Another Corporate Change Of Heart - United Students Against Sweatshops Enlightens Them

1,200 workers in Honduras who were fired by their American corporate factory owner because they unionized. Then, something remarkable happened. They got their jobs back.

In January, Russell shuttered one of eight apparel factories it owns in Honduras. It was the only plant with a union.

the University of Miami (which was the first to sever ties)

agreement with the workers' union that reopens the factory, puts all the fired employees back to work, compensates them for lost wages and, in a startling reversal, promises the union access to its other apparel manufacturing plants in Honduras.

But the happy ending did come. Russell did repent and reform its ways. And that good fortune may just spread. Russell is the largest private employer in Honduras, and its watershed agreement may influence other workplaces in Central America.

in the late 1990s, chapters of United Students Against Sweatshops started forming on college campuses with a mission to help empower working people around the world. Today, thanks to that activism, about 175 American colleges and universities have adopted manufacturing codes of conduct demanding that workers in factories that produce their apparel are treated fairly and decently.
===

Corporate Scrooge Has Change of Heart

by Robyn Blumner
Published on Sunday, November 29, 2009 by The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/29-5

When we think of heartwarming tales, they tend to be of the sort like "Miracle on 34th Street," where little Susan Walker gets the house she wanted for Christmas after all, or "It's a Wonderful Life," where George Bailey's neighbors and customers put self-interest aside to save his bank. Those are yummy treats of magical doings and brotherly compassion that the season inspires. But in real life happy endings don't often come so easily or tidily.

I'm about to share one of the most cockle-warming stories of the year, even though its happy conclusion was a long, tough slog and about a decade in the making.

This is a story about 1,200 workers in Honduras who were fired by their American corporate factory owner because they unionized. Then, something remarkable happened. They got their jobs back.

The Scrooge in this modern-day "A Christmas Carol" is Russell Athletic, a leading sportswear company, owned by Fruit of the Loom. The visiting spirits who made Russell change its shriveled corporate heart are college students around the country, members of United Students Against Sweatshops.

In January, Russell shuttered one of eight apparel factories it owns in Honduras. It was the only plant with a union. Since then, USAS students have convinced nearly 100 colleges and universities to end or suspend their licensing agreements with Russell.

This blow to the bottom line was not inconsequential. The agreements allow Russell to put university names on T-shirts, and other apparel that college students buy as wardrobe staples, and some of them were reportedly worth more than a $1 million in sales.

But those dollars flew out the corporate headquarters' window when the University of Miami (which was the first to sever ties), Harvard, New York University, North Carolina, Duke, the entire University of California system and dozens of other major schools told Russell to either correct the injustice and respect the rights of its workers to organize, or go away.

Lo and behold, Russell woke up one morning a changed entity, full of the milk of human kindness. Earlier this month it struck an agreement with the workers' union that reopens the factory, puts all the fired employees back to work, compensates them for lost wages and, in a startling reversal, promises the union access to its other apparel manufacturing plants in Honduras.

This is the same Russell that allowed its management and supervisors to regularly threaten workers that the plant would likely be closed if they brought in a union.

In one incident among many documented in a report by the Worker Rights Consortium, a group funded by universities to watchdog the behavior of their collegiate apparel makers, a Russell supervisor said in a factory cafeteria that "The workers will starve because they got involved with a union." He said, "The owners will never accept a union," and, "these people from the union are going to be left eating (expletive deleted)."

This is the same Russell that offered the union as its final offer during 2008 contract negotiations a raise for workers of four cents a day in 2009 and five cents a day in 2010. If that doesn't describe a classic miserly, exploitative Scrooge, what does?

But the happy ending did come. Russell did repent and reform its ways. And that good fortune may just spread. Russell is the largest private employer in Honduras, and its watershed agreement may influence other workplaces in Central America.

So how did all this happen? How did nearly 100 universities agree to boycott Russell within such a short period of time?

Back in the late 1990s, chapters of United Students Against Sweatshops started forming on college campuses with a mission to help empower working people around the world. Today, thanks to that activism, about 175 American colleges and universities have adopted manufacturing codes of conduct demanding that workers in factories that produce their apparel are treated fairly and decently.

When an investigation by the Worker Rights Consortium found that Russell had clearly breached this code, the universities had little choice but to say "adios."

And so ends our tale of little-guy triumph and noble do-gooders persevering. If only all businesses felt such pressure to treat their people well. What glad tidings those would be.

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PLUNDER - When The Rule Of Law Is Illegal - Ugo Mattei & Laura Nader

A new book worth reading:
PLUNDER - When The Rule Of Law Is Illegal
Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader
Amazon Link

[what is needed is] world culture and of global political realism.
a need of social justice and solidarity
empowered by a political soul
justice
respect

empowering its bright side and fully exposing the dark aspects of the rule of law can transform it into a tool for taking control of a runaway world, fueled by an economic dynamic called neo-liberalism.

a new form of international scholar and citizen activism.
resist the empire of lawlessness

We need ... a philosophy for our own time."

law in action is about politics and power
a rule of law of the people
fundamental restructuring of the political field.

People have to be free to build their own economies.
+++



'The only truly political action . . . is threat which severs the nexus between violence and law'.

the incremental use of law as a mechanism for constructing and legitimizing plunder.

patterns of global plunder, ... continued by nations, in particular the USA, and multinational corporate entities independent of explicit political or military colonialism.

a need of social justice and solidarity

the rule of law has a bright and a dark side

empowered by a political soul
justice
respect

empowering its bright side and fully exposing the dark aspets of the rule of law can transform it into a tool for taking control of a runaway world, fueled by an economic dynamic called neo-liberalism.

a clear rejection of an ideology of inherent superiority of Western culture that does not recognize that the West is itself part of something much larger.

... the problems we are facing are systemic to a several-hundred-year-old system of Euro-American expansion and domination based on extraction and plunder, a system that is now adopted by India and China.

plunder as the rule rather than the exception allows the reader to get outraged.
organize radical alternatives to its destructive models of development?

a new form of international scholar and citizen activism.

differentiate between the light and dark sides of the rule of law

plunder may become the target of public opinion and legal challenges.

Lifting plunder from below the radar screen is a potential mobilizing force
persistence, networking, imagination

resist the empire of lawlessness
develop tools that expose the variety of Western colonial strategies used to deny history
develop a critique of ethnocentrism both conscious and unconscious.

We need ... a philosophy for our own time."

law in action is about politics and power
a rule of law of the people
fundamental restructuring of the political field.

demystify many taboos ... [including the] rule of law.
tell the historical truth,
 to the people, to prove that truth is always revolutionary and might, if politically organized, pierce the thick veil of lies that shelters Western plunder and historical brutality.

Western spectacular and imperialist ideas of democracy and of the rule of law should be rejected.

On this planet, resources are scarce but, if the rich were legally forced to respect the limits of decency, there would be more than sufficient resources for all to live well.

admiring the rich and the powerful and the instruments used to secure such an unfair arrangement seems indeed paradoxical.

People have to be free to build their own economies.

There is nothing inevitable about the present arrangements and their dominant and taken-for-granted certainties.

[what is needed is] world culture and of global political realism.
+++


PLUNDER - When The Rule Of Law Is Illegal
Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader
Amazon Link

From the introduction:

'The only truly political action . . . is threat which severs the nexus between violence and law'. - Giorgio Agamben

... While theoreticians of Euro-American imperialism profess to recognize the rule of law as keystones of the 'civilizing process,' its dark side has been neglected. Law has been used to justify, administer, and sanction Western conquest and plunder, resulting in massive global disparities. Thus, we argue, imperial uses - past and present - of the rule of law are behind the current less-than-ideal practices of distributive justice.
...
Our story is about the incremental use of law as a mechanism for constructing and legitimizing plunder. Our intent is to examine the extent of the law's dark side and to explain the mechanics of such imperial uses of it.
...
What is of interest to us in this book are the mechanisms through which the transnational rule of law, as a deeply Western idea, has led incrementally to patterns of global plunder, a process initiated by the expansion of Euro-American society worldwide, and now continued by nations, in particular the USA, and multinational corporate entities independent of explicit political or military colonialism.
...
The transformation of the rule of law ideal into an imperial ideology has accompanied the move from a need of social justice and solidarity towards the capitalist requirements of efficiency and competition.
...
We argue that the rule of law has a bright and a dark side, with the latter progressively conquering new terrain whenever the former is not empowered by a political soul. In the absence of such political life, the rule of law becomes a cold technology, and the dark side can cover the whole picture as law yields to embrace brute violence.
...
A public shift from justice to profit, from respect to thefts, followed within an atmosphere of silenced political debate, overwhelmed by self-congratulatory rhetoric, such as the end of history, through the 1990s.
...
Perhaps empowering its bright side and fully exposing the dark aspets of the rule of law can transform it into a tool for taking control of a runaway world, fueled by an economic dynamic called neo-liberalism.
...
A reconfiguration would mean, first and foremost, a clear rejection of an ideology of inherent superiority of Western culture that does not recognize that eh West is itself part of something much larger.
... the problems we are facing are systemic to a several-hundred-year-old system of Euro-American expansion and domination based on extraction and plunder, a system that is now adopted by India and China.

Perhaps plunder as the rule rather than the exception allows the reader to get outraged. The Enron scandal, the mutual fund scandal, and other examples portrayed as exceptions ... in fact are the rule of corporate capitalist development; workers are victimized; people lose their savings; innocents are killed; peasants are starved. The distinction between what is legal and what is illegal blurs in a world in which the rule of law is reduced to a dull rhetoric or to Orwellian double-speak. How much more suffering do we need to realize that similar tragedies are the rule and not the exception? How much more time do we need to recognize the civilizing failure of corporate capitalism and the need to organize radical alternatives to its destructive models of development?

From Chapter 1
... In this book we are not moved by the desire to argue against the rule of law. We only wish to gain a better understanding of this powerful political weapon, to question its almost sacred status, by analyzing it as a Western cultural artifact, closely connect with the diffusion of Western political domination. We will try to disenatangle its connection with the ideal of democracy, and on the contrary recognize its close association with another notion, that of 'plunder.'

Let us clarify, before we continue, what we mean by the term 'plunder.' The American Heritage Dictionary defines 'plunder' as  'to rob of goods by force, esp. in times of war; pillage," and 'Plunder' (the noun) as 'property stolen by fraud or force.' It is the latter definition that especially brings to mind the dark side of the rule of law. We address both looting by force and looting by fraud, both wrapped in the rule of law by illustrious legal practitioners and scholars. We trace the development of the critical supporting role that the rule of law has played in plunder.

... the birth of the rule of law ... had nothing to do with notions of democracy, unless we wish to assert that the English Parliament of the time was a democratic institution! As widely recognized by contemporary historians, the birth of the rule of law was actually the triumph of medieval social structure over modernization. ... the false notion that progress and civilization were protected by the alliance between Parliament (democracy!) and the common law courts (the rule of law).


From the end of the last chapter
...
The preceding examples point to a new form of international scholar and citizen activism. The additive effect might in the long run cause people to be able to differentiate between the light and dark sides of the rule of law, between the seedlings that start with local law traditions and then grow and spread, as was exhibited with global outrage at the US's unilateral attack on Iraq. If more widely recognized for what it is, plunder may become the target of public opinion and legal challenges. Lifting plunder from below the radar screen is a potential mobilizing force, although there is no guarantee without persistence, networking, imagination, and recognition of the difficulties inherent in deconstructing the imperial rule of law, in some places still considered to be a social good.

...
If, however, you are a victim of land plunder, polluted drinking water, or loss of state oil revenues, if you have lost a job or savings, or are the poor target of a fishing expedition aimed at filling up privatized jails - that is where the spectacular hits the ground and the user of law grasps the difference between the light and dark sides of the rule of law. Can we resist the empire of lawlessness with a one-day protest or with a well-articulated suit in a US court of law? It seems unlikely.

The strategy is to develop tools that expose the variety of Western colonial strategies used to deny history, and to develop a critique of ethnocentrism both conscious and unconscious. Did Cicero not remind us: "Freedom is participation in power"? A vision that capitalizes on historical experience offers ideas based on whatever deserves to be saved in the name of justice, wherever it comes from in time and space. Realized Western capitalism and realized European socialism must be compared on an equal footing. Neither, with only few exceptions, have been success stories over time. We need, as Margaret Meed noted shortly before her death, "a philosophy for our own time."

In discussing the continuities between colonialism and neo-liberalism we have offered abundant evidence that capitalism has enough strength and its actors the capacity to deploy an impressive aggregate of effective strategies to overcome difficult moments created by temporary triumphs of legality. Given the fact that, ultimately, the law in action is about politics and power, possibly more than about efficiency or justice, we need to acknowledge the impossibility of significantly transforming the imperial rule of law into a rule of law of the people outside of a fundamental restructuring of the political field. Such an attempt, however, needs to demystify many taboos, one being the per se desirability of the historical experience hitherto known as rule of law. There is a renewed need to tell the historical truth, not only to powerful institutions but also to the people, to prove that truth is always revolutionary and might, if politically organized, pierce the thick veil of lies that shelters Western plunder and historical brutality. Western spectacular and imperialist ideas of democracy and of the rule of law should be rejected. What over time should emerge is a very simple notion, today hidden in plain sight over time should emerge is a very simple notion, by a centuries-old dominant ideological tale: in a world of scarce resources there is a limit to private accumulation to be respected, and the rich (countries, corporations, or, ultimately, individuals) cannot be rich beyond that limit without being responsible for the poor being poor. Trespassing over that substantive limit amounts to plunder, regardless of whether the rule of law, by protecting the bottom line and all externalized costs, enforces such disparities. On this planet, resources are scarce but, if the rich were legally forced to respect the limits of decency, there would be more than sufficient resources for all to live well. Nobody would admire and respect someone who at a lunch buffet for seven, obscenely ate 90 percent of the food, leaving he other guests to share an amount insufficient for one. In a world history of capitalism in which the rule of law has reproduced taht arrangement on the large scale, admiring the rich and the powerful and the instruments used to secure such an unfair arrangement seems indeed paradoxical. People have to be free to build their own economies.

There is nothing inevitable about the present arrangements and their dominant and taken-for-granted certainties. Indeed, it may be that the present legal and political hegemonies suffer from lack: the lack of world culture and of global political realism.



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Establish War Tax On High Income Americans To Fund Afghan War Surge

Any troop increase for Afghanistan should come with a "war surtax" on high income Americans

"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well,"

"graduated" tax on income that would help offset the roughly $40 billion in new costs needed to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan,

an "additional income tax" on incomes over $200,000 or $250,000 to finance any troop surge.

+++

Obey Wants 'War Surtax' to Fund Afghan Effort

by Michael O'Brien
Published on Monday, November 23, 2009 by The Hill
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-3

WASHINGTON, DC - Any troop increase for Afghanistan should come with a "war surtax" on high income Americans, a top House chairman said Monday.

Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned that if President Barack Obama decides to send additional troops to Afghanistan, it should be funded with the new tax.

"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well," Obey told ABC News in an interview, "by having a war surtax."

Obey said his proposed tax would be a "graduated" tax on income that would help offset the roughly $40 billion in new costs needed to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a cost estimated by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag.

"I want the president and every American to think ahead of time about what it means if you do add to our involvement in Afghanistan," Obey told ABC, pointing to the war costs that affected the presidencies and domestic agendas of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. 

The call for a new tax mirrors a similar demand over the weekend from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on funding the war effort in Afghanistan. Levin told Bloomberg News that he favored an "additional income tax" on incomes over $200,000 or $250,000 to finance any troop surge.

"If we don't pay for it, then the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every other initiative that we have to try to rebuild our own economy," he said. "I'm going to be fighting to get whatever they do paid for."

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Mammograms Harm Women - Cancer Industry Abandons Science To Keep Pushing Them

Cancer industry abandons science to keep pushing mammograms that harm women

Monday, November 23, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

(NaturalNews) The cancer industry has blatantly abandoned science these past two weeks by insisting women under 50 should receive annual mammograms even though the industry's own scientific task force concluded that such screenings result in too many false positives. Essentially, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force took a good, hard look at the science and concluded that mammograms harm far more women than they help (for women under 50, anyway). But when they announced the new recommendations that women under 50 should avoid mammograms -- and women over 50 should only get them every other year -- the cancer industry cried foul.

Radiologists, oncologists, Big Pharma pill-pushers and cancer industry non-profits all banded together to declare, "We are abandoning the science! We want more mammograms for more women, science be damned!"

Of course, they all still claim to be "scientific," but what they really do is selectively cherry-pick which bits and pieces of the scientific evidence they choose to adhere to. And when it comes to these new mammogram recommendations, they've decided to simply abandon the science and keep pushing more radiation imaging tests for women (mammography).

The cancer industry is a complete failure

What you are witnessing here, folks, is the desperate last gasps of a failed industry. Their technologies do not save lives, their drugs do not cure cancer, and their "science" doesn't add up. The cancer industry is a fraud, and now its fraudulent nature is finally becoming apparent to everyone. It even has the mainstream media (USA Today) describing the failures of mammography in articles like the one you'll see here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health...

Here's something else you need to know: The cancer industry hasn't merely abandoned science in terms of mammography; it has also abandoned all science with the pushing of chemotherapy. Did you know there has never been a randomized, placebo-controlled study proving that chemotherapy saves the lives of breast cancer patients?

That evidence doesn't exist. The whole "treatment" scam is based entirely on fiction. Chemotherapy only works at all against three rare types of cancer, and breast cancer isn't one of them.

In defending the new mammography guidelines, Dr. Timothy Wilt, a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, said that the task force recommendations "were based on the most rigorous peer review of up-to-date, accurate information about the evidence about the harms and benefits of treatment."

He repeated that women under 50 should never receive mammograms, and women 50 or over should only receive a mammogram every two years.

The American Cancer Society, quite predictably, has a real problem with that recommendation. Its entire success (and power) depends on more people getting cancer, and one of the best ways to make sure that happens is to keep pushing for more mammograms. In opposing the new mammography recommendations, the ACS has now abandoned science, too.

Chemotherapy: The chemical holocaust

When cancer doctors tell you that "chemotherapy will save your life," they are lying to you. And they lie thousands of times a day, deceptively recruiting women into modern medicine's version of a chemical holocaust.

The cancer industry offers no cures. A cure for cancer would destroy the industry. It would wipe out billions of dollars in profits that drug companies, radiologists and oncologists are counting on right now. This is precisely why the cancer industry dares not tell women the truth about vitamin D, for example, which prevents 77% of all cancers, including breast cancer.

If every woman in America were given vitamin D supplements, cancer rates would plummet by up to 77% in a single year, and the cancer industry would virtually collapse. That cannot be allowed to happen, of course, which is precisely why the industry has a complete blackout on vitamin D information while pushing hard for annual mammograms that continue to cause cancer (and generate repeat business).

The U.S. government has abandoned science, too

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has told women to ignore the new mammography advice by the U.S. government task force. But she has zero scientific evidence to back up her advice. She, like everyone else pushing mammograms, is engaged in pure quackery.

I find this particularly fascinating, given that the cancer industry claims people who are offering cancer cures are "quacks." Such cures aren't based on rock-solid science, they claim! But when the rock-solid science says mammograms are dangerous for women, the cancer industry abandons the science! That's why they are the new quacks.

Here's a simple prediction: In twenty years, mammograms will have been long since abandoned. Doctors of that era will look back at 2009 and wonder how this so-called "modern" medical industry could have been so deeply invested in such a dangerous, cancer-causing technology called mammography. They will scratch their heads and ask, "Why didn't they heed the science that said mammography is dangerous?" They'll write about "how medically illiterate the people were in 2009" because they voluntarily inserted their body parts into irradiation machines.

The fact is that people of every era are suckers for apparent medical authority. Patients tend to believe doctors because they mistakenly think doctors know what they're talking about. But conventional doctors are technicians, not healers. They understand the detailed of how to administer poisons, but they have no clue how to activate the body's innate healing potential.

Doctors tend to be very intelligent individuals, but even they cannot understand things they've never been taught, and medical school is focused almost entirely on a drugs-and-surgery approach to medicine (slash and burn).

To expect a conventional doctor to be good at healing is like expecting your accountant to be good at ballet.

Doctors may be smart, but they're ignorant about healing. And for the most part, they're nutritionally illiterate, which is why cancer doctors still don't recommend vitamin D. (Astonishing, but true.)

So why, then, would patients who are interested in healing their bodies go see medical professionals who are experts in the administration of poison? It makes no sense. But that's what insurance covers, so they keep doing it. And they keep dying of cancer, an almost entirely preventable disease with cures that exist right now but will never be publicized because too much profit depends on keeping people sick.

Mammograms are the insurance of the cancer industry. As long as mammogram machines keep running, there will always be more cancer to diagnose -- because the machines are making cancer!

Sources for this story include:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3404027...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health...

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Too Big to Fail is Too Big to Exist - 2 Page Bank Bill In Senate

BREAK 'EM UP

http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=c53f1aca-5881-403e-928b-a25980cb4e0c

A bill to make the Treasury secretary identify too-big-to-fail financial giants and break them up picked up support. 

"When it comes to understanding the real economy and the struggles of ordinary Americans, Bernie Sanders always seems to be ahead of the curve,"

The Nation said.  Bernie's bill "makes a lot of sense" to Rachel Maddow.  To read more from the editor of The Nation, click here.  To watch Rachel, click here.  To sign the petition, click here.

The Petition:

Petition to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Too Big to Fail is Too Big to Exist

Financial institutions that are “too big to fail” played a major role in undermining the American economy and driving our country into a severe recession.

Financial institutions that are “too big to fail” put taxpayers on the hook for a $700 billion bailout and more than $2 trillion from the Federal Reserve in virtually zero interest loans.

Huge financial institutions have become so big that the four largest banks in America (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) now issue one out of every two mortgages; two out of three credit cards; and hold $4 out of every $10 in bank deposits in the country.  

Just five banks in America (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) own a staggering 95% of the $290 trillion in derivatives held at commercial banks. Derivatives are risky side bets made by Wall Street gamblers that led to the $182 billion bailout of AIG, the $29 billion bailout that allowed JP Morgan Chase to acquire Bear Stearns, and the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The concentration of ownership in the financial services industry has resulted in higher bank fees and interest rates that consumers are forced to pay for credit cards, mortgages and other financial products.

No single financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of American jobs or to our nation’s economic well-being.

No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis.

We believe it is time to break up the banks and insurance companies which are too big to fail.

We believe that passage of The Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act is essential for a strong American economy and a secure future for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

We urge the immediate enactment of the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, which directs the treasury secretary to compile a list of those financial institutions that are too big to fail in the next 90 days, and to break up these banks and insurance companies a year after the legislation is signed into law.

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Live Map Of Increasing Unemployment Rates by County Jan 07 - Sep 09

Watch how unemployment increased from Jan 2007 to Sep 2009.
There are now more than 31 million people currently unemployed
-- that's including those involuntarily working part time and those
who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one.

The worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression.







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Charter Of Compassion - Nov 12

When Karen Armstrong, who has authored over 20 books on the role of religion in the modern world, won the 2008 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Prize, she wished for the creation, launch, and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, to help unite religious and secular people worldwide around a common belief in compassion.

Nurturing a global community of peace and harmony.

See video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCG4qryy1Dg&feature=player_embedded#

Submissions and comments came from more than 150,000 people from 100 countries; a Council of Conscience, made up of 18 diverse religious leaders, is distilling their input into a Charter for Compassion.

On November 12, Armstrong's wish will become fully realized with the launch of the charter.

The Charter Of Compassion unveiling.

There is an urgent need for a new focus on compassion.

Bringing together voices from all cultures and religions, the Charter seeks to remind the world we already share the core principles of compassion.

On November 12, thousands of people across the globe will listen together. More on November 12 »
See second video here:
http://charterforcompassion.org/

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Set Up State Banks & Put People To Work & Return Interest To Public Purse

the private credit system has failed.

public credit could put them back to work
returning the interest to the public purse.

Why should you continue to pay the banks for services and interest on loans when you can receive that interest for the benefit of the state of California? Wouldn't it be better if you could fund your own infrastructure projects without having to get the approval of independent banks or investment bankers? Additionally, you set the interest rate on your own projects.

set up publicly-owned banks that create credit using the same banking principles that are accepted as standard and usual in the trade by bankers themselves.

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Bank On It: How Cash-Starved States Can Create Their Own Credit

by Ellen Brown
Published on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 by YES! Magazine
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/04-12

"He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator." - Francis Bacon

On February 19, 2009, California narrowly escaped bankruptcy, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger put on his Terminator hat and held the state senate in lockdown mode until they signed a very controversial budget. 1 If the vote had failed, the state was going to be reduced to paying its employees in I.O.U.s. California avoided bankruptcy for the time being, but 46 of 50 states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years. 2

One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction-North Dakota. As Michigan management consultant Charles Fleetham observed last month in an article distributed to his local media:

"North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000, known for cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie-Fargo. Yet, for some reason it defies the real estate cliché of location, location, location. Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion!"

What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only state-owned bank in the nation. The state legislature established the Bank of North Dakota in 1919. Fleetham writes that the bank was set up to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. Three elected officials oversee the bank: the governor, the attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It loans money to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans), and it purchases municipal bonds from public institutions.

Still, you may ask, how does that solve the solvency problem? Isn't the state still limited to spending only the money it has? The answer is no. Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do: they can create "credit" with accounting entries on their books.

A License to Create Money

Under the "fractional reserve" lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit (create money as loans) in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this:

"[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people-or the government-deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up." 3

That banks actually create money with accounting entries was confirmed in a revealing booklet published by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics. 2 The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached 50 pages long. On page 49 of the 1992 edition, it states:

"With a uniform 10 percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts [loans created as deposits in borrowers' accounts]." 4

The 10 percent reserve requirement is now largely obsolete, in part because banks have figured out how to get around it with such devices as "overnight sweeps." What chiefly limits bank lending today is the 8 percent capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in Basel, Switzerland. With an 8 percent capital requirement, a state with its own bank could fan its revenues into 12.5 times their face value in loans (100 ÷ 8 = 12.5). And since the state would actually own the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It could lend to creditworthy borrowers at very low interest, perhaps limited only to a service charge covering its costs; and it could lend to itself or to its municipal governments at as low as zero percent interest. If these loans were rolled over indefinitely, the effect would be the same as creating new, debt-free money.

Dangerously inflationary? Not if the money were used to create new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (money) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). When they increase together, prices remain stable.

Today we are in a dangerous deflationary spiral, as lending has dried up and asset values have plummeted. The monopoly on the creation of money and credit by a private banking fraternity has resulted in a malfunctioning credit system and monetary collapse. Credit markets have been frozen by the wildly speculative derivatives gambles of a few big Wall Street banks, bets that not only destroyed those banks' balance sheets but are infecting the whole private banking system with toxic debris. To get out of this deflationary debt trap requires an injection of new, debt-free money into the economy, something that can best be done through a system of public banks dedicated to serving the public interest, administering credit as a public utility.

Some experts insist that we must tighten our belts and start saving again, in order to rebuild the "capital" necessary for functioning markets; but our markets actually functioned quite well so long as the credit system was working. We have the same real assets (raw materials, oil, technical knowledge, productive capacity, labor force, etc.) that we had before the crisis began. Our workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed. A system of public credit could put them back to work again. The notion that "money" is something that has to be "saved" before it can be "borrowed" misconstrues the nature of money and credit. Credit is merely a legal agreement, a "monetization" of future proceeds, a promise to pay later from the fruits of the advance. Banks have created credit on their books for hundreds of years, and this system would have worked quite well had it not been for the enormous tribute siphoned off to private coffers in the form of interest. A public banking system could overcome that problem by returning the interest to the public purse. This is the sort of banking system that was pioneered in the colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well.

Restoring Michigan to Solvency Among other advantages to a state of owning its own bank are the substantial sums it could save in interest. As Fleetham notes of his own ailing state of Michigan:

"According to recent financial reports (available online), the State of Michigan, the City of Detroit, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the Wayne County Airport, the Detroit Public Schools, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University pay over $800 million a year in interest on long term debt. If you add interest paid by Michigan cities, school districts, and public utilities, the cost to our taxpayers easily tops a billion a year. What does Wall Street do with our billion plus dollars? They decorate their offices like kings."

Interestingly, the projected state budget deficit for 2009 is also $1 billion. If Michigan did not have to pay over a billion dollars in interest to Wall Street, the budget could be balanced and the state could be restored to solvency. A state-owned bank could not only provide interest-free credit for the state but could actually generate revenues for it. Fleetham notes that in 2007, the Bank of North Dakota earned a net profit of $51 million on a loan volume of $2 billion. He comments:

"Last year, Michigan citizens paid over $5 billion dollars in personal income tax. With a state bank like North Dakota's we could reduce this burden, fund new businesses, and restore our crumbling water and sewer systems. And we don't have to feel sorry about Wall Street losing our business. They didn't ‘earn' the money they lent us. They created it in computers and charged us interest to boot. Let's follow North Dakota's lead and get free from Wall Street's web."

Taking the Initiative in California

California could do this as well. Robert Ellis is a Tucson talk show host who once worked on Wall Street and has been involved in setting up several banks and financial institutions. In January of this year, he proposed in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger that California could resolve its financial woes by setting up a bank on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. Ellis wrote to the governor:

"I admire your tenacity in dealing with California's financial problems. Your idea of using IOU's was ingenious but there is a better way. The State of California can charter its own bank and issue its own checks to all state employees... . It can also pay all its vendors, contracts and contractors through the bank... . Additionally, once the bank is operational, you can fund your own state projects and you determine the interest rate paid as opposed to being at the mercy of the banks you currently deal with or the interest rates the investment bankers make you pay to issue bonds. By doing this, you will put the state in control of its own destiny and make it the benefactor of its own money.

"... What I am proposing is not new. It has been done by one other state in the nation [North Dakota]. Why should you continue to pay the banks for services and interest on loans when you can receive that interest for the benefit of the state of California? Wouldn't it be better if you could fund your own infrastructure projects without having to get the approval of independent banks or investment bankers? Additionally, you set the interest rate on your own projects. You can even set it at zero if you deem the project worthy enough."

Ellis offered his services in setting up the bank, which he thought could be chartered in a few short months. The Governor has not replied, but some pressure from constituents might encourage a response.

Failing that, there is the initiative and referendum process pioneered in California. It allows state laws to be proposed directly by the public, and the state's Constitution to be amended either by public petition (the "initiative") or by the legislature submitting a proposed constitutional amendment to the electorate (the "referendum"). The initiative is done by writing a proposed constitutional amendment or statute as a petition, which is submitted to the California Attorney General along with a submission fee, which was a modest $200 in 2004. The petition must be signed by registered voters amounting to 8% (for a constitutional amendment) or 5% (for a statute) of the number of people who voted in the most recent election for governor. 5

As Gandhi said, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow." We the people can beat the Wall Street bankers at their own game, by moving our legislators to set up publicly-owned banks that create credit using the same banking principles that are accepted as standard and usual in the trade by bankers themselves.

Ellen Brown, J.D., wrote this article in March, 2009, for Path to a New Economy, a collection of online articles for YES! Magazine, on economic and financial solutions. Ellen developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and Forbidden Medicine. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.


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When the Dollar Rallies, the Market will Crash

Bernanke's success in reflating sagging asset prices has depended entirely on interest rate manipulation and liquidity injections. There's been no effort to patch household balance sheets, increase production, or strengthen overall demand. It's a clever trick by a master illusionist, but it has its costs. When the dollar rallies, markets will crash. And Bernanke will be responsible.
+++

When the Dollar Rallies, the Market will Crash

by Mike Whitney
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15919

Interest rates. The Fed does not need slinky women in plunging necklines to peddle money. All it needs is low interest rates. When rates are pushed lower than the rate of inflation, the Fed provides a subsidy for borrowing. This is not as hard to grasp as it sounds. If I offered to give you $1.00 for very 90 cents you gave me in return, you would buy as many dollars from me as you could. The Fed operates the same way. It generates market activity by creating incentives for borrowing. Borrowing leads to speculation, and speculation leads to steadily rising asset prices. This is how the game is played. The Fed is not an unbiased observer of free market activity. The Fed drives the market. It fuels speculation and controls behavior by fixing interest rates.

When Lehman Bros flopped last year, markets went into freefall. A sharp correction turned into a full-blown panic. The bubble burst and trillions of dollars in credit vanished in a flash. Trading in exotic debt-instruments stopped overnight. A global sell-off ensued. Markets crashed. For a while, it looked like the whole system might collapse.

The Fed's emergency intervention pulled the system back from the brink, but the economy is still wracked with deflation. Billions in toxic waste now clog the Fed's balance sheet. The dollar has fallen like a stone.

When the financial system blows up and credit is sucked down a capital-hole, the economy goes into a downward spiral. Businesses slash inventory and lay off workers, workers have to cut back on spending and credit. That creates less demand for products, which leads to more lay offs. This is the vicious circle policymakers try to avoid. That's why Fed chair Ben Bernanke wheeled out the heavy artillery and launched the most aggressive central bank intervention in history.

The Fed dropped rates to zero, but its Quantitative Easing (QE) program (which monetizes the debt) actually pushes rates even lower to roughly negative 2 percent.

Bernanke has underwritten every sector of the financial system with government guarantees. He has provided full-value loans for dodgy collateral which is worth only a fraction of its original value. The market can no longer operate without the Fed. The Fed IS the market, which is why it is foolish to talk about a "recovery". The idea of recovery implies a free-standing system based on supply and demand. But, for now, the government provides the demand, which is why there is no market and no recovery. Analysts at Goldman Sachs sum it up like this:

"How much of the rebound in real GDP was due to the fiscal stimulus, and where do we stand in terms of the effects of stimulus thus far? Although precise answers are impossible at this juncture, several aspects of the report are consistent with our estimates that the fiscal package enacted in mid-February as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) would have accounted for virtually all of the growth reported for the third quarter." (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hedging-their-bets)

Positive growth is an illusion created by government spending. The economy is still flat on its back. Consumer spending and credit are in sharp decline. Unemployment is steadily rising (although at a slower pace) and wages are flatlining with a chance of falling for the first time in 30 years. Deflationary pressures are building. The talk of a "jobless recovery" is intentionally misleading. Jobs ARE recovery; therefore a jobless recovery merely points to asset-inflation brought on by erratic monetary policy. Surging stocks shouldn't be confused with a genuine recovery.

The Fed faces stiff headwinds ahead. Low interest rates can have unintended consequences. The "cheapness" of the greenback has made the dollar the funding currency for the carry trade. Investors are borrowing low cost dollars and using them to purchase higher interest assets elsewhere. The process, which is rapidly escalating, is fraught with peril as economist Nouriel Roubini points out in an article in the Financial Times:

     "Since March there has been a massive rally in all sorts of risky assets... and an even bigger rally in emerging market asset classes (their stocks, bonds and currencies). At the same time, the dollar has weakened sharply, while government bond yields have gently increased but stayed low and stable...

But while the US and global economy have begun a modest recovery, asset prices have gone through the roof since March in a major and synchronized rally... Risky asset prices have risen too much, too soon and too fast compared with macroeconomic fundamentals.

So what is behind this massive rally? Certainly it has been helped by a wave of liquidity from near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. But a more important factor fueling this asset bubble is the weakness of the US dollar, driven by the mother of all carry trades. The US dollar has become the major funding currency of carry trades as the Fed has kept interest rates on hold and is expected to do so for a long time. Investors who are shorting the US dollar to buy on a highly leveraged basis higher-yielding assets and other global assets are not just borrowing at zero interest rates in dollar terms; they are borrowing at very negative interest rates...

Every investor who plays this risky game looks like a genius – even if they are just riding a huge bubble financed by a large negative cost of borrowing...

...This policy feeds the global asset bubble it is also feeding a new US asset bubble...
The reckless US policy that is feeding these carry trades is forcing other countries to follow its easy monetary policy... This is keeping short-term rates lower than is desirable... So the perfectly correlated bubble across all global asset classes gets bigger by the day.

But one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate... the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets – equities, commodities, emerging market asset classes and credit instruments." ("The Mother of all Carry Trades Faces an Inevitable Bust", Nouriel Roubini, Financial Times)

Everyone who watches the market has noticed the inverse correlation of stocks to the dollar. When the dollar fades, stocks soar. And when the dollar strengthens, stocks plunge. Eventually, the dollar will reverse-course and stage a comeback, probably when Bernanke stops his printing operations. That will trigger the next severe correction which will burst bubbles across all asset classes.

Bernanke's success in reflating sagging asset prices has depended entirely on interest rate manipulation and liquidity injections. There's been no effort to patch household balance sheets, increase production, or strengthen overall demand. It's a clever trick by a master illusionist, but it has its costs. When the dollar rallies, markets will crash. And Bernanke will be responsible.

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