Guam Land Grab

SUBHEAD: Property rights be damned! U.S. Military would like to use condemnation without compensation on Guam.

By Desiree Taimanglo-Ventura on 21 November 2009 in Drowning Mermaid 
(http://thedrowningmermaid.blogspot.com/2009/11/marianas-variety-article-featuring.html)
 
Image above: My cousin Seth looks out at the family land which will be a Marine firing range.  

General David Bice, executive director of the Joint Guam Program Office, has repeatedly assured the local community that the federal government would not condemn lands for use of the military buildup, but JGPO director Col John Jackson did not back up Bice’s statements during a recent radio interview. 

 Jackson gave evasive, vague and noncommittal responses when K-57’s Breakfast Show host Ray Gibson asked him if the military intends to condemn Guam lands. Residents were also assured earlier that the military was not interested in acquiring land in the Sasayjan Valley in the Marbo area in Yigo, but the recently released draft environmental impact statement shows otherwise. During a recent interview with Variety, Bice said the military would look into the acquisition of lands. “That's how we're going to approach this. It would be a normal acquisition process and that has yet to be determined as we go forward on that,” he told Variety. 

 Not at any price  
 Some local landowners said they would be interested in negotiating with the military for their portions of property in the Yigo area, but landowners of the adjacent properties within the footprint of the proposed firing ranges on the northeastern coast of the island are not willing to give up their lands at any price. Landowner Glenn Nelson said that the draft environmental impact statement should have also taken into consideration other sites that are federally-owned to include off-island properties, and that non-federally owned lands should be the last option. “I’m not so sure anymore if people actually grasp the concept of the potential negative impacts associated with this buildup other than the dollar signs attached to the various projects. I need help, the island needs help. This project is moving much too quick and impacts are far too great,” said Nelson. 

 Not theirs yet 
 Landowners in that area have said Benny Crawford, who leads the Tiyan landowners, are not the only landowners involved. Crawford seems poised to negotiate lands without the authority of other landowners whose lands lie within the footprint. Furthermore, Crawford and the Tiyan landowners don't even own those properties. They are still under the inventory of the Ancestral Lands Commission.

---

Memories of Guam  

SUBHEAD: Making a record of US military taking of foreign lands.  

By Desiree Taimanglo-Ventura on 21 November 2009 in Drowning Mermaid - (http://thedrowningmermaid.blogspot.com/2009/11/making-mad-dash-for-memories.html)

   
Image above: Koohan sits and speaks with friends and relatives at a regular family BBQ  

Award winning documentary filmmaker, and author of the recently published Superferry Chronicles, Koohan Paik, used her talents to help create footage of civilian lands scheduled for military take over.

I brought Koohan to my family's property, which is expected to be taken and used as a Marine firing range. She spent the day walking over the cliff line that held many happy memories for my family and I, and interviewing friends and relatives who regularly spend time on the property. 

 I have to admit, it was depressing doing this with her. She asked a lot of questions about how we felt; but it seemed pointless to answer them. As a territory, we don't get to decide. I'm grateful for what the United States did for our island when it was under Japanese occupation; but it's a situation that is hard to feel completely happy about. It's a very big sacrifice; and I do hope for the best for our island.

People keep trying to convince me that this will improve our economy and create new jobs, but anyone who takes a close look at their plans will see that the jobs created will not be those which significantly help our residents. They're mostly part-time jobs that will have limited to no benefits, or jobs that migrant workers and contracted employees from elsewhere will take. I wonder if completely trashing our environment is worth it. It's hard to feel ecstatic or eager about all of this. 

I guess my feeling is one of sad acceptance. Nonetheless, this piece of property is very special to my family. I'm glad Koohan's camera was able to preserve memories of it. Seeing the map in the newspaper showing how drastically the island will change has made me realize how much I need to take pictures, spend time hiking, going to the beach, and enjoying the island before it turns into this new place the military has planned for us.

See also:  
Ea O Ka Aina: Guam - Another strategic island 11/9/09  
Island Breath: PMRF Land Grab 3/15/04 

Wild Thanksgiving Food

SUBHEAD: Thoughts on surviving Thanksgiving week in Portland, Oregon, on wild foods.  

By Rebecca Lerner on 28 November 2009 in Culture Change -  
(http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=561&Itemid=1)

   
Image above: Loading wild foods onto Thanksgiving plate in 2009

Together, my forager friends and I spent five hours preparing our wild Thanksgiving feast. We sipped lemonbalm tea as we worked, crafting a colorful spread of nourishing foods that were totally local, money-free, and produced 100% compostable waste. Most impressively, our dinner actually tasted good! I never would have guessed it, but boiled rose hips are even better than cranberry sauce.

The red-orange dish is a similar texture and flavor, yet naturally sweeter. To make it yourself, wash the rose hips, then remove the seedy core and little hairs surrounding it. Put the sliced berries in a pot, add water, boil and simmer until the mixture is soft and thick, and voila! I cracked black walnuts with a rock as chestnut-breaded venison sizzled in the pan, filling the room with a delectable scent.

It tempted even me, a pesco-vegetarian who has rarely liked the flavor of mammal meat. Since it was roadkill, I couldn't have moral objections to eating it, so I chose to taste it. Honestly, it was delicious. I never imagined that roadkill would be so tender. I ultimately spit it out because I didn't want to risk sickening myself with meat after avoiding it for so long.

My friends who ate it, though, considered it the highlight of the meal. We also ate baked cattail roots; steamed wapato bulbs; oven-baked biscuits made of chestnut, acorn and dock seed flour with elderberries; roasted chestnuts; raw black walnuts; baked breaded mushrooms and boiled mustard greens. To drink, we had apple cider, lemonbalm tea, and Juniper beer. Surrounded by forager friends whose heart-filled enthusiasm kept me going through all seven days, I couldn't pick a more fitting finale for a week of wild food. When I started on Friday, I was determined and optimistic, but I wasn't sure what I was in for. As it turned out, the lessons I learned in May adequately prepared me to make it through.

 I didn't waste any calories wandering around looking for food because I had scouted my neighborhood in advance. I wasn't beholden to the bare trees because I stocked my pantry in advance, gathering stinging nettle over the summer and chestnuts and black walnuts in September and October. And I had the support of a tribe of forager friends who share the belief that survival is a cooperative endeavor. Together we gathered and processed more edibles more efficiently than I could have on my own.

They also generously offered gifts of plant foods they had stumbled upon, like sumac and feral prunes. I could have continued another week, if I had wanted to to continue eating foods that were less palatable than I'd like. In yesterday's blog I wondered whether ancient indigenous people had different expectations for flavor and texture than we do now. They may have, however, there is also some evidence to suggest that they sometimes cultivated wild plants for flavor. It's hard to know, but speculating is interesting.

 I wanted to keep the project local enough to stay relevant to the realistic constraints of a survival situation, but if I had expanded the range of the project to include the coast, I could have included sea salt, seaweed, and an abundance of fish and shellfish. Some friends did offer to give me fish they had caught in local rivers, but these were farm-raised fish that had been stocked in the waterways, and that didn't exactly seem "wild."

It can be difficult to define wild food. I tried to stick as much as possible to the indigenous diet here, but I also wanted to highlight non-native weeds and other plants that we don't tend to think of as food, like rose hips. My aim was to reveal hidden abundance and show that the Earth feeds us naturally. We don't have to dominate the land to get what we need. To paraphrase my friend Ariel Marguiles,

"The sun warms the Earth and never once does it say, 'But what did you ever do for me?' " The Earth gives us living gifts of food and medicine and asks nothing in return. Agriculture brought overpopulation. Overpopulation threw the natural system out of balance, creating scarcity. And now, instead of cooperation, the world economy is based on competition, greed and domination. Politicians propose wiping out the last remaining wilderness to build roads and drill for oil, because they don't recognize nature's inherent value to provide for us.

 They have forgotten that the Earth is a natural welfare system with free food, free housing and universal health care. Even environmentalists, much of the time, build their campaigns on sentimentality and aesthetics. Mankind has lost its way. Fortunately, the world is filled with the vestiges of a more harmonious past. Wild plants are a link to what once was and what could be. To forage is a beautiful thing, for it is a proclamation that you remember where you came from, that you acknowledge another way.


 
Image above: Author Becky "Wild Girl" Lerner gives thanks to nature with friends.

Together, my forager friends and I spent five hours preparing our wild Thanksgiving feast. We sipped lemonbalm tea as we worked, crafting a colorful spread of nourishing foods that were totally local, money-free, and produced 100% compostable waste.

Most impressively, our dinner actually tasted good! I never would have guessed it, but boiled rose hips are even better than cranberry sauce. The red-orange dish is a similar texture and flavor, yet naturally sweeter. To make it yourself, wash the rose hips, then remove the seedy core and little hairs surrounding it.

Put the sliced berries in a pot, add water, boil and simmer until the mixture is soft and thick, and voila! I cracked black walnuts with a rock as chestnut-breaded venison sizzled in the pan, filling the room with a delectable scent. It tempted even me, a pesco-vegetarian who has rarely liked the flavor of mammal meat. Since it was roadkill, I couldn't have moral objections to eating it, so I chose to taste it. Honestly, it was delicious. I never imagined that roadkill would be so tender. I ultimately spit it out because I didn't want to risk sickening myself with meat after avoiding it for so long.

My friends who ate it, though, considered it the highlight of the meal. We also ate baked cattail roots; steamed wapato bulbs; oven-baked biscuits made of chestnut, acorn and dock seed flour with elderberries; roasted chestnuts; raw black walnuts; baked breaded mushrooms and boiled mustard greens. To drink, we had apple cider, lemonbalm tea, and Juniper beer. Surrounded by forager friends whose heart-filled enthusiasm kept me going through all seven days, I couldn't pick a more fitting finale for a week of wild food.

When I started on Friday, I was determined and optimistic, but I wasn't sure what I was in for. As it turned out, the lessons I learned in May adequately prepared me to make it through. I didn't waste any calories wandering around looking for food because I had scouted my neighborhood in advance. I wasn't beholden to the bare trees because I stocked my pantry in advance, gathering stinging nettle over the summer and chestnuts and black walnuts in September and October. And I had the support of a tribe of forager friends who share the belief that survival is a cooperative endeavor. Together we gathered and processed more edibles more efficiently than I could have on my own. They also generously offered gifts of plant foods they had stumbled upon, like sumac and feral prunes.

I could have continued another week, if I had wanted to to continue eating foods that were less palatable than I'd like. In yesterday's blog I wondered whether ancient indigenous people had different expectations for flavor and texture than we do now. They may have, however, there is also some evidence to suggest that they sometimes cultivated wild plants for flavor. It's hard to know, but speculating is interesting. I wanted to keep the project local enough to stay relevant to the realistic constraints of a survival situation, but if I had expanded the range of the project to include the coast, I could have included sea salt, seaweed, and an abundance of fish and shellfish. Some friends did offer to give me fish they had caught in local rivers, but these were farm-raised fish that had been stocked in the waterways, and that didn't exactly seem "wild." It can be difficult to define wild food. I tried to stick as much as possible to the indigenous diet here, but I also wanted to highlight non-native weeds and other plants that we don't tend to think of as food, like rose hips.

My aim was to reveal hidden abundance and show that the Earth feeds us naturally. We don't have to dominate the land to get what we need. To paraphrase my friend Ariel Marguiles, "The sun warms the Earth and never once does it say, 'But what did you ever do for me?' " The Earth gives us living gifts of food and medicine and asks nothing in return.

 Agriculture brought overpopulation.

Overpopulation threw the natural system out of balance, creating scarcity. And now, instead of cooperation, the world economy is based on competition, greed and domination. Politicians propose wiping out the last remaining wilderness to build roads and drill for oil, because they don't recognize nature's inherent value to provide for us. They have forgotten that the Earth is a natural welfare system with free food, free housing and universal health care. Even environmentalists, much of the time, build their campaigns on sentimentality and aesthetics. Mankind has lost its way. Fortunately, the world is filled with the vestiges of a more harmonious past.

Wild plants are a link to what once was and what could be. To forage is a beautiful thing, for it is a proclamation that you remember where you came from, that you acknowledge another way. Contact: Rebecca Lerner Urban Forager & Blogger RebeccaELerner [at] gmail.com www.FirstWays.com

See also:
Culture Change: Surviving a week in Portland on wild food 11/19/09 http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=549&Itemid=1
Island Breath: Eden was a garden not a farm 4/19/07
Island Breath: Nuts & Bolts of preparing for a crash 11/26/07
The Gobbler: Native American Strawberry Festival 3/21/94
The Gobbler: A recipe for wild cowslips 3/21/94
The Gobbler: Wild Mayapple Jam 9/21/93
The Gobbler: A taste of spring - Wild Leeks 3/21/93

Wickedness Abides

SUBHEAD: The monstrosity Dubai built in their waterless convection-oven makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall. Image above: Dubai's propoosed Anara Tower would be 2,150 feet tall with restaurant pod atop. From http://gizmodo.com/5071391/dubais-newest-insane-skyscraper-to-house-a-restaurant-in-a-glass-pod-at-2150-feet By James Kunstler on 30 November 2009 in www.Kunstler.com - (http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/11/wickedness-abides.html) "While Dubai is not big enough to set off financial repercussions outside the Middle East, the main fear is that investors could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money." -- The NYT, Vikas Bajaj and Graham Bowley 11/30/2009 Apart from the stark self-contradiction in this quote from The New York Times, you have to love the fatuous 'it's all good' self-assurance where global banking is concerned. No problemo y'all! A mere overdraft incident, a cash-flow hiccup... and yet "the main fear" [among whom?] is that investors [where and in what? Like, everywhere?] could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money [WTF?]. Gosh, well, as long as they don't flee the New York Stock Exchange, the Hang Seng, the FTSE.... And, hey, do you suppose anybody bought any credit default swap "insurance" on the deals that financed scores and scores of super-giant condominium skyscrapers and hotels amounting to the greatest spec construction folly in the history of the world?

Snapshots of the stupid fucking work-in-progress have been circulating around the Internet for five years, the disbelief was so monumental. I confess, when I first saw the Palm Island I was impressed at what a superb air-strike target it presented. And then, when the real estate assemblage of artificial islands arranged like a map-of-the-world came along, I could only imagine the megalomanical glee rising in the throat of a jet bomber pilot (nationality unspecified) as he closed in on it. Image above: Interior photo of Ski Dubai indoor slope. From http://drewschottphotography.com/Site/EverydayLife.htm Whom the gods would punish, they first make completely crazy. That includes us, here in the USA, by the way, but pound-for-pound Dubai is the current champeen. The monstrosity they built in their waterless convection-oven of a city-state makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall in comparison. Throw in a few other affronts to nature, such as an indoor ski "mountain," a beach cooled by an under-the-sand refrigerated pipe network, golf courses that have to be hosed down with acre-feet of desalinated sea-water, and forget about "the gods" -- one begins to see the monotheistic hand of "Old Scratch" himself working the levers of the construction cranes out there. Frankly, I have no idea whether the Dubai fiasco will send seismic ripples thundering through a global banking establishment that is already crippled in more ways than you can count. But it does remind those in thrall to the dazzlement of "green shoots" that debt comes a'creeping, and runs so far, deep, and wide through the broken system of mutual assurances constituting international finance, that Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in central banks 'round the world could drop helicopter loads of paper cash on every rooftop, intersection, parking lot, field, forest, and camel raceway and never make a dent in the fatal web of false obligations we have woven for ourselves.

But you do wonder what was going through their minds as this ridiculous organism took shape on the horn of the Persian Gulf, just as one wonders at loathsome aspirations that Las Vegas presents in our own so-called culture -- essentially a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children. Image above: Detail of "The Romans during the Decadence" (1847) by Thomas Couture From http://thestupidnation.com/2009/01/31/porkzilla.aspx Lately, the much-repeated aphorism has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse. If this is true -- and it is hard to argue with the historical record -- then it's time to organize a new Third Party for the 2012 election with Jared Diamond and Cormac McCarthy heading the national ticket (and Roland Emmerich for EPA chief). By then, if we don't stop lying to ourselves about the destruction we have induced, every other suit-and-tie wearing authority figure in America, from the county clerk to Barack Obama, will take on the aura of the archetypal Evil Clown from a Stephen King yarn. Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible. This is the kind of country we're becoming and it will not keep running that way for long.

The markets will begin digesting the Dubai news in earnest today, making for a holiday season of possibly momentous thrills-and-chills. The big debate going into Thanksgiving was whether the dollar would continue its downward trajectory, leading to some kind of currency failure, hyper-inflation, take your pick... or turn briskly around as investors bailed out of risk vehicles for the conventional safe-haven paper parking lot of US Treasuries. This debate between the inflationists and deflationists has defied resolution all year. Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar. In keeping with the wickedness theme, isn't it interesting that our society now vests all its hopes and wishes for thriving -- indeed survival! -- on a yearly ceremony we have come to call Black Friday. I was raised in a religion-free household, but I confess the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side. I'm a little surprised that "consumers" were not caught on video wringing the necks of chickens in the WalMart parking lots the other day in the hopes of winning supernatural favor for that race down the aisle to the flat-screen TV loss leaders. Image above: Consumer on the hunt for a plasma TV at Walmart. From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260342750528573.html The cinemas are full of blood-sucking teenagers. Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats and butt-crack trousers. Why not just tattoo a message on your forehead that says: "Moron For Hire"? See also: Island Breath: Annals of Peak Oil Insanity - Ski Dubai 8/19/09

Let's worry about the real

SUBHEAD: "2012", 'The Book of Eli" and "The Road" all warn us of the end of the world. We have more important things to worry about right now... Image above: Detail of poster for movie "2012" rendering the many ends of the world. By Kathy McMahon on 27 November 2009 in Peak Oil Blues - (http://www.peakoilblues.com/blog/?p=1807) Here are 55 real things to worry about. if worry you must. Peak Oil, Climate change and the Greater Depression will pose many challenges to our way of life but let’s get real, for a moment: Golden Hordes aren’t one of them. At least not now. Economic depression brings with it a host of serious problems, and I think you can say quite confidently, without being a Chicken Little, that most of the world is in a Greater Depression. But still, we’ve got a few years to go before we can say that the USA is no longer a viable culture, when no one wants to live in Paris or London, when potatoes no longer grow in Poland, and before donkey’s begin pulling our rusted-out cars. In the movies bikers with shotguns; crashing waves drowning our cities; evacuating your house on a moments notice to house troops; the government coming to confiscate your precious metals; a mass exodus of cities as the violence and mayhem escalates to intolerable levels... all of these things should not be on the top of the list of what to prepared for. So what should be? 1. Job loss is up there. 2. We’ve already seen retirement accounts deteriorate, leaving us less money to live on in our aging years. 3. Our elderly today, like that 93 year-old who froze to death in his kitchen, will face real challenges in keeping themselves medicated, warm and fed. It may be time to get concerned about the old folks who live on your street, and start having tea with them on alternating days. 4. The rising price of everything from food to fuel is likely to be a serious problem for a lot of us. 5. Food pantries won’t be able to feed all of the people who need resources from them, and people who used to give generously to those same pantries, might now be lining up for help. 6. Managing depression–emotional depression, that is, should be up there. 7. We’ll also have to deal with the harmful side-affects of worry and fear, not brought on by the FBI tapping our telephones, but because we have no clue where the money’s going to come from to pay off our credit cards. 8. Domestic violence will be on the rise. So will alcoholism, drug abuse and out-of-control gambling. 9. Our towns, cities, regions, and states will continue to face serious problems. They will increasingly have trouble funding basic services like police, fire, education, sanitation collection and health services. 10. The evaporation of the housing bubble will mean fewer property taxes really soon. They will need more tax dollars, and yes, those who live within their jurisdiction will be the ones they’ll tap. You’ll also be asked to contribute more money toward things that used to be paid for by your governments. They may not confiscate your fire arms, but they will tax you for each and every one of them, as yet another source of income. 11. Rising taxes will mean less household money for food, fuel, etc. 12. Higher taxes will mean fewer dollars in your pocket and less support for local businesses. 13. More failing businesses will mean less tax revenues for basic services. Repeat bullets 10, 11 and 12 above. 14. What we really have to fear is desperate towns and cities selling off basic services, like fire protection services and water rights, to multinationals, in an effort to raise short term cash. That’s something to be afraid of. When that happens, you’ll see escalating prices for basic utilities more frightening than UFO’s hovering over your town hall. 15. More sick people doesn’t mean a sudden massive die-off, but it does mean more of those killer colds and flu’s that wipe out a great number of little kids and grandmothers. 16. Given how many people work for some branch, or are funded by the US Government, fewer tax dollars means more governmental workers losing their jobs. 17. Yes, there will be protests and some riots. Yes, some city residents, already suffering from years of unemployment and poverty, will rage at being unable to make ends meet on the social programs that use to be barely adequate. 18. I’m not saying don’t worry about global warming causing a new ice age that will leave one mile-thick ice throughout North America and much of Europe. I’m just saying it should be lower on your priority list than the greater chance that your basement is going to flood more often and that your insurance company is no longer going to cover it or tell you so until it happens and you need it. 19. Yes, keep several 50-gallon rain buckets, but not so you can live another week when Yellow Stone’s volcano erupts, wiping out life as we know it in the US, but so you can water your garden as you get less rainfall each year. 20. Crime will increase. But you won’t have 40 inner-city youth with oozies ransacking your living room. The kid who lives down the street, the one that couldn’t get a summer job, he’ll be the one stealing your stuff. Keep teens busy. We’ll need them even more as time goes on. Image above: Still from the movie "The Book of Eli" starring Denzel Washington 21. Grocery stores will get “tough on crime” as our “voleurs par faim” (thieves by reason of hunger), who might have been generally tolerated in the past, will now grow to intolerable numbers. 22. Dreams will die: the dream of an exotic vacation, a college or private school education, career advancement, or a comfortable retirement.

23. Marriages and relationships will end, because they’ve never known hard times, and when one or both turn away from the other, in response to the troubles, instead of growing closer because of them. 24. Small businesses will close, taking all the owner’s sweat equity and all the better-paid, long-time employees with them. 25. Closing local business means we’ll have to travel longer distances to shop, or pay the shipping costs for things that we used to be able to get in our neighborhoods. Gasoline will become, for many items, more expensive than the stuff we are buying. Shipping costs will also make online shopping more expensive . 26. We will suffer the greatest pains over lost dreams where we’ve imagined that we’ve failed our children or grandchildren. As H.S. Sullivan (who started his professional life during the Great Depression) has written: “Marked economic disturbances usually have either general or specific reasons, and have very marked effects on the course of personality development. Parents almost always aim their children at something, which the children either seek or avoid at all costs, but big economic change may lead to tragic revision of the parental ambitions with corresponding effects on the childrens’ goals and so on, and may leave permanent marks.” 27. The age of your children will impact the effect the change will have on them. If they are under age 8, the parental utterances they hear around your home, will be most impactful. The family establishes the worldview, and sets the tone. Like a light mist surrounding the child, they either uplift or cover your child with despair. 28. Unlike during the Great Depression, however, when employers were willing to hire children at slave wages, and children were therefore able to help out financially in real tangible ways, our children–even our teenagers–won’t have jobs. No, this will not be your grandmother’s Great Depression. 29. Instead of trying to explain why your children have to become cobblers, practice saying things like: “No, Tommy/Jane, I won’t be buying you that this year, because we are all needing to cut back on our spending. I know you are disappointed or angry. I can understand that. I wish it were different, but it isn’t. You’ll always have what you need, but that item isn’t a necessity, and we can’t afford to buy it for you.” 30. If your children or grandchildren are near college-aged, these plans for higher educational may be dashed. Many of us will have already tapped out our home equity line of credit, or if we haven’t, the banks won’t lend to us anyway. Even IF we have great credit scores. 31. If our children or grandchildren are active in a profession, and manage to keep their jobs, they may find themselves having to financially support a larger social network. They’ll take in their parents and grandparents, cousins, friends. We’ll have to learn the value of NOT expressing ourselves–our frustrations, our dislikes, our annoyances and fight with our spouses in private–as we all live in cramped quarters. 32. And things will start to look older and shabbier: Cars that we drive, clothes that we wear, homes that we live in. We’ll understand the word “decaying” in a whole new way, when we can’t afford to replace our roofs, or repair our driveways. 33. We’ll stay home a heck of a lot more, especially when the car breaks down, and we don’t have the cash to fix it. 34. Most of us will continue to find the cash to watch cable television, while we eat crappier food, and we’ll hear a repetitive message that while some people are suffering, everything is still dandy. They’ll imply our suffering is our own fault. 35. Our military budget will continue to increase, while our domestic budget will continue to decrease. 36. Wars will increase, no matter who is President. We will fear for our young people, more of whom will find the military the only option for a “secure” job. They’ll fight over oil. They’ll fight over land. They’ll be deployed in states that they don’t call home, where they will be charged with “crowd control”. These crowds will be composed of somebody else’s family and friends. 37. More of us will wait in absurd traffic lines to be “checked,” without knowing or caring what we are being “checked” for. 38. Fancier electronic ways will be developed by governments to separate us from our money–automatically. 39. We’ll find ourselves with less time and more work hours to pay for a lifestyle that’s barely equivalent. Image above: Still from movie "The Road" based on movel by Cormac McCarthy. 40. We’ll spend more of our week-ends or vacation time doing chores and repair work we used to pay someone else to do. 41. Our children will see more of us, as we will cut corners to cut daycare costs, but there’ll be less of us to see. 42. Despite our best intentions, our emotional and physical fatigue will leave us with little spare energy for the kinds of religious, social, or charitable work we’d assumed we’d continue to do. Our grandparents– a significantly more religious and social group than we are– dropped out of their community involvements in huge numbers during the Great Depression. So will we. We’ll learn how valuable our “free time” was, when we stop having very much of it. 43. We’ll learn the lesson so many African nations have learned, that mal-nutrition impacts our ability to process information cognitively, produce healthy children, and fight injustice. We should be fearful that people who need food stamps and school breakfasts and lunches will stop getting them. If we’re smart, we’ll target our priorities with a laser focus, stick to the basics, and keep our priorities straight. Full bellies make better neighbors. 44. We will find ourselves with a lot less energy to pretend we’re someone we aren’t, and a lot less money to keep up that illusion. 45. Those times we told other people that we ‘just couldn’t live without X,Y, or Z’– we’ll learn that we can. Some of us will be surprised to find out that we don’t miss the things we were so sure we couldn’t live without. 46. The longer we keep trying to convince ourselves that everything is the same, that nothing has changed, the more battered our souls will feel. After a period of loud protestation, beating of the chest, cries proclaiming how unfair it all is, and how this can’t be happening to us, we’ll quiet down. 47. We’ll have to swallow the news that most people who don’t live in the “developed” world already got: “we aren’t automatically entitled to be wealthy, have an easy life, be constantly amused,” and for some, that fact will make life absolutely miserable. For others, it will be a great liberation. Take a quote from Studs Terkel’s book on the Great Depression:

“I never liked the idea of living on scallions in the left bank garret. I liked writing in comfort. So I went into business, a classmate and I. I thought I’d retire in a year or two. And a thing called Collapse, bango! socked everything out. 1929. All I had left was a pencil…There was nothing else to do. I was doing light verse at the time, writing a poem here and there for ten bucks a crack. It was an era when kids at college were interested in light verse and ballads and sonnets. This is the early Thirties. I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released. Being in business was something I detested. When I found that I could sell a song or a poem, I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows.Someone who lost money found that his life was gone. When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity. I felt I was being born for the first time. So for me, the world became beautiful.With the Crash, I realized that the greatest fantasy of all was business. The only realistic way of making a life was versifying. Living off your imagination.”

48. We’ll start doing what we want, (as long as it’s free) because we won’t have the opportunity to do much else. 49. Some of us will be forced to move to poorer neighborhoods and will be surprised to find out them filled with decent people. We’ll find ourselves delighted to have working-class neighors who can actually fix the plumbing, repair the toilet, or get your truck running–and won’t charge us a dime. Some will keep our neighborhoods intact, while others will watch them be bulldozed. 50. We’ll learn to eat ‘Soul Food’–all the parts of the animal Black folks learned to cook with, because White folks wouldn’t touch that type of meat. And it will taste good, and we’ll be grateful to have it. 51. And no, of course not, it won’t be this way for all of us: Some of us will have to hide our excessive purchases in our closets or in plain paper bags. 52. Some of us will put on less elaborate cocktail parties. 53. Some of us will trade our newly-bankrupted husband for a wealthier one. 54. Some of us will watch the worst of this Greater Depression from the comfort of our “still working lives,” and will retain much of what we need to get by, in a comfort that we now appreciate a great deal more. 55. Some of us will learn the comfort of prayer or group worship. We will “get it” that there exists something greater than ourselves-whether it be G-d, community or family. The concept of who makes up our family, will grow for some of us and shrink for others. Just like today only worse But if there is anything at all we need to be afraid of, it is our sense of hubris that won’t admit to ourselves that this “everyday dreariness” is the worst of it or the best of it. It will be our desire to cling to a group or a leader who promises to restore our former glory. What will give us inspiration will be our capacity to see the great gifts delivered to us in these “every-day tragedies,” the blessing inside every misfortune, the spirit inside every hardship that will pull us through. The gift will be in our capacity to recognize that the “hard times” we are living with, right now, ARE real, and that our struggles are shared by millions of other people world-wide. And, while most of us are unlikely to end up in some governmental concentration camp, any time soon, we might easily end up in a hell of our own making, if we don’t accept how ordinary and ‘just like today only worse’ it will all be tomorrow, making today ‘just like tomorrow, only better.’

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Disaster Movie 8/3/09 Ea O Ka Aina:Apocalypse, Wow! 11/20/09 Ea O Ka Aina: Marching towards Zombieland 10/19/09 Island Breath: Blockbusters - When in doubt bring in the CG 1/16/06

$3.5 Trillion hole

SUBHEAD: Treasury to try to borrow $3.5 trillion in next 12 months. The bankruptcy of the United States is now certain.

By Porter Stansberry on 24 November 2009 in the S&A Digest -  
(http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/3455/Porter_Stansberry)


 
Image above: Slightly modified cartton of Uncle Sam in a debtor's stock. From http://longislandbankruptcyblog.com/consumers-file-bankruptcy-york

It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year?

That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from? How did we end up with so much short-term debt? Like most entities that have far too much debt - whether subprime borrowers, GM, Fannie, or GE - the U.S. Treasury has tried to minimize its interest burden by borrowing for short durations and then "rolling over" the loans when they come due. As they say on Wall Street, "a rolling debt collects no moss."

What they mean is, as long as you can extend the debt, you have no problem. Unfortunately, that leads folks to take on ever greater amounts of debt… at ever shorter durations… at ever lower interest rates. Sooner or later, the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that's when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over. Bankruptcy is next.

When governments go bankrupt it's called "a default." Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists - Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti - published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. That's why the formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. The rule states: To avoid a default, countries should maintain hard currency reserves equal to at least 100% of their short-term foreign debt maturities.

The world's largest money management firm, PIMCO, explains the rule this way: "The minimum benchmark of reserves equal to at least 100% of short-term external debt is known as the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. Greenspan-Guidotti is perhaps the single concept of reserve adequacy that has the most adherents and empirical support." The principle behind the rule is simple. If you can't pay off all of your foreign debts in the next 12 months, you're a terrible credit risk.

Speculators are going to target your bonds and your currency, making it impossible to refinance your debts. A default is assured. So how does America rank on the Greenspan-Guidotti scale? It's a guaranteed default. The U.S. holds gold, oil, and foreign currency in reserve. The U.S. has 8,133.5 metric tonnes of gold (it is the world's largest holder).

That's 16,267,000 pounds. At current dollar values, it's worth around $300 billion. The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve shows a current total position of 725 million barrels. At current dollar prices, that's roughly $58 billion worth of oil. And according to the IMF, the U.S. has $136 billion in foreign currency reserves. So altogether... that's around $500 billion of reserves. Our short-term foreign debts are far bigger.

According to the U.S. Treasury, $2 trillion worth of debt will mature in the next 12 months. So looking only at short-term debt, we know the Treasury will have to finance at least $2 trillion worth of maturing debt in the next 12 months. That might not cause a crisis if we were still funding our national debt internally. But since 1985, we've been a net debtor to the world. Today, foreigners own 44% of all our debts, which means we owe foreign creditors at least $880 billion in the next 12 months - an amount far larger than our reserves. Keep in mind, this only covers our existing debts.

The Office of Management and Budget is predicting a $1.5 trillion budget deficit over the next year. That puts our total funding requirements on the order of $3.5 trillion over the next 12 months. So… where will the money come from? Total domestic savings in the U.S. are only around $600 billion annually.

Even if we all put every penny of our savings into U.S. Treasury debt, we're still going to come up nearly $3 trillion short. That's an annual funding requirement equal to roughly 40% of GDP. Where is the money going to come from? From our foreign creditors? Not according to Greenspan-Guidotti. And not according to the Indian or the Russian central bank, which have stopped buying Treasury bills and begun to buy enormous amounts of gold. The Indians bought 200 metric tonnes this month.

Sources in Russia say the central bank there will double its gold reserves. So where will the money come from?

The printing press. The Federal Reserve has already monetized nearly $2 trillion worth of Treasury debt and mortgage debt. This weakens the value of the dollar and devalues our existing Treasury bonds. Sooner or later, our creditors will face a stark choice: Hold our bonds and continue to see the value diminish slowly, or try to escape to gold and see the value of their U.S. bonds plummet.

One thing they're not going to do is buy more of our debt. Which central banks will abandon the dollar next? Brazil, Korea, and Chile. These are the three largest central banks that own the least amount of gold. None own even 1% of their total reserves in gold. I examined these issues in much greater detail in the most recent issue of my newsletter, Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory, which we published last Friday.

Coincidentally, the New York Times repeated our warnings - nearly word for word - in its paper today. (They didn't mention Greenspan-Guidotti, however... It's a real secret of international speculators.)

The dark side of Dubai

SUBHEAD: It's the end of The World. Dubai has become market fundamentalist globalization in one city.

 By Johann Hari on 7 April 2009 in The Independent -
 (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html)


 
Image above: The Burj al Arab hotel on an island offshore of Dubai. From http://blog.luxuryproperty.com/new-luxury-development-porto-dubai

 [IB Editors note: this is the concluding section of the article. Please use the link above to read the entire article.]
 

VIII. The End of The World
The World is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished. Through binoculars, I think I can glimpse Britain; this sceptred isle barren in the salt-breeze.

Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world. They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth's land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who work at the nearby coast say they haven't seen anybody there for months now. "The World is over," a South African suggests.

All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn't singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.

The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen. Sitting on its own fake island – shaped, of course, like a palm tree – it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is pink and turreted – the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs, held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle, there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining; water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.

A South African PR girl shows me around its most coveted rooms, explaining that this is "the greatest luxury offered in the world". We stroll past shops selling $36million diamond rings around a hotel themed on the lost and sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis.

There are huge water tanks filled with sharks, which poke around mock-abandoned castles and dumped submarines. There are more than 1,500 rooms here, each with a sea view. The Neptune suite has three floors, and – I gasp as I see it – it looks out directly on to the vast shark tank. You lie on the bed, and the sharks stare in at you. In Dubai, you can sleep with the fishes, and survive.

But even the luxury – reminiscent of a Bond villain's lair – is also being abandoned. I check myself in for a few nights to the classiest hotel in town, the Park Hyatt. It is the fashionistas' favourite hotel, where Elle Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger stay, a gorgeous, understated palace. It feels empty. Whenever I eat, I am one of the only people in the restaurant. A staff member tells me in a whisper: "It used to be full here. Now there's hardly anyone." Rattling around, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the last man in an abandoned, haunted home.

The most famous hotel in Dubai – the proud icon of the city – is the Burj al Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat. In the lobby, I start chatting to a couple from London who work in the City. They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years now, and they say they love it. "You never know what you'll find here," he says. "On our last trip, at the beginning of the holiday, our window looked out on the sea. By the end, they'd built an entire island there."

My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn't the omnipresent slave class bother you? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: "That's what we come for! It's great, you can't do anything for yourself!" Her husband chimes in: "When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don't do is take it out for you when you have a piss!" And they both fall about laughing. 

IX. Taking on the Desert

Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?

The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.

Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds somber as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose."

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no usable water. None. There is no surface water, very little aquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.

If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues – if, say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil..." he shakes his head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week. There's almost no storage. We don't know what will happen if our supplies falter. It would be hard to survive."

Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. "We are building all these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it's all fine, they've taken it into consideration, but I'm not so sure."

Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? "There isn't much interest in these problems," he says sadly. But just to stand still, the average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.

I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai will react, so I decided to look at how it has dealt with an environmental problem that already exists – the pollution of its beaches. One woman – an American, working at one of the big hotels – had written in a lot of online forums arguing that it was bad and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. "I can't talk to you," she said sternly. Not even if it's off the record? "I can't talk to you." But I don't have to disclose your name... "You're not listening. This phone is bugged. I can't talk to you," she snapped, and hung up.

The next day I turned up at her office. "If you reveal my identity, I'll be sent on the first plane out of this city," she said, before beginning to nervously pace the shore with me. "It started like this. We began to get complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd, and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately – but there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing."

The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'.

I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.

Suddenly, it was an open secret – and the municipal authorities finally acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the water quality didn't improve: it became black and stank. "It's got chemicals in it. I don't know what they are. But this stuff is toxic."

She continued to complain – and started to receive anonymous phone calls. "Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you're out," they said. She says: "The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at it!" There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai's most famous hotels.

"What I learned about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them – deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a total disaster." As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.

X. Fake Plastic Trees

 On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-colored decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is market fundamentalist globalization in one city.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realized – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!"

But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand."

As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"

Some names in this article have been changed.

The Blue Economy

SUBHEAD: Cultivating a new business model for a time of crisis will be a great transition. By Gunter Pauli on 13 November 2009 in Hope Dance Magazine - (http://www.hopedance.org/home/money-news/1601-the-blue-economy-cultivating-a-new-business-model-for-a-time-of-crisis) Video above: Music video "Unsustainable 2010" From Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDuitlrANY4 How a new generation of entrepreneurs can bring innovations to the marketplace, secure the basic needs of all, and make sustainable businesses competitive. The Recent Economy

Mere months after the 2008 financial meltdown, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reported the loss of 50 million jobs. Developing economies were deeply affected by massive layoffs in the formal sector and the loss of income in the informal sector. It was a social shock that unsettled the world. In essence, the world economy for the past few decades was capitalized on money that simply did not exist.

Downsizing and outsourcing were some of the key driving forces of every major industrial group. "Wealth" was generated by making "assets" appear as though by magic through leveraging credit and creating financial instruments that contributed not even remotely to the value of the business. Money was multiplied over and over in special accounts without risk, initiative, or production of real assets. Innovation was limited to investments that could produce multiple short term returns. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, verged on becoming a vanishing breed.

The form of capitalism that has dominated world societies is entirely disconnected from peoples' real needs. Some two billion people struggle to get by on less than two dollars a day, lacking access to food, water, health, and energy, the most basic requirements for survival. Over 25% of the world's youth are unemployed. Yet one billion of us are overnourished and swim in 400 million tons of electronic waste with higher metal concentrations than the ores extracted from the earth. Conservatively, the top 70% of the world's wealth is concentrated in the top 10% of the population.

The business model that requires companies to invest more in order to save the environment will be replaced with a framework that permits less investment and more revenues while building social capital.

Fortunately, times are changing. This book is about that change. As the second decade of the 21st century sets the stage for a new economy, the core question we answer is, "What is the business framework we really need?"

Up to now, the model driving our economies depended on perpetual growth, requiring ever more resources and investments. This model has inherent flaws. It leads to unjust societies, highly skewed and exploitative economies, and devastated ecosystems. The business model that defines corporate environmental responsibility in terms of size of investment, and defines corporate success as increased shareholder value and grandiose executive compensation, must be replaced.

The New Economy

The new economy must be more effective and more collaborative. It must become truly sustainable, introducing innovations that permit less investment, generate more revenues, and build the strengths of a community and builds up social capital - not debt. This is the business framework that will drive the new Blue Economy. This is the framework that will seek out and define true sustainability for all living species on Earth.

The prevailing economic model predicates that scarcity is the major limitation. Industry searches for ever higher agricultural yields and manufactory outputs, demanding that the Earth and human labor produce more. We must re-evaluate this notion and begin to more fully utilize what the Earth and labor produce, rather than demanding more materials and more output. It is time to end the insatiable quest for ever lower costs that drives business towards economies of scale through megamergers and acquisitions financed by billion dollar loans. It is time to adopt broad-based innovative strategies that generate multiple revenues and greater cash flows while creating more jobs. It is time for a Blue Economy.

In shifting our focus to economies of scope, the framework of the Blue Economy opens possibilities for a new generation of entrepreneurs who use what is available to sustainably address the needs of the Earth and all its citizens.

The shift from the model of core businesses based on a single core competence and economies of scale to a framework of multiple businesses with aligned economies of scope may sound unrealistic to the executive trained by any leading business school.

However, the current global crisis highlights the need for an framework of economic development that is based on fundamental innovation and that will generate desperately needed jobs while sustainably addressing the needs of the earth and all its citizens. This "blue" approach is not only viable, it has already begun to take root. Four years of research has identified a portfolio of 100 innovations including whole systems models that have the potential to generate as many as 100 million jobs worldwide over the next 10 years.

The Blue Economy

The first set of innovations, all proven and benchmarked at a remarkable scale, cascade nutrients and energy the way ecosystems do. This means that everything contributes according to its capacity, and everything stays in the nutrient stream - even waste is not wasted. Instead of contrived scarcity and shortages, what we see in the new economic framework is abundance - of food, energy, jobs, and revenue. For example:

• Under the leadership of Paolo Lugari, Las Gaviotas in Colombia converted a desolate savannah created by 400 years of extensive cattle farming into a lush rainforest that provides residents with abundant water, food, and fuel while building valuable social capital. The project regenerates biodiversity, and becomes an island of peace in a world of poverty and violence, while the land value increased more over 25 years than the shares of Microsoft, turning the local population bankable.

• Small-diameter wood is a pernicious fire hazard in forests throughout the world. In New Mexico, USA, the peoples of a Native American Picuris pueblo have used a whole systems model introduced by Robert Haspel and Linda Taylor centered on mushrooms and their growth substrate to converted this fire hazard into a resource that provides jobs, food, and livestock feed while upholding their traditions and culture. This stands in stark contrast to how this hazard is handled elsewhere in the western US. Each year we see dramatic images of wild fires devastating rural and even suburban areas of California.

• The silkworm converts leaves into nutrients, which easily blend with soil bacteria, quickly attracting micro-organisms and regenerating topsoil that will safeguard agricultural production and build food security. Additionally, silk -as discovered by Fritz Vollrath based at Oxford University- itself can be used to replace high performance titanium in health care and consumer products, reducing the burden that titanium mining places on the Earth, while sequestering carbon. Simply replacing the titanium and stainless steel razor requires the planting of 250,000 hectares of mulberry trees on desolate and infertile land, which apart from generating top soil creates an estimated 12.5 million jobs.

• Anders Nyquist (Sweden) mathematically codified the termites' ability to utilize air flows for temperature and humidity controls into a model that makes automated climate control systems obsolete, successfully moderating the effect of ice-cold Scandinavian winters. With the new technology made possible by his research, buildings can be designed to warm or cool as needed. The "energy saving" model of locking all living species into an airtight and heavily insulated room cannot truly serve the purpose of energy savings. It merely creates an environment where the infectious species proliferate. If one person sneezes, then everyone sneezes.

Substituting "something" with "nothing" Our society is heavily accustomed to consuming products that create massive waste and pollution. These products and their manufacturing processes have squandered limited resources and mired many in living environments that are loaded with toxic residue and the spoils of production. The genesis of M1H1 or swine flu can be attributed to just such a scenario. Real, lasting solutions - truly sustainable solutions - require a fundamental shift in our awareness. We will need breakthrough innovations, such as the second set of innovations which exemplify how "something" - models of unsustainable production and consumption - can be replaced by "nothing." For example:

• Consumers do not realize that the cost per kilowatt hour of electricity stored by a hearing aid or a pacemaker battery may easily surpass 100!. The 40 billion batteries we dump into landfills every year required energy-intensive mining and smelting in their manufacture. While a "green" battery may someday be developed, it remains dependent on mining which is part of the old business model. The technology is available that would permit us to simply eliminate the battery altogether. The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has already presented a cellphone powered by the differential between ambient and body temperature and the pressure generated by our voice. Professor Jorge Reynolds (Colombia), a pioneer in whale research, has developed the first pacemaker that requires no batteries, no surgery, and only local anaesthesia, cutting costs carried by social security by factor 200, and dramatically reducing the trauma for the patient.

• The alarming proliferation of drug-resistant bacterial and viral strains requires science to venture towards solutions based on technologies that mirror natural systems, such as the ability of red algae seaweed to deafen bacteria. Australian scientists Peter Steinberg and Staffan Kjelleberg (Australia) discovered that red algae seaweed could mitigate the spread of bacteria - without killing them and without poisonous chemistry - simply by making the bacteria unable to communicate. If bacteria do not hear others of their species, they move on and do not populate a surface. This means that they cannot create a biofilm, a superstructure that plays a critical role in many diseases.

• The simple but elegant power of a vortex as industrialized by Curt Hallberg and his team at Watreco AB (Sweden) replaces chemicals with purely physical effects to remove bacteria and air from water. This eliminates the need for bactericides while cutting energy consumption. Many chemicals are replaced by the forces of physics. Since a vortex is reliably generated by gravity, it has the potential to generate drinking water with a minimal expense of energy.

There are over one hundred such innovations described in the forthcoming book, The Blue Economy, presented as a Report to the Club of Rome. Each has been benchmarked and brought to fruition in different parts of the world. They are are just a few examples of what is possible, and the insights they supply give us a positive future outlook. The new "blue" business framework will work with what is locally available to generate multiple revenues and respond to basic needs. It will provide a platform that merges creative entrepreneurship with breakthrough innovations to nurture life, secure food and shelter for all, and sustain the Earth's natural systems.

Imagining New Jobs

This mirrors the evolutionary path of nature. Indeed, just as ecosystems evolved to ever more efficient nutrient and energy cycles, bringing ever more diversity while developing resilience, flexibility, and performance, the Blue Economy will increasingly rely on less energy and provide more diversity through innovations brought to the market by ever more entrepreneurs fortified with a vision of real sustainability and prepared to take the risks. More players will be encouraged to respond to critical needs, linking the triangle of innovation, sustainability, and entrepreneurship away from scarcity and into abundance. Debt becomes social capital, external costs become opportunities to differentiate on the market.

Re-imagining our economic future requires entrepreneurs in science, social affairs, business, environment, and culture. We must make information available, exposing the opportunities we have to accelerate these innovations on the market, and refrain from imposing the laws. We will reach out to others we never imagined working with, so that we efficiently and purposefully allocate resources so that we can respond to the needs of all with what we have. We must to move away from an economy where the engine of growth is indebtedness loaded upon our children and grandchildren, squandering those future generations' material resources.

The incapacity to imagine meaningful jobs and to provide worthy challenges to a whole generation equates to telling the young that there is no future for them, that their generation is lost. With over one billion young people entering the labor market in the next decade, we must move toward a Blue Economy, based on what we have and what we can share with those who have not. *Gunter Pauli (1956) is an inveterate entrepreneur whose scope of initiatives span business, culture, science, and education. Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome, exposed Gunter to a systems approach which has influenced his research and projects ever since. In 1994, with the support of the Japanese government at Tokyo's United Nations University, he launched an initiative to design an economic framework and business model that converts all waste, including emissions, into a value- added cascading model that draws from whole systems in nature. In 2004 he undertook a massive research project to identify innovations that would shift business towards higher levels of competitiveness and sustainability, while generating millions of jobs through the creation of a platform for entrepreneurship. In Spring 2010 he will personally direct a two-year initiative that will regularly present Blue Economy business models to inspire entrepreneurs to translate these opportunities into worldwide business initiatives. Gunter is a member of the Club of Rome and the author of 17 books, published in 21 languagues, and 36 fables that bring science and entrepreneurship to young children. He is married with four children, including his adopted daughter from Zimbabwe, Chido Govero.

Film Noho Hewa on Kauai

SOURCE: Ray Catania, may11nineteen71@gmail.com
SUBHEAD: Free Documentary shown Sunday Dec 6th at Kapaa Neighborhood Center at 4pm.

 
Image above: Detail of movie poster for Noho Hewa.  

WHAT:
Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawaii A Free documentary about the militarization of Hawaii, desecration and forced removal of Hawaiian people, by Keala Kelly. Light refreshments will be served.  

WHERE: Kapaa Neighborhood Center Auditorium  

WHEN:
Sunday, December 6th 2009 from 4 to 7 pm  

SPONSOR:
Sponsored by Mana Oha.
 
CONTACT:
For more information, call Ben Nihi at 634-0469.

The film received the Hawaii International Film Festival's highest award in the documentary film category, the Halekulani Golden Orchid award for Best Documentary. Noho Hewa connects the military occupation of Hawaii to the fraudulence of statehood, the Akaka Bill, homelessness, desecration and more. Featured interviews: Haunani-Kay Trask, Kaleikoa Kaeo, Noenoe Silva, Keanu Sai, J Kehaulani, Kauanui and others. For more information about the film, go to the Noho Hewa website, http://www.nohohewa.com/

Noho Hewa film review from Big Island Weekly
http://www.bigislandweekly.com/articles/2009/02/11/read/news/news03.txt

By Ainaaloha on 11 Feb 2009

Ethnic cleansing isn't just something that they do physically to people, it's something that happens in the mind." This was said by Haunani-Kay Trask in an onscreen interview in the documentary "Noho Hewa." Haunani goes on to say that ethnic cleansing establishes within a people's mind-set that "You have no place to live. You do not have a home, so you do not exist." This manao (thought) is what Anne Keala Kelly is trying to capture in her first feature length documentary, "Noho Hewa."

Jan. 17 marked the 116th anniversary of the overthrow and continued occupation of the Kingdom of Hawai'i. "Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawaii" inspires and educates its audience on the struggles facing modern Hawaiians. It was presented in its unfinished version at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center on Jan. 17 as part of the University of Hawaii at Hilo Ho'olaulea. 

According to Kelly, the film connects the military occupation of Hawaii to the fraudulence of statehood, the Akaka Bill, homelessness, desecration and more. It includes onscreen interviews with Trask, Kaleikoa Kaeo, Noenoe Silva, Keanu Sai, J. Kehaulani Kauanui and others. It has taken Kelly five and a half years so far to get the film to its present state. She said:

"If I get funding, I can finish it in a couple of months. If I don't, well, I don't even want to talk about it. I would need about a little more than $15,000 to finish the project."

Kelly is putting a time limit on completing the film. She would like to finish the project by spring. "I can't do it anymore. This is a Gorilla movie, and so far I have worked for free. I need to take care of myself and move on to a project that will pay," she said. When asked why she had started the project Kelly replied, "As a journalist these are the same issues I saw coming up over and over again for Hawaiians." 

According to Kelly, a Gorilla documentary is usually a short project for public access programming, where she would only have a week, no money, nothing but a camera and some tape. "So I'm going to try and go for it, and try and get some manao and put it out, project it out, so that people get into the politics of things and get activated." 

Kelly said she could set up onscreen interviews and ask the interviewees a set of questions. The rest, according to Kelly, was kind of blind. She said, "I never knew what was going to happen -- I just was going after it with a camera, and it was never planned, always improvised. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't have the journalism background. After years of reporting I knew who might say what. 

So then, I would maybe shadow so and so, because he might do this. It's all fresh and it's all raw, not planned." She started off working with just a few activists focusing mostly on the Striker Brigade. Two years into that project, she realized, "I was never going to be able to finish that film. There were lots of reasons, political mainly, so I had to just move on and find a way to pull the same issues into one space." 

Kelly grew up around the Hawaiian movement. She said, "I was 12-years-old the first time I heard the word sovereignty. I remember how I felt the first time I heard the word. I felt it strong in me. I didn't even know what sovereignty meant." Viewers had strong reactions to the film. 

A citizen from the Czech Republic had a hard time holding back tears as the film ended. She was filled with sorrow after seeing what has become of a peaceful, friendly culture. During Q & A the Czech citizen spoke of how her own homeland is facing similar military occupational issues. She said the film inspired her to help her own homeland conquer its battles. 

An Alaskan Native, also inspired by the film, asked Kelly where to go to get more information so that he could share it with his friends. He wanted to help "spread the word." Kelly hopes that after seeing the film the audiences just take the time to do something, anything. "I hope that people take the time to consider the many things that are crushing Hawaiians from the spiritual to the physical to the physiological to the economics to the cultural. Our people are inundated from every direction. 

I hope Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians go away knowing that this is a terrible hewa (wrong) in multiple ways but also come out on the other end and know that they are supposed to do something to help, At least not make it worse with their opala or bad behavior, at least not make it worse for us, cause we Hawaiians have to really talk to each other and figure out how do we try to move together in a direction that's going to reverse the trend of these things you see in the film." 

 "Noho Hewa" is the winner of the 2008 Hawai'i International Film Festival and Halekulani Golden Orchid Award for best Documentary. "Noho Hewa" was not the only vehicle for education on Jan. 17. 

Simultaneous to Kelly's first showing of the film, Big Island residents were holding signs once again at the Borders parking lot in Hilo to let the public know that it is not OK to take any more from the Hawaiians, as so much has already been taken from them. The controversy covered in "Noho Hewa" has reached the youth of the Big Island. 

They are, as Hawaiian activist Skippy Ioane would say, "agitated and activated." They are taking a stand for the Hewa that has been done to their people. Keli'i Ioane, a 16-year-old junior at Kamehameha Schools Hawai'i Campus, son of activist Skippy Ioane, feels that it is his kuleana (responsibility) to do something about the Hewa. 

When Keli'i was asked why he was holding signs he said: "I believe that Ceded Lands belong to Hawaiians and not the people of Hawai'i. I feel that the lack of resources available to Hawaiians is all too evident in Hawai'i. I'm holding signs to fight the further loss of our inheritance, also to make people aware. I believe it's very important for the youth to be out here, because if we get started now we might be more successful than the previous generations."

Dubai commercial debt troubles

SUBHEAD: Global markets begin to panic on news that Dubai's Commercial Debt situation is not under control after all. [Publisher's Note: These videos have commercial introductions.] Image above: Rendering of proposed Dubai Towers as they would be seen at night. From http://marcus1234.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/dubai-property-crash-update Broadcast on 27 November 2009 on CNBC - Insight on the developing story on Dubai's debt concerns, with Paul Homsy, Crescent Partners CEO; David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff + Associates; and CNBC's Simon Hobbs. Discussing Dubai's debt freeze, with Komal Sri Kumar, TCW; David Kotok, Cumberland Advisors; and CNBC's Simon Hobbs.

The Dollar Bubble

SUBHEAD: Goldman Sachs continues to destroy US economy. Other nations must defend themselves from dollar collapse. Image above: Screen shot from and link to YouTube video "The Dollar Bubble". See video below. By Hossein Askari & Noureddine Krichene on 24 November 2009 in Asia Times (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KK24Dj06.html)

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Famous words, but uttered by whom and when? No, not some socialist or communist. It was none other than president Thomas Jefferson. The year was 1802. We forget these words at our own peril. On November 17, the "leader of the pack", aka Goldman Sachs, apologized. Its chief honcho, Lloyd Blankfein said: "Certainly, our industry is responsible for things. We're a leader in our industry, and we participated in things that were clearly wrong and we have reasons to regret and apologize for." To show remorse, Goldman Sachs will contribute US$100 million per year for five years to help small business. Wow! How generous! They only add insult to injury. After destroying millions of families, businesses and lives all over America and the world, they will contribute $100 million a year for five whole years. What are we supposed to say? Thank you? Let's look at the record and suggest a more appropriate remedy. Goldman was as responsible as any financial institution in bringing down the entire US economy, even threatening its own existence. It needed a government bailout and guarantees to survive; a fact it now denies. Today, after pocketing the government's helping hand, it is as arrogant as ever. Goldman received a $10 billion loan (which it has since paid back). It received $12.9 billion from AIG; let's not forget that the government paid AIG, and AIG then turned around and paid Goldman 100 cents on every dollar. Which bankrupt company has ever gotten such a deal? Shouldn't this alone be the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department? How could the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury possibly agree to this? Are they businessmen and businesswomen who guard America's national interests or are they simply collaborating with Wall Street? This year alone, Goldman has put aside $16.7 billion for 2009 bonuses. Compare that to the $100 million it is so generously earmarking for the millions of lives it has destroyed. Is this a measure of public-private justice? And the US taxpayer is still on the line to guarantee Goldman Sachs because it is too big too fail! Along with loose Fed monetary policy and inadequate lax supervision and regulation, banks and bankers have been right up there as leading causes of the worst financial crisis to hit the world since the Great Depression. Instead of exhibiting remorse, bankers are looking for new ways to extract another pound of flesh from ordinary Americans. Banks, not just Goldman Sachs, are again making record profits and plan to pay record bonuses to bankers for their "good work". Even after reporting record profits, some institutions want to delay the repayment of their federal bailouts to avoid dilution in their stock value; indeed, banks are putting up a fight to resist regulation calling for disclosure of overdraft fees that can amount to an annualized interest rate exceeding 3,500%. The banking industry obviously doesn't get it. A temporary tax should be imposed on banks that were bailed out to compensate for the damage they have inflicted on the economy. This is a fair solution. Our leaders profess surprise and powerlessness and do nothing. The White House, Congress, the Treasury and the Fed must put aside their own personal interests and relations with the financial industry, turn a cold shoulder on lobbyists and, for once, do what is right. The only way banks will learn not to repeat their greed-driven behavior is if they are held accountable for the financial crisis. While the final cost of the banks' irresponsible actions is anyone's guess - lost economic output in the US (the largest component), bailouts and stimulus expenditures - one thing is certain: current and future taxpayers will continue to pay as the exploding US national debt takes its toll. A temporary tax on the profits of banks would be a small step in exacting a small measure of justice for millions of ordinary Americans and could perhaps bring about a much-needed change in the way banks do business. The taxpayers' bailout of the banking industry has resulted in the prospect of budget deficits and a rising national debt as far as the eye can see. The spiraling national debt will not only result in a poor quality of life for our children and grandchildren, it will also impair other national initiatives. The US deficit for fiscal 2008 was $455 billion, or 3.2% of gross domestic product (GDP); in fiscal 2009, the figure has increased to a whopping $1.4 trillion, or 10% of GDP - that is, the highest ratio since 1945; and over the next 10 years the deficit will be an eye-popping $9 trillion! President Barack Obama has vowed to reduce the deficit to GDP ratio to 3% by the end of his first term in 2013, a task that may be all but impossible without new initiatives. The only solution is to reduce expenditures and increase taxes. In this, the financial industry must do its fair share. It will be tough to cut expenditures on entitlements and to increase taxes on average Americans who are already hurting. There is no other option but to increase the tax rate on a temporary basis on those who are more fortunate. This is only fair. Financial institutions that were bailed out should take a bigger hit than other entities since they brought on the financial crisis and would have declared bankruptcy had it not been for Uncle Sam. Moreover, unless something is done to make them take note, banks are going to take us right back down the same road to ruin - with continued overleveraging, speculation and price gauging. They have already started exploiting their customers again as attested by their exorbitant fees for overdrafts. Here is how a temporary tax would work. The temporary tax could be levied on the excess profits of all federally rescued financial institutions, with excess profits defined as the rate of return on equity (before payment of bonuses) minus the average return for all sectors of the US economy. The tax would be temporary, enforced until the estimated damage done by the financial institutions is paid back. The rescued banks would still continue to make handsome profits for bankers and their stockholders. Bankers would pay back some of their above-average profits to reduce the US national debt and to compensate for the damage they have caused by their selfishness. If we wait and do nothing, the national debt will become unmanageable, and we will have to take even more drastic action in the future. Jefferson would turn in his grave. Let's make sure we're ahead of the curve for a change. Institutions such as Goldman Sachs are bringing in huge profits right now. If the government calls on banks to help clean up their mess, then the American taxpayers might regain a measure of the trust they have lost in their leaders, who are so susceptible to lobbyists. To support this initiative and set an example, the US Fed should also stop enriching banks by acting as a quasi-fiscal institution. The Fed should stop paying interest on bank reserves. The Fed should refrain from inundating banks with free money in the form of zero-interest lending. Banks are not lending the money to the business. Instead, banks are lending the same money to the Treasury and are taking big trading risks, and are making obscene profits to enrich themselves at the national expense. Such a policy is purely redistributive in favor of the banks, imposing a huge tax on workers and pensioners, and requiring trillions of dollars in bailouts. The government must stop frightening Americans by saying that the sky will fall if they take retaliatory action against the financial institutions that have been responsible for our economic crisis. With the dollar in free fall and gold, oil and food prices again on the rise, foreigners will do whatever they can to protect themselves from losses in their dollar-denominated assets. We must act now before a full-blown dollar crisis, an oil crisis and hunger also envelop the world. Video above: "The Dollr Bubble" on www.YouTube.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZA0qNsf4m0 Hossein Askari is professor of international business and international affairs at George Washington University. Noureddine Krichene is an economist at the International Monetary Fund and a former advisor, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.