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From ELECTRONZ – 442 Weekly international Ezine focusing on the New Economics 8 November 2004

11:   [ 1 ] CANWEST TIGHTENS CONTROL

Ongoing incidents about hot and significant stories being killed because they conflict with the editorial rules involving specific people and governments endorses apprehension about the accuracy of press reports. This particularly applies since the owner of one of the world's biggest international chains of newspapers, said to be worth $7.5 Billion, and officially announcing that it was requiring its local editors to include, exactly as supplied, 150 HQ generated Editorials a year, as well as in their news coverage to avoid running stories or comments which differed from the paper's specified stance.

This tightening of control was reported almost three years back in the "As It Happens" program, with protests from journalists and investigative reporters all over the place, and passed on to us by Ekky Irion. Since then there has been no sign of a softening in HQ attitude, and further previously independent papers have been bought into the network. If we assume that several thousand wealthy shareholders could not just cough up a million dollars a head, and the boss's pocket money couldn't meet the deficit, then we would have to concede the probability that a big chunk of recent transactions involved plain, simple credit creation by the banking fraternity. In that scenario, with the demonstrated heavy-handed attitude of the HQ editorial writers propounding network policy, can you or anyone imagine them finding any space for monetary reformers recommending that governments should repossess their sovereign rights of credit creation, to save billions of dollars in taxes?

"The 7 December 2001 broadcast of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens [Real Audio link] uncovered a disturbing example of corporate and political interference in freedom of the press. The program reported on a new editorial policy directive from CanWest Global, a leading Canadian media conglomerate, that impairs readers' ability to make up their own minds about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other issues.

As It Happens reported that over two dozen journalists at the Montreal Gazette have pulled their by-lines to protest a new policy imposed by the newspaper's owners, Southam Newspapers Inc, which is owned by CanWest Global.

The new policy requires the company's main local newspapers to run editorials written at headquarters in Winnipeg by Southam Editor-in-Chief Murdoch Davis.

Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter at the Montreal Gazette, noted that up to 156 times a year -- about three times a week -- the editorial would be imposed and that the remainder of locally-written editorials would be required to reflect the viewpoints and stances taken by the paper's corporate headquarters.

Does this influence really matter? Yes, it does. CanWest's 2000 Annual Report states that:

The magnitude of these deals is unprecedented. Just a few months ago, the $860 million WIC purchase was the largest acquisition in the history of Canadian media. The $3.2 billion transaction to bring the Hollinger newspaper assets to CanWest remains the biggest media convergence deal ever consummated in Canada. The deal transformed CanWest into a $7.5 billion international media company and the largest Canadian publisher of daily newspapers.

Note that CanWest Global has not just limited itself to the Canadian media. It additionally owns media organisations in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand".

OUR COMMENT: When editorial directives are so categorical that they instruct their whole international network to "avoid stories containing any criticism of Country X:" while the airwaves are carrying details of Country X militia shooting identified, visiting journalists, because they had witnessed atrocities which would be embarrassing if exposed, then it illustrates how those papers can even indirectly support terrorism. In the face of such incidents, how any government can claim there is no danger in allowing the concentration of media network ownership in virtually single hands, is hard for we mere mortals to comprehend. To those who think it through, it suggests, if not some element of complicity, then dereliction of duty to the point of democratic treason.

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[ 2 ] [Part of] SPOTTY PAST OF MODERN BANKING

Most countries have a central bank, either privately owned or managed by a foreign bank. An exception was the N.Z. Reserve Bank which was bought off its private shareholders by the first (1935) Labour government as one of its first actions, and turned into a state institution. This enabled that Government to use its credit creating capability to underwrite or backstop a raft of political initiatives. It financed, at an actual cost of under 1%, the social and economic reforms for that government, which the so-called experts had claimed could not possibly be afforded, and would lead to national bankruptcy within a fortnight.

At this point I should acknowledge the brilliance of Mr Patterson, Esquire, and first President of the Bank of England, in devising a legal structure which has boomed for over 300 years, and consists of creating something out of nothing, and lending it out to borrowers at high rates of interest, secured interestingly enough, against the borrower’s own collateral assets.

The obverse of this bouquet is to throw a massive question mark at the national politicians in most developed countries who have allowed this barely legal scam to half strangle the prosperity of the countries they were elected to protect:

Well you may ask, how is it possible for this credit creating trick to NOT be seen through, and the privilege reclaimed back by the state? Main foundation of banking protection is a powerful myth, which is supported by appearances, and simply asserts: Banks just lend the funds deposited with them. It also infers that only institutions which the public would leave deposits with, can have any funds to lend. It also infers that bank lending does not expand the money supply, or cause inflation, whereas in fact, those inferences are absolutely wrong.

Despite being demonstrably false, these plausible looking myths, like Dr. Geobbels' lies, are commonly accepted through constant repetition, especially by those with personal or community credibility. To illustrate how this works, Electronz has been copied with correspondence from people as highly placed as a Minister of Finance, where it is asserted that trading banks lend money deposited with them; without causing inflation. In one letter Finance Minister Cullen goes so far as to say that N.Z. has to borrow money from overseas, because the population here does not save enough. While this may endear him to the international banking fraternity, to anyone with an even elementary knowledge of banking mechanics, it is absolute rubbish.

A contrast to that is the NZ Government's own Royal Commission on Banking and Credit, which in its published Report quoted the Governor of the state owned Reserve Bank as admitting that bank "lending" actually created new credit, but then went on to say that he didn't think the bankers knew that this was happening… Both the Canadian and the U.K. post depression Monetary Commission Reports independently came to the same conclusion about creating new credit, with one explaining that as each deposit is accepted by a bank, it changes into a "bank liability", and registers into its accounting system accordingly. So as it is impossible for any organisation to lend its liabilities, what is lent must be newly created credit or money, and this inevitably increases the national Money Supply, unless or until it goes into an Overdraft Account and is then cancelled.

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