I never got a reply to my email. But here is some of what I know.

She’s a mysterious person and I heard very interesting things about her from former SADF officers. But everyone’s passed away now and there are still questions in my mind about her background. I met her and she took an instant dislike to me. She told me that in her youth she’d been a communist.

I wish I could find out anything about her but I’m struggling.

There are a few things about Aida Parker that you can find, but not much.

Now this Aida Parker had BIG INFLUENCE, and this is where the secret really comes in. One military officer with an intelligence background told me that Aida Parker’s house in Auckland Park, was the place where lots of high level meetings took place – the top echelons of the National Party met IN HER HOUSE! But you won’t hear a peep about it anywhere. Apparently this took place in the 1980s.

If anyone has any information pertaining to her I’d like to know. The question in my mind these days is whether Aida Parker was Jewish. There were many things about her that made me wonder. She was a journalist and she was totally devoted to politics. I met her in her office at her house and I asked her lots of questions about communism and it was during this discussion with her that she mentioned that when she was young she had been a communist herself but that now she was a Conservative. Below are some screen shots of some of her magazines, but I found her website with her articles because she re-launched herself on to the Internet a while before she died.

She claims that she was against De Klerk and that she had always been for PW Botha, etc. But I don’t know enough about her going back far enough to say that this was indeed her position. In her newsletter below, you will see that she claims to have been 100% accurate on her views because she insinuates that she was right.

But I knew military officers, one of them an Afrikaans Major from the previous SADF and he and I were pals and he was sending me stuff and I got along well with him and she told him to cease all contact with me immediately, which he did.

As with all Conservatives Aida Parker never mentioned the Jew. But this woman had incredible contacts with the most powerful Afrikaner politicians and military people and yet I ask myself how this is possible? It is clear that earlier in her life she was a journalist. But she was deep into politics. Who was she really? Was she really the Christian Conservative she claimed to be? Jan]

NEWS24’s archive contains this announcement of her death:

You can find a few of her newsletters here: http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Aida/index.html

Here is the 200th Issue of the Aida Parker Newsletter. It makes for fascinating reading:

THE AIDA PARKER NEWSLETTER

Issue No. 200 Private subscription only October 1996

OUR 200TH ISSUE

All centenaries are remarkable. Even those which occur in the dark times of danger and despair. This is APN’s 200th edition, a not inconsiderable achievement considering the sandbanks and floating debris which have endangered the progress of our little boat in the swollen river of political rhetoric, deception, propaganda, threat, obfuscation and, finally, incompetence and ignorance, as it has been swept and tumbled in a violent passage to the sea of trouble in which South Africa now finds itself.

It would be comforting but, alas, not be true to say that the times in which we lived during the last ten years have been momentous. Matters of moment are those which lead on to greatness, as human effort is piled on human effort to erect a structure built to withstand the judgement of history. But we in the “New SA” have erected no such structure, despite our supposed “miracle”. Rather we have torn down the little civilisation which our pioneering forebears had managed, with anguishing struggle, to erect in this far off corner of Africa.

In the ruins we have sown anarchy. Much of this destruction has been wrought in the years of APN’s existence. If APN lives beyond this anniversary – or is allowed to remain alive in a brutal environment which resents our very being – we will perhaps be condemned to a fate perhaps worse than that which we have endured: the fate of recording the details of South Africa’s final destruction.

Do some still doubt that possibility? Let them recall the bleak events which in just three decades have brought so much misery to this sub-continent. Of Zambia, once a thriving and prosperous colony which attracted many of our most enterprising young men seeking their fortune in farming and on the Copperbelt. Of Rhodesia, the country to which so many people of conscience fled in protest against the perceived injustices of apartheid. Of Mozambique and Angola, cursed with a backward colonial power, but blessed with a creed of non-racialism.

Can there be any sorrier fate than that which befell Lesotho and Tanzania, unless it be that of Uganda ( “The Pearl of Africa”, no less!) of Rwanda and Burundi, or the deep heart of darkest Africa, Zaire? Or shall we point, in mindless optimism, to the one or two states which, because of their tiny populations and insignificance, appear to have escaped the scourge of Black totalitarianism?

Hardly. Every day brings more evidence of the fateful stench of decay, Africa-style, in our country, decay which starts with ignorance, feeds on the brutality of the fast multiplying hordes, where dog eats dog, rejects all moral restraints and ends in self-aggrandizement, in lust for wealth and power, in intolerance and corruption, crime and chaos.

South Africa, after all is said and done, is Africa.

The question which we ask ourselves on this anniversary is: “Were we more hopeful in 1983 than we are today about our country?” Let us try to answer that. APN, as subscribers well know, has never been starry-eyed about any group of politicians, internationalists, industrialists, businessmen, academics or other proclaimed soothsayers. From our very inception we warned against the liberal/Marxist/Utopian/New World Order assault.

LEGAL TERRORISM

We questioned the bona fides of the ANC/SACP alliance, with its unquestioning allegiance to Moscow and a foreign ideology, and its fellow travellers in the churches, academia and the media. For that we paid in blood.

For years, until with the aid of family and friends, we set up our own Legal Defence Fund, APN was the subject of unremitting legal terrorism from the radical ANC/SACP – supporting left. Again and again we were hit by politically motivated suits which had not the faintest chance of success in the courts, but cost us dear in time wasted, mental stress and hefty legal expenses. These falsely founded civil suits very nearly forced us into bankruptcy, saw us smeared and vilified in the courts and the media. Repeatedly, Supreme Court judges wrote in their opinions that the complainants had failed to produce any facts, that the relevant case was frivolous and without merit. Yet still the notices of action rolled in.

SURVEILLANCE

We have otherwise been threatened, attacked, investigated, spied on, subject to electronic surveillance. Agents of the old National Intelligence Service offered friends and colleagues handsome remuneration to report on our movements, our contacts, sources of information. Being under fire is said to concentrate the mind. To a degree that may be true.

Often we felt at one with Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham who, when heavily outgunned by the Italian fleet at Taranto, in November 1940, signalled: “We are so outnumbered that there is only one thing left to do. We must attack.” So he did. And so did we. One consolation: Never any shortage of targets.

Often and often, especially in the past seven years, we have wished it were possible to be more upbeat. But, for better or worse, we have a dogged commitment to what we perceive to be the truth. You may not agree with everything or anything we write, but we find, that the typical APN subscriber as a realist, who wants the unvarnished truth rather than the pabulum, softsoap and white-wash which these days passes for “news” in the electronic and print media.

THE NEW SOCIETY

We believe that the way forward will be found more readily if people disabuse themselves of fantasy and illusion, however alluring it may seem. We do not reject, as many conservatives do, the idea of change/process politics. Indeed, the idea of progress is central to our view of the world. What we do reject is the Marxian theory that to create The New Society, The New Man, all earlier institutions built up over time and at great human cost, have to be destroyed to be replaced with institutions which spring live from the minds of idealists and ideologues and are, alas, invariably installed by incompetents, hypocrites and outright crooks.

We don’t believe much in political miracles. And we certainly don’t think that they are easily performed by the demolishionists. People like Marx, Lenin and Gramsci… and the SACP. We think that the way forward is usually found by improvement and reform, produced by reason and conscience. That this position is these days regarded as arch-conservative says a great deal about the success of the Communist international propaganda campaign against the Western ideals of freedom, order and progress. We in Africa and in South Africa are today reaping the rewards of that kind of programme.

P.W. BOTHA

The world we knew in 1983 was a frenzied one. That year marked the greatest political transformation in South Africa’s history up to that point: P.W. Botha’s public admittance that Whites could no longer rule South Africa alone. To our great relief many the White electorate gave a resounding “Yes” to the referendum question “Should Indians and Coloureds be included in the Parliamentary system?”

It was probably the first time in history that a ruling minority freely decided to share power with the rest of the country. It was also the first time since 1956 that national-level power was extended to non-whites. In January, 1985, the three-tier Tricameral Parliament was formally inaugurated. The concept of apartheid was, effectively, dead: and a beginning was made on the larger goal of a multi-racial federal state.

Though we were troubled by the omission of Blacks from the new constitution, APN welcomed the move, as a start to the delicate task of power sharing. We recognised that it would be no easy thing to shift peacefully to a multi-racial democracy after three centuries of rigid segregation. Always there is much danger in major political change. With others, we feared that would be no exception. We soon found those fears to be well grounded.

Nothing that Botha could do was enough for his critics. As he thought to stem the avalanche of criticism, at home and abroad, by offering one desperate concession after another, the country descended precipitously into disorder and instability. Most of the chaos occurred in the black townships. And, as in 1976, it involved the schools. The new uncertainty provided the left at home with a climate highly conducive to violence, intimidation and coercion.

INSURRECTIONISTS

Young people in general, but children in particular, were exploited mercilessly by adult insurrectionists, often renegade Afrikaners, Jews and Indians. Stark terror also emerged at this time as a method of intimidation. The necklace appeared – to quote the ANC’s own words, “to make the death of a collaborator so grotesque that people will never even think of it”. Often it was used by children egged on by adults. Winnie Mandela was at the height of her notoriety.

Botha, helpless to stop the madness, resorted to ineffectual threats – the word Rubicon brings it all back – and turned his attention to the dangers from across South Africa’s borders in an effort to damp down incursions by the revolutionaries and to stem the flow of weapons into the country. To the authorities in the Eighties, the campaign to unseat South Africa’s legally constituted government by insurrection at home and foreign agencies and Soviet fronts abroad, looked suspiciously like “total onslaught”. To fight it, the government developed a “total strategy”. Where did APN stand?

UNSPEAKABLE

We bitterly opposed the terror. In our view, absolutely nothing in South Africa could pardon the unspeakable brutality of burning innocent people alive. It is useful to remember that in September 1986 Mr Alfred Nzo, our distinguished present Foreign Minister, openly backed the use of the “necklace”. speaking in Lusaka, he said: “Collaborators with the enemy had to be eliminated”. Asked if this included necklacing, “Nzo nodded emphatically”. (Natal Daily News, 16.9.86).

We detested the employment of children by the revolutionaries to fight their battles. We called them cowards and murderers then, and we see them as that today, whether or not they now sit in the legislature, the executive or the judiciary.

APN did believe there was a total onslaught on the country, an onslaught orchestrated by the old USSR, in its desperate efforts to recover from its defeats in Angola and Afghanistan.There were good reasons for Moscow’s interest in this country. Above all, the urgent need to get its hands on our mineral wealth to replenish its treasury. In all its costly African adventures, it had acquired nothing but expensive liabilities.

This did not mean we believed all political opposition was inspired or fed by the communists. Far from it. We knew all about the machinations of the US, the NWO, the Scandinavians, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. Each had their own particular reasons for desiring our demise. And well we know, too, the radical infiltration that had overtaken our own churches, academia and the media.

For many years we have strongly supported Inkatha – and still do – a movement inspired by the many cruelties of the failed apartheid system; by the sting and pain and humiliation of discrimination. And, too, we supported the non-revolutionary blacks whose families were so often the targets of unrestrained UDF-ANC-SACP terror.

RESERVATIONS

We applauded the SADF victories in Angola, but had deep reservations about Pik Botha’s 1984 Nkomati peace accord with Mozambique, seeing this as of considerable benefit to Samora Machel and the ANC, but presenting great security dangers for SA.

How did we deal with the De Klerk era? We regarded De Klerk as a sellout and still do. Time and again we have given our reasons for this. Our view was that de Klerk and his weakling government were bending to US pressure to hand this country over to those elements which would ensure that the NWO imperialists would, through a weak, corrupt and incompetent ANC regime, dictate our future.

Many of our friends were generously prepared to give de Klerk the benefit of the doubt. They hoped, as did most South Africans then, that the ANC had shed its communist affiliations following the impending dismemberment of once mighty USSR. We were not so sanguine. We opposed the unbanning of the ANC/SACP, just as later we opposed the 1992 referendum. Why? Blind anti-communism? Not at all.

MOCK LEADER

We just did not trust de Klerk. We wrote that he was a mock leader who had stolen the DP’s policies; that as president he had botched everything he touched; that we had been lied to throughout his brief; that this untrustworthy man was now asking for a blank, signed cheque enabling him to continue his secret, back-room deals with the ANC/SACP. Of the referendum, we wrote: “De Klerk says he wants an honest answer. We say give it to him – DON’T be bluffed or propagandised, blackmailed or bamboozled”.

De Klerk exacted his revenge. He attacked us by name in Parliament, saying we were “misleading” and “misguiding” the people. We were hit by a very dodgy donations tax bill, amounting to hundreds of thousands of Rands, and intended to close us down. It very nearly did. And, on his say-so, cancellations arrived on our desk like confetti. It was a bad time. But, in the event, who was “misleading” whom?

What we feared has duly come to pass: the effective installation of a one party state, run by unreconstructed communists, ideologically contaminated and virtually incapable of effective co-ordinated action. Ignorance and inexperience masquerade as wisdom and responsibility. Corruption and lawlessness masquerade as law and order; madness as reason, violence as peace. Allied with it all, the deliberate effort of the SABC and others to deculturise us, to project us into a state of collective degradation.

SICK SOCIETY

We are indeed a sick society – “sick” to imply mental sickness. And Mandela, Mbeki and the rest have the gall to talk of “democracy”. SA is today a country paralysed by its leadership. As was the Soviet Union in its time, and as is the Russia of today. The connection is obvious.

The conventional wisdom is that apartheid was an unrelieved calamity for SA. But, as Simon Jenkins once remarked, apartheid did not destroy. It may have been unfair – but it made SA rich. Without a cent of foreign aid, apartheid took a moribund pastoral, agricultural and mining economy, and transformed it into a manufacturing and trading entity on world-scale. It made South Africa the most developed nation in all Africa.

Again, the conventional wisdom is that this was all due to White capitalism and the super-exploitation of Blacks. Perhaps some of it was. Yet the fact remains that while the rest of Africa was degenerating into pseudo-socialist chaos, out of the guts and sweat of our people, Black and White, arose great industries, shipyards, steel works, oil refineries, power stations, hospitals with leading world techniques, great road and rail networks, advanced telecommunications, great dams and huge water works.

That is the truth, and apartheid’s historians will one day tell it. It was sub-Saharan Africa’s first and only Wirtschaftswunder, success against great adversity.

VIRTUE STANDARD

Our position today is catastrophic. On the one side, the Afrikaans bloodline, at this stage anyway, seems to have run out of greatness, a people writing themselves out of history. On the other, we are ruled by a regime which has for all practical purposes discarded the virtue standard. In the ugliness which has surfaced, the work ethic, thrift, self-reliance, lawfulness, honesty, truthfulness, morality, idealism, fairness, integrity, altruism, pride, all have, like our currency, been heavily devalued.

For a majority of the blacks, Mandela’s many utopian promises have turned into an Orwellian nightmare.

EGALITARIANISM

There are, unfortunately, no precedents to point the way for a people who no longer accept any definition of right or wrong, whose governing and educational bodies reject the idea of excellence, who place a pathological emphasis on so-called egalitarianism.

The greatest threat we face now is the erosion of the best and brightest to foreign emigration. We pray that those who leave these shores will retain, at least for a few years, enough love for their country to consider returning if we, by some miracle, mend our ways.

So … no, we are not more hopeful than we were in 1983. But even in 1983, APN could see the writing on the wall. The difference today, perhaps, is that the writing has vanished.
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In the above article we have committed one unpardonable sin after another against the holy doctrine of p.c. We have implied that there is a difference between civilized manners, behaviour, customs and aspirations and the other kind, that is, not civilised. We have spoken of freedom in a way which implies that freedom embraces more than the right to vote. We have suggested that real, and even great progress, may occur in situations which, in many respects, perhaps leave much to be desired: like colonialism, imperialism – or apartheid.

Though we haven’t said it in so many words, we do believe that since the coming of van Riebeeck, this country progressed in every way in which cognizant human beings recognise progress; more than it had for all of human history before that time. We also believe that unless South Africans admit that fact and try to keep that progress going, we will soon find ourselves back to the days of Harry the Strandloper.

Our readers might like to know how we, who have been so sceptical of the benefits of “liberation” and have failed to fall for pop “democracy”, would actually define freedom. I think Christian Bay expressed it well when he wrote: “A person is free to the extent that he has the capacity, the opportunity and the incentive to give expression to what is in him and to develop his potentialities”.

Freedom, therefore, means freedoms of various kinds. The vote does not make free and, as the ANC is showing us, may actually enslave. Ask Holomisa or any of those who have suffered because they support the wrong party.

Civilisation then, to us, is the culmination of freedom and progress. It widens man’s choices, gives freer rein to his creative powers, and makes possible a fuller realisation of his potentialities. Whatever detracts from that purpose, in our book, moves us away from civilization. That hurts.

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CONGRATULATIONS !

WITH very rare exceptions APN does not generally publish personal comment – especially flattering comment – on our work. You will forgive us, however, if on this special occasion, we publish messages of encouragement and goodwill received from around the world on the occasion of our 200th issue. Due to APN’s admittedly controversial stance, specific identification of certain vulnerable individuals must be withheld. Others who might well have chosen to keep their identities confidential have authorised publication of their names.

First message to arrive came from a dear friend of many years standing, Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party and perhaps Africa’s only living Black statesman. He writes: “I would like to congratulate the Aida Parker Newsletter on reaching this important milestone.

“APN has always been like a breath of fresh air in a room where everyone is gasping for air because of the lack of sincerity, fair play, truth and lack of objectivity suffered in the mainstream SA press. There has been much blatant advocacy journalism in SA in recent years.

“This is because of the intimidation that many journalists suffered in the Eighties, particularly so after the emergence of the UDF (United Democratic Front). For more details of events then I refer those interested to the SA Institute of Race Relations publication, Mau-Mauing The Media, written by John Kane-Berman. This will give you an idea of the extent to which the media was “taken over” in this country. There were also stories of bribery, apart from intimidation.

So, if you did not favour the so-called ‘armed struggle,’ sanctions and disinvestment, you gained only negative coverage from most of SA’s media.

That trend has worsened since the emergence of the ‘New South Africa. Should anyone doubt this, visit any newspaper library and read how certain senior Black journalists have been subjected to a bashing by the ruling party.

“It was a very wonderful thing that we managed to change from the apartheid era to the New SA. However, we all know there has been much blood-letting since the emergence of the UDF in 1984. That bloodshed continues even now between members of the ANC and members of the IFP. Because of the so-called ‘miracle of the New SA,’ these deaths, particularly the deaths of our IFP members, are regarded as insignificant statistics, appearing merely ass ‘filler’ in most of our media.

“Some facts about the reality have appeared in full only in the Aida Parker Newsletter. It is in the interests of truth and justice that APN should continue to do the great job it has been doing over the years. That is why I have no hesitation in wishing APN everything of the best. I do hope that those who have supported it in the past will continue to support it, so that the truth may be disseminated. I salute Miss Parker for her courage and integrity in doing what she does.”

A man who has done much to help APN along its rocky road is Theodore Shackley, a Deputy Director of the CIA under George Bush. One of America’s legendary intelligence officers, especially during the Vietnam War, he now heads up Research Associates International in Washington. Typically, his message was short and sweet: “APN’s incisive reporting on history-making developments in South Africa for 200 issues has earned our respect and admiration.”
* * *

AND from another close friend, General Tienie Groenewald, former head of SADF Military Intelligence and now a key leader of the Freedom Front: “To compete with the electronic media, especially TV, newspapers today can only survive by drawing big advertising revenue. That means mass circulation and an inevitable dropping of standards to draw the widest possible readership. Adlai Stevenson once wryly remarked that newspaper editors are men who spend their time sifting the wheat from the chaff, then publish the chaff. The departure left a major credibility gap, which newsletters quickly filled. APN has survived for two reasons. First, Aida, with remarkable international experience, is a tireless researcher, with a sharp eye and retentive ear. More importantly, her journalistic ability and tenacity have kept APN going through many difficult times. She has often been threatened and taken to court, but she has never compromised her principles in the search for truth. Congratulations, Aida, dear friend. May APN go on for ever. God bless.

* * *

A very special friend and APN’s main advisor on events in Israel and the Middle East – Dan Nimrod, head of Dawn Publishing in Quebec, Canada: “To Aida Parker, APN publisher, marking your 200th issue of this remarkable, highly readable newsletter. Very few of the many periodicals that have crossed my desk in the past two decades have measured up in substance and depth to your front line challenge. If and when the story of fighting journalism – without bias or prejudice – is told, you will be counted among the last Mohicans of a lost civilisation, facing the odds uprightly, with courage and dignity. Yours in the struggle.

Dan Nimrod.”

* * *

HILAIRE du Perier, who publishes his marvellous newsletter from Monaco, has been a tower of strength to me over the years. Hilaire, with an incredibly adventurous life behind him, has published his newsletter since 1954. He is on all counts one of the most courageous reporters of our time. A tribute from him is a tribute indeed: “Aida, with each passing month you emerge more and more as a rare South African heroine, crying ‘Desist’, to a distant world which never understood that your people needed another 100 years of guidance before they could stand alone. For years I have admired you more than any other woman I know. Your courage is inspiring, in that world of which Conrad said: “In Africa no depth of cruelty is unimaginable.”

* * *

FROM Professor Eric Brodin, President, Foundation for International Studies, North Carolina, USA: “Warmest congratulations on achieving the 200th issue of your excellent newsletter. I think back on the 23 years I have been privileged to know you, with gratitude for the many things about Southern Africa I have learnt from you. Over the years I have found APN so useful in my understanding of SA, another ingredient in what I have learnt during my seven visits over the years since 1973. While I have not always agreed with everything, I have found much to learn from APN. As you have succeeded with the 200th issue under often trying circumstances over the years, may you be enabled and succeed in producing another 200 issued in the years to come.”

* * *

FROM Robert Santamaria, publisher of the outstanding Australian News Weekly, a very important voice in Australian publishing: “Dear Aida … I note that you are in course of preparing APN No 200. It is no mean achievement. While the concentration of the magazine has been on the internal affairs of South Africa proper, its wider significance has been to draw attention to the general tragedy associated with the decolonisation of Africa as a whole. Decolonisation, apartheid, tribalism and similar concepts are frequent subject matters for polite – and occasionally impolite – controversy in Western society. Your contribution presents a view which rarely appears elsewhere. For me, the underlying reality is the unceasing tragedy which has been the fate of the many African people. The changes supposed to usher in an era of freedom and cooperation for Blacks and Whites in SA, to date at least, have as yet fallen far short of their mark. I trust that you will keep on reminding your readers of what is actually happening.”

* * *

FROM Dr Ed Cain who heads up the big, Pretoria-based Christian organisation, Signpost Publications and Research Centre. With the friendship of Ed and his wife, Deanna, I am truly blessed: “Congratulations, Aida, on your 200th edition. Despite all the changes on the political scene, you have persevered, producing a unique and vital newsletter. Many have tried to close you down, but you have kept going and shamed us all with your courage and faithfulness to the truths you hold dear. We who stand on the sidelines and have watched the battles you have come through want to cheer you on to the 300th edition! May the Lord bless and keep you.”

* * *

TWO of APN’s most generous supporters, particularly so in our efforts to help distressed Afrikaner primary school children, are Los Angeles business executive Tony Longinotti and his wife, Gay: “Words are inadequate for your great work. May you and South Africa soon find peace.”

* * *

DR RICHARD Martin, of Lucerne, Switzerland, with whom we have worked for many years and who long ago foresaw the dangers of a communist takeover of SA, with all this would mean to the West: “Cordial congratulations on the occasion of the 200th issue of APN. We admire your courage and perseverance. APN provides essential information for South Africans, to understand the dangers of communism and hopefully one day to help lead to a real democracy in your beautiful country.:

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FROM Donald Dareoch, now living in Benalla, Australia, and who has for many years been a good friend, supported and advisor: “It mast be some 20 years since we first met and I think I was among the first of your subscribers. At any rate I have read APN with great interest and am still amazed at how often you have got things right. I have valued our talks – long distance now – and meetings and look forward to these continuing. The rapid changes in the world today make a voice of sanity more necessary than ever before. Yours is such a voice. Keep up the good work. There are few enough daring to print the truth today.”

* * *

TWO of my most special friends in the US are Prince Michel Cantacuzene, a member of the former Russian Royal family and who was himself smuggled out of that country as a babe-in-arms during the height of the Bolshevik Revolution, and his wife, Princess Pamela Cantacuzene. Now living on Rhode Island in New York, they faxed: “Congratulations, Aida. You keep us aware of the truth of what is really happening in SA. Thank you, old friend, for the huge efforts you have made for freedom.”

* * *

A whole batch from Greece. One from an especially dear friend now living on a Greek island, lucky thing – Ms Theo Sofianos: “To everything there is a season, and a time to speak. May you always speak out. So much is owed to you by so many. We thank you dearly. Congratulations, APN.”

* * *

One signed simply Iphigenia: “Congratulations, APN. To dear and precious Aida, always the best and bravest. How grateful we are.” Another using the pseudonym: Neels Bitterender: “Congrats on bicent. publication. Keep speaking up when other voices quaver. Stand by the innocents when others fail them. You have the loneliest job in town.”

* * *

FROM two ladies who play a very big role in the production of APN. Estelle Lombard, writing on behalf of the Executive Committee, Action Save South Africa: “Congratulations on the 200th issue of APN. Thank you for all your assistance and encouragement. May you be around for another 200 issues.”

And from Ann Forbes of Mega-SA: “In an era when political expediency outweighs accuracy and compromise denies truth, APN stands as a beacon, highlighting the realities confronting this nation and indeed the world today. Written with integrity and foresight, it retains its position in the forefront of SA journalism. Viva, Aida.”

From my long-time friend and medical advisor, Dr Barbara Boss: “Congratulations on your 200th ‘birthday.’ For brute honesty and colossal courage you take the cake. Warmest good wishes.”

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AND three messages which must of necessity remain anonymous:

“APN is the only publication in SA today which pulls no punches. What a relief it is, after a month of reading The Daily Cringe, to get my copy of APN in the mail. Without honesty, this country will get nowhere. Courage, Aida.”

“Congratulations to an honest and determined lady, a woman who truly shows that gender is no barrier to brilliance and achievement. I am grateful that throughout the storms you have been there for us.”

“APN should be compulsory reading for every politician and bureaucrat in the ‘New SA.’ It is ideas that this country is short on and APN is the only ideas paper available here. Aida can be proud of her achievement.”

THOUGH life is not always a walk in the park here, I am singularly fortunate in my friends. One of the best is Julia Brueggeman, of Seattle in the US. She writes: “Since sadly our own US newspapers give such slanted news about what is really going on in SA, I was delighted to discover your wonderful newsletter several years ago. APN is truly a voice in the wilderness and I look forward to its arrival each month. God richly reward you for your good work.”

* * *

And from Franklin Sanders, publisher of The Moneychanger, based in Memphis, Tennessee and often quoted in APN: “Congratulations on your 200th and may God give you 200 more! You have been a faithful and brave warrior for the truth, for justice and for South Africa. God bless you.

* * *

“HISTORICALLY, the accession to power by any one group is accompanied by the humiliation of its predecessor. This is very evident in South Africa today, with the indignities now being heaped on the Whites, especially the Afrikaners, by an unrelenting assault on all the values and traditions their civilisation holds dear. What is mot needed in this predicament and struggle is perspective. That you, and a tiny band like you, attempt to present.

Don’t EVER give up. All good wishes on this special occasion in your career.” ATP.

And thank you, friends known and unknown, for making all of this possible.
TWO LATECOMERS

TWO very late faxes arrived right on printing time, both from very special friends. The one from a man to whom I have long been a dedicated disciple: Brian Crozier, the great British strategist. For his influence on my career, I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. I was, I believe, one of the first journalists to enter Angola when it was invaded by Holden Roberto’s terrorist gangs in the early Sixties.

What I knew then of Soviet-inspired revolution, subversion and terrorism you could have written on the head of a pin. Returning to SA, I obtained Brian’s two masterly works on revolutionary warfare: The Rebels and Strategy of Survival. Over the coming years, as I covered revolutions in the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, South West Africa, Rhodesia and, finally SA, those books become my bibles. It was a sad time, watching as the Russians and the Americans between them converted what had been the most peaceful continent on earth into the violent, disease-and-poverty-stricken slum it was to become.

HISTORIAN

Brian’s message to APN: “I greet the 200th issue of the APN. Nowhere else can I read the unadorned truth about South Africa. Long may it and Aida Parker flourish. Brian Crozier from London.”

The other message is from the renowned historian, Professor Leo Raditsa, often referred to as America’s answer to Paul Johnson. Years before I was privileged to meet him, I knew of Leo as a distinguished scholar of Mediterranean antiquity. He came into my life when he visited SA to prepare one of the best books ever written on SA’s modern, revolutionary history, The Other End of the Lifeboat.

At that time, few other commentators had noted the ridiculous paradox: that, at precisely the moment that all of Eastern Europe was ridding itself of communist dictatorship, South Africa alone in the world had welcomed home SA Communist Party leaders, men with an appalling record of violence and treason behind them. Prisoners dealt with the 1982 hearings scheduled in Washington by one-time Republican Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama.

Testimony heard before the Denton Committee on security and terrorism in SA disclosed the existence of a strategy to seize power by force and terror. The first tactic, of course, was to kill Black South Africans who disagreed with the ANC strategy of revolution. Naturally, the lib/left media here and abroad chose virtually to ignore the hearings.

Prisoners is a book that deserved to be carefully studied when it was first published: and even more so now. Above all, it goes far to put into perspective much of the testimony now being presented by SA security force officers, prostrating themselves before Desmond Tutu’s highly questionable Truth & Reconciliation Commission, crying mea culpa, mea culpa.

SANCTIONS BILL

One of the most striking chapters in the book dealt with the campaign against SA in the US: how popular anger against this country was skilfully manipulated by various fronts, many of them using the UN an their transmission belt. Even today few South Africans understand that every provision of the vicious Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, the US sanctions bill which hit SA with everything short of outright war and was passed over Reagan’s veto, followed the ANC programme to the letter. The ANC and its SACP masters could well accept that it was indeed winning the “armed struggle” – not in SA, but in Washington.

The views of Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a true Christian, a man who profoundly hates violence and who saw the dangers inherent in US sanctions, were rarely heard over the repressive roar of Nelson Mandela’s US media patrons. For the US media, then as now, Buthelezi, the true democrat and peacemaker, was a non-person. As Arnold Beichman once remarked, Mandela was the hero, Buthelezi the anti-hero.

NAIVE ILLUSIONS

Above all, Prisoners was a book designed to shatter the naïve illusions of unwitting dupes flaunting their dreams while doing the work of the SA Communist Party. Such an event was, naturally, not new. Think of Franklin Roosevelt’s extraordinary infatuation with Stalin, while knifing Churchill in the back.

Rereading the book now, it brings the whole wretched, carefully manoeuvred tragedy back to life. The old South Africa was universally portrayed as a “bandit state”, yet it was a “new European nation outside Europe.” That no longer applies. We have on our hands a parody of free institutions. And for that, too, we can thank the Russians, the Americans and the Scandinavians.

Yet the West always knew where the ANC stood: that their great hero, Mandela, had himself in the early Sixties made the ANC the creature of the SACP. Sol Dubla, writing The South African Communist, noted that “today the ANC and the SACP are embraced in the common front of liberation.” Nor has Mandela – of whose real political affiliations little is known even now – ever hesitated publicly to declare his loyalty and affiliation with the SACP.

WORSE EVILS

There were, and are, worse evils than discrimination. South Africans today are finding that out. All around us we can see the results of the total abandonment of common sense, here and abroad.

One day the real history of this tragic, hideously betrayed country will be written. Leo’s book will then come into its own – a book written by a brave American intellectual who dard swim against the tide of unreason. You will understand that I have an immense affection for Leo. His message to APN reads:

“You are at your 200th issue and APN’s 13th birthday, both too old and too young, like this time that feeds on illusion but dares not hope. But unlike it you will not remain stuck: maturity is a word I can say in your presence. At APN’s birth, the ‘top sergeant’ mentality was strong enough in me to make me embarrassed reading you. Who was this person who dared think with her own head? And a South African!

“You show us the obvious we ignore because we dare not use our eyes. And this in a time in which few can make any sense of what is going on because everything that happens is so obvious. You bring the strength out in us, not only in South Africa, for the charade playing in South Africa betrays most obviously the attempt to paralyse and destroy opposition going on throughout the West. Only individual voices can resist this onslaught. Leo Radisa, New York.”
THE LATE, GREAT MR PALME

COCKEYED claims by disgraced apartheid-era SA security police officers that former State President P W Botha somehow sanctioned the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme have drawn worldwide attention: and brought two top Swedish cops to SA to “investigate.”Anything, of course, further to damage and denigrate the wicked, wicked Boers.

As SA’s orthodox media (surprise! surprise!) have seen fit tamely to print these highly offensive defamations, we on APN decided to do our own investigation into Palme. And most interesting it has proved For decades this saintly Swede has been presented to the world as an unsullied apostle of peace and international goodwill, his heart full of goodness and sweetness. He was, indeed, posthumously awarded India’s Jawararlal Nehru Prize for promoting “world peace and non-violence.”

SOVIET STOOGE

An image, if truth be known, greatly at odds with the reality.

Passionately anti-Western and anti-capitalist, Palme was not only a willing and eager Soviet stooge and one of the world’s leading supporters of radical-left terrorism/revolution but, to cap it all, was one of the world’s leading illicit arms salesmen to boot.

Conspiratorial theories about his murder abound. The only thing that can be reported for certain is that the Swedish authorities, police and government alike, have gone to desperate lengths over the last decade to ensure that the truth does not surface. This SA diversion must please them greatly.

Let’s first look at Palme’s various arms deals, notably that concluded with his friend, Rajiv Gandhi, who was himself later assassinated: an event many believed to be associated with the crooked Swedish arms trade. In January 1986 Palme visited New Delhi, specifically to pressure Gandhi into buying US$ 1,3 billion worth of Swedish weaponry: 400 155 mm howitzers from AB Bofors, an ailing Swedish armaments manufacturer.

Company officials later admitted that Bofors had sweetened the deal with a commission totalling a cool US$50 million. Did Rajiv Gandhi or officials close to him receive the commission? What did Palme know about this payment? And when did he know it? Whatever, one month after his meeting with Gandhi – and just as the sale was being finalised – Palme was gunned down by persons unknown.

One official who might have shed light on the mystery is also dead. Carl-Fredrik Algernon, chief of Sweden’s Arms Exports Inspectorate, had emerged as a key figure in various investigations into Bofors. In January 1988, one day before he was due to testify in the Bofors investigation, Algernon fell or, more likely, was pushed to his death before an oncoming subway train at Stockholm’s Central Station. His death was listed as “accidental … possibly suicide.” Few believe it.

ARMS SALES

Stockholm Country Police chief, Mr Hans Homer, later resigned from the force, complaining that his investigations into the death were being hampered by the prosecuting authority.

In personally negotiating the sale to India, was Palme simply bending his well-known “principles” to accommodate Rajiv Gandhi? Not at all. While mouthing peaceful sentiments, Palme and the Swedes were energetically pushing arms sales to Third World states that could ill afford them and should not get them. Yet such sales were necessary. Sweden’s own defence procurements were too small for its big arms industry to survive without exports. the Indian order guaranteed employment for 5 000 Bofors workers for at least four years. The company threw a lavish champagne party for all staff and their families the night the deal was signed.

Other sales included: Arms to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Teheran. Iran received nearly 1 000 RBS-70 anti-aircraft missiles plus many other items routed to the Mid East through two Singapore companies, Allied Ordnances of Singapore and Unicorn International. Here’s a twist. According to Sweden’s Bureau of Statistics Singapore – whose defence requirements are modest – was Sweden’s biggest weapons customer between 1977 and 1986.

REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS

It bought US$1,4 billion worth of arms, almost 11% of all Swedish arms exports in that period. Missiles were only part of the story. In 1983, with Palme in office, Sweden’s shipbuilding firm of Boghammer Marin diverted some 40 speedboats to the Iranian Coast guard, an order reportedly worth some US$9,5 million. The boats, capable of speeds up to 50 knots, were used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to harass and attack oil tankers and other shipping in the Gulf, including Swedish-owned supertankers.

Sweden’s War materials Inspectorate later investigated charges that these speedboats were modified for military purposes by Boghammer Marin before delivery to Iran. Further, more than 400 tons of explosives were sold to Iran by Sweden’s Nobel Kemi Co, through Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, according to Swedish Customs. They stated that the company made US$67 million on that deal. Like Bofors, Nobel Kemi is a subsidiary of Nobel Industries founded by Alfred Nobel, of Peace Prize fame.

But the big kicker to this story is that Palme, “the peacemaker,” all this time had been assigned by the UN to mediate in the protracted Iranian/Iraqi war. Some peacemaker.

So, what do we have here? Evil capitalists defying the law in the interests of fat profits? Hardly. Avowed socialist Olof Palme was involved in all these deals up to his armpits. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that the Iraqis, whose forces were destined to be at the receiving end of this Swedish hardware, could have decided to give the Great Peacemaker a helping hand into the next world?

CAUGHT RED-HANDED

And don’t think plenty of people in Europe didn’t know what was going on. In 1984 the Danish seamen’s union asserted that arms were being carried from Sweden to Iran in Danish ships – and claimed they had the documentation top prove it. Other evidence was surfacing.

Western intelligence agencies had been keeping tabs on illegal weapons trafficking by one Karl-Erik Schmitz. In June 1985 Swedish Customs confiscated 50 tons of explosives originating from Bofors, leading to a raid on Schmitz’ office in Malmo soon thereafter. Schmitz was put on trial. Many at the time claimed that the fact that Schmitz was caught red-handed in this arms trafficking led to Palme’s assassination. The allegations went on.

In February 1992, in an interview in Dagens Nyheter. a Bofors executive confirmed that his company had paid a US $50 million bribe to Indian officials including, it was suggested, the late Rajiv Gandhi. The unnamed Bofors executive said he “still wondered every day if there was a connection between the Palme murder and the sale to India.’

SCANDAL

Two years ago, 25.2.94, The italian daily Corriera della Sera, published an article “Weapons and Bribes: The Palme Mystery”, dealing with the release of “hundreds of banking documents on the sale of the Bofors cannon to India.” The fact that the Swiss banks had decided to release their banking documents had, it said, “triggered an international scandal, which the Swedish authorities, at all levels, have tried to avoid for years”.

Let’s now go back to the evening of 28.2.86, when, at about 11.30 p.m., Palme was shot and killed as he and his wife Lisbeth, walked away from the Grand Theatre in Stockholm. There, with the second of their three sons, Marten, they had seen a Swedish comedy, The brothers Mozart, After parting from Marten, the Palmes – without bodyguards, at his wish – were heading towards his home in Stockholm’s Old Town, a neighbourhood about 15 minutes away. Now they come under attack by a lone gunman. One bullet entered Palme, killing him instantly. A second bullet grazed his wife’s back. It was the first political slaying in Sweden since the killing of King Gustav III at a masked ball in 1792.

ROTHSCHILD

Reports at the time claimed that Palme was having an affair with British/American millionairess Emma Rothschild and that it could have been through this that his movements were monitored. One police theory was that the assassin and his back-up could have gained knowledge about Palme’s movements by tapping her phone.

One report claimed that Swedish detectives were seeking to interview Emma Rothschild when they received instructions from high places not to pursue this line of enquiry. Palme’s alleged affair with Emma Rothschild was, according to political sources, “a public secret” in Stockholm, in government, diplomatic and media circles.

Ten months after the killing, at least 12 top detectives investigating the case resigned. According to a Swedish intelligence source, police claimed “political pressure” was being exerted, to block progress of the investigations. The Swedish government, it was claimed, was “terrified” of the international consequences should the police name the assassin and “reveal the forces behind him.”

ANGOLAN DIAMONDS

Particularly mentioned here was that Palme had been instrumental in helping an alleged Russian KGB agent, Polish-born Jacob Leizer Chanow, to set up a trade route for Angolan diamonds, so defrauding the SA diamond giant, De Beers, and threatening its pricing cartel. After the resignation of the detectives, it was disclosed that the Swedish police had uncovered a connection between Palme and Jacob Chanow. While it was not claimed that Palme knew that Chanow was a KGB agent, it was reported that Palme assisted him in making contacts in a number of international deals, including the marketing of the Angolan diamonds.

It as repeatedly claimed at the time that Swedish police chief Hans Homer knew who the assassin was: and the identity of the group which ordered the killing. This would seem a probability. On 24.8.1989 the popular Swedish newspaper, Expressen, carried a front-page banner headline, “Soviets Knew Palme Was To be Murdered.” The article reported that named members of SAPO, the Swedish secret police, had taped a conversation of a Swedish-based Soviet diplomat, suspected of being a KGB agent, the night before Palme was assassinated.

ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE

It claimed that careful analysis of the transcripts had convinced some SAPO officials that the Soviets had advance knowledge of the plan to murder Palme: and that the official mainly responsible for translating the tapes had concluded that the Soviets had “both initiated and carried out the assassination.” A sensational claim about a high-focus political killing? Certainly, But, strangely, not one of the top Western “liberal” media chose to print it, though it was carried by The Washington Times.

One of the few public comments on the matter came from Zdzizlaw Rurarz, former Polish Ambassador to Japan, who said it was widely suspected in diplomatic circles that the USSR had had a hand in Palme’s murder. Why? Because the Russians feared he had switched his loyalties to the CIA.

And if you think that is the end of the Palme scandals, think again. Palme was born in 1927, into a aristocratic family. Ironically, it seems that he became radicalised while studying at Kenyon College in Ohio. He returned home from the US a dedicated socialist, an ideologue of epic proportions, bitterly opposed to capitalism, which he claimed created a society of “egoism and sharp elbows.”

Joining the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP), he was soon elevated to Cabinet status, as Minister of Education. As such, in 1969 he angered the US when he joined the North Vietnamese Ambassador to Moscow on a Stockholm demonstration against US involvement in Vietnam. In 1969 he was elected SDP leader, and then premier. Once in office, he placed Sweden firmly on the anti-Western side.

Second only to Moscow, Sweden became the most generous supporter of the Vietcong, in 1979 sending US$200 million to Hanoi. He became very friendly with Boris Ponomarev, head of the International Department of the CPSU. Again, after the USSR, he became the second most generous financial fairy godfather to Castro, being received later as a hero in Havana. Nor did he neglect Allende’s Marxist regime in Chile or any other Latin American trouble spot.

SUBVERSION CENTRE

Gradually, he converted Sweden into an international subversion centre and the main Soviet line of infiltration into the West. In 1973 he accepted 170 Uruguayan Tupamaro terrorists: by 1979 thousands of Soviet- and Cuban-trained Latin American Marxist revolutionaries were resident in Sweden: 410 Argentineans, 397 Bolivians, 492 Brazilians, 2 411 Chileans, 344 Colombians, 214 Peruvians, 732 Uruguayans. By the beginning of 1980 there were more than 70 Latin American leftwing extremist organisations active in Sweden.

Also enjoying Swedish hospitality were members of Germany’s Baader-Meinhoff gang and the Red Army Faction; Italy’s Red Brigade; Abu Nidal’s terrorist organisation; The ANC and Swapo; the Turkish PKK group; Sikh and Basque separatists; the radical Kurdish Workers Party, pressing for a Kurdish homeland, and many more. To Britain’s intense irritation, Palme also allowed the IRA to use Sweden as a base for its operations in the UK and Ulster.

So there you have it. The CIA, MI6, the KGB, the Germans, the Iraqis, the Argentineans, General Pinochet, De Beers – and now P W Botha and the old SA Security Police – all in their time have been suspects in the Palme killing and its complex cover-up. Nor should it be overlooked that Sweden’s own SDP was also on this list, with suggestions that the then-ruling party would have been only too happy to rid itself of an increasingly embarrassing political liability.

RESERVATIONS

So who do you think was the guilty party? Who knows … except that P W Botha trails very, very far along at the bottom of the line. Knowing P W I have the greatest reservations about his involvement in this or any other murder. So: no suspect, no motive, no murder weapon. This despite the whopping award the Swedish authorities offered for information leading to an arrest: 50 000 Kronor, or $9 million in 1986 US dollars. Was the reward put at that figure, the Swedes well knowing there was little if any chance of it ever being claimed?

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UNDERCOVER EXCELLENCE

There are spies and spies.

This enigmatical assertion is amply borne out if one bends an ear to our electronic media where one spy stands out, literally that is, from the rest: Craig Williamson is always a SUPERSPY.

And somehow, SUPERSPIES, unlike Parktown prawns, do not have to bear the sinister ignominy of their undergrown co-workers.

SUPERSPIES have qualities which, if not exactly exemplary, exude a certain romance. And among those who move in workerist circles – as they do in their interminable ‘workshops’ – romance is a quality much in demand, and understandably so, especially by the drab feminists who toil there.

But why does the notorious Craig Williamson, and he alone, qualify for this distinction? APN’s guess is that Williamson’s single-handed penetration of the conspiracy within the Geneva-based International University Exchange Fund, an organisation which, as Deputy Director, he effectively ran for several years, is what earned him this the rare accolade. In its time the IUEF, largely Swedish supported, acted as an important communist front – and a major funder to the ANC/SACP.

One hardly dares mention it, of course, but could it be that the Communists look back in awe at the efficiency which he brought to the IUEF while he was in charge?

Perhaps, looking back, we should all be sorry that Craig blew his cover. If he’d stayed on, the ANC would have had at least one cabinet minister who knew what he was doing.

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MUGGED BY MBEKI

Transparency is a word frequently to be found near the lips of our new masters. It is perfectly understandable. Whenever political interest groups come newly to power, whether through the vote or by less conventional means, such as aggressive foreign intervention or revolution – or as in South Africa’s case, the two combined – the greatest challenge the newcomers face is that of convincing the people, and the world, of their noble antecedents, unblemished record, meritorious intentions, purity of soul and selfless dedication.

ORCHESTRA OF SWINDLERS

To make this unlikely symphony sound sweetly melodious to the masses, the orchestra of swindlers, charlatans and wind-bags and know-nothings (to err on the side of generosity), who take up their fiddles (if the pun can be pardoned) always proceed from the assumption that the public is composed entirely of tone deaf cretins who will bear any discomfort, sustain any insult or injury, in silence in the interests of political tranquillity.

It always works for a while. Then the truth begins to ooze out. The villainous crew untune their instruments and project a discordant cacophony at those daring to expose the fraud.

Dr Roland, till very recently MD of Sappi Saiccor, is presently the target of the loudest brass. Like those who in their day amplified the media campaign against the Nationalists in their day, projecting the views of its critics on to the international screen, he has, with remarkably similar intent, moved to mobilise international opinion with the object of forcing reform on the present government. His point is that unless the ANC/SACP alliance does something to scotch incipient anarchy, the tranquillity which we so deeply desire will be the quiet of the grave.

COULD FOOL US

What a pity, then, that the most likely result of his efforts will be a still further diminution of press reports on crime and government corruption and incompetence. And what a pleasure it will be for Mr Thabo Mbeki, the gentleman who “fears” that any suggestion of anarchy “could deter foreign investment”.

I find it extraordinary that the US Information Service, which laboured so diligently to help bring this miserably incompetent ANC/SACP regime to power – even establishing a library in Soweto some 20 years ago, including 600 helpful books on the French Revolution – was responsible for alerting Mbeki to the Mazery initiative.

Most stunning of all was the comment from Mbeki’s spokesman, one Thami Ntenteni. He said that the Mazery campaign “makes it look like there isn’t an effective government in South Africa.”

You could have fooled us.

Season’s bleatings

The Church of England says it’s time we all had a very Unmerry Christmas

OH, dear. I note that the Christian faith in which I, like millions of others, was raised – the church of England – is at it again. Desperately trendy as is their wont, the Lambeth Fathers, woolly dogooders all, have decided in their ecclesiastical wisdom to abolish the idea of Happy

Christmas. Instead, according to the London Daily Mail, the former restive season is to be known – wait for it! As “a bad hair day.” The Mail outlines this latest brilliant example of Anglican enlightenment:

“The phrase – Bad Hair Day?’ – will be used on posters, T-shirts, radio and possibly television in an extraordinary Christmas advertising campaign intended to attract more young people into services. One poster proclaims: “Bad hair day?! You’re a virgin, you’ve just given birth, and now three kings have shown up.’ Underneath, in small print, is the message: ‘Find out the happy ending at a church near you.’

MEAN TO SHOCK

“The church’s advertising men, with the backing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, admit they mean to shock. One said: ‘Peace and goodwill to all has had a good run. That message has got home. It’s time for something else.’ The idea has already been roundly condemned by traditionalists inside the Church.

“Clerics who helped draw up the Churches’ Advertising Network campaign – being supported by the Roman Catholic and free churches – say they want to overturn the ‘safe and comfortable’ idea that Christmas is a time of happiness and celebration. They want to emphasise how unpleasant it must have been for the Virgin Mary to give birth in a stable and to draw parallels with the poor, the homeless and refugees today.

“It means in effect that the Church – which this summer abandoned Hell by a vote of the General Synod – has now turned its back on the traditional culture of its most popular festival. Advertising ‘creatives’ behind the campaign believe ‘bad hair day’ is such contemporary slang it will appeal to youngsters who find the traditional message too staid. One of the team, John Griffiths, said: ‘Church advertising has been safe and a bit preachy. We wanted to change the tone.’

FATUOUS

“He added: ‘We have to be very cautious about trendy advertising. We wouldn’t want to say something three years out of date like ‘Christmas is wicked.’ Mr Griffith said ‘bad hair day’ had become current only recently and had only just begun to reach the newspapers. “It is not a phrase that came in three movies ago.”

As The Mail points out, the fatuous Mr Griffiths with his kitschy phrases, is wrong. ‘Bad hair day’ first appeared in a British newspaper five years ago. A new version of Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, published last month, describes it as 1990s Californian teenage slang, meaning “a feeling of slight depression when you would rather stay at home than face the world.” It has been used in shampoo advertisements.

The Mail concludes: “The new campaign’s supporters admit that some bishops and clergy who have seen it are unimpressed. Ely vicar Tom Ambrose said: “There has been some concern, but people who object cannot put their finger on shy.” The Archdeacon of York, George Austin, said: “I can put my finger on what is wrong with it. Bad taste.”

Let’s pause to allow the richness, the ripeness, of modern Anglican thinking to sink in. The campaign does, of course, represent some sort of victory for that demented ecclesiast, David Jenkins, former Bishop of Durham. I think it was at the 1986 General Synod that this famed publicity hound opined that the Anglican Church would benefit by injecting more “whoopee” (his word, not mine) into its overall approach.

For years Jenkins regularly hit the headlines by seeking to demolish both the Bible and key parts of the Christmas story. He insisted that Jesus Christ was not “the saviour of men,” that all the church’s most cherished stories of Christmas were myths. He questioned the story of “no room at the inn,” and the stars guiding the Three Wise Men. He shot down their gold, frankincense and myrrh and even the swaddling clothes and the manger at Bethlehem. speaking of the BBC, 24.12.93, he informed the listening public it was “all poetical myth.”

In many other ways too the long-suffering congregations of this seriously ailing church have suffered from change-hungry prelates. They have seen some very strange ladies ordained as priests – and listened to some of them demand that God be addressed as “She.” They have seen guitars and rock music in their cathedrals, with insane vicars prancing around in the aisles: what the Bishop of Chester once called “raves in the nave.”

More recently we have seen the widespread introduction of the “no outcasts” policy, with the liturgical solemnisation of homosexual “marriages.” Latest example of church PA (politically absurd): in some dioceses, it is being recommended that the words “husband” and “wife” fall into disuse, because these might offend the delicate sensibility of married homosexuals.

Isn’t that progress? Who could want a better church? Please pray for the Anglican Church.

ATTENTION DR ZUMA

“ABORTION is essentially a moral issue, just as slavery was. Both revolve around the value we attach to human life. Entire civilisations lived with slavery for centuries, but ultimately its inescapable immorality had to be recognised and the political consequences accepted whatever the cost. (In the USA in the 19th century) a powerful case for slavery could be, and was, made, and enforced by the huge special interests which had grown up around it. Time and again the subject bubbled to the surface, and subsided again as yet another compromise was thrown over it.

“It seemed in everyone’s interests to avoid a showdown. But the issue was morally too important for that. It would not go away and in the end it involved the United States in a war which killed a million people and destroyed a society and way of life for ever. The price America had to pay was enormous but Americans decided it had to be paid. Today it is hard to find any American, even in the South, who would not agree that slavery had to be ended, even at the cost of a civil war.

“Slavery was tolerable only when it was shrouded in ignorance, euphemism and deception. The more you knew about its realities, the more its ugly facts were uncovered, the higher the gorge rose. The decisive moment in America came when Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, brought the horrible essence of slavery home to millions. The case against abortion has yet to find its Harriet Beecher Stove. Bit it will.

“It is notable that every time the truth about the nature of abortion breaks the surface – as it did in the case involving the killing of a twin – more and more people, including doctors, themselves, ask questions about the morality of the whole evil business.” – Paul Johnson, The London Spectator, 17.8.96.

WHITE HOUSE WATCH

WITH only days to go before US voters go to the polls, APN asked our Washington representative to provide us with a last-minute wrap-up of the Presidential elections. He writes: Historically, US presidential elections are won on domestic pocket book issues. The old Southern adage, “the catfish are jumping and the living is easy” is in full flower in Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party campaign headquarters.

Bolstered by a remarkably strong economy, most americans are better off today than they were four years ago at the start of the Clinton administration. this means that more than half US households have video cassette recorders, colour TVs and air conditioners. A growing number have personal computers, cellular telephones and home telefax machines. More than 90% of all households have a car: and 40% have two or more cars.

In other words, despite high levels of crime and social decay, most Americans still enjoy levels of prosperity way above those found in any other country. In this climate of contentment, Clinton has benefited hugely from the reluctance of Americans to concern themselves too deeply with his failings. Those realities explain why Clinton is currently 10%/15% ahead of the Republican challenger, Robert Dole, in most political polls.

Despite serious character flaws – womanising and a fleeting acquaintance with the meaning of truth -Clinton is a master politician: On the key political issues of the day, he is where the polls say he should be. He favours less government but not that much less. Less Government spending is good, providing no one gets hurt. He supports women staying longer in hospitals after giving birth. He favours everyone having health insurance and he supports strong family leave laws.

Gun control is high on his agenda but it has to be accomplished so anyone who wants to hunt or shoot a prowler entering a bedroom at night can do so. Most important, he can feel the electorate’s pain, no matter what issue brings tears to their eyes. Add to that package glib world-class oratical skills. One can then understand why, though Americans tell pollsters they don’t trust Clinton, they will vote for him. Character as an issue in US presidential politics is undergoing its death rattle thanks to the man Arkansas politicians call Slick Willie.

Bob Dole, a decent man, war hero and an able legislator, as he repeatedly proved in a distinguished career in the Senate, seems unable to capture the public’s imagination as he pursues his Presidential aspirations for the third time. Dole does not come through as “Mr Congeniality.” Most of his support is either from hard-nosed Republican loyalists or those who support him solely due to their antipathy to Clinton. That gives Dole an electoral basis of 40% of those registered to vote.

The Clinton/Dole debates did little to close the gap. Dole did well in the structural forum of the give and take, giving a sound lesson in both civics and civility. Unfortunately Middle America, the “Joe Six Pack” vote, was not listening. That was a disaster for Dole, for it is in middle America that swing voters can be found and converted to his vision of less government, less taxes, reduction of the federal deficit, a more aggressive war on drugs and a foreign policy focused on natural interests rather than social engineering.

Heading down the stretch toward November 5, Dole must forget the popular vote as such. What requires his attention is the electoral college vote which is gained by obtaining a majority of the popular vote in a given state. It takes 270 electoral college votes to gain the Presidency. Dole could thus craft a strategy of dividing the electoral map into three categories. The first: 16 states with 135 electoral votes where the core of the Republican Party’s voter base is located. Then he needs to zero in on “must win” states such as Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Colorado, Nevada and Arizona to gain another 77 electoral votes.

If Dole has these 23 states in his pocket on election night, he would have 212 votes, which is 68 short of the goal. To pick up the shortfall, Dole has to win in Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, Connecticut, Iowa and Montana. Unfortunately, Clinton is ahead in these states at this time. Thus, even an electoral college strategy is no formula for a sure win for Dole.

In short, black clouds hover over Republican presidential aspirations. The odds heavily favour joy prevailing in the “Slick Willie” camp on November 5. Dole supporters can expect nothing better than black crepe draped over their hopes and dreams unless a last-minute sea change in political attitudes occurs in the electorate.

IMPEACHMENT? Bill Clinton may be riding high right now, but he is still sitting on a barrel of dynamite. Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of the London Times, believes Clinton will probably be “Watergated” in his second term of office – “That’s what happened to Nixon, and I think it can happen again.” Republican Dr Jack Wheeler writing in the high-priced US newsletter, Strategic Investment, thinks the same. He discloses that two months ago a high profile delegation of Democrats, led by Ted Kennedy, called on Clinton and told him to stand down.

“He had a purple fit and told them to stick it. Then for good measure he sent a message to Ken Starr (Watergate special prosecutor), the clear implication of which was: ‘If you indict Hillary or me, you’ll end up like Vince Foster or Ron Brown.’

After intimidating Starr out of the way, Slick thinks it’s clear sailing for a second term – but he could soon run into an implacable foe, the man determined that his second term will be in the Big House, not the White House.

“That man is Congressman Dan Burton (Rep-Indiana). One of Burton’s colleagues told me: ‘Bill Clinton better pray he loses in November, because then he can retire from politics gracefully, like Carter. But if he wins, we’re going to impeach him. We are simply not going to put up with this crooked bastard any more. We’re going to put him and his crooked wife behind bars – and that’s a promise.'”

Wheeler says that the chairman of the previous Congressional investigative committee, Richard Clinger, “did not have the stomach to find and expose the truth about Vince Foster. But Burton will. Not only about Foster, but Cattlegate, Filegate, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Louis Freeh’s conversion of the FBI into a criminal organisation, Paula Jones, Karen Ferguson and especially Larry Parks. Count on it.

“It has been almost 100 years since Emile Zola wrote his famous letter, J’accuse. Zola accused French President Faur of corruption and anti-Semitism regarding the Dreyfus affair. I accuse President Clinton of murder, specifically of ordering his personal goon squad of Arkansas State troopers and ex-troopers to kill Larry Parks.

“A Little Rock private investigator, Parks was hired by Vince Foster to collect an extensive surveillance file on then-Governor Clinton from 1984 to 1990, which included Clinton’s participation in a number of cocaine and sex parties at his brother Roger’s apartment at the Vantage Point Apartments, the manager of which was Park’s wife Jane. British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has now discovered who asked Foster (who had done business with Park’s security firm since 1981) to hire Parks to spy on Governor Bill. Yes, it was Hillary.

“A few days after Foster was murdered, July 20, 1993, Parks’ file of photos, tapes and notes on Clinton was burgled from his home. Two months later, September 28, Clinton’s hit men pumped nine bullets into Parks’ chest in broad daylight on a Little Rock street corner. Two eye witnesses saw an Arkansas State Trooper leaving the scene of the crime.

“I accuse the President of the United States of knowing complicity in this murder. Dan Burton will investigate this murder and many others, all they way to the end. If Slick is put on trial for Foster or Parks or Ferguson or others (the list is long) and is found guilty, I say give him the chair.”

All that depends, of course, on whether the Republicans retain their majority in Congress: but it does reflect the deep unhappiness man Americans feel about their very dodgy President.

* * *

WHEELER seems obsessed with getting Clinton impeached, but this in itself would entail huge dangers both for the US and the West generally. What happens if US voters, having re-elected Clinton to a second term, then find out the truth about their man? The distinguished US Black economist and conservative, Thomas Sowell, provides the possible answer: “Not only would that be demoralising to the country … it could lead to a paralysis of government as impeachment proceedings tie up both the Congress and the White House.

“Worst of all, it could make Al Gore (the ultra-liberal former Senator from Tennessee) President. I have long believed that the best way to deter assassination attempts against Clinton would be to publicise Vice President Gore’s political record. A man who twice beat out Ted Kennedy for the title of the biggest spender in the Senate is bad enough. A man whose hysterical book about the environment was found heavily marked up in the Unabomber suspect’s cabin (alleged terrorist Ted Kaczybski) is worse. Al Gore hardly represents ‘the end of the era of big government’ that Clinton talks about.

“He represents the same expansion of government that Clinton represents, only more so. The more you hate Clinton – as millions do – the more you should want him to remain safe and sound, for Al Gore is politically even more of the same. Clinton’s defeat at the polls … might help us to remember that American values are the opposite of the values of this tawdry crowd in the White House.”

OTHER analysts, too, agree that if America does ever say hello to President Gore, it could trigger the greatest financial collapse in 20 years. Wrote one analyst in The Wall Street Journal: “It would shock the markets. When Nixon finally resigned the Dow plunged 45% from its peak in 1973. Incredible fortunes will be lost (and gained).”

* * *

ALMOST all commentators agree that what our US correspondent terms “the climate of contentment” would be the major factor behind any Clinton victory. But is this truly a season of economic celebration in the US? Any serious analysis of the US economy suggests not: that there are instead great gaping holes in this “success” story. As investment advisor J A Davidson points out in Strategic Investment, “You don’t have to be a conservative, a liberal or even interested in politics to understand that America must (sooner or later, bur probably in the next few years) be flattened by a tidal wave.”

He points out that at the end of 1994, the US federal debt – the one politicians and the media talk about – stood at US$4,6 trillion, and going straight up. But not factored into this figure are the trillions more in government debt that is “off the books.” That represents the unfunded obligations of the federal government: Medicare, military, governments and old age pensions; retiree health; social security, insurance and other liabilities. Thus, total federal liabilities – stand at a prodigious US$17,4 trillion.

Davidson comments: “Were the US Government a private corporation, it would be required to have that pension money on fixed deposit. Any company acting as the US Government has done would be charged with fraud.” And if the US Government fails to meet its obligations? “Either the government will be forced to default on its obligations like old age pension, health care and military pensions. Or it will pay everything in full – with worthless money.”

* * *

THE US financial system is therefore essentially extremely fragile. And it faces plenty of other quicksands and mudholes. Graphs show that the US economy has been in a 25-year downslide, a creeping, managed, unacknowledged depression since 1971. The last year that the US exported more than it imported was 1975. The last US financial trade surplus was 1981.

Since 1985 the US has steadily devalued the $ to encourage US exports. In 1992 the US merchandise deficit was US$84 billion – and climbing fast. Some 65% of Americans have no savings for retirement. Those who do have savings have far too little. Average financial assets per household are less than $15 000. Even Clinton is beginning to understand the moral corrosiveness of high welfare addiction.

No wonder US News & World Report comments that “yuppies” in the US are gradually being replaced by “Dumpies” (Destitute, Unprepared Mature People).

* * *

NOT only is the US staggering under a colossal debt burden, but also an accumulation of frightful social problems. Senator Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, is one of America’s most acute social analysts. He has long since warned that “a profound and disastrous social crisis is under way in America, one that the nation, unwilling to confront, pretends is not happening. Behaviour and events once regarded as wholly unacceptable, as deviations from civilised norms, are gradually being accepted as a normal part of life in this country.

“Crime is the most obvious example of this, but the statistical evidence for a developing social disaster includes teenage pregnancy and suicide; the break up of families; murders by primary school children; guns in the schools and senseless gun violence everywhere; the rapid spread of AIDS; sexual abuse of children; battering of women; an exploding jail population; drug abuse and homelessness.”

MANY wonder: Just why is Clinton such an unreconstructed sleazeball? Bob Santamaria, of the Australian News Weekly, has his own theories on this … on why the Clintons represent perhaps the lowest ethical standards ever seen in the White House. He points out that these are “Baby Boomers – essentially products of the ‘Swinging Sixties,’ Their orthodoxies were those of the Vietnam protest movement, the drug culture, the Beatles, Woodstock, Janis Joplin, Rudi Deutsche, the whole ‘let it all hang out’ period.

“Their minds were shaped by the familiar Marxist delusions, including the universal right to abortion as the hallmark of women’s freedom, homosexual rights, radical feminism, environmentalism a pantheist substitute for Christianity. Taught to momentary desires, their essential nihilism made them the generation least fitted to govern a country now faced with problems of an intensity not previously encountered.

“Taught also to believe that the liberal capitalist culture of the US was morally corrupt, conceivably worse than that of Soviet communism, that principled opposition to communism was merely

McCarthyism, their complexes deprived them of firm principle for the exercise of power in international relationships.”

* * *

JUDGE Robert Bork, one of the better known victims of the US “democratic” system, recently recalled that he taught Bill and Hillary Clinton when they were at Yale – “Let me rephrase that. Bill and Hillary were in the room when I was teaching at Yale.” Asked why so many Americans hate Clinton, Bork replied: “Because he deserves it.”

* * *

The 23rd Qualm

Bill Clinton is my Shepherd, whom I do not want.

He maketh many lies about Green pastures.

He leadeth me beside the still factories.

He restoreth my doubt about the Democratic Party.

He leadeth me in the path of Socialist for his name’s sake.

Yes, I will walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Debt,

And I will fear much evil, for he is with me.

And Hillary Rodham and her staff hey discomfort me.

He preparest a tax hike for me

To give presents to mine enemies.

He anointed my wages with inflation so that my

Expenses run over my income.

Surely Poverty and Hard Times shall follow me

All the days of his administration,

And I will dwell in a rented HUD house forever.

– the US Republican Party publication, Political Leadership.

PUBLISHER’S LETTER

FOR whatever reason, Health Minister Dr Zuma so desperately eager to protect us from smoking is equally keen to poison or mentally incapacitate us by fluoridating the nation’s metropolitan water supplies. This month I had intended publishing a summary of a major treatise on this, The Fluoride Fiasco, written by Dr Gary Null, Ph.D., and published in the US journal, The Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients.

However, our schedule went adrift when letters and faxes of congratulations on the 200th issue of APN began rolling in. Studying these, we decided that if friends were thoughtful enough, kind enough, to congratulate us on this special occasion, it was up to us to return the courtesy by publishing their messages of goodwill. After all, a centenary issue is only marked every 6 ½ years.

We will accordingly deal with the Null article in much greater depth in our next issue. However, as this is a subject of the most vital importance to the public health, and due to come before Parliament quite soon, probably in the next session, I thought we should deal with some of the points made now. Dr Null opens with this telling paragraph:

“There’s nothing like a glass of cold, clear water to quench one’s thirst. But the next time you or your child reach for one, you might want to question whether that water is in fact too toxic to drink. If your water is fluoridated, the answer may well be yes.”

He continues: “For decades, we have been told a lie, a lie that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the weakening of the immune systems of millions more. This lie is called fluoridation. A process we were led to believe was a safe and effective method of protecting teeth from decay is in fact a fraud. In recent years it has been shown that fluoridation is neither essential for good health nor protective of teeth. What it does is poison the body. We should all at this point be asking how and why public health policy and the American media continue to perpetuate this scientific sham.” We might well ask the same questions of the same people in SA.

We have little time left to lodge protest against this blatant ANC attack on the national health. The paper was given to me by a prominent pharmaceutical manufacturer, who has kindly also supplied sic photostat copies. We will happily give these to anyone preparing to submit a protest on this matter to either Dr Zuma or the Department of Health. If you wish for a copy, get in touch with us. We would appreciate it if you would cover the cost of packaging and mailing.

* * *

I am afraid we must once more ask subscribers to help us, by providing the names and addresses of persons who might be interested in subscribing to APN. For reasons you will readily understand, most APN subscribers are in the A?B income category: and it is exactly these people who are now departing SA in such numbers. In the last six to eight months we have lost between 180 and 200 subscribers who have joined the rush to safer climes. Significantly – and an indication that many of the departees wish to cut all ties with their former homeland – only three will continue to get APN.

If you could provide us with the names of possible subscribers, we will send then free sample copies of APN to let them see what is on offer. It has been suggested that we make a special Christmas offer at substantially reduced rates. Unfortunately, for us that is not possible, operating as we do on the narrowest possible margin on our domestic sales. But, clearly, we do have to do something quite urgently to jack up our sales.

* * *

Those of us who are running Mission Rescue, our entirely voluntary effort to help hard-luck Afrikaans kiddies, children of the unemployed and disabled, have been discussing what we can do to make Christmas just a little bit brighter for them. Many of these little scraps have never possessed a new garment, hardly ever eat a decent meal. If they get sweets, all too often it is because they steal them. We have decided that we will provide special food parcels to as many of our dependent families as possible. In these, we hope to include a small gift and some goodies for the very small children. One Good Samaritan says he will see if he can raise 100 small T-shirts, carrying a logo if that becomes necessary.

If any among you care to help us in this effort and, believe me, we know this is not a good time to ask South Africans for handouts – we would be deeply grateful. If cheques are involved, please do NOT endorse them to APN. Mark them Mission Rescue, Volkskas Bank, Northcliff, account number 0738175166. We have taken on far more than we ever envisaged in this rescue effort. We really do need your help. Thank you.

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