For more details about how this all works, please read my book “Spiritual Economics”.

Here’s the story of Pope Francis from RT.com:

Pope Francis has taken aim at capitalism as “a new tyranny” and is urging world leaders to step up their efforts against poverty and inequality, saying “thou shall not kill” the economy. Francis calls on rich people to share their wealth.

The existing financial system that fuels the unequal distribution of wealth and violence must be changed, the Pope warned.

“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” Pope Francis asked an audience at the Vatican.

The global economic crisis, which has gripped much of Europe and America, has the Pope asking how countries can function, or realize their full economic potential, if they are weighed down by the debts of capitalism.

“A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules,” the 84-page document, known as an apostolic exhortation, said.

“To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits”, the pope’s document says.

He goes on to explain that in this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which has become the only rule we live by.

Shameful wealth

Inequality between the rich and the poor has reached a new threshold, and in his apostolic exhortation to mark the end of the “Year of Faith”, Pope Francis asks for better politicians to heal the scars capitalism made on society.

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,” Francis wrote in the document issued Tuesday.

His calls to service go beyond general good Samaritan deeds, as he asks his followers for action “beyond a simple welfare mentality”.

“I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor,” Francis wrote.

A recent IRS report shows that the wealth of the US’s richest 1 percent has grown by 31 percent, while the rest of the population experienced an income rise of only 1 percent.

The most recent Oxfam data shows that up to 146 million Europeans are at risk of falling into poverty by 2025 and 50 million Americans are currently suffering from severe financial hardship.

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems,” he wrote.

Named after the medieval saint who chose a life of poverty, Pope Francis has gone beyond general calls for fair work, education, and healthcare.

Newly-elected Pope Francis has stepped up the fight against corrupt capitalism that has hit close to home – he was the first Pope to go after the Vatican bank and openly accused it of fraud and shady offshore tax haven deals.

In October, Pope Francis removed Vatican bank head Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, after revelations of alleged mafia money laundering and financial impropriety.

From: RT.com

U.S. Atty. Benjamin Wagner explains how mortgages were bundled at a news conference in Sacramento. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press / November 19, 2013)

The housing bubble and subsequent collapse were deliberately engineered by elements of the banking industry and government working together to achieve this goal. This has been demonstrated conclusively by the research that I conducted in Dec 2008-Jan 2009 and have posted on this website. This has further been demonstrated in the video “Inside Job“.  U.S. attorneys have demonstrated in court that JPMorgan played a major role in this catastrophe by purchasing risky mortgages and bundling them as securities that were rated as AAA investments and sold around the world.

Although $13 billion is the largest settlement in history it can in no way adequately compensate for the damage that was created. And unfortunately, in the investigation and settlement not even one JPMorgan employee was prosecuted for illegal activity.  Paying a small percentage of what was reaped as a fine can be understood as the cost of doing business. Although we applaud the efforts of these attorneys to extract financial compensation, if nobody personally pays the price by going to jail, fraud will continue to be part of the “business” paradigm.

Here’s the article from the L. A. Times:

NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase has agreed to a $13-billion settlement with the government over selling shoddy mortgage investments, ending a legal battle that signals a tougher stance against Wall Street wrongdoing.

The nation’s largest bank admitted to knowingly peddling the toxic securities that helped lead to the housing bubble and the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. The settlement is the largest made by any single American company in history.

California, slammed by 1 million foreclosures during the mortgage meltdown, will be a major beneficiary of the deal.

The agreement includes $4 billion to help homeowners in the Golden State and across the nation who were foreclosed on or who are struggling with their loans. California pension funds, which were big investors in mortgage securities, will receive nearly $300 million in damages to cover losses to the retirement accounts of state employees and teachers.

For the Justice Department, it was a much-needed win. Critics have lambasted the government for not doing enough to hold banks accountable for financial chicanery that helped trigger a global recession.

“Before the crisis, Big Brother was asleep on the couch,” said Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at CLSA in New York. “Now Big Brother is coming back with a vengeance.”

JPMorgan has long contended that the government’s case against it was unfair because many of the problem mortgage securities came from investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. and thrift Washington Mutual. JPMorgan purchased those crippled institutions at the depths of the financial crisis at the urging of the federal government.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chairman and chief executive, said the bank was “pleased to have concluded this extensive agreement” that covers a “very significant portion” of its legacy mortgage problems.

Legal experts expect U.S. prosecutors to use JPMorgan’s $13-billion deal as a template to extract significant sums from other major banks accused of wrongdoing.

read the rest here

Our entire global economic system has been created to do just that and many people are beginning to wake up to the fact. Every dollar, ruble, yen, franc, pound sterling, etc. is borrowed into existence upon which debt service must be paid. Paid to who? Answer that question and you will know who the world’s rulers are. They and their lower level minions control the direction the world is going to take. When you hear the words “New World Order” they are the architects behind it.

Let’s wake up to the fact that we do not choose how we are going to live. We are given a way of living. The last several world order changes, including the current one that is now being dismantled, have been imposed on us, and we are made to understand this as “progress”. They gave us nation states, capitalism and the consumer lifestyle. They created and dismantled the Communist Soviet Union. They are recognizing that the system they have created is not working so well and they are going to improve on it with yet another plan, and their new New World Order means less for us and more for them. Much less. Less jobs, less freedom, less security, less sanity and less money. With less, less, less, and less you are finally reduced to a slave. Meet the future. If that’s not your future yet consider yourself fortunate. However, that future is already here for millions.

America’s Gulag Archipelago

America is a country that is predominantly influenced by rajo-guna, a subtle influence that creates desire for increasing production, gain, profits and sense enjoyment. That influence manifests in every facet of life, as explained elsewhere on this website. In addition however, a significant increase in tamo-guna is being felt and one of the results of this combination is profit created through suffering. Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is the essential text to read to get the full grasp on how perverse and twisted this mentality can go. A very good example of this is America’s gulag archipelago, the modern prison system that makes profits from others’ suffering.

All totaled, the prison population in America (in all prisons) is more than six million people—greater than the number held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history. With only 5% of the world’s population, America has 25% of the world’s prison population. In 1972, the U.S. had less than 300,000 inmates.

Privatization of prisons began in 1984, and “coincidentally” at the same time a mood of “get tough on crime” began to appear, bringing laws that require stiffer sentencing, such as “three strikes and you’re out”, with third convictions requiring a 25-years-to-life sentence. Thus the number of U.S. prisoners who received life sentences without parole quadrupled between 1992 and 2012, many of these prisoners getting a life sentence without parole for petty crime. Imagine having to spend the rest of your life in prison for such things as:
• Stealing small change from a parked car,
• Stealing a pair of socks,
• Stealing nine children’s videotapes,
• Theft of a pair of work gloves from a department store,
• Theft of three golf clubs,
• Theft of chocolate chip cookies and a slice of pizza
• Possessing stolen scrap metal (the offender was a junk dealer)—10 valves and one elbow pipe
• Siphoning gasoline from a truck
• Shoplifting three belts from a department store
But the life sentence is not just for the “incorrigible” any more—more than 18 percent of nonviolent offenders in the federal system get life without parole for their first offense.

Why has the number imprisoned skyrocketed? Simple. Because it can make money. It’s not enough that corporations profit by producing consumer stuff. The lower classes who don’t have jobs need to produce profits for the ruling class too.

The Profits of Suffering

Two corporations control the majority of the government prison contracts: The Corrections Corporation of America, and G4S (formerly Wackenhut). They contract with State and Federal governments to purchase and run the prison system. These contracts typically run for 20 years with occupancy guarantees up to 100 percent, 90 percent being the most frequent requirement. If improvements in society uplift society and decrease crime and incarceration, as everyone would desire, the quota becomes a “low-crime tax” guaranteeing profits for the private prison corporations.

These corporations not only make money from housing and managing prisons, but they sell their labor, and all able-bodied federal prisoners are required to work. The Federal government is in on the action too. Work in Federal prisons is managed through Federal Prison Industries also known as UNICOR, under the Department of Justice. UNICOR has 109 factories in federal prisons, producing about 175 different types of products and services, including clothing and textiles, electronics, fleet management and vehicular components, industrial products, office furniture, recycling activities; and services including data entry and encoding.

Three-fourths of the states have legalized the contracting of prison labor to private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies includes: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more.

Wages paid by Unicor range from $0.23 to $1.15 per hour for “highly skilled” positions. Texas and Georgia pay their prison labor nothing, as in $0.00. So let’s call it what it is—pure and simple slavery.

How Right It All Is

Waves of indignation rush over us as we read about these injustices. How could they do this?! But the fact is that the powers-that-be have been enslaving all of mankind for millennia. Their idea is that we should be their slaves, forget about whatever other ideas or plans we may have had for our lives.

Isn’t this unjust? After all, as living beings, we have desires of our own that we want to fulfill. We have more value than whatever they may assign us as their slaves. But despite how wrong all of this may seem, these are cosmic events that are perfect. “How can that be?!” you say—“they are enslaving people!”

Yes it is true, but at the same time it fulfills the perfection of this world. Consider the following. . .

What is the purpose of a chicken? Does it have a purpose of its own, or just the purpose we might assign it as an egg producing machine, or drumsticks, wings and white meat? Does it have desires to walk about and stretch its wings, to scratch the earth, and to interact with others? Of course it does. Chickens enjoy being together in small flocks, sunning, dust-bathing, and scratching in the soil for food. A mother hen will tenderly and even fiercely protect her young brood, driving off predators and sheltering her little chicks beneath her wings. Motherly love.

But that is not their lot. Because of our desire to eat their bodies we have condemned billions of chickens to being stuffed in cages so small that they cannot stand erect and stretch their wings. They are stuffed 6 to 8 in a cage and cannot avoid each other. But these birds have a social hierarchy, not unlike human prison populations, and those at the bottom of the pecking order will wind up without eyes because they cannot run away from those at the top. To prevent this, all of them then have their beaks burned off with a hot knife, making eating and preening just a bit of a challenge.

We have enslaved them because we are of the opinion that these life-forms are meant to serve us alone. Forget whatever desires of their own that they may have.

Slavery and death to the tune of 50 billion female chickens every year (add billions more if you count the males, but forget the males because they have no value for humans, and are snuffed out at the very beginning of their lives).

So how much of this are you responsible for? How many Chicken McNuggets have you swallowed, and how many times a year do you visit the Colonel?

Do I need to connect the dots?

In the perfection of the universe there is no distinction between one living being and another, and as we do to others, it shall be done to us.

We protest the genocidal plans of the NWO, the FEMA internment camps, the prepared mass graves, the for-profit prisons and their slave labor system, but we are so short-sighted that we do not see that what is happening is the fulfillment of karma? On the cosmic scale, what makes is your human life more special than that of the cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys or fish? Answer: it’s not. What goes around, comes around. What we have sown, we are reaping. Do you really want freedom? Well, freedom for who, exactly?

Do we really want to prevent the enslavement of the NWO? If so we need to evolve. It’s time to get an education and realize that all living things have equal value, and we will be treated the same way that we are treating others—all others, not just the humans.

Since the spiritual principles on which this world operates are no longer hidden away it is time to learn and understand the principles of reality, and apply them. Karma is a fact of human life. Only when we begin to follow that inalienable law can we have a truly happy life. Only when all beings have a happy life will we also be able to have a happy life. Human beings have been given custody of the earth, and it is the sum total of the actions of all of us. If we are going to change the balance of the ledger sheet, we have to do our part.

Karma

These so-called powers-that-be, seeming evil-doers have are not independent in their actions, they have merely been assigned as the agents of our karma. They alone are not the cause of whatever suffering may befall us. We ourselves create the circumstances of their success by acting in spiritual ignorance.

Do we want to change the world? Then we must wake up! Stop protesting what others are doing, become conscious of what we are doing, and make the changes there. Changes in the world will automatically follow as if by magic.

And if you want to know how effective it is at impoverishing people, the following short and succinct video explains the extent of the disparity beyond any doubt.

Make no mistake—economics is not such a difficult concept that it can’t be made to work better. It is specifically arranged to give the result that it is giving—sucking the energy and wealth of all of the people of the world into the hands of the 1%, along with the top 20% who participate in, and also benefit handsomely, from the system.

“How can this happen?” you ask? Simply because of too much tamo-guna—the result of the current actions of a global population wandering in spiritual ignorance and thereby creating their own misfortune. The people are being led down the path of perdition, following their MIS-leaders who are only intent on exploiting them.  We are nothing more than beasts of burden to them, and is obvious from the result. If we actually want real change, we must change our actions and thereby change our karma. Only then will we be able to wrest ourselves free from our enslavement.

Brand sat down with the BBC’s “Newsnight” to discuss his temporary position as the guest editor of the New Statesman magazine. The conversation began with Jeremy Paxman, a journalist known for his combative and aggressive tone, pressing Brand on why the public should take his opinion seriously when considering the fact that Brand has never voted.

“I don’t get my authority from this preexisting paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people,” Brand said. “I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity.”

Paxman spent more than half of the ten minute interview attempting to discredit Brand and write him off as irrelevant because he does not participate in the demoncratic system, to which Brand retorts that to participate in a failed system is an exercise in foolishness and a waste of time. At the end of the interview he goes on the offensive leaving Paxman speechless. Brand simply overwhelms Paxman by repeatedly pointing out how the system does not work for the welfare of the people at all, but only for the elite, creating huge disparities and masses of poverty-stricken and desperate people.

It’s a great interview. Be sure to watch it all the way to the end

Read the RT article here.

Learning is the most natural thing in the world. Every child naturally desires to learn and in their own time they move forward from one learning conquest to the next. Why should learning be any different when children go to school? Sal Kahn thinks that learning should continue in this very natural way and has created a revolution in education with his approach.

His track as an educator developed in the most natural way—tutoring his young cousin with math. Although his cousin had thought that she “just didn’t get math”, after patient help from her uncle she went on to an advanced math student. Sal’s patience and personal teaching methods made a big difference for her. His tutoring other kids continued to develop in a very natural way and soon he found himself putting his tutorials on YouTube. Soon hundreds, then thousands of people were watching his tutorials, able to take the lessons again and again, as they required, and learning at their own pace they mastered the lessons one after another.

With serendipitous help—a $100,000 donation here, then a $2 million donation there—Sal created the Kahn Academy that has in its nascent stages has taught more people in one month than Harvard has taught in its entire existence!

KahnAcademy has several wonderful aspects that are turning traditional education on its head. First, since it is computer based, anyone all over the world can access it and learn at their own pace. And secondly, we stress that anyone in the world can access the lessons because KahnAcademy is totally free for everyone.

In the traditional Vedic culture teachers would never ask anything for sharing their knowledge and would live on whatever was given as a gift in return. We predict that this ancient culture is going to be the standard of the future.

From their website:

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

KhanAcademy is an organization on a mission. We’re a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. KhanAcademy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge. In the video below we ask you to take note of Sal’s comments at the 52:20 minute mark. He speaks there about what motivates people to work for him. It is the same motivation that motivates everyone, and is what is promoted by Spiritual Economics—work that is challenging, serves a vision, and provides adequately for material needs.

How it works for students

Students can make use of our extensive library of content, including interactive challenges, assessments, and videos from any computer with access to the web.

Coaches, parents, and teachers have unprecedented visibility into what their students are learning and doing on the KhanAcademy.

Learn about anything

Our library of content covers math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history.

“I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him.”
—Sal

Here’s the story from Sal—

The Supreme Lord is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance.

This is transcendental mathematics: 1 – 100 = 1; or even 1 – 1,000,000 = 1

This is inconceivable to our limited understanding. But how can the limited accommodate the unlimited? We must simply admit that the Supreme is beyond our comprehension. However, many aspects of the Absolute Truth can be revealed to us when we give up our effort to challenge the Lord for His natural position as the Supreme Enjoyer, Proprietor, and as the dearmost friend of everyone. When we acknowledge our subordinate and dependent position and act accordingly He will show Himself to us. And this is the destiny of us all – to one day to know Him personally and be united with Him in a loving relationship.

The first verse of Isopanisad explains what is called the “Isavasyam Principle” – that God is the owner of everything and maintainer of everyone. He has thus arranged for everything we require for our sustenance. However, if we take more than we require others will be left without. As Gandhi put it: there is enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed. The Isavasyam principle warns against the extreme disparity that we see in the world today, at the same time explains how we can live sustainably – by using only what we need. This satisfied way of living can be realized when we feed our spiritual nature by spiritual practices, such as glorifying the Lord by chanting His holy names. The Lord and His names are non-different, and by this spiritual association the individual soul can find satisfaction. I have chanted the Hare Krishna Mahamantra as my own personal meditation for more than 40 years and can testify to its efficacy. Chanting done with music is called kirtan—check out the many kirtan videos on YouTube—you will find many that you like from the hundreds of choices.

The remaining 17 verses in the Isopanisad go on to describe the inexplicable, yet personal, nature of God. This text is the introduction to a personal conception of the Lord. Bhagavad-gita continues to explain more.  The Isopanisad was translated into English by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and is available as an ebook and audio-book from Krishnapath.org.

One young devotee of Krishna has a beautiful poetic way of describing this. His name is Mikey Jay. He is undertaking a record album that explains and glorifies the Isopanisad, and several cuts are available now on YouTube. I found them very enjoyable and think you will too.

Here he is — Mikey Jay:

The premise of Spiritual Economics is that human consciousness determines which method is used. The next question then is how consciousness is affected and altered to arrive at different states of being and understanding. This question is answered quite nicely by the ancient Sankhya philosophy, and the first volume of Spiritual Economics explains this relationship in detail. The key factors are known as gunas, a Sanskrit word that I define as “consciousness determinants.”

I was invited to speak at The Association of Heterodox Economists Conference, London, England  July 4-6, 2013 where I explained the gunas and associated human behavior. Because it is quite impossible to present the entire concept in 30 minutes I wrote a paper for further explanation. The content of this paper is also explained on this website under the link on the main menu “Spiritual Econmics”>”Essential Background Information”. Below is the abstract that was written for the conference, and below that is the link to read or download the paper as a .pdf file.

Human Motivation and Behavior as Explained
by Sankhya Philosophy

Dhan Rousse, M.S.
Bhaktivedanta Institute

Abstract

Organizations are a social context created to align the activities of a number of people. Organizations do not and cannot function independently of people, although their structure provides the context for display of various values and behaviors. At the root of it all are various actors that determine the structure and context. These actors are people, human beings, who have individual values, desires, and motivations. If we want to understand the behavior of organizations we must therefore understand the behavior of people.

On one hand we find desire for status, reward, lust, envy of others, laziness, the cheating propensity, contempt of others, and so on, and at the other end of the spectrum there is honesty, responsibility, a sense of duty, sense of purpose, the common good, etc. All of these qualities are a function of consciousness.

In this paper I combine psychology, economics and the spiritual science of the Vedas to explain how individual consciousness determines desire, motivation and monetary reward. The origin of different values and influences that change them are explained in reference to what may be called “consciousness determinants.”

Sankhya philosophy is a branch of Vedic knowledge that offers an explanation of how this world functions. Stemming from an entirely different worldview its concepts are “out of the box” thinking compared to modern Western thought, thus offering unique insights that may be applied to modern problems.

The entire paper paper can be read or downloaded from the link below.

Human Motivation and Behavior as Explained by Sankhya Philosophy

This is a story of central bank’s taking exception to anyone else using any other form of money other than the one they create. In this story Ellen cites several examples from South America where the national governments get educated to the idea that local currencies can help eliminate poverty.

It’s easy to understand: money is issued from a central government but each community must have ways to attract that money to their community. It can be through educational institutions, factories, farming operations, or any kind of business that connects the community with the outside world. The fact is that many small villages have nothing of the sort and thus having no way to bring a medium of exchange they effectively have no economy. In this story one enterprising American set up a local currency that worked wonders immediately, but within less than 3 weeks he has been arrested and charged with counterfeiting.

Hopefully the Kenyan government will see the light in the coming trial and act to encourage more of the same in other impoverished areas. Or will we have a repeat of other places in history, such as Worgl, Germany, where such successful creative endeavors were squashed for good? Stay tuned. . .

The Crime of Alleviating Poverty: A Local Community Currency Battles the Central Bank of Kenya

Former Peace Corps volunteer Will Ruddick and several residents of Bangladesh, Kenya, face a potential seven years in prison after developing a cost-effective way to alleviate poverty in Africa’s poorest slums.  Their solution: a complementary currency issued and backed by the local community.  The Central Bank of Kenya has now initiated charges of forgery.

Complementary currencies can help eradicate poverty.

Proving that may be difficult in complex economies, due to the high number of factors influencing outcomes. But in an African slum with little of the national currency available, supplying residents with an alternative currency has a positive effect that is obvious, immediate and incontrovertible.

This was demonstrated when Will Ruddick, an American physicist, economist and former Peace Corps volunteer, introduced a complementary currency into a Kenyan slum called Bangladesh, near the coastal city of Mombasa. Will’s local development organization, Koru-Kenya, worked with over one hundred small business owners in Bangladesh, who agreed to give each other the equivalent of 400 shillings (about €3.5 or $4.60) in mutual credit in the form of business vouchers called Bangla-Pesa. Half of the vouchers would be available for spending on each others’ products and services, and half would be spent into the community on public projects such as waste collection and health services.  Allocation decisions were democratic and transparent, and the new currency was backed entirely by the community’s own resources and insured by a system of group guarantors, not by the Kenyan government or a development agency.

The project was launched on May 11, 2013.  The immediate effect was an increase in sales of 22%. That meant increasing incomes and purchasing power by 22%.  These exchanges were of goods and services that without the additional currency would have been thrown away or gone to waste, not because they were unmarketable but because potential customers did not have the money to buy them.  Introducing Bangla-Pesa worked to move the economy forward at full capacity, connecting the community to its own resources when the only things lacking were those slips of paper called “money.” A compelling video on the project is here.

The successful Kenyan experiment quickly earned endorsements from the United Nations, The Hague and  the International Reciprocal Trade Association. Indeed, no other poverty alleviation or local governance program can compete with the cost-effectiveness of this approach, which is easily replicable in poor communities across Africa. The plan was to expand it to other villages in a democratic grassroots fashion so that it could provide a local medium of exchange for people throughout the continent. This would be done via mobile phones with a system provided by Community Forge, an organization based in Geneva that supports the development of community currencies worldwide.

But that plan was unexpectedly interrupted on May 29^th, when Will and five other project participants were arrested by Kenyan police and thrown in jail.  Besides Will, who is married to a Kenyan aid worker and is a new father, the others include local community business owners who are parents and grandparents, a youth activist, a volunteer mother, and the caretaker of seven orphan children.

The police at first accused the group of plotting a terrorist overthrow of the government, claiming that Bangla-Pesa was linked to the MRC, a terrorist secessionist group. When that link was easily disproven, the Central Bank of Kenya was called in and charges of forgery were formally placed.  Will and his fellow suspects have been released for now on a bail of EUR 5,000 and await trial on July 17^th.  If convicted, they face seven years in a Kenyan prison.

Despite these perilous circumstances, Will remains optimistic.  “The exciting thing,” he says, “is that these systems really do show a means of poverty reduction – and my hope is that after this case we’ll be allowed to spread them to slums across Kenya.  There have been years of precedent for Complementary Currencies as a solution to poverty, and today there is no doubting it.”

Successful Precedents from Switzerland to Brazil

Complementary currencies are endorsed by many governments worldwide. The oldest and largest is the WIR system in Switzerland, an exchange system  among 60,000 businesses – a full 20% of all Swiss businesses. This currency has been demonstrated to have a counter-cyclical effect, helping to stabilize the Swiss economy by providing additional liquidity and lending capacity when conventional credit for small businesses is scarce.

Brazil is a global leader in using the complementary currency approach for poverty alleviation. Interestingly, its experience began in much the same way as Kenya’s: Brazil’s most successful community currency, called “Palmas”, was nearly strangled at birth by the Brazilian Central Bank. How it went from criminal suspect to official state policy is told by Margrit Kennedy and co-authors in People Money:

After issuing the first Palmas currency in 2003, local organiser Joaquim Melo was arrested on suspicion of running a money laundering operation in an unregistered bank.  The Central Bank started proceedings against him, saying that the bank was issuing false money.  The defendants called on expert witnesses, including the Dutch development organisation Stro, to support their case.  Finally, the judge agreed that it was a constitutional right of people to have access to finance and that the Central Bank was doing nothing for the poor areas benefiting from the local currencies.  He ruled in favour of Banco Palmas.

What happens next shows the power of dialogue.  The Central Bank created a reflection group and invited Joaquim to join in a conversation about how to help poor people.  Banco Palmas started the Palmas Institute to share its methodology with other communities and, in 2005, the government’s secretary for “solidarity economy” created a partnership with the Institute to finance dissemination.  Support for community development banks issuing new currency is now state policy.

The Legal Debate: Mutual Credit or Counterfeiting?

If the Kenyan court follows the example of Brazil, this could be the beginning of a promising new approach to poverty reduction in Africa. The Bangla-Pesa is backed by local resources, and the villagers were very happy to have it in orderto move their products and buy the surplus of others within their community.

Viewed as a case of counterfeiting, however, there is historical precedent for harsh punishment.  In the mid-eighteenth century, when the Bank of England was privately owned and had the exclusive right to issue the national currency, counterfeiting Bank of England Notes was made a crime punishable by death. That was the era of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House, when supplementing the national currency might have helped relieve mass poverty; but it was in the interest of the Bank to control the market for currency and keep it scarce, in order to ensure a steady demand for loans.  When there is insufficient money in the system to cover the needs of exchange, people must borrow from banks at interest, ensuring the banks a handsome profit.

The converse is also true: when sufficient money is supplied to cover the needs of exchange, debt levels and poverty are dramatically reduced.

. . .

The defendants just need to prove that in court. A crowd-funding campaign is being used to raise the money urgently needed for their defense. The link for contributions is here. To sign a petition begun by a delegation at The Hague supporting the Bangla-Pesa, click here.

Read the complete article here: http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/5801/

In the video below you will see a smart and effective 13-year old asking provocative questions that have not been understood or asked by people 3 and 4 times her age—even our political leaders. And it’s about time! — time that everyone started asking such questions and pressing their ‘leaders’ for reasonable answers. There is a simple way to solve these problems, if we are willing, and we have more to say about that below.

Not only does Victoria ask the tough questions but she has given the answers (and such a great presentation without a telepromoter—Obama take note!) She knows her stuff!

So, yes, why do we have an economic system that benefits the 0.1% in such outrageous ways when children are dying by the millions and more than a billion people have no idea where their next meal is going to come from? Why do we have a banking system that is in cahoots with the governments of the world? Why don’t we have a system that works for everyone?

The first simple answer is because ‘they’ have set it up like that. The next simple answer is that our forebears had trusted their government too much and accepted what they said as the truth, largely because there was no other access to information and people innocently accepted what the government said.

But times have changed. People are learning online what the government and bankers are doing and that the problems are systemic in nature and that the entire system must be re-created in ways that serve the people rather than the special interests. Public banking that creates debt-free money is certainly a step in the right direction—if we can go in that direction. If, because the money-powers have used all manners of deceipt, deception, bribery, threats, murder, mayhem and even world-scale war, to achieve what they have achieved. And they are not about to simply walk away from it because a precocious 13-year old asks embarrassing questions.

The more complicated answer to your questions Victoria (and the explanation that we offer in our book and on this website) is karma. In fact the 1% are able to pull off such outrageous and damaging ploys at empire building at the expense of extreme human misery is because we the people have earned such a reaction by participation in activities of tamo-guna—activities that carry a negative karmic balance and we have to pay the piper.

We can pay that karmic bill one of two ways: suffering more at the hands of our ‘leaders’ as in business-as-usual, or by changing the way that we live in this world and acting in goodness (sattva-guna).

There are many who are taking action to live differently, to create ways of living that are inclusive, supportive, and mutually dependent. There are many whom we write about on our blogs that are changing the focus from ‘getting’ to ‘giving’. There are many who are either creating their own local currencies that serve the local community and stay there or giving up currencies altogether living an economy of love. It is beginning on the small and local level, and as more and more people realize the nature and effects of the ‘normal’ debt-money economy they are hopping on board, ditching an anxiety-ridden life about where to get money, turning it around to focus on where and how to give.

Those who decide to change their orientation to life will find great relief and an increasing sense of security. But the dominant culture of getting and taking in order to survive is going to become increasingly more stressful and difficult.

It’s time for change. We no longer live in a world of ignorance. There are plenty of opportunities to realize the actual nature of this world—it’s spiritual dimension—if we will. Moving in that direction is the key to our sustained survival and healing, as a people, as a planet.

The result of tamo-guna is suffering and destruction. It is creating a downward spiral that leads to an abyss of darkness, suffering and destruction. And if you think it’s bad now, just wait. Or don’t wait rather, but do something to change it.

So Victoria, if you want things to go better for your generation please help your friends, your parents and all the other people in your world to understand better how this world functions on a spiritual level. Then Think Spiritually and Act Locally.