Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
The
Hindmarsh Island Bridge farce revealed 31st March
UN
agrees to make our fresh water a "global commodity".... beware farmers -
your fresh water dam WILL cost you! 28th March
Courier
Mail's national affairs reporter Peter Charlton attacks MAI concerns and
breaches ethics guidelines 28th March
The
US Government's global "Cablesplice" project, fact or fantasy? 26th
March
Pauline
Hanson endorses 12 state candidates. 22nd March
News
Limited bucket opposition to the MAI. 21st March
The proposed privatisation of
Telstra 16th March 1998
Queensland State Candidates meet the
people 15th March 1998
One Nation, the First Year
12th March 1998
Current topical links (available to all readers):
[Links to the MAI]
[Queensland
One Nation State Election website]
[Sign the "I'm so sorry Pauline"
book]
Archive of weekly features (available to all readers):
[The
Canberra Column]
[Economic
Rationalism]
Today's
Headlines
an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's
first daily Internet newspaper.
Since
October 1995
The Australian Press Council's Statement of Principles.
Discussions with the Australian Press Council (APC) took place yesterday over my claim that the Courier Mail and Peter Charlton were unethical in their coverage of the MAI and matters relating to the content.
I received a copy of the APC's "Statement of Principles" yesterday.
Clauses include:
A publication should make amends for publishing information that is found to be harmfully inaccurate by printing, promptly and with appropriate prominence, such retraction, correction, explanation or apology as will neutralise the damage as far as possible.
Where individuals or groups are singled out for criticism, the publication should ensure fairness and balance in the original article. Failing that, it should provide a reasonable and swift opportunity for a balancing response in the appropriate section of the publication.
Lies and the MAI
Here is an extract from today's article on economic rationalism by Graham Strachan:
Let’s be clear on one thing: Australia has always had foreign investment, but until now the federal government has always retained the right to limit and control it. Signing the MAI signs away that right. In its place the MAI creates a ‘right’ of multinational corporations (MNCs) and foreign investors to do what they like in and to the country without any corresponding social responsibilities, and to sue the government if it interferes. This frees up the minds of MNC executives, now paid millions of dollars annually, to concentrate on the delicate process of profit maximisation without having to worry about damage done to the host country or its people. That’s ‘rationalism’.
More students infected with tuberculosis
Two new cases of TB have been discovered since the death of a Gold Coast based Indian student from the disease last month.
The infected students, one at the Queensland University of Technology and another on the Sunshine Coast, have increased fears that there could be an outbreak of this highly infectious disease in Queensland.
The death was only announced after Pauline Hanson raised the issue of immigration and infectious disease at the Beenleigh state rally.
Suharto Signs IMF pact to lure Western investors
The article below reveals the dismantling of Indonesia's national assets as privatisation becomes the rod used to break up the barrier which has traditionally stood between the multinationals and incorporating Indonesia into their globalisation plans.
The spin off for the multinationals, as can be seen below, is that they are now able to buy large enterprises for a fraction of their real worth.
The raping and pillaging of national assets by foreign interests was exemplified early this year when George Soros moved in on large going concerns facing bankruptcy in South Korea after their currency crashed.
Indonesia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed to sell up to half of the government's stake in several massive enterprises to help boost foreign exchange reserves, which at US$16 billion are dangerously low.
Several large companies from the United States and Europe are interested in buying stakes in the state-owned enterprises, which make up about one-third of the shares sold on the Jakarta stock exchange, said Indonesian Finance Minister Fuad Bawazier after meeting with President Suharto in Jakarta.
"There are letters from nine investors who are serious in wanting to buy government shares in listed companies:' he said. "I think if they didn't see our economic Prospects as good, they wouldn't be brave enough to want to buy."
The sales appear aimed at taking advantage of the growing interest of American and European companies in buying Asian enterprises whose stock has fallen by half or more in value because Of the region's financial crisis. A recent survey of the largest U.S. companies found that nearly two thirds were eying acquisitions in Asia.
The IMF originally directed Indonesia to sell shares in 12 state run monopolies in its Jan. 15 letter of agreement signed by Suharto. The companies control domestic and international phone services, the mining of tin, and the manufacture of cement.
The sales are badly needed to boost Indonesia's depleted foreign currency reserves, which the nation needs to defend the rupiah and pay foreign debts. The revenues also will help trim the government's ballooning budget deficit.
Hubert Neiss, the IMF's Asia Pacific director, said the talks under way in Jakarta for a week have resolved most issues and a revised agreement could be unveiled "in a matter of days," Mr. Neiss said discussions he has been holding with Indonesia's central bank on interest rate policy and banking reform are close to complete. But the most nettlesome issue in the negotiations - repayment of $74 billion of loans Indonesian corporations took out from overseas banks - is unresolved, he said.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian monopoly on plywood - Apkindo, which is owned by a Suharto friend - will not be disbanded as originally required by the IMF, Apkindo's head, Abbas Adhar, said in Jakarta yesterday.
"Apkindo will carry on", he said, "but we won't set [export] quotas, prices or marketing arrangements. That's all going to be left to our members."
Growing number of councils in Canada "ban" MAI
As a result of this article by international lawyer Barry Appleton a growing number of Canadian Councils are passing resolutions questioning and outlawing MAI.
Ontario - Windsor, Tecumseh, Woodstock, Kitchener, Waterloo, Owen Sound, County of Peterborough, Toronto BC - Vancouver, Squamish, Parksville, Duncan, District of Cowichen, Coquitlam, District of Toffino, Richmond Quebec - Montreal.
Making the
news" -
Howard and the Menzies centre
John Howard was a director of the Liberal Party's non-profit Menzies Research Centre for the first six months of his Prime Ministerialship breaching his own code of conduct because he did not declare his interest in the organisation.
The non-profit Menzies Research Centre was granted a Au$100,000 per annum tax payer funded grant over the next four years by the Coalition during the period that Howard was a director. To keep the Australian Labor Party quiet the Evatt Foundation, their think tank, got the same tax payer funded grant.
Last night Howard went on Channel 9s A Current Affair proclaiming his innocence, meantime the ALP are calling for his resignation. Howard went on after Channel 9s political editor Laurie Oats raised the issue during the 6pm news.
Today Laurie Oats again went on the attack questioning Howard's credibility stating:
October 13 1996 Jim Short resigns because of conflict of interest.
October 14 1996 John Moore resigns because of conflict
October 15 1996 Howard quietly relinquishes his directorship in the Menzies Research Centre.
The archives reveal that Oats is wrong on his dates - Here is an extract from the anotd of 27th October 1998:
Industry Minister John Moore was yesterday under attack after it was revealed that his wife, Jacqueline, co-owns some Au$500,000 BHP shares.
Mr Moore said that his wife inherited the shares from her father and said "I do not have the slightest knowledge of what she has. Her affairs are run from Melbourne, I am not aware of (the BHP shareholding) - I don't want to be aware of it."
During Channel 9's "Today" programme Laurie Oats also said this about John Howard "(He) Pretended to be different from other politicians but he is not."
Why is Packer taking this time to launch an attack on Howard's credibility? Quite simply Howard stood between him and Fairfax last year and it is now payback time.
Our subscribers can follow the saga behind this by going to the archive search page and typing in "Packer and Fairfax". There are about 100 references - with the climax coming when Rupert Murdoch flew into see Howard while he was sick - resulting in a decision by Howard's cabinet to do nothing - leaving Packer one very unhappy little vegemite.
Here is a quote from that time:
The Weekend Australian, September 6-7, 1997:
Heading: "Fear of favour dooms PM's media reform".
"But unlike Keating, Howard could not find a balance that placated both Packer and Murdoch. Every model that Howard and Alston came up with gave Packer an easier run at taking over Fairfax than it gave Murdoch of controlling Seven."
"....Two days later, details of Howard's discussions with Murdoch - in which the Prime Minister suggested News "surrender" some newspaper titles in exchange for a higher stake in Seven - was leaked to a Fairfax newspaper.
"Howard hit the roof. Confirming the ill-feeling at
the time his office commented: "The point is you can have a conversation
with PBL and it doesn't get out, you can have a conversation with News Limited
and a distorted version comes out."
Dear Editor,
In a recent report [17 March] on 'Privatisation and Telstra' I wrote: "A Report prepared by a [Canadian] task force found evidence that privatisation would result in lower quality service for people in low-density, high cost areas due to decreases in maintenance and system investment, and higher rates relative to subscribers on more profitable routes attractive to competitors. This was based on the actual experience in the US and Britain."
Fourteen days later, on 31 March, the Australian online reported: "The two Cabinet ministers running the sale process confirmed fears that some customers have suffered since the first one-third of Telstra was floated late last year." Those customers are on the less profitable (country) routes. The EXPERIENCE OF THREE SEPARATE COUNTRIES should have alerted the government that THIS WOULD HAPPEN, which speaks volumes about the government's real motives!
The Howard government's reaction? "THE Howard Government yesterday unveiled a tough new regime to force Telstra to lift its performance, including fines of up to $10 million, in a bid to placate National Party concerns about the full sale of the carrier." The Howard government knows that with substantial foreign investment in Telstra when fully privatised, such fines will be illegal under the MAI, which it intends to sign.
This country is like the picture of Dorian Gray: fine on the surface, putrifying underneath, and the root of the disease is in Canberra.
Graham Strachan.
It is important that One Nation does not be seen to be taking sides in the wharf front dispute. This is obviously the old scam to stir up division. " Rally to the Nationals, the brave defenders of the working farmers, and RALLY to the ALP the brave defenders of the working class" One Nation is about uniting the farmers and the small businessmen and the oppressed workers forced to accept private working agreements, (this secretly supported by union leaders who have obviously been bought off by the same money power that has bought off our politicians.)
The struggling working farmer, the struggling working businessman, the struggling union workingman, are all oppressed by the same money power (using the banking system) to divide us against each other. Those media Journalists, those Politicians, those union Leaders, who eagerly grab those enticing dollars for their betrayal of the people they are supposed to represent, will ultimately find their fortunes dissipated in the same way as is happening in Indonesia today.
To these betrayers, I add that it might happen that they will have to answer to a future peoples court of law, merely losing at the next election will not absolve them of their negligence. The Union membership will not be backward in coming forward to lay charges against their current leaders. Most of the farmers today know that they and their city relations are being strangled by a common enemy.
The UNITY that Pauline Hanson's ONE NATION , and to some extent Graham Campbell's Australia First produces will come at a price. It will not be an easy road, but it will in the end put things right. I pray enough people have the courage to make the sacrifices necessary.
Philip Madsen
Another perfect day in paradise. Still very hot and very warm nights...
Have a good one.
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