On November 15, world statesmen are gathering in Washington, DC to debate about global recession and a much needed change in the global financial architecture. This fall's summit, which should impose a new Bretton Woods order, is not the first international response to the financial crisis. Much has already been discussed in the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the Financial Stability Forum, the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, G7, and G20. Besides negotiating, actual measures showing international generosity and solidarity have been taken. Just during the last month, the IMF poured millions of dollars into various parts of the globe - $2.1 billion in Iceland, $16.5 billion in Ukraine and $15.7 billion in Hungary. Pakistan and Belarus might receive a financial boost in upcoming days too.

Solutions are being sought on the international level, because the problems are also international. Many prominent economists, including Nobel Prize laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, have asked how to cope with almost unprecedented economic slowdown. Their message is clear; the world needs a working international body which should warn us about the next crisis in advance. Despite some differences, all their suggestions have one thing in common; they contain the word "global".

This trend towards international action seems to be natural under inconvenient economic conditions. Countries drowning in their economic problems need help, since nations often can't help themselves. During conflicts and crises affecting the entire world, national leaders rapidly understand that they are interdependent on the other actors. Historically, in the 20th century, we can observe that this phenomenon appears after deep recessions; for instance, after WW1 and WW2, the Great depression of the 1930s, or the collapse of the Soviet Union. No wonder that recently the call for common action is loud, too. Not surprisingly, nowadays all the existing fears of losing sovereignty have been disappearing and nation-centered thinking has subsided.

What is more, wider international cooperation usually starts with economic agreements. In post-war Europe the first stirrings of today's European Union consisted of agreements in the coal and iron industries. Nobody at that time thought that the European Parliament or European Commission could emerge and cope with a non-economic agenda, including Schengen passport-free zone guaranteeing free movement of persons within the continental EU or cutting car emissions of carbon dioxide by a fifth. The same expansion of attention might result from the recent financial crisis. Cooperation on an economic basis can result from an effective supranational body dealing with a wider range of issues.

Right now, the world is actually hungry for solutions of other global issues. In particular, the upcoming year 2009 will bring together statesmen to Copenhagen who are worried about the rising level of CO2 and will mobilize American peace-lovers concerned about proliferation of nuclear weapons and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Before reaching any compromise with a bunch of foreign countries, though, people need to experience a threat like a decrease in their living standards, which has been the case in the financial crisis. Despite early warning voices from economists, the world only started to franticly react after the first symptoms clearly emerged. Nobody knows whether the Copenhagen protocol or the CTBT will reap more success than former similar agreements, but these attempts to regulate global issues could succeed this time thanks to the recent cooperation and financial altruism demonstrated donating to collapsing states. A spillover from the financial field to other areas might just happen.

I would like to thank Scott Hoffman for his helpful advice and careful editing of my blogpost.

November 11th is Veterans Day in America, marking the official end of "The War to End All Wars" was an unnecessary war created and fueled by the greed and power-hunger of all nations involved. "Never again" people said after it ended, however the treaty of Versailles laid the foundation of World War II, which was even more devastating than the first. It was a failure of the world community itself.

But this Veterans Day, we should also reflect on the positive things that came as a result of such a violent and terrible conflict. It created an idea that there should be other ways to handle disputes, such as international diplomacy, rather than spilling people's blood. It fueled the creation of international treaties to make sure that it never happened again together with institutions to uphold them alongside its members. Even though the first attempts failed, the ideas of these peaceful solutions survive and live on today.

As long as people die of poverty, diseases and hunger there can be no true stability. As long as people die in internal conflicts that are not classified as wars caused by instability, there can not be a "War to End All Wars".

This upcoming weekend, statesmen from twenty different countries will meet in the White House and intensively discuss solutions for the financial crisis. After the summit of the EU in Brussels and G-20 in Brazil last week, this November 15 the highest political representatives are heading to the U.S. capital at the initiative of the U.S. President. George W. Bush invited de facto the same countries which participated in the already-held G-20 summit, including the Group of Seven or G7 (Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, the U.S.), a group of very ambitious countries called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and other emerging economies (such as Argentina, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey). The 27 European nations will be represented by the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy.

Aside from the G-20 countries representatives, the Washington summit will host Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mario Draghi, the Chairman of the relatively new Financial Stability Forum, and leaders of the old Bretton Woods institutions, namely Robert B. Zoellick, the President of the World Bank and finally, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

This distinguished symposium is planning to discuss how to coordinate national responses to the fallout from the financial crisis and how to rebuild the international financial architecture, especially how the IMF and World Bank reflect the increasing role of the emerging economies and consequent changing economic weights in the world economy. Still, many participants do not anticipate any substantial shift of a national sovereignty towards a global institution. Neither does Mr. Strauss-Kahn from the IMF who on one hand supports more regulations in global economy, but at the same time claims that they have to be implemented by national authorities.

More positively, it seems that states have clear ideas what they want to pursue on the summit. Thanks to the regional summits and lower level negations, all the actors could have already formulated their standpoints and are well prepared for the Saturday deals. For instance, BRIC countries expressed desires to give more influence to developing economies and to secure fair representation within the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. The EU agreed on five common principles on their summit; more oversight of ratings agencies, aligned accounting standards, closing oversight and regulation loopholes, banking codes of conduct that discourage risk-taking, and a bigger role for the International Monetary Fund. Less formally, the EU might push for removing the dollar as the world's sole reserve currency. Even though the decrease in the role of dollar in the world economy would stir up minds of American diplomats, the Bush administration agreed with European leaders on the importance of identifying common principles to guide reforms, setting out a process to implement those principles promptly, and proceeding with actions on certain reforms immediately. These mutual aims give a good soil for further compromises.

Whether November 15 becomes a historic moment and galvanizes the preeminent authorities into a common action is in hands of 23 representatives of the international community. If everything works well, this date might become a turning point for global financial architecture.

As I just posted, there are still some races pending. However, I wanted to get some numbers up to show how Global Solutions PAC has done so far.

• Overall Win rate: We've won 155 races so far, giving us a win rate of 88.07 percent. If we win the remaining six races, that rate will go up to 88.46 percent.
• Challenger win rate: So far we've won 30.77 percent of our races and that could go up to 41.94 percent.
• Wins where we contributed: We're at 75 percent now and that could climb up to 77.78 percent
• We've won 9 Senate races where we endorsed, including helping to elect 4 new Senators: Mark Udall (Colorado), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Tom Udall (New Mexico) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon). If we win the remaining Senate races, that would push us up to 12 wins with 7 new Senators.
• We've won 146 House races where we endorsed, including 4 new Representatives: Chellie Pingree (ME-01), Martin Heinrich (NM-01), Eric Massa (NY-29) and Gerry Connolly (VA-11). If we win the remaining races, that would push us up to 149 wins, including 6 new Representatives.

Now, for some pictures that display some of the same information, but also include results from the last two cycles as well as the current one.

First up is the number of races we've won and lost:

Next up is the number of races we've won and lost when we made a contribution to the candidate:

And finally, let me show you how many new Members of Congress we've elected each cycle:

It's been almost a week since the historic elections of 2008. We still have six races pending, evenly divided between the House and the Senate.

As I posted about earlier, in the Senate, we have:

• Alaska: currently they're counting absentee ballots, about 80,000 of them. Incumbent Senator Ted Stevens remains in the lead, but it's only by about 3,200 votes over our supported candidate, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. This race is going to take awhile to resolve and could involve a recount. Ballots are still arriving from overseas; they need to be received by November 19th. The final count of absentee and questioned ballots is set for that day and certification of the election will be on November 25th.
• Georgia: The race between our candidate Jim Martin and incumbent Saxby Chambliss is headed to a runoff on December 2nd. Neither candidate achieved the required 50 percent plus 1 vote necessary to avoid a runoff. Both campaigns are gearing up for the short sprint to the 2nd. I'm sure we'll have more to report on this exciting race.
• Minnesota: This race is definitely going to a run with incumbent Norm Coleman over our challenger Al Franken by only 206 votes! Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is calling for patience as they move into the mandate recount process. With luck, Ritchie believes the recount of almost 3 million ballots will be complete by mid-December.

On the House side, we have:

• Louisiana's 2nd District: A delayed general election, due to Hurricane Ike, is schedule for December 6th.
• Ohio's 15th: Mary Jo Kilroy still trails Steve Stivers, but the margin is down to about 146 votes. There are still about 10,000 provisional and absentee ballots to be tallied. One pundit says this race may be decided within 100 votes. Given the demographics of where the remaining ballots are coming from, our candidate Kilroy looks good. This one may take until December, though.
• Virginia's 5th: While I posted earlier that our fantastic candidate Tom Perriello had claimed victory, this race will likely go to a recount. Perriello still leads incumbent Rep. Virgil Goode by more than 700 votes, so we have our fingers crossed that this lead will stand. One more reason we like Tom? In his victory announcement, he said that "We wanted to show that our politics is capable of caring about jobs in Danville [Virginia] and genocide in Darfur - we have the capacity to promote the common good."

On Friday, the Associated Press called the race in Washington's 8th Congressional District for incumbent Representative Dave Reichert. With 81 percent of the votes counted, Reichert leads Burner 52 to 48 percent.

We had supported Darcy Burner's challenge in this race. She conceded to Reichert late Friday night. Ms. Burner ran a great race and we are proud that we backed her principled and strong run.

Tom Perriello has declared victory in a ridiculously tight race in Virginia's 5th Congressional District. Long thought a hard seat to win from incumbent Virgil Goode, Perriello succeeded with a razor thin margin. You may remember Goode as the Congressman who railed against Muslims in general and Rep. Keith Ellison (MN-05) in particular in 2006 and 2007. His vitriol alienated voters across the country who sought a new way in the 2008 elections. Looking solely at Global Solutions issues, Goode received two F's and two D-'s over the last four years. Not the kind of Representative we'd like to see in this seat that run from Charlottesville south to the North Carolina border.

Tom Perriello could be our poster child for an ideal challenger. He fully supports our issues, including funding the UN, addressing climate change, working with the ICC, supporting UNEPS and opposing new nuclear weapons. His background is ideal, having worked in Sierra Leone with child soldiers, pro-democracy groups, and aided in the post-civil war peace and reconciliation process. He also served as special advisor and spokesman for the prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Perriello pulled together an amazing campaign with volunteers throughout the district and strong fundraising. Global Solutions had backed candidates in this district in the past two election cycles, but our candidates hadn't come close to beating Goode. This time around, a great globally-minded candidate who we backed from the beginning, took on an anti-internationalist Goliath and appears to have won.

The race is still very close and once it is certified in the coming weeks, a recount could be asked for by the loser. We'll keep you updated on this very important race for Citizens for Global Solutions.

Local and national media have called the race in upstate New York's 29th District. It was a rematch of the 2006 race where Congressman Randy Kuhl defeated Eric Massa by a few thousand votes. The day after the 2008 election, as votes were tallied, Massa took a strong several thousand vote lead. Currently, absentee and provisional ballots are being tallied, but based on the counted ballots and the results from 2006, it looks like Massa's lead will hold.

Eric hasn't declared victory himself yet. The reason is not due to a lack of confidence but to a sense of honor and dignity. In 2006, he asked for every vote to be counted before a winner was declared and he's sticking by the same ideal this time around. He feels confident but he's not cocky

Since November 2006, Eric Massa never gave up. This former Navy Commander and internationally-minded candidate jumped right back into the fight to try take this seat from incumbent Randy Kuhl. Representative Kuhl, a sophomore member of Congress, was a perennial D student on our Congressional Report Card.

Massa worked the district hard, the old-fashioned way, meeting everyone he could and injecting them with a sense of hope for a better America. On his candidate questionnaire, he said that he "believe[s] that our nation's support of the UN is vital to ensuring international cooperation and peace." He wants to work on climate change and fund peace operations, like the one in Darfur. He spoken out loudly and clearly on these issues on the trail and we hope the results stand and we can hear him speaking similar words from the House floor in January 2009.

Following up on our enormously successful wins in 2006, Citizens for Global Solutions continues to help elect candidates to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives who care about engaging the world, tackling climate change, funding and working with international organizations, supporting peacekeeping and stopping the development of new nuclear weapons. While the dust hasn't settled yet on some of the races, we are very excited about our new Members of Congress. This is even more true due to who they're going to replace.

• In Colorado, Senator Wayne Allard retired, but not before getting F's on our Congressional Report Card for the last 3 years. Senator-elect Mark Udall got an A+, A and an A during his tenure as the Representative from Colorado's 2nd District.
• In New Mexico, Senator Pete Domenici also retired, leaving a legacy of D's and a C. He's being replaced by Senator-elect Tom Udall, who like his cousin in Colorado also received an A+, A and A over the last three years.
• In New Hampshire, Senator John Sununu didn't retire. He lost to Senator-elect Jeanne Shaheen. Senator Sununu grades before his tight re-election race this year were: F, D and D-. Based on Shaheen's candidate questionnaire and talking with her campaign, we believe she'll be a great Senator for Global Solutions.
• In the House, Chellie Pingree replaces Tom Allen, who left his seat to run for the U.S. Senate. We believe his record of A's will continue with Congresswoman-elect Pingree.
• In Virginia's 11th District, Rep. Tom Davis retired. His grade of D+ will surely be replaced by a much better one from Congressman-elect Gerry Connolly.

We really want to thank our members for all they've done to make this success happen. Through their time, phone calls, contributions and local action, we're able to continue building a globalist majority in Congress! Thank you!

We'll have more information as it becomes available.

Although many of us may think of human trafficking as a problem of the past, even today destinies of millions of people all around the world are affected by forced labor, involuntary servitude, forced prostitution or pornography. Not only people in the Third World, but also Americans and citizens from other developed countries are still, unfortunately, encountering victims of so called modern-day slavery. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), estimated 12.3 million throughout the world are being exploited and facing coercion, abduction, deception, or the abuse of power.

The U.S. administration has been trying to solve this hot issue for a while. Since 2003, the U.S. has contributed $50 million to help combat human trafficking in many countries- Brazil, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. This negligible sum compared to $700 billion bailout or costly presidential campaigns. Money from American taxpayers has financed some activities of non-governmental international organizations, and government entities which contribute to protect victims, prosecute traffickers, and increase public awareness of this crime (government ministries, and officers from the local army and police). According to U.S. Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking on Persons, concrete improvements, such as reducing numbers of forced labor and effective prevention, have emerged.

Besides direct financing of the above mentioned projects, the U.S. government actively searches for solutions for those who suffered from such inhumane dealing. Being aware of the fact, that even after being rescued, tough times for the abused did not come to an end, U.S. Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking on Persons said, and will soon issue an official report on how to help those who personally survived human trafficking. A symposium of experienced victim service providers found out that to get over the unbearable feeling of fear victims firstly need a safe shelter. Interestingly, such a feeling of safety is reached for instance by bulletproof windows and professional security guides. After being traumatized from serving as a sex slave, a psychological evaluation and treatment is oftentimes needed. As many of victims are HIV positive or have other illnesses, they demand medical care as well. When the most urgent needs are satisfied, people with painful experiences should be reintegrated into community by becoming involved into the working process. Therefore, the experts with various experience concluded that victims should be advised how to enter a work environment with training in self motivation, work ethics, developing competency, interview preparation, career counseling, and literacy. During this training, people may make first contacts with their future employer. Then, one can effectively assist victims by a small loan provided within so called micro-credit programs.

In conclusion, having observed success of financial aid thus far, we already know that money can be distributed to victims of trafficking personally and efficiently. Theoretically, experts also know how to assist victims of human trafficking and which projects are helpful to victims. Now, the only "to do" is to put it all in practice.