a war on children

a shady and illegal pipeline expansion

In August the State Department quietly posted documents revealing that it is allowing Canadian pipeline company Enbridge to move ahead with a shady and illegal pipeline expansion project that could nearly double the amount of tar sands crude pumped into the U.S. through its Alberta Clipper pipeline, in clear violation of its existing permit.¹

Enbridge is responsible for the Kalamazoo tar sands disaster, the largest inland oil-spill in U.S. history.

But shockingly, the State Department is green-lighting this scheme without giving public notice of its decision, without conducting a detailed environmental review, and without a finding of "national interest," as required for Keystone XL and other new pipeline projects.

Expanding tar sands production, by any means, will lead to “essentially game over” in our fight against climate change. So it is crucial that we strongly challenge this decision.

Tell Secretary Kerry and President Obama: Stop Enbridge’s dangerous and illegal tar sands pipeline expansion scheme.

Enbridge has been trying since 2012 to get a presidential permit to expand the Alberta Clipper from its current permitted capacity of 450,000 barrels per day to 800,000 barrels per day.

Thanks in large part to our public pressure, activists have stalled approvals for this tar sands project and others, like the Keystone XL pipeline. So Enbridge concocted a dangerous scheme that essentially amounts to smuggling to get their filthy product across the border.

Instead of carrying tar sands across the border on the Clipper pipeline directly, Enbridge is diverting the tar sands flow to an adjacent 47-year-old pipeline, where it will travel 20 miles across the US border into Minnesota, then back to the Clipper pipeline. Disturbingly, the aging "Line 3" was not designed to carry toxic and corrosive tar sands crude, yet would be operating at more than double its current capacity.

Yes, this is a proven recipe for disaster: The 2013 Mayflower Arkansas spill was caused by a rupture of the similarly aging Pegasus pipeline, which had been also co-opted to carry tar sands crude.

Tell Secretary Kerry and President Obama: Stop Enbridge’s dangerous and illegal tar sands pipeline expansion scheme.

The quiet State Department approval of Enbridge’s pipeline scheme stands in clear violation of the process required to approve new tar sands infrastructure, and the National Interest Determination test the President set for Keystone XL: If the project significantly increases carbon pollution, it should not be approved.

This project, which could carry about half as much crude as Keystone XL, clearly fails that test.

It’s possible that President Obama and Secretary Kerry did not know about this decision, in which case they could intervene and put a stop to it. But if they do nothing, it will seriously call into question the President’s commitment to fighting climate change, and commitment to the test he himself set for ensuring that tar sands pipeline projects do not make climate change worse.

Only time will tell. But now is the time to raise our voices against the State Department’s approval of Enbridge's dangerous and illegal tar sands pipeline expansion scheme.

Thanks for taking action.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Add your name:

Learn more about this campaign

1. "State Department Approves Illegal Scheme for Doubling Tar Sands Flowing through the Great Lakes," National Wildlife Federation, 8/25/14

DOT-111 train cars

This summer, in the middle of the night, the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic was suddenly thrust into a nightmare. A train carrying crude oil derailed, and then exploded, destroying half the downtown and claiming 47 lives.
With big oil companies planning to massively increase crude oil and tar sands trains, this is a serious and growing threat to the safety of communities across the U.S.
Astonishingly, federal regulators have known since 1991 that the most common railway tanker car – known as the DOT-111 – is prone to rupture and explode during derailments. Yet regulators have largely sat on their hands.
In the wake of the Lac-Megantic tragedy, the Department of Transportation is now accepting public comments on rail car safety. Our current system is anything but safe – and it's time for the DOT to take the dangerous DOT-111 train cars off the rails.
Submit a comment to the Department of Transportation: Protect our communities from dangerous oil trains.
Lac-Megantic wasn’t the first oil tanker train explosion, or even the most recent. In fact, earlier this month 13 tanker cars carrying liquefied petroleum and crude oil derailed and exploded in Alberta, Canada. In 2009, 13 tanker cars ruptured and caught fire after a derailment in Cherry Valley, Illinois, killing one person and injuring nine, including two firefighters.
The DOT-111 has been called “the Ford Pinto” of the railways, because, like the car that was pulled from the roads in the early 70’s, DOT-111’s have a “high incidence of tank failures during accidents.”
With oil companies looking to expand on the already-booming oil production in the Alberta tar sands and the Bakken formation in North Dakota, they are relying on these unsafe rail cars to bring their oil to refineries and coastal shipping ports. But we can’t let them continue to endanger communities with rail tanker cars that are known to have serious safety problems.
Removing these dangerous tankers from our railroads – and ensuring that the replacements are built to higher standards - is only one way that the Department of Transportation can take action to improve rail safety. The agency should also enforce speed limits on trains, reschedule trains from running through communities at peak times, and alert communities when these trains will be moving through.
Tell the Department of Transportation: Protect our communities from the dangerous DOT-111 tanker train car. Submit a comment now.
Thanks for taking a stand against dangerous oil trains.
Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager

1. "DOT-111 Oil Tank Cars, Like Those In Lac-Megantic, Quebec Disaster, Long Seen As Flawed," Huffington Post, 7/9/13
2. "Rail safety advocate calls DOT-111 the ‘Ford Pinto’ of rail cars," Bangor Daily News, 8/28/13

Tar sands danger

By Kiley Kroh on October 15, 2013 at 9:35 am

Petroleum coke, a byproduct of tar sands refining, is building up along Chicago’s Calumet River and alarming residents, reported Midwest Energy News.
Petroleum coke is a high-carbon, high-sulfur byproduct of Canadian tar sands that are shipped from Alberta to the U.S. to be refined and is rapidly becoming a cause for concern in Chicago. “It’s growing by leaps and bounds,” Southeast Environmental Task Force member Tom Shepherd, told Midwest Energy News. “It’s coming at a breathtaking rate.”
The pet coke is owned by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch whose operations drew similar outrage from residents and elected officials in Detroit earlier this year. In July, a large black cloud of pet coke dust was spotted over the Detroit River and caught on camera by residents across the border in Windsor. Members of the communities in close proximity to the piles were complaining of respiratory problems as the thick, black dust was blowing off the piles and into their apartments.

Conformity and Mind Control

PERCY SCHMEISER

Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser [2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada case on patent rights for biotechnology. The court heard the question of whether growing genetically modified plants constitutes "use" of the patented invention of genetically modified plant cells. By a narrow 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it does. The case drew worldwide attention.

DAVID VERSUS MONSANTO

TO ORDER: TEL: +49-89-52 66 01 FAX: +49-89-523 47 42 EMAIL:  mail@denkmal-film.com WEB:  http://www.denkmal-film.com

Imagine that a storm blows across your garden - and that now, without your knowledge and without your consent, foreign and genetically-manipulated seeds are in your vegetable patch which you have nourished and maintained for many years. A few days later, representatives of a multi-national corporate group pay you a visit at home, demand that you surrender your vegetables and file a criminal complaint against you requesting a fine a $20,000 USD against you - for the illegal use of patented and genetically-manipulated seeds. What's more: The court finds for the corporate group!   Yet, you fight back.... This short story is no utopia - rather, around the world, the bitter truth. It is also the true experience of the family of Percy and Louise Schmeiser in Canada, also winners of the Alternative Nobel Prize, who meanwhile have been fighting the chemicals and seed manufacturer Monsanto since 1996. Nowadays, nearly three-fourths of genetically-manipulated plants harvested worldwide originate from Monsanto's labs. Monsanto is a U.S. based corporate group which calls the dismal inventions such as DDT, PCB and Agent Orange its own. In its efforts to gain absolute hegemony over plants - from the field all the way to teh consumer's plate - Monsanto knows no qualms. The farmers Tony Rush, David Runyon and Marc Loiselle also learned the hard way what it means to be confronted with Monsanto's methods of doing business, as did thousands of other farmers worldwide. They and the Schmeisers are not just fighting against Monsanto - and with that, for the continuation of their livelihood as farmers - but also for the right to freedom of speech and the right to their property. Yet above all, they are campaigning for the future of their children and grandchildren - so that they too, will have a chance to grow up in a world without genetically-manipulated food. This film is reassuring...reassuring to all who fear that as an individual, no one would have any power to confront policy makers, large corporations or the business world. "David vs. Monsanto" proves the opposite. DIRECTOR - Bertram Verhaag -  DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY - Waldemar Hauschild -  FILM EDITOR - Verena Schonauer -  SOUND - Zoltan Ravasz VDT -  ASSISTANT - Isabel Theiler, Kim Koch -  MUSIC - Bauer Karger Holzapfel PRODUCED BY DENKMAL - FILM - GmbH, MUNICH TO ORDER: TEL: +49-89-52 66 01 FAX: +49-89-523 47 42 EMAIL: mail@denkmal-film.com WEB: http://www.denkmal-film.com

an alarming trend

Google Bombarded with Requests to Suppress Information

“Google has received more than 1,000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011, the company said on Monday, denouncing what it said was an alarming trend. In its twice-yearly Transparency Report, the world’s largest web search engine said the requests were aimed at having some 12,000 items overall removed, about a quarter more than during the first half of last year.” (Reuters)

---

(bbc) Google has revealed it removed about 640 videos from YouTube that allegedly promoted terrorism over the second half of 2011 after complaints from the UK's Association of Chief Police Officers.

The news was contained in its latest Transparency Report which discloses requests by international authorities to remove or hand over material.

The firm said it terminated five accounts linked to the suspect videos.

However, the firm said it had rejected many other state's requests for action.

Canada's Passport Office was among the organizations rebuffed. It had asked for a video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and then flushing it down the toilet be removed.

Google also refused to delete six YouTube videos that satirized Pakistan's army and senior politicians. The order had come from the government of Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology.
Free speech

But Google did act in hundreds of cases, including:

• requests to block more than 100 YouTube videos in Thailand that allegedly insulted its monarchy - a crime in the country
• the removal of a YouTube video that contained hate speech that had been posted in Turkey
• the termination of four YouTube accounts responsible for videos that allegedly contained threatening and harassing content after complaints by different US law enforcement agencies.

Overall, the firm said it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011. It said it had complied with 68% of the orders.

It added that it had received a further 546 informal requests covering 4,925 items, of which it had agreed to 43% of the cases.

Google's senior policy analyst, Dorothy Chou, said the company was concerned by the amount of requests that had been linked to political speech.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect - Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," she said.

"For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors.

"In Poland, we received a request from the Agency for Enterprise Development to remove links to a site that criticized it.

"We didn't comply with either of these requests."

Income Inequality and Violent Crime

Research Digest: Violent Crime

Read an introduction to the Research Digest series and FAQs
Download the Digest as a PDF
Receive future Research Digests by email

Income Inequality and Violent Crime

Key Points

• The relationship between inequality and homicide has been found in many different settings-among developed and developing countries, both between and within countries. Relationships between inequality and violence are stronger when comparing whole societies and tend to be weaker when looking at small areas [1].

• Several studies have found that small reductions in income inequality cause large reductions in homicide.

• Inequality affects homicide, whereas a society's average income level does not.

• The relationship between inequality and homicide seems to be part of a more general divisive effect of inequality which weakens the social fabric.

• Almost two-thirds of the higher homicide rates in southern (as compared to northern) states of the United States are attributable to their greater income inequality. There are lower rates of homicide in the Canadian provinces than in the states of the USA as a result of their smaller income differences [2].

Introduction

As early as 1993 an analysis of 34 studies of violent crime concluded that there was a robust tendency for rates of violence to be higher in more unequal societies [1].

In 1997, Messner and Rosenfeld [3] said "A finding that has emerged with remarkable consistency is that high rates of homicide tend to accompany high levels of inequality in the distribution of income."

Two years later in a study of 50 countries, Lee and Bankston [4] concluded that "...economic inequality is positively and significantly related to rates of homicide despite an extensive list of conceptually relevant controls."

Since then the evidence that violence is higher in countries with bigger income differences between rich and poor has not only continued to accumulate, but has also continued to be ignored by governments.

Contrasting trends: England and Wales, and Japan

England and Wales experienced dramatic increases in inequality during the last quarter of the 20th century, particularly during the later 1980s. In contrast, Japan became a much more equal society during the second half of the 20th century. Homicide rates in England and Wales doubled between 1967 and 2001, but in Japan homicide rates fell by 70 percent during the second half of the 20th century. In England and Wales the increase occurred mainly among young working-aged men from poor areas. In Japan the decline in violence was particularly large amongst young men [5].

Murder in Britain

On average there are 1.8 murders per day in Britain [6]. The increases in murder over recent decades are predominantly murders of poorer men. Richer areas have experienced opposite trends of low and declining murder rates. Men are twice as likely to be murdered as women. The murder rate amongst young men in their 20s has doubled.

Shaw, Turnstall and Dorling [6] note that the increase in murder in Britain occurred alongside the dramatic increases in inequality and relative poverty of the 1980s and 1990s. They suggest that "...when people are made to feel worthless then there are more fights, more brawls, more scuffles, more bottles smashed and more knives brandished, and more young men die. The lives of young men have polarised and this inequality has curtailed opportunities; hopelessness appears to have bred fear, violence and murder."

Small changes in inequality, big impacts on violence

Using data for 39 countries covering the period 1965-1994, Fajnzylber, Lederman and Loayza [7] show that a small permanent decrease in inequality-such as reducing inequality from the level found in Spain to that in Canada-would reduce homicides by 20%. They also showed that a similarly small decrease in inequality would result in a 23.2% long-term reduction in robberies. The analyses took account of the possible influence of economic development, education, economic opportunities, and urbanisation. The research controlled for causality, so that results would not be affected if there was a feedback loop between income and homicide. Daly, Wilson and Vasdev [2] found a decrease in income inequality of 0.01 (Gini) leads to 12.7 fewer homicides per 100,000 individuals.

Opposing views

While the vast majority of research in this field supports this analysis, the evidence has a few detractors. Neumayer [8] questions the link between inequality and violent crime. He recognises that this relationship is widely accepted amongst academics and international agencies, including at the World Health Organisation and World Bank. But, using the UN World Income Inequality Database he suggests that there is no link between income inequality and robbery. He argues that this is evidence for 'country-specific effects' influencing inequality and crime. However, such effects were taken into account by Fajnzylber et al. [7] as well as by Daly et al. [2]. Another explanation of Neumeyer's findings might be that he looks at robbery rather than homicide and they may have different relationships to inequality. In addition, robbery data is well known to be less reliable than homicide data, especially for international comparisons.

It's not culture

One of the benefits of cross-national work is that it can reveal patterns that persist despite cultural variations. On the basis of their international analyses, Elgar and Aitken [9] state that "...inequality relates to homicide independently of local context." They point out that "[the] large differences in homicide rates between countries with low inequality (such as Japan and Denmark) and countries with high inequality (South Africa and the Dominican Republic) are difficult to attribute to geographic proximity or to cultural, political or historical similarities."

It's inequality, not income

Daly, Wilson and Vasdev [2] found that income inequality, but not median income levels, relate to homicide rates. In other words, it is not the level of wealth, but the distribution of wealth, that influences murder and manslaughter. Their research compared Canadian provinces over the period 1981-1996 before going on to look at Canadian Provinces and US states together (see graph below). The more unequal have homicide rates ten times as high as the most equal. After taking account of the effect of income inequality, homicide was not related to average income levels. In this research, single events specific to one province that might influence the pattern are controlled for in order to see the link between inequality and crime more clearly. The authors suggest that this link is caused by inequality stimulating social competition, thus encouraging violence.

Figure 1: Homicide and income inequality in the USA and Canada

How inequality causes violence

Economic inequality affects crime via psychosocial processes influencing social interactions, cultural norms, values and behaviour. These may be affected by inequality through social status, social support, community cohesion, self-esteem, sense of control over one's life, loneliness, tension, anxiety, trust, and depression. Elgar and Aitken [9] consider how greater income inequality leads to more homicides. Across 33 countries lower levels of trust seemed to provide the statistical link which leads from higher inequality to higher homicide. The link was not explained by any tendency for more equal societies to spend more on health and education. They concluded that "Societies with large income differences and low levels of trust may lack the social capacity to inhibit violence and create safe communities." This has parallels in a study showing that weakening trust and social cohesion may also explain why greater inequality is associated with poorer health [10]. This is echoed by Gilligan who, as a prison psychiatrist, talked frequently to violent men. He argues that inequality makes people more sensitive to experiences of inferiority such as disrespect, loss of face and humiliation which are amongst the most common triggers to violence [11].

Conclusions

There is near consensus within academia concerning the link between inequality and violent crime. Indeed, as seemingly small reductions in income inequality can lead to sizeable falls in violent crime, these findings have powerful policy implications. The uncertainty surrounding the transmission mechanisms are an additional reason to target economic inequality directly. As Elgar and Aitken [9] suggest, "...crime reduction policies that ignore income inequality relinquish much of their potential impact on reducing homicide."  

References

[1] Hsieh Ching-Chiu, and Pugh, MD. (1993) "Poverty, income inequality, and violent crime: a meta-analysis of recent aggregate data studies." Criminal Justice Review. 18: pp.182-202

[2] Daly, Martin; Wilson, Margo and Vasdev, Shawn. (2001) "Income Inequality and Homicide Rates in Canada and the United States" Canadian Journal of Criminology 43: pp.219-36

[3] Messner, Steven and Rosenfeld. (1997) "Political Restraint of the Market and levels of Criminal Homicide: A Cross-National Application of Institutional-Anomie Theory." Social Forces. 75: pp.1393-1416

[4] Lee, MR and Bankston, William. (1999) "Political Structure, Economic Inequality and Homicide: A Cross-national Analysis." Deviant Behaviour. 19: pp.27-55

[5] Johnson, DT. (2008) "The Homicide Drop in Postwar Japan." Homicide Studies. 12: pp.146-160.

[6] Shaw, Mary; Tunstall, Helena and Dorling, Danny. (2005) "Increasing inequalities in risk of murder in Britain: Trends in the demographic and spatial distribution of murder, 1981-2000." Health and Place. 11: pp.45-54. Available at http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/publications/2005/shaw_tunstall_dorl ing_murder_corrected.pdf 

[7] Fajnzylber, Pablo; Lederman, Daniel and Loayza, Norman. (2002) "Inequality and Violent Crime" Journal of Law and Economics 45: pp.1-39

[8] Neumayer, Eric. (2005) "Inequality and violent crime: evidence from data on robbery and violent theft." Journal of Peace Research. 42: pp.101-112

[9] Elgar, Frank J and Aitken, Nicole. (2010) "Income inequality, trust and homicide in 33 countries." European Journal of Public Health. pp.1-6 Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20525751 

[10] Kawachi, I; Kennedy, BP; Lochner, K; and Prothrow-Stith, D. (1997) "Social capital, income inequality and mortality." American Journal of Public Health 87: 1491-8

[11] Gilligan, J. (2001) Preventing Violence. Thames and Hudson: London

Suggested Citation: The Equality Trust. "Income inequality and violent crime." Equality Trust Research Digest 2011; no.1:pp.1-5

infinite money

Median net worth dropped by 40% between the start of the recession and 2010.

The Great Recession shrank Americans' wealth so much that in 2010 median family net worth was no more than it had been in 1992 after adjusting for inflation, the Federal Reserve reported Monday.






Fiat money is money that derives its value from government regulation or law: the initial value of fiat money is established by government decree. The term fiat currency is also used when the fiat money is used as the main currency of the country. The term derives from the Latin fiat, meaning "let it be done" or "it shall be".
Fiat money originated in 11th century China,^[1] and its use became widespread during the Yuan and Ming dynasties.^[2] The Nixon Shock of 1971 ended the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. Since then all reserve currencies have been fiat currencies, including the US dollar and the euro.^[3]

---

DOLLAR DECEPTION:
HOW BANKS SECRETLY CREATE MONEY

Ellen Brown, July 3^rd, 2007
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/dollar-deception.php
It has been called "the most astounding piece of sleight of hand ever invented." The creation of money has been privatized, usurped from Congress by a private banking cartel. Most people think money is issued by fiat by the government, but that is not the case. Except for coins, which compose only about one one-thousandth of the total U.S. money supply, all of our money is now created by banks. Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) are issued by the Federal Reserve, a private banking corporation, and lent to the government.¹ Moreover, Federal Reserve Notes and coins together compose less than 3 percent of the money supply. The other 97 percent is created by commercial banks as loans.²
Don't believe banks create the money they lend? Neither did the jury in a landmark Minnesota case, until they heard the evidence. First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly (1969) was a courtroom drama worthy of a movie script.³ Defendant Jerome Daly opposed the bank's foreclosure on his $14,000 home mortgage loan on the ground that there was no consideration for the loan. "Consideration" ("the thing exchanged") is an essential element of a contract. Daly, an attorney representing himself, argued that the bank had put up no real money for his loan. The courtroom proceedings were recorded by Associate Justice Bill Drexler, whose chief role, he said, was to keep order in a highly charged courtroom where the attorneys were threatening a fist fight. Drexler hadn't given much credence to the theory of the defense, until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took the stand. To everyone's surprise, Morgan admitted that the bank routinely created money "out of thin air" for its loans, and that this was standard banking practice. "It sounds like fraud to me," intoned Presiding Justice Martin Mahoney amid nods from the jurors. In his court memorandum, Justice Mahoney stated:

Plaintiff admitted that it, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, . . . did create the entire $14,000.00 in money and credit upon its own books by bookkeeping entry. That this was the consideration used to support the Note dated May 8, 1964 and the Mortgage of the same date. The money and credit first came into existence when they created it. Mr. Morgan admitted that no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note.

The court rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure, and the defendant kept his house. To Daly, the implications were enormous. If bankers were indeed extending credit without consideration – without backing their loans with money they actually had in their vaults and were entitled to lend – a decision declaring their loans void could topple the power base of the world. He wrote in a local news article:

This decision, which is legally sound, has the effect of declaring all private mortgages on real and personal property, and all U.S. and State bonds held by the Federal Reserve, National and State banks to be null and void. This amounts to an emancipation of this Nation from personal, national and state debt purportedly owed to this banking system. Every American owes it to himself . . . to study this decision very carefully . . . for upon it hangs the question of freedom or slavery.

Needless to say, however, the decision failed to change prevailing practice, although it was never overruled. It was heard in a Justice of the Peace Court, an autonomous court system dating back to those frontier days when defendants had trouble traveling to big cities to respond to summonses. In that system (which has now been phased out), judges and courts were pretty much on their own. Justice Mahoney, who was not dependent on campaign financing or hamstrung by precedent, went so far as to threaten to prosecute and expose the bank. He died less than six months after the trial, in a mysterious accident that appeared to involve poisoning.⁴ Since that time, a number of defendants have attempted to avoid loan defaults using the defense Daly raised; but they have met with only limited success. As one judge said off the record:

If I let you do that – you and everyone else – it would bring the whole system down. . . . I cannot let you go behind the bar of the bank. . . . We are not going behind that curtain!⁵

From time to time, however, the curtain has been lifted long enough for us to see behind it. A number of reputable authorities have attested to what is going on, including Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920s. He declared in an address at the University of Texas in 1927:

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. . . . Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.

Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in the Great Depression, wrote in 1934:

We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon.⁶

Graham Towers, Governor of the Bank of Canada from 1935 to 1955, acknowledged:

Banks create money. That is what they are for. . . . The manufacturing process to make money consists of making an entry in a book. That is all. . . . Each and every time a Bank makes a loan . . . new Bank credit is created -- brand new money.⁷

Robert B. Anderson, Secretary of the Treasury under Eisenhower, said in an interview reported in the August 31, 1959 issue of U.S. News and World Report:

[W]hen a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower.

How did this scheme originate, and how has it been concealed for so many years? To answer those questions, we need to go back to the seventeenth century.

The Shell Game of the Goldsmiths

In seventeenth century Europe, trade was conducted primarily in gold and silver coins. Coins were durable and had value in themselves, but they were hard to transport in bulk and could be stolen if not kept under lock and key. Many people therefore deposited their coins with the goldsmiths, who had the strongest safes in town. The goldsmiths issued convenient paper receipts that could be traded in place of the bulkier coins they represented. These receipts were also used when people who needed coins came to the goldsmiths for loans.
The mischief began when the goldsmiths noticed that only about 10 to 20 percent of their receipts came back to be redeemed in gold at any one time. They could safely "lend" the gold in their strongboxes at interest several times over, as long as they kept 10 to 20 percent of the value of their outstanding loans in gold to meet the demand. They thus created "paper money" (receipts for loans of gold) worth several times the gold they actually held. They typically issued notes and made loans in amounts that were four to five times their actual supply of gold. At an interest rate of 20 percent, the same gold lent five times over produced a 100 percent return every year, on gold the goldsmiths did not actually own and could not legally lend at all. If they were careful not to overextend this "credit," the goldsmiths could thus become quite wealthy without producing anything of value themselves. Since only the principal was lent into the money supply, more money was eventually owed back in principal and interest than the townspeople as a whole possessed. They had to continually take out loans of new paper money to cover the shortfall, causing the wealth of the town and eventually of the country to be siphoned into the vaults of the goldsmiths-turned-bankers, while the people fell progressively into their debt.⁸
Following this model, in nineteenth century America, private banks issued their own banknotes in sums up to ten times their actual reserves in gold. This was called "fractional reserve" banking, meaning that only a fraction of the total deposits managed by a bank were kept in "reserve" to meet the demands of depositors. But periodic runs on the banks when the customers all got suspicious and demanded their gold at the same time caused banks to go bankrupt and made the system unstable. In 1913, the private banknote system was therefore consolidated into a national banknote system under the Federal Reserve (or "Fed"), a privately-owned corporation given the right to issue Federal Reserve Notes and lend them to the U.S. government. These notes, which were issued by the Fed basically for the cost of printing them, came to form the basis of the national money supply.
Twenty years later, the country faced massive depression. The money supply shrank, as banks closed their doors and gold fled to Europe. Dollars at that time had to be 40 percent backed by gold, so for every dollar's worth of gold that left the country, 2.5 dollars in credit money also disappeared. To prevent this alarming deflationary spiral from collapsing the money supply completely, in 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt took the dollar off the gold standard. Today the Federal Reserve still operates on the "fractional reserve" system, but its "reserves" consist of nothing but government bonds (I.O.U.s or debts). The government issues bonds, the Federal Reserve issues Federal Reserve Notes, and they basically swap stacks, leaving the government in debt to a private banking corporation for money the government could have issued itself, debt-free.

Theft by Inflation

M3, the broadest measure of the U.S. money supply, shot up from $3.7 trillion in February 1988 to $10.3 trillion 14 years later, when the Fed quit reporting it. Why the Fed quit reporting it in March 2006 is suggested by John Williams in a website called "Shadow Government Statistics" (shadowstats.com), which shows that by the spring of 2007, M3 was growing at the astounding rate of 11.8 percent per year. Best not to publicize such figures too widely! The question posed here, however, is this: where did all this new money come from? The government did not step up its output of coins, and no gold was added to the national money supply, since the government went off the gold standard in 1933. This new money could only have been created privately as "bank credit" advanced as loans.
The problem with inflating the money supply in this way, of course, is that it inflates prices. More money competing for the same goods drives prices up. The dollar buys less, robbing people of the value of their money. This rampant inflation is usually blamed on the government, which is accused of running the dollar printing presses in order to spend and spend without resorting to the politically unpopular expedient of raising taxes. But as noted earlier, the only money the U.S. government actually issues are coins. In countries in which the central bank has been nationalized, paper money may be issued by the government along with coins, but paper money still composes only a very small percentage of the money supply. In England, where the Bank of England was nationalized after World War II, private banks continue to create 97 percent of the money supply as loans.⁹
Price inflation is only one problem with this system of private money creation. Another is that banks create only the principal but not the interest necessary to pay back their loans. Since virtually the entire money supply is created by banks themselves, new money must continually be borrowed into existence just to pay the interest owed to the bankers. A dollar lent at 5 percent interest becomes 2 dollars in 14 years. That means the money supply has to double every 14 years just to cover the interest owed on the money existing at the beginning of this 14 year cycle. The Federal Reserve's own figures confirm that M3 has doubled or more every 14 years since 1959, when the Fed began reporting it. ¹⁰ That means that every 14 years, banks siphon off as much money in interest as there was in the entire economy 14 years earlier. This tribute is paid for lending something the banks never actually had to lend, making it perhaps the greatest scam ever perpetrated, since it now affects the entire global economy. The privatization of money is the underlying cause of poverty, economic slavery, underfunded government, and an oligarchical ruling class that thwarts every attempt to shake it loose from the reins of power.
This problem can only be set right by reversing the process that created it. Congress needs to take back the Constitutional power to issue the nation's money. "Fractional reserve" banking needs to be eliminated, limiting banks to lending only pre-existing funds. If the power to create money were returned to the government, the federal debt could be paid off, taxes could be slashed, and needed government programs could be expanded. Contrary to popular belief, paying off the federal debt with new U.S. Notes would not be dangerously inflationary, because government securities are already included in the widest measure of the money supply. The dollars would just replace the bonds, leaving the total unchanged. If the U.S. federal debt had been paid off in fiscal year 2006, the savings to the government from no longer having to pay interest would have been $406 billion, enough to eliminate the $390 billion budget deficit that year with money to spare. The budget could have been met with taxes, without creating money out of nothing either on a government print press or as accounting entry bank loans. However, some money created on a government printing press could actually be good for the economy. It would be good if it were used for the productive purpose of creating new goods and services, rather than for the non-productive purpose of paying interest on loans. When supply (goods and services) goes up along with demand (money), they remain in balance and prices remain stable. New money could be added without creating price inflation up to the point of full employment. In this way Congress could fund much-needed programs, such as the development of alternative energy sources and the expansion of health coverage, while actually reducing taxes.

___________________

1	Wright Patman, A Primer on Money (Government Printing Office, prepared for the Sub-committee on Domestic Finance, House of Representatives, Committee on Banking and Currency, 88th Congress, 2nd session, 1964).
2	See Federal Reserve Statistical Release H6, "Money Stock Measures," www.federalreserve.gov/releases/H6/20060223 (February 23, 2006); "United States Mint 2004 Annual Report," www.usmint.gov; Ellen Brown, Web of Debt, www.webofdebt.com (2007), chapter 2.
3	"A Landmark Decision," The Daily Eagle (Montgomery, Minnesota: February 7, 1969), reprinted in part in P. Cook, "What Banks Don't Want You to Know," www9.pair.com/xpoez/money/cook (June 3, 1993).
4	See Bill Drexler, "The Mahoney Credit River Decision," www.worldnewsstand.net/money/mahoney-introduction.html.
5	G. Edward Griffin, "Debt-cancellation Programs," www.freedomforceinternational.org (December 18, 2003).
6	In the Foreword to Irving Fisher, 100% Money (1935), reprinted by Pickering and Chatto Ltd. (1996).
7	Quoted in "Someone Has to Print the Nation's Money . . . So Why Not Our Government?", Monetary Reform Online, reprinted from Victoria Times Colonist (October 16, 1996).
8	Chicago Federal Reserve, "Modern Money Mechanics" (1963), originally produced and distributed free by the Public Information Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, now available on the Internet at http://landru.i-link-2.net/monques/mmm2.html; Patrick Carmack, Bill Still, The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (video, 1998), text at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/money-masters.html.
9	James Robertson, John Bunzl, Monetary Reform: Making It Happen (2003), www.jamesrobertson.com, page 26.
10	Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, "M3 Money Stock (discontinued series)," http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/M3SL.txt.

---

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.

Keystone XL Pipeline

President Obama is touting his efforts to expedite the southern portion of Keystone XL — although it will do nothing to reduce high gas prices. Send an email directly to the Obama Campaign demanding real leadership for our climate, not cheerleading for Keystone XL. Send a message to President Obama: Stop cheerleading for Keystone XL Dear Friend, Today, President Obama takes his "all of the above" energy tour to Cushing, Oklahoma — the "pipeline crossroads of the world." Standing in front of piles of TransCanada's pipeline waiting to be put in the ground,1 he will issue a specific memorandum to federal agencies, not just to build, but to "expedite" the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the refineries and shipping ports in the Gulf Coast. Even as he rejected the full Keystone XL pipeline saying he had insufficient time to evaluate it, the President has always pushed for the southern portion to be completed. But now in issuing a memorandum to speed up that process, he's signaling a willingness to backtrack on his initial (and minimal) condition of a full review for Keystone XL. Such a public announcement in Cushing to promote Keystone XL is a slap in the face to those of us who worked so hard to convince President Obama to reject Keystone XL in January. And it gives fuel to the cynics who said that that rejection was just an attempt to temporarily placate the environmentalists and young people who believed his campaign rhetoric about the need for real action on climate and our fossil fuel dependence. If there was ever a clear moment to register our disappointment, this is it. Send a message to President Obama: Be a leader on climate, not a cheerleader for the disastrous Keystone XL Pipeline. President Obama's energy tour is clearly a response to political pressure. His advisors think that he'll suffer at the polls if he's perceived as failing to take tough action about gas prices. And so they're working to showcase his support for Big Oil. An "all of the above" strategy just digs us in deeper. We all know the only way to get out of the hole we're in is a dramatic shift away from more drilling and bigger pipelines and to a massive investment in renewable energy like wind and solar. The fact is, President Obama's trip to Cushing shows that he is failing on gas prices. Oil prices are up because of speculation, irresponsible talk of war with Iran, and rising demand for gasoline in countries like China and India — not because of a lack of dirty tar sands oil. And any policy that deepens our dependence on oil puts us at the continued mercy of oil prices that we can do little to control, and oil companies who have every incentive to keep prices high, not just now, but forever. This is the problem with the southern portion — or any portion — of Keystone XL, and the problem with "all of the above" in general. As the ever-wise Bill McKibben wrote this week: And if you think about it, "all of the above" is not a particularly coherent energy policy, not if one worries about climate change. Burning all the oil you can and then putting up a solar panel is like drinking six martinis at lunch and then downing a VitaminWater. You're still a drunk — just one with your daily requirement of C and D. If a presidential candidate said they had an "all of the above" foreign policy, where every other nation was an equal ally, they'd be thought lightweight or even dangerous. But with energy, it apparently seems politic to insist we need never make a choice. Or at least to tailor your talking points to your audience.2 Tell President Obama: Be a leader on climate, not a cheerleader for the disastrous Keystone XL Pipeline. Send an email message to his campaign now. While the southern portion of Keystone XL does not turn up the spigot of tar sands bitumen that can be transported out of Alberta, Canada, and it does not threaten Nebraska's crucial Ogallala Aquifer, it does ultimately accomplish the biggest goal of Keystone XL — to connect with the existing tar sands pipeline from Canada, and finally bring the landlocked tar sands to shipping ports and the global market so it can be burned across the globe, leading to disastrous climate impacts. Ironically, building the pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma — where there is currently an excess of stored oil due to expanded domestic and tar sands production — will reduce supply in the Midwest and actually raise gas prices by an estimated 20 cents!3 But President Obama is so determined to use the southern portion of Keystone XL to show that he's taking aggressive action to promote fossil fuels, he's issuing an executive order to federal agencies to expedite approval. Once the southern portion is built to the Gulf, it is only a matter of time before oil companies like TransCanada figure out a way to get more oil out of the tar sands and to the Gulf for export. And then we'll be one step closer to "essentially game over" for the climate.4 As President Obama stands in Cushing today, let's urge him to bring some real leadership on climate, and let his campaign know our bitter disappointment over this significant misstep: http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=5542118&id=37105-5154581-E8hfKIx&t=8 Thank you for fighting Keystone XL. Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets 1. "Keystone XL Pipeline: Big Oil Leans On Obama To Approve Entire Project," Huffington Post, March 21, 2012 2. "Mr. Obama Goes to Cushing, OK," Bill McKibben, March 21, 2012 3. "Keystone Oil Pipeline Seen Raising Gas Prices in Midwest: Energy," Bloomberg, February 29, 2012 4. "Key Facts on Keystone XL," Tarsands Action

slow decline in available oil

Tech Talk - a recap in light of Iranian Sanctions and Canadian production estimates

Keystone XL

The President shouldn't expedite the southern leg of Keystone XL — he should publicly reject it.

Dear Friend,

Yesterday, the White House applauded news that TransCanada would go forward with building the southern leg of Keystone XL, promising to help expedite the permits necessary to complete the pipeline's route from Cushing, Okla. to the refineries and shipping ports of Port Arthur, Texas.

Breaking up the pipeline in this way is quite simply TransCanada's latest end run around the State Department's formal review process, which is required for any pipeline that crosses an international border. It will also make it easier for the company to trample property rights and immediately seize Americans' land by eminent domain.

President Obama's support for the southern leg isn't a surprise — he specifically mentioned this project as he was rejecting the full pipeline last month based on insufficient time to conduct a thorough review.

But it is deeply disappointing that, just a month later, he would signal a willingness to backtrack on even that minimal condition, saying he would "take every step possible to expedite the necessary federal permits."¹

The southern portion of Keystone XL carries the same risks of oil spills on American water and soil, and brings the tar sands carbon bomb one big step closer to being unleashed across the world. President Obama must insure that the Department of Transportation and the Army Corps of Engineers do not cut any corners in evaluating this project, and consider it's full impacts on the climate.

Tell President Obama: Don't expedite approval of the southern leg of Keystone XL or cut any corners to force this project through. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

While the southern portion of Keystone XL does not turn up the spigot of tar sands bitumen that can be transported out of Alberta, Canada, it does ultimately accomplish the biggest goal of Keystone XL — to bring the landlocked tar sands to shipping ports and the global market so it can be burned across the globe, leading to disastrous climate impacts.

This should be enough for the President to publicly reject this project. Instead he's not only applauding it, he wants to "expedite" it.

Instead of criticizing TransCanada's bullying as it runs rough shod over the private property rights of Americans, President Obama is now acting to enable to enable TransCanada's ability to seize land via eminent domain.

President Obama can't keep trying to have it both ways. He can't claim to want to move our nation away from fossil fuels and fight climate change while he paves the way for the dirtiest oil on earth to be shipped and burned across the globe. He can't try to appeal to environmental voters by rejecting this pipeline on an insufficient evaluation, and then turn around and allow the pipeline developer to circumvent the approval process, even accelerating the minimal process that remains.

Click below to automatically sign the petition:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=5537116&id=35771-5154581-S%3D6LfZx&t=9

We knew this project would be back, and we meant it when we said we'd fight it everywhere, every step of the way.

There will be many local and national opportunities in the upcoming approval fight — but for now the least President Obama can do is maintain even the minimal commitment he made to us when he rejected Keystone XL just weeks ago.

Thanks for fighting Keystone XL in all its forms.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets 

Kyoto Protocol

Canada’s Minister of Environment Peter Kent addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference today and defended his country’s environmental record despite Canada’s support of continued tar sands oil extraction and its threat to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol. Soon after Kent began speaking, six members of the Canadian Youth Delegation stood up and turned their backs on the minister. They were taken out of the room and later stripped of their credentials to the climate change conference. "Today, six of us stood up and turned our backs on the government of Canada, in the same way the government of Canada has turned its back on us," says activist Karen Rooney. "We are calling on the government of Canada to start putting the interests of people over the interests of polluters." [includes rush transcript]

tar sands

Tell Prime Minister Harper: Stop Canada's planned wolf killings

Dear Friend,

It just gets worse and worse.

To make up for the fact that rapid tar sands extraction is threatening caribou herds by destroying vast swaths of forest habitat in Alberta, the Canadian government has called for killing thousands of wolves.¹

Tell Prime Minister Harper: Stop Canada's planned tar sands wolf killings! Click here to automatically sign the petition.

If Alberta Canada's tar sands fields are fully developed, an area of boreal rainforest the size of Florida will be eviscerated, leaving in its wake giant ponds of toxic wastewater.²

It's obvious why this would pose a massive threat to all wildlife species who reside there, including birds, wolves, woodland caribou and the iconic spirit bear.

But instead of preserving the habitat caribou need for their survival, the Canadian government's answer is to blaze ahead with tar sands extraction, and kill thousands of wolves who would naturally prey on the caribou. A paper released by the National Wildlife Federation reports that The Ministry of the Environment's plan calls for aerial shooting, and poisoning with bait laced with strychnine — a particularly painful type of poison.

Tell Prime Minister Harper: Stop Canada's planned wolf killings! Preserve caribou habitat, and stop the irresponsible tar sands mining which threatens all of us. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

This plan to kill wolves is a misguided, cruel response that does nothing to alleviate the greater problem: tar sands oil extraction is a huge threat to wildlife, local communities, and all of our futures.

But despite the clear negative consequences, the Canadian government continues working to rapidly expand tar sands production and sales, including promoting the Keystone XL Pipeline to export refined tar sands bitumen all over the world.

Understandably, this has begun to earn Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and many in the country's government, a negative reputation to which they are becoming increasingly sensitive.³

The Ministry of the Environment has not yet begun this planned wolf kill. With enough public pressure, we can get them to abandon the plan, and build the case for Canada to stop their devastating race to expand tar sands development.

Click below to automatically sign the petition:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=5532375&id=35696-5154581-qjqw2%3Dx&t=10

Thank you for fighting tar sands and all their devastation.

Elijah zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets