International:

National Party in disarray.

Deputy Prime Minister has just woken up to the fact that the National Party (like the Democrats) is on a hiding second to nothing in the upcoming Federal elections.

It goes without saying that Pauline Hanson's One Nation, despite the trash being peddled by the Murdoch media, is going to gain a number of seats in rural Australia. Seats that the National Party have traditionally held.

Today the Courier Mail refers to Ms Hanson as follows, "Outspoken Independent MP Pauline Hanson's politics had "lapsed into lunacy" and she was a declining threat to the National Party, Deputy Prime Minister Time Fischer said yesterday."

Just like the media inspired inclusion of "outspoken" on anything associated with Pauline Hanson there now seems to be a new phrase that is now used by the politically correct as a verbal attack weapon at every opportunity. It is "mean spirited".

Getting back to the Courier Mail story Hanson's political adviser, David Oldfield pointed out the obvious by saying, "Rather than declining. she's growing in support.

"There isn't anone sensible in the National Party that isn't worried (about One Nation).

Meantime One Nation's National Director did not deny reports that the party had accumulated over Au$1 million in campaign funds with which to fight the upcoming (Queensland) state and Federal Elections.

Speaking about his own outspoken National members Time Fischer said, "It is far better that you have a robust democracy and a set of political parties which are not absolutely screwed down to the point of irrelevance.

"I would not like to be the leader of a party of blanks."

The problem with the National Party is that the leader is a blank.

Father Christmas banned in South Australia

While mainstream Australians are expected to be compliant and even welcoming to the beliefs and views of other cultures in the multi-cultural world, it appears that this co-existence of views only works one way.

The story below says it all:

KINDERGARTENS have banned visits from Father Christmas for fear of offending the cultural sensitivities of non-Christian children.

Several kindergartens across Adelaide have decided not to have Father Christmas visit, including one which refused a free offer from a child's relative.

Education and Children's Services Department officials say the decision is left to each kindergarten, and were unable to say how many had said no to Santa.

Kindies which decided against such visits include those at Hackham East and Woodville Gardens, where directors declined to comment about the decision.

The Playgroup Association also has cautioned about visits by Father Christmas on cultural grounds.

However, the association has urged groups to make children celebrate other religious events, including the births of Muhammad, Buddha and Krishna.

Officials at Woodville Gardens decided against a visit by Father Christmas because of the "cultural sensitivity" of its mix of children. It is understood the class has discussed aspects of Christmas, including the religious element and how various cultures celebrate.

The ban has been welcomed by the Islamic Society of SA, with spokesman, Mr Wali Hanifi, saying multicultural Australia should celebrate all religious festivals equally or have none.

"While we respect the right of others to celebrate Christmas, in a multicultural society you cannot have it one-sided where one festival is celebrated, but not Muslim festivals," he said.

Senior Jewish religious leader, Rabbi Kanterovitz, also backed the ban, saying Father Christmas was not part of Jewish custom.

However, the ban has angered some people, who say it is reverse discrimination. Bio-ethicist, Father John Fleming, said it was a case of political correctness smothering children's enjoyment.

"I believe there is a hidden agenda to remove any reference to the principal religious festivals Australia celebrates as a nation," he said.

"It is like saying we should cancel Anzac Day because there are two pacifists in a class."

Latest Bureau of Statistics figures show SA's population is 70.3 per cent Christian, 1.3 per cent non-Christian, and 28.4 per cent "other", including atheists.

MAI? No thanks!

IMF now de facto government for millions

By Richard Gwyn

FOR ALMOST ALL practical purposes, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now the government for the 350 million people living in South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

It's the IMF rather than the elected governments of these countries (no matter that in some instances the word "elected can only be used in its broadest sense) that is now determining all the matters that really affect the lives of people there - the level of unemployment, the level of interest rates, the value of the currency, the rules about banking and investment.

The IMF's writ is far wider than this. In another 71 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe, with a combined population of over one billion or about one-fifth of all the people in the world, where the IMF is operating what it calls "programs," this international institution has similarly largely displaced and replaced the authority of the nation-state governments.

Never in history has an international agency exercised such authority.

It's time long over-due for a hard look at this nascent global government..

The first thing to be said about the IMF is that it isn't very competent. In its 1997 annual report published early last summer, the IMF had this to say about South Korea, a country now in deep financial and economic recession:

"Directors welcome Korea's continued impressive macro-economic performance (and) praised the authorities for their enviable fiscal record."

About Thailand, which has suffered a 50 per cent drop in the value of its baht and which now faces unemployment soaring to 2 million, the IMF report declared:

"Directors strongly praised Thailand's remarkable economic performance and the authorities' consistent record of sound macro-economic policies."

Even Hubert Hoover, on the eve of the Great Depression, wasn't so far off the mark.

Americans in the 1930s, though, had a democratic option, which they took: They replaced Hoover with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

About the IMF, no one can do anything. It's unelected, unaccountable and as secretive about its decisions and actions as the regimes in countries like Thailand and Malaysia which brought disaster upon themselves by keeping the state of their finances, most especially the extent of their foreign borrowings, from their publics and from the international financial system, and indeed from the regimes themselves, save for a few insiders.

The second thing to be said about the IMF is that it gives to those who have and takes from those who already have little or nothing.

The great beneficiaries of the $100 billion (U.S.) the IMF has committed itself to pour into Southeast Asia will be the investors (especially the foreign ones) and the bankers and the bureaucrats and the politicians of the regimes that created the disaster in the first place.

Those who will carry the cost of implementing the IMF's policies - slashes in government spending; high interest rates (25 per cent in the instance of South Korea) - will be the ordinary workers and farmers (because of high oil prices) and small businessmen.

The third thing to be said is that even if the IMF may have got it glaringly wrong in the first place, and may now be punishing the wrong people, it, as matters a good deal more, may well be doing all of this in the wrong way.

Austerity was the remedy North American and European nations first tried to cure the Depression.

The consequence was a vicious downward spiral as ever more factories closed because people lacked the money to buy their goods - until enough leaders turned to the pump-priming remedies of John Maynard Keynes.

Southeast Asia's root problem, though, is political rather than economic. All the economies there remain essentially sound, with hard-working and well-educated labour forces and pretty efficient infrastructure.

The real cause of the disaster is "crony capitalism," or the secretive and unaccountable - the same words used above to describe the IMF is deliberate - systems encompassing politicians, bureaucrats, bankers and favoured industrialists (favoured because they fund the regimes', so-called, elections).

In essence, one form of cronyism is being replaced by another and overlaid by "socialism for the rich" or the use of public money (all of which come from industrialized countries, that's to say from us) to save political and economic elites from the consequences of their actions.

The IMF's defence is that it's a financial institution, not a political one. It' job is to keep the system going and prevent panics.

But money is politics. Most of the rest of politics is rhetoric and symbols.

So what it's really time long overdue to do is to de-cronyize the IMF. That means politics, no differently for a world government than for our own nation-state governments.

For those who are interested in more information on the devastating consequences of the tyranny of transnational corporations (and their concept of "globalisation"), there is the continually updated MAI? No thanks...!

Here is a set of New Zealand links on MAI.

You Say:

One from John Hamilton in the US:

Hi,

on 12/15/97 you wrote:

> I just thought I would let you know that I am an Australian bureaucrat
> with a passing interest in the MAI, and I think that it is wonderful
> that you have managed to stimulate such debate in Canada about the MAI.

Thanks for your comments. Whichever position one may take on the proposed MAI, the secrecy surrounding the negotiation process (and regarding the details of the proposed agreement) is a portent of bad things to come...

> Nobody in Australia has heard of it much apart from public servants and
> (keep this confidential please) very few I imagine would want to stir up
> debate about foreign investment.

I have shared your message - stripped of name and address, of course! - with others - in Australia and elsewhere - who are working on bringing the MAI discussion into the public realm...

> In Australia, foreign investment,
> under the law (Foreign acquisitions and Takeovers Act) is basically
> prohibited unless it is determined that it is not contrary to the
> national interest that it should proceed.

If Australia agrees to sign the MAI, your national laws will soon be changed to suit the new set of rules - if not, your country would end up paying billions and billions in "compensation" to companies that sue your government.

> I am not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. One thing
> that I am sure of is that although money makes the world go around, that
> should not be the be all and end all of everything.

Good point! I am self-employed and understand the need for "business" as clearly as anybody else. The MAI is about creating a global government with only one ministry - finance - and only one goal: to maximise monetary profits at the expense of other human values and ecological sustainability.

> Just a worry there,
> inspired by John Ralston Saul about the unconscious civilisation. Golf
> balls aint all, compared with education, the values of the civic society
> and the rest.
> We must keep up debate about the MAI, the WTO and these other organs. I
> congratulate you on what you have achieved.

Thanks again for sharing your ideas...

Regards: Hendrik

Subject: Counter Reset

Hi Scott & a very Good Morning to You,

Firstly may I congratulate and thank you for your continuing efforts in publishing "Australian News of the Day". It should be essential reading at every free thinking Australians breakfast table.

Just one concern I noticed tonite that I was visitor no 73. Strange, yesterday I was no 120 thousand something. Hope the hackers have not been active again!!

All the best for Christmas from your very dedicated reader here in Bundaberg,
Regards
Bob

Personal trivia, from the global office:

Yesterday the Oxley branch of Pauline Hanson's One Nation met for a Christmas Party at our home.

Pauline Hanson, One Nation's leader can be seen on the right with her children Adam and Lee.

This link will take you to more pictures and feedback on the event.

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