VOTE FRAUD 1,000,000 SIGNATURES NEEDED
VOTE FRAUD 1,000,000 SIGNATURES NEEDED
http://raenergy.igc.org/votefraud.html
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
VIDEOS: VOTE FRAUD
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VOTE FRAUD VIDEOS
http://raenergy.igc.org/votefraud.html
-GOP in defense of theft. Tort reform and deregulation is the legalizing of
theft.
http://raenergy.igc.org/goptheft.html
-GOP election fraud tricks. The campaign tactics of GOP Fascism are an
ongoing onslaught of government. We the people are the government and should
take this a direct insult.
http://raenergy.igc.org/gopelectiontricks.html
"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a
merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia
Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor).
http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
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http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml
Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://raenergy.igc.org/bio.html
Blog
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Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
GOP Vote Fraud _Reaching Fecal Mass
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"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
GOP Vote Fraud Reaching Fecal Mass After reading the Top Entry scroll down to the chart to see the real damage.
http://raenergy.igc.org/votefraud.html
80% of the world population agrees that we are in a Fascist takeover in the USA
http://raenergy.igc.org/worldlight.html
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Raleigh Myers
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Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
Repub Voter Suppression merits a RE-VOTE, resist unfairness
just like Ukraine_ call to action
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Raleigh Myers
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"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
Repub Voter Suppression merits a RE-VOTE, resist unfairness just like Ukraine_ call to action
Milions weere not given the courtesy to cast a vote due to every kind of gangstericm. We should let all those who couldn't vote and those who haven't to now vote. We started the vote a month early why not give it another week or two. "We the People" are the greatest super power on earth. All we are asking is fairness. Witnessing unfairness demands resistance whether private public or government. Our teachings on fairness and justice are in jeopardy every time we don't resist. The Judeo Christian, Islamic tether is the Abrahimic base.
http://raenergy.igc.org/resist.html
Calling to Action the People of Earth (The Salt of the Earth) _Journalists, Artists, Wizards, Students, Cosmic citizens, Whistleblowers, Dormant 60s Activists, Ditto Heads and sellouts welcome back.
We need to come to our senses. Since the GOP election fraud attempt WE need to realize that WE can shut down the world and we have the support of the population of the planet at this time. Let us use the opportunities we have at hand right now to make a stand against Fascism. Never has the whole world been focused on anti fascism as they are right now.
Calling to Action People of Earth, The Salt of the Earth _Journalists, Artists, Wizards, Students, Cosmic citizens, Whistleblowers, Dormant 60s Activists, Ditto Heads and sellouts welcome back after all it's you unborn that will suffer.
Theft of US Election Rallies World Against Fascism_the F word
http://raenergy.igc.org/worldlight.html
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Raleigh Myers
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Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
Prenatal Debt GOP Fascism sharing their fairness legacy
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"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
Prenatal Debt GOP Fascism sharing their fairness legacy. The unborn should share in Corporatism's tax breaks and trickle up.
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=%22Prenatal+Debt%22&start=0&ie=UTF-8&
After prenatal debt is the elderly and the medicare dependants
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/a_lump_of_coal_for_americas_poor.php
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Raleigh Myers
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Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch
Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch
December 12, 2004
ECONOMIC VIEW
Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
[]ASHINGTON
OF all the arguments being made to replace part of Social Security with private retirement accounts, few are more seductive and more misleading than the prospect of earning higher returns.
Get ready to hear a lot about this next week, when President Bush is host for a two-day economic conference that is expected to focus sharply on Social Security.
Under the current system, investment returns from Social Security are "abysmal," Mr. Bush said in one recent speech, because the trust fund is allowed to hold only low-yielding Treasury bonds.
Letting working people invest some of their Social Security money in the stock market would allow them to earn higher returns, giving them more money at retirement than they would have if they let the government do everything for them, the logic goes.
It sounds like a no-lose proposition. According to the Social Security Administration, Treasury bonds can be expected to yield a real annual rate of return of about 3 percent. Equities, by contrast, can be expected to earn 6.5 percent.
That assumption is crucial to arguments that personal accounts can reduce Social Security's long-term shortfall - which the government estimates to be at least $3.5 trillion. Most of the proposals to overhaul Social Security call for steep reductions in future benefits that would be offset by the higher returns people would presumably earn on their investments.
Stephen Goss, the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, has endorsed the assumption of higher returns. In evaluating the major proposals for putting some payroll taxes into personal investment accounts, Mr. Goss estimated that even people who hedged their risk by mixing stocks and bonds could expect an average return of 4.45 percent.
But that logic is as flawed as a perpetual motion machine. If it were true, the government could erase Social Security's entire projected deficit by selling bonds at 3 percent and buying stocks that yield 7 percent.
Why doesn't the government do just that? Because higher returns are inseparable from higher risk. No risk, no reward. And if the goal is to enhance security, if people are to have a solid reason to expect a particular level of wealth at retirement, the risks have to be relatively low.
"The entire argument is absurd," said William C. Dudley, chief United States economist at Goldman Sachs. "These returns weren't free. You are getting these returns precisely because you are taking on risk."
To be sure, one of the biggest ways to reduce risk is to have a long time frame. People who invest at age 30 or even 50 have the time to ride out most of the ups and downs of the stock market.
But there are no guarantees. According to Ibbotson Associates, which publishes data showing average returns over different periods, large-cap stocks actually suffered a loss of 1 percent, annualized, from early 1929 to the end of 1942.
Granted, it is somewhat unfair to pick a time period that begins just before the great stock crash of 1929 and continues through the Depression. But many analysts contend that it is even more misleading to suggest that people should have complete confidence in their ability to earn above-average returns with no risk whatsoever.
Surprisingly, the Social Security Administration actually goes further than that. In addition to relying on the premise that equities will yield higher returns than Treasury bonds, Mr. Goss of the Social Security Administration suggested that returns in the future might be even higher than those of the past.
"A consensus is forming among economists that equity pricing as indicated by price-earnings ratios may be somewhat higher in the long-term future than in the long-term past," wrote Mr. Goss.
"This is consistent with broader access to equity markets and the belief that equities may be viewed as somewhat less 'risky' in the future than in the past," he added.
If investment funds or stockbrokers made that kind of claim, they would probably be breaking the law.
In an interview last week, Mr. Goss acknowledged that many experts believe investment returns should be adjusted for risk and that the common proxy for a risk-free return is the real yield earned on Treasury bonds.
The Social Security Administration's analyses do include lengthy disclaimers, noting that the projected returns are highly "sensitive" to what happens in the markets.
But other government analysts take a much more conservative approach. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is run by a former chief economist in President Bush's own Council of Economic Advisers, assumes that equities and bonds will earn no more than Treasury bonds.
Strikingly, the White House's own Office of Management and Budget recently made the same assumption. The issue was not Social Security but rather the projected growth of assets in the railroad retirement trust. In evaluating the railroad retirement system, the White House budget office also assumed that investments would yield the same as Treasuries.
BUT the more basic question is this: Should a rational person believe that Social Security's very real financial shortfall can be reduced just by shifting from bonds into stocks?
Those who imply that stocks can promise higher returns without higher risk are essentially arguing that Social Security can be fixed with a huge exchange of paper.
If that is the government's strategy, people should by all means push for the right to shift all their payroll taxes to personal accounts and invest the money in gold.
Copyright 2004
The New York Times Company
Copyrighted work reprinted here is for educational non profit purposes. It was offered free to me on the internet (as a member of a wide audience) and is copied here free to others (adding to its value)it is fair use of the work.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
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Blog
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Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
Oil and Water Commons
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Oil and Water Commons
THE PETROLEUM COMMONS:
LOCAL, ISLAMIC, AND GLOBAL
by George Caffentzis
1. All land and natural resources (including mineral resources) within the
Ijaw territory belong to Ijaw communities and are the basis of our survival.
2. We cease to recognise all undemocratic decrees that rob our
peoples/communities of the right to ownership and control of our lives and
resources, which were enacted without our participation and dissent. These
include the Land Use Decree and The Petroleum Decree, etc.
--The Kaiama Declaration (December 1998)
Introduction: Oil and Water
The struggles over the ownership of the two most important political
liquids of this era, petroleum and water, have had different fates. Though
water has been claimed to be either private, state or common property
throughout history, the novel feature of this neoliberal period has been
the move by corporations to totally privatize it. The powerful struggles
against this corporate privatization of water from Cochabamba in Bolivia to
Soweto in South Africa have focused world attention on the question: Who
owns water? The consequent efforts to keep water as a common property on a
local and global level are now some of the most important initiatives of
the anti-globalization movement.
Petroleum, on the other hand, has in the last hundred and fifty years been
considered exclusively as either private or state property. The pages of
the history books on the petroleum industry have been filled with
"magnates" like John D. Rockefeller or government "leaders" like Saddam
Hussain and Winston Churchill. Thus the "struggle over oil" has been
largely seen as a struggle between oil companies and governments, since its
beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century.
But over the last fifteen years there has been a major shift in the
physiognomy of the protagonists in the oil struggle. No longer do national
governments and huge energy conglomerates dominate the scene so
exclusively. The new protagonists include: "peoples" like the Ijaws, the
Ogoni, the Chiapanacos, the U'wa, the Cofan, the Secoyas, the Huaorani, the
Sumatrans; border-transcending social movements under the star of Islam and
subscribing to "Islamic economics"; elements of the UN system like the
World Bank, claiming to represent "global governance" of the "global
commons." These peoples, movements and global entities have entered into
the struggle for the control of oil production, legitimizing themselves
with a new (and yet, at the same time, quite archaic) conception of
property--common property.
Why is the notion of a petroleum commons emerging now, and what are its
consequences for the oil industry?
There are three levels of claims to petroleum as common property,
correlating with three kinds of allied communities that are now taking
shape, for there is no common property without a community that regulates
its use:
*First, some local communities most directly affected by the extraction of
petroleum claim to own and regulate the petroleum under its territory as a
commons
*Second, Islamic economists claim for the Islamic community of believers,
from Morocco to Indonesia, and its representative, the 21st century
Caliphate in formation, ownership of and the right to regulate the huge
petroleum fields beneath their vast territory.
*Third, UN officials claim for the "coming global community" the right to
regulate the so-called global commons--air, water, land, minerals
(including petroleum) and "nous" (knowledge and information). This imagined
global community is to be represented by a dizzying array of "angels" that
make up the UN system, from NGO activists to UN environmentalist
bureaucrats to World Bank "green" advisors.
These claims and their legitimizing discourse are displacing, with
different results, the monopoly hold of governments and corporations over
the ownership and regulation of the planet's petroleum. There is much in
common in these conceptions of the petroleum commons, but they are also
often in conflict. These conflicts will determine how the struggle over the
ownership of petroleum and the regulation of its extraction and use will be
transformed by the entrance of the "commoners" into a field dominated for
over a century by nation states and global corporations.
The Local Petroleum Commons: Nigeria, Chiapas, the Amazon
One of the most important areas where the petroleum commons is emerging as
a political reality is the Niger Delta. This area is located in a
crossroads of the world market. Three centuries ago the region from
Escarvos to Calabar was the main storage and transshipment point of African
slaves bound for the plantations of the Americas. This trade poisoned the
Delta people's social relations then. Today the Delta people are caught in
the middle of the global oil industry that is poisoning them physically and
economically as well as socially. They have been struggling against this
fate with great courage and originality, taking a political road that began
with a demand for reparations for past damages caused by the oil companies,
and has evolved to the declaration of a petroleum commons in the Delta.
This story begins in the early 1990s, when the Ogoni people decided that
the time was ripe to transform what had been a long-fought but largely
unknown and parochial struggle against both the Nigerian government and the
global oil companies into an internationally-recognized one. The Ogonis are
a relatively small ethnic group in Nigeria (with a population of less than
a million), but they have been in the middle of oil production in Nigeria
from its beginning and have suffered greatly for it. Some Ogonis realized
that if they had to fight a global oil company--in their case, Royal Dutch
Shell--to get reparations, they had to become global themselves. But how
was a relatively small, impoverished ethnic group in the midst of an
"obscure" part of Africa to "globalize itself"?
Parochial ethnic politics had to be transcended to make clear that the
Ogoni struggle was part of the worldwide ecological struggle against the
major oil companies. On the heals of the "No Blood for Oil" struggle
against the first US-Iraq war, the Ogonis pointed out that they too had
suffered to fuel the profits of Shell and the industrial machines of Europe
and the US. And with the help of one of their leaders, playwright Kenule
Saro-Wiwa, who had built up an international audience with his writings,
the message made a connection with environmental groups around the planet.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) helped stimulate
a "recomposition" of the anti-capitalist movement, since it made it clear
that the Ogonis' demands for reparations for Shell's destruction of their
environment were an integral part of the wider demand that the total costs
of capitalist development be recognized and paid for by corporations
everywhere. In 1995, Saro-Wiwa was arrested and hanged on false charges of
murder by the Nigerian military regime of Gen. Sani Abacha--actions Shell
was complicit with. In response, Greenpeace and other environmental groups
organized an effective worldwide boycott of Shell, protesting the blood
being painfully exchanged for oil in Nigeria as the Middle East. Ken
Saro-Wiwa paid with his life for connecting the Ogoni with a world
environmentalist movement, but his organizational model has been used again
and again by other small ethnic groups throughout the world.
The high cost the Ogoni paid for their struggle was noted by other militant
groups in the Niger Delta, which have de-emphasized the
internationalization of their struggle and focused directly on negotiations
with oil companies and the Nigerian government based upon their capacity to
hinder or halt production or shipment of oil. These groups, however, have
pushed the demands of the struggle to a new level--instead of demanding
reparations as MOSOP did, they are claiming ownership of the petroleum
underneath their territory as common property.
Thus the most prominent movement in the Delta after the MOSOP effort was
the Movement for the Survival of Ijaw Ethnic Nationality (MOSIEN). The
Ijaws form one of the largest ethnic groups in the Delta (with a population
of approximately eight million), and their struggle has largely rejected
non-violence and resurrected the militant symbols and memories of their
collective past. The cult of Egbesu, their traditional war god, has been
the recruiting ground for young militants who have liberated their leaders
from government prisons, taken over oil installations, and kidnapped oil
workers.
MOSOP was formally a non-violent organization. Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other
Ogoni leaders believed that it was folly to think that a small ethnic group
could directly confront the might of the Nigerian army--which was then
controlled by a military government. The Ijaw armed resistance has rejected
this path, even though it has faced devastating attacks by the Nigerian
military--including the horrendous Christmas massacre at Odi in 1999 that
left 2,000 dead. This shift in tactics put into question much of the
international support that the Ogoni struggle and Saro-Wiwa's martyrdom had
engendered for struggles in the Delta.
There were other important changes in the struggle beside the turn to armed
confrontation with the government and oil companies. These included the
Kaiama Declaration, that formally claimed the petroleum within Ijaw
territory as the common property of the Ijaw community. This notion of the
petroleum commons has become the ruling discourse in much of the armed
resistance in the Delta. A good example of this is the reply a former
president of the Ijaw Youth Council and current militia commander, Alhaji
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, gave to a Financial Times reporter when asked about
much his men take from pipelines each day, "As much as we can. It's free."
Another is the graffiti left behind after the Odi massacre by invading
soldiers: "Na you get oil? Foolish people." ("Does the oil belong to you?
Foolish people.")
Another dramatic political development was the entrance of women's
organizations into the struggle for a petroleum commons. Local women from
the Ijaw and Istkeri ethnicities remembered the old tactic of shaming
soldiers by appearing before them collectively naked--which was used to
effect in the Aba Women's War of 1929 against the British. After being
brutally beaten by oil company guards in November 2002, one group of women
protesters in the Delta threatened that "within 10 days from today, if our
hospital and rehabilitation bills are not paid, we will all come out en
masse fully naked, and we shall occupy not only their gates but their flow
stations throughout the Niger Delta..."
What was more threatening to the oil companies and the Nigerian government
than the presence of thousands of naked women occupying their oil
installations, however, was the fact that women from different, often
conflicting ethnic groups had come together at all. For the most powerful
weapon the government and the oil companies have in escaping paying
reparations and recognizing the Niger Delta communities' communal ownership
of the petroleum under their territory is the division between the groups
themselves. However powerful ethnic ties are in strengthening the will to
resist, they are also extremely divisive, resulting in thousands of deaths
in the last decade. The fact that women from the oft-warring Itsekiri,
Ijaw, Ilaje and Urhobos groups could join in a united front indicates that
at least they have understood the secret of power. Whether their unity will
set the pace for the petroleum commons movement in the Delta is still an
open question.
Just as the early 1990s was a crucial turning point for the first step to a
petroleum commons on the Niger Delta, that time also saw the organization
of indigenous peoples around similar demands in Mexico, Ecuador and
Colombia. We know that at that time the Zapatistas were organizing an armed
rebellion in Chiapas, launched on New Years Day 1994--the precise moment
NAFTA took effect. The Zapatistas' Subcommendante Marcos frequently pointed
out that when the indigenous cut firewood for their homes they are arrested
and fined. But when the oil developers cut huge swathes through the forest
for their roads and blow down trees with their dynamite, they are
congratulated for their productivity!
But as fate would have it, post-rebellion Zapatista communities are often
located near or directly over oil deposits. Consequently, the San Andres
Accords--the main document arising from the peace talks between the
Zapatistas and the Mexican government--included the recognition of the
indigenous communities' "collective right to evaluate federal and state
plans to exploit strategic resources in their region in order to determine
those plans' effects on indigenous territories." This provision which, in
effect, gave the indigenous communities a veto over oil exploration and
exploitation, was certainly one of the main sticking points that prevented
the approval of the Accords.
Similar developments took place in Ecuador in the early 1990s. Although oil
exploration and extraction began in the Ecuadorian Amazon in the 1960s, it
took some time for the indigenous peoples most affected by the industry's
pollution of their environment and the disintegration of their social life
to organize: first to demand a clean-up and compensation, and then to claim
the oil as a common resource whose disposition depended upon their will and
not the state's or the oil companies'--up to and including "The Right To
Say, 'No.'"
The Right To Say "No" became extremized in the struggle of the U'wa people
in Colombia against Occidental Petroleum's attempt to explore for oil in
their territory, beginning in 1993. The U'wa threatened to commit
collective suicide if Occidental Petroleum, which was granted exploration
rights in U'wa territory by the Colombian government, actually drilled in
their territory. The oil company had estimated over a billion barrels of
oil there, and was anxious to verify the estimate. But a combination of law
suits in Colombian and international courts, shareholder resolutions,
demonstrations in front of its California offices and the home of its CEO
carried on by the U'wa and their allies--as well as the threat of mass
suicide by the entire U'wa community--somehow almost magically managed to
"hide" the oil from the exploratory drills' reach. Occidental Petroleum
then pulled out of U'wa territory without making the second try which is
usually standard procedure. Not surprisingly, these failed efforts by
Occidental to penetrate the U'wa resistance have been followed by the
exploration activities of Ecopetrol, the Colombian state oil company--which
will face similar resistance and similar defeats.
The U'wa are one of many local peoples throughout the planet that are going
beyond the position of supplicants demanding compensation from the oil
industry for the harm oil extraction has caused. The growth of these
non-corporate, non-state actors who claim communal ownership of petroleum
is remarkable, and is having a decisive impact on the development of the
oil industry. This is especially true of the expansion of oil exploration
into the "margins"--areas that had previously been too distant from the
main centers of the oil industry. It is exactly there that the oil industry
is continually confronting people who still have a sense of the commons,
since they often have common property resources such as land, and methods
to regulate them. Consequently, the state and market paradigms of oil
ownership are clashing with dozens of new, often "small," local movements
and communities that, when integrated across the planet, are beginning to
have an impact on the legal status of oil ownership.
The Islamic Petroleum Commons: From Morocco to Indonesia
Another notion of a petroleum commons has developed in Islamic economic
theory and political practice since the 1970s. It claims that petroleum
found beneath Islamic territory is the common possession of the world-wide
Islamic community and neither state nor private property. This conception
is challenging the relations that have been worked out between global oil
companies and Islamic nation-states since World War I.
A key event in the development of the global oil industry was the
destruction of the last Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, at the end of World
War I. A Caliphate requires a secular military-political entity that is
pledged to defend the world-wide Islamic community, and the Ottoman Turks
had been performing this role of the "defenders of the faith" since the
fifteenth century. Their imperial lands included Iraq, Kuwait, and parts of
Saudi Arabia--i.e., the center of the main oil reserves of the planet. In
order for the petroleum industry to operate on a completely capitalist
basis, the large international oil companies and major imperialist powers
at the end of World War I (US, Britain, France) tore up the Ottoman
Caliphate and created a number of rentier states that were largely under
their control.
This antithesis between a Caliphate and the regular for-profit operation of
the oil industry is simple. An Islamic Caliphate had to recognize certain
redistributive economic principles (including the notion of a petroleum
common owned by the ummah, the entire Islamic community) that are
problematic to the kind of total corporate control envisioned by the
founders of the oil industry in the Middle East in period between 1918 and
1945. A genuine Caliphate would have had to invest in ways that would have
made it autonomous from the directives of the imperialist powers
(governmental or corporate). Finally, a genuine Caliphate would have had
worldwide reach, and be committed to intervening in areas where the Islamic
community resided. These areas were often essential parts of the empires of
Britain, France and Holland. (e.g., India, Algeria, and Indonesia).
What is called Islamic fundamentalism, or political Islam, or Islamism, is
an effort to revive the Caliphate almost a century after its end. This is
what gives these social movements their "global reach," for they claim to
unite and to "protect" the Islamic community--which presently stretches
from Morocco to Indonesia and, via immigration, into the heart of Europe
and North America.
Whatever the ultimate fate of this type of patriarchal politics and
whatever its class composition, this drive to a Caliphate is an important
reality for the oil industry since both are operating at the center of the
major oil reserves of the planet. Indeed, if one correlates the
nation-state members of the Organization of Islamic Congress with the oil
reserves that are estimated to lie in their territories, one sees that
nearly two-thirds of the world's petroleum is "Islamic." Such a drive, of
course, is toward an "imagined community"--but then again, what community
except the most intimate is not imagined?
Along with the revival of Islam as a political force has come the
development of an "Islamic economics" that has a number of tenets relevant
to the oil industry. First, since oil is a sub-soil resource, it is seen
from an Islamic perspective as a gift from Allah and hence a community
good. Although Islamic economics respects private property--after all,
Islam is a religion founded by a merchant--it also recognizes the role of
communally shared resources. Islamic economics accepts the standard
division of private, state and common property, and oil is definitely
included in the category of common property. It is now traditional to
repeat at this juncture the famous statement of Mohammed: "The people are
partners in three things: water, pastures and fire [today, petroleum]." The
recognition of an Islamic petroleum commons is seen as a first step in the
realization of an Islamic economics.
It is true, of course, some common property must be mined (like oil, gold,
silver, and iron), but the minerals themselves remain the common property
of all Muslims. The Caliphate might mine them itself or sub-contract their
collection, but all revenues gained from their sale should be kept in the
Bait al-Mal--the same treasury that the zakat or redistributive tithe, is
destined for.
The second principle of Islamic economics is the redistributive one.
Islam, for all of its respect of private property, instituted from its
beginning a system of income transfers. Even non-Muslims know of the zakat,
but there are many other redistributive mechanisms (e.g., the prohibition
of charging interest) that make doctrinaire neoliberalism literally
anathema in Islamic discourse. For a Caliphate is duty-bound to fund the
poor, the needy, the travelers, the debtors and jihad from the funds in the
Bait al-Mal. This is especially true of revenues derived from oil
production, since they are directly derived from the sale of a communal
good. Thus the charges of corruption hurled against the Saudi Arabian elite
by Islamists are especially damning, since the Saudi elite's extravagant
ways are literally denying bread to the mouths of poor Muslim babes that
Allah destined it for.
The third principle of Islamic economics is one based on the prohibition of
waste and the concern for conserving scarce resources. Indeed, if the
conspicuous consumption and self-protective expenditure on military
hardware of the present elites are stopped, there would be an imperative to
leave more oil in the ground. Such an economic policy would have an
enormous impact on the pricing of oil, since it would not be considered a
state or corporate commodity to be sold to the highest bidder; it would be
a common good whose conservation is of value in itself.
Common property in the Islamic tradition is often not emphasized in typical
academic expositions of Islamic economics, where the pride of place is
taken by a symbolic zakat and a banking system that denies a role to
interest. The works of Pakistani social thinker Savyid Abul-Ala Mawdudi
(1903-79), martyred Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) and Iraqi
writer Muhammad Baquir al-Sadr (1931-80)--the intellectual progenitors of
Islamic economics--are often taken to task for trying to impose unrealistic
constrains on the development of capitalism in the Islamic world, instead
of heeding the free market wisdom of Frederick Hayek! But while critics
cite the zakat and prohibition of interest, in fact their doctrine of the
petroleum commons that would certainly have a much greater impact on world
economics, if it were actually put into place throughout the Islamic world.
This oil doctrine is the theoretical basis of economic planning for an
Islamic world of more than a billion people. If a number of Islamic nations
actually transformed their petroleum resources into a commons, then three
important, perhaps even revolutionary, changes would follow. First, it
would lead to a tighter control of the pace of extraction and a willingness
to exercise the "Right to say 'No'," resulting in a much higher oil price.
Second, the surplus of the commons would immediately flow into
redistributive projects in the Islamic world and not into the financial
systems of Europe and the US. Finally, of course, the whole basis of the
neo-liberal program for the Middle East (as outlined in George W. Bush's
plan for the outcome of the Iraq war) would be definitely challenged.
The Global Petroleum Commons of the Future and the UN System
If we put together the local petroleum commons claims with those of Islamic
economic theorists, then more than 70% of the oil on the planet is
notionally claimed to be a part of a commons. Yet, there is still a third
notion of petroleum as a global commons that incorporates all oil deposits,
whether discovered or not. The proponents of this notion argue that the
consequences of the exploration, extraction, distribution and consumption
of petroleum are so problematic for "humanity" that they cannot be left to
the devices of private companies or nation states. There is, in this view,
a global petroleum commons that needs an appropriate regulative community.
But what is this community in its present incarnation? The most prominent
contemporary answer is: the United Nations system.
Indeed, the concept of a global commons has stimulated the revival of the
UN system's legitimacy in the 1990s--since the system had an identity
crisis after the end of the Cold War. For the UN system is increasingly
claiming to be the surrogate for a truly global community of humanity that
clearly does not yet exist. On the basis of this official representation of
the future global community, the UN system has negotiated a number of
accords with mining and energy companies that promised these companies
ideological legitimacy. These include the Global Compact and the Global
Mining Initiative as well as, of course, the Kyoto Accords. This makes the
UN system--which includes the World Bank and IMF--the global "partner" to
and regulator of the oil, gas and coal companies of the planet.
It is crucial to understand why in the last fifteen years the UN system
dares to claim the right to regulate petroleum as a global commons. During
this time the extractive industries, with special emphasis on mining and
oil, have been in crisis. This was not due to their reaching the absolute
limits on supply of minerals or oil. It was due to the refusal of billions
of people around the planet to accept the social and environmental impacts
of their destructive activities. What appears to be the "natural" limit of
extraction (as explained by either the Club of Rome's "asymptotic depletion
curves" or by M. King Hubbert's "peak oil" graphs) is simply the resistance
of an ever-wider circle of people to suffering the consequences of private
or state mineral or oil extraction with no compensation or redress. Global
warming, environmental pollution and illness, hazardous working conditions
have increasingly been the source of anxiety about, protest against and
disruption of operations in the extractive industries. Inevitably these
responses and the problems they address--not the difficulty of finding new
fields of coal, copper or petroleum--have led to these industries'
long-term loss of trust. The extractive industries needed some "legitimate
partner" to negotiate with that would not pose the immediate threatening
demands that organizations of workers and local communities increasingly
present.
Just as the extractive industries were undergoing their crisis, the UN
system was facing it own. After all, it was set up to negotiate the
conflicts of Capitalism vs. Communism and Colonialism vs. Anti-Colonialism.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and collapse of apartheid in South
Africa, what was the UN system to do with itself? Here is where the call of
the extractive industries, especially the oil industry, became one of its
lifelines. Its identity crisis could be resolved by becoming the "partner"
of the extractive industries and regulating them as a representative of the
coming global community.
The difficulties of such a surrogate global community has been brought to
every one's attention after more than a decade of the anti-globalization
movement's critique of the UN system's most powerful elements besides the
Security Council--the World Bank and IMF. Instead of the inherent problems
of the nation state being transcended by the rise to a global level, the
experience of the neo-liberal turn of the World Bank and IMF demonstrates
that the UN system often just magnifies the problems of nation-state
capitalism. This UN-based "coming global community" once again poses the
classic solution to all distributive problems: "What's yours is mine, and
what's mine is mine." Thus this "virtual community" (actually composed of
the UN-system and its satellite NGOs) feels free to demand, for example,
that indigenous people in the South respect "ecological zones" or
"conservation regions" it designates even though the actual indigenous
community has no real power to control the behavior of this imaginary
global community actually substituted for by the UN system. Indeed, the
global petroleum commons as defined by the UN system can be seen as merely
a preemptive strike against the local and Islamic commons.
The Petroleum Commons as Conflict and Opportunity
The entrance of "commoners" (indigenous peoples, Islamists, or UN
officials) into the world of oil ownership and production on the three
levels discussed here is undoubtedly creating major changes in the oil
industry worldwide. The logic of both market and state rationality is
increasingly losing its compelling power to determine the future of oil
extraction and, with it, the whole system of capitalist production it
energizes.
Critics of capitalism, however, cannot be complacent about the rise of the
petroleum commoners. This social reality also poses political problems that
can easily divide the anti-capitalist movement as well as make
neoliberalism stumble. Every local commons requires a regulatory community
with insiders and outsiders, and the outsiders might rightly demand to
become insiders, with all the attendant possibility of conflict. Similarly,
the regulation of the Islamic petroleum commons can conflict with the rules
of local communities and their claimed commons. Finally, the demands of the
global commons have already conflicted with the needs of local communities
and with the Islamic ummah. But whatever the results of these conflicts,
actual or potential, the assumption that petroleum is a different political
liquid from water has been put in doubt by the demands and struggles of the
petroleum commoners. Will petroleum be as common as water one day? Perhaps
----------
This article is based on the text of a talk given at the Fusion Arts Museum
in New York City on Nov. 7, 2004
---------------------
George Caffentzis is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. With the
Collective he has edited two books, both published by Autonomedia:
"Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War 1973-1992" and "Auroras of the Zapatistas:
Local and Global Struggles in the Fourth World War." Midnight Notes is
online at: www.midnightnotes.org.
For more on Nigeria and the Shell boycott, see:
http://www.essentialaction.org/shell/issues.html
-------------------
Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 10, 2004
Reprinting permissible with attribution
WW4Report.com
*************************************************************
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Vigilant, Independent Sentry of Truth in the War on Terrorism
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Ra Energy Fdn.
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Worksheet bio
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Blog
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More on the Social Security Greenweasel scam
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://raenergy.igc.org/bio.html
Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
More on the Social Security Greenweasel scam
"The federal budget surplus President Bush inherited came entirely
from Social Security surpluses resulting from the 1984 payroll tax
increase. Bush gave away revenues meant to provide for workers'
retirement as tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% of the population."
and consider,
"Opponents of Social Security have hated it since its creation in
1935. The first prediction of a Social Security crisis was published
in 1936! The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute are home to many
of the program's opponents today, and they fixate on the concept of a
"demographic imperative." In 1960, the United States had 5.1 workers
per retiree, in 1998 we had 3.4, and by 2030 we will have only 2.1.
Opponents claim that with these demographic changes, revenues will
eventually be insufficient to pay Social Security retirement benefits.
"The logic is appealingly simple, but wrong for two reasons. First,
this "old-age dependency" ratio in itself is irrelevant. No amount of
financial manipulation can change this fact: all current consumption
must come from current physical output. The consumption of all
dependents (non-workers) must come from the output produced by current
workers. It's the overall dependency ratio??the number of workers
relative to all non-workers, including the aged, the young, the
disabled, and those choosing not to work?that determines whether
society can "afford" the baby boomers' retirement years.
[Secondly],..."
* * *
Social Security Isn't Broken
So Why Does Greenspan Want to Fix It?
BY DOUG ORR
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress earlier this
year that everyone knows there's a Social Security crisis. That's like
saying "everyone knows the earth is flat."
Starting with a faulty premise guarantees reaching the wrong
conclusion. The truth is there is no Social Security crisis, but there
is a potential crisis in retirement income security and there may be a
crisis in the future in U.S. financial markets. It's this latter
crisis that Greenspan actually is worried about.
Social Security is the most successful insurance program ever created.
It insures millions of workers against what economists call "longevity
risk," the possibility they will live "too long" and not be able to
work long enough, or save enough, to provide their own income. Today,
about 10% of those over age 65 live in poverty. Without Social
Security, that rate would be almost 50%.
Social Security was originally designed to supplement, and was
structured to resemble, private-sector pensions. In the 1930s, all
private pensions were defined-benefit plans. The retirement benefit
was based on a worker's former wage and years of service. In most
plans, after 35 years of service the monthly benefit, received for
life, would be at least half of the income received in the final
working year.
Congress expected that private-sector pensions eventually would cover
most workers. But pension coverage peaked at 40% in the 1960s. Since
then, corporations have systematically dismantled pension systems.
Today, only 16% of private-sector workers are covered by
defined-benefit pensions. Rather than supplementing private pensions,
Social Security has become the primary source of retirement income for
almost two-thirds of retirees. Thus, Congress was forced to raise
benefit levels in 1972.
What has happened to private-sector defined benefit pensions? They've
been replaced with defined-contribution (DC) savings plans such as
401(k)s and 403(b)s. These plans provide some retirement income but
offer no real protection from longevity risk. Once a retiree depletes
the amount saved in the plan, that pension is gone.
In a generous DC plan, a firm might match the worker's contribution up
to 3% of his or her pay. With total contributions of 6%, average wage
growth of 2% a year, and an average return on the investment portfolio
of 5%, after 35 years of work, a retiree would exhaust the plan's
savings in just 8.5 years even if her annual spending is only half of
her final salary. If she restricts spending to just one-third of the
final salary, the savings can stretch to 14 years.
At age 65, life expectancy for women today is about 20 years, and for
men about 15 years, so DC savings plans will not protect the elderly
from longevity risk. The conversion of defined-benefit pensions to
defined-contribution plans is the source of the real potential crisis
in retirement income. Yet Greenspan did not mention this in his
testimony to Congress.
No Crisis
Opponents of Social Security have hated it since its creation in 1935.
The first prediction of a Social Security crisis was published in
1936! The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute are home to many of
the program's opponents today, and they fixate on the concept of a
"demographic imperative." In 1960, the United States had 5.1 workers
per retiree, in 1998 we had 3.4, and by 2030 we will have only 2.1.
Opponents claim that with these demographic changes, revenues will
eventually be insufficient to pay Social Security retirement benefits.
The logic is appealingly simple, but wrong for two reasons. First,
this "old-age dependency" ratio in itself is irrelevant. No amount of
financial manipulation can change this fact: all current consumption
must come from current physical output. The consumption of all
dependents (non-workers) must come from the output produced by current
workers. It's the overall dependency ratio??the number of workers
relative to all non-workers, including the aged, the young, the
disabled, and those choosing not to work?that determines whether
society can "afford" the baby boomers' retirement years. In the 1960s
we had 1.05 workers for each dependent, and we were building new
schools and the interstate highway system and getting ready to put a
man on the moon. No one bemoaned a demographic crisis or looked for
ways to cut the resources allocated to children; in fact, the living
standards of most families rose rapidly. In 2030, we will have 1.27
workers per dependent. We'll have more workers per dependent in the
future than we did in the past. While it is true a larger share of
total output will be allocated to the aged, just as a larger share was
allocated to children in the 1960s, society will easily produce
adequate output to support all workers and dependents, and at a higher
standard of living.
Second, the "demographic imperative" ignores productivity growth.
Average worker productivity has grown by about 2% per year, adjusted
for inflation, for the past half-century. That means real output per
worker doubles every 36 years. This productivity growth is projected
to continue, so by 2040, each worker will produce twice as much as
today. Suppose each of three workers today produces $1,000 per week
and one retiree is allocated $500 (half of his final salary)?then each
worker gets $833. In 2040, two such workers will produce $2,000 per
week each (after adjusting for inflation). If each retiree gets
$1,000, each worker still gets $1,500. The incomes of both workers and
retirees go up. Thus, paying for the baby boomers' retirement need not
decrease their children's standard of living.
So why the talk of a Social Security crisis? Social Security always
has been a pay-as-you-go system. Current benefits are paid out of
current tax revenues. But in the 1980s, a commission headed by
Greenspan recommended raising payroll taxes to expand the trust fund
in order to supplement tax revenues when the baby boom generation
retires. Congress responded in 1984 by raising payroll taxes
significantly. As a result, the Social Security trust fund, which
holds government bonds as assets, has grown every year since. As the
baby boom moves into retirement, these assets will be sold to help pay
their retirement benefits.
Each year, Social Security's trustees must make projections of the
system's status for the next 75 years. In 1996, they projected the
trust fund balance would go to zero in 2030. In 2000, they projected a
zero balance in 2036 and today they project a zero balance in 2042.
The projection keeps changing because the trustees continue to make
unrealistic assumptions about future economic conditions. The current
projections are based on the assumption that annual GDP growth will
average 1.8 % for the next 75 years. In no 20-year period, even
including the Great Depression, has the U.S. economy grown that
slowly. Each year the economy grows faster than 1.8%, the zero balance
date moves further into the future. But the trustees continue to
suggest that if we return to something like the Great Depression, the
trust fund will go to zero.
Opponents of Social Security claim the system will then be "bankrupt."
Bankruptcy implies ceasing to exist. But if the trust fund goes to
zero, Social Security will not shut down and stop paying benefits. It
will simply revert to the pure pay-as-you-go system that it was before
1984 and continue to pay current benefits using current tax revenues.
Even if the trustees' worst-case assumptions come true, the payroll
tax paid by workers would need to increase by only about 2%, and only
in 2030, not today.
If the economy grows at 2.4%?which is still slower than the stagnant
growth of the 1980s?the trust fund never goes to zero. The increase in
real output and real incomes will generate sufficient revenues to pay
promised benefits. By 2042, we will need to lower payroll taxes or
raise benefits to reduce the surplus.
The Real Fear: An Oversupply of Bonds
So why did Greenspan claim cutting benefits would become necessary? To
understand the answer, we need to take a side trip to look at how
bonds and the financial markets affect each other. It turns out that
rising interest rates reduce the selling price of existing financial
assets, and falling asset prices push up interest rates (see "How Does
the Bond Market Work?" p. 15).
For example, in the 1980s, President Reagan cut taxes and created the
largest government deficits in history up to that point. This meant
the federal government had to sell lots of bonds to finance the
soaring government debt; to attract enough buyers, the Treasury had to
offer very high interest rates. During the 1980s, real interest rates
(rates adjusted for inflation) were almost four times higher than the
historic average. High interest rates slow economic growth by making
it more expensive for consumers to buy homes or for businesses to
invest in new infrastructure. The GDP growth rate in the 1980s was the
slowest in U.S. history apart from the Great Depression.
But high interest rates also depress financial asset prices. A five
percentage point rise in interest rates reduces the selling price of a
bond (loan) that matures in 10 years by 50%. It was the impact of the
record-high interest rates of the 1980s on the value of the loan
portfolios of the savings and loan industry that caused the S&L crisis
and the industry's collapse.
Greenspan is worried because he sees history repeating itself in the
form of President Bush's tax cuts. In his testimony, Greenspan
expressed concern over a potentially large rise in interest rates.
This is his way of warning about an excess supply of bonds. Starting
in 2020, Social Security will have to sell about $150 billion (in 2002
dollars) in trust fund bonds each year for 22 years. At the same time,
private-sector pension funds will be selling $100 billion per year of
financial assets to make their pension payments. State and local
governments will be selling $75 billion per year to cover their former
employees' pension expenses, and holdings in private mutual funds will
fall by about $50 billion per year as individual retirees cash in
their 401(k) assets. Private firms will still need to issue about $100
billion of new bonds a year to finance business expansion. Combined,
these asset sales could total $475 billion per year.
This level of bond sales is more than double the record that was set
in the 1980s following the Reagan tax cuts. But back then, the newly
issued bonds were being purchased by "institutional investors" such as
private-sector pension funds and insurance companies. After 2020,
these groups will be net sellers of bonds. The financial markets will
strain to absorb this level of asset sales. It's unlikely they will be
able to also absorb the extra $400 billion per year of bond sales
needed to cover the deficit spending that will occur if the new Bush
tax cuts are made permanent. This oversupply of bonds will drive down
the value of all financial assets.
In a 1994 paper, Sylvester Schieber, a current advisor to President
Bush on pension and Social Security reform, predicted this potential
drop in asset prices. After 2020, the value of assets held in 401(k)
plans, already inadequate, will be reduced even more. More
importantly, at least to Greenspan, the prices of assets held by
corporations to fund their defined benefit pension promises will fall.
Thus, pension payments will need to come out of current revenues,
reducing corporate profits and, in turn, driving down stock prices.
It's this potential collapse in the prices of financial assets that
worries Greenspan most. In order to reduce the run-up of long-term
interest rates, some asset sales must be eliminated. Greenspan said,
"You don't have the resources to do it all." But rather than
rescinding Bush's tax cuts, Greenspan favors reducing bond sales by
the Social Security trust fund. Doing that requires a reduction in
benefits and raising payroll taxes even more.
Framing a question incorrectly makes it impossible to find a solution.
The problem is not with Social Security, but rather with blind
reliance on financial markets to solve all economic problems. If the
financial markets are likely to fail us, what is the solution? The
solution is simple once the question is framed correctly: where will
the real output that baby boomers are going to consume in retirement
come from?
The federal budget surplus President Bush inherited came entirely from
Social Security surpluses resulting from the 1984 payroll tax
increase. Bush gave away revenues meant to provide for workers'
retirement as tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% of the population.
We should rescind Bush's tax cuts and use the Social Security
surpluses to really prepare for the baby boom retirement. Public
investment or targeted tax breaks could be used to encourage the
building of the hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices that aging baby
boomers will need. Such investment in public and private
infrastructure would also stimulate the real economy and increase GDP
growth. Surpluses could be used to fund the training of doctors,
nurses and others to staff these facilities, and of other high skilled
workers more generally. The higher wages of skilled labor will help
generate the payroll tax revenues needed to fund future benefits. If
baby boomers help to fund this infrastructure expansion through their
payroll taxes while they are still working, less output will need to
be allocated when they retire. These expenditures will increase the
productivity of the real economy, which will help keep the financial
sector solvent to provide for retirees.
Destroying Social Security in order to "save" it is not a solution.
Doug Orr is a professor of economics at Eastern Washington University.
He is a regular speaker on the issues of private sector pensions and
Social Security and has published articles on these issues in national
and international journals. His e-mail is dorr@ewu.edu.
Resources Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, Social Security: The
Phony Crises, University of Chicago Press, 1999; William Wolman and
Anne Colamosca, The Great 401(k) Hoax, Perseus Publishing, 2002;
Sylvester J. Schieber and John B. Shoven, "The Consequences of
Population Aging on Private Pension Fund Saving and Asset Markets,"
National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 4665, 1994.
= = = Side Bar = = =
How Does the Bond Market Work?
A bond is nothing more than an IOU. A company or government borrows
money and promises to pay a certain amount of interest annually until
it repays the loan. When you buy a newly issued bond, you are making a
loan. The amount of the loan is the "face value" of the bond. The
initial interest rate at which the bond is issued, the "face rate,"
multiplied by this face value determines the amount of interest paid
each period. Until the debt is paid back, events in the financial
markets affect the bond's value.
If market interest rates fall, prices of existing bonds rise. Why?
Suppose you buy a bond with a face value of $100 that pays 10%. You
then collect $10 per year. If the current interest rate falls to 5%,
newly issued bonds will pay that new rate. Since your bond pays 10%,
people would rather buy that one than one paying 5%. They are willing
to pay more than the face value to get it, so the price will be bid up
until interest rates equalize. The price at which you could sell your
bond will rise to $200, since $10 is 5% of $200.
But changes in bond prices also affect interest rates. If more people
are selling bonds than buying them, an excess supply exists, and
prices will fall. If you need to sell your bond to get money to pay
your rent, you might have to lower the price of the bond you hold to
$50. Because the bond still pays $10 per year to the owner, the new
owner gets a 20% return on the $50 purchase. Anyone trying to issue
new bonds will have to match that return, so the new market interest
rate becomes 20%.
Issue #256, November/December 2004
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/1104orr.html
Note: We personally subscribe to this excellent magazine and
encourage readers to do the same, have a look
at http://www.dollarsandsense.org/
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
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Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
Designer Sin Designer Crime Inverted Morality is nonesence
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
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Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
"Fascism should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). http://raenergy.igc.org/republicanfascistparty.html
Designer Sin Designer Crime Inverted Morality is nonesence
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=Designer+Sin
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://raenergy.igc.org/bio.html
Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml
Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Ra+Energy+Fdn%2E%22
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead
