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Old Paradigm Capitalism

Perhaps no one better articulates the old paradigm of business economics better than John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and his latest Hoodwinked on the financial collapse.

Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” (Thoreau)

Being a father has been one of the seminal events in my life and to have the joy of being a grandparent has just doubled the blessing. It has also made me even more aware of my responsibility to my grandson and his sisters and brothers around our precious planet.

All of us are anxiously waiting a fix to the devastating oil spill that BP created in one of our most environmentally fragile regions in North America. Let us also not forget the terrible destruction Chevron/Texaco caused in the Ecuadorian Amazon (as of this writing, more than 400 times the toxic wastes of the BP disaster), Shell in the Congo, Exxon in Alaska, and all the other tragedies that result from drilling, mining, cutting, and dredging. As I frequently discuss in media interviews and public speeches, it is our job to be in a true relationship with the environment. Just as a father guides his children toward maturation, we must do the same for the environment. If we want to save our lands, forests, air, and water, we must dream actively of this better world.

While we encourage organic farmers and many types of companies to turn toward green technology, we still are not doing nearly enough. Every one of us must alter our dream, must continually re-create ourselves and the societies we form. We must rescue our dreams of this sustainable and just world from the clutches of sociopathic CEOs, public relations con artists, greed-driven corporate policies, and the form of predatory capitalism all of these promote.

When politicians run for office, they talk about “growing” the economy. What they usually mean is manufacturing houses, cars, appliances, computers, and other material products from cement, metal, plastic and other raw materials that are mined from the Earth, Pachamama. Such production consumes vast amounts of energy and causes unquantifiable pollution. We see how these processes then create huge trash piles of waste that are incompatible and harmful to the land and the water surrounding them.

Our Founding Fathers would call on us to revolt and battle the corporatocracy that has grown so selfish and greedy and so entrenched that it threatens the security of our nation, the entire planet, and indeed the very survival of our species and many other life-forms.

Now is the time for all fathers and mothers to parent our children to not only dream for a more sustainable and positive world, but to also demand it of ourselves and for future generations.

We can — and must — achieve this. I know you and I will continue working very hard to complete our journey to success.

The Ethics of Gold

By Ron Robins, Founder & Analyst - Investing for the Soul

The rising price of gold stands as the ethical barometer of the mismanagement of our fiscal, monetary, and currency systems. Gold is in the early stages of re-asserting its historic role of helping to bring order to monetary and currency chaos. Its price has risen more than fourfold over the past ten years as a result of investors anticipating the predictable financial and currency chaos we have today—and what is likely yet to come.

The central banks and government treasuries, particularly those of the US, Europe, and Japan, have been weakened and our trust in them eroded. For decades they assured us that only they and their paper currencies and fractional reserve banking systems can keep our economies growing forever. They are now failing for all to see. And before the ships of state sink and economies further submerge they bail out their banking friends.

The monetary and currency systems and organisations responsible for them are deteriorating because they essentially lack an ethical standard. That is not to say that most individuals in these organisations are unethical. It is that as organizations they implemented policies over the past several decades that knowingly—or they should have known—would eventually lead to great financial and economic hardship.

One such policy was the encouragement of debt creation way beyond income or economic growth. When this policy failed, it led to tens of millions of people losing their jobs globally, millions losing their homes, and retirees in developed countries losing their savings as interest rates were reduced to near zero. It is in this sense that these organizations were, and are, without an ethical standard.

To rise to the top among many of these banking and financial organizations, requires not only brilliance, but usually subservience to base instinctual values of status and greed.

According to Dr Paul Ray’s research on Americans’ values, close to half the American population’s primary values include those of status and greed. It could be argued that even Timothy Geithner, the US Secretary of the Treasury, exhibited these values. Before his appointment it was divulged that he owed taxes that went back several years. He then hurriedly paid them to smooth his appointment to head the US treasury, the most powerful treasury on earth. About those taxes—he says he just ‘forgot’ to pay them.

When many in the financial, banking and political elites are motivated primarily by greed, unethical financial behaviour asserts itself. ‘Moral hazard’ is the term economists give to this condition. Until we as a species are able to have an inner compass that is driven by higher ethics and consciousness, then some form of firm control in regard to credit and debt creation has to be enabled. Gold is ideally suited to act in this controlling capacity.

However, anyone who studied economics at Western universities and colleges since World War II, left with the understanding of gold as a ‘barbaric relic.’ This is how John Maynard Keynes, the ‘guru’ of today’s economists, famously referred to gold. It is perceived wisdom today that we are capable of managing our monetary and currency affairs more wisely than having them subjected to the hard discipline of a gold standard, or some system where gold acts to control the issuance of currency or credit availability.

What modern economists choose to forget is that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries while the world was on a gold standard, global economic growth was unprecedented.

As is now obvious, the perceived wisdom of modern monetary and currency management is shown to be false. Monetary conditions are increasingly calling for the kind of control that only gold can offer. However, it is unlikely that we would go back to a traditional gold standard—where everything is linked to gold. What is more probable is the tying of gold to a new international currency or to some form of monetary or credit measure. It is known that because of the vexing issues with all the four major global currencies—the dollar, euro, yen and pound—that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is developing proposals for a new international currency.

Countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (the ‘BRIC’ nations) as well as Western countries like France are demanding the establishment of a new world currency as well. Soon it will be realized that all paper currencies have the same historical deficiencies: their administering agencies and human governors lack the necessary restraints on credit creation unless they are tied in some way to a commodity standard. And that is best fulfilled by gold.

Jim Sinclair, one of the world’s greatest experts on gold, believes the US will eventually be forced to anchor the dollar to gold. He says the tie will be the gold held by the US Federal Reserve and Treasury versus a measure of international liquidity (ie money and or credit).

Already some central bankers are acknowledging the inadequacies of the present system and beginning to resort to gold.

After more than two decades of mostly gold dishoarding, central banks are again becoming net buyers of the metal. They include China, India and Russia. A Bloomberg story reported in June on a UBS survey of central bank reserve managers and other financiers, found that 30 per cent of them cited gold as being the best performing asset they could own for the balance of this year. That was the highest percentage for any asset class.

We are in the midst of major currency and monetary upheavals the like of which we have not seen since World War II. Deep, fundamental fissures have been exposed. Most notably: the lack of an ethical compass by institutions managing our monetary and currency systems, the policies of our monetary authorities who see the only way forward as the promotion of excessive debt, and the increasing moral hazard among bankers and financiers.

Investors and the global public are viewing these developments with alarm. Gold’s rising price represents an ethical barometer of their views. Gold is in the early stages of re-asserting its historic role as an anchor to our monetary and currency systems. It may well yet save the floundering ships of state.

Small is Beautiful and Affordable

From one of my favorite daily news feeds, Daily Good, comes this great story which is part of Yahoo’s series, Second Act that looks at people’s life shifts. This article gives a whole new meaning to downsizing. This story has been viewed millions of times and certainly fits many people’s desire to live a simple life.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. –Confucius

Good News of the Day:
Jay Shafer lives in an 8-by-12 foot house. He built it from scratch. With no prior carpentry knowledge or experience. “I’m sure there are people out there who think I’m crazy for living so small, but living in this little house has allowed me to totally reinvent my life,” he says. With a desire to “escape the rat race,” the former grocery-store clerk’s intentions were simple: focus on the things he really wanted to do, and not on working for money. Now, he runs a company that builds small homes for others. “I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur in anything, but it’s my passion to design small houses,” he smiles. “It’s been really liberating.” [ more ]

Want to connect with Jay and explore building your own small home? Click here to visit his website and get started.

Rainforest Alliance Launches Sustainable Vacations Website

Savvy travelers looking for sustainable vacation options in Latin America and the Caribbean can now find them by logging on to SustainableTrip.org, an online search engine launched today by the Rainforest Alliance.

SustainableTrip.org is a database of hotels, tour operators, and other businesses (such as restaurants) in Latin America and the Caribbean that have been certified by a sustainable tourism certification program, verified by the Rainforest Alliance, or recommended as being sustainable by a reputable organization.

The site is available in three languages – English, as SustainableTrip.org; Spanish, as ViajeSostenible.org; and French, as VoyageResponsable.org.

“SustainableTrip.org is a valuable, unique resource in that it provides travelers, tour operators and travel agents with a credible, comprehensive listing of sustainable tourism options from a trusted conservation NGO,” said Ronald Sanabria, vice president of tourism for the Rainforest Alliance. “The sustainability claim of each business is verified before it is listed on the site.”

The Rainforest Alliance is an international nonprofit organization committed to conserving biodiversity and promoting sustainable livelihoods around the world. The organization has been working in Latin America for more than 20 years. Through its sustainable tourism program, the Rainforest Alliance helps tourism professionals improve the sustainability of their businesses based on the principles of the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria. Initiatives include implementing ecosystem and water conservation measures, reducing energy use, supporting local economies, hiring from within the community and reducing costs.

SustainableTrip.org supports business owners’ efforts to become sustainable by promoting them to key tourism markets in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America.

Online since 2005 as the Eco-Index of Sustainable Tourism, SustainableTrip.org features a more powerful search engine, an updated design, Google Maps of business locations, links to promotional videos and information in French.

The Rainforest Alliance works with people whose livelihoods depend on the land, helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers. From large multinational corporations to small, community-based cooperatives, businesses and consumers worldwide are involved in the Rainforest Alliance’s efforts to bring responsibly produced goods and services to a global marketplace where the demand for sustainability is growing steadily.

For more information, visit www.rainforest-alliance.org.

  • Posted on July 19, 2010 in Sustainability, Travel  |  
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Chellis is Still in Recovery From Western Civilization

Years ago, I read a book that probed deeper than any I had read up until that time. I was just reminded of the book and it’s author Chellis Glendenning when I came upon an interview with her from 2004. I’m going to try and meet with Chellis next month when I visit friends in Santa Fe.

For now, here is the interview I discovered. I t reflects thinking that is beginning to awaken something in me that is another step toward my deepening feeling about my place in the world and connection with nature.

The interview was conducted by Aric McBay of In the Wake.

Chellis Glendinning is writer and a psychologist specializing in recovery from post-traumatic stress. She is the author of Waking Up in the Nuclear Age (1987); When Technology Wounds (1990); My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization (1994); Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy (1999, 2002); and Chiva: A Village Takes on the Global Heroin Trade (2005). Off the Map won the National Federation of Press Women 2000 Book Award. I interviewed her by telephone in January, 2005.

Aric McBay: Can you tell us about the community where you are living now?

Chellis Glendinning: I live in the village of Chimayó, New Mexico. It is one of a number of villages, a village system, that was established in the 1700′s and the 1800′s. It was Spanish culture meeting an indigenous situation. But the people themselves were only partly Spanish. A lot of them were Mexican natives, and a number of Moors and Jews. Also there was intermarrying with Native people here in the Rio Grande Valley. And then there were also various people who were fleeing Europe, so there were Greeks, Irish, and other kinds of folk. What we call the result is Chicano, but it’s a in fact a big mixture.

Each village has its own common lands that usually extend out from the village into the forest. So the setup is fairly archetypal the world around, and it’s a setup of sustainable living with hunting, fishing, and small agriculture. I’ve been living here for more than twelve years.

AM: Can you tell us a little bit about the changes that have been happening recently in your village in terms of encroachments by the dominant culture?

CG: There’s been a huge change. Such that the place is unrecognizable in a way because, in I’d say the last four years, around the turn of the millennium, the changes really started. And they all happened at once so it’s hard to point to one thing. Before this, the old way was very much being lived and assumed. The old philosophy was part and parcel of every breath.

Then all of a sudden, we get the big freeway coming up from Sante Fe, we get the WalMart, we get the cell phones, we get the satellite dish. For the longest time it seemed like just one person in the village had a computer, and all of a sudden, computers became common. Right now we’re just getting the Home Improvement, so when that thing opens it is going to be the end of traditional adobe architecture.

And also a lot of money that came in. So that there was new clothes, new cars, and everything changed.

To continue reading the Chellis Glendenning interview, click here.

And a 2008 video on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is something most of uu have whether we want to admit it or not.