Darby Report 281
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TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY
On the anniversary of the
Bali bombing atrocity, our hearts go out to all the survivors and to all who lost loved ones, friends
and colleagues; and
we salute all the medical, military and civilian personnel who saved lives and
mended bodies beyond all expectation.
We join with Prime Minister John Howard in thanking the people of
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CONTENTS OF DARBY REPORT 281 To return to this menu: Ctrl/Home (DOUBLE)
CLICK ON THE ITEM YOU WISH TO READ |
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Hernando
De Soto – Ron Manners |
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Lead
letter: Ambitions of Malcolm Turnbull (James Harker-Mortlock) |
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EDDIE
CROSS: Underbelly
of Mugabenomics & Fundamental
Freedoms |
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Work in Progress: 200 Poets of the
People (6 files totalling 925pp) |
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ßPLEASE PATRONISE DARBY REPORT ADVERTISERSà üAlain
Woolf’s Hypno Comedy üAt
Call Limousines üAttention
all poets üColleen
Mathews Art üDine
with Darby @ Harry’s üDonate
used computers üEngine
Room Internet Company üWonderful
yacht “Galatea” üGiltinan’s
Tennis & Squash üGood
Links üIndependent
Funeral Services üIslam
Unveiled üKerry
Collison the author üMark
Lee Photographer üNeutral Bay Village Shoe Repairs üPay
Darby with Bartercard üPlanning
a Big Event üSoviet
Brutality üSpringFest 26 Oct 03 üThomson Ford
ü
“Thorns Among The Briar Roses” üWork
of the Salesians |
This issue’s quotation, helpfully selected by John Woods:
Government's view of the economy could be summed up
in a few short phrases. ‘If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,
regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize
it.’ -- Ronald Reagan (1986) |
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DarbyReport276 DarbyReport277 Darby Report 278
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The Darby Report may be distributed widely by any medium.
Michael Darby is willing to address any gathering in the cause of individual
liberty, is available to perform poetry in an honorary capacity at schools
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The tireless North American correspondent for the Darby
Report is Erich Kern. Opera singer Andrew Heggie is our man in Manchester, Eric Bruckner provides the
French connection, Jamie Whitelaw writes from South Africa, Dr JJ Ray is our erudite Queensland
source and Hal G.P. Colebatch is the wise man of the West. The Darby Report frequently carries
material from Zimbabwe´s courageous Eddie Cross, Cathy Buckle, Paul Themba Nyathi and Jenni Williams. Kerry Collison is our authority on
Indonesia and South East Asia. Unsigned articles in the Darby Report are the
work of Michael Darby. Views expressed
in the Darby Report are not necessarily shared by any organisation, and
Michael Darby writes as an individual, not as a representative of the Liberal
Party.
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Passing of Gordon Jones
At St Andrew’s Church Manly NSW on Tuesday 7 October
2003, former Warringah Shire President Gordon Jones, a local giant of
humanitarianism and good works, was farewelled by Doris, his “precious
darling” wife of 57 years, by his three sons, by his grandchildren and by a
great number of friends and admirers.
Gordon entered the building business after his return
from active service, and rapidly earned a favourable professional reputation
in the Manly area for the high quality of his work and his enthusiasm for
employing and training apprentices.
For fifteen years Gordon served on the Warringah Shire
Council, and for three successive terms he was elected by Warringah
Councillors to lead them as Shire President.
Gordon Jones never accepted a salary, stipend or fee of any kind for
his local government work, and similarly he always acted in an honorary
capacity in the course of his many humanitarian activities, including his
years of service on the Manly Ambulance Board followed by an extraordinary 25
years on the Central District Ambulance Board. It was Gordon Jones who originally proposed
the establishment of the Mona Vale Hospital, and he was the first Chairman of
the Hospital Board.
Gordon’s fifty years of service to Surf Life Saving was
reflected in his appointment as Patron of two Clubs, Freshwater SLSC and
South Curl Curl SLSL, each of which Clubs annually
honour their outstanding Surf Life Saver with the award of a “Gordon Jones
Honour Blazer”.
In recent years Gordon Jones, a man of the highest
personal standards, has been one of the innocent victims of a vicious and
dishonest propaganda campaign against the Warringah Council. Gordon was a gentleman of such beneficence
that he may have forgiven the perpetrators.
However, the cowards who falsely tried to undermine the reputation of
this scrupulously honest and compulsively generous man, while he was too ill
to defend himself, should not imagine that their political crimes against
decency will be forgotten.
Gordon Jones achieved more in every year of his adulthood
than many people achieve in a lifetime.
We’ll remember Gordon whenever we encounter one of his worthy
descendants, admire one of his buildings, greet one of his hundreds of former
employees or get to know one of the countless individuals who through their
involvement in the medical system or in a range of sports have gained from the
generosity of Gordon’s great heart.
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Welcoming Speech By Ron Manners Notre Dame University, Fremantle, 15TH September, 2003 Good evening
friends & distinguished guests, with a special welcome to the Honourable
U.S. Consul, the Honourable Japanese Consul and to Gina Rinehart. The written
invitation to tonight’s event contained a magnificent background document on
Lang Hancock, in whose memory this lecture series is named. Those of us who
were fortunate enough to have known Lang Hancock personally, will understand
when I say that Lang planted many seeds amongst those whom he touched. Lang had a
relentless curiosity that he passed onto many people, myself
included. This relentless curiosity
causes us to seek out people who have visionary ideas that we admire and wish
to understand further. Two years ago,
with great expectation I attended an Atlas Foundation meeting in San
Francisco. It was called An Evening With Milton Friedman, a
special celebratory event around the time of Milton Friedman’s 89th
birthday. A special
guest speaker at that event was to be Hernando de Soto, whom I had always
wished to meet as his ideas have particular relevance to Australia. Instead of a personal appearance, Mr. de
Soto sent a video recording, the next best thing and certainly much better
than nothing. However, we
are fortunate tonight that he actually appears in person and I wonder what
that proves? Could it prove that
George Kailis has more influence than Milton
Friedman? If so, George, that is the
supreme compliment to you. Tonight’s
printed program also includes a very detailed background document on Hernando
de Soto. Mr de Soto’s latest book, The Mystery of Capital (Why capitalism
triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else), which last week reached
No. 6 on the U.S. best selling non-fiction list, contains lessons for
Australia where we see many unintended consequences of the destruction of
property rights through either Native Title legislation or other “stakeholder
activism” undermining the property rights of the productive sector. The intention
of such redistributions may have been well-meaning but the outcome is the
severe diminishing of the level of investment, so in the end we are all
losers. Since
publishing The Mystery of Capital, Hernando
has increased the number of world Heads of State that he now advises. This now totals 25. Mr de Soto doesn’t deal with Vice
Presidents or bureaucrats; he deals directly with Presidents and Prime
Ministers. He has just flown in from
Sweden and after this evening’s talk will be flying direct to Beijing. Hernando, I hope that your message is widely heard in Australia and
that it helps us to lift our game. I
look forward very much to your comments and welcome you here tonight and to
the podium.
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Lia Looveer BEM
Lia Looveer BEM, lifelong liberty campaigner, Estonian
community leader and long-serving Secretary of the Captive Nations
Council of |
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Morgan Tsvangirai 30 September
2003 Early this
month, the Mugabe government closed down the Daily News, the only alternative
voice in the form of a daily newspaper in Zimbabwe. Thousands of people have
been thrown out of work. The company has lost billions of Zim dollars in
revenue at a time when our economy is already on its knees. This newspaper
was read by about a million people daily. It provided valuable space for
diverse and different views. The closure of the newspaper merely extends the
democratic deficit in this country and creates an environment of intolerance
and fear. The Zimbabwean public media lost all credibility a long time ago
and degenerated into a fully-fledged propaganda machine of Zanu PF. State
newspapers and radio and television mirror events in our country in a manner
that is devoid of any fairness and objectivity. Since the
formation of the MDC in September 1999, almost a year after the Associated
Newspapers of Zimbabwe group was established, the Daily News has always been
in trouble with Zanu PF and the government. You will
recall that the newspaper was never allowed to circulate freely in small
towns and in the rural areas. You will recall television pictures of
so-called war veterans burning copies of the newspaper in Mutoko,
Rusape, Shamva and other
centres. The company’s property was being destroyed in the full view of the
police. We, in the MDC, received numerous reports of travellers and civil
servants being victimised at illegal roadblocks mounted specifically to check
on readers of the Daily News in these centres. In April 2000,
the newspaper’s Harare office was bombed. A direct casualty of this act was a
small art gallery below the then Editor Geoff Nyarota’s
office. We understand the owner of that gallery was immediately pushed out of
business. The perpetrators of this act were never brought to book. Almost a year
later, in January 2001, the newspaper’s printing press was blown up in
Harare. Again no one was arrested and brought to trial for such a serious
crime. Almost all
members of the company’s board of directors and its editorial staff face
different charges arising from their association with that newspaper. Staff
at the newspaper were constantly harassed, arrested and brutalised on
untested allegations as part of a brutal campaign to muzzle the newspaper. The Daily News
represented a key addition to the range of voices calling for change in
Zimbabwe’s political arena. It reflected the mood in the country and went
further to play a key role in providing our supporters with an outlet to
express themselves when the public media turned hostile to the wishes of the
majority of our people. The closure of the Daily News is a political act. It
has nothing to do with the law. The newspaper informed the world of the
vicious government crackdown on the opposition before, during and after the
election and exposed the electoral fraud of June 2000 and the Presidential
election in March 2002. May I make
clear that we do not own the Daily News; nor do we determine its editorial agenda. Our interest in the newspaper is very clear. We
feel hurt by the government’s continued onslaught on the democratic space. We
are concerned about the shrinking avenues for Zimbabweans to express
themselves. Our concern is the rising democratic deficit in Zimbabwe. The
consequences of a gagging a society through the closure of all outlets for
free speech are too serious for any democrats to ignore. The forced
shutting down of the Daily News has a lot to do with the desire to smash the
MDC. Although that desire has failed to bear fruit in the past four years,
Zanu PF has remained resolute to wish the MDC away. All our members of the
national executive face a variety of charges, hundreds of our supporters have
been killed, maimed and brutalised in an effort to destroy the party. That
scheme has failed. We believe the
Supreme Court made a serious error when it refused to hear the arguments of
the newspaper in its contest with the need to register under the Access to
Information and Protection to Privacy Act (AIPPA). The refusal to hear the
complainant’s case strengthened perceptions and reservations on the independence
of the judiciary at a time when the people rely on that arm of society as the
remaining protector of human rights and fundamental freedoms. As an
independent nation, we are bound by international instruments that require us
to respect minimum standards necessary for promoting and protecting the right
to freedom of expression. Our Constitution is clear on the right to receive
and impart information freely. AIPPA was
enacted specifically for the Daily News after all other attempts to squeeze
the newspaper out had failed. First it was war veterans and hired Zanu PF
officials who confiscated the newspaper, burning and tearing up copies on a
daily basis. They beat up readers in the rural areas. They harassed vendors.
Reporters were denied access to government information and to government
buildings. Local investors were intimidated and editors were arrested. AIPPA is an
unjust law. It was fast-tracked through Parliament primarily to sabotage the
right to freedom of expression and suffocate the free exchange of ideas and
information. AIPPA, together with the
Public Order and Security Act (POSA), the Broadcasting Services Act, the
Miscellaneous Offences Act (MOA) and the Labour Relations Act (LRA), among
many other pieces of repressive laws, form the bedrock of legislative
repression in Zimbabwe targeted at dealing with both freedom of expression
and freedom of assembly. The use of AIPPA to shut down the Daily News is a
serious demonstration of intolerance and must leave no person in any doubt as
to the desire of the regime to limit the flow of ideas and stifle freedom of
expression in Zimbabwe. The
Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ) and the Daily News
challenged AIPPA before the same Supreme Court on the grounds that it
infringed the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. The IJAZ challenge was heard 12 months ago
and no judgement has been made to date. The delay has never been explained;
nor has the nation been informed of why no decision has been made after such
a long time. Within a short
space of AIPPA life, three foreign journalists were deported and dozens of
local journalists, all from the private media, were arrested. None were
convicted. We say the law
was promulgated with the intention of curtailing media freedom as expressed
by private citizens because no journalist from the state media has ever been
harassed or arrested under the provisions of AIPPA. We believe the
rights of Zimbabweans are under siege. Repression is set to increase as long
as the Daily News remains silenced. Nearly every issue of the Daily News
carried reports of the state abuses. Without that regular exposure, the state
may step up its brutal campaign because the government owns all the other
dailies and they do not criticise the regime or expose its violence. Without
the Daily News the future is bleak indeed. It is for this
reason that we believe pressure must be brought to bear on this government to
re-open the democratic space and allow Zimbabweans to enjoy generic freedoms
that make it possible for them to make informed decisions necessary in a free
society. The Daily News
provided us with a vital channel through which to communicate with the people
on a daily basis. We are denied access to the public media, which is simply a
mouthpiece for Zanu PF and an outlet for their deception, lies and
propaganda. Closing down independent
papers will not conceal the criminal failings of this regime. People
experience these failings on a daily basis: in the queues for food, in the
queues for cash and in the queues for fuel. They know who is to blame. Our fear is
that this latest assault on democracy in Zimbabwe betrays a more sinister
agenda aimed at silencing all diverse voices within the country. The absence
of private media exposure may well provide the enemies of democracy with the
injection of confidence to implement a cynical agenda aimed at silencing
their internal critics. Despite this
setback, the people of Zimbabwe have remained determined to fight for their
freedom. They now controls and run 12 major towns
and cities in Zanu PF
ministers attempted to exploit the MDC’s overall success for their own
political ends by suggesting that the results demonstrated that Zimbabwe was
a ‘true democracy’. Any slender chance of such misleading comments resonating
around the international community would have come to a halt with the forced
closure of the Daily News. If Zanu PF is
serious about the need to break the current political impasse and allow the
people to set up a functioning democracy, then that party needs to add some
substance to its rhetoric. People are not fools. They know that Zimbabwe
cannot be a democracy when opposition legislators are tortured whilst in
police custody, when people are mandated to attack political opponents
without fear of prosecution and when people are prevented by law from
gathering to have a political discussion unless they have received official
permission to do so. We urge Zanu
PF to put the people first and discharge their basic duties by disbanding the
youth militias, ending state sponsored violence and ensuring that everyone
receives equal protection under the rule of law. We urge them to commit
themselves to a process of dialogue for a long-term resolution of the
problems currently facing us. As we have said before, only through a free and
fair election, held according to SADC norms and standards, can we tackle the
crux of the Zimbabwe crisis, the issue of legitimacy, and take the necessary
steps to tackling the broader elements of the crisis that are polarising and
destroying our country. We are ready
to engage Zanu PF in meaningful dialogue. Our victory in urban elections
shows that we are no longer a mere opposition party. We are governing the
country. We determine the agenda for Zimbabwe today. Our role is that of a
social democratic movement fighting to extend the ideals of the liberation
struggle to enable Zimbabweans to achieve peace, freedom and total democracy. Our interest
in dialogue must never be confused with capitulation. It is part of our broad
strategy to end the crisis of governance in this country. Zanu PF has run out
options to address the crisis, so we have taken a number of steps to give
dialogue a chance. We are even prepared to make further compromises for the
sake of our bleeding nation. The key to
whole saga rests with the leaders of Zanu PF and the MDC. We need to meet to
unlock and remove the stumbling blocks and pave the way for the two parties
to engage each other in a climate of confidence and patriotism. Contrary to
claims that Zimbabwe is under a sanctions regime, it must be remembered that
the Harare Declaration of the Commonwealth is very clear on matters of
governance. Zimbabwe has simply failed that test. The
Commonwealth then imposed certain measures to bring back the regime into
line. The regime has remained adamant. The regime has taken no steps to
address the issues raised by the international community. Such actions have
forced the Commonwealth to maintain its position because there has been no
significant shift in the regime’s actions. The CHOGM position must be
enforced until there is meaningful change in the behaviour of the regime. I thank you. Morgan
Tsvangirai President, Movement for Democratic Change |
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EDDIE
CROSS IN ZIMBABWE Bulawayo, 11th
October 2003 Transparency
International rated Zimbabwe 106 out of 133 countries they classed recently
in terms of corruption. The sort of thing they were talking about were the
usual - government officials taking bribes in return for favours, the
perception of foreign businessmen abroad about what they would have to do to
come into the country as an investor or contractor. Petty corruption at
borders and so on. But these forms of theft of national, private or public
assets pales into insignificance against what I call the activity that goes
on in the name of that peculiar science - the economics of Robert Mugabe.
Remember as you read this that the Mugabe government has 17 Ph.D. graduates
in its ranks. Mugabe himself has 6 degrees and is widely recognised as a
highly intelligent, if not, brilliant, man. We have all the
usual forms of petty corruption - policemen at road blocks - strangely racial
in their activity as they target black drivers rather than white. All
government contracts, almost without exception now, are only awarded after
some form of corrupt practice. Our first decade of independence was not
characterized by this form of corruption on any scale but by the mid 90s it
was endemic and has grown exponentially since. Even so, many visitors to
Zimbabwe say that our corrupt officials are no where near as avaricious as
those of, say, Nigeria or the DRC. A country can
absorb these forms of corruption and still function; in fact in an
environment where officials are paid low salaries it may be the only way the
country continues to work at all. Like the practice in the DRC of placing a
ten-dollar bill in your post box before you get your mail, you just write it
off as a business expense. No, it is
another form of theft of assets that really concerns me. It is not widely
recognised but everyone who works in the system knows it is going on and also
recognises the huge transfers of assets that are involved. Mugabe and his
collection of thieves have made this into virtually an art form. The key is the
legal system and the control over transactions in our society levied by the
Reserve Bank. The informal sector largely operates outside this so you need a
fairly sophisticated system to start with to make it effective. If we take just
one factor - the artificial exchange rates levied by the Reserve Bank on
foreign exchange receipts by exporters and service providers. Take just one
year as an example - the year 2000. In that year Zimbabwe earned US$2
554,000,000 from exports of goods and services. This was made up of US$600
million from tobacco and about US$250 million from gold - 33 per cent of all
exports. The total value of all receipts from tobacco and gold were sold to
the Reserve Bank at a prescribed exchange rate of 55 Zimbabwe dollars to one
US dollar. Of the balance of all export receipts the Reserve Bank bought 50
per cent or another US$850 million. So the Reserve Bank purchased from
exporters a total of US$1,7 billion dollars at an
exchange rate of 55 to 1. For those of
you who do not know how this works, if you were to receive a payment of
US$1000 into your bank account from an overseas client, a computer would
reach into your account and take out US$500 and give you Z$27 500 in return.
The Reserve Bank now controlled your US$500 receipts at a cost to the Bank of
Z$27 500. However the
"real" value of the dollar at the time was about 350 to 1. So the
effective loss to the exporter of earned income on that simple transaction
was Z$147,500 or 85 per cent of the value of the currency earned. Across the
whole transaction (US$1000) the loss in potential income was 42 per cent. So
if we go back to the total exports of the country in that year, we will see
that the effective theft of exporters’ income by the Reserve Bank in one year
alone was a staggering Z$500,500,000,000 or 56 per cent of the total value of
the exports of the entire country. In other words - had a free market for
foreign exchange existed in Zimbabwe, exporters would have earned Z$893
billion from exports instead of Z$392 billion. This
calculation is not altogether a true reflection of real values because demand
and supply inflated the value of the US dollar in open markets. If all
foreign exchange was traded - the open market exchange rate would have been
much stronger - maybe as much as half the nominal market price. Even under
those circumstances exporters would have earned Z$55 billions dollar more
from their exports than they actually did. What makes this
form of theft even more pernicious is the effect it has on the rest of the
population. Everyone apart from a small coterie of Zanu PF acolytes has to
use foreign exchange at the open market price for their imports. A
manufacturer who wants to import raw materials or a pharmacist, who wants to
import an essential drug, all have to price their needs into the market at
the open market exchange rate (350 to 1). Consumers therefore have to pay for
everything they buy that has an import content at
the higher price. This affects everything in the country from the price of bread
to liquid fuels. In effect the Reserve Bank system is therefore another layer
of taxation by the State levied without knowledge or approval of the people
by the gnomes behind the elaborate façade of the Reserve Bank in Harare. |