The Kiva organization has been defensive about its situation. It’s saying that the microfinance industry has no choice but to charge more than 50% in annual interest and fees to poor people in poor countries, and on occasion to harass its borrowers to collect repayments — sparking “No Pago” riots among the desperately poor. Kiva says that logistics and remoteness raise the cost levels so high that Kiva and its partners and its partners’ partners just can’t operate a microloan enterprise without these huge interest-and-fee packages.

It may or may not be true that usury and stalking borrowers is necessary for the microfinance industry to survive. But our goal in giving at Irregular Times is not to sustain the microfinance industry. Our goal is to help people, and there are ways to help people — like micro-grants without any interest or fees — that don’t involve usurious loans. We won’t get money back from from micro-grant institutions, but that’s alright with us. In fact, it’s preferable — and so we’ve shifted our international giving to other less ethically-conflicted institutions like Village Enterprise.

The thing is, we still had some of that original money invested in Kiva microloans, and as we were paid back we ended up with some funds to reinvest. As a way of handling this system, we sent those funds back to new borrowers through Kiva’s only zero-interest, no fee lender, the Nicaraguan institution ADEPHCA. ADEPHCA invests in poor and remote Creole communities along Nicaragua’s coast and has consistently refused to convert itself into a repo agency when its borrowers couldn’t pay back their loans. When hard times came to the Nicaraguan coast and push came to shove, ADEPHCA collected back just $984 in repayments out of its last round of $27,056 in loans. Some funds from Irregular Times were included in this latter amount.

Kiva, aggrieved that ADEPHCA hasn’t collected monies from its poor clients, has refused to work with ADEPHCA any more, declaring that “Kiva’s partnership with ADEPHCA is now closed” and sending Irregular Times an e-mail message apologizing for ADEPHCA’s compassion and imploring us to give Kiva another chance: “We hope that you realize that this default is a true exception to the norm and that you will give lending to the working poor another chance on our site.”

I wish the default weren’t an exception to the norm at Kiva, which is why with the default of these last microloans and our Kiva balance down $0, our relationship with Kiva is finally at an end.

We’ll continue to devote money from our shirt sales to helping poor people overseas, working through gifts and grants rather than loans. If you know of a non-profit doing good work to develop poor people’s economic independence without dragging them into debt, please leave a comment here with a link to that organization. We’ll take a look — and we’ll keep letting you know where our money goes in our donations thread.

1. To pay for the hosting and logistical costs associated with keeping Irregular Times up and running.
2. To help spread messages that we believe in.
3. To help change the world just a little bit.

#3 may seem odd to you; how does selling a shirt change the world, even just a little bit? Beyond the messages we place on the shirts themselves, we’re trying to help in a couple of ways. We’re trying to support an alternative to third-world sweatshop-based shirt production. How do you think those t-shirts made in Cambodia and sent all the way across the Pacific Ocean to your mall can be sold for just $12.99, when comparable shirts made in the United States cost $18.99? The answer is that the shirt producers in Cambodia are dancing to the tune set by their unethical American investors, paying workers meager wages in unsafe factories that are environmentally unregulated. Apparel production in the United States is regulated, audited, pays better wages and treats its workers better.

In the midst of the suffering, pollution and debt slavery that sweatshop production engenders, it accomplishes one thing: diverting money to impoverished nations. Of course, most of that money goes to enrich corrupt factory owners, but that’s better than nothing, right? What a weak argument that is. There must be a way to reward more humane apparel production while supporting third world development. Irregular Times’ approach to this is to continue to working with sweat-free American producers but to take a dollar out of the profits of every shirt we sell and send it to an overseas development charity that benefits the poor and downtrodden, not exploitative cronies.

As we continue to sell liberal t-shirts, the time’s come around again to make that donation for overseas development. We’re avoiding Kiva, which charges usurious rates in ultimately destructive microloans. Instead, we’ve sent a donation to Village Enterprise, a non-profit organization working in East Africa. Village Enterprise finds people who are severely impoverished, who are struggling to feed themselves and their children, and gives them money outright — not willy-nilly, but to get them on their feet and start a sustainable local business. Along with the grant comes the training needed to run a business well and manage money. Thanks to Village Enterprise’s approach, 75% of the startup businesses are still in operation after 4 years and 93% of those businesses actually have accumulated savings. More importantly, 90% of the new business owners have been able to send their children to school, and 75% of their families have increased food security.

Just as we write to spread political information and ideas, we want the money we bring in from selling t-shirts to make a difference politically — so we have committed to donating another for every shirt we sell to an American political group doing work that we believe in. This past month, when Rush Limbaugh calls a woman a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying on Capitol Hill regarding contraceptive health care policy, we wanted to do more that offer this set of Sluts Vote t-shirts as a counterpoint. This month’s donation goes to Planned Parenthood, an organization that not only provides low-cost access to contraception, S.T.D. treatment and abortions for women, but also advocates for a vision of America in which it’s not a crime to exercise these options.

Where should we send dollars next? If you have a good idea, let us know.

New Zealand protesters with Occupy Auckland didn’t have that option today. When Auckland Police officers moved in to break up the Occupy Auckland protest, they were using fake badge numbers.

Observant Occupy Auckland protesters caught the cops with some careful observation. While the police were taking apart tents and hauling protesters off to jail, some people were filming, and looking at the video, one thing became clear – more than one police officer was using the badge ID number Z557.

Use of the badge number Z557 has been documented by three police officers. Others may be involved. Some reports say that five different police officers used the same fake badge number.

The use of the fake badges suggests that some among the Auckland police were prepared to violate the law in order to break up the Occupy Auckland protest, knowing that their own illegal anti-protester activities could not be traced back to them.

I don’t know what the specific laws are in New Zealand for dealing with police officers who present false identities to the citizens they’re arresting, but it’s clear that the Auckland police have abused the trust of the people they have been hired to serve. Some are saying that it’s the Auckland police, and not the Occupy Auckland protesters, who belong behind bars.

I think that’s a fair cop.

Does that sound familiar? It’s the same political playbook being used by the Republican presidential candidates here in the United States of America. In today’s South Carolina primary, the remaining Republican candidates are competing over who can be the most intolerant.

Public Radio International reports what the consequences of this radical regressive approach have been for Hungary. A huge number of young Hungarians are leaving the nation for better places. They’re seeking to get away from “this whole attitude that many people have here, I think, which is, one of intolerance.”

Many young Hungarians are coming to the USA. It would be terrible thing if we disappointed them by electing an intolerant national leader of our own. To move forward, Americans need to reject the fear and hate of the Republican Party in this November’s election.

It’s time to make another donation, and this time around we’re giving to Village Enterprise, which makes free skills training and grants rather than usurious microloans to poor people in East Africa so they can start up their own small businesses.

So, a group calling itself OccupyWEF – Occupy the World Economy Forum – has formed to organize creative protests at the site of the conference. The group has issued a statement explaining its first tactic: Snow architecture.

The statement explains, “We defend ourselves against the power of corporations and corrupt elites. Starting on January 21, 2012, together we are building an igloo camp, made of snow and ice… And wherever you are: Give your power on January 21, 2012 to an international day of protest against the 1%, which we blame for the rules of an unfair world economy and for stealing our future.”

As this photograph by JUSO Schweiz shows, the Occupy Igloo activism has already started. There’s not only an igloo to house the Davos Occupy protest, but a snow podium too, for frigid press conferences.

It’s true, though. In the Republic of Kiribati in the South Pacific, a big tanker has run aground on the island of Kiritimati releasing over 140 tons of oil, which will soon wash up on the islands beautiful beaches, subjecting a generation of larval crabs to deadly toxins.

The Kiritimati red crabs live in the jungle on the island, but return to the ocean surf to breed and lay their eggs. Large numbers of whale sharks, the largest fish in the world, are now gathering in the waters around Kiritimati, to eat the larval crabs. So, it’s likely that the whale sharks will also be harmed as they eat their way through clouds of their fouled prey.

Unfortunately, a lot of relief charities use their distribution of largesse to press sectarian religious beliefs onto people in need. We try to avoid those groups. Instead, this month we’ve donated funds to the Humanist Crisis Response of the Foundation Beyond Belief, which is an organization of non-religious people seeking to help their fellow human beings. The Humanist Crisis Reponse is currently working to ameliorate famine in the Horn of Africa where Ethiopia, Eritraea and Somalia meet. We’re grateful for the work of the Foundation Beyond Belief; if you have money to spare we encourage you to give what you can.

The facts are that Newt Gingrich hasn’t taught history since before the days of disco. He only taught history as an assistant professor for four years, before being turned down for tenure by an obscure, second-rate college.

Newt Gingrich’s early failure as an historian was echoed this week when Gingrich declared that the Palestinian people were invented.

Today, an invented Palestinian was killed when he was struck in the face by another invention – a tear gas canister. Also in recent news, there’s an invented Palestinian film festival going on in Bristol, invented Palestinians recently released from Israeli custody are resuming their invented lives, and Israel has been accused of torturing invented Palestinian children.

Newt Gingrich says that there’s no such thing as a real Palestinian, because Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. By that logic, Syrians and Turks and Greeks and Egyptians are all living “invented” nationalities, because their nations were swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire as well.

Of course, in a literal sense, the idea of any nation is an invention. Humans made it up. What does that prove? Gingrich isn’t referring merely to the literal meaning of the concept of “invented” nationality. He’s speaking about something much more vague, more undefined because it’s based on a current political bias rather than an objective analysis of history.

Gingrich won’t call Israel an invented nation, or the Jews an invented people. His point seems to be that some ethnicities and nationalities are more valid and more real than others, though he hasn’t given any criteria for what makes some nations less invented than others.

Gingrich’s own religion teaches that there were non-Jewish people living in Palestine. Of course, non-Christians understand that the Bible isn’t an accurate historical document. But now, Gingrich’s right wing Christian literalist base of support might want to ask itself if Gingrich has decided that the Bible promotes falsehoods.

The underlying problem with Newt Gingrich’s sloppy statement about the “invented Palestinian people” is that it’s got no basis in a serious examination of history or current events. It’s simply an idea that Gingrich invented in order to justify an unsustainable, extremist Middle East policy, in which he calls the effort to build peace between Jews and Palestinians as “delusional”.

If I were to invent a nation just for deluded people, I would name it the Republican of Delusion, and I would appoint Newt Gingrich as its Delusional Dictator for Life.

A reasonable candidate for President might remember that the United States of America itself is an invented nation, consisting of an invented people, brought together not by territorial claims, by religious belief or by ethnic heritage, but by trust in the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.

But, Newt Gingrich is not a reasonable candidate for President. That’s why I say, No Newt is Good Newt.