BND: The Bank of North Dakota

In searching for a banking system less prone to corruption and systemic failure, for both Foundation Canada and World Foundation, the best model to emerge so far is that related to the Bank of North Dakota. According to an article by Steve Lendman as published by Safehaven.com, American “states are currently facing one of the worst, if not the worst fiscal period since the great depression”.

However “One state stands out in the current environment, North Dakota, with its governor John Hoeven calling a December 15^th (2009) news conference to explain that the state has so much money (a $1.3 billion FY 2009 surplus, its largest ever) that individuals and businesses will average $650 in 2009 tax savings from income and property tax cuts enacted by its legislature”.

According to Tax commissioner Cory Fong:

North Dakota has been able to weather the economic crisis. “While other state governors and legislatures are looking for ways to raise revenue through raising taxes and cutting services, we just came through a historic session of funding both our priorities and substantial tax relief…. The winners are families, business and the State of North Dakota, “because it’s unique in one important respect.”

It is the only state with a state owned bank.

Financial writer Ellen Brown explains that the BND “chiefly acts as a central bank, with functions similar to those of a branch of the Federal Reserve.” In contrast, BND is a public bank, 100% owned by the state, operating in the public interest and those of the state. It avoids rivalry with private banks by partnering with them. Local banks do most lending. “The BND then comes in to participate in the loan, share risk, buy down the interest rate and buy up loans, thereby freeing up banks to lend more: (One of its functions) is to provide a secondary market for real estate loans, which it buys from local banks. Its residential loan portfolio is now 500 to 600 billion in a state with around 700,000 people and thriving.

Its function in the property market helped it “avoid the credit crisis that afflicted Wall Street when the secondary market for loans collapsed in late 2007 and helped it reduce its foreclosure rate….(its other services) include guarantees for entrepreneurial startups and student loans, the purchase of municipal bonds from public institutions, and a well funded disaster loan program.” When the state didn’t meet its budget a few years ago, the BND met the shortfall.”

In sum, state owned banks have “enormous advantages over smaller private institutions….Their asset bases are not marred by oversized salaries and bonuses, they have no shareholders” demanding high returns, and they don’t speculate in derivatives or other high risk investments. As a result, BND is healthy with a 25% return on equity, paying a “hefty dividend to the state projected at over 60 million in 2009” and well over five times that amount in the last decade”.

There are, I believe, 14 U.S. states now considering the North Dakota model. Foundation will be adopting and adapting this system for both national and international financial services.

It is my understanding that Ms Browns next book will in part deal with some form of the BND for international use. Her book Web of Debt will be linked in the reading section.

Carl Joudrie: Nov. 24, 2010

Foundation aims to prepare for that certainty in our time, based on the reality of a rapidly degenerating ecosystem that will require a politically co-operative global effort to repair, or to mitigate the damages of that decline.

A new social contract, defining limited but real powers for national electorates might move the global ship of state in a new direction less prone to violent collisions. Foundation could offer important federal protections for the rights of member nation states, and the independence of their national electorates to secede from that federation should it become oppressive or unjust.

Carl Joudrie

It was interesting to note the reactions of college students in a course titled “Introduction to peace studies” who dismissed “world government” as “dangerous, too likely to become tyrannical”. An Interesting and deserved observation, which leads me to wonder why we still put that Orwellian foot forward, and then all but demand that people shoot at it. Dance pardner, dance. A kind of self flagellation. They are not confused, we are.

Mr. Shepherd plainly states that “We are clearly not answering people’s basic objections”. What we are continuing to do is what we have all done for the last half century. We have just reelected our favorite political parties and politicians to status quo political offices and institutions that will not have any interest in, or the power to advance the political machinery of Democratic World Federalism.

We have once more chosen to support the existing nation state and United Nations systems, no matter how dangerous they have become to the health of our physical world, or to our democratic freedoms. To add insult to injury we have sadly been maneuvered across the floor to aid and abet a form of United Nations sponsored World Government that will end in the same imperial tyranny that spawned it.

Does anyone in the World Federalist movement for instance, seriously believe that the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly will ever be allowed to control the United Nations Security Council? The idea is ridiculous, a tragic diversion of precious World Federalist resolve, and an embarrassment to a once proud democratically minded movement.

World federalists do not have another generation to waste, discovering that an assembly is not a government. At best an assembly is a low level legislature or a “group of persons gathered together, as for worship, instruction, entertainment, etc.” World Federalists should find their entertainment elsewhere, not in the foolish or manufactured idea that an appointed United Nations Parliamentary Assembly will somehow meet the standard of a republic, or that if it is elected, it will have the authority to enact, interpret and enforce world federal law, irrespective of what the United Nations Security Council wants.

This barrier to global democratic oversight is being constructed I am ashamed to say, with the full consent, cooperation, and active participation of people who claim to represent World Federalism. They don’t. At least they don’t represent me.

What they represent through their support of and involvement in the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, which combined with the North American and European Unions, is the effort to consolidate an unelected corporate/political world order, moving toward a democratically unaccountable global deep integration. This United Nations sponsored “world government” and that is what it is, will not support any meaningful democratic national oversight, from any of its member national electorates. Not American, not Canadian, not Mexican, not European, not any.

Be mindful of the fact that the United Nations system was designed for, and essentially functions to support the Imperial ambitions of the United Nations Security Council, and then to clean up and salve over the debris it leaves behind through militarism and ecological damages. This system needs to be laid to rest, buried, as unworkable for this new century, in favor of a form of democratically induced and regulated World Federalism in which we can all have a stake.

World government or democratic world federalism? We can’t live in both worlds any more, at least not as far as those students are concerned, so end the argument now, choose one. Straight up, we would all be much better off if we let the United Nations do its own work, and if they left us to do ours.

What is ours? I would suggest that if we are to begin at the “ground level” of democratic world federalism, we start with foundation, and foundation starts with social contract.

According to the Canadian World Federalist National Charter, we were “To secure support for the establishment of a competent World Federal Government, elected by and responsible to the people under its jurisdiction” and “to strive toward the creation of a World Federal Government with authority to enact, interpret and enforce world law.”

World Federalism does not exist to “secure support for the establishment” of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, but “for the establishment of a competent World Federal Government.” This government is to be “responsible to the people,” not for them. That means that we need to secure the support of the people, among them, those students, and to do that, we need to define an appropriate social contract for them that distributes World Federal power in such a way, as to render that power subject to their full democratic consent and oversight, both as national, and as world federal citizens.

In doing so, we can achieve something that has the force of law behind it, that is to say national political party status wherever that is legally possible. We can also attain much of the moral authority to lead it, provided we are prepared to lead it in productive ways that reflect democratic values.

Through such an effort we could set standards that would otherwise take generations to bear fruit. We could for instance as regards equal rights, simply state as a matter of policy that one man and one woman will occupy what is now one seat, in any elected foundation national legislature, or world foundation federal legislature. There is important work to do in designing a space based industrial and transportation system, and in designing complimentary national and global polices to protect vital biological and ecological systems. With imaginative and relevant policy, foundation could popularize world federalism and bring it relatively rapid success.

There is potentially a very significant constituency for such a political movement, and a growing global pool of innovative leaders and ideas that are now without a unifying political home. In a politically united world, these forces could bring an exiting and essential change that is within the democratic grasp of nations and electorates everywhere. Perhaps we can stop dancing now.

Please read World Federalism: A Minority Opinion at www.foundationcanada.ca

Thank You: Carl Joudrie. November 6, 2008

That was perhaps the first public acknowledgment that our national and international political systems are not equipped to lead us to an ecologically sustainable world. These are the same political systems and operatives that are now advancing a form of world government, over which they will have almost total control. Not a good prospect for democracy, or for the conditions necessary to repair a physically damaged planet.

The first of the three components forming this world government, is its cornerstone. It is the United Nations.

The United Nations was designed for, and essentially functions to support the imperial ambitions of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and then to clean up and salve over the debris it leaves behind through militarism and ecological damages. The United Nations is governed as an oligarchy, through representatives which are nation state appointed and controlled.

The second component will be a series of Continental Unions, like for instance the European Union, and an emerging North American Union. There will be other continental unions to follow.

Continental Unions, as now exemplified by the European Union, are carefully constructed and managed elements of this world government. They are meant to perpetuate and grow the United Nations system, to keep power where it has always been, in the hands of the few for the benefit of the few. That is the way of imperial systems. The most powerful oligarchs and plutocrats within these Continental Unions are already granting themselves the imperial power to orchestrate the conduct and elections of less powerful nation states, within their own Continental Unions.

The November 13th, 2009 edition of the Globe and Mail is reporting in an article on who should be the European Unions first president and foreign minister, that these “first big decisions under the treaty (the Lisbon Treaty) which is claimed to make the E.U. more democratic, transparent and accountable, will be taken in secret and without contenders formally declaring they are after the jobs.” “Polish proposals for a more open contest by declared candidates” have been “dismissed” as “unrealistic”.

Apparently European electorates have no right to know in whose interest those proposals were dismissed, or why. Just as in the United Nations oligarchic system, European electorates have been denied the fundamental right to elect their representatives, or for that matter, too even know who those representatives are going to be.

North American electorates are not going to be given the right to vote on whether we want to enter into a Continental Union. Canadian, American, and Mexican voters are too have no say whatsoever on entry into, or the extent of the legal binding of our nations to a North American Union, or for that matter, that Unions relationship to The United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

Smaller, less powerful North American nations, are to continue in their role as servants to this imperial state. There is no reason to expect a different result for the periphery nations of other Continental Unions as they emerge.

The third and final component of this World Government is an institution to bind the United Nations and these Continental Unions as one, to merge under the control of a new United Nations political entity being developed as The United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

The United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, the campaign for which began on April 24th, 2007, is described as “a proposed addition to the United Nations system that could eventually allow for the direct election of U.N. Parliament members all over the world.”

Reality Check. The United Nations Security Council has no intention of giving “people all over the world” the democratic right to overrule their decisions. It has already been reported that this so called Assembly is backing away from the idea of elected representatives, in favour of appointing them. Count on it, and count on the fact that combined with phoney elections at the Continental Union level of government , these three institutions will constitute a dangerously centralized form of World Government that will have none of the democratic controls or federal protections that democratic World Federal government was meant to establish.

There is an urgent need to legally establish the political tools of Foundation Canada and World Foundation, Without these democratic institutions to remind us of what is at stake, and what is possible, we will continue to be fooled into giving up important democratic rights and freedoms to codify a model of world government, that so far most strongly resembles the political realities and structure of the former Soviet Union.

For more information check these articles

obama-creates-worlds-first-superstate-with-us-canada-merger

vladimir-putin-eurasian-union.

Thomas Jefferson

These are the reflections of a remarkable republican who understood the need for and the dilemmas accompanying historic change. Our times and circumstances now cause us to think in terms of an internationalism based on World Federalism, but efforts to secure those institutions have been frustrated by an artificially divided World Federalist organization. This division among World Federalists is being encouraged through literature and speech, in order to sustain international norms of sovereignty which deny the governed even the most limited of democratic powers, in a global arena that increasingly impacts the governed in a direct and profound way. World Federalists might wonder if they are being compelled to support and perpetuate this limitation, which is not only contrary to the letter, but to the spirit of World Federalism.

There are some basic and troubling questions of how to create a World Federal government, while being dominated by an international elite who are unsympathetic to the democratization, and therefore the public acceptance of World Federalism as a representative institution. The traditional power of the elected, or the tyrant, to exercise control over foreign relations without the advice or consent of those they govern, presents no great obstacle to World Government, or to any particular notion of a new world order. This power however is incompatible with any accepted Federal norm of democratic behavior, in a world context, and may constitute a dangerous impediment to short or long term unified human, or state efforts, to overcome major planetary problems.

Joseph Barratta, a World Federalist historian, published a book in 1987 titled Strengthening the United Nations, A Bibliography on U.N. reform and World Federalism. This book expresses the fundamental differences between traditional and democratic approaches to the achievement of World Federalism, and is typical of literature which in my opinion misrepresents and distorts a vitally important area of World Federalist thought and reason.

Barratta writes “A world federation must be constituted, like democratic republics generally, with representative institutions — primarily a world legislature, plus a world executive and world judiciary so that the people have a sense of participation in the making of the laws, and hence will obey them willingly as rules of action truly in the common interest.[....]The preferred method of most World Federalists to advance these goals, would be to convene a general review conference for the reform of the United Nations, or to convene a new world constitutional convention”. Barratta declares this approach to be “official, legal, and realistic.”

Barratta states that “A World Federation must be constituted, like democratic republics generally, with representative institutions”. The central characteristic of republicanism, as I understand it, would hold that in a republic, the supreme power rests with all of the citizens entitled to vote, or, the electorate. It is apparent in Barratta’s argument that the citizen component of a World Federal government would continue as in the League of Nations and U.N. models to be content, or be forced to be content, with a mere “sense of participation” dependent on the punitive condition of obedience.

An obedient electorate is not supreme, and can have no legitimate authority over a general review conference for the reform of the United Nations, or enforce any edicts of a World Constitutional Convention. What Barratta describes is not so much a republican government as it is an oligarchy dressed up to look like a republic.

The political realities of an oligarchy and republicanism are incompatible in that they are based on diametrically opposed views of who is entitled to vote. An oligarchy reserves that privilege for itself, in the case of the U.N. through representatives which are state appointed and controlled. In a global republic, all of the citizens of member nations would, at minimum, be entitled to elect those representatives, and to hold them accountable. In a more advanced system, that entitlement might even take the form of a limited direct democracy, but obedience to what is essentially an absolute form of power, even if it is federal in nature, is a menacing prospect, unworthy of World Federalist support.

Barratta’s view of entitlement emerges more clearly in his description of the minority opinion. It reads, “A minority of federalists have argued that national governments are natural enemies of a project that would reduce national sovereignty, so an appeal must be made directly to the people in order to produce a wholly new social contract. They propose to hold popular elections [...] using state electoral machinery wherever possible”. Barratta dismisses these arguments as “unofficial, revolutionary, and utopian”.

What has existed in place of an international social contract can be described in law as quasi contract. A quasi contract is equivalent to a contractual obligation, created in law in the absence of a contract, to prevent unfair gain by one party at the expense of another. International quasi contract, as expressed by the U.N. model for example, is fundamentally unfair, and is in no way equivalent to an entitling social contract, for dependence on the goodwill of those who will not submit themselves to contractual oversight does not, and never has constituted a fair contractual arrangement.

This lack of accountability in international affairs illustrates the nature of existing power structures which roughly move from the people to the state, or in the case of a tyranny, from the state to the people. In either case, power moves independently from the state to a world government model thus creating an unstable international order. The missing link remains any connection between a world government model and the people, without which there can be no legitimate representative, or accountable World Federal institutions. World Federalism as a foreign policy objective will remain an unattainable goal so long as the construction of this vital link remains dependent on those who see democratic will as an attack on their personal authority.

The representatives Barratta sees as fit to perpetuate quasi contract, in the name of World Federalism, are the Parliamentarians for Global Action. Barratta writes, “A variant on the official approach is the parliamentary approach. It is carried on, with more political realism, by Parliamentarians for World Order [PWO], now Parliamentarians for Global Action “[PGA], co-founded by Douge Roche when he was a Canadian M.P.

In his review of Douge Roche’s Politicians for Peace, a book describing the aims of the [PWO], David Taras, writing in the summer 1984 edition of the Canadian Parliamentary Review, offers a criticism of Roche’s views. “Mr. Roche’s vision of a future world order must be questioned seriously. Although the United Nations system has been discredited in the minds of many people who are concerned with democratic values and human rights issues, he sees the international organization as a cornerstone of future achievements …. The classical argument against a central global authority is that if that body becomes tyrannical or unjust, then freedom is endangered everywhere. In proposing to deliver us from our many problems Mr. Roche’s plan might have within it the seeds of an even more perilous future.” It should be noted that when Mr. Roche was asked what he thought of the democratic inducement and oversight of World Federalism, at the 1985 Canadian World Federalist National Conference, he publicly replied, “We have no time for any such nonsense.”

In The Federalist Papers, published in 1787 and 1788, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay outlined the basic tenets for the constitution of the United States. They urged the adoption of republican federal government as then outlined, in order to counterbalance unbridled central power. In the September 1991 issue of Scientific American, in an article titled “Infrastructure For The Global Village”, then U.S. Senator Al Gore writes, “representative democracy relies on the still revolutionary assumption that the best way for a nation to make political decisions is for all its citizens to process the information relevant to their lives and to express their conclusions in free speech and in votes that are combined with those millions of others to guide the system as a whole. Communism, by contrast, attempted to bring all the information to a large and powerful central processor, which collapsed when it was overwhelmed by ever more complex information.”

Barratta and Roche do not explain why they perceive little or no danger from a powerful and over-centralized world government, but it is clear that what they advocate has nothing to do with republican World Federalism. They imply that the people living under such a government can or should have no rights to either elect for World Federalism, submit it to democratic will, or to abolish it should it become destructive or oppressive. So long as this model is dominant, World Federalism will remain, and correctly be viewed by the electorate as undemocratic, and politically indefensible as a representative institution. The damage being done by this perception, or reality, to the cause and timely adoption of World Federalism, is incalculable.

World Federalism may represent the last and only real hope to democratize our international system. With that in mind, a Federalist failure to promote the democratic election and limited oversight of World Federalism, is unconscionable, and World Federalisms association with any organization which derides those principles, is objectionable. The cost of associating ourselves with such a narrow political perspective is evident in our failure to attract or to hold the interest or respect of our first generations. We must not lose the current or next generations to this poverty of democratic spirit and purpose.

For the first time in modern history, World Federalists can be fully justified in committing their time and energy to the achievement of republican World Federal institutions. During the formative years of the World Federalist movement, the technical capacity to involve the electorate in any genuine global sense simply did not exist. Nor was there any sense of a sufficiently large global constituency with any wish or need to directly impact a world system. Those circumstances have dramatically changed in direct proportion to our collective understanding of the limits and urgent needs of our planet.

Due to discoveries and advances in information technology, there are no longer any valid technical grounds on which to deny citizen involvement in the democratic inducement, or limited supervision of a world federal system. Many influential World Federalists, however, remain mired in a way and era of thinking which is dependent on state acquiescence, as opposed to independent appraisal and action. These leaders remain unable or unwilling to grasp the importance of using these powerful media to secure public consent for a world federal system, or to devise and manage an acceptable mix of central world federal powers with some form of genuine and balancing electorate power.

This genuine and balanced power will be necessary because coinciding with this progress in technical capacity has been a significant change in public manners and opinions. People today, especially the younger generation, are justifiably frightened by military, economic and ecological realities, and are distrustful of political or corporate agendas which exclude them. While there may be deficiencies in the democratic capacity to overcome these problems, this electorate identifies, correctly I think, democracy in its current, or some expanded form, to be central to any sustainable global solutions, and vital to the early adoption of world federal systems.

This electorate, should it conclude itself or the planet to be in imminent danger, without benefit of any globally corrective democratic mechanisms, may react in ways that current national and international models of government are ill-equipped to deal with. Governments which fail to recognize this new reality, or fail to build democratic institutions capable of responding to democratic will, on a global level, may face debilitating confrontation on a massive scale. Alternatively, the offer of a social contract defining limited but real powers for this electorate, in areas that will directly impact their global health and security, are likely to produce a much accelerated movement toward a genuine world federation.

The movement to exchange quasi contract for genuine participation does find support in the popular media. Allan Tonelson in the July 1991 issue of The Atlantic, in an article on “What is the National Interest”, called for a “foreign policy” that would “no longer implicitly accept the need for control by an elite.” He states that “After a half century of predominance, Internationalism would be superseded by a foreign policy for the rest of us.” What Mr. Tonelson could not say, because it has not yet been made viable, is that a World Federalism modeled on true republican principles may be very well equipped to usher in a new era of internationalism, complete with not only the obvious benefits of federalism, but the democratic capacity to overcome the oppressive qualities of internationalism, as it currently exists.

To that end, new World Federalist rules of action must be considered which unite the people to, not isolate them from, the concept of World Federalism. World Federalists should be taking the lead in establishing the democratic conditions under which such a union might prosper, through appropriate research and development, for instance, and be actively pursuing a form of international social contract which is relevant to democratic will. Any failure to construct such a social contract, or to express it through republican means, will render World Federalism obsolete and impotent.

The World Federalists of Canada were incorporated in 1965 under Part 2 of the Canada Corporations Act. Under the terms of the Canadian World Federalist Charter, the purposes of the new body were defined as follows:

A: To secure support for the establishment of a competent World Federal Government, elected by and responsible to the people under its jurisdiction, with limited functions but real powers adequate for the maintenance of peace.

B: While giving complete support to the endeavors of the United Nations to bring about a world community favorable to peace, to strive towards the creation of a world federal government with authority to enact, interpret, and enforce World law.

The Canadian World Federalist Charter is a binding contract, approved by a public body. As such it is every bit as legal and realistic as is any United Nations precedent for self reform. The World Federal Government imagined here is to be responsible to the people, not for them. This condition, no matter how threatening it may be to the status quo does meet the standard of republican government, and does require popular elections.

Before the 1982 Canadian World Federalist Annual General Meeting was a resolution to “form a committee to research the prospects of, and to work toward the formation of a political party based in large part on World Federalist principals.” That resolution was carried by a vote of 34 to 3, and produced a series of ideas which came to be known as Foundation. Just how this vote, or Foundation came to represent an “unofficial”, or “minority” opinion, without debate, is unclear, but understanding why Foundation continues to be represented as such has critically important implications for the democratic character and future of World Federalism.

Carl Joudrie