BANKING ATTORNEY JOBS

Geneva, Hotel de Ville, Alabama Room. Photo taken March 2003.

This is the city's historic ceremonial room where special events and presentations are held. This is also where the Geneva Accords were initiated in 1867, as part of a settlement in one of the first international court cases ever held. The legal confrontation was offered as an alternative to a military one pitting the United States against Great Britain over damages allegedly inflicted against the United States by the Confederate naval vessel, CSS Alabama, during the course of the American Civil War.

This attempt to convene an international court to settle a dispute between two nations was historic. It was also the first modern attempt by a third party and neutral nation, in this case Switzerland, to successfully arbitrate a dispute as an alternative to going to war.

Geneva and Switzerland stood to loose much financially if the US and England went to war, not to mention the disruption of future international trade such a war would cause involving other countries on which Swiss investors depended. It was logical that the Swiss do everything possible to resolve the dispute which had arisen from the American Civil War. The US won their case, but only token damages were awarded. It was a moral victory, but the precedent was far more valuable.

The years immediately after the end of the American Civil War were bruising for both America and its traditional allies with relations strained during the conflict. The war would have very nearly brought an end to the United States if the South had been successful. After the Confederates were defeated in 1865, many Unionists called for reparations for war damages from those who had in anyway supported the vanquished. Chief among the targets were the British.

In an effort to head off unbridled nationalism in the US and animosity toward the United Kingdom in America for England's alleged, if only tacit, support for the Confederacy, Canada was made a separate nation. Should the US decide to officially invade its northern neighbor, which it had, it would no longer be attacking England, but a sovereign nation not unlike the US. Fortunately, the US has managed to not attack Canada since then.

The resulting Geneva Accords were the first of many which the US and the British have long championed among the nations of the world. Though it is difficult to say that warfare can ever be civil, at least through the ongoing discussions and implementation of generally accepted rules of engagement, conflicts can be more limited and leaders held more accountable.

The recent leadership in the US, from 2001 until early 2009, stood alone in their having said after 2001 that the Geneva Accords are, to use their word, irrelevant. What an irony given the history of the Geneva Accords. How many Americans know that this room and the events which took place here are deeply rooted in American history? To say the Geneva Accords, a living and evolving set of documents and agreements between nations, is irrelevant would not be too distant from their describing the US Constitution, the world's oldest written constitution still in use, is also irrelevant. Thankfully a different set of leaders have begun to emerge in the US since 2008 who have a better appreciation of history. With effort they may be able to restore this country's commitment to the rule of law. This is, after all, among the reasons America and Americans were once so admired by so many for so long.

The Alabama Room is a living reminder that the United States has a responsibility to others in how it conducts its policies, both internally and internationally. Taking the right course in accordance with established law ultimately is in America's best interests. This historic room located in Geneva's city hall should be proof to all Americans that this course, begun in 1867, is not one which should be taken lightly by any United State President, no matter how inconvenient it might appear to be. The loss of this nation's integrity, as seen from the perspective of other nations and people, is not worth any temporary gain that might be achieved by an equally temporary American political leader.

From this Southerner's perspective on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the discovery of the Alabama Room was an unexpected gem. In this photo the entry to the Alabama Room is seen through a logia just beyond a public street in the old town section of Geneva. Not without some irony, high above the logia leading to the Alabama Room is a stone tablet inscribed with the names of the citizens of Geneva who declared the city's independence from France and Napoleon’s Empire in 1813, thus taking the first step toward the establishment of the modern Swiss nation. At least two of the family names listed on Geneva's declaration of 1813 can also be found among those who signed the Ordinance of Secession in 1860, South Carolina's unsuccessful attempt to separate itself from the

Time now, ladies and gentlemen, for The Real Story of Thanksgiving---->

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

Now, you know the usual story of Thanksgiving: They landed. They had no clue where they were, no idea how to feed themselves. The Indians came out, showed 'em how to pop popcorn, fed 'em turkey, saved 'em basically -- and then white European settlers after that basically wiped out the Indian population. It's a horrible example. Not only is that not true, here is the part that's been omitted from what is still today taught as the traditional Thanksgiving story in many schools. "The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store,' when they got here, 'and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

"They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. ... [William] Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. ... Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,' and it had failed" miserably because when every put things in the common store, some people didn't have to put things in for there to be, people that didn't produce anything were taking things out, and it caused resentment just as it does today. So Bradford had to change it.

"What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering," that happens today and will happen "in the future. 'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote.

"'For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without [being paid] that was thought injustice.' ... The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?"

Here's what Bradford wrote, the governor of the Massachusetts colony. "'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?" or an Obamaite, if I can update it. "Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? ... Anyway, the pilgrims found "In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. ... So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.'&