The privatisation of water is as benign as Lucifer

Posted on February 19, 2012 by travellerev

Water privatisation is what will be the next bubble if the 1% can help it. Just imagine the planet would die in three days without water and the 1% want control over it. They want to speculate with it and control it and control who or what lives or dies.

San Rafael, California — There hasn’t been much rain this season where I live. Personally, I don’t mind much. I like sunny days, summer weather, dry fairways at San Geronimo. The deer are not very happy, having to spend more time on my street than they’d prefer but they’ve had to come down from the hills a bit looking for food.

Where I live the reservoirs are still mostly full from the last winter’s rain and we will not experience any delays or service interruptions. I pay for water every month, the local water district sends a bill, costs maybe 30 bucks if everybody showers a lot and there are loads of clothes.

Drinking water, all I have to do is open the tap.

I take water for granted, did even during drought years when we recycled water for the garden and to flush toilets. Shower with a friend, the saying went, and we did, although that didn’t really seem to save much water.

Every year about 2 million people, most of them children, die from lack of water, either directly or indirectly through lack of sanitation; that’s twice as many people as the United States killed in Iraq. Estimates of international agencies put the number at 1.1 billion who do not have access to enough water to drink, cook with, or properly bathe.

Water in Marin County is a public utility. There’s a water board elected by the voters and various projects from time to time. For most of my life I was not even aware that water might be a problem for some people, blissfully wrapped in the Bay Area cocoon. What I’d heard seemed to be passing news bulletins. Droughts somewhere, I wasn’t sure. Relief efforts.

I’ve also been ignorant about nearly everything else in the world. I don’t think I really got how deeply evil some corporations were. I didn’t understand how money worked, nor what the World Bank was about, nor the International Monetary Fund. They sounded benign. They are about as benign as Lucifer.

Profit Driven Prison Industrial Complex: The Economics of Incarceration in the USA

Posted on February 10, 2012 by travellerev

If you need any more proof that we are just cattle for the powers that be I despair.

For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally challenge the underpinning moral infrastructure of American society and the values it claims to uphold. Under the conceptual illusion of liberty, few things are more sobering than the amount of Americans who will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated correctional facility – ostensibly, being corrected. The United States of America has long held the highest incarceration rate in the world, far surpassing any other nation. For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. Presently, the prison population in America consists of more than six million people, a number exceeding the amount of prisoners held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history.

While miserable statistics illustrate some measure of the ongoing ethical calamity occurring in the detainment centers inside the land of the free, only a partial picture of the broader situation is painted. While the country faces an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, business is booming in other fields – namely, the private prison industry. Like any other business, these institutions are run for the purpose of turning a profit. State and federal prisons are contracted out to private companies who are paid a fixed amount to house each prisoner per day. Their profits result from spending the minimum amount of state or federal funds on each inmate, only to pocket the remaining capital. For the corrections conglomerates of America, prosperity depends on housing the maximum numbers of inmates for the longest potential time – as inexpensively as possible.

By allowing a profit-driven capitalist-enterprise model to operate over institutions that should rightfully be focused on rehabilitation, America has enthusiastically embraced a prison industrial complex. Under the promise of maintaining correctional facilities at a lower cost due to market competition, state and federal governments contract privately run companies to manage and staff prisons, even allowing the groups to design and construct facilities. The private prison industry is primarily led by two morally deficient entities, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corporation). These companies amassed a combined revenue of over $2.9 billion in 2010, not without situating themselves in the center of political influence.

Power point presentations!!!

Posted on July 4, 2011 by travellerev

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a bit slow with posting but to be hones I have been thinking about how to move forward.

As a result I am currently working on several power point presentations on several subjects:

Derivatives: Financial weapons of mass destruction.
History and use of Derivatives translated into simple understandable language
John Key and Derivatives and how he made his millions
John Key’s history in banking and how he made his money
Recent Wall street banking history and the reasons for the sub prime crisis and the bubble and bust cycles.
The banking history of Wall street over the last 35 years and how the Wall street banksters set the global economy up to fail.
Merrill Lynch, Bank of America PIIGS and John Key.
Why John Key is still very much a banker and why he has a huge conflict of interest where it concerns the borrowing of the NZ Government.

This means that while I will link to the odd post I consider of importance I will have to spend most of my time writing and editing to get these presentations made.

I hope you will invite me to speak on these subjects when they are finished. With the upcoming election I think it is very important people vote with all of the relevant information available.

Our green clean image only counts for something if we get tourists or why our Nature reserves will be mined.

Posted on March 2, 2010 by travellerev

While bloggers around the NZ blogosphere rail against the oh, so predictable privatisation (excellent article, hattip to the Standard) of the National parks so that international corporations can rape and pillage them, leaving New Zealand with nothing but environmental disasters and hardly any monetary gain it pays to point out that one argument namely our green clean tourist image will suffer if this happens is only worth something if there is a tourist market.

The fact that no blog seems to doubt that there will be one in the next say ten years is what is really shocking to me.

It seems that New Zealanders have absolutely no idea of what is really going on in the rest of the world and how that will effect our tourism industry but when it finally dawns on the naive New Zealand population all that is left is the destruction of our pristine wildernesses in order to satisfy the international banking and mining worlds hunger for whatever we have left as NZ’s assets. and the one leading the attack will be their local boy John Key.

So for those of you who ant to learn here are some links to the real world out there.

Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Soros and the Euro. Just to mention a few disasters in progress.

In Arizona, death row may soon be run by private industry

Posted on October 26, 2009 by travellerev

The State of Arizona, seeking to close a $2 billion budget gap, is planning to open bidding on all but one of its prison facilities.

Included in the offerings to private firms is an opportunity to manage the captivity of those condemned to die: a move that, for the first time ever, would put a U.S. state’s death row in corporate hands, according to The New York Times.

“While executions would still be performed by the state, officials said, the Department of Corrections would relinquish all other day-to-day operations to the private operator and pay a per-diem fee for each prisoner,” the Times added.

Privatisation alert: Transpower on credit watch

Posted on December 22, 2008 by travellerev

Investment banker and chairman of the Capital Markets Development Taskforce Rob Cameron recently called for the substantial reorganisation of Transpower, saying the electricity grid operator had been “woefully served by the state-owned enterprise model.”

Ok, so here’s how it’s going to go down, and the fun really is going to start for John Key and his banking scum mates:

First you suggest that the “state owned” asset is a liability because it’s state owned.

You do so by asking your scummy fraudulent mates at a reputable investment ratings service such as Moody’s Investors Service which by the way, unbeknownst to the average Naive and Gullible Kiwi, has been involved in every privatisation ratings scam (Subprime anyone) in the US and is currently under investigation for involvement with these scams to give the company you want to get your filthy hands on a lower rating that is realistic, then you call for a substantial reorganisation and since Moody has killed of the share market with the low rating you buy the publicly owned company for cents on the dollar and the great asset stripping can begin.

By the time the idiots find out what you’ve been doing your long gone and we are left with another run down asset like transrail. And you do so while everybody has family obligations and is coming to terms with the biggest shock in recent history, the collapse of the international finance system.

How’s that change going for ya New Zealand. Oh and Merry Christmas every one.

———————————–

Transpower has been marked by credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service for a review pending a possible downgrade in light of “continued weakness” in the national grid operator’s financial profile as it upgrades its network.

Moody’s said today it had placed Transpower’s current long-term A2 debt rating and P1 short-term ratings under review.

“The review for possible downgrade reflects the continued weakening in Transpower’s financial profile due to substantial capital expenditure programme over the medium to long term to upgrade its existing network capacity,” Moody’s Analyst Spencer Ng said.

“Transpower’s financial profile is also expected to weaken when compared to other regulated utilities with lower ratings,” Ng added.

Prison Policies a Recipe for Disaster

Posted on December 4, 2008 by travellerev

I don’t usually link to press releases but I think that this one warrants attention. Let’s not forget that National has been known to want to privatise the prison system. Is this why they implement this stricter regime? Will they collapse the system through overburdening prison staff, and antagonising prisoners who will become re offenders thus supplying the Government with the arguments needed to bring in an overseas contractor to run our prisons?

Prison Policies a Recipe for Disaster – Bring on a Royal Commission – Rethinking Crime and Punishment

“The current proposals to increase prison musters are a recipe for disaster” said Rethinking Crime and Punishment Director, Kim Workman. He has joined in the call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to examine the philosophies and values of the criminal justice system.

“The Labour government increased the prison population by 50% over an eight year period. It resulted in a highly dysfunctional prison service. Prisoners were housed in shocking conditions, in Police Stations, courthouses, and in inhumane conditions. Prison staff were expected to warehouse prisoners in conditions which made rehabilitation and treatment impossible. The stress on staff was intolerable. Many excellent corrections officers resigned in disgust, and in some prisons, 40% of staff had less than two years experience. The public were treated to weekly media stories of prisoner abuse, corruption, and mismanagement.

Hide and local government a scary mix

Posted on November 26, 2008 by travellerev

Local Government has done nothing to upset John Key. John Key does not get upset. John Key in fact will do exactly what he said he would do, he will keep smiling his happy smile. He just enacts his masters orders. It’s nothing personal.

His orders? Destroy the cohesion of local communities. Monger fear and make sure that the local population accepts the restriction of their rights and in fact sees it as protection when chaos and violence ensues. Then follow up with the privatisation of every community service. In will step the international fascist corporations to pick up prisons, policing services and whatever else is on offer. Endgame.

They did it in the US, in Britain and they will do it here. how to go about it? Let the most right wing asshole elected by only a hand full of rabid right wing nutjobs loose in every single community in the country.

Destruction, Chaos, anger and polarisation guaranteed.

Yep, if anything John Key was very good at following orders. Whether firing hundreds of his Colleagues or running an account for the man conducting the biggest speculative attack on the NZ Dollar. Key’s masters knew they could count on him. he wasn’t called called the Smiling Assassin for nothing. New Zealand are you beginning to feel the fear? Well done, you voted for your own destruction.

——————–

There are many in local government scratching their heads after the appointment of Act leader Rodney Hide as Minister of Local Government and wondering what on earth they did to upset Prime Minister John Key so much.

Back in July when he addressed the Local Government New Zealand conference, Mr Key was at his smoochy best.

“We want to work closely with the local government sector… because on many issues, central and local government are in the same boat. We are both major players in the economy and in society. What we do actually matters in people’s lives.”

Privatisation acoming John Key style?

Posted on November 13, 2008 by travellerev

Aotearoa a Wider Perspective

"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." Henry Kissinger 1970

Tag Archives: Privatisation