.htm#hijacked_inheritance_the
DETAILS: Copyright Publishing Co Pty Ltd, Brisbane, 2005; 192pp, soft covers, 13.5 x 21 cm (5 3/8 x 8 1/4 in), contents, no index, chapter notes, references and further reading;
ISBN 1 876 344 41 5. Delivery paid in Australia AUS $19.80, other countries US $22.10, by air US $26.35.
Copyright Publishing Co, GPO Box 2927, Brisbane, Queensland, 4001, Australia;
info@copy right. net.au ;
Click www.copy right. net.au .
[2005]
Unintended Consequences: The United States at
War, 2007, by Kenneth J. HAGAN and Ian J. BICKERTON.
This is an important work that traces the stated aims, and actual effects, of ten US wars.
[Picture] Unintended Consequences - Amazon webpic.
CHECK Amazon Books: www.amazon. com/Unintended- Consequences- United-States- War/dp/1861 893108 (sighted March 16, '07)
DISCUSSION: ABC (Australia) www.abc.net. au/rn/latenight live/stories/ 2007/1852242. htm (sighted March 16, '07)
[2007]
Fascist Europe Rising; The repression and resurgence of democratic nations, 2001, Rodney ATKINSON.
As the constitution of the Danish people rightly asserts "It is by law you build the land" and no other regime in world history has achieved so much imperial conquest by merely generating the law to build their land as has the so-called "European Union".
The European Union extended that body of law to questions of "free movement of people" but the whole purpose of the free movement of capital is to make the movement of people largely unnecessary. It was the movement of people which interested them most, for that would more quickly break up the cohesion of the nation states.
'The Commission should not get carried away by the idea of transparency - it is necessary to learn to conceal aspects of information which give rise to bad interpretation.' European Commission internal memorandum.
Eastern Europe wants only to trade freely with the countries of Western Europe but the European Union forcefully prevents that, offering to remove trade barriers only when those nations surrender their hard-won constitutional nationhood.
In the modern era of the universal franchise each Parliament only represents (for its statutory term) the true sovereigns, the people. The end of sovereignty is the end of democracy.
We do not speak of Californian fishing grounds because all the wealth in those grounds is an asset of the US Dollar. The step which really creates the European Superstate is the introduction of its currency – the Euro. Democrats know that you do not need a single currency to enjoy free trade. Dictators know that you cannot conquer countries without a single currency.
Hitler destroyed Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and created petty nationalist states in Slovakia and Croatia. German Europe has broken up Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Slovakia driving out its gypsies, Croatia its Serbs and Albanian Kosovo its gypsies, Jews and Serbs.
During the 1930s and 1940s, as today, there were few terms with which European Fascism was more happy than The New World Order reflecting as it does notions of power, global ambition, order (ie control) and contempt for democratic nationhood. (back cover)
... a massive economic corruption at the very heart of the European [Union] institutions. The annual loss of up to £6,000m by fraud and mismanagment in the European Commission ...
... Paul van Buitenen ... who leaked the details was taken by an employee of the European Commission to view some guns! -- very subtle. Bernard Connolly who was head of the Commission's EURO department and who wrote
The Rotten Heart of Europe was excluded from the commission buildings, his picture was put up in public corridors, he was ordered -- illegally -- not to leave the country, his phone was tapped, his wife was followed and receive many nuisance telephone calls and his house was broken into. (p 41)
The Author: Rodney Atkinson, B.A., M.Sc., M.I.L.: He is a British political economist, who predicted the collapse of oil prices in 1983, the fall in British house prices in 1989, and the end of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990.
A linguist and linguistic theoretician, he was formerly a lecturer at the University of Mainz, Germany, and a merchant banker in the City of London. He is chairman of Heritage Media Ltd. Previous books include Government Against the People (1986), and Treason at Maastricht (with Norris McWhirter, fourth edition 1998). See author's website at:
http://www. rodneyatkinson. freeuk.com/
(from p 213)
DETAILS: Compuprint Publishing, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne; 240pp, soft covers, 14.7 x 21 cm (5 3/4 x 8 1/4 in), contents, index. (Although the book is well-produced, it was not done by a professional publisher, as evidenced by its having the odd page numbers at the left of the spine, and other telltale details.)
AUS$40.
[2001]
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, 1984 (orig. 1974), Victor MARCHETTI and John D. MARKS.
"AN INSIDER'S INDICTMENT OF THE ENTIRE AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE INDUSTRY..." *
The CIA tried to stop it. But former CIA senior official Victor Marchetti and ex-State Department intelligence expert John D. Marks took their case to the Supreme Court. The story they tell–with many blanks now newly filled in–is fascinating... and still frightening.
The Cleveland Press called The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence the book that "ripped the bloodstained cloak off the CIA." Time called it "the most detailed expose of CIA tactics to date...a book bound to pose embarrassing questions about the aims and activities of American espionage...sure to be must reading in quiet offices around the world."
Victor Marchetti is a veteran of fourteen years with the CIA, where he rose to be executive assistant to the deputy director. He is currently at work on a novel.
In five years with the State Department, John D. Marks worked as analyst and staff assistant to the Intelligence Director. He has since written the award-winning Search for the Manchurian Candidate, has been a fellow of Harvard's Institute of Politics and an associate of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and is currently the director of the Nuclear Network in Washington, D.C.
* Myron Beckstein, The Chicago Daily News
Some of the passages that the CIA had forced the publishers to delete have been published, after vigorous court action, but quite a number remain, shown by such notes as "9½ lines deleted". Under the Freedom of Information Act all but 168 of the deletions had been reinstated, with more being freed as the book went to press. Some of the CIA's activities are explained in the introduction by Melvin L. Wulf, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Introductions by Anthony Lewis (ex-journalist), AND Melvin L. Wulf, ACLU.
DETAILS: Laurel / Dell Books, U.S.A., ISBN 0-440-31298-1; 336 pp, soft covers, 11 x 17.25 cm (4 1/4 x 6 3/4 in), contents, index, US$3.95.
NEWS ITEM: "CIA hired mafia to kill Castro," The West Australian,
p 32, Thursday, June 28, 2007. (This book entry was then put onto this webpage.)
[1984]
Hidden Agendas, 1998, John PILGER.
This is a wide-ranging book that demolishes the smokescreens around and double-dealing of many "revered" public figures on all continents. One example:
[Myanmar, formerly Burma] One Australian business group was led by the former [Labor] Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who lauded the regime as having a 'genuine commitment to improving the economic condition of the country and its people'. ... He had not raised the issue of human rights or the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, then in the sixth year of house arrest. (p 179)
Subjects covered include: Fake opposition to terrorists, the armaments industry arming the world, Undemocratic Burma backed, Australia's flawed leaders, East Timor betrayal and Indonesia, the famine road, how The Mirror was broken, Vietnam, and the "new" South Africa's failure to revive the lives of thousands displaced by the white apartheid regime, while its leaders flirt with the powerful companies that profited from them.
[COMMENT: Mr Hawke, like many other world leaders, does NOT care a fig about cruel governments, in spite of his tears on television when Communist Chinese tanks crushed students in the great Tienamin Square demonstrations for democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was elected and ought to have been Prime Minister of her country, is now [2007] still deprived of liberty, while the military dictatorship attacks and tries to wipe out dissenters and racial minorities.
ENDS.] [1998]
Burke's Shambles; Parliamentary Contempt in the Wild West, 1987, Anthony McADAM and Patrick O'BRIEN.
... the great Midland abattoir affair [to make an extra brickworks] is more than just another tale of skulduggery from the "Wild West" ... an "international story."
[...]
[Prestige Brick, Mr Peter Ellett]. ... in 1968 ... Police Constable Ellett, was convicted of stealing, while on duty, the sum of about $300 from a dead body. ... The West Australian of 8 November 1968 ... from Southern Cross ... plea ... guilty ... having stolen money from the body of Mr Robert Whyte.
(p 12)
... it was no private-sector entrepreneur, but Tricontinental ... the State Bank of Victoria ... Labor ... that was providing Ellett with his finance ...[...]
... Julian Fletcher Grill, Ll.B., J.P., ... driving offences ... on one occasion having left the scene of an accident at high speed after having collided with a police car (in August 1969). ... another occasion ... a car he was driving knocked down and killed ... Cuthbert Gerald Richardson ... only 30% brakes ... one headlight working. (p 57)
ISBN 0 0587698 0 X
[A FULLER SUMMARY is in Australian Books.
[COMMENT: In February-March 2007 Brian Burke, Julian Grill, Noel Crichton-Browne, Graeme Campbell and Graham Edwards were being mentioned in newsitems, while W.A. ministers fell, and a Federal minister fell around March 3, 2007.
COMMENT ENDS.]
[1987]
The Growth Illusion; How economic growth has enriched the few, impoverished the many, and endangered the planet, 1992, Richard DOUTHWAITE.
The idea that growth is beneficial
underlies the economic strategies of all
major political parties, but the reality of
recent years is that the negative effects
of growth have far outweighed any
positive ones.
In Ireland growth has
been the root cause of unemployment;
in Britain it has led to an eightfold
increase in crime, the breakdown of
family life and a deterioration in
general levels of health and education;
in the USA real incomes have fallen; in
India people have been driven from the
land into urban slums; and the natural
world suffers increasing threat and
inexorable erosion.
The growth process generates the
profits it needs by the introduction of
labour-saving technology.
Until recently,
the resulting job losses were conveniently out of sight - in the Third
World.
Now, industrial nations can no
longer maintain full employment at the
expense of jobs overseas, and compete
among themselves for a shrinking pool
of available work.
The Growth Illusion exposes the real nature of undirected economic growth, and refutes Adam Smith's belief in the 'invisible hand' ensuring that self-interest would serve the common good.
Rather than strive for constant expansion to stave off collapse, nations must learn to build stable economies.
Richard Douthwaite was born in Yorkshire in 1942 and studied at Leeds and Essex universities. A former
professional economist, he was adviser
to the governments of Jamaica and
Montserrat. In 1974 he moved to
Westport, Co. Mayo, and now works as a
writer and journalist, specializing in
business and the environment.
DETAILS: Resurgence Books by Green Books, Bideford (UK), ISBN
0 870098 41 2; 368 pp, hard covers, 15.5 x 23.5 cm (6 x 9 1/4 in), contents, index, graphs and illustrations, bibliography, endnotes.
[1992]
The Burke Ambush; Corporatism and Society in Western Australia, 1986, Patrick O'BRIEN (ed.).
... the necessary secrecy that surrounds the invisible handshakes between big government, big business, big unions and other large corporate interests such as education and welfare institutions, leads to an erosion of fairness in a government's dealings with the people, ... (pp xiii-xiv) [...]
... while surrounding himself with advisers and other retainers who are hostile to the democratic capitalist tradition, the Premier has used the powers and purse of the State to assist the businesses of those Perth-based millionaires who bankrolled the coffers of the
ALP's
John Curtin Foundation, thus providing the bulk of the funds being used by the ALP to campaign against free enterprise. ...
It was in only the last six weeks of the life of the State Parliament that the Liberal Party came out of its state of torpor ... by asking a series of detailed questions concerning the expenditures of taxpayers' funds on WADC, EXIM and the Seaman Land Rights Inquiry. ... Burswood Casino ... the M.R.P.A. ... funding of the arts. [...]
ISBN 0 949901 04 0. A FULLER SUMMARY is in Australian Books.
[1986]
The Burkes of Western Australia, ? 1990s, Brian PEACHEY.
More details awaited.
[LATER DETAILS will be posted here, and in Australian Books section.
[? 1990s ]
The Executive State; WA Inc. & The Constitution, 1991, Patrick O'BRIEN and Martyn WEBB (editors).
This book describes how the extraordinary powers in the Westminster system under the Western Australian Constitution have been misused, costing present and future generations $1,000,000,000, and eroding their democratic rights.
... The book proposes radical constitutional reforms. (back cover)
... report ... into the sale of the Midland Abattoir was tabled three minutes before the assembly was dissolved in late 1986. [...]
... the government's involvement ... Bond Corporation ... Petrochemical Industries Company Ltd (PICL) joint venture.
... Rothwells rescue operation ... over $300 million of taxpayers' funds ... government's secret guarantee for the project to the tune of approximately $1.2 billion. ...
(p 108)
[...]
AUTHORS: Hal Colebatch, Ann Duffield, Anthony Ley, Leslie R. Marchant, Patrick Mugliston, Patrick O'Brien (a Fulbright Scholar), and Martyn Webb (professor of geography).
ISBN 0 646 04875 9, Dewey 354.941009. A FULLER SUMMARY is in Australian Books.
[1991]
Reluctant Indonesians: Australia, Indonesia, and the future of West Papua, 2006, Clinton Fernandes, Published by Scribe,
RRP $AUST. 22.00
WHEN 43 West Papuans claimed asylum in Australia in February 2006, it marked the beginning of yet another crisis in the fragile relationship with our closest neighbour.
Anxious to allay Indonesia's suspicions of Australian motives in the wake of East Timorese independence, the Howard Government proposed reforms to policies on asylum-seekers to preclude the arrival of more boats, and loudly proclaimed its support for Indonesian territorial integrity and sovereignty - despite the fact that a great many Australians support the right of West Papuans to
determine their own future.
Clinton Fernandes traces the history of West Papua from the
colonial era to its incorporation and full-scale transformation
under Indonesian rule, and offers a penetrating analysis of
the problems posed by the rise of the West Papuan
independence movement for Australia's relations with
Indonesia.
Reluctant Indonesians issues a timely, provocative, and profound challenge to the orthodox views of the foreign policy establishment and its various supporters in the media. It is essential reading for those interested in West Papua, Australia's relationship with Indonesia, and Australian foreign policy in general.
THE AUTHOR
Clinton Fernandes is senior lecturer in strategic studies at University College, the University of New South Wales. He specialises in international relations and strategy with a focus on the 'national interest' in Australia's external relations. He is the author of Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the independence of East Timor (Scribe, 2004).
-- Dated: 03 October 2006, by e-mail of Oct 31, 06
[2006]
Hitler's secret bankers; how Switzerland profited from Nazi genocide, 1997, by Adam LeBOR.
(From back cover) An explosive new account reveals how the Swiss became Hitler's secret bankers. Switzerland, supposedly neutral in the Second World War, seemed a safe have to desperate Judaists who entrusted their wealth to its banks, believing that even if they died their families would inherit it. Millions of pounds were deposited in banks, who later refused to hand the money to the relatives of the Holocaust mass-murder victims unless they had written proof of death.
For more than 50 years the money has provided free working capital for the banks.
Now Adam LeBor uncovers evidence of Swiss economic collaboration with the Nazis, playing a vital role in the Nazi war effort. Even Swiss diplomats and the Swiss-based Red Cross are implicated in channelling Nazi money. The money went on to other neutral countries. Swiss banks profited from Nazi genocide.
(From page xvii) Swiss banks supplied the foreign currency that the Third Reich needed to buy vital war materials.
At the Basle-based Bank for International Settlements, Nazi and Allied nationals even worked together all through the war as their compatriots were slaughtering each other on Europe's battlefields.
Spain and Portugal supplied tungsten, Turkey chrome, and Sweden steel.
There is another book with a similar title. In his thanks in the acknowledgments, Mr LeBor lists (page xii): Hitler's Secret Bankers; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer; Jews for Sale? by Professor Yehuda Bauer; and Hitler's Spies, by David Kahn.
-- Hitler's secret bankers; how Switzerland profited from Nazi genocide, 1997, by Adam LeBor; Simon & Schuster, Sydney and London, ISBN 0-671-01027-1. (First published 1997 in Great Britain.)
354pp, soft covers, 13 x 19.7 centimetres (5 1/8 x 7 3/4 inches), index, endnotes and sources, photographs. ($12.99 Angus & Robertson, 1997.)
[1997]
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East , 2005, by Robert Fisk.
Part of review By Masood Haider, www.dawn.com/ 2005/11/18/ int11.htm , November 18, 2005.
NEW YORK: Distinguished British journalist Robert Fisk, an outspoken critic of the US-British war in Iraq, ... launched his latest book The Great War for Civilization in New York the other day.
Mr Fisk ... has met Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on three occasions, ... the attacks of Sept 11 might have been to turn the innocent against the innocent and not just Muslims against the West.
He also spoke about a revealing radio interview immediately following the Sept 11 attacks when he encountered American lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who, when Mr Fisk said that we must ask the question Why?, retorted angrily To ask the question why means that you are sympathetic to terrorists hence you are anti-American and being anti-American you are anti-Semitic.
See also: Press Gazette Ltd.,
www.pressgazette. co.uk/article/131005/ mouse_journalism_is ,
October 13, 2005
[2005]
Dictators of the Labor Party of Australia; The autobiographic memoir of Frank Rooney 1914-2005, 2005, by Frank Rooney. AUSTRALIA: Launched by Peter Westmore, National President of the National Civic Council, and Editor of News Weekly, in the Adam Room, Castlereagh Hotel, 169 Castlereagh Street, Sydney at a luncheon on 20 December, 2005.
www.hschap man.org/auto biographical_ memoir_of_ frank.htm .
Orders to The Treasurer, HS Chapman Society, PO Box 159, Rose Bay, NSW 2029. $20 each (including postage).
[2005]
Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter Terrorism & Threat to Democracy, ? 2005, by Jenny Hocking.
AUSTRALIA: Detention without charge, indefinitely? Organisations banned without trial? Children kidnapped off the street, strip-searched, and interrogated without charge? Those things don't happen in Australia you say? Wake up Aussie or you are in for a rude awakening!
Our once jealously guarded civil and political rights - freedom of expression, freedom of association, protection from arbitrary detention, the right to independent legal advice - have been deceitfully and cunningly tossed aside in the name of the "war on terror".
Jenny Hocking traces the growth of Australia's internal security organizations to the powerful 'counter terrorism' networks that now reach into every corner of our lives.
Price: $AUD 43.00 posted, from Heritage Book Services, GPO Box 1052, Melbourne, Vic, 3001, Australia; or PO Box 163, Chidlow, WA, 6556, Fax 08 9574 6042; or Veritas Publishing Co, PO Box 1334, Midland DC, WA, 6936, Fax 08 9574 6042, veritaspub@avon.net.au , etc.
[? 2005]
The collapse of globalism, and the reinvention of the world, 2005, by John Ralston Saul.
GLOBALIZATION, LIKE MANY GREAT GEOPOLITICAL IDEOLOGIES BEFORE IT,
IS NOW OFFICIALLY DEAD.
CANADA: Despite the near-religious conviction with which it was originally conceived, a growing vagueness now surrounds its original promise that nation-states were heading toward irrelevance, to be replaced by the power of global markets; that economics, not politics or arms, would determine the course of human events; that growth in international trade would foster prosperous markets that would, in turn, abolish poverty and change dictatorships into democracies.
Yet, contends Saul, little has transpired as predicted. The collapse of Globalism has left us struggling with a paradox -- a chaotic vacuum. The United States appears determined to ignore its international critics. Europe is faced with problems of immigration, racism, terrorism and renewed internal nationalism. Many of these issues call for uniquely European solutions born out of local experiences and needs. Elsewhere, the world looks for answers to African debt, the AIDS epidemic, the return of fundamentalism and terrorism, all of which perversely refuse to disappear despite the theoretical rise in global prosperity.
Saul also objectively analyses the successes of Globalism, such as the astonishing growth in world trade and the unexpected rise of India and China, which seem slated to become twenty-first-century superpowers.
Insightful and prophetic, The Collapse of Globalism is destined to take its place as one of the seminal books of our time. (from the front dust jacket)
Publisher: Viking, a division of Penguin Books, Camberwell (Victoria, Australia),
www.penguin.com.au ,
2005. 310pp, 13.5 x 20.5cm (5 3/8 x 8 1/8 inches), hard covers, endnotes, index. $AUD 32.95 at Perth Airport bookshop Nov 24, 2005.
ISBN 0 - 670 - 04267 - 6.
[2005]
The Stolen Election according to Frank Hardy, 2005, by Amy McGrath.
AUSTRALIA: The electoral fraud at the Australian federal elections in 1987 was boasted about afterwards by a Labor Party stalwart. It even led veteran left-winger Frank Hardy to say there had been fraud, and afterwards to write a fable about it. So author Dr Amy McGrath's full title for her latest book is The Stolen Election, Australia 1987, according to Frank Hardy. The late Mr Hardy had previously won national fame through a court case against him for his book exposing business frauds in political circles, Power without glory.
But Dr McGrath also tells of the 1993 computer hacking of the Electoral Commission's computer, affecting the enrolments of 11.5 million Australians.
The book explains how the mass media, the electoral officials, and even the political parties that have been denied office by the frauds seem unable to get their mind around how fraud prevents democracy from working. Dr McGrath and the H.S.Chapman Society must be doing something right -- she has been attacked by Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute.
Union electoral fraud in Queensland led to an inquiry, which the Premier of the day suddenly shut down by withdrawing all funds and even put decorators into the premises! According to a 1996 report a postman named Mr Cook was dismissed after objecting to the denial of 1000 ballots to workers.
The Stolen Election, according to Frank Hardy, 2005, Amy McGrath, Towerhouse Publications for H.S.Chapman Society, 232pp, no index, 16.5cm x 24.2cm (6 1/2 inches by 9 1/2 inches), soft covers, $28 posted,
ISBN 0 95871045-7. H.S.Chapman Society, PO Box 39, Brighton-le-Sands, NSW, 2216.
It used to be: The H. S. Chapman Society, G.P.O. Box 2391, Sydney, N.S.W., 2001, Australia, http://www.hschapman.org/
[COMMENT: In the 1989 Western Australian election, the evidence was gathered by volunteers, but the Liberal Party declined to speedily prosecute or to tell the news media the most important facts. To read more, click Electoral Fraud in Western Australia, 1989]
[2005]
You Enjoy a Share of the earth's resources, 2005,
by Tanya Marwood and Reworking Tomorrow members (eds).
AUSTRALIA: Reworking Tomorrow in WA was formed in response to the Robert Theobald lectures and Conversations, which were organised by the University of Western Australia Extension Service in 1997 and early 1998. Robert Theobald was a futurist visiting from the USA where he worked as an academic for a number of years, after leaving his native England. Originally an economist, Robert produced a seminal work titled "Reworking Success" which revealed alternatives to the doctrine of economic rationalism.
The Reworking Tomorrow group invited Katrina Bercov and Tanya Marwood to organise this project. The articles are:
Locally-grown organic food, by Ross Mars.
Waste re-use, by Ross Mars.
New Ways of Housing -- climate adjustment without using energy, by Richard Hammond.
Child-centred Education, by Jarrod Burns and Victor Guest.
Money and Banking - local initiatives in credit and savings, by John Croft.
Decision-making in Local Communities, by John Croft.
Work today, and the future in Western Australia, by Mary Jenkins.
Leisure. The Bibbulmun Track, by Steve Sertis.
WWoof Your Way Around the World, by Lionel Pollard. Willing Workers on Organic Farms. (Internet: www.wwoof.com.au )
Real Alternatives to Cars, by David Wake.
Preface by Trevor Muller.
Introduction by Rodney Vlais.
To get involved with Reworking Tomorrow Conversation Groups, telephone Phil Johnson 08 9306 1859
Self-published by Reworking Tomorrow WA, Perth, Western Australia.
96pp, 15 x 21 cm (5 7/8 x 8 1/4 inches), soft covers, illustrations, no footnotes, no index,
ISBN 0 646 49976 9, $AUD 10.00 plus GST, packing and postage (March 2005).
Orders to Mr Trevor Muller, Perth, Tel. 08 9309 4581.
* See book review by Deryn Thorpe in The West Australian Habitat (magazine), p 14, Friday, June 17, 2005.
One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story, 2005, by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, with Steven Strasser.
UNITED STATES: In her new book Karpinski makes a strong argument that she was made a scapegoat by George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, her immediate bosses and military intelligence commanders.
Karpinski never steps up and takes responsibility, in any way, for what happened at Abu Ghraib.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski HAD arrived in Iraq in June 2003 with the understanding that she would be in charge of the 800th Military Police Brigade as it transitioned from guarding EPWs (enemy prisoners of war), to helping Iraqis retake control of their own prison population.
But although Karpinski was in charge of the military police at the prison, she had no control over interrogations being handled by military intelligence, the CIA or even private contractors. In April 2004 we first saw the shocking photos.
-- Salon (subscriber site), "Salon interviews Karpinski,"
www.salon.com/ books/int/ 2005/11/10/ karpinski/ index.html ,
Nov. 10, 2005
[2005]
Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World, ? 2005, by Kishore Mahbubani.
WASHINGTON: United States policy has unwittingly made terror leader Osama bin Laden nearly the most popular figure in the Middle East, says an Asian scholar whose new book has triggered debate on why Muslims hate America.
Kishore Mahbubani, once Singapore's chief United Nations diplomat, warned Islamic anger would get stronger if the US did not improve its image among Muslims quickly.
In his book the Singaporean university dean described positive US contributions to global society and how the superpower abruptly walked away from the world when the Cold War ended.
-- The West Australian , "When Americans leave, the real talk begins," Agence France-Presse, p 23, Tuesday, March 8, 2005
[? 2005]
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, ? 2005, by Noam Chomsky.
-- Information Clearing House, "It's Imperialism, Stupid,"
www.information clearinghouse. info/article9387. htm , By Noam Chomsky, July 5, 2005
[? 2005]
The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, ? 2005, is certainly the kind of book whose introduction and conclusion alone raise enough questions and spur enough dialogue for an entire semester course. But hopefully students and teachers won't stop there. What each chapter offers is extensive information, insight, and analysis into some of the issues regarding U.S. influence throughout the Americas from the time just before WWII through the lens of the School of the Americas/ WHINSEC military training camp, Fort Benning.
-- School of the Americas Watch, "Less than one month until thousands gather to close the SOA: November 18-20, 2005!" SOA Watch Update, October 20, 2005
[? 2005]
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 2005, by John Perkins.
UNITED STATES: According to notes on Amazon.com's website: "John Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this exposé of his former professional life." --
www.amazon.com/ exec/ obidos/ tg/sim- explorer/explore- items/-/1576753 018/0/101/1/none/ purchase/ref%3D pd%5Fsxp%5Fr0/ 002-5375450- 6159232 . List price $US 24.95, reduced to $US 15.72 (sighted June 25, 2005).
The New Times Survey, Australia, states: The inside story of how America turned from a respected republic into a feared empire. "Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and murder." John Perkins should know - he was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the US -from Indonesia to Panama - to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, and to make sure that the lucrative profits were contracted to the US corporations. Saddled with huge debts these countries came under the control of the United States government, World Bank and other US dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks.
Price: $AUD 52.95 posted (June 2005 issue, p 8). Heritage Book Services, GPO Box 1052, Melbourne, Vic, 3001, Australia.
[? 2005]
"Help Save Telstra: What has to be done", 2005, Heritage Book Services, Melbourne (Vic) Australia.
• Ask the representative local councillors and politicians in your own town/region to pressure the State's senators to vote against the sale when it comes before Federal parliament mid-year. Insist you do not want the rest of Telstra sold off.
• On this matter insist the Senators faithfully represent their own State. That is what they are there for!
• Ask your State representative to inform the Premier this is what you want.
• Inform the Premier this is what you want!
• Write to as many media outlets as possible informing the readers/listeners of what is happening asking them to join in the campaign.
• Write to local business leaders and community groups encouraging them to get involved
in the campaign.
Flyers: 5 copies $3.00; 10 copies $5.00; 50 copies $15.00. Prices include postage & handling.
Heritage Book Services:
Victoria & Tasmania: Box 1052, GPO, Melbourne, 3001;
New South Wales & Queensland: Box 6086, Lake Munmorah, NSW, 2259;
South Australia: PO Box 27, Happy Valley, 5159;
Western Australia: PO Box 163, Chidlow, 6556;
OR: VERITAS PUBLISHING Co. Pty. Ltd., PO.Box 1334, Midland DC, 6936, WA.
CREDIT CARD FACILITIES are available at: VERITAS PUBLISHING CO. PTY LTD.
For orders $20.00 and over ~ Visa, Master Card, Bankcard.
Tel/Fax (08) 9574 6042 - E-mail veritaspub@avon.net.au .
-- New Times Survey, February 2005, page 8.
[2005]
Leisure, the basis of culture, by Joseph Piper
Unequal freedoms: The global market as an ethical system, by John McMurtry.
Inside the Wire, due 2005, by Erik Saar, tells the story of torture by U.S. forces of supposed terrorists. It is due out some time in 2005. A former US army sergeant, Saar, 29, worked as a translator at Guantanamo camp in Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003.
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing miniskirts and thong underwear and, in one case, smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, an insider has stated.
-- The Weekend Australian,
"Female interrogators 'taunted terror suspects'," AP, page 11, January 29-30, 2005.
AND see Globe and Mail (Canada),
"Ex-officer describes lewd tactics at Guantanamo,"
www.theglobe andmail.com/ servlet/story/ RTGAM.20050128. wxsexx0128/BN Story/Internat ional , By PAISLEY DODDS, AP, Friday, January 28, 2005
[due 2005]
Hoodwinked, 2004, by John Prados.
"Americans do not like to think of themselves as aggressors, but raw aggression is what took place in Iraq," national security and intelligence analyst John Prados concluded after his careful, extensive review of the documentary record in his 2004 book Hoodwinked
Prados describes the Bush "scheme to convince America and the world that war with Iraq was necessary and urgent" as "a case study in government dishonesty ... that required patently untrue public statements and egregious manipulation of intelligence."
-- Information Clearing House,
www.information clearinghouse. info/article9387. htm , "ICH", By Noam Chomsky, July 5, 2005
[2004]
America's Secret War, 2004, by Dr. George Friedman.
In America's Secret War, you'll discover what's really behind America's anti-terrorism strategy, and what was really behind the 9/11 attacks. Dr. Friedman draws on Stratfor's vast intelligence networks - not rumours or theories - so you have the facts on stories you've never heard about before:
Al Qaeda's war plans and how they led to 9/11.
The threat of a suitcase nuclear bomb in New York and how that changed the course of the war.
The deals the U.S. made with Russia and Iran to make the invasion of Afghanistan possible - and how those deals affect the United States today.
How fear and suspicion of the Saudis after 9/11 tore apart the Bush-Saudi relationship, and why Riyadh's closest friends in the administration became the Saudis' worst enemies.
The real reasons behind George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and how WMD became the cover for a much deeper game.
How the CIA miscalculated about Saddam Hussein's and Iran's real plans, leaving the U.S. bogged down in the war.
How the war in Iraq began with a ruse.
The real story about why the U.S. raises and lowers its alert status and why it can't find and destroy al Qaeda.
The strategic successes that are slowly leading the United States to victory, and much more.
Take a look now: www.americas secretwar. com
-- Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) e-mail, October 5, 2004.
[COMMENT: Yet, some of us had thought the real reason for the US and Britain's attack (with Australia tagging along) was that Russia and France were signing oil contracts with the dictator Saddam Hussein! COMMENT ENDS.]
[2004]
Gulag: A history of the Soviet camps, 2004 (orig. 2003), by Anne Applebaum, winner of a 2004 Pulitzer Prize. "She has constructed from novels, records and scraps of paper a heaving, breathing testament of experience ... and made the names of Solovetsky, Kolyma, Norilsk and others resound with the same dull echo of evil as Auschwitz." -- Hugh Macdonald, The Herald. (Added to webpage 22 Sep 04).
"About the author. Anne Applebaum studied Russian history and literature at Yale, and international relations at the London School of Economics and St Antony's College, Oxford. She has been a writer at the Economist, foreign and deputy editor at the Spectator and columnist for the Evening Standard and Sunday Telegraph. She is now a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Washington Post." -- from the book. She speaks Russian.
Penguin Group, Camberwell (Victoria, Australia), Paperback 610 pp (includes Endnotes, Bibliography, Glossary, and Index), $26.95 (Angus & Robertson, Aug. 2004) [2004]
Intelligence Matters, by Sen. Bob Graham. WASHINGTON: He writes that two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government.
They were two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers. The staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that they were working for the Saudi government. Bush and the FBI stifled further investigation of these links.
He reveals that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. (Added to webpage 10 Sep 04)
-- "Graham book: Inquiry into 9/11, Saudi ties blocked,"
The Miami Herald,
www.miami.com/ mld/miamiherald/ 9584265.htm?1c ,
By Frank Davies, fdavies@herald.com , Sep. 05, 2004
Don't tell the Prime Minister, by Patrick Weller. AUSTRALIA: The Australian Prime Minister John Howard "tells us that he did not know that the story was untrue." It was the "children overboard" untruth that the PM used to help him win the November 2001 Australian federal election. The Liberal-National government posed as being firm against the people smugglers, bringing boatload after boatload of illegal immigrants/refugees to Australian shores. "But very soon truth of the incident began to emerge, revealing a tale of mixed messages, conflicting responsibilities, and pre-election promises."
$15.00 posted from Heritage Bookmailing Service, PO Box 163, Chidlow, WA, 6556, Australia, Tel/Fax 08 9574 6042, or from Veritas Publishing Company P/L, PO Box 1334, Midland DC, WA, 6936, Tel/Fax 08 9574 6042, veritaspub@avon.net.au . Veritas takes Visa, Mastercard, and Bankcard. (Available from June 2004)
Sexing it up by journalist Geoffrey Barker, in relation to the invasion of Iraq. Barker "takes us step by step through the maze of claims and counter-claims about what US, British and Australian intelligence agencies were telling their governments, and what those governments were telling the media."
None of Iraq's feared chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were used in the conflict, and none were subsequently found.
$19.95 posted. From Heritage's various bookmailing addresses or Veritas Publishing. (Available June 2004)
The Awful Truth by Michael Moore,
© 1999, Film (available in video hire shops).
UNITED STATES: From the guerrilla filmmaker who brought you Roger and Me comes the most daring documentary show to hit the American Public since Moore's TV Nation.
He is the writer and director of the movie Bowling for
Columbine, and author of the book Stupid White Men. And, in 2004, his political movie Fahrenheit 9/11 won the gold palm at the Cannes Film Festival, France. It exposed the business links between the Bush and Bin Laden families, and the way that when they fell out, the Bin Ladens in the USA were given a special exit flight, but the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US were dragged into wars.
Critiques of The Awful Truth: "Revolutionary" (Associated Press). "Moore is an American original . . . 'The Awful Truth' is great Television, a great Video and a great DVD." (Boxoffice Magazine)
The films/videos/DVDs are of his weekly shows before a studio audience. There are about six episodes on each video. [1999]
Plan of Attack by journalist Bob Woodward, 2004 (19 April 2004 release date), Simon & Schuster, Hardcover, ISBN: 074325547X, $25.80 AUD upwards, plus postage and packing.
Visit http://au.bookchecker.com/074325547X to compare prices of various Internet booksellers.
Do not confuse with a Dale Brown novel of the same name.
Newsitem: "US President George W. Bush secretly ordered a war plan be drawn up against Iraq less than two months after US forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furore he did not tell everyone on his national security team, according to a new book on his Iraq policy." -- The Sunday Times Online, Australia, "Bush's secret war plan revealed,"
http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,9305042%255E1702,00.html , From Calvin Woodward and Siobhan Mcdonough in Washington, Associated Press,
Apr 17 2004
And another book review: The West Australian "All the president's minions," by former US ambassador Raymond Seitz, Weekend Extra section, page 9, Saturday June 12, 2004.
Here is Vice-President Cheney as a taciturn zealot (Powell says Cheney had a "fever"), who is single-minded on "regime change", who jumps on the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] bandwagon before there is any conclusive proof and who seems to prowl in the background like a figure out of Machiavelli's The Prince. ...
Woodward's book ... has revealed a war cabinet at odds with itself. ... Woodward's book is hot history. ... The President blessed the project and encouraged everyone in the administration to co-operate.
(Simon Schuster, $49.95)
[2004]
Perpetual war for perpetual peace by Gore Vidal; 130 pages. This book is about September 11, 2001, the "war on terror," and the Coalition's partial invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.
"A problem from hell"; America and the age of Genocide by Samantha Power, 2003 (©2002), Flamingo / Harper Collins, London, www.fireandwater.com . Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (a US award) 2003. Back cover note: "The United States has never in its history [sic ?] intervened to stop genocide and has in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred."
ISBN 0 00 717299 0, $27.99 at Melbourne Domestic Airport, Dec 2, 2003.
"Disturbing ... Power's book will likely become the standard text on genocide prevention because it thoroughly debunks the usual excuses for past failures, while offering a persuasive framework that can help predict future outcomes and suggest policy responses. It is also engaging and well written." -- Chaim Kaufman, Foreign Affairs
"She is particularly good at bringing alive various people who were eyewitnesses to these catastrophes as they were happening and who tried to make Americans share their outrage."
-- Adam Hochschild, The Washington Post [These included Lemkin, Proxmire, Galbraith, Clark, Morgenthau, Senator Dole, Zygielbojm, and Karski]
[2003]
Distant Voices by John Pilger, 1994 (orig 1992), Vintage Books / Random House, London, Sydney, etc. www. random house. co.uk
ISBN 0 09 938721 2. It includes a chapter praising Noam Chomsky (pp 337-45), and another for Farzad Bazoft (pp 354-57), an Iraqi journalist hanged by Saddam Hussein for investigating a huge explosion. Bazoft was smeared by the UK mass media in order to keep UK orders for arms etc. flowing to Saddam. (By courtesy of Josie Leeden and the South Perth Public Library. 08 Dec 03.
[1994]
The New Rulers of the World by John Pilger
John Pilger, an Australian now based in London, is a frequent critic of the modern-day hypnosis of public perception. Awards include: Journalist of the Year award (UK, twice), the UN Media Peace Prize (Australia, twice), an Emmy (USA), the BAFTA/Richard Dimbleby Award (UK), The Monismanien Prize (Sweden), and he is the first journalist to receive the Sophie Prize for Human Rights (Norway) -- adapted from UWA Extension 2003-4 on 08 Dec 03
Boundless Plains? by Mark O'Connor, 2003, Duffy & Snellgrove, Australia. On the front cover is NSW Premier Bob Carr's opinion: "... the most important Australian book of recent times." It is an updating and improvement of This Tired Brown Land, 1998, which has sold out. Bob Carr (Labor) said of that book "... a robust refutation of all the arguments for population growth."
It will be available in late November from the publishers, and from Jill Curnow, PO Box 3070, Dural NSW 2158, Australia. $30, or $20 to members of Sustainable Population Australia. WA people please order from Dr Paddy Weaver 08 9386 1890 or weaverp@cygnus.uwa.edu . (Sources: SPA newsletter No 59, Sep 2003, p 8, and SPA WA newsletter Sep 03 p 2)
[2003]
A People Betrayed by Patrick Sookhdeo, 2002,
Land of the pure
IN its literal Persian translation Pakistan means 'Land of the Pure'.
When Pakistan was created in 1947 there were high hopes for this new nation as there was a clean slate to start from. It was the first nation in modern times to be formed on the basis of religion, but it was founded with a solidly secular, western style, constitution.
Pakistan was not a nation that seemed susceptible to the pressure of Islamic fundamentalism.
However, as years passed it has become increasingly clear that there has been a process of creeping Islamization. This ostensibly secular state now has a mandatory death sentence for crimes 'defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed'. A state formed with the intention of protecting religious minorities from persecution has seen the persecution of its own minorities gradually increase to the point where the Christian community is under great pressure.
This book is a thorough analysis of the Christian Community in Pakistan. It reveals a gradual shift in the Pakistani State, and is a clear warning to the West and minorities in other Muslim countries around the world of what can happen when conservative Islamic voices come to the fore.
"While Western Political leaders rightly call for tolerance of Muslims within their own nations the plight of Christians in one of the most prominent Muslim nations goes largely unreported - this is an attempt to correct that deficiency. The basic question is 'Can there be freedom for Christians in an Islamic state?' and the result of the developments in Pakistan recorded here suggest a rather negative answer to that question."
LORD MACKAY OF CLASHFERN
PATRICK SOOKHDEO is Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, a Christian research institute specialising in the status of Christian minorities in the Muslim world. Dr Sookhdeo is a well-known lecturer and author who holds a Ph.D. from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies and a D.D. from Western Seminary, Oregon, USA. His previous books include A Christian's Pocket Guide to Islam, ISBN 1 85792 699 4
Christian Focus Publications, Fearn (Ross-shire, Scotland) and Isaac Publishing, Pewsey (Wiltshire, England), 2002, 460 pp, 14 x 22 cm (5 1/2 x 8 5/8 inches), hard covers, glossary, bibliography 50pp, index.
ISBN 1 85792 785 0. (Displayed 13 March 2005)
(This book is displayed elsewhere on this Website at Submit / Reading.htm )
[2002]
Gone Whaling -- Stumbling towards Sustainability,
R. Graham Chittleborough, ? 2003, 114 pp. His latest book recounts experiences as a marine scientist working for the CSIRO from the early 1950s and researching whaling on both the west and east coasts of Australia. The Federal Government set quotas that were related to the capacity of the whaling stations, instead of to the whale stock. When numbers fell, quotas were reduced in an arbitrary fashion. The Russian whalers under-stated their reports to the International Whaling Commission. (The original reports were found after the Cold War ended.) (Source: SPA newsletter No 59, Sep 2003, p 11)
[? 2003]
Deep Futures, Doug Cocks, of CSIRO, ? 2003, launched August 12 2003 in Canberra. See speech by Ian Lowe in Sustainable Population Australia newsletter No 59, Sep 2003, p 5.
Straw Dogs, John Gray, 2002, Granta Books, Britain. He is a brilliant contemporary philosopher who writes in plain enjoyable English prose. He writes that "Cities are no more artificial than the hives of bees." But he also forecasts that humanity will disappear, and the Earth will recover, and forget humankind. Australian price $39.95, hardcover, 199 pp. Details from:
Sustainable Population Australia newsletter No 59, Sep 2003, p 10.
[? 2003]
The Party's Over, Richard Heinberg, ? 2003. The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) in a report stated: "... EIA estimates are based on non-technical considerations that support domestic supply growth to levels necessary to meet projected demand levels." In other words, Americans should believe there will be no lessening of petroleum, and "should continue buying and consuming with no care for the future." In 2002, George Bush [an oil baron] said: "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption."
Book review by Peter North in
Sustainable Population Australia newsletter No 59, Sep 2003, pp 9-10.
[? 2003]
Gangs of America by Ted Nace, 2003, can be obtained off the internet at www.gangsofamerica.com/read.html , with a few chapters in ordinary format (HTML) for sampling, and the rest in Acrobat PDF format. At an early age Ted Nace became interested in corporations riding roughshod over local communities. After writing for computer magazines, he started a publishing business.
After eleven years as publisher, Nace sold Peachpit Press to British conglomerate Pearson Plc, and he returned to freelance writing. In seeking to understand the institutional structure of power in America, he investigated the historical roots of the corporation, as well as reflecting on his own experiences as a community organizer and a publishing entrepreneur.
According to Nace, the optimistic view after the Great Depression was dashed in the final decades of the twentieth century, as Big Business mounted a remarkable comeback. The corporate political resurgence began with a 1971 memorandum written by Lewis Powell, Jr., shortly before Powell was appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon. In the memorandum, Powell urged corporate America to apply its full
organizational and strategic resources to politics, a course of action that proved highly successful.
Gangs of America is the result of that research and reflection.
Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Cloth, 296 pages, $US 24.95, ISBN: 1-57675-260-7, Available: August 2003 free off the internet, Official publication date: September 1, 2003.
[2003]
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, The Truth About Globalisation, Corporate Cons and High Finance Fraudsters, by Greg Palast, 2002, Pluto Press, Britain. BRITAIN: Newsitem discussing this and other books exposing how the Iraq war was engineered, climbing the U.S. bestseller charts, April 20 2003, follows:--
Beneath the uniformity of a US media high on victory in Iraq, a wave of books of a heretical flavour is flooding the bestseller lists.
At number five in the New York Times bestsellers and climbing Amazon's
chart is The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a collection of essays by journalist Greg Palast, one of a triad known as the 'Angry White Men' - a play on the title at number six in the chart, Stupid White Men by film director Michael Moore, with 500,000 sales.
The third in the 'axis of anti' is Noam Chomsky, whose controversial 9/11 -- in which he calls America 'a leading terrorist state' -- has 205,000
copies in print.
The books are comfortably outselling titles which might seem at first to better reflect the zeitgeist*, such as Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism and similar.
Concluding his recent book tour, Moore said: 'I look out into the
auditorium or gymnasium and I see Mr and Mrs Middle America, who voted for George W Bush and believed in the American dream as defined by the Bushes and Wall Street. Then they woke up to realise it was just that, a dream.'
On Iraq, a number of fast-selling books have joined British writer Con Coughlin's Saddam: King of Terror with less conventional attacks not on the fallen tyrant but on America's war. They include Targeting Iraq: Sanctions, Bombing and US Policy by Geoff Simons and Gore Vidal's Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta.
Palast's book - published by Pluto Press in Britain last year - is the latest to appear in America. Subtitled The Truth About Globalisation, Corporate Cons and High Finance Fraudsters, Moore endorsed it with an enthusiastic 'Read this book'.
The essays include Palast's investigation into vote-rigging during the Florida campaign that won Bush the election and into the place where Americans fear to tread: alleged close ties between the Bush and bin Laden families.
Once Palast's book was published in America, the media took a cue from Tony Blair's aide Alastair Campbell, who issued a political health warning on the author in Britain.
Plans by CNBC television to have him as a commentator on the Phil Donahue chat show were reversed after one performance, following an internal company memo recommending against guests who were 'sceptical of the Bush administration' when 'other networks are taking every opportunity to wave the flag'.
But his book is selling without the name recognition or marketing behind Moore and Chomsky.
'Michael Moore was the battering ram through the media Berlin Wall,' he said, 'and Chomsky and I are rushing through.
'There is a whole number of Americans who have been hypnotised,
propagandised, and short-changed, who know something is wrong.
Apparently the moment has come for the awful truth.'
-- The Observer, (London), "Bestseller success for anti-US war books,"
www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,940140,00.html , by
Ed Vulliamy, New York, Sunday April 20, 2003
_________
* zeitgeist, (pron. tsuyt'-guyst) the spirit of the time, general trend of thought or feeling of an era. (Random House Dictionary, 1968)
Author Palast and Penguin Books are being sued.
NEW YORK, December 18: Mario Cuomo today sued author Greg Palast and his publisher, Penguin, for $15 million over mention of the ex-politico in the
New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Palast, whose award-winning stories appear on BBC television and the Guardian Newspapers, is known in Britain as, "the most important
investigative reporter of our time" (Tribune Magazine, UK).
Palast's expose of Katherine Harris' wrongful purge of Black voters before the 2000 presidential election won Harper's Magazine a US National
Magazine Award nomination for public service reporting.
Palast said, "It's goofy. Katherine Harris called me, 'twisted and maniacally partisan.' Well, now here's another politico from the other
side of the aisle gunning for me - all for reporting the news."
"There are two Cuomos," explained Palast, "Mario Jekyll and Mario Hyde. In public, Cuomo is the sanctimonious defender of the Bill of Rights and the working man, but here he's a bully-boy allergic to the First Amendment."
THE NPR CHALLENGE.
Northeast Public Radio host Alan Chartock has offered Cuomo a chance to debate Palast on First Amendment issues raised by his lawsuit. Palast
asked Chartock, who co-hosted a radio program with Cuomo for 18 years, "to
give the Governor and me a chance to set the record straight - no lawyers,
just face to face and fact to fact."
Palast looks forward to the chance to review until-now secret files of communications between the Governor, his political donors and benefactors.
As to Cuomo's complaint, Palast said, "I stand by every word and comma. Cuomo's attempt to censor reports published in the public interest will not intimidate me. Thankfully, I have the support of my publisher."
The dispute centers on the period when Palast was chief investigator for Suffolk County, New York, in the government's successful prosecution of a civil racketeering case against the builders of the Shoreham nuclear plant.
Long Island electricity customers received approximately $400
million in compensation in settlement of the litigation brought after
Palast's discovery of alleged frauds. Palast's bestselling book mentions
then-Governor Cuomo's involvement in that 1988 trial and settlement.
"The real issue," said Palast, "is the right of a reporter to write the facts to the best of his knowledge free of the fear of financially ruinous lawsuits and intimidation."
Palast, [is a] recipient of the Financial Times David Thomas Prize and winner of Britain's 'story of the year' for his undercover investigation of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The journalist also won accolades from Cuomo. Palast received a mounted pen from Cuomo's signing of the Long Island Power Authority Act which put the owner of Shoreham out of business.
Palast said, "Cuomo accuses me of calling him 'corrupt.' He must be reading some other book - the word does not appear in mine. He is clearly uncomfortable about press scrutiny of his conduct. He has chosen to
mischaracterize and coerce rather than debate and open the records."
For interviews, contact Media@GregPalast.com .
Greg Palast's broadcasts for BBC Television and his columns for Britain's Guardian papers can be seen at www.GregPalast.com . THE BEST DEMOCRACY
MONEY CAN BUY has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than
six months this year.
Palast's commentaries are featured on "Weapon of
Mass Instruction", the spoken word CD released last week.
-- Greg Palast palast@gregpalast.com by e-mail, Ex-pol "will not intimidate me",
18:40:09 -0500, Thu, Dec 18, 2003
* See Palast's reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers of Britain at www.gregpalast.com . Interviews/reprints: Media@gregpalast.com
* "Bush family fortunes: The best democracy money can buy" This hour long documentary follows the award-winning reporter-sleuth Greg Palast on the trail of the Bush family, from Florida election finagling, to the Saudi connection, to the Bush team's spiking the FBI investigation of the bin Laden family and the secret State Department plans for post-war Iraq. PRE-ORDER at www.gregpalast. com/bff-dvd.htm .
(The above two items were adapted from "One Year Later -- Power Outage Traced To Dim Bulb In White House," by Greg Palast,
http://www. GregPalast.com , ZNet, updated
by Greg Palast, Saturday Aug 14, 2004.
[Main item Dec 18, 03]
[2002]
Stupid White Men; and other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, Michael Moore, 2001 (reprinted 2002), Penguin,
www.penguin.com.au , Camberwell (Vic., Australia), soft covers, no index, notes and sources, 282 pp. $AUD 22.00 incl. GST (checked Apr 6 2003, by courtesy of Phil Burrows).
Dust jacket of First edition (illustrated); ©:2001, Regan Books (HarperCollins), New York; hard covers with dust jacket, 282 pp; no index, notes and sources, ISBN 0-06-039245-2, $AUD 4.99 at Angus and Robertson, Warwick (Perth, WA, Australia), on July 12, 2005, label stated that the recommended retail price had been $22.95.
[2002]
The Frauding of Votes, Dr Amy McGrath (OAM), 1996, Sydney, Tower House Publications, ISBN 0 9591879 9 5, 190pp, paperback. Discount price of next edition $25 including postage. Send cheque or money order to Hon. Treasurer, GPO Box 2391, Sydney NSW 2001. Enquiries 02 9599 7915, 9337 5600, or fax 02 9500 7016, 9337 6368.
http://www.hschapman.org/
[1996]
Lucky be Damned, John Cumming. Exposes how Australians have been kept in the dark! The book tells how Australia can win back its freedom of speech and become the wealthy country it should always have been. The book led to the discovery of "The Great Australian Swindle." Send $20 (P&P) to J.Cumming, PO Box 173, Noosa Qld 4567, or pay $33.50 to Austand for video.
Source: Nexus,, Oct-Nov 1999, p 87.
| Use KEYWORDS to SEARCH Webpages. With most systems press [Ctrl] + F, or [Ctrl] + H. This will cause a Find or Find/Replace dialogue box to appear. (With some old programmes, start by pressing [Ctrl] + [Shift] + F. However, if your system requires it, click Edit, then click Find.) Type in a keyword, and press [Enter], or click Find.
|
Shouldn't our grandchildren know?
R. Graham Chittleborough, 1992, South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
This masterly autobiographical book covers pollution (even a large section of Albany's harbour had to be closed to fishing), salination and other destruction of soil, the water shortage, declining rainfall, smog, and the destruction of the ability of the earth to refresh itself. He writes: ". . . do we really need another million people in Perth? Or, to put it more bluntly, can we afford another million?
"The well-worn arguments of conventional economists for more people are looking rather thin as we approach the capacities of our life-support
systems. . . . Since in Australia birth rates are now barely
at replacement levels, the only ways in which Perth's population can double
are by immigration and the continued exodus from rural areas." (p 135)
Graham Chittleborough was trained under Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson, and spent 25 years studying ocean creatures. He then began battling a "monolithic bureaucracy" that just didn't want to know that Australia was going seriously wrong. On the issue of mining in national parks, he was forced by an industry-led clique and others into early retirement from the W.A. Environmental Protection Authority in 1987. He refused to give up his struggle to make the world safe for future generations.
Sir Ninian Stephen, Ambassador for the Environment, describes the book: "His focus is Australia but his reach is global . . ." This book's royalties are being shared with the Conservation Council of Western Australia. 196pp, ISBN 1 86368 015 2, Dewey 333.79092
[1992]
This Tired Brown Land, Mark O'Connor, Duffy & Snellgrove, 1998, distributed by Tower Books, $17 and by Mark O'Connor at 8 Banjine Street, O'Connor, Canberra A.C.T. 2602, Australia. Information from
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aespop/welcome.htm . In August 2003 a rewritten edition, tentatively entitled Boundless Plains? was announced. Keep in touch with http://www. population. org.au/ .
[1998]
Bankers and Bastards, Paul McLEAN and James RENTON, Hudson Publishing, 1992, Hawthorn (Victoria, Australia).
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This book is all about the way banks and bankers have moved from providing a service and advice, into being profit-oriented purveyors of dubious "products" (back cover). An example was that the Commonwealth Trading Bank had emptied out the trading account with a woman by putting the money on term deposit, stopping her from making the interest payment on her capital loan from the Commonwealth Development Bank (page 3). The CTB then took her to the Bankruptcy Court, even though she sold other assets and had paid the proceeds to the CTB.
There were also the famous Westpac Letters, revealed in the Australian Senate. These documents ought to have been referred to the National Crime Authority in February 1991 (p 88), but weren't. The book covers the Foreign Currency Loan scandal. The "Establishment" managed to squash Senator McLean's exposures, which had been made with the help of anonymous faxers from overseas.
(Inserted 21 Dec 04)
Back Cover's wording:
Bankers and Bastards
... is all about the way banks and bankers have moved from being the respected pillars of the community, providing a trusted service and reliable advice, into being profit-oriented purveyors of dubious 'products'. It's also about how we suffer the consequences and the government mainly looks on and watches.
The authors became involved because people came to them for help: Renton as a lawyer, McLean as a politician.
Paul McLean (right) has been a teacher, an army officer and a social planner. But it was as Australian Democrat Senator for New South Wales that he became interested in bank malpractice. His battle to get the Westpac Letters before the Senate is now history.
James Renton (left) is a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of Australia. He has made a speciality of white-collar crime, and has advised hundreds of victims of bank malpractice. It was his files which provided many of the cases tabled in the Senate by Paul McLean.
Hudson Publishing, Hawthorn (Victoria), 1992. 178pp, 13.7 x 21.4 cm (5 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches), soft covers, well illustrated with documents proving main points, no footnotes, epilogue, index, ISBN 0-949873-40-3, $AUD16.95 in 1992.
[1992]
Towards a New Society, Sir Allen Fairhall, 1999, Sydney. Unemployment and poverty stem from our current taxation system, which is so flawed that abolition is the only sensible way for reform. The taxing of land is simple, fair, and produces much better outcomes. He finishes with a plea for a non-partisan inquiry to look at the issue of tax reform. Send orders with $12.70 per copy to the author at 7 Parkway Avenue, Newcastle, NSW, 2300, Australia, or to Prosper Australia (formerly Tax Reform Australia), 1st floor, 27 Hardware La, Melbourne, Vic, 3000, Australia, fax 03 9670 3063.
[1999]
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See below: Alive and Global, Brenda C. and Scott Ludlam (eds.) 1999, Perth, Gaia Foundation. There is a sinister side to Globalisation, that is, the misuse of power by large corporations in pushing towards globalised so-called "free" markets, which may really mean monopolies, which are the very opposite of free.
[1999]
|
Common Courage Press, progressive thinkers including Naom Chomsky's forthcoming book (July 1999) on Kosovo and the world's Corporate Raiding Parties, at
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/
National Suicide; Military aid to the Soviet Union,
© 1973, Antony C. Sutton.
Revealed: the major companies most prominent in building up the Soviet truck industry.
The strange statement of Dr. Henry Kissinger.
Reproduced: Lyndon Johnson's Preface to a trade brochure for the Russians--till now, available only from Russia.
The No. 1 method of transferring strategic goods from the U.S. to Russia.
GE and RCA help electrify Russia.
The common denominator of all administrations from Wilson's to Nixon's.
Russian MIGs get a lift from Rolls-Royce.
One vital area where the U.S. is more secretive than the Soviets.
The American company that provided the Russians with the world's first commercial plane able to fly the Atlantic nonstop.
Why "cooperative" space ventures with the U.S. are vital to the Communists.
The big Red merchant marine sails on -- compliments of Uncle Sam.
Stalin gratefully acknowledges Uncle Sam's assistance in building Communist industry.
The "mystical" approach of our State Department to trading with the Communists.
The West's largest single supplierof computers to the USSR.
State Department's "innocent" student exchange program. What Soviet students study in America. What Americans study in Russia.
Named: the probable originator of bridgebuilding.
Two reasons for classification of material--never mentioned by Washington officials.
Detailed list of 96 Soviet ships used to supply North Vietnam.
Unchallenged: Dean Rusk's big lie in 1961 about U.S.-Soviet trade.
Soviet missiles for Cuba--in State Department-approved ships.
The link between U.S.-Soviet trade and Vietnam casualties.
The unanswered question: why do policymakers continue to build up an enemy still sworn to overthrow us?
To the above list could be added how the German firms including Krupps helped build up Soviet industry. Other country's corporations were also keener on getting the business than in analysing morality.
This book was written while Vietnamese, Australian, and Americans were being killed by armaments from the Soviet bloc in Vietnam and nearby areas. The Insiders have never apologised to this day.
DETAILS: Australian League of Rights, www.alor.org.au , Melbourne; ©1973 by Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York. ISBN 0-870000-207-4. 284pp, soft covers, 13.5 x 21 centimetres (5 3/8 x 8 1/4 inches), contents, index, appendices, ($2.95)
[1973]
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Prosper Australia, formerly known as
Tax Reform
Australia, Books On-line
Order by On-line Form, Telephone, Fax, or Mail
1 / 27 Hardware Lane, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
Telephone (03) 9670 2754; Facsimile (Fax) (03) 9670 3063
WWW:
http://www.taxreform.com.au/
Australian Authors
(Prices include Postage)
Rent as Revenue by Dr Les Hemingway, $13.50
Elementary Economics, George Charles, $8.50
True and False Economics, W.A.Dowe, $13.50
Rehabilitation of Rural Industry, Graham Hart of Perth, $5.00
Monopoly & the Individual, George Hardy, $11.00
Natural Resources Rental Taxation in Australia, A.R.Hutchinson,
$3.50
Why Capitalism & Socialism Failed, A.R.Cannon, $13.00
Land, Phil Day of Queensland, $18.00
The Recovery Myth, Bryan Kavanagh of Melbourne, $8.00
Canberra in Crisis, Frank Brennan, $6.50
Overseas Authors
That All May Live, Godfrey Dunkley, $20.00
The Corruption of
Economics,
M.Gaffney,
F.Harrison, $28.00
The Trial of Chaka Dlamini, S.Meintjes, M.Jacques, $16.50
The Land Question, Shirley-Anne Hardy, $3.50
From Waste Land to Promised Land, R.V.Anderson, J.M.Dawsey,
$27.00
BARGAIN BASEMENT
Six Booklets (set) by Henry George, $4.00 the set
Thy Kingdom Come; Thou Shalt Not Steal
The Crime of Poverty
Justice the Object/Taxation the Means
Moses
Study of Political Economy
and others
EarthSharing ™
in Melbourne, Australia
Georgist Perth
campaigner
in Western Australia. If visiting Perth, telephone John Massam,
08 9343 9532,
and buy or order one or more books, including.
Natural Resources Rental Taxation in Australia, A R Hutchinson,
1979, 62pp $2.00 including postage
An assessment of the annual value of all lands in Australia as at 1976/77.
This is updated to 1996 as an annexure to the submission to be rebutted in
the $25,000 Tax Reform Challenge, which closed on 31 March 1998.
The Recovery Myth: A Positive Response, Bryan Kavanagh 1994,
20pp $7.95
Graphs, charts and a commentary explaining the critical role of land prices
and taxation in triggering the economic downturn of the 1990s.
LAND: The elusive quest for social justice, taxation reform & a
sustainable planetary environment, Philip Day, Australian Academic
Press, Brisbane 1995 (120pp) $17.95 A study of an enigma: "of how vast wealth
is made and disbursed within a tangled maze of institutional arrangements
and practices - practices which are seemingly pre-ordained, notwithstanding
their manifestly questionable consequences for the welfare of society."
Robert
Schalkenbach Foundation list at Earthrights, in U.S.A.
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/earthrights/rsf.html
Robert Schalkenbach
Foundation list at Progress, in U.S.A.
http://www.progress.org/books/
The
Lost Science of Money
http://www.monetary.org/lostscienceofmoney
Published in German in 1999 by Conzett Verlag of Zurich. The expanded English version was released in 2002, $US48 plus $22 postage and packing, from American Monetary Institute, PO Box 601, Valatie, NY 12184, U.S.A.
(Old webpage
The
Lost Science of Money)
An End to Poverty - A Beginning to Prosperity
by Glenn Harrington: Trafford Publishing, Canada; 51 pages; Docutape Black; catalogue #96-0020; CDN$14.50 (approx. US$9.86)
Synopsis of single tax approach to eradicate the cause of recessions and poverty, persistence of poverty alongside progress. Addresses free trade, urban sprawl, slums, crime.
Order through nearest Geonomics office, or to the publishers' one-at-a-time system online, Trafford Publishing, 3050 Nanaimo Street, Suite 2, Victoria, B.C. V8T 4Z1, CANADA.
World Orders, Old and New
by Noam Chomsky ©1994: Pluto Press, London; 312pp, Paperback,
~$32.00.
Land reform in Guatemala would be a threat to investors, according to a US
State Department document (p. 122). Land proprietors were created in India
during the British "permanent settlement" of affairs (p. 116). Dacca at one
time was as big and as prosperous as London, until the multinationals of
a couple of centuries ago ensured that its textile industry was swamped by
regulations and "free" trade, thus ensuring wealth for their Manchester
factories. Nowadays the Indian Government's minister of finance must report
directly to the World Bank in Washington (p. 127).
Economic rationalists and the market economy theorists are working in the
interests of the masters of the global economy, and to the detriment of the
rest of the world, Chomsky writes in this book.
Chomsky, author of many books including
The Prosperous Few
and the Restless Many, Turning the Tide, The Culture of
Terrorism, and
Necessary
Illusions, is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussets Institute
of Technology. He co-authored Manufacturing Consent, in which the
claim was made that the consent of electors in so-called democracies is
"manufactured" by very clever and unscrupulous people working for the super-rich.
For a wide review of his writings and speeches up to recent times, including
audio and video online, try:
http://www.worldmedia.com/archive/.
In "Free Market Fantasies" which can be heard online from that link or from
http://206.9.170.150/archive/audio/fmf.html, he said that all of the
top 100 transnational corporations in the world had benefited from government
assistance in their alleged "home" country, and 20 of them had been saved
from collapse. Yet these companies were strongly advocating "free market"
theory, while receiving government subsidies or being baled out. He covers
the reasons for over-fishing through government subsidies while "free" trade
was introduced.
Newt Gingrich was one of the most successful politicians in obtaining government
help for his electorate's industries, while preaching the "market."
The Losses of Nations
Edited by Fred Harrison: "Economists have produced estimates of the
staggering annual shortfall in production caused by current forms of taxation.
The authors connect several political crises, like recession and unemployment,
to the way in which taxation distorts economic incentives by encourage land
speculation at the expense of investment in industry and services."
£UK14.95 paperback, £UK30 hardback, postpaid from Othila Press
Ltd, 7 Kings Rd, Teddington, Middx, TW110QB, United Kingdom; $US15
paperback postpaid from Robert Shalkenbach Foundation, 41 East 72nd St, New
York, NY, 10021, United States of America, Tel. (212) 988 1680
BOOKS WORTH READING
Gangs, Counter-Gangs and other Political Crimes
David Syme College for information
about "Gangs" that infest Reform Groups; see book Gangs, Counter-Gangs
and other Political Crimes, Don Veitch , B Comm, B Arts, Dip Ed,
2 vols = 1161 pp, 1997, Flemington (Victoria, Australia), David Syme College,
$60.
First Abolish the Customer
202 Arguments Against Economic Rationalism
by Bob Ellis, 1998, Ringwood (Victoria, Australia), Penguin Books.
Paperback 222pp, $17.95.
"House prices will go up to consume disposable income ... Whatever
savings are made on the prices of smaller goods, the price of houses and
the rent of houses will always go up to consume the difference. Prove
that I lie. For a roof is the one thing you cannot do without, and
will, if you are employed, pay anything for. Prove that I lie.
And the argument that smaller families mean cheaper housing is fallacious."
"Real estate became the preoccupation of a whole generation, and family fortunes
made and lost with its manipulations." (pp 109-110)
"On a true level playing field, products would compete for customers
on the basis of product quality; not Orwellian sales pitch. Local soft
drinks, local biscuits, local cheeses, local beers, local shoes and hats
and radios would have a chance. ... But not in a globalised economy.
There, because of television, the big automatically prevail, and the small
have to struggle to be noticed. So economic rationalism hurts, and
often mortally hurts, small business. And therefore abolishes competition.
(p 98)
COMMENT: There are many facts, too, about the unethical practices of some
huge corporations in the past and at present. However, the book will
be spoiled for some people by the claims on pages 23 to 25 that the Soviet
Union had not been a threat to world peace, and by the lack of an index.
The Evil Empire: Globalization's Darker Side
Former Canadian Cabinet Minister Paul Hellyer, interviewed
on Australian Broadcasting Commission around 15 April 1999, wrote this
book exposing the world centralisation he used to be party to. THE
EVIL EMPIRE: Globalization's Darker Side, 1997, Canada, Chimo Media,
114 pages, $CAN 9.95 Softcover. See:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/046.html
Free Men and Free Markets
Professor Robert Theobald [died 27 Nov 1999] was based in New Orleans, U.S.A., wrote
Free
men and Free Markets, (originally 1963, Clarkson N. Potter), 1965,
New York, Anchor Books - Doubleday & Co
A webpage advertising a 3 May 1999 talk by him in Canberra, Australia, says: "Robert Theobald has been one of the leading voices arguing that only radical changes in direction can avoid massive breakdowns throughout the world. His talks on the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] and recent lecture tours have made him one of the most sought after speakers in Australia. He was recently recognized by the
Encyclopedia
of the Future as one the top ten living futurists. His latest book
is
Reworking Success, which has been on the Australian best-seller list." Read
it on:
http://www.transform.org/transform/tlc/rsuccess.html
A satellite program had been planned for late May 1999.
Details from Professor Theobald's
homepage
are: "On January 22nd and April 8th, 1999 Resilient Communities hosted its
first live-satellite programs. Please check the
Resilient Communities site
for details. The next broadcast will be on May 27th and will feature
Robert Theobald, Rachel Bagby and Vicki Robin looking at 'Making Meaning:
A Challenge for the New Century.' Plans are being developed now for
additional programming via satellite later this year." (died 27 Nov 1999)
Alive and Global
Brenda C. and Scott Ludlam (eds.), 1999, Perth, Gaia Foundation,
40 A4 pages, $5.
There is a sinister side to Globalisation, that is, the misuse of power by large corporations in pushing towards globalised so-called "free" markets.
"Free markets" may only be free for the very rich and powerful, and may really mean monopolies, which are the very opposite of free. Published 18 June 1999. Preface by the then
Greens WA Senator Dee Margetts (who was later an MLC in the WA Parliament around 2001), an article on the proposed anti-globalisation actions for 18 June
and the caravan of Indian and other
farmers going to European capitals to end at the G7 meeting at Cologne,
and articles by