by Andrea Muhrrteyn
Why We Are White Refugees
 |
Further Below are two articles: (i) Greece Starts Putting Island Land Up for Sale to Save Economy: Desperate attempt to repay debts also driven by inability to find funds to develop infrastructure on islands, and (ii) California on 'verge of system failure’: Golden State, like many others, is nearly bankrupt and desperately needs a bailout.
They demonstrate the cause and effect endgame March of Corporate Cannibalism: (i) the result of Greece overspending on its Welfare Politicians, Corporations and Citizens, now means the Greek Goverment has decided -- as per the orders of the German Gov. -- to sell its Assets to pay its debts, i.e. islands to Rich People Corporations; and (ii) California's impending bankruptcy due to overspending on its Welfare Corporations, Citizens and Immigrants, soon to sell its National Parks and Air Force Bases to Corporations?
They provide an 'In Your Face' example of the End Game, of the Corporate & Economic Growth Conquer & Multiply Memeplex, which works hand-in-hand with the Population Growth Conquer & Multiply Memeplex, the end growth documented in Mencken -- Licensed to Breed DieOff -- Monkeylaw Prophets.
The origins of the Cain vs. Abel Conquer and Multiply Memeplex is well described by Daniel Quinn, as blogged at An ABC’s of Ecology Systems Approach to a Sui Generis Agriculture Mythology: When did we Become We?.
The Economic and Population Growth Frankenstein Titanic's, like Deaf Dumb and Blind Easter Islanders, are on their Globalcorpse Serfdom March to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Their icebergs: exponential declining finite resources. The Worlds Corporate, Religious and Political leaders seem to think that unlike Easter Islanders, who lived on an island with finite resources; they live on a flat earth with infinite resources. Or as Kenneth Deffeyes puts it: “The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier's cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground.” Put differently, if you arrive at an Ethiopian Petrol Station that has no petrol, it don't matter if you own an Island in Greece, you cannot purchase any petrol. You can print money until you are blue in the face, but industrial economies don't run on printing money, but on cheap energy. Peak Oil, means that cheap energy is a concept that no longer exists in reality, only in history and fantasy; which is why BP is drilling in deep waters; only to find out exactly how expensive deep water drilling can be; and why America is in Iraq and Afghanistan to guard oil supply routes, only to find out how expensive guarding oil supply routes are.
A few excerpts from Concourt 23-10: First Amicus submission on The Citizen's Right to ‘Free Speech’ Propaganda Profits Deception (PDF):***
C: Right to ‘Free Speech’ Propaganda Profits Deception
The documentary, The Corporation, based on The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to effect specific public functions, to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person.
One theme is its assessment as a "personality", as a result of an 1886 case in the United States Supreme Court in which a statement by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The film's assessment is effected via the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia psychology professor and a consultant to the FBI, compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically-diagnosed psychopath.
Corporations Intentions: Power and Profit
In Stalking the Wild Taboo, by Garrett Hardin: Part 4: Competition: (20) Competition, a Tabooed Idea in Sociology; (21) The Cybernetics of Competition; (22) Population, Biology and the Law; (23) Population Skeletons in the Environmental Closet; (24) The Survival of Nations and Civilisations, he deals with the concept of Competition, a process that is inescapable in societies living in a finite resource world, and the competitive exclusion principle. According to Harden, omitting competition from a study of group processes is like leaving gravity out of a treatise on space travel. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences, most notably in economics, as well as in biology (most notably evolutionary biology and ecology), engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, and philosophy. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others. While initially developed to analyze competitions in which one individual does better at another's expense (zero sum games), it has been expanded to treat a wide class of interactions, which are classified according to several criteria. Game Theory brought us the doctrine of Military Strategy and Nuclear Cold War acronym, known as: MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction.
In Game Theory a Zero-Sum Game is one in which the losses of one person are exactly counterbalanced by the gains of others, such as Poker, the balance is zero. In a Non Zero Sum game the losses and gains are not zero, like Russian Roulette. Non Zero Games come in two varieties benign and malign. A game where academics share their scientific research and everyone benefits from sharing research information is generally positive.
Long story short; the end result of perfect laissez-faire competition’s end result reduces all competitors until there is only one left. The monopolist will try to manipulate the machinery of society in such a way as to extend his powers everywhere, without limit. The same applies to labour monopolies. Under these conditions it is important to seek the boundary conditions within which the rule of laissez-faire can produce stability.
a: Law of Stability in a Finite Eco-System
An Act that may be harmless when the system is healthy and strong may be quite destructive when the system is stressed near its limits. To promote the goal of stability, a law must take cognizance not only of the act but also of the state of the system at the time the act is performed.
Economic man, Harden predicted would try to defend his actions in terms of some tradition-hallowed “absolute” principles that take no cognisance of the state of the system. Absolutists of all sorts, may be defined as men who reject systemic thinking. An example of such a law on behalf of political stability could be that of ostracism in ancient Athens, to deter overweening political ambition. It was a device aimed at stopping the positive feedback of power, to maintain a political system on a stable plateau. The political and economic system of Conquer and Multiply work on the same exponential growth principles: exponential growth of economy and population; for the benefit of only politicians and large corporations. Infinite economic and population growth are impossible in a finite environment.
In GlobalCorp: I am not a Politician; The Fire is No Longer on its Way, it Has Begun: An Important Announcement, by Michael C. Ruppert, editor of From the Wilderness, he describes the endgame of Corporate Cannibalism, as:The bottom line turns out to be the suicide of the human race as mergers and acquisitions lead to the final moment of malignant capitalism: "the last corporation standing."
GlobalCorp becomes Global corpse. Hurray, we did it!
In Population, Biology and the Law, Harden describes the population control laws of competition necessary to achieving a peaceful society, where two or more cultures, racial groups or ‘tribes’ inhabit the same ecological niche; i.e. where a tribe is any group that perceives itself as a distinct group, which is so perceived by the outside world. For example the Mafia could be a tribe, as can Taker corporations vs. Leaver ecological societies.
 “The interviews show some evidence for the "spiral of silence" explanation: many interviewed reporters felt that population is a hot issue, better left unmentioned.... Thus a spiral of silence about population growth may be maintained by determined pronatalists, immigration advocates, and intimidated journalists.” How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection, Univ. of SW Louisiana |
Suppose that one introduces into the same region two different species that inhabit the exact same “ecological niche”... then all that one needs to know to predict the ultimate outcome of their competition is the rates at which they reproduce in this ecological niche. If one reproduces at a rate of 2% and the other at 3%, then their rates of reproduction, like compound interest, are exponential functions: the ratio of the faster species to the slower species increases without limit. If the environment is finite – and it always is finite, the total number of organisms that this environment can support is also finite. This means the slower breeding species will be completely eliminated from the environment.
In our world of reality, Corporate Tribes insist on exponential economic growth, and Black Power Tribes insist on exponential population growth; and the rest are ignored.
Corporations and their absolutist adherence to exponential economic growth and Politicians and their adherence to exponential welfare Population Growth of their slave and cannon fodder breeding tribe, are surely infected with the “I think I am Unique” Conquer and Multiply Memeplex?***
TRC (Truth Religious Circus) Legal Indulgence Matrix Reality vs. NDR-113 Buck Minstrel Matrix Defence“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v. Bell (PDF)
 |
Welcome to the TRC Matrix Reality --- Inalienable ‘Right to Breed’, but you need Licence to Own a Gun, a Licence to Drive a Car, a Licence to Practice Law, a television licence, a credit licence, a licence to earn a living, a university exemption licence, a licence to fish, a licence to hunt, a liquor licence, a business licence, a marriage licence -- slave and cannon fodder breeding system of law, hypocritically referred to as the ‘rule-of-law’ (sic), that:(a) Pretends to advocate for human rights, peace and social justice laws; while legally ignoring their necessary ecological basis laws: a stable human population at, or slightly less than, the eco-systems long term carrying capacity; and
(b) Provides legal benefits to its legal indulgence salesmen practitioners, who apply legal principles, doctrines and arguments, that demand everyone’s ‘right to breed’, without any licence, but deny or ignore, that overpopulation colliding with scarce or depleting resources – resource wars - is a causal and aggravating factor, for crime, violence, and war.
A legal world of lawyers, politicians and priests, who prefer to negligently ignore, plausibly deny, or phallicly benefit from the conquer-and-multiply control over the means of human reproduction; is a Matrix reality, of legal indulgence salesmen. It is a legal world, similar to the Matrix religious world that existed before Martin Luther confronted the religious indulgence salesmen with his Ninety-Five Theses, on the Church of All Saints, on 31 October 1517, thereby initiating the Protestant Reformation.
Excerpts from Concourt 23-10: 1st Amicus Curiae: Evidentiary Documents: as quoted in: » » Ubuntu Brief of Amicus Curiae Lara Johnstone, Bushido Dischordian Futilitarian, In Support Of: Radical Honesty Common Sense Population Policy Social Contract Interpretations of Promotion of National Unity & Reconciliation Act, 34 of 1995 » » C: Right to ‘Free Speech’ Propaganda Profits Deception (PDF); and [2/6] RH Truth & Forgiveness Social Contract: A Protagorus Legal Absurdity for Planet Earth's TRC (Truth Religious Circus) Legal Indulgence Matrix Reality (PDF)
Greece Starts Putting Island Land Up for Sale to Save Economy
Desperate attempt to repay debts also driven by inability to find funds to develop infrastructure on islands
by Elena Moya, guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 24 June 2010 21.33 BST
 Greece is raising cash by selling off an area of state-owned land on Mykonos for luxury tourism. Photograph: Getty Images |
There's little that shouts "seriously rich" as much as a little island in the sun to call your own. For Sir Richard Branson it is Neckar in the Caribbean, the billionaire Barclay brothers prefer Brecqhou in the Channel Islands, while Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios, his Greek hideway.
Now Greece is making it easier for the rich and famous to fulfill their dreams by preparing to sell, or offering long-term leases on, some of its 6,000 sunkissed islands in a desperate attempt to repay its mountainous debts.
The Guardian has learned that an area in Mykonos, one of Greece's top tourist destinations, is one of the sites for sale. The area is one-third owned by the government, which is looking for a buyer willing to inject capital and develop a luxury tourism complex, according to a source close to the negotiations.
Potential investors also looking at property on the island of Rhodes, are mostly Russian and Chinese. Investors in both countries are looking for a little bit of the Mediterranean as holiday destinations for their increasingly affluent populations. Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea football club, is among those understood to be interested, although a spokesman denied he was about to invest.
Greece has embarked on the desperate measures after being pushed into a €110bn (£90bn) bailout by the EU and the IMF last month, following a decade of overspending and after jittery investors raised borrowing costs to unbearable levels.
The sale of an island – or convincing a member of the international jet-set to take on a long-term lease – would help to boost its coffers. The Private Islands website lists 1,235-acre Nafsika, in the Ionian sea, on sale for €15m. But others are on for less than €2m – less than a townhouse in Mayfair or Chelsea. Some of the country's numerous islands are tiny which could barely fit a single sunbed.
Only 227 Greek islands are populated and the decision to press ahead with potential sales has also been driven by the inability of the state to develop basic infrastructure, or police most of its islands. The hope is that the sale or long-term lease of some islands will attract investment that will generate jobs and taxable income.
Told by the Guardian that such sales or leases were in prospect, Makis Perdikaris, director of Greek Island Properties, said that he would be unhappy at the prospect of any outright sale of state land: "I am sad – selling off your islands or areas that belong to the people of Greece should be used as the last resort," he said. But he was not necessarily against long-term leases: "The first thing is to develop the economy and attract foreign domestic investment to create the necessary infrastructure. The point is to get money."
In its battle to raise funds, the country is also planning to sell its rail and water companies. Chinese investors are understood to be interested in the Greek train system, as they already control some of the ports. In a deal announced earlier this month, the Greek government also agreed to export olive oil to China.
After the socialist government of prime minister Geórgios Papandreou responded to the IMF bailout with draconian budget cuts, rioters took to the streets, costing three lives in May.
In the midst of the crisis, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, delayed her support as she faced local elections and popular opposition to any public-funded help to Greece.
As strikes almost paralysed the country and hedge funds bet against the economy, German politicians called for Greece to start selling islands, historic buildings and artworks. It now appears that the Greek government has heeded their demands.
The City, where investors are increasingly shunning Greek investments, welcomed any island sales. "It's a shame if it has come to this but it does at least demonstrate that Greece is prepared to take all actions necessary to try and meet its obligations," said Gary Jenkins, a credit analyst at Evolution Securities.
Property prices have fallen between 10% and 20% since the May riots in Athens, as bad publicity has drawn visitors away, Perdikaris said.
"We have experienced a very slow booking season. Most tour operators offer hugely discounted rates," he said. Britons account for more than 60% of his company's property sales.
This article was amended on 25 June 2010. The original heading - Greece puts its islands up for sale to save economy - went beyond what the story said. This has been corrected. A reference to Natsika has been amended to make clear this sale offer is private. More context has been added to a quotation from Makis Perdikaris, director of Greek Island Properties, to make clear that he was not expressing knowledge of existing Greek government sales of islands or island land.
» » » » [The Guardian, via Lew Rockwell]
California on ‘verge of system failure’
Golden State, like many others, is nearly bankrupt and desperately needs a bailout
Barrie McKenna
Los Angeles — Globe and Mail Update
Published on Friday, Jun. 18, 2010 6:01PM EDT
Last updated on Friday, Jun. 18, 2010 8:21PM EDT
 “We fail to mandate economic sanity, because our brains are addled by... compassion.” -- Garrett Hardin (The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia & Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos) |
Arnella Sims has seen a lot in her 34 years as a Los Angeles County court reporter, but nothing like this.
Case files piling up by the thousands, phones ringing off the hook, forced midweek courthouse closings and occasional brawls as frustrated citizens queue for hours to pay parking fines.
“People think we’re becoming a Third World country,” said Ms. Sims, 55. “They don’t understand.”
It’s a story that’s being repeated all across California – and throughout the United States – as cash-strapped state and local governments grapple with collapsed tax revenues and swelling budget gaps. Mass layoffs, slashed health and welfare services, closed parks, crumbling superhighways and ever-larger public school class sizes are all part of the new normal.
California’s fiscal hole is now so large that the state would have to liberate 168,000 prison inmates and permanently shutter 240 university and community college campuses to balance its budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Think of California as Greece on the Pacific: bankrupt and desperately needing a bailout.
“We are on the verge of system failure,” warned Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, an independent think tank based in Sacramento.
None of this would matter much to anyone outside the not-so-Golden State except that California’s budget crisis is a harbinger of a grim dilemma that all Americans will soon confront. The country has built an elaborate and costly government machine, tied to a regressive tax system that can’t generate enough revenue to pay for it all.
Canadians too have a stake in all this. Dramatic cuts by state governments are threatening to derail the U.S. recovery, dampening expectations for global growth.
“This is a classic American dilemma,” explained Peter Dreier, a professor of politics and director of urban and environmental policy at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “Americans expect a lot of their government. But politicians have convinced them they’re not getting what they want.”
Americans have been “brainwashed” into believing they pay a lot of taxes, Prof. Dreier added. In fact, they are among the least-taxed people in the Western World, particularly if they’re wealthy, he said.
After unveiling a grim budget last month that scraps a popular welfare program for a million children and slashes countless other programs for the poor and elderly, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger complained that the state’s broken budget process has left him facing a “Sophie’s Choice.” That’s a reference to the story of the Polish Jew forced by the Nazis to choose between saving her son or her daughter from the Auschwitz gas chambers.
Experts say the U.S. government will inevitably have to come to the rescue, using its borrowing clout to save the state from near-bankruptcy or devastating service cuts. Do nothing, and the entire U.S. economy could be put at risk. California, like the country’s banks, may be too big to fail.
California is looking at a gap of $19-billion (U.S.) this year and $37-billion next year on a roughly $125-billion-a-year budget. Local governments, including the City of Los Angeles, are in similarly dire financial straits and are now scrambling to shed workers and services.
“We have to get some federal money,” argued Ms. Ross of the California Budget Project. “The impact [of the Schwarzenegger budget] would be enough to slow down the U.S. economy. It would be bad for the U.S. and, arguably, bad for the world to do the shock therapy approach.”
And California isn’t alone in angling for a bailout. U.S. states are facing shortfalls totalling nearly $300-billion in 2010 and 2011; they also must wrestle with hundreds of billions more in unfunded pension obligations to their workers. “There are a few Greek crises brewing among the United States of America,” said economist Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research Inc.
The task is made all the more difficult because California and virtually all other states are barred by legislation from running operating deficits, forcing them to balance their budgets annually by slashing spending, raising taxes or both. Typically, states can only borrow short-term funds, or for capital projects.
Billionaire Warren Buffett, who advised U.S. President Barack Obama during his White House run, suggested recently that a Washington bailout of California and other troubled states is inevitable. How, he wondered, can Washington deny California after saying yes to General Motors, AIG and dozens of banks.
“I don’t know how you would tell a state you’re going to stiff-arm them with all the bailouts of corporations,” Mr. Buffett said.
The alternative for many state and local governments may be default. Mr. Buffett said many state and municipal bonds are only triple-A rated because investors assume there’s a federal backstop. “If the federal government won’t step in to help them, who knows what [the bonds] are,” he said.
California’s credit rating is already the lowest of all 50 states.
 Red ink, from sea to shining sea |
How California, the largest and once most-prosperous state, got in this mess is a story decades in the making. It began with middle-class angst and a property tax revolt in the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles. The movement would eventually sweep the country in the inflation-ravaged economy of the late 1970s, leaving government unable to pay for many of the services and entitlements people now take for granted.
John Serrano Jr., a social worker, was frustrated that he had to move his family out of East L.A. to find decent public schools for his children. He would eventually lend his name to a class-action lawsuit that would go all the way to the California Supreme Court. In a series of decisions, the court found the state’s school finance system to be unconstitutional for relying too heavily on local property taxes, which vary widely in poor and wealthy neighbourhoods. For example, a school in tony Beverly Hills would often get more than twice the funds per student than one in poor East L.A.
The landmark case would forever change the fiscal landscape of California, and many other states, shifting the financial burden of kindergarten to Grade 12 education from local to state governments, but not the tax base. K-12 education is now the State of California’s single largest expense, soaking up roughly a third of its budget.
A tax revolt would further tilt the tax burden to the state and deprive local governments of their most stable funding source – property taxes.
In the mid-1970s, California property taxes were soaring, along with real estate values, and incomes couldn’t keep pace. The result was a campaign, financed by L.A.-area apartment landlords, that culminated in the now-infamous Proposition 13 ballot initiative in 1978.
Prop. 13 rolled back and capped both residential and commercial property tax rates at 1975 levels. And it virtually guaranteed that only a revolution would reverse the measure. Proposition 13 imposed a two-thirds majority requirement for all tax bills and required local voters to approve all municipal tax increases.
“California put itself in a straitjacket that it hasn’t been able to get out of,” Occidental College’s Prof. Dreier explained.
In the years since Prop. 13, California has come to the rescue of local governments, taking on ever-greater responsibility for schools, low-income health care and welfare. And it has paid for all that with volatile sales and income tax revenue, making it tough to balance its budget when the economy stalls.
“A lot of people predicted doom and gloom in 1978. It just took a long time,” said John Tanner, executive director of Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 85,000 government workers in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California.
Prop. 13, according to Mr. Tanner, has put schools, courts, parks and a raft of other government services in a downward spiral. “We are at an unacceptable place right now,” he said.
Perhaps no group of workers feels more targeted in the crisis than teachers. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has warned that without money from Congress as many as 300,000 teachers nationwide could lose their jobs to state budget cuts, including several thousand in California.
“It’s not easy being me these days,” said A.J. Duffy, president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. “I have 45,000 members looking to me to save their jobs.”
His union represents teachers and other employees at 700-plus L.A. schools, where as many as 1,200 jobs are threatened.
“We’re destroying education as we know it,” Mr. Duffy lamented. “My teachers will do a great job no matter what. But it’s harder and harder to deliver the quality of education we’ve had.”
California public schools were once a beacon for the country. Now, the state ranks dead-last in student-teacher ratios, 45th in per-student spending and 36th in high school graduation.
The tax structure may be badly flawed. But even union activists acknowledge that repealing Prop. 13 outright is probably a non-starter. Recent polls show support for keeping a lid on property taxes remains strong, in spite of the budget crisis.
Experts say tax reform is the only option for California, short of a massive and unprecedented shrinking of government. And that requires an “open conversation” between voters and their elected leaders, and almost certainly higher taxes, according to Ms. Ross, the economist.
If you want good schools, you have to pay for them,” she said. “Cutting taxes doesn’t raise revenue.”
That kind of talk angers Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, named after the L.A. homeowner who led the Prop. 13 campaign and dedicated to ensuring it’s never overturned. He said California is a high-tax state with generously paid government workers, and recession-weary taxpayers have no money to pay more.
“The bank is empty,” Mr. Vosburgh complained.
“We have tried to be all things to all people and we can’t afford to do that any more.”
But in California, and elsewhere, the price will be steep – in lost jobs and vanishing services.
Carliose Lane, 37, an animal licensing official for the City of Los Angeles, knows the city, and the state, are in a budget bind. But he can’t understand why he and the city’s entire team of animal fee collectors must pay the price with their jobs. Who, he wondered, will collect the money that pays for the city’s shelters and pet control operations after he’s laid off on July 1.
“Laying me off isn’t going to solve the city’s budget problems,” said Mr. Lane, whose $32,300-a-year salary helps support a wife and three children. “It will make them worse.”
» » » » [Globe and Mail]
No comments:
Post a Comment