#42 UN Sustainability Summit Exposed: Big Business, Dictators, and NGOs

Photo: Mayors from left to right, Franklyn Tau of Johannesburg, Won Soon Park of Seoul, Eduardo Paes of Rio de Janeiro, Michael Bloomberg of New York, Babatunde Fashola of Lagos, Gilberto Kassab of Sao Paulo and Eduardo Macri of Buenos Aires pose for a photo during the Rio+C40: Megacity Mayors Taking Action on Climate Change, a parallel meeting during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 19, 2012: AP Images

Written by Alex Newman – Source - Originally posted Tuesday, 10 July 2012 04:25

RIO DE JANEIRO — The real agenda behind the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development was clear months before the summit began. It had little to do with solving poverty or legitimate environmental concerns. Instead, the UN was hoping to acquire vast new powers to re-shape the world and its people, as evidenced by multiple reports and documents it released ahead of the conference. Of course, the fact that Rio+20 Secretary General Sha Zukang was a Chinese Communist who openly loathes Americans was revealing, too.

Aside from the fairly transparent UN agenda, however, the conference itself offered a great deal of insight into the forces working together against national sovereignty, private property, individual liberty, and economic freedom. Big business was there — mostly begging for more government control and taxpayer money. A wide assortment of tax-funded “non-governmental organizations” — known as NGOs for short — was there, too. Unsurprisingly, they mostly demanded more government control.

Finally, no UN conference would be complete without member governments — a chance for Western powers to mingle with a gaggle of dictators and mass murderers styling themselves “presidents.” They found plenty to agree on. In fact, it seemed like all of the so-called “stakeholders” were essentially on the same page: more for them, less for you. The New American (TNA) was also at the summit to bring you the inside stories that the mainstream press largely ignored.

Police State, Green Hypocrisy, Secrecy, & Disorder

Rio+20 was originally touted as the biggest UN summit in history, but analysts later said that probably was not true. Some 50,000 people were supposed to participate, but nowhere near that number actually showed up — several observers even thought that less than 10,000 had attended. Many of the world’s most important heads of state and government — Obama, Angela Merkel of Germany, and the U.K.’s David Cameron, for example — also stayed away.

Immediately upon arrival, the most striking phenomenon in Rio was the overt nature of the police state. All over the city, attendees were greeted by armored personnel carriers and assault vehicles, dozens of military helicopters swarming overhead with turrets aimed downward, checkpoints manned by machine gun-wielding Brazilian troops, federal police dressed in futuristic costumes, and much more.

On the first day of the official conference, it took the TNA team more than two hours to cover just a few miles and get into the conference — largely owing to the unimaginable traffic created by “security.” The fact that the troops occupying every street corner in the area demanding ID did not know what they were doing certainly did not help matters.

Once inside, the UN again revealed that its inability to run a proper conference — let alone the world — is surpassed only by its zealous ambition to assume ever-greater powers. There were not nearly enough desks for all of the journalists, leading to more than a few heated arguments. Internet cables were also in short supply, and the wireless Internet, when it was actually working, was pathetically slow.

Despite the summit being touted as an effort to increase “sustainability” — a vague term with hundreds of definitions generally understood to mean reduced consumption — the waste evident all throughout the conference was astounding. Every building was running the air-conditioning at full blast with the doors wide open, for example. In some rooms, the AC was so cold that journalists were moving out from under the vents.

Consuming less was apparently only a requirement for the ruled. The world’s rulers and their representatives stayed at five-star hotels and lived a lifestyle unimaginable to most of the world — not to mention the millions of destitute Brazilians living in squalor throughout Rio’s infamous favela slums. “Saving the world” from humanity at lavish conferences apparently costs a lot of money, and the “dignitaries” had every luxury at their disposal for the job. The total price tag of the summit remains a mystery.

Massive motorcades of gas-guzzling limos transported dictators and mass-murdering gangsters calling themselves “presidents,” as well as their oversized entourages, to and from the venue. Meanwhile, other “VVIPs” — the term used by the UN to identify top officials at the summit — landed in carbon dioxide-spewing helicopters.

Apparently some of the dignitary squads squandered even more taxpayer money buying “carbon credits” from their cronies to offset the emissions. But the unsustainable resource-gobbling spectacle was slammed by more than a few critics on both sides of the debate, not to mention poor Brazilians who spoke with TNA, as blatant “green” hypocrisy. Even true “sustainability” believers were shocked.

When the environmental dignitaries left, security did too. At that point, residents of the slums in the area began pouring into the venue to scavenge for the remaining scraps left behind, looting the food court as the few remaining security guards were overwhelmed. The TNA team witnessed part of the commotion before leaving as dozens of favelados, as they’re called, ran out from the food court carrying what they could.

The So-called “Stakeholders”

Governments:

Virtually every national government on Earth was represented at Rio+20. Delegates representing mass murderers, communist tyrants, genocidal maniacs, war criminals, Islamic theocracies, and more were all intermingling, supposedly defending the interests of their “citizens” while trying to hammer out an agreement to “save the world.” Of course, it does not take much knowledge about the world to understand that at least the vast majority of the regimes present at the table had ulterior motives.

Unlike past conferences, government delegates at Rio+20 were kept in isolation, hiding behind security personnel in their own special pavilion. Organizations and the media were kept out — unless, of course, they could find a government willing to let them in. Even then, they were supposed to take care of business with the delegation that invited them through security and then promptly get out.

Across from the main venue was another large area where governments and dictatorships set up booths to tout their own accomplishments. Seeking press coverage for a panel discussion hosted by the Islamic monarchy ruling Qatar, the TNA team was invited to attend and was picked up in a private car paid for by the regime.

The discussion — mostly on redefining the concept of rights to include things like food, rather than liberties — featured more than a few heavyweights, including UN boss Ban Ki-moon, a socialist former Spanish prime minister, heads of UN agencies, and many others. The AC was blasting there, too, in what was essentially an open-air tent. After chatting briefly with the Qatari ambassador to the UN who happens to be serving as the chief of the UN General Assembly, mostly about why and how he thought the global body should save the world, TNA decided to visit some of the other government booths.

The communist dictatorship ruling over China had a massive setup where interested parties could learn about its supposed leadership on “sustainability” issues, though the regime seems to have toned down its celebration of the reduced “carbon emissions” achieved through its barbaric “one-child” policy. Nobody was available for an interview with TNA, but we did get a “flash drive” containing documents.

The European Union had a big booth, too, where participants were debating the role of regional regimes in the new green-world order. At the American government’s booth, the first visible flyer was promoting population control, while another touted USAID programs to achieve global “sustainability.” U.S. taxpayers’ money also went to hand out coffee — presumably sustainably grown coffee — to anyone who stopped by. It was delicious.

Throughout the three-day summit, government representatives, including some prime ministers and presidents, offered long speeches about sustainability, what they were doing, what should be done, and more. Their faces were broadcast throughout the conference center on huge screens so people could see the dignitaries no matter where they went. But most people were not paying attention anyway.

The Cheerleading “Media”

When Rio+20 boss Zukang announced hundreds of “commitments” by governments and businesses on so-called “sustainability” worth more than half a trillion dollars, much of the audience — supposedly unbiased members of the media — applauded in delight. The bizarre scene offered extraordinary insight into why the one-sided international press coverage of such summits has become so routine.

Rather than asking hard questions about the alleged science or the true agenda, the vast majority of reports being churned out of the Rio+20 media room largely parroted UN claims as if they were gospel. The “significant” UN announcement at the final major summit press conference included few details about the actual agreements or their implications. For the most part, Zukang and other conference speakers simply offered vague generalities about building a “sustainable” world for a “better future,” saying governments and businesses around the world had agreed to undertake massive “sustainability” efforts.

“From the very beginning, we have said Rio+20 is about implementation. It is about concrete action. And the commitments that we share with you today demonstrate that governments, the UN system and the nine major groups are committed and serious about implementation,” said Zukang, the communist who also heads the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “The total figure is now 692 registered commitments. Ladies and Gentlemen, this brings the estimated total value of commitments to $513 billion.”

That’s when most of the supposed journalists at the official press conference applauded and smiled upon hearing Zukang’s news. According to critics of the media reaction, they were behaving more like cheerleaders than objective reporters. But unlike past major international environmental summits, most of the press was kept in the dark about the negotiations throughout the final days of the summit — making the applause even more bizarre.

As members of the press celebrated the vague announcements, one Japanese reporter called the behavior “ridiculous.” Later on, more than a few analysts blasted the cheering, too. Critics of the shadowy negotiating process itself had even harsher words, slamming the global body’s secrecy and the journalists’ complacency about it.

The media applause continued after each speaker at the press conference — statements by politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders, and more all received a very warm reception from hundreds of journalists in attendance. When a non-profit foundation leader on the panel announced mandatory “sustainability education” for all Brazilian children enforceable by law, as well as the inclusion of “sustainable development” themes on national standardized tests, the reporters exhibited special delight.

Later that night, when the Rio+20 plenary session finally voted to adopt the highly controversial UN document known as “The Future We Want,” the media section at the conference center erupted with applause, cheering, and whistling as if a goal had been scored in a soccer game. When asked on camera by TNA why they were celebrating, some refused to talk, others said they were happy because the summit was over, and still more claimed not to know.

Media outlets known to be especially reliable and relatively effective UN lapdogs — the state-funded BBC, for example — were given special, private areas to work in. They also obtained much greater access to the “VVIPs” in attendance, scoring exclusive interviews to ask soft-ball questions about why even more wasn’t being done to save the world.

But despite the VIP treatment for select “media” outlets — in the United States, at least — the lack of press coverage about the summit was deafening. The day after the conference ended, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post included front-page headlines mentioning the conclusion of Rio+20. “It seems the conference did not end as the editors wished,” noted Ken Haapala, executive vice president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Of course, most of the journalists celebrating Zukang’s announcement at the press conference were almost certainly not aware at the time that no officially “binding” commitments had been foisted on populations by their governments. If they had known, based on discussions TNA had with reporters throughout the summit, they probably would not have been applauding.

Even with the cheerleading media, however, more than a few analysts and critics who spoke with TNA said the world was waking up to the UN’s schemes and its failed science — especially in the United States, where opposition to the global agenda is building while the public largely rejects the alarmism being hyped to push it. Scientists, meanwhile, including many who have been affiliated with the UN, are jumping ship in growing numbers as well. And those trends, especially with the rise of the Internet and the alternative media, are likely to continue accelerating.

NGOs Demand Anti-liberty Global “Solutions”

As the summit got started on June 20, a 17-year-old NGO activist gave a speech to the national delegates about how it was their duty to decide the fate of her future and the future of her children. It was a dramatic opening — official dignitaries seemed impressed. Strong agreements and global measures were needed to save the world, she insisted.

Countless so-called NGOs were in attendance, supposedly representing “civil society.” Much of the funding for the groups comes from taxpayers, so, unsurprisingly, most of them loudly called for more and more government to stop poverty, environmental problems, gender inequality, class inequality, and innumerable other real and perceived issues affecting the planet.

The Brazilian government helped them along, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to create a “People’s Summit.” Immediately upon arrival, this reporter was approached by a man wearing a giant condom suit handing out taxpayer-funded condoms from the “Ministry of Health” to the taxpayer-funded activists at the taxpayer-funded “People’s Summit.” Military helicopters were swarming overhead the whole time.

The TNA team spent several hours perusing the whole area. We spoke to socialists of various persuasions ranging from a representative of the Movement for Socialism, who did not think Latin America’s socialist despots were radical enough, to a spokesperson for the “Movement to End Capitalism,” who said the group desired reform that was impossible to achieve through politics and that money should be abolished. When asked how it might be accomplished without the existing political system, however, they offered few details.

Many of the “People” at the “People’s” summit, despite their overt government backing, saw themselves as rebels. There were dozens — probably hundreds — of natives from the Amazon, too. Most of them were selling trinkets or chanting, but they made for good photo opportunities for the NGOs seeking to advance various causes.

A partially tax-funded Danish artist with “Art in Defense of Humanism” was there as well, presenting a series of exhibits including a decent-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty with the words “Freedom to Pollute” written across it. Another piece he was showing off featured a young pregnant girl on a crucifix, which he said was a protest against the Catholic Church for its opposition to sex education, contraception, pre-marital sex, abortion, and other teachings.

"We must get a lot of tax on oil," he told TNA in an interview, proposing $40 per gallon gasoline without really knowing what to do about the consequences such measures would have on the poor. After boasting of taking money from capitalists to use against them, he also said there was no “right to consume” and the standard of living in the West should decline dramatically — a common sentiment among the “people” at the tax-funded summit.

Greenpeace was at the “People’s Summit” as well, offering presentations about mining and logging. The next day, however, we caught up with Icelandic investigative journalist Magnus Gudmundsson, who has studied environmental campaigns and their effects for more than two decades. His take on Greenpeace and other environmental groups was a real eye-opener.

According to Gudmundsson, many of the mega-“Green” groups use blatant deception. One example in particular that he spoke about was an allegedly bogus propaganda video created by Greenpeace purporting to show seal hunters in the far North. The video, he said, citing multiple experts, was staged for the camera. But the tragic effects on the some of the world’s most vulnerable people were all too real.

“Communities have been destroyed economically and socially,” Gudmundsson explained, pointing to Native American villages in the Arctic that had been completely devastated by “green” deception campaigns. “It brings in a lot of money” for the organizations, he said about the propaganda schemes. But the results are generally horror and destruction for the affected communities. More than 100 people out of less than 1,000 in just one village he visited committed suicide following a deceptive propaganda campaign to stop their traditional seal hunting.

“Communities have suffered incredibly, all in the name of saving the Earth,” Gudmundsson told TNA, wondering if Rio+20 was part of the same pattern. “Of course, it has no impact on saving the Earth, but a big impact on their wallets.”

Ironically, the vicious anti-seal hunting campaign actually ended up hurting the environment, he noted: The increase in seals caused a drop in the supply of fish, which threw the traditional ecosystem off balance. The local human community was virtually destroyed. And the seals were never even endangered in the first place.

Despite the stories of lies and destruction, however, many of the activists at Rio+20 were no doubt sincere. TNA interviewed some young Brazilians wearing funny-looking pig costumes, for example, who were passionately representing “Rio+Veg.” The swine-suit-clad trio was very friendly as they explained the environmental benefits of vegetarianism. However, their mission at the conference — lobbying governments and the UN to curtail meat consumption — was typical of the NGOs’ mindset: coercive power must be used to reform and guide humanity.

As the whole conference came to a close, another almost certainly well-intentioned activist spoke to TNA as well. Organizing Partner Kiara Worth representing the UN sustainability commission’s Major Group for Children and Youth, was supposed to read a short statement on behalf of so-called “civil society” to the delegates.

But according to the young South African activist, she was told that there was no time — “essentially meaning that civil society has no voice here at the conference,” she said, clearly upset, as representatives of governments and assorted dictatorships shuffled by with smiles on their faces. So, instead of reading the speech to the planet’s “sustainability” dignitaries, she read it to TNA and answered a few questions.

"If these sheets of paper are our common future, then you have sold our fate and subsidized our common destruction," she said of the final UN agreement, expressing the disappointment many “stakeholders” felt with a document which did not technically mandate anything new. "We have one planet. Our being, our thinking, and our action should not be constrained by national boundaries, but by planetary ones. You failed to liberate yourselves from national and corporate self-interest."

Critics of the UN say the NGO activists present at the international conferences — no matter how sincere or well-intentioned — serve a crucial function under the guise of representing “society.” The role of those groups and their criticisms about the UN’s alleged failure to do enough help to advance the global institution’s agenda, partly by making the sweeping planetary agreements seem moderate by comparison.

This allows the cheerleading media to create a false paradigm for their audiences where the only critics seem to be people who wanted more government, more UN, and more of the global agenda. Then, opponents of the whole agenda itself can be glossed over as the debate is framed in terms of advancing the UN’s goals, or, on the other side advancing them even faster to please “civil society.”

Opponents of the environmental agenda have called for an end to all taxpayer subsidies for NGOs, calling the government-funded groups “AstroTurf” designed to apply pressure from below and create the impression of popular support for the UN schemes. Of course, not all of the organizations receive public funds, but many do, even amid an economic crisis that has left untold millions completely destitute.

A few NGOs were at Rio+20 actually promoting what seemed to be real solutions to real problems. The Brazilian Association for Sustainable Development (ABIDES), for example, gave a presentation explaining that true sustainability should mean protecting nature while lifting people out of poverty — and it should start at the local level.

“The UN is speaking at a level that is not close to reality,” said ABIDES President Everton Carvalho in an interview with TNA, noting that the real issues — increasing food production, developing infrastructure, creating jobs, and promoting economic growth — should be dealt with by locals who understand what is needed. “You have to solve the problems that are real, right now, for us.”

Other organizations with representatives at Rio+20 promoting market solutions, economic growth, private property, real science, and individual liberty included the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. However, such groups were a tiny, tiny minority — and they received virtually no establishment-press coverage. The vast majority of NGOs were busy calling on the UN and world governments to expand their powers under the guise of environmentalism, poverty, and more — exactly the opposite of what all available evidence shows can truly alleviate real problems. For those groups, though, the media cameras were always rolling.

Big Business Joins Forces With UN & World Governments

Despite the widely held misconception of Big Business and Big Government as being at odds with each other, many of the world’s top corporate chieftains played a central role throughout the UN conference. Many literally begged the global institution and its member governments for new regulations and more economic meddling.

“Businesses like regulation,” said General Electric Brazil CEO Adriana Machado during a World Business Council for Sustainable Business panel discussion, without mentioning, of course, how much the U.S.-based side of GE has benefited at taxpayer expense. “Regulation is necessary to show companies who want to get better on how to get there.” Apparently the market is just not good enough.

In an interview with TNA, Infosys co-chairman Senapathy “Kris” Gopalakrishnan, who also served as chief of an international coalition of companies known as “Business Action for Sustainable Development,” offered similar remarks on joining hands with government. “As we move forward we have to start thinking about some policy framework, including regulations,” he said, adding that businesses — which participated at Rio+20 in “record numbers” — should partner with “civil society” and governments to create rules. “It should be a public-private partnership in creating those regulations.”

Unilever Global Advocacy Director Thomas Lingard spoke approvingly of so-called “public-private partnerships,” too. In fact, he told TNA in an interview, his company is already working through the "Consumer Goods Forum" with some of its top competitors and assorted government agencies to move the “sustainable development” agenda along faster.

"We're very excited that what started out as an industry initiative is now attracting interest from governments to develop into more of a public-private partnership," he explained. The EU's burgeoning anti-carbon regime, meanwhile, is a good start, and Unilever is now "pushing for the tightening of that scheme," he noted.

While Lingard said the final UN agreement should have been stronger with more concrete deadlines, he was still optimistic about increasing the public-sector role in the economy. "We are very interested in governments creating the right frameworks," he said, adding that coercive power could play a greater role in reducing carbon dioxide, among other perceived ills. "We are encouraging governments to go further and to be more ambitious in the policy frameworks they set."

Countless CEOs and corporate leaders spoke of creating an “alliance” between government and enterprise — for “sustainability” purposes, of course. Indeed, there are now close to 10,000 corporations participating in the UN Global Compact, which aims to have businesses submit to the global body’s schemes and “catalyze actions in support of broader UN goals.”

Big tax-exempt foundations financed by some of the wealthiest people on Earth wholeheartedly agreed with the idea as well. “I think this is a moment of real transformational opportunity, that’s why we are here and why we are partnering with the UN Global Compact,” said Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin at the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum. “Turning all this potential into kinetic and life-saving flows of capital will require a concerted effort by governments, by foundations, by large companies and investors committed to developing this space and harnessing it. That is our primary goal.”

Mega-companies at the summit — some of which have received massive taxpayer bailouts even in recent years — were actually so enthusiastic about the UN agenda that many of them offered billions for the cause. Bank of America, after receiving some $45 billion directly from American taxpayers, more than $100 billion in government loan guarantees, and even more in bailouts from the Federal Reserve, for example, pledged $50 billion to the agenda over the next decade. Many other top firms made similarly grandiose promises.

Governments and global bureaucrats were very pleased. UN chief Ban Ki-moon, for example, said he was upbeat about “these huge numbers” pouring into “sustainable development,” adding that they were “part of a growing global movement for change.” Now the global body must keep up the pressure. “Our job now is to create a critical mass, an irresistible momentum,” he concluded.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appeared briefly at Rio+20 to give a speech and pledge billions of taxpayer funds, seemed particularly enthusiastic about prodding the “private” sector to get on board, too. “Sustainability won’t happen without business investment,” she said. “Governments alone cannot solve all the problems we face ... That’s why we are so strongly in favor of partnerships.” It seemed like just about everybody at Rio+20 was strongly in favor of partnerships.

So-called “multilateral development banks” — taxpayer-backed transnational institutions working to finance the erosion of national sovereignty while putting populations in perpetual debt for their leaders’ extravagant borrowing — pledged around $175 billion for “sustainability” schemes as well. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank were both among the participants.

“We commit our institutions’ support for implementing the sustainable development for all agenda,” the banks said in a joint statement, noting that they would help harmonize and build policies around the world to advance the controversial “green” schemes. “We will work together to support global transformation in line with Rio+20 agreements.”

Apparently the public-private financing plan, as UN documents revealed before the summit even started, will use coercive power to “encourage” investors and companies into showering more resources on “sustainability” schemes. Everyone will benefit, it seemed — except, of course, the people paying the bills: taxpayers and consumers. Big Business and Big Government, though, will be lining their pockets.

The anti-tax competition “cartel” known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was excited about all of the progress. “Without the private sector it’s not going to work,” noted OECD Secretary General José-Ángel Gurria. “While governments put up the seed money, the big numbers come from the private sector.” Indeed.

One analyst, Ronald Bailey, who covered the summit for the libertarian Reason magazine, described the agenda of many Corporate Sustainability Forum participants as “green crony capitalism” — especially because virtually every panel touted so-called “public-private partnerships” as the way to achieve “sustainability.” In recent years especially, Americans have become all too familiar with what Bailey described. Think Solyndra.

Obviously, not every corporate action taken under the guise of “sustainability” is necessarily wrong. Some firms, for example, are simply seeking to reduce costs by lowering water or electricity consumption, which would, in theory, benefit consumers by making production cheaper. However, for most of the businesses at Rio+20, benefiting consumers was — at the very least — not the main objective.

“The reason lots and lots of businesses are in Rio is they’re rent-seeking,” Copenhagen Business School Professor Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, was quoted as saying. “They’re looking for huge potential subsidies for everything they produce.”

Other analysts described the open discussions on “collaboration” between business and governments as something even more alarming, pointing to Benito Mussolini’s widely quoted definition of fascism: “a merger of state and corporate power.” Some observers also used the term “corporatism” to describe the ever-deepening bonds between the private sector and coercive power.

Rio+20: Billions for the Cause, Paid for by You

In all, the Rio+20 summit collected more than half a trillion dollars’ worth of so-called “commitments” from governments, big businesses, and other key players. That is more than at any previous UN environmental summit — ever. Unfortunately for taxpayers and consumers, they will be paying the tab, either through higher taxes, higher prices, or a combination of the two.

The conference ended with a final agreement between virtually every national government in the world to continue working toward “sustainability” through “education,” population control, less economic freedom, implementation of past treaties, and more centralized power at the global level. Because there were no new binding measures, however, the agenda certainly did not leap forward as fast as the UN and its supporters had hoped.

Still, despite the apparent setbacks, the effort to control the human population — at the global level, with its own wealth, allegedly for its own benefit — is not dead yet. Instead, it slowly marches onward, more quietly now, but with an extra $500 billion in the war chest after Rio+20. All, of course, paid for by the people themselves — much like the extravagant conference.

This article is the second installment in a three-part series adapted from the cover story article on Rio+20 in the July 23, 2012, print edition of The New American magazine. To read the other installments, go to: “The Real Agenda Behind UN ‘Sustainability’ Unmasked,” and “Despite Setbacks, UN ‘Sustainability’ Agenda Marches on After Rio+20.”

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com.

David Burton's Comments:

This blog is supposed to be a set of papers concerning the design and development of a new monetary system.  Occasionally we shall repost articles of long term value to a growing community of those around the world who are waking up to who their real enemies are.  We advocate leaving these people behind by "coming out of her, my people" rather than taking any reprisals.  However when their Agenda starts to affect people in local areas, we advocate resistance in any way possible.

#41 Taxpayers, Rockefellers Fund “Sustainable” Plot to Undermine Market

David Dees Illustration - Source

Written by Alex Newman -  Source - Originally posted Tuesday, 25 June 2013 09:51

The Rockefeller Foundation, mega-banks, and even taxpayers via the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have provided millions of dollars toward pushing a new type of “socially responsible” corporate structure known as the “benefit corporation.” More than 15 states have already signed on. Critics, however, say the scheme will further undermine what remains of the market system while promoting deeply controversial United Nations Agenda 21-linked notions of “sustainable development.”

Under the “benefit-corporation” agenda, companies would no longer be just responsible for producing shareholder profits. Instead, a firm that becomes a benefit corporation would also have to pursue other goals that appear noble at first glance — sustainability, social justice, environmentalism, social responsibility, and other alleged “public benefits.” Apparently, creating jobs for workers and profits for shareholders, as well as goods and services that consumers want to purchase, is no longer enough.

If and when companies decide to become benefit corporations, they would obtain significant advantages over traditional firms dedicated to maximizing value. After receiving certification from a Rockefeller-funded outfit known as “B-Labs,” which is at the heart of the nationwide push, B-Corps could become eligible to receive everything from major tax breaks to preferential access to lucrative government contracts.

State governments across America are under heavy pressure by powerful lobbyists to adopt legislation creating “benefit-corporations” within their jurisdictions. Along with Washington, D.C., at least 17 states have already passed the necessary laws — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. Another dozen states, meanwhile, have bills introduced in the legislature.

Because the vast majority of Americans know nothing about the benefit-corporation agenda, legislation to lay the foundations of the scheme has met with little resistance so far. In North Carolina, however, liberty-minded activists succeeded in stopping the effort in May — if only temporarily — by explaining the more sinister side of the plot to lawmakers.

One of the citizen activists responsible for defeating the bill, Wynne Coleman, told The New American that the real agenda behind the whole benefit-corporation concept was socialism and more power for the global establishment. After hearing about the scheme, Coleman began researching. What she found was deeply troubling.

“The main problem with benefit corporations is that they disrupt the free market system of the United States,” she explained. “They set socialistic precedents in economy, society, and environment that are incompatible with our free enterprise system.”

More specifically, Coleman pointed to a series of major issues she sees with the plan. For one, she said, benefit corporations would fundamentally transform the way business is done in the United States by shifting the focus away from shareholder profits — the single bottom line. Instead, resources would be diverted toward nebulous “social” and “environmental” causes — “economy, environment, society” or “People, Planet, Profits” — known as the so-called “triple bottom line.”

Benefit corporations also blur the lines between public, private, and non-profit sectors that should remain separate, Coleman continued. Meanwhile, she said, the scheme would establish a “certification” process by third-party rating agencies that, while voluntary for now, could eventually become mandatory.

Other problems include the imposition of “hazy moral social standards” that would force companies to pursue expensive environmental schemes based on “unproven scientific theory,” she added. Finally, benefit corporations would “normalize a socialist philosophy,” Coleman concluded, pointing to the highly controversial UN Sustainable Development agenda — a planetary plot backed by Big Business, Big Banks, Big Government, dictators, and more.

“Ultimately, the benefit corporation system’s design is to consolidate power for the global elites,” Coleman told The New American, citing a series of hard-hitting reports and presentations she prepared for lawmakers about the scheme. “The global elite in politics and finance use an unconstitutional arrangement of public-private partnerships, by which the force of government combines with the power of business to plunder the resources of society and dictate how people must live.”

While the words United Nations, Agenda 21, and sustainable development do not appear in the benefit-corporation legislation being promoted across America, Coleman and other critics said the link is unmistakable. According to the definition of benefit corporations, they must “create a material positive impact on society and the environment.” Taken together, those nice-sounding terms, along with the fact that corporations are involved in business and the economy, should be cause for alarm.

After summarizing the key points of UN Agenda 21 — environment, economy, and equity, the so-called 3 E’s — Coleman explained that the goals of benefit corporations are virtually identical: promoting government, “sustainability,” pseudo-environmentalism, the merger of state and corporate power, and more, all under the bogus guise of helping people. Reviewing information found throughout the websites of front-groups promoting benefit corporations, the link becomes even more clear.

“One must ask: If the genuine motive for creating a benefit corporation is to enable a corporation to use profits to accomplish charitable and good acts, why must these good acts be defined by the specific 3E terminology of sustainable development, so often used in United Nations documents and websites?” Coleman asked, saying businesses should be free to run themselves but government should not provide special favors to so-called “benefit corporations.”

Of course, looking at what organizations and individuals are financing the push for benefit corporations and legislation to create them reveals a great deal as well. One of the groups at the center of the entire agenda, known as B Lab, lists its major funders online. The top donor: The Rockefeller Foundation, which gave between $2.5 million and $5 million.

The Rockefeller family has a long history of pushing causes at odds with the free market system, national sovereignty, and more. Indeed, billionaire banker David Rockefeller — a top player in key groups associated with the global establishment such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission, and others — has openly revealed where his sympathies are.

In a 1973 piece for the New York Times, for example, he praised the communist “social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership,” which killed tens of millions of people and enslaved over a billion, as “one of the most important and successful in history.”

More recently, David Rockefeller offered some insight into his views in his 2002 autobiography. "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will,” he wrote. “If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

The Rockefellers are not alone in pushing benefit corporations, though. Donating between $1 million and $2.5 million were several entities. Among the most noteworthy, perhaps, is USAID, a taxpayer-funded federal agency mired in controversy that is supposedly charged with handing out foreign aid. The New American reached out to USAID to find out why tax dollars were funding such a scheme, but the outfit did not respond to requests for comment. It was not immediately clear what constitutional or statutory authority purportedly authorizes spending public funds on the push for benefit corporations.

With the notable exception of some segments of the alternative media, very little scrutiny has been offered about the agenda so far — partly because so few Americans are even aware of the plot. However, for critics, it is crucial that citizens get informed about benefit corporations and get to work stopping the enabling legislation at the state level.

Coleman, who played a central role in stopping the bill in North Carolina, said Americans in states without benefit-corporation laws must stay on high alert. Citizens in states that already have such laws on the books, she added, should work with their elected officials to get the bills repealed. Coleman believes legislators and even governors might not have understood what they were doing, so educating them could help.

Analysts and critics of benefit corporations, pointing to some recent developments such as the formation of the billionaire-dominated “B Team,” say the effort to foist the scheme on America is about to be ramped up — big time. However, opposition to the so-called “sustainability” agenda is exploding nationwide, with some states even banning UN Agenda 21 entirely. Whether the establishment will succeed in imposing even more centralized government control over Americans will almost certainly depend on the strength of grassroots efforts to stop it. 

 Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com

David Burton's Comments:

This blog is supposed to be a set of papers concerning the design and development of a new monetary system.  Occasionally we shall repost articles of long term value to a growing community of those around the world who are waking up to who their real enemies are.  We advocate leaving these people behind by "coming out of her, my people" rather than taking any reprisals.  However when their Agenda starts to affect people in local areas, we advocate resistance in any way possible.          

#40 The Lawful Bank

Here is just a sampling of video presentations. There are far more out there describing all of Roger Hayes' activities and involvements. 

Roger Hayes 29th Oct 2012 Lawful Bank TAMS Magna-Carta 2015 presentation

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 1 of 6

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 2 (ROGER HAYES ARRESTED) [This video says nothing about his arrest.]  

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 3 (ROGER HAYES ARRESTED [This video says nothing about it either]

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 4

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 5

PART 6 COULD NOT BE FOUND!

TheLawfulBank.com

Roger Hayes is a nobody just like myself. He has tirelessly gone up and down among his countrymen, explaining things very well concerning present political realities which definitely have their counterparts everywhere else in the world, because everyone is presently under the same enforcement of unlawful statutes that have nothing whatever to do with basic common law, in fact they have attempted to steal national and individual sovereignty and place it under the supervision of so called “experts” (who are all traitors to real law, real people and real nations). We are currently under rule by ourtlaws, just about everywhere in the world. We have tremendous respect for this man. He has demonstrated courage, has gone before his people to explain their situation (always a potentially dangerous undertaking) and what he says has direct application to everyone else in the civilized world and has tremendous implications for people everywhere else on earth.

Hayes has done a spectacularly good job explaining what the people are facing under the present banking cartel (PART 3 above). We notice that Hayes' preferred solution turns out to be exactly the same as Bill Still's; have the government issue the money without interest and spend it into circulation “for the public interest,” etc. This requires the government to tax back everything it spends as otherwise inflation inevitably results, because the government doesn't have anything to sell back into the economy to retrieve the money they have spent. What neither Hayes nor Still sees, and they have a lot of ready followers, is that if you allow the government to issue the money you inevitably end up with communism, which doesn't work. We have tried state issue of money now for many hundreds of years and it cannot and does not work. It's time we stop advocating this as a preferred objective.

Riegel and others pointed out that ANY government issue of money amounted to turning over the natural rights of each one of us, to people who neither had the right nor the responsibility to create and spend money for us on our behalf, etc. We believe that it's time for the people of the world to grow up and take care of themselves, stop behaving like snivelling aged children and take back the power from governments and others who have no rights, no reason and no basis for their authority over us.

Authority as we maintain, rests solely with the truth, which can be rationally attained, contrary to all those who might insist that “noble lies” are every bit as good as the truth. We are in common agreement that it all begins and ends with who issues the money, because nobody does anything without being paid. Money is the ultimate lever of power and certain people have known this far longer and used it against the rest of us for a very very long time ... going all the way back to Babylon. All issues related to war and poverty are directly related to who has stolen the legitimate right of money issue from humanity.

Hayes explains the accounts required for his system in PART 4 above. What he has in mind is something like a “land bank” as he has clearly seen that another power has been stolen from us, the power of the land to become wealth and generate income for us. We agree with him and remind him and others that property rights extend to both the right to secure and protect property in land and other tangible resources, free of encumbrance from anyone else (allodial title) as well as the right of money issue. He makes many excellent points.

In PART 5 Hayes describes a fundamental truth that might change our mind concerning how we deal with taxation. If they want to tax us, they must accept our money which we do not expect them to do; therefore “pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's” etc. He makes many excellent points in this section that will become the basis of our future public campaigns. Hayes advocates creating common law authorities. We ultimately agree. There are a variety of “free state” or “self rule” movements under way right now across the world. This represents the future as we turn our backs on statists, bankers, elites and cabals of all kinds, etc. He also explains his means for exchange through use of the fractional reserve, which he ratchets down as more reserves in “public” money come in. He advocates using their money to underpin his new money which is intended to be interchangeable with pounds sterling which they will buy and retire. He also has many excellent ideas concerning allowing transfers into his system that we shall certainly evaluate.

The remainder of this article concerns the proposed Lawful Bank and how it compares with our proposal, the Independent Exchange. So we begin with this:

Welcome To The Lawful Bank

The Lawful Bank provides a gateway to 'The Alternative Monetary System' (TAMS) - a new and independent monetary and banking system owned and controlled by its users/members. The objective of TAMS is to create its own liquidity (money) for the benefit of the people of the nations that choose to use it... and by so doing, reassert the sovereign right of the people to self-governance - for a nation cannot truly govern itself unless it is in full control of the means by which its money is created.

The Lawful Bank is owned by its members. What then is the structure of this business? He says the branches are “for profit” operations, so what is the basis for ownership? It's based on deposits of national “public” money; UK pounds sterling. He says there's nothing wrong with fractional reserve banking. We obviously see this differently, but we marvel at the ingenuity of his monetary system design, as it solves some issues while creating others. Hayes turns the fractional reserve model upside down and considers that the “owners” of the “bank” deserve the proceeds of the bank. Perhaps he grants that it is the members themselves that create their own Sovereign Pounds (we really like the name and concept! Tally ho!), but what he's done is set up certain percentages that will determine how much money would be created.

Now of course, certainly he also knows that this money could not be spent outside his network, his market, TAMS (organised as a voluntary private club), the one created by the entire network of Lawful Bank branches. It's basically a system primed by national “public” money, which would form the “reserve” to generate the money of its members on a predictable 10 to 1 ratio.

I want to point something out to my American readers, many of whom may have lost their ability to really feel this thing called nationality (before our so called Civil War most of us felt the same toward our states). This is being written by a Briton who I am quite sure accepts as normal the concept of national identity. We have a requirement in our proposal that will not be understood by many, it's called Domicile. In order to be a member of any IE within our proposed VEN (our term for TAMS), you must actually prove that you have a lawful right to be resident where you are; recognized residence for one year or more in any location. We propose a private organization and we shall have our rules. If we hadn't been able to exert our will at the polls, since the governments were bought by those who wanted to profit from the importation of people more desperate than ourselves, who would work for less, etc. then we certainly jolly well will have our way in these matters by rights, right from the start of our new monetary system.

Those in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Russia, etc. who understand this immigration problem acutely, please pay attention; our purpose through the requirement to prove legitimate domicile, is to recognize the natural right of all nations to establish and preserve their national identities. We have further news for those in Africa, Asia, South America, etc. where most of these people have come from; we have the solution to your poverty and the means of your prosperity. Return home, use our private monetary system and methods and become prosperous in your own lands and among your own nations.

By the way, we happen to think that the globalist corporatist fascist paradigm, with its beehive groupthink mentality of chasing around after the eleventh marble, where everyone is treated as “human resources” by these people ... is really boring. We prefer our uniqueness as individuals and yes as peoples and nations too. This is the kind of diversity that we shall promote. It will be demonstrated on the obverse (front) sides of our exchange notes. Possibly each nation will adopt a national obverse side, but the monetary unit would always be the same everywhere. We shall have no more need of money changers!

We'll eventually get to describing our evaluation of Sovereign Pounds, we liked the name, would like to see the design. We do think that ultimately cash will be king, so that the idea of printing and minting these tokens of exchange, will take on more importance than most think.

That most nations around the world do not control their own money supply is not well known - but it should be - and it is our intention therefore to educate as many people as possible about this issue and explain its significance in terms of the impact it has on our freedoms.

We certainly hope he actually means it. By this I mean that all our freedoms are inherent in each of us as individual human beings, no matter where we are or what we are by natural or national makeup. We must insist that these rights are beyond the reach of ANY law to FORCE compliance against our own interests; none of these rights can be taken from us by FORCE (or other attempts to cheat us out of our wilful consent; stealing our consent by frauds and deceits), without instantly invalidating the action as unlawful. That's exactly how we see the issue of liberty: it can be national, it must be individual and respected.

TAMS has been developed to counter the destructive modern-day banking system that is the sole cause of the massive debt mountains that are now the burden of virtually every nation on this planet. It is our contention that people should be educated to the fact that the national debt would not exist if the creation of money was directly controlled by our elected government and that also, if this were the case, the taxes we pay could be dramatically reduced.

Emphasis here: this is absolute rubbish! No government, whether elected or not, should control the creation of money, EVER! It is a widespread and ghastly mistake to think so. The practice directly contributes to war! We've already been doing this, even during the “greenback” era before the Federal Reserve, people suffered from the natural scarcity of money under the traditional banking model.

Governments are supposed to rely for their money on US and WE are the only ones who can, by inalienable right, create money. ALL money created by governments is by fiat (not a problem) and not backed by anything the government could sell to us to justify their spending (THE problem!) and is all loaned into existence at interest (a swindle deliberately creating scarcity of money, which they think is a good thing and it isn't: this is the cancer in the present monetary system, creating huge tumours of debt that eventually kill the host economies). Governments rely on taxes taken by FORCE and they always overspend, so the rest becomes higher prices; inflation. We know all this, so let's stop talking about the governments creating money, shall we? Their money is all illegitimate and we just keep using it, because there hasn't emerged a credible alternative. One will emerge, because more and more people want something else.

TAMS provides the means by which national debt mountains can be extinguished - for the universal benefit of us all - by creating streams of positive financial liquidity in the hands of the people - instead of the streams of negative debt that have been placed on the shoulders of national governments and which are being paid for by ever-increasing taxes. It is a statement of fact that these debt mountains were entirely unnecessary and exist simply because the political elite in national governments have been 'persuaded' (some would say bribed) to hand over the control of their nation's money supply to the international banking cartel. In our view this is nothing short of criminal collusion.

As can be seen, if you have watched the video presentations, Hayes' approach is far more politically direct than ours. He seems to want to demand things of the system that we would prefer to approach through a “come out of her, my people” strategy. (We should consider any who stay on their side as the “left behinds.”) But others may see this differently; if they are doing this in England, why not in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, all the rest? Why not also in the BRIC nations?

"I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies." Thomas Jefferson

The Lawful Bank is not a “banking institution” run on the same model as Jefferson had in mind. He knew full well the usual commercial banks as they existed then; run exactly the same then as now. We want to call our branches exchanges rather than banks because we have the same reasonable concerns about the endless stacking up of money which the word bank implies. Hayes mentioned some sort of tax on extra cash in accounts. He should really throw this idea out too. People knowing that there's a tax on “cash” in accounts, would then certainly prefer to be holding cash in notes and coins outside of any accounts, so there wouldn't be any trail to implicate them in some future tax. People are tax averse by nature, which indicates to me that everyone recognizes taxation as robbery, even under the best regimes.

Hayes mentions some ideas for reclaiming the real estate of Britain, for a sort of “pay it forward in life, recoup on the decease,” model. He clearly dislikes inheritance. I wonder if he'd consider farms, or industrial property in the same category as housing? We would tend to support the notion of families owning the land or business their forefathers owned and that certainly goes for housing too. Getting rid of inheritance was one of the key planks of the Communist Manifesto. so we think Hayes badly needs to rethink this one too. While we concur concerning the excesses of the financial elite, honest capital formation is not a bad thing for any nation or community and the best way for it to form is in families over many generations, under conditions of peace.

The right of inheritance is actually an extension of personal property; the donor gets to pass his property on to whomever he freely chooses. It's nobody else's business! If you're FORCING someone into payback at death, you've assumed an authority that sooner or later in the wrong hands would turn very ugly. On the other hand we STRONGLY support the maintenance of an independent land registry for every geographical area where an independent exchange (or Lawful Bank branch) is started.

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Yeah, we know. But what Rothschild did was not new. John Law tried it and before him the bankers in London, Amsterdam, etc. The present banking model is very old. It traces itself back apparently to ancient Babylon.

YOU can help change things.

Please click here to sign up to the Lawful Bank now. (Read the details at your leisure.)

No offence Roger, but we have to laugh. We've just been told what we already knew, that we are universally spied upon by the bankers' paid government elves. What makes you think anyone will want to sign up in the broad open daylight of internet traffic? You have to use snail mail or even the private mail systems. You have to form networks of secure correspondence over vast distances as well as within tight communities. Above all you have to start building potential pools of liquidity as soon as possible. These will form the juice for starting the new monetary system. Hayes is absolutely right about one thing though, it will be a tremendous effort to get and secure what I'd prefer to call “subscribers,” pursuant to becoming members and it will ultimately be a numbers game; when enough people have a personal interest in the future of a new monetary system, it will kick start all over the world, rise and thrive as the old order passes away and takes its usury based banking model with it.

Please note, you are not making a commitment at this stage, you are merely expressing an interest, which will provide us with an early indication of the level of support that we might expect. The success of TAMS depends on our ability to co-ordinate our efforts and work to a common agenda to take back control of the means of money production and by so doing - reassert our sovereign rights.

This is something like what we think. But sovereignty to have any real meaning in these times, ultimately resides in the individual human being. These rights spring from no outside authority and they include life, liberty and property, including the right to defend what belongs to us. Property also extends to allodial title to all real property and the right to pass that property on to anyone we choose.

The lawful Bank, serves as a conduit to TAMS via this web site. By signing up to The lawful Bank you will (in due course) avail yourself of the benefits of membership of this unique monetary and banking system, the essence of which is to distribute to the people the grotesque profits being skimmed by greedy bankers from the nation's economy.

This is exactly why Hayes likes the fractional reserve model, turned upside down. What he has solved by this is tying the amount of each member's potential money creation to the amount contributed to the bank's “reserves” in national currency at a ratio of 10 to 1. Recalling that nothing becomes money until it is exchanged for something, a value in an open market, a member could stack up as many Sovereign Pounds as he had pounds sterling to invest in the future money he'd have access to when TAMS gets up and running. He's got one problem though; his sovereign pounds are numerically tied to the purchasing power of whatever pounds sterling would buy. This is what most complementary systems try to do, because it's conceptually simpler for most people. But his members would still be at the mercy of what happens to the pound sterling when Weimar like hyperinflation sets in, as it very well could.

Instead, we used E. C. Riegel's approach, setting a stake in the ground, a Figure 1, upon which the monetary unit, as a measure of value, not a holder of value, the distinction is conceptually important, would determine all future assessments of value including the relative value of other currencies while they last. We set our proposed Value Unit at 1,000 per 1 troy ounce of gold bullion on 2 November, 2011, an easy day to remember. On that day the hypothetical international standard Value Unit as an independent measure of monetary value had a comparable value in US dollars of $2.16.

TAMS, with no shareholders to satisfy, is able to distribute all profits to its members and provide benefits that no other system can provide (see benefits below).

The members are actually shareholders in some precise arrangement as to the number of pounds sterling they have placed into the Lawful Bank's public currency reserves. The Lawful Bank does not deposit these public monies, they buy them with money created by The Lawful Bank members called Sovereign Pounds. This situation could fluctuate as people come and go, presumably taking their public money with them. Of course the Value Unit and the Sovereign Pound would always be private money. You can spend it within the community upon the actual launch of either TAMS or the VEN, but the Sovereign Pound is still tied to the public pound sterling, whereas the Value Unit is independent of every other money and will not be affected by government spending or bankster racketeering.

The fundamental principle of TAMS is that each nation's money supply should be in the hands of the people, for the benefit of the people - and not controlled by privately owned central banks, as is the case with the present international monetary/banking system.

Here again we see the emphasis on the idea of a nation. Quite probably Hayes and we agree on the illegal alien issue and seek a remedy through private initiatives seeing that we get nowhere with governments who are in thrall to the bankers and their corporations, always seeking advantage through exploiting desperate people who will work for less than provides a living wage for a particular community. These are serious problems that the libertarians are unalterably opposed to. We part company with them on these points, not because we do not approve of human freedom, but because these are cases where some have obtained freedom directly at the expense of others, the depletion of their freedoms. We have elaborated some critical definitions on this blog, including selfishness. Genuine selfishness consists in deliberately taking advantage of someone else. Where do advocates of liberty fail on this issue? They fail to recognize that liberty does not extend to bullies, whether they be globalist fascists or impoverished desperadoes.

Understanding money, its creation and the means by which the main political parties are controlled is vital to understanding the controls that the banking cartel places on each one of us personally by virtue of the control that the banking fraternity imposes on our system of government.

We of the E. C. Riegel approach do not concern ourselves with these matters as they form for us a dead letter; we have not been listened to, our requirements have not been met, our desires for advancement, freedom, prosperity, etc. have been cast aside as if we do not deserve them or because somehow we must serve some higher cause or purpose. Whatever. It's all strictly speaking a load of claptrap. Hayes' approach is bound to get him into trouble, as he advocates a process that will eventually end in conflict at the courts first and then in the streets.

An honest government would take back control of the money supply.

An honest government is an oxymoron and they could have about as much success controlling money as if they set about deciding the orbits of the planets! People consistently ask government to do what it should never have done and then wonder why it never works. ALL fiat money fails because it is government issued and for no other reason. Why don't more people get some sense and figure it out?

We would like people to start asking the question, 'Why don't they? The answer is of course that the political establishment is universally in the pocket of the banking fraternity and that this is the sole reason why so many politicians end up with lucrative directorships or consultancies with and for the banks.

To reiterate, since we agree here, the answer is that ANY prominent politicians are bought and paid for by them and if they step out of line, as a few American presidents have done, they end up disgraced or dead. We are dealing with the oldest criminal cabal in the world. THAT too should be better understood by more people.

An honest politician that voted in favour of taking back control of the production of our money supply, for the benefit of the nation, would not make a single penny from that decision... but the same cannot be said for voting for the status quo - i.e. leaving the production of the money supply in the hands of a private banking cartel... which rewards its sponsors (politicians) very well indeed.

Well of course, but this only proves that ALL politicians without exception are dishonest. There will not be any possibility for honest politicians until the present order fails, as sooner or later it certainly will.

TAMS Member Banks.

All banks that are members of TAMS have the capacity to offer a range of unique benefits to its members because it operates independently of the existing system - i.e. beyond the control and influence of the interest based global system.

Fine, so let's see what he's selling.

TAMS recognises the absolute sovereign rights of the individual and the sovereign rights of nations as created by the voluntary joining together of individuals of like-mind and shared national ambition and objectives.

Any valid concept of sovereignty in this 21^st Century must dispense with the notion that it belongs first and foremost to nations or states. We have a meme over here that is growing in usage; people want to be their own Alpha. But get that nationalism in there? More people should feel this, including those in the less developed parts of the world. It all begins with individual dignity and self respect, then onward to the mutual respect and reasonable business trust of others nearby. We would normally expect that those who most closely share more things in common will develop goods and services for their individual circumstances that will meet their needs better than anything arriving from some foreign destination, though genuine free trade would be encouraged by sharing the same monetary language.

TAMS has been created as a tool to serve the interest of sovereign men or women and to help assert global freedom. Any group of individuals from any nation may establish their own independent bank and sign up to the TAMS charter... which confirms its universal ownership by its users, to be operated in accordance with the principles agreed by the majority of its members.

The VEN would be similar. Independent Exchanges, we prefer these terms for our organizations rather than calling them Banks, would operate within a designated geographic area and be open to those who can prove clear Domicile for the past year. They would not need to deposit anything to begin with, because everyone starts with some free money. Hayes' free money is created in his system as a result of turning the fractional reserve mechanism on its head and allowing members to create a certain multiple of the public money reserves. We don't know whether he restricts this to individuals or includes businesses. We stick to Riegel's design here by excluding businesses and governments from creating money.

TAMS is managed in accordance with these principles by a team elected by the membership on the basis of one member one vote. The managers of TAMS are not born into their position or come to it via membership of an exclusive international club of elites.

We could all resolutely hope this is the same everywhere, but again we can feel Hayes' anger toward those who inherited money or property. Fine, there are ways to limit what might be inherited. The probate courts do a bang up job of that right now anyway.

What Hayes really needs to be concerned about are a class of people so far above his head that they use the current inheritance tax laws and probate courts to make sure that only they can profitably pass on their property to others of their choice. These people have no love for the independent farmer or businessman whose farm or business might be a cherished family legacy that benefits community and society alike and would be sorely missed were it to go under ... or gobbled up by yet another corporation. We cannot accept as lawful at all a society that forbids inheritance of property as a natural right. We may deal with the real villains in the piece or we may not. We'd honestly prefer not to have any dealings with them at all, unless or until they are led to the scaffolds for their crimes. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you couldn't be a criminal, perhaps even of the very worst kind imaginable. As has been said vast wealth usually rests upon vast crimes.

So, here's this particular monetary system's features and how they differ from our proposal:

The benefits TAMS will offer: -

Interest free loans for home purchase - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Interest free loans for businesses - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Interest free loans for cars and other household goods - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Interest free funds for community projects - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Bonded car insurance - at massively reduced annual premiums - approx £100 per vehicle - subject to payment of a security bond of about £500. There are no investors to pay.

Higher interest payments to deposit accounts - achieved through direct loans to other members.

A large network of community branches.

A positive credit system - for every £1 of cash deposited, each member creates £10 credit in their account. This credit (created by the system) on the back of the cash deposited is the property of the member and thus not a debt to the member. This will provided streams of credit to the system - and not debt.

To name just a few of the many benefits available.

This is a bank turned upside down with the benefits flowing to the members. It's not bad as a concept, except that its money is created as direct counterparts to a national currency that may become hyper inflationary as the debt on which it is built loses its appeal. A Weimar meltdown would not affect any Value Units as they are separate from any and all other currencies, so that they would not be affected by government spending, corporate games or financial chicanery. Hayes can't claim the same for his, but on the other hand, since his money would be identical to public money in purchasing power, as it is designed that way, he could make a better case for forcing certain public companies into taking his money. But that's ultimately going to require a political solution. And then there's the matter of taxes; if they accept your money as legitimate (lawful) they will find every possible means of taxing it.

Our branches are not in the finance business at all. They are only concerned with transaction clearing and determining whether labour and credit contracts as described are lawful within our very simple rules. Financing in the VEN would be undertaken by member businesses assuming their own risk. Should any of them fail, it would not bring down the entire system.

TAMS also operates in conjunction with The Common Law Courts and The New Land Registry.

We like these ideas, especially the New Land Registry, but wonder if now is the time for them. Perhaps so though. Some of us wondered if Britain still retained the offices of Sheriff at the county level and whether they could call for a Grand Jury to be opened to decide matters under common law, usually to send an indictment of a public official or agency up to a higher court for action.

Please sign up now (external link)

Yeah, maybe by snail mail or in person. People have gotten really angry over here about knowing that their government has no respect at all for anyone's privacy. Signing up for anything on line is probably going to become less effective until these matters are dealt with. After all, in the case of the current NSA spying, the US government has clearly violated the terms of its charter, the 4^th Amendment, a part of the original Bill of Rights. They have broken the law and everyone knows it! It's quite another matter however whether anyone can reasonably expect any justice will come of it.

It is a formidable undertaking to try and explain The Alternative Monetary System (TAMS) and its benefits in a few short paragraphs - suffice it to say at this point in time that the benefits are real and substantial. We invite individuals to sign up and take the time to read a more detail explanation of how the system works at your leisure... including how you can set up your own profit making branch in your community.

All this reading a more detail explanation of how the system works at your leisure is very important as the devil is usually in the details.

IMPORTANT: TAMS is not currently in operation... the system, although fully developed will not be activated until it has a minimum number of members in order for it to function effectively and for the maximum benefit for members - we are inviting YOU to join now and help make up the critical mass of members that we need.

The easiest way to recruit new members is to have them set up preliminary accounts. In Hayes' system, anyone willing to send in a few British pounds sterling could probably start one with £10 for each pound deposited. The bookkeeping requirements are pretty simple. He also seems to have left it open to anybody to join, regardless of nationality. So presumably even wanker Americans could open an account with The Lawful Bank.

This is a people based project that needs individuals to sign up so that through the collective power of the many, each one of us may benefit individually... but we need NUMBERS to breathe life into this project - we need your support.

I'm about to do this too, so I'll hand Hayes a tip: get yourself a private post box with a reliable mailing address and advise people to send their correspondence in to you. That way there will be less chance of potential customers ending up on someone's list.

There is nothing to pay at this point in time. When there are enough members signed up, sufficient to make the system viable... we will email every member and ask them to pay a one-time-only subscription of £10 (or international equivalent) - to help pay for the operational costs of the system. At this time also we will have in place a board of directors voted for by the members for the proper and transparent administration of these funds.

Again, why not have them send in their contributions NOW by snail mail and begin by sending them back a crude little piece of paper informing them that they have a preliminary account with The Lawful Bank? (Some in the room are fighting with me concerning this, thinking that Roger Hayes may be just another disappointing character as have been so many working in this area of interest. I asked them whether they thought I was especially brilliant and had all the best ideas? They didn't know, but I assured them that I wasn't and didn't and that Roger was on the level -after all he even went to jail for a while last year- and though some of his ideas really should be revised, that nevertheless he'd come up with a pretty good alternative banking model. Were I resident in the UK and actually planned to live there and contribute to their society, I would jolly well want to sign up right away, but not over the internet.

You see people are increasingly desperate. They know something's wrong and they know it's the money. Most want to deal in something else, something that is not subject to inflation, something they can reliably save as a measure of value, not a holder of value; the more money one has the larger thing one can measure for purposes of procurement. People would like to be able to trust their government to take care of them as some great parent in the capital city. But it's time to wake up and grow up. No government has ever been good at parenting its charges. Why would we ever expect things to be any different today?

The Lawful Bank is the first of many 'new banks' to come. The Lawful Bank is a partnership between 'The British Constitution Group' and 'The World Freeman Society.'

We're glad this represents at least some fringe support, but as Hayes himself seems to know, ANY politician represented as a member of ANY political party is actually operating in opposition to the government and people served. Certain kinds of mythologies die hard, party politics being one of these.

At the very heart of TAMS is the principle that a nation's monetary/banking system should be owned and controlled by that nation, for the benefit of the people. TAMS is an alternative to the present private banking system because national governments refuse to recognise their obligation to act in the best interest of the citizens. TAMS is owned by its members and membership is available to every individual as a right, not a privilege and without restriction.

Let's untangle this: the first underlined bit is a practical impossibility. You are asking governments to act in matters over which they can have nothing but harmful effects through their market interventions. The second bit, as a rationale, since they aren't doing their job (which in any case they'd make a mess of, as they always have), we're doing it for them. No sir, we are doing something for ourselves that we should have done hundreds of years ago! Every individual human being on the planet deserves to create his/her own money as an extension of their private property. No one else can steal this right from them. All The Lawful Bank is doing is enabling anyone, whether they are truly of the nation or not (as he just said this was open to anyone), to exercise their lawful rights.

TAMS operates internationally and gives easy access to low-cost international monetary transfers. In each case, access is via a nationally controlled network of branches, owned and controlled by small groups and communities. These small groups and communities control TAMS through an elected committee who hire and fire the managers of TAMS. The whole system is controlled from the bottom up by members through the democratic process of one vote per member. There are no block votes.

Fine, if you have all this together, it's merely a simple matter of establishing preliminary accounts, then branches, then hooking them all up to TAMS and away you go with commerce. But if TAMS is international and your banks in England are operating from a pound sterling basis, while we operate on a dollar basis, you still have not eliminated money changers, the primary causes of inflation or by opening up membership to all comers, have not furthered the causes of integrity, honesty and ethical dealing, as the more desperate someone is the more risks they are willing to take just to survive, including doing some things that might really wreck things for other members. This comes of having the finance function tied to the transaction clearing functions within a bank. It's time to consider separating these functions for good and forever, so that a lender assumes his/her own risk apart from a bank. If a lender is beset by a bunch of bad loans, it would not affect any independent exchange (bank branch) within our proposed Value Exchange Network.

There are no investors to satisfy and no high flying executives on million pound/dollar salaries or city slickers on astronomical bonuses. Our system plays no part in casino banking. TAMS is both safe and cost effective and serves the interest of the sovereign aspirations of individuals.

None of our people would be able to earn these fabulous remunerations either. It will be a good thing for everyone concerned including the individual branch exchange officers.

TAMS is a mirror image of the existing monetary system - it is tried and tested... but with a crucial difference in that there is an entirely different approach as to where the profits are delivered. In the existing system, the profits go to investors, and the people running the bank - with our system the profits are distributed to our members.

We like it and we don't. Does this not in fact infer that you have taken a system that makes money on money and turned it upside down so now everyone can get in on making money on money? Our proposal would involve giving people money based on their pensions, in international standard Value Units of course, not dollars, pounds, etc. Over a matter of a few months they'd be accruing more money than in most alternative systems, but aren't we really about retaining the ability to trade real goods and services that we all really need and want? Isn't it also true that we would want to have the means to build back through our own efforts what the elites have swindled and taxed away from us, from our families, our communities and yes our nations? 

We have given a great deal of thought to these matters and would surely like to share them with Roger and others involved in similar serious efforts. And aren't we also about returning the means and the reason to work to billions of people? Isn't the elimination of poverty and war worth the effort? The criminal elites? Why not move away from them and when confronted by their minions, ask them just who they'd prefer having as friends, the snotty elites or we the people? Hayes has actually done this. More of us should be doing the same. 

I've put my challenge out to all military and law enforcement veterans and their likely mothers, the grandmothers of this world, to unite and begin to start preliminary accounts that would form the basis of a viable alternative to the present systemic disaster. Anyone with a valid pension including all Social Security recipients should get on board with this right away as the clock is ticking and ... we have advance warning of our enemies' plans and they intend on winning which means billions of people are scheduled to be ... liquidated for the good of the planet, etc. (more abysmal claptrap and rubbish dressed up as “science” in order to secure our rights against our free consent!)

Operating an honest banking system is not rocket science... it is merely a record keeping exercise. The complication of banking only arises on the coattails of the deceit and corruption employed by the present system. TAMS steers clear of the greed that has now become the hallmark of today's banking system... and the casino mentality that drives it.

Or have you? Gee, if I just keep earning pounds sterling and sticking them into your bank and pull out ten times the money, that's quite a nice casino and I can always count on it. But of course what happens when that public pound shrinks in value? So too will any Sovereign Pounds generated therefrom, because they are linked. Best solve as many problems as one can within any new system, or it will just manifest some odd problem that will need fixing later.Hayes and others have already started out with a principle, the government issuance of money in the public interest, that is completely untenable. Idealists are people who want the world to function the way they thy think it should and are oblivious to facts of life that make their ideal impossible. The sovereignty of the individual makes a far better principle and doesn't require anyone else being involved but the members. 

For now, all governments are forbidden membership within our VEN. Perhaps they only get taxing authority when they accept our money as legitimate and then we allow them membership as B members as Riegel had originally proposed. Maybe.

It is the irrefutable fact that the near collapse of the world's financial system (which is still a possibility) is directly attributable to the banking fraternities focus on profit, greed and the gambling mentality the pervades in the banking industry.

The same models have been used from time immemorial and they have failed catastrophically before, so yes they will fail again. In fact the incidences of failures have gotten closer and closer together. The causes are built into the mathematics of debt and all the fabulous ways this has been played with to swindle real wealth (that which is capable of providing income) from whole classes of people, in particular, the middle classes upon whom civilization rests as a given and without whom no civilization worth the name can exist. The banking model cannot be so easily bettered or rendered any more sound by flipping the model upside down to benefit members rather than absentee owners (investors) etc. The fractional reserve banking model was based on a well known fraud concerning gold and silver warehousing and the leverage used to cause the creation and circulation of bad notes not redeemable for precious metals held in storage and still belonging to those who had deposited them with the storeroom managers. Our model uses silver and gold bullion as a buffer between ourselves and their money, so we never have any of it in our institutions be they independent exchanges or the various finance businesses that decide to operate within our VEN.

In contrast and in a similar vain to co-operative banking and mutual societies - TAMS uses the power of a large number of members to generate the benefits that each individual member can tap into. Achieving a large membership is the hurdle we must overcome in order to get our alternative system up and running - i.e. we need a critical mass of members to sign up to maximise the benefits available.

Well you said you had no problem allowing the rich to transfer their money into The Lawful Bank. We don't have any prejudice in that regard either, but we have far fewer ways for them to ever make money on money, as they are often used to doing. A rich person by definition has enough money and so doesn't need to be creating any more of it. In fact by failing to spend their excesses back into economies and instead preferring to live off of the “yield” from debt instruments or equities, they are economic parasites every bit as much as those who work for non-profit foundations, think tanks, the government or live from public relief. A rich person buys Value Units with their public money in the only means of exchange we will allow, through gold or silver bullion as they are the only reliable means of comparing our money to theirs. In this way we can provide exchange for all the major currencies for as long as they last.

TAMS charter. (Please note that this is work in progress)

The Alternative Monetary System (TAMS) is the hub of a network of autonomous branches, each owned by members of their local communities. No one member can have an interest in more than 3 branches.

The Value Exchange Network is the totality within which all branches, called independent exchanges (IE), operate. Individual people who can satisfy Domicile requirements are eligible to join an IE, but they are sponsored by two other members. They do not pay anything to join. Each individual human being is an A member whereas all groups of A members joining are B members; businesses and eventually governments starting with the most local ones first. In the beginning no governments will be allowed membership because they will not be expected to accept Value Units. All these transactions will have to be conducted in local currencies until these become ... valueless? No, until they no longer adequately measure any value in trade. Most currencies die from a Weimar meltdown in hyperinflation as governments try to repay their debts with more and more unbacked useless money.

An A member has an account in his/her local IE only. If he moves to another location where an IE already exists, his account transfers there also. An A member may open a business using the customary “doing business as” (DBA) form, available through most local county clerk's offices or their equivalents in other countries. A business operating as a B member at the local IE may have branches in other IE's, other locations and these could be very far apart. There could be many or few depending on the size and scale that nature allows. Nevertheless the B member is not organized as a limited liability absentee ownership stock company, as these would not be allowed as members. You want to stop corruption? Here's where you start, by keeping certain kinds of predatory business entities out of the VEN (or TAMS).

It is this extensive network of autonomous community based branches that controls the operation of the hub and not the other way around - thus ensuring that the hub functions for the benefit of all users/members and that control of the system can never fall into the hands of a small minority. Any attempts by any individual to influence more than 3 branches will result in a life-long ban as a branch director.

We kind of like this, even though we suppose that the only means for this kind of concentration is usually in the forms of corporate structure and the various applications of usury and compound interest (usury on steroids). It seems to me that what Hayes has advocated for loans is an arbitrary up front payment of what would normally be an interest charge, but this is satisfactory to us as all the money involved in the deal is out of already created money, so there's no need to filch the eleventh marble from an artificially scarce money supply.

The only problems with this are 1) he's maintained the loan functions within the same institution as the transaction clearing function, therefore subjecting the vital transaction function to the risk of possible default on loans which could bring his whole system down. This is what always brings banking systems down so I'm not bringing up anything new. And 2) he thinks all lenders would be satisfied with the same rate, represented as the up front fee, to carry their risk. Not all members are equally able to be counted upon to pay their debts. That's a simple fact of life. We'd prefer all that finance business to be carried out by those willing to assume the risks outside the IE with the IE holding the all important power to decide whether the credit contract, since that is what it is, passes the rules. We would not set any rules regarding how much extra someone might have to pay for the same thing under different credit situations. We would only insist that no uncreated money is ever involved and that the loan is retired entirely by money earned or created by the borrower. Compounding of interest is always absolutely forbidden.

All branches are profit centres... that is, they are run by their board directors with the aim of making a profit. Revenues come from earning a range of fees from a variety of services, including providing loans and insurance.

Under such terms, perhaps Hayes' bank officers would earn more than our IE exchange officers, because the rewards from carrying on trade would be spread among more factors. There is no reason why finance operations apart from clearing transactions could not enjoy similar rewards for members brought together for these specific purposes. Finance entities would be separate businesses operating within the VEN, usually organized as limited partnerships, that share the rewards for putting up their money to be loaned to others within very simple and strict guidelines that must still be fully worked out and universally accepted by all VEN members. Perhaps Hayes' suggestion that real estate loans be a flat 10% would be widely acceptable. But perhaps not. This whole area really requires more feedback.

The system provides interest free loans... and the branches charge a fee to arrange same.

The VEN can suggest sources for loans in Value Units through B members affiliated with the IE but no IE is ever involved in financing anything. The functions are separate and forbidden to be engaged in hereafter as they represent a conflict of interest and pose a risk to the continued operation of the transaction clearing function.

Borrowers must pay a fee of 10% of the loan value.

This is a straight 10% interest on all loans. We'll have to see whether this is widely acceptable. It may be.

If borrowers do not have the 10% fee - they may make arrangements to borrow the fee from other members, and will be required to pay 10% interest to the lending member and a fee to the Branch.

This 10% rate is to become a standard within The Lawful Bank and its branches. We agree that the interest charges should be paid up front from already created money, but we aren't sure what a fair and equitable rate for any loan would really be as there are many possible durations for repayment to consider, especially for real estate, which would have to affect the cost of borrowing money. We are all in agreement that the usual definition of usury as “excessive interest” is served by fixing an upward or standard interest rate, but what this also does is prevent certain needful large projects from getting funded, because of the tremendous sizes of the loans involved and for how long the schedule of repayment is anticipated to last. Both of these affect the cost of borrowing directly. It's wonderful to imagine that everyone will accept a 10% interest as “reasonable” or “acceptable” when circumstances would demand another approach.

Anybody can start a branch. Individuals who wish to do so must comply with the start-up rules and find 5 other members to form a board of directors whose job it will be to uphold the integrity and honesty of their branch and to operate in compliance with the rules. 3 directors of each branch must be property owners to 'anchor' their branch at a known location.

What had I said earlier? It was that the people who can help us the most are the least desperate among us, those who have something they can live on but are concerned about the future. We offered another idea and suggested that military and police pensioners and grandmothers be the first two likely groups to form an alliance and work together to start these new banking / money exchange institutions. They start by opening mutually agreed to accounts that complement the money they receive from their pensions. Starting with 3 people, each does the minimal accounting for another member which at this stage only takes a few minutes each month. We have a page where the latest exchange value of the proposed Value Unit is maintained. Currently we express a Value Unit in US dollars. Below the daily quote is a table of amounts for each month since inception on 2 November, 2011. I am looking into setting up columns for pounds, euros, and yen as well as US dollars. A pensioner merely takes the amount normally received under the rules of his/her pension (yes, including Social Security) and takes the amount of Value Units this dollar amount would represent as it would change every month because dollars, etc. change while the Value Unit does not, and credit each account with new Value Units and maintain a running balance. All this was explained in #39 Monetary System Engineering and Just Why Cash is King.

There is much that's good about Roger Hayes' design. But is it good enough? My colleagues have advised me to be careful about forming alliances with others in this budding field of new possibilities through new money creation and the institutions that must sustain it all, but I wonder if some competition might not be so bad as to finally flush out all the mechanisms that would not work. We know what some of them are. We have to build in the same kinds of checks and balances as statesmen have tried when designing government institutions. Will our designs ever come to fruition as real live social and economic entities? Only time and people will tell. But more people are getting interested all the time as the present order promises no good future for most of humanity that has been slated by the elites for extinction. What a pleasant thought from such pleasant people!

David Burton

dpbmss@mail.com