Anti-Poverty / Anti-Prohibition

JCT: My home page features the 1982 Toronto Star article
"Immorality of interest led man to police station" about my arrest at
an IMF-World Bank conference with my "Bankers Starve Third-World
Babies" placard. This event, I was also the lone person protesting
that Prohibition of medpot kills. Both are genocides though the
genocide of the poor by interest rates is a thousands times greater
than the genocide of the sick by prohibition of this wonder herb.
I prepared a double sign with four messages:

SIDE 1:
Don't Cancel Debt Jesus, Mohammed,
Cancel Debt Growth First Nehemiah said:
Abolish Interest Rates "Do not lend money
at interest."
The Anti-Poverty Engineer The Anti-Poverty Engineer

SIDE 2:
www.UN.org/ Abolish
Millennium/declaration.htm Medpot
Interest-free Prohibition
UNILETS bank
The Anti-Poverty Engineer The Anti-Prohibition Engineer

I had prepared a flyer with a collage of some of press clippings
but highlighting my 1982 Toronto Star arrest. I had the 1984 "Great
Canadian Character Anthology," the 1996 "Super Loser Fails Again," the
1996 UK "anti-poverty LETS local currency strategy" article, the 1997
Arizona Republic's "World's Richest Pauper," and the 1999 picture of
me addressing the Jubilee 2000 festival at the G8 meetings in Koln
Germany. With my web site.
Page two had the 1982 Christian Credit "bond-currency" program I
was handing out at my arrest and the article about the Cash-starved
Argentine Provinces used my "bond-currency" idea to turn out their own
money. http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/argentin.htm

Though there were supposed to be a few small marches around
Ottawa, the big event that evening was a teach-in at a large church on
Glebe Street starting at 6pm till at least 10pm headlining Maude
Barlow and a few other anti-poverty philosophers concerned about the
engineering of the World Bank System. It wasn't really a teach-in,
just a few guest speakers bemoaning how bad things were but not
actually teaching what to do about it more than talk.
As I listened I couldn't help thinking that's it's the same old
show at all these anti-poverty teach-ins. Denver 1997, Birmingham
1998, Cologne & Seattle 1999, Washington & Philadelphia 2000, Quebec
& Ottawa 2001, the speakers recite the same few statistics showing how
bad things are, the same few statistics showing that they're getting
worse and bemoaning that "something must be done." And everybody
applauds. Sometimes standing ovations who those who most convincingly
point out that "something must be done."
I have to say that most people who saw the Abolish Medpot
Prohibition nodded. Fighters are bred in the alcoholic generation.
Seems peace-niks may be bred by the non-alcoholic generation.
So, among this group of anti-poverty philosophers, this anti-
poverty Engineer walking around with a big sign that says "I've got my
LETS alternative to poverty, what's yours?" it's never hard to steal
the show. My strategy is the best described by the old adage "Where
does a 500 pound gorilla sit?" I have always walked up right to the
front to challenge those on stage without an alternative to demure to
the proclamation of the solution to world-wide poverty, a United
Nations LETS, UNILETS.
Wearing my trade-mark white hard hat with "The Engineer"
stencileld on the front, I started walking down the right aisle
towards the front exposing the most important sign, "Don't Cancel
Debt, Cancel Interest First," to the majority on my left.
Keep in mind that this was Ottawa, my home town, where this
audience comprised of the most responsibly concerned citizenry would
have heard my LETS anti-poverty solution during any one of the dozens
of Ottawa-area elections and byelections I contested in the past 22
years. So the majority knew that the tempo of the evening had just
gone up a notch and you could hear the palpable buzz. "Wise-cracking
Turmel's here, what's he going to say? I remember the last time the
police..." may have gone through more than one mind.
You know I didn't disappoint them because almost no media
reported the event! They had reported on the protesters from the
morning marches and meetings up to 6pm, then there was a press
blackout. Then they picked up on the protesters' activities the next
morning. What do you think happened at that meeting that could have
had such an impact that no one covered that portion of this
internationally prominent event?
Nearing the very front, there was a huge pillar that I could step
in front of and not block the view of those behind me while my
placard, (on a 5 foot high pole) could probably be seen by the whole
congregation, and of course, the guests in front since I turn it on a
regular basis.
"Jesus, Mohammed, Nehemiah said "Do not lend money at interest,"
abolish interest rates, The Engineer" and "Don't cancel debt, cancel
debt growth first, abolish interest rates, The Engineer."
Over and over again.
After awhile, a girl organizer came and asked me to move to the
back saying "you can see there are no other signs here." I told her
"they forgot to bring theirs, I didn't" but decided to follow her to
the back and seem to comply. Once there, I continued on around and
started walking down the left aisle of the church to the very front
where I took up position in front of the left post.
Later, I passed out literature on my way to the back. The head
organizer came over to ask me not to disrupt. I just kept walking and
I could sense him on my heels though there wasn't much he was saying
that I was going to listen to. Where does a 500 pound gorilla sit?
Anywhere he wants to. What was he going to do, call the cops? He
didn't know there was nothing he could do. I'd done this a hundred
times before. It was the first time it was happening to him.
When I found out that there were going to be questions and
answers, I walked up the center aisle to stake out the first spot at
the microphone. After awhile, I dropped a sheaf of flyers to mark my
place and then returned to the back for other promotional duties.
When came questions, the moderator announced that questions
should be limited to 1 minute and that they would take 3 or 4
questions and let speakers answers them all at the same time. What
wunderkind dreamed this up, I don't know but I can't imagine a better
way of keeping things incoherent than dealing with four questions in a
row from five different speakers rather than dealing with one question
at a time. Of course, maybe he had other reasons for that...
I started by saying I'd been sufficiently depressed with their
bad news. Did no one have any good news? I was hoping to bring them
some good news but I had passed by the home of a old buddy, a high
school substitute teacher, Serge "Elvis" Girard, that many Ottawans in
the crowd may have had substitute but that he had committed suicide 10
years ago, because of poverty. But I was here with some good news.
How many people have heard of LETS anti-poverty local currencies.
(Large number of hands.) Well there's a resolution at the UN C6 for a
world-wide LETS. You've got until tomorrow to do your homework and
find out about it so we can demand something smart from the G20 and
not the four silly demands now being presented. I asked the panel if
they supported a world-wide interest-free UNILETS alternative time-
based currency?
I got a pretty good round of applause, maybe just for being the
only little bit of spark in a host of generally tedious speakers, but
I don't know what they answered when all questions were asked and
answers started. I don't even know if my question was addressed.
No matter. Almost everybody I talked to had their eyes cleared
when I would say:
Cancelling debt is like trying to dig them out from under a
mountain while a conveyor belt of interest is piling more on top all
the time. The Engineer is going after the conveyor belt.... (light
goes on in their eyes)... switch." (realization explodes in their
brains)
That's why the diggers are with their shovels in their grubbies
and The Engineer's here with his finger in a suit. What's more
effective if successful, digging at cancelling the debt or switching
off the growth of debt, will be left to sharper historians to
conclude.
The pitch to get people to grab a flyer as they were leaving
stated "I'm the only person passing out good news. Tonight you're
heard all about eternal debt from the anti-poverty philosophers, now
hear about interest-free loans from the anti-poverty engineer. Who's
got the good news?"
The really funny part was while I'd been at the front once, a
speaker mentioned how the powers that be felt that the Stain of
Seattle had been washed away. I quipped "I was there." The speaker
acknowledged it with a grin.
Later, another speaker was explaining how the movement had
progressed and mentioned direct actions in Washington. "I was there."
A few minutes later he mentioned the protests in Philadelphia. "I was
there." And finally he mentioned the protests in Quebec City. "I was
there."
At one point, I had my sign in front of me and was leaning on it
with both elbows. One of the speakers said something about needing to
look for new solutions, one of my triggers. I shouted "We've found the
solution to poverty. LETS." I have a stentorian high-pitched voice so
a full declaration from the diaphram is heard throughout the hall
without it sounding like I yelled. Just extremely high volume
conversation.
He couldn't answer, was left speechless, so I popped him another
"Why are you still looking? I've found the solution"
He was still speechless so I popped him a a last quip "Come back
when you've found the solution."
Or something to that effect. Someone may have recorded it. But it
was three quick quips that infuriated three guys in the audience who
rushed up to me to put a stop to my disruptions.
Funny, like an accident that's out of control, time seems to slow
down and I didn't even flinch. When they were only a few feet away, I
hissed "Cameras are on, hit me." Pure bluff. There were no cameras.
The two to my right simply evaporated away and to the third on my
left, a little guy who barely came up to the top of my sign, I waved
him away and said "go away, you bother me." He did.
At one point, a man came up to me that I'd had a friendly
conversation with earlier and said he thought it was rude of me to
heckle and interrupt our guests. I told him we'd take a vote among
those now starving in the third world once the money system is
upgraded to UNILETS and see whether they are happy I challenged the
anti-poverty philosophers with no alternatives to offer with the LETS
alternative anti-poverty system I did have to offer.
I'd say "I want them to order the banks to install the LETS
software so that when I go to my bank branch tomorrow, I have access
to my Canadian account, my American account and a new LETS timedollar
account. Most people will cut checks out of their interest-free
accounts to pay off all their interest-bearing debts, stabilizing it
to one number so that all future payments must go against the
principal and debt must eventually be paid off. The only thing that
keeps all us debt slaves drowning in debt is the growth of debt, not a
stable debt. The Good Books say the positive feedback of interest on
debt is the sin, the usury, not the debt itself.

Their speakers list:
Susan George, Transnational Institute, France
JCT: I've been at many meetings with Susan George, her on stage
with no alternatives to offer and the engineer in the audience with
the only successful anti-poverty system in the world (with my
placards, of course. She can't have missed me and yet, years later,
she's still urging everyone to join her in digging at the bottom of
the mountain with the slaves rather than switching off the conveyor
belt at the top with The Engineer.)

Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South, Thailand
Oronto Douglas, Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth),
Nigeria
John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies, USA
Alejandro Bendana, Centre for International Studies, Nicaragua
Lidy Nacpil, Freedom from Debt Coalition and Jubilee South,
Philippines. Peter Coombes, September 11th Peace Coalition, Canada
Anna Kikwa, Tanzania Gender Networking Programme, Tanzania
Anuradha Mittal, Institute for Food and Development Policy, USA
Steve Hellinger, Development GAP, USA
Sergio Sauer, Brazillian Association of Agrarian Reform, Brazil
Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians, Canada
JCT: And of course, they're all working from the same set of
poverty statistics so it's pretty well the same old thing all the
time. How people can give standing ovations for speeches they can't
remember two lines from an hour later eludes me. That's always one of the
funniest things about these kinds of
sessions. It's all been said so many times before, nothing ever new,
that you can usually ask someone leaving, "Can you remember one thing
such a speaker said?" and usually they can't.
All I can remember from Maude Barlow's speech was that she was in
Qatar for some anti-poverty function where she overcame the ordeals of
bad room service having to walk somewhere for 15 minutes. The crowd
was shocked at her trials so of course, everyone could remember Maude
Barlow's treatment in Qatar.
Remember, I heard Maude and Susan give the same speeches two
years ago in Seattle. How many ways can they keep repeating things are
bad; that something must be done?
The last flurry was at the end. One of the speakers, an American,
was passing by and I offered him a flyer. He refused it and moved on.
Nothing burns me more than a guy who is taking a leadership position
on anything and who won't look at all the alternatives. I tailed him
to the back of the room heckling him as an anti-poverty philosopher
who had no answers, which wasn't so bad. It was that this philosopher
with no answers didn't want to know any answers that was so bad.
Here's a guy using up time on stage with no alternatives to offer. And
he doesn't want to learn. Who needs him?
I said that with people dying from lack of money all around the
world, he should be ashamed of himself for not looking everywhere he
could for a solution.
Now, given the hat, he probably thought I was some kind of nut
and it may never have dawned on him that I was the engineer who gave
the key-note speech on restructuring the global financial architecture
for the United Nations Millennium Declaration which recommended the
interest-free UNILETS system. Right. Imagine me bouncing around the UN
with my white hard-hat and placards. Don't imagine, read. I wrote
reports on my attendance at the Millennium Assembly events.
I kept calling him a low-tech anti-poverty philosopher with his
no-solution bad news who couldn't match the high-tech anti-poverty
engineer with my good news solution to poverty. Overall, should have
been the worst public drubbing of his life. It's what the crowd were
waiting for. And I love seeing the panic in their eyes when I've got
them cinched. "Reraise."
I saw Soren Ambrose, one of the pro-violence promoters from the
"50 Years is Enough" organization in Washington DC
http://www.50years.org skulking in the background.
During that event, they erased everyone's web site and email
addresses so from the public list so there would be no way to
communicate with each other than through their listserv where he and
his buddy Neil Watkins, since early 2000, have single-handedly
censored every mention of the UNILETS alternative to over 2200 anti-
poverty groups while letting through every article dealing with the
need for gas masks and combat boots. No alternatives allowed, violence
and thuggery are the 50 Years prescription for poverty.
I had braced him and his boss Njoke at a meeting in Madison
Wisconsin last year so he disappeared quickly when he saw me. He was
supposed to be one of the speakers and had he been on stage, I'd have
broached what I consider to be sabotage of the movement by their
group's promotion of only violence in the streets. You can read all
about them in the first 10 reports at a newsgroup I created at the
time:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a16-accommodations/messages/1

The question is why would these 50 Years - IMF World Bank agent-
provocateurs want violence at these financial meetings. Why do they
want the media covering the kids breaking windows at Starbucks and
MacDonald's? It sure makes it easier to ignore anyone who is proposing
a solution. Actually, it lets the world's finance ministers and
bankers laugh at the protest movement. The four demands the protesters
presented to the world's financial elite were pretty juvenile.

>Subject: [stop-imf] 4 Demands of IMF and World Bank
This document was issued at a news conference in Ottawa in advance of
the rump IMF/World Bank meetings held earlier this month.
November 2001

FOUR DEMANDS FROM THE MOBILIZATION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE

In late September, with little fanfare, the World Bank released a
response [www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/pb/pbfourdemands.htm] to the
four demands circulated by the Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ),
the Washington-based coalition organizing protests and alternative
educational events at the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and
its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
scheduled for September 2001 in Washington, DC. Those four demands,
endorsed by hundreds of organizations around the world, are:

1. Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public.
JCT: This is their number one demand? How weak!

2. End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access to
food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to
organize. (Such structural adjustment policies include user fees,
privatization, and economic austerity programs.)
JCT: Sure. What policies are they? Nothing definite?

3. Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally
destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all
support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of
people.
JCT: Sure. What projects? Nothing definite?

4. Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF,
using the institutions' own resources.
JCT: Sure. And do what the next time the debt gets out of
control? You already know what I think of the idiots digging at the
bottom of the debt pile while the conveyor belt keeps piling it on on
top. Cancelling the interest is on debt seems so near and is yet so
far away from their consciousness.
What I find the worse about these protesters with no alternatives
is that it has permitted the Ottawa media to laugh at bank protestors
like they had never laughed while I held sway in the debate. Randall
Denly put the boots to their silly demands and their lack of
alternatives though he's always been "tail-between-his-legs" in his
dealings with me whenever I've explained LETS to him. He's probably
one of the slowest low-tech reporters in town but with four loser
demands like this, even the dullest of the dull can be right.
Anyway, the high point of the Direct Action brigade was smashing
a MacDonald's Window. Shades of Jose Bove, the French anti-poverty
activist who smashed up a MacDonalds in France. While I believe we're
victims of a conspiracy of international bankers enslaving us with the
evil of an ever growing debt, he thinks we're victims of a conspiracy
of international cooks enslaving us with bad McMuffins. I mentioned
this before in my Quebec City report but it's so funny, I had to say
it again.

Saturday Protest March
----------------------

The march started forming in the Lebreton Flats. I spent a couple
of hours passing out flyers and doing money and hemp poetry. Most
people did love the medpot message but they were there mainly for the
anti-bank message. Still, denying people medpot is just as much an
assault on their health as denying them the money to buy food, even if
a lot less deadly.
For the record, the favorite poetry poems are:
"Rich man says" and "To have the Plates is best." It's only one page
so I'll produce them here.
"Rich man says" from http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/pombank.htm

RICH MAN SAYS
A rich man once spoke up in his attempt to set me straight,
His thoughts upon his interest, he honestly did state:
"Because I have a million bucks, I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn,
For in some pro-creative way that isn't very clear,
A million bucks will breed a hundred thousand every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet, with sympathy, I see the grimy son of toil,
And heartily congratulate the tiller of the soil.
I like the miner in the mine, the sailor on the sea,
Because up to a hundred grand they sail and mine for me.
For me, their toil is taxed unto the annual extent,
According to the ancient law that gets me ten percent.

So get a million bucks, my friend, in any way you can,
And leave your future welfare to the noble Working Man.
He'll buy you suits of Harris tweed, an Airedale and a car,
Your golf clubs and your morning Times, your whiskey and cigar.
He'll cozily install you in a cottage by a stream,
With every modern comfort and a garden that's a dream.
Or if your tastes be urban, he'll provide you with a flat,
Secluded from the clamor of the proletariat.
With pictures, music, easy chairs, a table of good cheer,
A guy can manage nicely on a hundred grand a year.
And though around you painful signs of industry you view,
Why should you work when you can have your money work for you?

So I'll get down upon my knees and bless the Working Man,
Who offers me a life of ease through all my mortal span;
Whose loins are lean to make me fat, who slaves to keep me free,
Who dies before his prime to get me round the century.
Whose wife and children toil in turn until their strength is spent,
That I may live in idleness upon my ten percent.
And if at times they curse me, why should I feel any blame,
For in my place, I know that they would do the very same.
They talk of revolution on a Sunday afternoon,
But offer them a million bucks and see them change their tune.
So, I'll enjoy my dividends and live my life with zest,
And bless the mighty men who first invented interest."

"To have the Plates is best."

When you were little, did you ever dream of printing cash?
Of filling up your wallet with some money in a flash?
Creating money accurately means TO HAVE THE PLATES,
The stamping of some paper into notes best demonstrates;
Or stamping metal into coins; or blips computerized,
Into your bank account deposits, checks now authorized.
So whether paper, metal, volts of electricity,
TO HAVE THE PLATES is printing money absolutely free.

Now if you printed to spend, the others would bewail,
They'd call it counterfeiting and send you off to jail.
But what if government would let you print it up to lend?
With only what you could collect in interest to spend?
If you could print and lend a thousand out at ten percent,
You'd make a hundred interest on printing that you lent.
But if you could print up and lend a million out you'd get,
An extra hundred thousand dollars for your fee on debt!

If government stops using its own plates and comes to you,
A billion printed nets a hundred million revenue!!
With everybody being taxed to pay you interest,
Of all the scams in history, TO HAVE THE PLATES is best!!!
Though never spending, only lending, riches do await,
To all who with the plates become the loan-sharks to the state.
And though to join the few who thusly profit, one might dream,
Wake up to see we're all the victims of their greedy scheme.

While governments of old had "Treasury run money plates,"
Without the interest to middle-men at rip-off rates,
Today most governments to banking industry have lost,
Control of money plates so interest is now a cost.
To service debt in ninety nine, Canada's request,
Three hundred and twenty billion dollars paid in interest.
We're taxed over a thousand dollars each per month to pay,
For interest to holders of our plates they gave away!!!

I'll pay my tax for army and police to handle strife;
I'll pay my tax for doctors, nurses who protect my life;
I'll pay my tax for all engaged repairing road and sewer;
I'll pay my tax for social servants helping out the poor;
I'll even pay my tax for bureaucrats with no regret;
But I object to paying tax for interest on debt.
We now see the unjustly cost that makes our tax inflate,
And only usury is what we must eliminate.

We Abolitionists would get the plates back from the banks,
Have Treasury create the money for printing charge and thanks.
The interest we save could be split up I recommend,
For each to get a thousand dollars monthly dividend,
As if you owned a share in the incorporated state,
An income guaranteed for life, no question, no debate.
Would you agree control of plates by private banks should end,
With all that interest diverted to your monthly dividend?

JCT: I can only tell you that when this poetry gets going, it
takes no time for the crowds to form.
I met the Green Party's Stuart Langstaf. He was the Green
candidate who saw farther than most Greens. Being an engineer, he saw
no reason why the LETS software couldn't handle a database of 30
million Canadians as well as it handles a database of 300 Ottawa
members or 1000 Toronto members. During the 1997 federal eletion in
Ottawa West, he had helped me convince the the NDP, Natural Law and
Marxist-Leninist candidates to join us in signing a petition
supporting a Canadian National LETS.
Imagine! An ultra-capitalist professional gambler like me, the
ultimate parasite, agreeing with Marxists and Socialists about the
benefits of a national LETS. And let's never forget that Russia did
operate the biggest interest-free Gosbank in history. That they
diverted credit away from productive enterprise to war and spy games
does not detract from the fact that people lived better under their
tighter monopoly communist slavery than they now live under the looser
monopoly capitalist slavery that we also enjoy. Better LETS where
everybody gets to be a capitalist, communistic capitalism, the perfect
blend between the two, the ideal engineering synthesis.

Then there was the march up to the Supreme Court of Canada
building where they had a small stage set up for speeches. Same old
rants. Things are bad. How bad. Something must be done. And me
wandering around with my "Don't cancel debt, cancel debt growth" sign.
What's interesting is that the march passed right in front of my
picket station where I protested at the Bank of Canada every Thursday
at high noon for 5 years in the early 1980s when they changed the
"mort-gage" death rate for interest so it was appropriate that I take
that same station I'd held in the years while many of these kids who
weren't even born then passed by. I shouted it was nice to have them
finally join me in yelling at the right bad guys.
It's when I started to see the ugly graffiti and paint thrown on
the buildings that I decided that I'd had enough of it and went the
other way while the marchers ended the show and proceeded from the
Supreme Court Building downtown looking for more trouble. I don't
think they found any.

The cops grabbed some of the kids who had caused the mischief. As
a protest-instructor, I've never had the need to cause mischief in my
protests which the protest-obstructers have as their only goal. While
they're getting in the way of my getting my message about a workable
alternative out, I can't condone their conduct.
Ottawa local ambulance-chaser Lawrence Greenspon came to their
rescue arguing the legitimacy of their damage. Lawrence Greenspon is
the Ottawa lawyer who took the case of Donald Hogan, the most abused
child in the Alfred, (Ontario) Reformatory scandal. All the others
went with a class action and got compensation. Donald Hogan went with
Greenspon and is the only victim who ended up with zilch. Who needs a
lawyer? Don Hogan: 49 Cleveland St. Thorold, ON, L2V 3K4

So, the World Bank IMF came to The Engineer's home town of Ottawa
and got to consider 4 silly demands on the banking system's
engineering that boil down to "Be open. Do good. Don't do bad."
I've would have asked them to adopt section c6 to governments in
the http://www.un.org/Millennium/Declaration.htm on restructuring the
global financial architecture with an interest-free UNILETS time-based
currency network.
Too bad the low-tech kids got the media's attention and not the
world-wide blueprint of the world's only working anti-poverty system:
LETS.
Better luck next IMF-World-Bank meeting.

--
John C. "The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel, Author of the UNILETS
interest-free time-based currency United Nations C6 recommendation to
Governments in the http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel / http://www.medpot.net 613.632.2334