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TURMEL: Mea Culpa About The Engineer's Bill. 
 
     One reader noted that I had earlier stated that when my 
global-sized engineering project was complete, I was going to 
hand the world a global-sized Statement of Account. Mea culpa. 
That's true. I have often half-joked that I would eventally 
submit my bill for my professional services as "banking systems 
engineer" and include all expenses I incurred including LETS 
promotion and development. 
 
     So yes, if the Abolish Interest Rates Project takes 21 years 
as somehow expected, I'd have no hesitation in submitting a bill 
for 100,000 Hours worth of Timedollars for 100,000 on the job to 
the central LETS bank. I suspect the millions of account holders 
world-wide would honour a similar sized fee for Michael Linton's 
full-time devotion to the LETS phase of the AIR project. I doubt 
many would mind each chipping in few Time Minutes to replace our 
Hours on the job so we can retire. 
 
     And I always expected to someday get my principle back. 
Nevertheless, I consider all the interest I could have made over 
the last 12 years on my $22000 as my gift to the world. At 
compound interest, it's probably more than my initial interest-
free loan to the world anyway. When you consider the number of 
times I've been a pauper since then and the consequent 
deprivation for my loved ones, you'll understand the number times 
I've had the opportunity to rue my decision to give that $22000 
away. But I never have. And, I'm proud to say, neither have my 
family who suffered those pangs of pauperty - new word for 
pauperism only because it rhymes better with "poverty," 
"property," all sorts of "ities" with which to rhyme - with me. 
We're good Quebec Social Credit stock and interest-free loans is 
what sociable credit is all about following Christ's lending 
dictum: "Lend expecting nothing in return." I don't expect my 
principle back soon but bet it will be someday returned. 
 
     For all those who have requested reposts, there is some good 
news. The newsgroup "ncf.ca.lets" contains all my LETS-related 
articles back to the end of May 1996. Go get what you want now 
before someone deletes 4 or 5 months worth. 
 
     What funniest is that I have no hesitation in believing that 
the publication of the Turmel Two-Step Poker Point Count System 
will win me the crown of King of the Professional Gamblers, so 
also winning the Crown of the world's legendary super loser turns 
that joke on the world, doesn't it? 
 
     For the best synopsis of the first 5 years on the AIR 
Project by the King of the Fringers, Hubert Bauch's story in the 
Great Canadian Character Anthology sums everything up best:
 
                The Great Canadian Character Anthology
 
Eden Press: ISBN: 0-920792-54-5
 
     If you still look upon Canadians as a bland and boring 
bunch, this book is guaranteed to change your mind!
     The Great Canadian Character Anthology will introduce you to 
a new breed of unforgettable personalities.
     Real people. True Canadians whose careers, hobbies, ideas, 
achievements or passions make them GREAT!
     This cross-country collection of a few of our more colourful 
characters allows you to travel the country and meet these 
special people without ever having to leave your easy chair.
 
Page 17
 
HE ALSO RAN .... AND RAN.... AND RAN 
 
by HUBERT BAUCH
 
OTTAWA, Ontario - On the morning after every election day they 
find themselves facelessly lumped together in the dense agate 
type columns of the newspaper riding breakdowns as "Others." 
 
They are the fringe players of the political parties who operate 
without the brand-name security that adherence to one of the 
major parties imparts They are the vast army of independents of 
all stripes, Social Crediters of assorted colorations, western 
separatists, Quebec separatists, Northern Ontario separatists, 
wildly clashing hues of Marxists and/or Leninists, fundamental 
communists, Libertarians, Rhinos, Greens and many, many more.
 
They are a faceless legion, marching out of step with each other 
to the beat of private drummers whose irresistible rhythms pound 
in their skulls, making them go out and march. They are never 
seen chatting with Mike Duffy on "The National." Generally the 
only media recognition they get is in the nether paragraphs of 
election-time newspaper stories. Paragraphs that begin: "Also 
running in Effluent Creek-Sasquatch are ..." In fact, the only 
times they are assured of getting their names in print are on the 
ballot itself and in the final report of the Chief Returning 
Officer, which dutifully records their participation along with 
their inevitably dismal vote tallies that once more injure the 
sustaining illusion that maybe this time they could beat the 
odds.
 
It is therefore consistent that we should find the name of John 
C. Turmel in the returning officer's report, buried deep in the 
field of candidates who contested the federal riding of Beaches 
last summer. It was an eight-man race and Turmel finished 
seventh.
 
Beaches has a reputation as a granola-fed, upwardly mobile 
constituency, widely hailed as the creeping white paint centre of 
Metro Toronto and the major papers rated it as one of the most 
exciting individual riding contests in the country, one in which 
all three of the major parties had a clear shot at winning. 
Eventually Neil Young retained it for the NDP with 14,914 votes 
to 12,443 for Conservative Jack Jones and 8,155 for Terry Kelly 
of the Liberals. Between them they accounted for 96 per cent of 
the ballots cast.
 
Few people paid attention to the other five guys who staged their 
own race for the remaining four per cent. Here, judging from the 
final result, the real contest was to avoid finishing last. It 
was a fate that would have befallen John Turmel had it not been 
for one Ron Thersen, standard-bearer for the Commonwealth Party, 
who wound up with 27 votes in his column, or .07 per cent of the 
grand total.
 
Turmel could take comfort that he had whipped this guy good with 
his own 285 votes and .31 per cent. Still, he'd taken it in the 
ear from the Libertarian wimp who wound up with 353 votes, and he 
was way behind the upstart from the Greens who came close to 
breaking 600. That hurt a bit. After all, John Turmel isn't just 
another fringer, he's the current king of the fringers. 
 
Compared to John Turmel, most of these characters are mere fly-
by-nighters. At age 34, Turmel is the Dr. Gonzo of fringe 
politics. He works the fringe with a vengeance, and he works it 
full time. He runs in every election he can get to, federal 
elections, provincial elections and by-elections. He has run for 
public office nineteen times during the past six years(1). Not 
only does he run often, he runs hard. He is loud and outrageous, 
and though most people try to ignore him wherever he goes, he has 
a way of making himself noticed. In the morgue of his home-town 
paper in Ottawa, his file is thicker than those of most members 
of the current cabinet.
 
There are pictures of him in his trademark white hard hat with 
THE ENGINEER stenciled across the front, picketing the Bank of 
Canada head office with a huge sign that declares "Bankers Are 
Crooks." Here's one from '82 where he is being led out of the 
International Monetary Fund general meeting by two Toronto 
constables. This time the sign says: "Bankers Starve Third World 
Babies."
 
Here is a story that explains the latter sign. Turmel dragged 
Bank of Canada Governor Gerald Bouey before the Supreme Court 
claiming that the bank's interest rate policy is genocidal 
because it drives farmers into bankruptcy at a time when people 
are starving in Ethiopia. He himself has lost count of the number 
of times he has launched court actions against banks but he 
figures he's getting close to two hundred. Here he is up against 
the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission in 
the Federal Court of Appeal claiming he was discriminated against 
because the local CTV outlet didn't give him equal air time 
during one of his federal election runs.
 
There are various accounts of stunts he pulled during his various 
election campaigns, most notably the time he ran for mayor of 
Ottawa in 1980. And, hello, what have we here? An item that 
recounts how John Turmel was sentenced to three weeks in jail for 
running what the authorities insisted was an illegal blackjack 
game in the basement room of an all-night restaurant on Bank 
Street.
 
Other politicians, even of the fringe variety, might be inclined 
to regard such a conviction as detrimental to a career in public 
life, but not John Turmel. He freely admits that he earns his 
living playing cards, and he insists it was the conviction for 
running the game on Bank Street that led him into politics.
 
Today happens to be Thursday, so John and his brother Ray are in 
the ramshackle two-room suite they occupy in a low-rent, two-
storey box-like structure on the unfashionable edge of Ottawa's 
Centretown. They are preparing for their weekly march on 
Parliament Hill and the Bank of Canada.
 
"We're at the Bank of Canada about noon every Thursday," says 
John. Ray lets John do all the talking. "Then at about 1:30 we 
move up to picket Parliament Hill. We've been doing the Bank of 
Canada for about four years and Parliament for about three. It's 
been effective. Eccentric and a little out of the ordinary, but 
effective."(2)
 
The boys are freshly back from Atlantic City, where they say they 
had an outstanding weekend. "See here,"" says John, reaching into 
a filing cabinet drawer beside the desk. He comes up with a brown 
envelope and pulls out an inch-thick wad of greenbacks. "God," he 
says, "gave me the gift to walk into a game and walk out with all 
the cash."
 
He is a card counter who has mastered the knack of keeping track 
of the cards that have been played from a given deck in a 
blackjack game and taking advantage of the shortening odds as the 
game progresses. He says he's been barred from the casinos in 
Vegas, but Atlantic City is still prime territory. " They haven't 
caught on there yet," he says. "I play craps too. I used to go to 
Vegas and it was only blackjack, and they'd say card counter, you 
know, throw him out. Now I go in and I play craps too. I mix up a 
game where I can't win with a game where I do win."
 
He says a natural aptitude for mathematics led him to bridge and 
then to blackjack, which he played throughout his university 
years at Carleton, where he took a degree in electrical 
engineering. He also showed enough expertise at the mechanics of 
blackjack that he was subsequently hired as a teaching assistant 
in the mathematics department for a course on gambling. That 
lasted for four years before he was abruptly dismissed for 
running a widely publicized blackjack game in the Carleton 
faculty lounge.
 
By then he was heavily involved in a campaign to legalize 
gambling by running games under the noses of the local police 
department, inviting them to come and arrest him. They did this 
on several occasions and each time Turmel defended himself 
claiming he had observed obscure provisions of the Criminal Code 
that rendered his games technically legit.
 
A succession of magistrates was unimpressed with his arguments. 
In February of 1882 he was dispatched to spend two weeks in the 
Ottawa Regional Detention Centre, where he said he spent most of 
his time playing cards. "Imagine that, I get put away for having 
a deck of cards and look what I wind up doing." In September he 
was back up on the same charge. This time he got a choice: no 
card playing for three years or twenty-one days in jail. He chose 
the twenty-one days. "I couldn't face three years without 
intellectual stimulation," he said as they led him away.(3)
 
The first time he ran in an election, in 1979, he says he ran on 
a platform that called for legalized gambling. "I figured that 
they ought to have something better to do than chase gamblers. 
Especially when I wanted to legalize the industry. That was 
mainly the thrust of my first campaign when I decided to run."
 
The combination of gambling and politics turned out to be the 
catalyst for the vision that struck him six years ago at age 28. 
The vision was a variation of the old Social Credit doctrine of 
Major C.H. Douglas, which he had first heard of at the knee of 
his grandfather, Adelard Turmel, who had stumped with Real 
Caouette in northwestern Quebec during the '30s. The vision was 
that the world would be right if the banking system worked on the 
same principle as a casino bank.(4)
 
"It's so difficult for people to believe that you can run it as 
simple as a casino bank because it would be an admission that 
they've been conned, that they've been ripped off," he says. "If 
you understand a casino bank that doesn't inflate, you can 
understand maybe how."
 
One of the few things that most fringe candidates have in common 
is that they tend to subscribe to a grand universal scheme that 
would transform society, a system so simple that everyone should 
be able to grasp it, but that is never implemented because it is 
opposed by powerful vested-interest groups and because people 
would feel foolish once its basic simplicity became clear.(5)
 
What sets Turmel apart is that few such people have the massive 
ego to pursue their ideal with quite the intensity he shows. He 
has distilled his system into a complex algebraic formula, and 
his modus operandi between elections is to collar economists and 
other bank types as they emerge from the Bank of Canada and give 
them odds of 10,000 to 1 that they cannot disprove the formula. 
So far, he says, none of them has taken his money. They used to 
stop and try to debate with him, but they don't any more. "It's 
just too unbelievable to believe that you could run it like a 
poker game. You've got collateral, they've got chips. No 
interest, no inflation. At the end of the game the chips buy back 
exactly what the collateral was."
 
The economists, of course, think Turmel is a nut case, as do many 
people who have been exposed to his high-octane rhetoric. They 
try to make their points with him, then walk away shaking their 
heads under a barrage of Turmel's insistent, speedy rap that 
makes no concessions to the sacred cows of contemporary economic 
talk.
 
He is, of course, convinced he's a genius. "My claim to fame," he 
says, "is that if Einstein made it big by algebraically linking 
energy and mass accurately, I claim I've made it bigger by 
algebraically linking interest and inflation, because it's a far 
more relevant problem to society's misery." Now who's going to 
counter that by quoting him John Maynard Keynes or Milton 
Freidman?(6)
 
W.J. Schneider, the Carleton professor who hired Turmel as 
teaching assistant for the gambling course, recalled, with 
understatement, that he found his protege somewhat rigid in his 
thinking. "Sometimes he gets simple things wrong and sometimes he 
grasps sophisticated ideas very quickly, but either way he's 
stubborn about it. He went from totally apolitical to running for 
everything. One day his interest in interest rates was 
nonexistent, the next day it was the single motivating factor in 
his life."
                                                                                 
Turmel doesn't only blow his own horn. He advises others on how 
to use his guerrilla court tactics to stall bank foreclosures by 
tying up their cases in the judicial mill. "If a criminal can 
stall, stall, stall by appealing, appealing, appealing, why can't 
a poor person stall the same way?" 
 
Jean Metcalfe of Smiths Falls, an Ottawa Valley town, is one 
person who doesn't think John Turmel is a nut case. Metcalfe, who 
suffers from severe allergies, was ordered to vacate her property 
by the Bank of Montreal a few years ago for non-payment of rent, 
despite her pleas that she could not survive in the outside 
world. "John offered his help," she said, "and now he keeps me 
here by appealing the eviction notices. He comes and goes with me 
to court because I'm not able, and he doesn't charge me anything. 
He really cares."
 
George Bothwell is a farmer from Owen Sound who got the same kind 
of help from Turmel. "His method will buy a lot of time if 
nothing else," he says. "I don't think he's a nut. A little 
egotistical - maybe even a lot - but what he's saying has a lot 
of merit."(7)
 
Besides playing blackjack and politics, Turmel also plays the 
accordion. Ultimately, his three-week jail term in '81 was 
changed to a hundred hours of community service, which he 
performed by playing the accordion in old folks' homes. The one 
hundred hours have since been put in, but he still plays for the 
golden-agers. "They kept calling," he says, "and how do you say 
no?"
 
He even got a kind word from Ottawa's mayor, Marion Dewar, 
against whom he ran in the 1980 municipal election. "You have to 
face the fact that there's nothing you can do to stop them," she 
said when asked about the nuisance factor posed by fringe 
candidates like Turmel. "It's a small price to pay for living in 
a democracy. Besides, he has a great sense of humor, and one-on-
one he's very good. "
 
Turmel himself is only slightly put out by those who do call him 
crazy. "I hear it said behind my back," he says, "and I hear the 
odd media treat me that way. But I don't mind looking like the 
eccentric who is unassailable on his theory. I've been 
brutalized, but I'm tough, OK. I've taken a few lickings, but I 
want to fight the system. This way I'm doing good. I believe I'm 
doing good."
 
He has even been victimized by impostors. During the 1980 
municipal election it was duly reported in the local papers that 
John Turmel had added a new plank to his platform calling for the 
legalization of bigamy to protect children from marriage 
breakdown. "This way if a wife decides to leave, " he was quoted 
as saying, "she'll still have visiting rights and the child will 
still have a family to live with."
 
Turmel had to deny this vigorously the next day. The papers, in 
their own defence, said they ware easily misled by the prankster 
because they figured it was the kind of thing John Turmel would 
naturally come out with.
 
Not this, not all the brickbats nor his nineteen consecutive 
election losses have in any way deterred Turmel. For a political 
free spirit this looks like a perfect day. It's sunny outside, 
perfect weather for picketing the Bank of Canada. He's got his 
envelope full of winnings from Atlantic City and he's at work on 
a private, no-interest system of cashing people's welfare cheques 
that would undermine companies that do this for a profit.(8) He's 
also plotting to take over what's left of the federal Social 
Credit Party to avenge the indignity a few years back when they 
kicked him out.
 
"I like to think I'm the fourth force in Canadian politics," he 
says cheerfully, "There's the Grits and the Tories and the NDP. 
Then there's me, and then there's all the others."
 
JCT:
 
(1) 41 elections entered in 1997 Guinness Book of Records. 
 
(2) 5 years picketing Bank of Canada.
 
(3) John Casino Turmel convicted 7 times of running an honest 
game. Acquitted once. Last conviction in "Project Robin Hood" 
raid in 1993.
 
(4) Local currencies from local Poker games could be used for 
Local Employment Trading.
 
(5) The World Hails LETS lifeboats without realizing they're 
merely computerized Poker chips. 
 
(6) P < principle, I < Interest, i < Interest Rate, t < Time
 
                               PERCENT    ALGEBRA   EXP. FUNC
 
Production costs (principal)     100         P          1
 
Production prices (Debt)        100+i       P+I       exp(it)
 
Purchasable Value                100         P           1
or ratio of money to prices     -----      -----      -------
or survivors                    100+i       P+I       exp(it)
 
Unpurchasable value               i          I             1
or forced unemployment     U=  -----      -----    1 - --------
or non-survivors                100+i       P+I         exp(it)
 
For U=0, let                     i=0        I=0      i=0 or t=0
 
     The odds of survival are always set by the interest rate(i). 
P/(P+I) survive, I/(P+I) do not. Verifiable by competent 
engineers.
 
(7) Stiff-the-bank Kit stall foreclosure record held by the 
Toronto Woodhouse family at 32 months before eviction. 
 
(8) Foster Merchant Program pairing with cash-flush merchants 
with welfare recipients needing to have their cheques cashed 
after providing photo-ID and guaranteeing those government 
cheques. Over 500 Foster merchant cheque-cashing cards issued to 
needy Ottawa families to escape the 6% Money Mart Trap. 
 
     
     Hubert, I owe you something for putting this on the web. 
This is the finest, fairest and funniest report of my first 5 
years on the job ever written. Drop me a line and I'll take care 
of you.  
 
                       THEN CAME L.E.T.$.
                "Local Employment Trading System" 
                  Engineered by Michael Linton
--
John C. "The Engineer" Turmel, Leader, Abolitionist Party of Canada
Box 111 Canada K2C 3L4, Tel/Fax:613-723-2739
All TURMEL topics to newsgroup: can.politics
Help Abolish Interest Rates by visiting www.u-net.com/gmlets