June 30, 2011 at 00:03:36Promoted to Headline (H3) on 6/30/11:
Observations On The Day
by paul craig roberts (about the author)
For example, the governments of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, states that share borders, have been fighting for more than two decades over the water in Georgia's Lake Lanier, located a few miles northeast of Atlanta. In 2009 a federal district judge ruled that it is illegal for water to be drawn from the lake to meet the needs of Atlanta's three million residents. The judge stipulated that the three states had until July 2011 to reach an agreement, failing which Atlanta would be restricted to the amount of water it received in the mid-1970s, when its population was less than one-third of its present size.
Obviously, the ruling was a major incentive to Alabama and Florida not to compromise. Either the judge gave no thought to this fact or he was unconcerned that 3 million Atlantans would find themselves in drought circumstances.
At the last moment on June 28, with two days to go before Atlanta was cut off from its water supply, a federal appeals court ruled that the district court judge's decision was incorrect and gave the US Corps of Engineers one year to make a final decision concerning the allocation of Lake Lanier's water to the three states.
The state of Alabama, displaying total callousness to its 3 million fellow American citizens in Atlanta, has announced that it is appealing the ruling, and Florida is "studying the ruling," no doubt looking for a way to get Atlanta's share of the water.
Quite clearly, this is not a United States. Even the old Confederacy cannot stand together. For more than two decades the three states have not sat down to make a fair deal. Instead, they have been suing in federal courts, each seeking advantage.
In California, water is being attacked from a different direction. Rich corporate and financial interests realized that control over water was control over life -- the ultimate power. These powerful few are moving to deregulate and privatize California's water supply in order to exploit their control over the life-sustaining substance. California's dry spell has been hyped into a cataclysmic crisis that pits small farmers against urban environmentalists. This is theater to distract a gullible public and media from the fact that privatized water can be turned into paper water, for which derivatives can be created and speculation can ensue. "Privatized water" has nothing whatsoever to do with providing water to mere people. Its purpose is to provide billions of dollars to financial interests.
Speaking of paper profits, today the stock market was up on the news that the "democratic" Greek government, despite the overwhelming opposition of the Greek people, agreed to the imposed austerity measures in order to borrow from the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, both being illegal loans under the two organizations' charters, the money to pay private foreign banks that bought Greek government bonds. The private banks are being fully compensated for not doing due diligence.
The financial markets, in their utter stupidity, think -- if that is an appropriate word -- that it is good news the Greek government has agreed to drive the Greek economy deeper into recession in order to acquire more loans with which to pay off loans that it cannot pay off.
The financial press thinks that the austerity measures that the Greek government has to accept and the sell-off of the public domain -- water companies, ports, a string of Greek Islands, the state telephone monopoly, the state lottery and the reduction in pay, employment, and social services -- somehow makes the Greek economy more capable of producing the income needed to service the new IMF and ECB loans that pay off the private German, French and Dutch bankers.
If Wall Street and the financial sector had an IQ as high as 100, they would know -- every one of them -- that the "bailout" is pushing Greece deeper into a hole, and that Greek's ability to pay will decline.
Why doesn't the Greek government know what is completely obvious when the people in the streets protesting are fully aware of the fact? The only answer to this question is that the Greek politicians have been bought by the debtor banks. Greek "democracy" serves the debtor private banks, not the Greek people.
The vaunted financial markets are not rational. Indeed, they are the opposite. Financial markets turn obvious bad news into good news in order to drive up prices of financial assets. Truth and facts mean nothing whatsoever to financial markets. The financial markets are based on lies, illusions, and delusions that drive up asset prices. That is what you are investing in when you invest in Wall Street.
In the US today we have president obama challenging congress on the "default crisis." The american president (lower case is used to indicate the insubstantiality of american political institutions, including that of the country itself) who refuses to obey the War Powers Act which requires that he communicate with congress before he takes america to war, told congress that the entire cost of deficit reduction cannot be put on the backs of america's poor unless he has the cover of taking away a few special interest tax breaks. Obama is telling the nitwits who, like himself, are bought-and-paid-for by the interests, that to continue the game the rich corporations have to give up something, like a few insignificant tax breaks. If the congressional idiots catch on, then obama can emphasize how he is making the rich pay, while he covertly shifts the burden to the poor and to the remnants of the american middle class, a destroyed entity.
The entire default "confrontation" between "america's first black president" and congress is fraudulent. If attacking Libya is so much in the national interest that obama doesn't need to inform congress, it is completely obvious that it is too much in the national interest that the US government not default.
The US default on its bonds would not only wreck the international financial system, it would destroy american power. Nothing is more in "the national interest" than Washington not defaulting. Therefore, it is completely obvious that if congress does not raise the debt ceiling, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury's debt issues so that the government can pay its bills. The Bush regime, with its Federalist Society brownshirts, established once and for all that the american president becomes Caesar during war and that it is the president's prerogative alone to declare what is in the national interest. Congress has become unnecessary, like the Roman senate under the Caesars.
There is no chance whatsoever of the US government defaulting. Yet, the "default crisis" is the main story purveyed by the US Ministry of Propaganda.
On the environmental front, more devastation awaits america. This is not about the nuclear radiation dangers from the floods, no matter how real. It is more simple. The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has also been "privatized" and has become a government servant of private interests.
The BLM has been "privatized" in the sense that those who actually cared about the purpose of the law and the preservation of public lands have been displaced by new appointees put in power by the Clinton and the Bush regimes. Yes, you guessed correctly, the BLM's management consists of corporate appointees, who are doing what they were put there to do, which is to steal the public domain for private profit.
For equines or horse lovers, this is turning out to be a hard blow. According to Marilyn Wargo, who is knowledgeable on this issue, the BLM is about to exterminate two-thirds of the remaining wild horse herds that exist on the pubic's lands in Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon and Colorado.
Like everything else in our "freedom and democracy" country, this extermination is being done despite powerful public protests by citizens -- citizens most likely characterized by Homeland Security as "animal rights terrorists."
Who stands to gain? Obviously, cattle and sheep corporations that take over the grazing rights from wildlife. Americans have still not understood that one accomplishment of the Bush Regime was to put government agencies that were created to protect the public domain into the hands of corporate interests. The fusion of corporate and government interests in the US today is more complete than in Fascist Italy.
There is no freedom, no democracy, and no government accountability in Amerika, a fascist state.
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