MAINTAINING BALANCE

by Eric D. Butler
I have been asked why I do not recommend that League of Rights supporters aid an international campaign to have prominent American political activist, Lyndon LaRouche, released from prison. The reason is very simple: LaRouche is not in prison because of his political views, but because he was found guilty of credit card fraud. His supporters claim, naturally, that he has been "framed".

LaRouche has operated on the American political scene for a long time, starting his career as a Trotskyite. During the early '70s he used to call himself the U.S. Labor Party. LaRouche is a brilliant and charismatic figure that has built up one of the most sophisticated political movements in the U.S.A. During his last visit to Australia and New Zealand, the late Patrick Walsh, former Royal Canadian Mounted Police undercover agent, attempted to warn Australian and New Zealand people who had been "taken in" by LaRouche that this man was serving very dubious purposes. Pat Walsh had assembled a big file on LaRouche.

While LaRouche was well known in the U.S.A. for his "sharp" practices, these do not explain the source of funding for such a major operation. In a recent communication, one of the best-informed Christian patriots in the U.S.A. states that LaRouche had been funded by both the C.I.A. and the K.G.B. through East Germany. My contact that had personal experience of LaRouche's credit card frauds, believes that LaRouche was "used as an early warning system for the Trilateral group and also the Zionists as to what ideas were selling, or could be sold, to the American public. He managed to put dozens of newsstands across the United States distributing as many as more than a dozen different articles, magazines or publications. Using this procedure he conducted political surveys, without the public realising it, and reported back. In the event that these publications would strike a nerve here in the U.S.A., they would immediately advise the superiors in New York and Moscow to a sensitive topic that had to be addressed in an appropriate way".

Much of what the LaRouche organisation has produced is factually correct. But it is a classic example of the art of misinformation. Anyone who has studied LaRouche knows that he is violently anti-British and has claimed that the Royal Family are members of an international drug operation! LaRouche's economics are also fascinating: he proposes a forty year programme for colonising Mars, arguing that the "spin off" would assist with technological development on earth. The American conservative movement has been cursed for years by the LaRouche type of operation. Then there are those known as "Professional Patriots", who say all the right things - for the right fees! America has produced a wide array of these types of patriots, some of them psychopaths who are easy to manipulate.

Every attempt has been made to link the League of Rights movement, here and in New Zealand and Canada, with these types of people, the latest example being the Keith Wright campaign to link the League with National Socialist Jack van Tongeren and his group in West Australia. Opponents of Australia's current immigration policy can do without the support of those who preach violence.

It was the famous South African lyric poet, Roy Campbell, who warned against the danger of becoming tainted with that which we fight. These are desperate and critical times, and many people become susceptible to extravagant allegations. Australian Peter Sawyer is a classic example of another able and charismatic figure that has been a major diversionary influence. I can only express my amazement at the manner in which sincere people can financially or in any other way support a self-proclaimed prophet whose predictions have been consistently wrong. The tragedy is that he says some things about the green hoax and other matters which are true. But Sawyer appears to have gone right "over the top" with some of his more recent predictions, including the exact date of an Indonesian invasion. Then all his readers were rushed a special message urging them to get all their money out of the banks and invest in gold. And so it goes on.

Balance and sanity are essential for survival in the perilous days ahead. Realistic Christianity provides that balance. I have had considerable personal experience with the American situation and with several exceptions, have learned little - except how not to operate a genuine service movement.

THE SHARP OBJECT BEYOND THE SILHOUETTE

"The Prime Minister, Mr. Hawke, signaled yesterday the possibility of further interest rate cuts, saying enough had been done to slow economic activity." - The Australian, October 15th.

The "sharp object" to us, is the deepening recession, which is being made "fuzzy" by the optimistic (if that's what it is) - rhetoric - of the HawkKeating duo. The economy is being "talked up", to use the current buzz phrase. Our view is that liquidity has been drained out of the economies of the West for some time, and that the process is not finished by any means. The situation is Australia is worse than in most Western countries because of mismanagement, fiscally and monetarily. Look at Victoria. The Board of a business concern, which performed in the manner of the Cain Victorian Government, would have been at least sacked on the spot.

We believe that the Hawke Government is now beginning to become "windy" about the economic situation, hence the talk of the "possibility" of interest rate cuts, and how the situation would have been much worse if our Great Treasurer had not taken the measures he had. We have commented elsewhere that this so-called "recession" is in its very early stages: yes, wait for another 12 months! People are now merely cutting down on inessentials and luxury goods. The cars are queued up for petrol; plenty of money for that. The crowd at the Caulfield Guineas was large. There will be huge amounts of money placed on the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup.
Early days; early days. Our view, again, is stand by for a deep recession... Falling interest rates, in our view, will make little difference - now. The policy of the banks is the key point, and that policy, now, is extreme caution.

GULF GOBBLEDEGOOK

"The die is cast in the Gulf. There is no question now but that the United States will, sooner or later, get rid of Saddam Hussein, if need be, without U.N. support." - Peregrine Worsthorne, in Herald-Sun, October 15th.

Worsthorne's reasoning is that President Bush cannot allow Saddam Hussein to get the upper hand. This would mean national humiliation, and the political demise of President Bush. The message in Jeremy Lee's article in the On Target issue of October 12th is that the United States virtually encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait; so Bush could become hoist with his own petard. We have known from the outset that Israel wants war in the region, for her own purposes, and we notice that Peregrine Worsthorne is of the same opinion: All the real, inescapable and deadly pressures - pressures he (Bush) cannot resist - are directing him forward, not backwards. Israel is one of those pressures."

He goes even further: "If the U.S. were to falter or fail in its determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Israel would undertake the task itself." We have commented earlier in these pages that we do not have the full story on the Gulf Crisis, but we feel, in our bones, that it is all building up to something big, and that it is not unconnected with the swift and remarkable events taking place in Eastern Europe.

General William Westmoreland, former U.S. Commander in Vietnam (1964-68) and U.S. Army Chief of Staff (1968-72), talks of the "stakes" in the Persian Gulf Crisis in an article in The Australian (October 12th): those "stakes" are "strategic oil reserves and the building of a new world order jointly supported by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union" .. The Soviet Union is supporting the U.S. presence in the Gulf, and has a small presence there herself. The general's other point is that a Moslem society will suffer casualties in war, which would be unacceptable to a Western society: the attitudes to life and death are dissimilar. This must influence the military thinking of the American Command. Is war in the Gulf likely? Yes, very likely.

BRIEF COMMENT

The Reserve Bank's current statistics confirm that the rate of lending by Australian banks has fallen: indeed, has fallen below the rate of inflation in the first two months of the financial year. Professor Ian Harper, of Melbourne University, seems not to share the optimism of Messrs. Hawke and Keating; he sees deep and long recession immediately ahead for Australia. Professor Harper blames the Keating strategy of relying on high interest rates to turn around the deficit. We do not think that Paul Keating knows what he is doing, or perhaps more correctly, Paul Keating does not understand what he is doing. He thinks that his strategy is "on track", and is bluffing his way through. We say this is not so, and that the slump in Australia's economy, just starting, could be his Waterloo.

SENATOR EVANS
from The Australian, September 26th "So, as Senator Evans politely explained to us on the 7.30 Report the other night, 'the people might think they want the return of capital punishment (Derryn Hinch's poll: YES - 100,000; NO - 3,000), but we will not allow that to happen'. "There will be no referendum and thus Senator Evans declares that some hundreds of politicians are telling millions of the Australian people that it is the politicians' will that must prevail! "That is how the Communist Party ruled Russia and its satellites for at least 50 years. Someone should tell the pollies that this is supposed to be a democracy and it's the people who are the masters, and indeed, it's the people's will which must prevail." (Robert Murtough, Roseville, N.S.W.)

NEW BILL WILL LIMIT FREEDOM OF CHOICE
from The Age (Melbourne), October 15th "The quiet attempts with little or no publicity, to push through the Therapeutic Goods Bill Regulations 1989 is alarming in view of the fact that it will impose additional costs of $17 million on the natural therapeutics industry with little or no appreciable benefits to the industry. "This bill will limit the freedom that thousands of people have with regard to their choice of therapy and even down to being able to take vitamins! "A document issued by dietitian Ruth English, with the Department of Community Services and Health, implies that health shops, naturopaths and herbalists are quacks. "This book is the basis of the Therapeutic Goods Bill Regulations and flies in the face of information collated in the United States from 1983-87 that shows that zero people died from vitamin intake and a total of 1,132 people died from prescription and non-prescription drugs during that period. "It doesn't take $17 million to help me decide what Vitamins I need to take." (Michael Moore, South Caulfield)

RACISM
In last week's issue of On Target (Supplement) we reprinted an Editorial on Immigration ("referendum needed"). The editor of the Wimmera Mail-Times (Horsham, Vic.) then received a letter from an Asian-Australian, accusing the editor of racial prejudice, etc., etc. The editor published this man's letter in full, but added further editorial comment, thus: "Mr. Stork would do well to re-read the editorial, then read it again. It did not cast aspersions on the integrity of Asians as a race or as individuals. It did warn of the dangers in mixing people who are different from each other, not superior. "On indiscriminate multiculturalism, the editorial said: 'It is yet to work anywhere'. "Asians especially recognise that multiculturalism in their own countries is undesirable, a philosophy which we believe has nothing to do with over-population. "It is illogical to suggest that our warning of inevitable problems, and our assertion that Australians should have a say in what they see is right or wrong in immigration policy, points to racial intolerance or a breathtaking insensitivity to racism. "There is a familiar ring about Mr. Stork's response in that it debates racial qualities which were never in question, and never will be in this newspaper."