CONTENTS / BLOG (19), Just World Campaign

Free papers or a free press

 
   Le Monde Diplomatique (France), http://MondeDiplo.com/2007/01/01press , by Ignacio Ramonet, (Translated by Barbara Wilson), Monday, January 1, 2007
   FRANCE: THE press is in crisis; the worst crisis in its history. For the past three years newspapers and news magazines in France, including Le Monde diplomatique, and almost everywhere in the world have been steadily losing readers. Their delicate economic balance is upset, their survival threatened and, with it, the democratic right to express a range of opinions. What is to blame for this depressing state of the press?
   First, the rise and rise of "free" newspapers. The "free" is a lie since it leads some readers to believe that news costs nothing, whereas "free" papers are paid for by an advertising levy that is incorporated in the price of everything else they buy.
   In just a few years these publications have shot to the top of the circulation tables. As a result many people have stopped buying daily papers and advertisers are turning to the "free" papers instead. Sales on the newsstands and advertising are the two main sources of a newspaper's revenue; the third is subscriptions.

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Directories:  Main 19  Australia  Esperanto  Experiments  Freedom  Georgist  Globalism  Molestation 141  Religion  Submission 6

This series begins at: http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont.htm     Then there is the internet, which is revolutionising every aspect of cultural life -- music, publishing, cinema, television -- as well as the media. It is significant that the international news channel France 24 was launched first on the web and only later on cable and satellite.
   People turn more and more to the internet for news and information and some have stopped buying newspapers. They too, like those who read the "free" papers, have deserted the newsstands, many of which have then been forced to close down with a corresponding reduction in sales of all newspapers and periodicals (1).
   The internet is attractive, access to many sites is free, people can express their own opinions in their own way on blogs and it is easy to exchange ideas on everything under the sun. But this increase in freedom must be weighed against some contrary considerations. There is the disturbing fact that many groups that have engaged through the internet in intense, internal debate in a spirit of democratic participation, have been crushed, reduced to impotence or self-destruction.
   The researcher Eric Klinenberg in the United States has noted that the internet used to be remarkable for many new sites expressing a wide range of political opinions, yet the most popular sites are now controlled by the most powerful media groups. This means that, as always in the history of communications, whenever a new medium appears -- from newspapers in 18th century to the independent radio stations of the 1970s and the internet today -- it begins by extending the boundaries of free speech, only to be taken over and tamed by the money men.
   Reader profiles based on search engine utilisation are now being sold to businesses keen to target potential consumers more effectively.
   In France, control of the mass media is concentrated in the hands of a few industrial and financial groups, including two arms manufacturers, Lagardere (via Hachette) and Dassault (via Socpresse). This disturbing fact should prompt members of the public to rally round and support the independent press, including Le Monde diplomatique.
   You will recall that our magazine is owned jointly by the Le Monde group (51%) and by our readers and production team (49%). This is extremely rare in the press, not only in France but in the world, and it guarantees complete independence from all the powers that be, political, media or financial.
   This peculiar feature is highly prized in other countries and has been instrumental in allowing us to expand our international editions, of which there are now some 60 in more than 30 languages. This is unique in the world press but it has not prevented a decline in sales in France itself, sales on which the financial balance of the paper depends.
   In the media battle ahead Le Monde diplomatique is counting on the loyalty of its readers and a large association of readers' groups (the Friends of Le Monde diplomatique). But it is also taking a number of initiatives, starting in February: while it remains more than ever committed to fact-based journalism, the editorial content will contain substantial innovations.
   This is meant as a signal to readers, a call to rally round and take action. To subscribe to Le Monde diplomatique is the best way to show your support for a free press, free speech and independent journalism.
____________________
   (1) The number of press sales points in France has dropped from 36,000 to 28,000 in only a few years.

Call for fair share of boom windfalls

 
   The Perth Voice (suburban free newspaper), news [at] fremantleherald [dot] com , by BRENDAN FOSTER, p 2, Saturday, January 13, 2007
   PERTH: EQUAL rights for all and special privileges for none is the catch-cry of the East Perth-based Georgist Education Association.

• Georgist Association president John Massam believes everyone should share in nature's gifts and opportunities.

   The association is holding lectures this Sunday and Tuesday to explain the work of social philosopher Henry George who believed the root cause of social problems is an inequality of rights.
   "Henry George was a self-taught economist who argued that the task of government is to secure the equal rights of land to everyone," WA branch president John Massam said.
   Mr Massam said society should collect revenue from "windfalls" gained when people profited from shares or land values that go through the roof. Lucky breaks    "You can't tax a beggar but people who make huge amounts of profit from land or 'lucky breaks' should pay a bigger tax that is placed in public revenue," he said.
   "The public revenue collected from this tax could help pay for the police force, the army and navy and in doing so, lower income tax to almost nothing."
   Mr Massam said the Georgists also believed that there were imperfections in democracy and all opinions should be represented in parliament.
   "The Liberal Party defy what the State Government and people of WA want by planning to mine uranium, yet it goes against the popular will of the people," he said.
   Richard Giles from the Sydney branch will lecture on housing affordability this Sunday January 14 from 2 - 3.30pm at 10 Broome St, South Perth.
   There will also be a lecture on social justice and taxation on Tuesday January 16 from 10am - 1pm at the Georgist Education Association (Perth Tattersall Bowling Club), 2 Plain Street, East Perth.
   For more information Mr Massam on 9343 9532. #

Council slams lock-up plan

 
   The Perth Voice, by FIONA WILLAN, p 3, Saturday, January 13, 2007
   PERTH: IN a rare display of unity, Perth council voted unanimously this week against the WA government's bid to resume private Northbridge land for a new police station.
   The public gallery was a sea of familiar faces at Monday evening's special council meeting, called by Cr Judy McEvoy.
   Cambridge mayor Marlene Anderton, Property Council of WA president Joe Lenzo, Northbridge Business Improvement Group president Paul Afkos, former Big N president Bob Smales and the WA Association of Property Rights' Leo Killigerew were among the crowd.
   "This is an extraordinary attack on private citizens," Cr McEvoy told council.
   She criticised the government for failing to negotiate with landowner Graeme Hardie before deciding to resume Lot 12, at the corner of Lake and Roe Streets.
   Cr Max Kay said council would've thought twice about injecting $31 million into the Northbridge link project had it realised it would include a number of apartments overlooking a police lock-up.
   Councillors said sites such as the empty IMAX theatre, Mega-Mart building and James Street carpark opposite Russell Square were more appropriate sites.
   Perth Police Superintendent Duane Bell told the Voice the footprint of the proposed police headquarters was too large for most sites.
   "All [police] land was considered, all government land was considered and railway land was considered and quickly dismissed," he said.
   All large sites were considered, but Lot 12 was deemed most appropriate - it was the right size, was central and a relatively safe location for police headquarters.
   Supt Bell said Mr Hardie had been informed of the possibility of land resumption at a meeting in mid-2006.
   Mr Hardie told the Voice the first he heard of it was through an unofficial phone call from a government property consultant in November 2006. #

  WHY HOUSING IS UNAFFORDABLE  

Richard Giles, talk in Perth, WA, Australia, Sun., Jan. 14th, 2007
A publication of the Association for Good Government, Sydney
www.associationforgoodgov.org.au We are here to talk about housing affordability. Housing affordability is falling and we want to know the reasons for it.
1. What is Housing Affordability?
   Reduced to its simplest terms declining housing affordability means two things. First, those who are renting or buying homes are spending more and more of their disposable income on rents and mortgages. Second, it means that more and more folk who want to buy a home cannot do so because the mortgage is beyond them.
   Those are obvious conclusions from the information on your Facts and Principles Sheet. That information in the end says nothing more than this: the cost of accommodation is rising faster than incomes. The result is that shelter is absorbing an ever-greater proportion of wages, even though, as now, that is most often a double income.
   That the cost of shelter can rise faster than the rise in incomes is partly due to an important principle. This is that the cost of housing tends to absorb all surplus disposable income.    Food, clothing, shelter are the basics of life. So it is not surprising that people will try to meet the rising cost of shelter. Page 2.    To illustrate: in the 1970s double incomes became common and provided overseas holidays and other ‘extras’. But now what we see are two things. On the one hand rising property prices are absorbing those gains so that many on double incomes are no better off than single income families were thirty years ago. On the other hand we find young people more prepared to stay at home or batch in large numbers while holding on to the ‘extras’.
2. Land Appreciates; Houses Depreciate
   Some weeks ago I tuned into one of those TV advertising programs that tell you how quite ordinary people can become immensely wealthy.
   My attention was immediately captured, not by the prospect of becoming immensely wealthy, but by a principle the speaker began with. It was this.
“Land appreciates in value; houses depreciate in value”.
   His comfortable life today, he said, was based on that principle. So I immediately learned where the wealth was coming from. It was coming from the mounting value of land helped along by generous helpings of tax depreciation allowances and negative gearing.
   The speaker even showed us how to do it.
   Knowing that it is really the land and not the house that matters buy a mediocre house in a smart new suburb. The house will make no money at all but, courtesy of the renter and the ‘tax breaks’, it will at least pay for itself. But, as the new suburb fills with smart new houses with well-kept streets, lawns and gardens, and, consequently, as amenities increase, the land value will leap ahead. Page 3.    It was as if we have opened a secret bank account, a land account, one that will never be robbed. Having a house on the land pays the account-keeping fees!
   Our salesman even spoke with some pride about the fact that his house was the worst in the neighbourhood. And, of course, he did not live there. So much for his contribution to the community.
   One other thing - and it is remarkable. He claimed (I do not know how honestly) that he had used none of his own money. The money had come from the bank, from the renter, and from the Australian taxpayer.
   Of course there is nothing wrong in any of this, and quite extraordinarily ordinary people, one after the other, came forward to thank him for making them millionaires and to tell him how he had improved their self-esteem. He had helped make the world a better place!
   Or had he? And here we come more directly to our subject of housing affordability.
3. The Effects of ‘Rent-Seeking’
   Our salesman was encouraging us to undertake certain economic activities, activities doubtless called rent-seeking that add to the wealth of some individuals. But do they add to the wealth of the community as a whole? Page 4.    I surmise that, in a properly run society, anyone who makes a million dollars over, say, a six or seven year period (and some had), will have made a very significant contribution to society. So let us ask the persons in our story what they had done. They had borrowed funds, and bought and sold houses. So their contribution to society seems to have been to exchange titles to property. That does not seem to be much of a contribution.
   You might say that I have missed the point. The fact that their activities are rewarded by government by ‘tax breaks’ shows that this is an activity that ought to be encouraged. We do tend to look at the matter that way and, indeed, that is one way to look at it. But there is another way.
   Remember the house was already there. So they had not increased the stock of housing. What they did was to buy the house and leave it empty until someone who wanted to live there paid the rent they demanded to get access to it. The trick here seems to be create an obstacle, then demand money to remove it!
   These people entered the housing market when they did not need accommodation. They increased the demand for houses and the demand for housing finance. So their efforts helped raise the cost of housing; that is, the cost of housing land and the cost of housing finance. Forcing up property prices and interest rates does not sound much like a contribution either. Page 5.    My intention is not, maliciously, to heap criticism on a group of investors who have legally and courageously taken risks to better their own condition.
   My intention has been to highlight what is an obvious structural weakness in the housing market.
   This weakness is that presently the housing market encourages rent-seekers to compete with both genuine home buyers and genuine investors.
   Confirmation that this is the wrong way to do things is given by the economics of this activity. It makes nonsense out of the laws of supply and demand. We might remember that for a long time the Reserve Bank deferred raising interest rates. Its Governor was well aware of a growing “bubble” in the housing market but he delayed applying the brakes to this rent-seeking activity. This was because he saw that raising interest rates would also stifle useful investment. In other words what was going to stop this harmful activity would harm useful activity as well. This is the kind of dilemma that policy-makers face when they confront rent-seeking.
   The dilemma is based upon the fact that investment in land seems to work quite contrarily to other investment. Normally, when prices for a commodity go up, increasing demand causes the supply of that commodity to expand. But, when the price of land begins to move upward, supply tends to freeze. The reason, of course, is that everyone is tempted to hold onto property, expecting the price to go even higher. In short, with land, increasing demand reduces the supply! Page 6.    One other thing: this increasing price which, might for ordinary goods and services cause demand to slacken, actually causes demand for land to increase. This causes a more rapid escalation in land values. The reason is again obvious. The rise in land price is now so obvious that the general public are lured into investing. So we have increasing demand as well as falling supply. The “bubble” is a speculative value; that is, its value is far beyond the value of its location.
   We might indeed say that something is very wrong with the land market. But what is it that is wrong?
4. Not ‘Housing’ but Land
   You may have noticed that I have talked of land when, ordinarily we talk of housing. But, remember, houses depreciate. If we talked less about housing and more about land we might begin to better analyse housing affordability.
   Let us take this analysis further. It is land that appreciates in value and not houses. So, many who can afford to, prefer to hold valuable land vacant. That reduces the supply of serviced land and increases its price. It also increases the cost of supplying those services.
   So new home buyers invest in relatively unserviced land around the edge of the city or in satellite towns and councils extort development levies from them under the so-called user-pays principle. That again adds to already high prices for land. Page 7.    We may call these places commuter suburbs. Denied land closer to the centre these new home buyers live far away from relatives and old friends. More to the point they are often far from their jobs. There, time and money is wasted commuting. This fragmented life is not good for families. That and the financial pressure of excessive mortgages can often destroy marriages.
   With two or even three jobs needed to keep abreast of the mortgage and so much of their disposable income spoken for, child-bearing is postponed or abortions increase. These families have a home but too little disposable income left to furnish it. Thus, they tend to live on credit. The relation between credit-card debt and mortgage debt is too little appreciated.
5. Do We Want Affordable Housing?
   But let us stop complaining and protesting. What we seem to want by being here is to make housing more affordable.
   So let us turn first to the experts. A prestigious inquiry was held in Canberra in June, 2006. It was called the National Summit on Housing Affordability. Symbolically, it was held at old Parliament House. Page 8.    Unfortunately, like all previous inquiries, this one gave us no answers. It called for a new Federal Department of Housing to keep statistics and to set “benchmarks” and a Five Year Plan (would that solve anything?). It called for national leadership (but was not this Summit supposed to give that?). It called for ‘tax breaks’ for private investors (as if that was not part of the problem); it called for more infrastructure and for what it called a “more supportive economic environment” (but that would only raise land prices); and it called for another inquiry.
   Curiously it called its report A Call for Action. That was a perfect disguise for the fact that it had failed itself to take action. In other words, the experts called on the government to do something while the government called on the experts to do something!
   So let us start from scratch. What is the problem? What we have already discussed shows us what it is. It is that there is a chronic under-supply of land that, periodically, becomes acute, leading to excessively high prices for land. At this time we have inquiries.
   But when we state the problem this way we come to an ominous conclusion. We see that why the problem will not be solved is that we like rising prices for land. We just do not want action that will once and for all reduce the price of land.
   For that reason the recent Summit virtually turned the inquiry into a welfare issue. It gave the term affordable housing a new meaning. It became housing for the poor. That was a safer issue to address and something could be done about that problem. Government could create more public housing and more ‘tax breaks’ could be given to encourage private investment. Page 9    Take note, as a society we greet rising land prices as good news, while we see falls in the price of residential land as disastrous. As a society we hold solidly to the interests of the “winners”, property-owners, and not to those of the underdogs.
   In one sense we need go no further. We just do not want to make housing more affordable!
9. Increasing Land Supply
   But, treating the matter as a hypothetical, what would we do if we were really serious about increasing the supply of land?
   Funnily enough we are very serious about increasing the supply of labour and the supply of capital. But, without increasing the supply of land, the effect of policies to increase the supply of labour and the supply of capital can only be to further increase the price of land. What else?
   So far we have treated land unaffordability as a single issue. It is really two issues. There is the long-term problem of a tendency of land values to rise, and there is the short-term problem.
   The short-term problem is due to speculative “bubbles”. The long-term problem is due to the fact that the on-going rise in population and increases in economic efficiencies create rises in land values. It is that long-term problem which causes the short-term problem of speculation. Page 10.    You might have noticed that I have said that the growth of the economy is the long-term problem. That might seem silly. It is bizarre, but it is nonetheless true, that progress itself is the most serious cause of what we call housing unaffordability.
   Mortgages have now been extended from 25 years to 30 years and, soon it is envisaged there will be 50 year mortgages. To repeat: something must be rotten in the land market when progress itself causes it to break down.
   It seems like we are expecting the problem to get worse. But let us continue our analysis.
10. Land Values as Public Revenue
   We got to the point of saying the obvious: that rising population and economic improvement are the driving forces behind the upward movement in land values. A speculator in land values knows that proposition is indisputable.
   But the problem of land unaffordability is not unresolvable. We only like to make it look like that. All we really need to do is to look at the problem from a community viewpoint rather than from a personal viewpoint. To do that all we need to do is to do something quite horrid by the norms of modern economics, we need to replace a selfish view of the issue by a moral view.
   Justice requires that we see that land values be returned to those who produce them. And that is the community. It alone has a moral right to land values and it alone needs the moral courage to take them. Page 11.    Let me put this another way. We produce land values and we suffer the effects of not collecting it. If we adopted a more principled way of dealing with land we would make the land market work more like other markets. For instance, the only ones buying land would be those who wanted to use it. Speculation would vanish. Owners of productive land would release it for use. There would not be, at least in the foreseeable future, any shortage of land, any failure of supply.
   Revenue generated by community growth would be spent upon public services. Infrastructure would then stop being extorted by development levies from unwilling developers and home buyers.
   You might say that we as a community would be like a vast company that ‘ploughed back’ part of it earnings in services that would enable further growth while, at the same time, it paid its individual share-holders a citizen’s dividend. It really is so easy to have abundance and happiness but it is only just that we must deserve it!
§ § §
A PUBLICATION OF - THE ASSOCIATION FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT, NSW, Australia
TELEPHONE (02) 4455 7880 - FAX (02) 4455 7881
The magazine Good Government, $20 ($14 if unwaged) to P.O. Box 251, Ulladulla, NSW, 2539
E-MAIL: goodgov@westnet.com.au - INTERNET: www.associationforgoodgov.org.au
[The original Page Numbers of the talk are shown above for reference, although in Perth a shrinkage from 11 pages to 4 was effected by reducing the margins and the font size and switching to Times New Roman, to save paper and costs.]
Reproduced by: GEORGIST EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Inc)
2 Plain Street, East Perth, Western Australia, 6004
Tel. +61 (0) 8 9221 1973, or 9343 9532
www.multiline.com.au/~georgist

Bush Must Go

 
Only Impeachment Can Stop Him
   Information Clearing House (USA), www.information clearinghouse. info/article 16175.htm , By Paul Craig Roberts, Jan/ 15/ 2007
   UNITED STATES: When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the US has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state in the US?
   Americans don't have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush's "surge" speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.
   The "surge" gives Congress, the media, and the foreign policy establishment something to debate and oppose, while Bush sets his plans in motion to orchestrate a war with Iran. Suddenly, we are hearing Bush regime propaganda that there are Iranian networks operating within Iraq that are working with the Iraqi insurgency and killing US troops.
   This assertion is a lie and preposterous on its face. Iranian Shi'ites are not going to arm Iraqi Sunnis, who are more focused on killing Iraqi Shi'ites allied with Iran than on killing US troops. If the Iranians wanted to cause the US trouble in Iraq, they would encourage Iraqi Shi'ites to join the insurgency against US forces. An insurgency drawn from 80% of the Iraqi population would overwhelm the US forces.
   CBS reports that the news organization has been told by US officials "that American forces have begun an aggressive and mostly secret ground campaign against networks of Iranians that had been operating with virtual impunity inside Iraq." To manufacture evidence in behalf of this lie to feed to the gullible American public, US forces invaded an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and kidnapped 5 consulate officials, claiming the Iranians were part of plans "to kill Americans." In typical Orwellian fashion, Secretary of State Condi Rice described Bush's aggression against Iran as designed to confront Tehran's aggression.
   Iraqi government officials in the Kurdish province and the Iraqi foreign minister have refused to go along with Bush's propaganda ploy. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced that the Iranian officials were no threat and were working in a liaison office that had Iraqi government approval and was in the process of being elevated into a consulate.
   The Iraqi foreign minister said that US troops tried to seize more innocent people at the Irbil airport but were prevented by Kurdish troops.
   The Kurds, of course, have been allies of the US forces, but Bush is willing to alienate the Kurds in the interest of provoking a war with Iran.
   If Bush is unable to orchestrate war with Iran directly, he will orchestrate war indirectly by having US troops attack Iraqi Shi'ite militias. Bush has already given orders for US troops to attack the Iraqi Shi'ite militias, who oppose the Sunnis and have not been part of the insurgency. Obviously, once Bush can get US troops in open warfare with Iraqi Shi'ites, the situation for US troops in Iraq will quickly go down hill. Bush will be able to blame Iranian Shi'ites for arming Iraqi Shi'ites that he can say are killing US troops.
   Bush has also ordered the Persian Gulf to be congested with TWO US aircraft carrier attack groups. There is no military or diplomatic reason for even one attack group to be in the Persian Gulf. If Bush fails to orchestrate a war with Iran by kidnapping its officials or by attacking Shi'ite militias, he can orchestrate an event like the Tonkin Gulf incident or have the Israelis pull another USS Liberty incident and blame the Iranians.
   The Tonkin Gulf incident was used by the Johnson administration to deceive Congress and to involve the US in the Vietnam war. Johnson alleged a North Vietnamese attack on US warships.
   In 1967 Israel attacked and destroyed the US intelligence ship Liberty, because Liberty's crew had picked up proof that Israel had initiated the war with Egypt and intended to attack Syria the next day ( http://www. lewrockwell. com/orig/ margolis12. html ). Some have speculated that Israelis hoped their attack on the Liberty could be blamed on Egypt and used to draw the US into the war against Egypt.
   In 2003 the Moorer Commission [see http://www. ussliberty. org/report/ report.pdf and http://www. ussliberty. org/moorer findings.htm ], headed by Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, concluded:
   "That in attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States."
   "That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty."
   "the Captain and surviving crew members were later threatened with court-martial, imprisonment or worse if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government."
   "That due to the influence of Israel's powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people."
   "That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel's interests when they conflict with American interests."
   On the 30th anniversary of Israel's destruction of the Liberty, Admiral Moorer said that Israel attacked the Liberty because Israel knew that the intelligence ship could intercept Israel's plans to seize the Golan Heights from Syria, an act of Israeli aggression to which the US government was opposed. Admiral Moorer said, "I believe Moshe Dayan concluded that he could prevent Washington from becoming aware of what Israel was up to by destroying the primary source of acquiring that information--the US Liberty. Moorer reports that after a 25 minute air attack "that pounded the Liberty with bombs, rockets, napalm and machine gun fire … three Israeli torpedo boats closed in for the kill … the torpedo boats' machine guns also were turned on life rafts that were deployed into the Mediterranean as well as those few on deck that had escaped damage."
   Admiral Moorer says, "What is so chilling and cold-blooded, of course, is that they [Israel] could kill as many Americans as they did in confidence that Washington would cooperate in quelling any public outcry." [ see http://www. ussliberty.org/ moorer3.htm ]
   The US invasion of Iraq and the looming US attack on Iran are proof that Israel has even more power over the White House today.
   Bush has many ways to widen his war in the Middle East. His brutal aggression against Somalia has largely escaped criticism for the war crime that it is. On January 11 the US National Intelligence Director told Congress that Hezbollah in Lebanon may be the next US threat. Just as he lied to the entire world about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, Bush is lying about Iran. Bush and the neoconservatives are frantic for war with Iran to get underway before the US Congress forces a US withdrawal from the failed adventure in Iraq.
   Bush's entire "war on terror" is based on lies. The Bush Regime, desperate to keep its lies covered up, is now trying to prevent American law firms from defending the Guantanamo detainees. The Bush Regime is fearful that Americans will learn that the detainees are not terrorists but props in the regime's orchestrated "terror war."
   On January 13 the New York Times (editorial) said that "Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, tried to rally American corporations to stop doing business with law firms that represent inmates of the Guantanamo internment camp." Stimson alleged that it was "shocking" that American law firms were "representing detainees down there." He suggested that when corporate America got word of if, "those C.E.O.'s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms. We want to watch that play out."
   The only reason for the Bush Regime's policy of indefinite detention without charges is that it has no charges to bring. The detainees are not terrorists. They are the Bush Regime's props in a fake war that serves as cover for the Regime's hegemonic policy in the Middle East.
   The only action that can stop Bush is for both the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate to call on the White House, tell Bush they know what he is up to and that they will not fall for it a second time. The congressional leadership must tell Bush that if he does not immediately desist, he will be impeached and convicted before the week is out. Can a congressional leadership that lives in fear of the Israel Lobby perform this task?
   All the rest is penny-ante. Revoking the Iraqi War Resolution as Rep. Sam Farr has proposed or requiring Bush to obtain congressional authorization prior to any US attack on Iran simply lets Bush and his Federalist Society apologists for executive dictatorship claim he has commander-in-chief powers and proceed with his planned aggression. Cutting off funding is not itself enough as Bush can raid other budgets. Non-binding resolutions of disapproval are meaningless to a president who doesn't care what anyone else thinks.
   Nothing can stop the criminal Bush from instituting wider war in the Middle East that could become a catastrophic world war except an unequivocal statement from Congress that he will be impeached.
   Bush has made the US into a colony of Israel. The US is incurring massive debt and loss of both life and reputation in order to silence Muslim opposition to Israel's theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights. That is what the "war on terror" is about.

Principles For Those Seeking Social Justice

Richard Giles, talk in Perth, WA, Australia, Tue., Jan. 16th, 2007
A publication of the Association for Good Government, Sydney
www.associationforgoodgov.org.au    Suddenly awake and momentarily revolted by hearing of some injustice many people look around for answers. But it is only for a short while. Then, comforted by the thought “It’s sad but that is the way things are” they turn over and go back to sleep again. I presume that we are here because we think we can do better than this …
   The title of this course is Principles for Those Seeking Social Justice. That title suggests two questions. What principles? And will principles help?
WILL PRINCIPLES HELP?
   Principles have certainly solved technical problems.
   We have made great technical progress for an obvious reason. We have realised that everything is under physical law and we have discovered and applied these physical laws. But our civilization is faced with extinction because we have failed to discover and apply another set of laws, those to do with the regulation of society.
   The quickest way to reach a solution is to find and then apply the relevant principle. Some of us did it at school in Geometry using the principles enunciated by Euclid.
   These laws governing our behaviour are normally called social and moral laws. Sometimes we think of morality as something to make us “better persons”. But moral laws are more important than that. Moral laws make societies sound and healthy … Page 2. WHAT PRINCIPLES?
   What rule or principle do we think is the most basic moral principle that we know? In other words, if we had to revert to a moral principle to apply to a social problem what would it be? …
   Many people would say it was the Golden Rule. This traditionally is stated as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. In the Bible it is stated in Matthew (7:12) as “Therefore all things whatsoever we would that men should do unto you, do ye even to them: for this is the law and the prophets”.
   Do we agree that this is the principle upon which to base just or equal relationships? …
WHOSE RIGHTS?
   But what are the “things … ye would that men should do to you”? Thomas Jefferson suggests what they are in the American Declaration of Independence in very broad terms.
   “We hold these truths to be self-evident- that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness …”
   If asked for the “things … ye would that men should to you” we could very well answer “We want to live, to live freely, and to be happy”. We feel that we have a right to satisfy those desires. But, for this to happen, do you agree that we have to be willing to give the same right to others? … Page 3.    A recent incident may illustrate this. A ferry capsized off a Greek island. A group of survivors found themselves in a lifeboat. At one end of the boat several men believing there were too many in the boat began to panic. They were threatening an all-out brawl. At the other end were several women when they spied a man in the water swimming towards the boat. The men fearful and insecure screamed that he was not to come on board. But one woman grabbed his arm while another called out that she was not going to let go. The women however lacked the strength to haul the man aboard. Finally, the men relented and dragged him into the lifeboat. The woman interviewed said that a decision had to be made when everyone first came aboard. Was it to be each man for himself or were they all going to co-operate?
   It is like that in the economy. Either our economics is going to be a study of how to get as much as possible for oneself or it is going to be a study of how to add to the wealth of the community as a whole.
   In Roman Times some emperors capriously took the lives of those around them. It was not long before, in one way or another, they themselves were murdered. You might be able to think of other examples …
   It therefore becomes important to secure, not just my rights, but everyone’s rights. That is certainly the case if we are seeking social justice. Thomas Jefferson lays down this as the basic obligation of government. He writes “that to secure these (equal) rights, governments are instituted among men …”. Page 4.    Just imagine the kind of society we would have were government to do this; that is, to institute equal rights for everyone. The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu describes such a government as “but a shadowy presence”. It would practically not exist, at least it would not exist as an omnipotent coercive force …
HOW FAR ARE WE FROM SUCH A SOCIETY?
   You might say that we are a long way from such a society but that is not so. We are social beings. We are equipped quite naturally to live harmoniously with others.
   Think of the everyday situations in which we find ourselves: at parties, on buses or trains, walking along the street or in a park, organising the washing up, driving a car, attending a lecture or meeting; we could go on and on. Do we agree that most of the time we live harmoniously with others? …
   True, we can complain about isolated incidents but generally, we would have to say, we do preserve some kind of equality in our relationships. Let us face it, if we did not life would be impossible. Well, is it impossible? …
UNEQUAL RELATIONSHIPS
   Yet it is only too true that marriages, friendships, partnerships, singing groups, relations between family members can collapse, often because they involve unequal relationships. Page 5.    But there are larger relationships than these. There is war between nations. There is civil strife between classes or religions or races. Unequal relations in these cases is the stuff of social injustice. In other words, social injustice is institutionalised as unequal relationships between groups.
   The present furore over industrial relations is founded upon the perception that this legislation is going to produce unequal relationships between employers and employees. Do you agree? …
   Recently a letter was discovered dating from 1893. In it a mine manager announced a reduction in wages to his workers in these terms.
   “It is, as it appears to me, only fair to afford you an opportunity of obtaining better pay elsewhere, and this is my reason for giving you a month’s notice (of the pay reduction). You will not inconvenience me much by leaving, as I am simply beset with men begging for employment at any price, and I think I know where to lay my hands on what I want if you leave”.
   Does this old letter sound familiar? …
   If this letter is familiar then the unequal relationship it portrays is also familiar even though the letter was written more than one hundred years ago. But is this unequal relationship only a hundred years old? …
   Of course it has lasted much longer. In that time how many have experienced this injustice? … Page 6. HOW DO WE RESOLVE THIS UNEQUAL RELATIONSHIP?
   Apparently, nothing over this long period has really radically changed this kind of relationship. Then will future legislation promised now end it? …
   But there is another aspect. Trade union organisers and Labor politicians promise to abolish the recent changes in industrial laws. Their plans, however, seem to be nothing more than to use an even stronger force to coerce employers. This is the State. We are again looking at an unequal relationship, unequal rights.
   Is this the same as giving equal rights? …
   So, even if support this legal remedy maybe we have to admit that it is a second best solution. It sounds a little artificial. It sounds like coercion is being used to protect one party form the other. Do you agree that a more ideal solution would be find what is unequal in the rights of worker and employer and resolve that? …
   One objection to this could be that the longevity of this inequality must indicate that it is natural. But then we are back to the way we started: we are throwing up our hands and accepting injustice … . . . . . . . Page 7. UNEQUAL RELATIONSHIPS ANALYSED
   It looks like we have to analyse this employer-employee relationship.
   This relationship may be easier to see if we first do a little economic analysis. Three causes or factors lie behind production. They are called factors of production. These factors are land, labour, and capital. All these factors gain returns. Land receives rent; the labourer receives wages; and the capitalist receives interest or profit.
   Let us see these factors in action in a simple situation. That is the case of the share-cropper. A share-cropper is a tenant farmer who pays his landlord part of this crop in rent. In some cases the landlord supplies seed, tools, and farm buildings. So, while we see him as a landlord he is both a landlord and a capitalist.
   It is common for a share-cropper to get the worst end of the bargain. His rent in the worst cases can amount to half his crop. That might seem a trifle unfair. He is the victim of an unequal relationship. But which right is unequal? Let us see.
   The landlord has a right to the farm land and to the farm capital. But which right gives him the greater power over the share-cropper? …
   We can put that question another way. What represents the greater loss and trouble to the farmer the loss of the capital or the loss of the land? … Page 8.    Undesirable as the loss of buildings, tools, and seed might be the loss of the land will prevent his having either any land or any capital. The loss of the land is the greater loss.
   Now, had the landlord chosen he may have made the share-cropper into a farm labourer; that is, employed him to grow the crop. Would his employment position have been essentially any different? …
   So, now we have an employer-employee relationship. Has that changed our conclusion that the right to the land, carrying with it the threat of eviction, is a more powerful right to the farm labourer than the right to the farm capital? …
   It really has not.
   The greatest inequality of rights stems from the fact that one owns the land and the other does not. Again, would the situation be any different were the person exercising this power not the landlord but his steward or agent? …
   It really would make no difference to the worker whether the owner or his steward exercised the power to evict him …
   Now let us turn to a case that seems to be far more complex. Let us take a worker in a factory. His employer is a corporation. Its agent is the Chief Executive Officer whom the worker might never have seen. The most obvious feature of the factory may be the acres of buildings and complex machinery or capital. Page 9.    But does the fact of this predominant appearance of capital really change the basic relationship between employer and employee? …
   While we might take little notice of this fact the corporation is nonetheless a landowner. In fact, corporations own far more land than individuals. They are the largest urban landowners. Their agents exercise the rights of landowners. One of those rights is the power to evict.
   You might remember the letter from the mine manager to his workers (p.5). The threat he conveys is that, if they do not accept a reduction in pay, they will be dismissed. That is they will be evicted from the mine site. The threat is not simply to take away the tools that the workers use; it is to remove them from the workplace.
   A survey of American workers has revealed a surprising fact. This is that 43% of American workers do not take annual holidays. Why don’t they take annual holidays? …
   We live amid miles of concrete, capital one could say. At work land is invisible but, arguably, it remains vitally important. Why has the Landlord and Tenant Act grown so enormous? …
   One answer is that, recently, we have tried to protect the tenant from the greater power of the landlord. We have tried to do it by coercion. Page 10. CORRECTING UNEQUAL RELATIONSHIPS
   At the moment we cannot accept with any certainty that it is the power of landownership that gives the greater bargaining power to employers.
   So, to continue, let us proceed by What if …? That is, let us hypothesise that the greater bargaining power of the employer is because he owns rights to industrial land and the worker does not.
   Let us try to correct this. We need not aim to make everyone into an employer. This would mean that everyone would become a capitalist. Clearly, in our society that is not possible. Instead, let us aim to increase the number of employers including the self-employed. How would that help workers? …
   Clearly, if an inequality of land rights is the problem, to correct it we need to make our rights in land equal.
   To help us achieve this let us turn to a social law. A social law is one that results from many people seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at the same time. It is a law of large numbers.
   We are not only land animals. We are social animals. We congregate together and we co-operate. Wherever we congregate together and co-operate production is easier and what we produce is more sophisticated.
   What we do not realise is that when we do congregate and co-operate we add value to land. To help this co-operation along we build all kinds of infrastructure. We build highways and railways, ports and power stations. Real estate agents know that location is the most important element in the value of land. Page 11.    The result is that while most land in cities is covered in concrete making it worthless as farmland the value of land in cities varies enormously. This is the result of a social law: the law that makes human beings live together and co-operate. Do we see this? …
   Now, we are quite used to paying more for better locations. We do it when we go to the theatre, or to a concert, to a sporting event, or when we buy a house. But, if we leave that value in the hands of private individuals or corporations we have not changed anything. Some are going to be enormously wealthy and powerful because they own rights to valuable land while the majority who lack land rights will continue to be less powerful and poorer.
   So what can be done? …
   The adjustment that seems to be suggested by our discussion is one to our institution of private property in land. Moral law suggests to us that our collective desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness may best be satisfied by equal rights.
   Social law suggests to us that the more we come together and co-operate the more we will produce. One important effect of this is to make some land in cities more valuable than other land.
   The problem is how to achieve equal rights in land of unequal value. The answer to that problem seems clear enough. We as a community must assert a right, not to the land itself, but to the value of land. Plainly, this suggestion needs careful consideration.

---

-- Richard Giles, of N.S.W., talk in Perth, January 16th, 2007
A PUBLICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT
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§ § §
[The original Page Numbers of the talk are shown above for reference, although in Perth a shrinkage from 11 pages to 5 was effected by reducing the margins and the font size and switching to Times New Roman, to save paper and costs. The article Who was Henry George? was appended to the original, but in Perth has been separated.]
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WHO WAS
HENRY GEORGE?

   Who wrote the most popular book on economics ever written? Which American's funeral rivalled that of Abraham Lincoln's? Did you know that Progress and Poverty sold over two million copies prior to 1914? Did you know that over 50,000 people lined up to pass by the body of Henry George during the seven hours it lay in state, and that more than 100,000 lined the streets along the path of his funeral procession? The funeral procession was compared in size and spontaneous reverence to that of Abraham Lincoln.
   Henry George was born September 2, 1839, in Philadelphia and died in New York on October 29, 1897. He lived most of his life in San Francisco as a typesetter, journalist, editor and managing editor. At fourteen he left school and went to sea; at twenty-two, unemployed and faced with going back to sea for good and losing the girl he loved, he proposed marriage. Although penniless he was accepted with the solemn words, "If you are willing to undertake the responsibilities of marriage, I will marry you". The couple eloped and he married in borrowed clothes. Although he tried all kinds of jobs they remained poor. George was forced to beg $5 for food for his starving wife and second baby.
   In 1865 his fortunes changed when he began to write and find publishers. Already suspicious of the effects of progress on the poor, he was "appalled and tormented" by the extremes of wealth and poverty he saw in New York, America's leading city. Back in California he formed the opinion that poverty was caused by the monopoly of natural opportunities, in other words the monopoly of land. But this view was immeasurably refined by a giant insight when, riding well out of Oakland one day in 1869, he strayed onto the path of the projected Sacramento-Oakland railroad.
   For something to say he asked a passerby how much land was selling for. He was told it was selling for more than $1000 an acre. As he told it some twenty-four years later, it was then that he realised what became of progress. Rent took it! Progress increased the value of land but not wages.
   Still thinking in terms of California he wrote a pamphlet in 1871 advocating a single tax on land values to give to producers their full wages, to Government its natural revenue, and to the people their right to land.
   He next turned his theory to an explanation of the depression gripping the United States after 1873. It was this essay which, expanded into a study of civilization, and making use of the Ricardian concept of economic rent, showed how production was divided between rent and wages, how progress, whatever its form, increased the relative proportion of rent to wages; and how the monopoly of land reduced wages to a customary minimum, produced trade depressions, and suggested false ideas about the nature of economics and the capacity of the earth to provide for its inhabitants. The story goes that, the night in March, 1879 he completed Progress and Poverty, he fell to his knees in tears to thank God for what he had seen and for what he had been allowed to do for humanity.
   With the help of a friend in the printing business who provided the plates, he printed an author's edition of 500 copies. These plates, given to the publishers Appletons of New York, were the basis of a regular edition to 1880, and Henry George moved to New York in the same year.
   The story of one of George's closest associates, Louis Post, illustrates the often accidental paths by which people come to the ideas of this book. Post, a New York journalist, took a cursory look at (The Irish) Land Question published by George in 1881, and dashed off an editorial "demolishing" its main idea. Land monopoly might be bad, he wrote, but land tax would simply be passed onto tenants.
   The quality of the book had nonetheless impressed upon him a lingering doubt, so he sent off the editorial to George asking for a comment. Progress and Poverty came back. He read the book in its entirety, interrupted only by some few hours of sleep.
   He was convinced, even though he could not remember having seen the answer to his question. Later on, in conversation with a friend, he praised George's land tax - and was immediately confronted with his own question. "Landowners will raise rents, and so recover your land-value tax from their tenants".
   The doubt came back; but he pressed forward. Taking a new tax on the production of sugar as an example, he asked what would happen to its price. His friend replied that the tax would increase the price of sugar, just as a land tax would increase the price of land. This time he was confused; but he went on. He suggested, and his friend agreed, that this tax on sugar must increase its cost of production and, where the sugar could not be sold at the increased price, decrease its supply. He then found himself asking his friend whether "a heavy land tax" would decrease the supply of land or whether it would actually make it more plentiful. His friend was puzzled, and Post found himself suggesting that this tax had not added to the cost of producing land, but that it had added to the cost of holding it out of use. He later found much the same answer tucked away in Progress and Poverty.
   With Post's support the book was serialised in a New York daily and, in 1883, George was commissioned to write a series of articles on current problems, later collectively printed as Social Problems. In 1885 he wrote the third of his most popular books, Protection or Free Trade? - a work which, while persuasively arguing for free trade, shows why workers legitimately doubt that it raises wages. (Unfortunately, George had to write it twice after a cleaning lady had thrown out his original manuscript in the rubbish!)
   George was of course now a public figure. He made lecture tours of Great Britain, The United States, and even Australia (April to June, 1890) - his wife was Australian. In Australia the rich took to free trade, but it did not excite workers, who were protectionists. On the other hand, land tax won him the support of workers but alienated the rich. Nonetheless, press reports recorded his powers as an orator.
   While noting his slow, almost hesitant start, the Brisbane Courier and Sydney Echo for example showed amazement at his effortless power to form polished sentences, and to hold an audience of all shades of opinion upon the subject of economics for two hours without using any notes. (The hesitant start can be explained by his nervousness, and his habit of speaking extemporarily).
   Back in America he helped form Land and Labor clubs and continued to edit a journal the Standard (until 1892). He also continued to write. Without being named his main ideas were attacked in several placed by the Papal encyclical Rerum Novarum whose centenary was celebrated in 1991. His response was an open letter to Pope Leo XIII, The Condition of Labour, perhaps the most readable and straight-forward outline of his views.
   At the height of his popularity, in 1886, he was nominated by labour organisations and liberals for Mayor of New York. Tammany Hall advised all respectable citizens to "save society" from the violent revolution George planned if he were elected. As it happened George came second, behind the Democrat candidate but ahead of the Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. Without his own scrutineers it was said that on election day many of George's votes had sailed down the Hudson! It was during this campaign that his most energetic supporter, Father McGlynn, was warned by his superior not to make public speeches in favour of George's ideas. When he persisted he was excommunicated. Dr. McGlynn was reinstated in 1892, possibly showing that The Condition of Labour had some effect.
   In 1890, soon after the gruelling three months tour of Australia, George was struck down by aphasia. One result was that he retired to his project to write a primer on economics. Uncompleted at his death in 1897 The Science of Political Economy is far from a primer. Instead it carried forward his thinking, especially about land value which he now more thoroughly identified as an antisocial power to deny access to land.
   His physical weakness continued. Against the advice of his doctor and friends in early October, 1897, he once again accepted the nomination of organised labour to stand for Mayor of New York. Four or five public speeches each day, often to immense crowds of working people, scattered his last physical resources. The opening words of his last speech, made on October 28 on the eve of the election, were only begun after he had wandered silently and uncertainly for some time about the stage. He died the next day. § § §
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AWB chiefs reap $6.5m bonanza

 
   The West Australian, by SHANE WRIGHT, ECONOMICS EDITOR, pp 1 and 4, Thursday, January 18, 2007
   AUSTRALIA: Five discredited former AWB executives reaped payments of $6.5 million from the wheat exporter last year, including golden handshakes of $2.65 million, even though four of them may face charges for their role in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.
   AWB's annual report, released yesterday, shows that former executive director Andrew Lindberg collected $1.4 million as a termination payment even though kickback payments by the company to the regime of Saddam Hussein took place on his watch.
   Mr Lindberg, who resigned last year and will not face charges out of the Cole inquiry into the Saddam kickbacks, was paid more than $3 million for just five months work.
   In 2005, he was paid $1.8 million, of which almost $900,000 was in performance bonuses.
   But four men who could face charges, including breaches of the Crimes Act and the Corporations Act, were also paid handsomely for their time with the company, and for leaving it.
   Former chief financial officer Paul Ingleby, who Justice Terence Cole found effectively approved the system of kickback payments, was paid $964,000 in 2006, including a $200,000 retention payment.
   In evidence to the Cole inquiry, Mr Ingleby revealed that he claimed the kickbacks to the former regime of Saddam Hussein as a company tax deduction.
   The Australian Taxation Office investigated but eventually found the claims were legitimate because Mr Cole did not rule that the payments amounted to bribery of foreign officials under Australian law.
   Mr Cole found Mr Ingleby approved the mechanism for paying the kickbacks, recommending he be investigated for possible criminal offences.
   Mr Cole said he could not accept AWB's former trading chief Peter Geary as a frank and truthful witness. But he was paid $572,000 for his work with the company.
   Mr Ingleby and Mr Geary could make hundreds of thousands of dollars more. They paid well below market price for thousands of AWB shares as part of a share rights issue made to them.
   AWB shares are currently worth $3.36, giving the two not only a paper profit but also access to the company's dividend stream.
   Former general manager of international sales Charles Stott was paid almost $1.4 million, including a $781,000 termination payment.
Discredited AWB chiefs paid $6.5m when they left
   And former in-house general counsel Jim Cooper was paid $643,000, including a $468,000 termination payout, before he left AWB on April 15 last year.
   The Cole report said Mr Cooper must have known that a complex debt recovery, referred to as the Tigris matter, was a sham.
   The payments cover the period stretching from the release of the initial United Nations report into the oil-for-food scandal and the Cole Commission hearings. Mr Cole's report was not released until late November.
   The task force examining Mr Cole's recommendations begins in Melbourne next week.
   WA Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey said that the share rights offer to Mr Ingleby and Mr Geary was particularly upsetting. "After the release of AWB's annual report for 2006, it is obvious that AWB continues to put their own interests ahead of the interest of wheat growers," he said.
   Shadow attorney-general Kelvin Thomson said every taxpayer and wheat grower should be shocked at the size of the payouts. #

UN director on bribery charges

    
   The West Australian, p 4, Thursday, January 18, 2007
   NEW YORK: The former director of the scandal-tainted UN oil-for-food program in Iraq has been charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit fraud in relation to the scheme.
   Former executive director Benoh Sevan, 69, and Ephraim Nadler, 79, a businessman and brother-in-law of former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, were named in an indictment in a US court yesterday.
   Mr Sevan is accused of receiving $204,700 in kickbacks from the government of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein through Mr Nadler.
   He faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted and Mr Nadler up to 112 years.
   "The allegations in this current indictment that the executive director of the very program that was created to provide humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people was involved in such a scheme demonstrates how pervasive the corruption was," prosecutor Michael Garcia said.
   A statement issued by Mr Sevan's US lawyer dismissed the allegations as "not only trivial, they are without basis".
   Mr Sevan resigned from the UN in August 2005 and criticised then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan for "sacrificing" him.

A Multi-Year History In Brief

 
   E-mail of January 23, 2007, said to derive from the David Icke website, which is www.david icke.com, received January 26, 2007
   18th May, 1967: Texas oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, using a sophisticated satellite technique to detect global deposits, discovers a huge oil source south of New Zealand in the Great South Basin.
   10th June, 1967: Hunt and New Zealand Finance Minister reach an agreement: Hunt will receive sole drilling rights and Muldoon will receive a $US100,000 non-repayable loan from Hunt's Placid Oil Co.
   8th September, 1967: Placid Oil granted drilling rights to the Great South Basin.
   10th May, 1968: Hawaiian meeting between Onassis and top lieutenants William Colby and Gerald Parsky to discuss establishment of a new front company in Australia - Australasian and Pacific Holdings Limited - to be managed by Michael Hand. Using Onassis-Rockefeller banks, Chase Manhattan and Shroders, Travelodge Management Ltd sets up another front to link the operations to the US.
   Onassis crowned head of the Mafia; Colby (head of CIA covert operations in S.E. Asia) ran the Onassis heroin operations in the Golden Triangle (Laos, Burma, Thailand) with 200 Green Beret mercenaries - i.e. the Phoenix Programme.
   Gerald Parsky deputy to ex-CIA/FBI Robert Maheu in the Howard Hughes organization, took orders from Onassis and was made responsible for laundering skim money from the Onassis casino operations in Las Vegas and the Bahamas.
   Mid-July, 1968: Placid Oil Co and the Seven Sisters (major oil companies) begin Great South Basin oil exploration - Hunt finances 45.5% of exploration costs, Gulf Oil 14.5%, Shell (US) 10%, B.P. Oil 10%, Standard Oil California 10%, Mobil 6.5% and Arco 6.5%.
   12th October, 1968: Hunt and Seven Sisters announce confirmation of new oil source comparable to the Alaskan North Slope - gas reserves estimated at 150 times larger than the Kapuni Field.
   Early 1969: Mafia consolidates its banking operations; David Rockefeller becomes Chairman of Chase Manhattan; Wriston at Citibank and Michele Sindona captures the Vatican Bank, Partnership Pacific launched by Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo and Bank of New South Wales.
   24th February, 1969: Onassis calls Council meeting in Washington to discuss strategy to monopolize the Great South Basin discovery. Council members included Nelson Rockefeller and John McCloy, who managed the Seven Sisters, and David Rockefeller, who managed the Mafia's banking operations.
   McCloy outlines the plan to capture all oil and mineral resources in Australia and N.Z.
   10th March, 1969: Parsky and Colby use Australasian and Pacific Holdings to set up a 'front' company in Australia. Using old banks - Mellon Bank and Pittsburgh National Bank - they buy control of near-bankrupt Industrial Equity Ltd (I.E.L.) managed by New Zealander Ron Brierly. 'Australasian and Pacific Holdings' 'consultant' Bob Seldon helps Michael Hand set up the new organization. Seldon took orders from Mellon and Pittsburgh National Banks, while Hand was directly responsible to Gerald Parsky and William Colby. Ron Brierly would take orders from Hand.
   24th July, 1969: New board established for I.E.L. includes Hand, Seldon, Ron Brierly, plus two Brierly associates - Frank Nugan and Bob Jones. Both are appointed consultants to Australasian and Pacific Holdings Ltd.
   Jones will help Brierly launder funds into real estate (Brierly/Jones Investments) while Seldon and Nugan will channel funds into oil and mineral resources through I.E.L.
   October 1969: Chase Manhattan begins new operation in Australia with National Bank Australasia and A.C. Goods Associates - Chase-NBA.
   J.C. Fletcher appointed chairman of Seven Sisters' company - British Petroleum (N.Z.).
   17th February 1970: Gerald Parsky sets up a new heroin-dollar laundry in Australia - Australian International Finance Corp - using the Irving Trust Co. New York.
   April 1970: Onassis, Rockefeller and the Seven Sisters begin setting up the shadow World Government using the Illuminati-controlled banks and the transnational corporations. In Melbourne they set up the Australian International Finance Corporation using:
* Irving Trust Co. N.Y. - linked to Shell Oil, Continental Oil, Phillips Petroleum.
* Crocker Citizens National - linked to Atlantic Richfield (Arco), Standard Oil of California which is Rockefeller-controlled.
* Bank of Montreal - Petro Canada, Penarctic Oils, Alberta Gas, Gulf Oil.
* Australia and New Zealand Bank (ANZ).
   Meantime,
   Japanese members of One World Government move into New Zealand, helped by Finance Minister R. Muldoon
   Mitsubishi and Mitsui make a profitable deal buying up rights to ironsands helped by Marcona Corp. (US) and Todd (Shell/BP/Todd)
   Todd rewarded with sole New Zealand franchise for Mitsubishi vehicles
   Muldoon helps Mitsui (Oji Paper Co) obtain a lucrative 320 million cubic foot Kiangaroa Forestry contract with Carter Holt
   November, 1970: Fletchers extend the Rockefeller Travelodge operation by buying control of New Zealand's largest travel company - Atlantic and Pacific Travel.
   Manufacturers' and Retailers' Acceptance Company (in 1970 changed to Marac): This firm specialises in leasing and factoring (buying debts at a discount). It also finances imports and exports.
   The major shareholders are: the Fletcher Group (38.0%), the Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd (24.7%), NIMU Insurance (7.7%), Phillips Electrical (3.8%), National Mutual Life Association (2.4%), New Zealand United Corporation (4.0%).
   The CBA is a partner in the supranational Euro-Pacific Corporation, the other partners being the Midland Bank (UK), the United California Bank (USA), Fuji (Japan) and Societe Generale de Banque (France).
   Early 1971: Onassis and Rockefeller begin global operation to buy influence for the One World Government concept. They use Lockheed, Northrop and Litton Industries 'agent' Adnan Khashoggi, to organize operations in the Middle East, Iran and Indonesia. I.C.I. set up $2.5 million slush fund to Australia and N.Z.
   Finance Minister Muldoon changes law to allow Mafia-controlled banks to begin operations in New Zealand. Links also made by N.Z.I. in preparation for:
Paxus control with Hong Kong and Shanghai;
Wells Fargo with Broadbank;
Chase Manhattan with General Finance;
Bank of America and Barclays with Fletchers and Renouf in New Zealand United Corp.
   All members of the Business Round Table Organization.
   Late 1971: Gulf Oil and their man Brierly begin organizing chains of Shell companies and dummy corporations to conceal their takeover operations of oil, gas and mineral resources and related industries such as vehicle franchises, vehicle spare parts and finance services - all part of the Seven Sisters' controlled car culture.
   To extend links to the US banking operations they buy control of I.S.A.S. (NSW) and I.S.A.S. (Qld), which hold sole franchise for construction and mining equipment produced by International Harvester Credit Co, which is part of Chase Manhattan Bank and associated with First National Bank Chicago (Chairman Sullivan also Executive Vice-President of Chase Manhattan), Continental Illinois (linked with CIA and Mafia Michele Sindona of Vatican Bank) and Rockefeller's Standard Oil of Indiana (AMOCO).
   I.S.A.S. (Qld) also has strategic holdings in North Flinders Mines, Flinders Petroleum, Apollo International Minerals.
   February 1972: Onassis and Rockefeller help associate Adnan Khashoggi buy the Security Pacific National Bank in California and take control of the United California Bank through CIA-linked Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Both banks used by Onassis and Khashoggi to funnel bribes and payoffs via the CIA's Deak Bank to captive Japanese and other crooked politicians. Security Pacific also used to 'launder' over $2 million for Nixon's re-election campaign. Khashoggi also buys 21% of Southern Pacific Properties, which is the major stockholder in Travelodge (Aust), thereby establishing direct links to New Zealand, and U.E.B. and Fletchers through its equity links with Travelodge (N.Z.).
   April 1972: Mafia banking operations expanded through New Hebrides with establishment of Australian International Ltd to finance Pacific development by the oil companies (Seven Sisters). Banks involved include Irving Trust NY, Bank of Montreal, Crocker International, Australia & N.Z. Bank and the Mitsubishi Bank, whose president, Nakamaru, is appointed Chairman.
   26th May, 1972: Gerald Parsky installs Michele Sindona as 'owner' of Franklin National Bank, helped by the Gambino Mafia family and David Kennedy - Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank and Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury.
   Pacific Basin Economic Council Conference in Wellington, NZ. Vice-President Shigeo Nagano also chairman of Nippon Steel and member of Onassis and other World Government organizations. Chairman of NZ sub-committee, J. Mowbray is also General Manager of the National Bank.
   Meanwhile, Michele Sindona, acting as the go-between for the Mafia and the CIA, was the conduit between US and European banks. Michele Sindona's Vatican Bank and associate Calvi's Abrosiano Bank was used to finance CIA neo-fascist Italian/Latin American operations through Licio Gelli's P2 Lodge, which helped to organize the 'death squads' of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. This aided the P2 members such as Klaus Barbie ('The Butcher of Lyons') and Jose Rega - organizer of the A.A.A. in Argentina.
   16th August, 1972: Gulf Oil associate Bob Seldon helps establish new banking operation, first NZ international banks include Bank of New Zealand, D.F.C. (Aust), N.Z.I., Morgan Guaranty Trust, Morgan Grenfel and S.F. Warburg.
   Fletchers begins expansion overseas with deals signed in Indonesia, Fiji and New Guinea.
   December 1972: Kirk elected Prime Minister of New Zealand.
   February, 1973: Gerald Parsky, William Colby, Michael Hand, Frank Nugan and Bob Seldon move to further consolidate the Mafia banking operations. In NZ they acquire 20% Fletcher subsidiary Marac, using the Security Pacific National Bank helped by Marac Corporate secretary Alan Hawkins.
   Frank Nugan and Michael Hand use Fletcher and Renouf and their NZ United Corporation to link with I.E.L. and Brierly Investments through cross-shareholding agreement.
   In Australia, the Nugan Hand Bank begins operations with 30% of the stock held by Australasian and Pacific Holdings (100% Chase Manhattan Bank), 25% by CIA's Air America (known as 'Air Opium'), 25% by South Pacific Properties and 20% held by Seldon, Nugan and Hand.
   The Irving Trust Bank's New York Branch establishes US links between the CIA and Nugan Hand, a worldwide network of 22 banks set up to:
a) 'launder' money from Onassis heroin operations in the Golden Triangle and Iran
b) as a CIA funnel to pro-US political parties in Europe and Latin America, including Colby's P2
c) a spying conduit for information from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand
d) finance arms smuggled to Libya, Indonesia, South America, Middle East and Rhodesia using the CIA's Edward Wilson
   Colby and Kissinger use key CIA and Naval Intelligence officers to oversee the operation, including Walter McDonald (former Deputy Director CIA), Dale Holmgren (Flight Service Manager CIA Civil Air Transport), Robert Jansen (former CIA Station Chief, Bangkok), etc.
   Heroin flown into Australia by CIA's Air America and trans-shipped to Onassis lieutenant in Florida, Santos Trafficante Jr, assisted by Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics officials and coordinated by CIA's Ray Cline.
   14th June, 1973: Inauguration of the Onassis shadow World Government - the Trilateral Commission. Includes over 200 members from the US, Europe and Japan - bankers, government officials, transnational corporations' top executives, trade unionists, etc. Of the world's largest corporations, 24 directly represented and dozens more through interlocking directorships.
   * Trilateralist strategy: monopolization of the world's resources, production facilities, labour technology, markets, transport and finance. These aims backed up by the US military and industrial complexes that are already controlled and backed up by the CIA.
   18th August, 1973: Ray Cline and Michael Hand meet in Adelaide to discuss CIA plan to establish spying operations in NZ.
   September 1973: Seagram's, with strong links to Chase Manhattan Bank of Montreal and Toronto Dominion Bank, buys 2,800 acres of prime land in Marlborough helped by Peter Maslen.
   17th February, 1974: Mafia sets up New Hebrides Bank - Commercial Pacific Trust Co (COMPAC). Banks include CBA, Europacific Finance Corporation, Trustee Executors and Agency Co, Fuji Bank, Toronto Dominion Bank, European Asian Bank and United California Bank, COMPAC to be used as a cover for heroin dollar laundering operations.
   26th February, 1974: Michael Hand meets Bob Jones in Wellington to implement plans for the CIA's new spying operation - countries targeted include France, Chile, West Germany and Israel.
   Using the Brierly/Jones Investment funnel, Jones buys building in Willeston Street which will be rented to France and Chile, another at Plimmer Steps to house West Germany and Israel.
   CIA will set up eavesdropping communications centre inside the Willeston Street building and another at 163 The Terrace which will link with equipment installed in the Plimmer Steps building. Four CIA technicians will run the whole operation.
   April 1974: Finance Minister Rowling appoints Ron Trotter to the Overseas Investment Commission, whose chairman, G. Lau, is also a member of the Todd Foundation (Shell/BP/Todd) investment board.
Whitlam and Kirk
   Mid-1974: Gough Whitlam and Norman Kirk begin a series of moves absolutely against the Mafia Trilateralists. Whitlam refuses to waive restrictions on overseas borrowings to finance Alwest Aluminium Consortium of Rupert Murdoch, BHP and R.J. Reynolds. Whitlam had also ended Vietnam War support, blocked uranium mining and wanted more control over US secret spy bases - e.g. Pine Gap.
   Kirk had introduced a new, tough Anti-Monopoly Bill and had tried to redistribute income from big companies to the labour force through price regulation and a wages policy.
   Kirk had also rejected plans to build a second aluminium smelter near Dunedin and was preparing the Petroleum Amendment Bill to give more control over New Zealand oil resources.
   Kirk had found out that Hunt Petroleum, drilling in the Great South Basin, had discovered a huge resource of oil comparable in size to the North Sea or Alaskan North Slope. Gas reserves alone now estimated at 30 times bigger than Kapuni and oil reserves of at least 20 billion barrels - enough for New Zealand to be self-sufficient for years.
   Oil companies completely hushed up these facts. To have announced a vast new oil source would probably mean a decline in world oil prices, which would not have allowed OPEC and Onassis plans for the Arabs to eventuate. N.Z. could be exploited at a later date, particularly since the North Sea operations were about to come on stream - Kirk was the last to hold out.
   September, 1974: According to CIA sources, Kirk was killed by the Trilateralists using Sodium Morphate. Rowling's first act as NZ Prime Minister was to withdraw Kirk's Anti-Monopoly Bill and the Petroleum Amendment Bill.
   Later, Rowling was to be rewarded with ambassadorship to Washington. Incidentally, the Shah of Iran was murdered the same way as Kirk on his arrival in the US.
   6th October, 1974: Ray Cline implements William Colby plan to oust Australian Prime Minister Whitlam. Nugan Hand Bank finances payoffs to Malcolm Fraser and other pro-US politicians. A joint bugging operation commences between CIA and ASIA.
   Rupert Murdoch, playing his part, uses his newspapers and television network to spread lies and misinformation. Whitlam, as well as refusing to waive restrictions on overseas borrowing to finance the aluminium consortium, had plans to ensure that all corporations were at least 50% Australian-owned. This interfered with the Seven Sisters' plans to build three oil refineries at Cape Northumberland in South Australia to exploit the Great South Basin discovery.
   December, 1974: Australian Governor-General John Kerr joins Ray Cline's payroll and received his first pay-off of $US200,000 credited to his account number 767748 at the Singapore branch of the Nugan Hand Bank.
   11th November, 1975: Governor-General Kerr sacks the Whitlam Government.
   August 1975: Rowling re-introduces unrecognizable Commerce Bill, designed to aid monopolization of the NZ economy and repeals the News Media Ownership Act, allowing more foreign ownership of NZ media. The new legislation does not define monopoly, competition or stipulate permissible maximum market share, or even ascertain what the public interest is - resulting in a sell-out to big business.
   December, 1975: Election battle between Rowling and Muldoon. Oil companies pour thousands of dollars into Muldoon's campaign via National Bank (NZ), whose general manager Mowbray is also a member of Todd Foundations; Investment Board Director Tudhope also Managing Director Shell Oil and Chairman Shell/BP/Todd. Muldoon wins.
   February, 1976: Muldoon implements pre-election secret agreement with the NZ Seven Sisters' oil representatives of Shell/BP/Todd for helping finance the National Party campaign.
   Muldoon removes the $3 per barrel oil levy for the New Zealand Refining Company, which increases the oil companies' profits by 100% at the taxpayers' expense and with all future oil prospecting licenses, the Government has the option to take 51% of any discovery without meeting exploration costs. This is designed to discourage further exploration, thereby keeping the lid on the Great South Basin discovery.
   Meanwhile, in Australia, new P.M. Malcolm Fraser reopens uranium mining and opens the way for takeover of mineral resources with big tax breaks for oil exploration, coal and mining.
   Muldoon returns a favor to the oil companies by arranging $US200 million loan for Maui Gas Development for Shell/BP/Todd.
   September, 1976: With captive politicians in place in both Australia and New Zealand, the Internationalists can now proceed with their strategy of takeover of the economy and exploitation of natural resources.
   "In New Zealand, the elimination of unnecessary competition is fundamental to a sound economy," Brierly says.
   Parksy and Colby use Brierly/Jones Investments as a vehicle to buy into A.B. Consolidated Holdings in New Zealand.
   Associate of R. Jones, Pat Goodman, is appointed 'consultant' of Australasian and Pacific Holdings.
   November, 1976: The Internationalists (Mafia) set up a NZ money 'funnel' using Brierley's City Realties. National Insurance Co acquires 33% of the stock. Largest stockholders in National Insurance are the US Firemen's Fund - Chairman and President Myron Du Bain also Vice Chairman of American Express (Amex). Chairman of I.E.L. linked International Harvester, Archie McCardell, also Amex Director. Amex linked with Chase Manhattan and seven Sisters' Texaco and Mobil. Du Bain also Director of CIA-linked United California Bank, which is a partner in Commercial Pacific Trust.
   To complete the money funnel, National Insurance becomes a stockholder in Chase Manhattan's Chase-NBA. Brierley's declared assets reach $100 million, with shareholder's capital of only $2.5 million - all cash acquisitions.
   3rd February, 1977: Parksy and Colby close down the Brierley/Jones Investment funnel and open up separate channels for Brierley and Jones. Jones will be supplied with 'laundered' funds via Sydney branch of the Nugan Hand Bank, while for Ron Brierley, Gerald Parsky uses Myron Du Bain, Dierctor of United California Bank and also chairman and president of the US Firemen's Fund, which are the largest stockholders in National Insurance (NZ). Funds to be 'laundered' via Chase Manhattan Bank through National Insurance to City Realty and via United California Bank through COMPAC (New Hebrides) to National Insurance and City Realties.
   To expand the Bierley/I.E.L. 'front', Parsky establishes Industrial Equity Pacific (Hong Kong).
   September 1977: Brierley's new holding company begins operations - A.B. Consolidated. H.W. Revell appointed Deputy Chairman and B. Hancox General Manager, while newly-appointed directors include S. Cushing, B. Judge, O. Gunn and P. Goodman, linked with Renouf, Fletcher and Papps through I.E.L./N.Z.U.C.
   * Strategy: To target and divide key sectors of the economy for takeover, exploitation and monopolization. Operations to extend to use Hong Kong facility, I.E.P. Fletchers to extend the Khashoggi/Rockefeller Travelodge operation by taking holdings in Vacation Hotels and Intercontinental Properties (Renouf Chairman).
   October, 1977: Muldoon and John Todd - Shell/BP/Todd - sign an agreement. NZ Govt would take 24.5% holding in the Great South Basin for $1.65 Billion. Hunt would reduce his holding from 45.5% to 27.5% and Arco would sell its 6.5%.
   * Reason: Hunt did not possess the technology to pump oil from deep water; Gulf possessed the technology but did not tell Hunt. Arco was not told anything and were swindled out of its 6.5% concession.
   November, 1977: Muldoon introduces the S.I.S Amendment Bill, designed to keep the economy free of obstruction and to help uncover obstructive elements. Telephone taps, mail tampering and other surveillance methods approved after CIA input on contents of legislation.
   Late 1977: Muldoon travels to the US to meet top Rockefeller officials, including Trilateralists' Deputy Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, and Richard Bolbrooke, who were in charge of the new "South Pacific Desk" at the State Department established by Rockefeller to target exploitation of both New Zealand and Australia. In Los Angeles, Muldoon meets top Rockefeller officials, Robert Anderson (Rockwell Chairman, also Director of Kashoggi's Security Pacific National Bank) and P. Larkin (Rockwell Director, also Chairman, Executive Committee Security Pacific National Bank and Director of Marac).
   April, 1978: Muldoon sets up Petrocorp. New Zealand taxpayers pay for the exploration costs but the oil companies control all distribution outlets. Muldoon blocks development of Maui B as restructured supplies mean higher prices and bigger profits for Shell/BP/Todd. South Island gas market not developed as Great South Basin fields closer than Kapuni. Plans develop for re-opening of National Parks for mineral exploitation.
   22nd July, 1978: Director of Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics suspends his investigation into the Nugan Hand Bank after pressure from the CIA and Australian politicians controlled by Mafia, particularly Malcolm Fraser.
   Brierly's declared assets reach $200 million, with shareholders' funds only $17 million.
   May, 1979: Trilateral Commission secretary Zbignieu Brzezinski appoints Muldoon chairman of Board of Governors of IMF/World Bank on orders of David Rockefeller. Muldoon would head three-man administration committee which included Canadian Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp, key figure in the Mafia Council and the Trilateral Commission. Australian Treasurer McMahon also involved.
   8th June, 1979: Michael Hand, Frank Nugan, Brierley and James Fletcher meet in Hand's Sydney penthouse to discuss the establishment of the New Zealand Mafia organization.
   Mid- 1979: Gulf Oil using its man Brierley, begins operations designed to capture key sectors of the economy. A.B Consolidated restructured into the Goodman Group and Goodman to run operations but with the majority of the stock held by IEL and Brierley using Shell companies plus dummy corporations.
   * Strategy: To take over food and produce resources, Brierley and Fletcher restructured a small private company, H.W. Smith, using Cyril Smith as Chairman but with key executives Judge, Collins and McKenzie. Bob Jones helps.
   Private company used, as no Commerce Commission control, accounts not published, no public disclosure of transactions. Bunting is established as a shell company and the South Island is targeted for asset-stripping and takeover, as well as key sectors of the automobile industry.
   Unlimited funds channeled through City Realties, NZUC and Marac extends Travelodge operations by buying control of Transholdings, which has strategic holdings in Vacation Hotels and Tourist Corp. Fiji Holdings.
   17th August, 1979: New Zealand Mafia inaugural meeting in Sydney including Hand, Brierley, Fletcher, Goodman, R.Trotter, Alan Hawkins and L.Papps.
   Key sectors of the economy would be taken over- food, using Goodman; forestry and farming, using Fletcher and Trotter; property, using Brierley and Jones. Brierley, Hand and Papps would be responsible for banking, insurance and finance, while Hand and Hawkins would be responsible for setting up new "laundry" channels into New Zealand.
   The economy would be taken over using cheap loans of less than 5%, while consumers would pay 28%.
   October, 1979: BP Oil begins $100 million joint venture deal with Fletcher and Trotter at Tasman.
   Muldoon makes secret deal with oil companies which effectively robs New Zealand taxpayers by giving Shell/BP/Todd the Maui Gas deal. Normally the granting of drilling rights on public land is done using a worldwide system which incorporates an auction tender system. Muldoon bypassed this. Also, Shell/BP/Todd pays no tax on Kapuni profits, while putting funds into Maui development.
   19th November, 1979: Secret meeting in Auckland between Muldoon, Fletcher and Trotter to transfer 43% Tasman Pulp and Paper held by New Zealand Government to Challenge Corporation (Chairman Trotter) and Fletchers. Tasman has lucrative 75-year contract for cheap timber signed in 1955.
   Muldoon paid off with a $1 million 'non-repayable' loan - $500,000 to be paid into account number 8746665 at New Hebrides branch of the Australian International Bank.
   November, 1979: Muldoon drops restrictions on foreign investment. AMAX (Standard Oil of California subsidiary) captures the Martha Hill goldmine.
   Muldoon unveils the Government's plans (instructed by Rockefeller) to form New Zealand into an offshore production base for the multi-national corporations as benefits include government export incentives, stable government, cheap labour, and so on.
   27th November, 1979: Gerald Parsky's lieutenant, David Kennedy, meets Muldoon to deliver $US100,000 cash to Muldoon for implementing the Internationalists' Mafia Think Big plans.
   These plans began with big contracts and guaranteed profits for the Seven Sisters, Bechtel, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Nippon Steel, Internationalists' Mafia banks.
   With the experimental petroleum plant, the oil price has to be $50/barrel to be profitable, yet Mobil's profits are guaranteed.
   New Zealand Steel is to be expanded 500%, even though there was a global steel glut of 50%.
   Fletchers own 10% of New Zealand Steel and are majority stockholders in Pacific Steel and control monopoly over wire rod, reinforcing steel. Also, New Zealand taxpayers subsidize Fletchers' profits.
   Muldoon introduces the National Development Bill with 'fast-track' legislation, to keep the economy 'free of obstruction' for long-term monopolization. C.E.R. plan introduced, designed to integrate the economies of Australia and Ne