June 29, 2015

Yes, and who benefits from the privatization of public assets.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/selling-off-greece-stone-by-stone-commerce-threatens-innate-beauty-1.2037491

Nearly four years ago, the German tabloid Bild suggested that, in return for the European Union bailout, Greece should sell off the Acropolis and some islands, including Corfu. Everyone laughed. And yet now it is happening. The International Monetary Fund-led troika has insisted Greece should sell state assets through Taiped (Hellenic Asset Development Fund) – an agency not unlike Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency.
Taiped is selling assets, from a disused mental hospital, a ski slope and a marina to all Greece’s regional airports, the national rail network, the water supply of Thessaloniki, and millions of acres of real estate, including gold mines worth an estimated €10 billion.
Deutsche Telekom acquired the Greek network some years ago and last year Azerbaijan bought the national gas company. The port of Piraeus, a controlling interest in Athens airport and the huge site of the former airport, are all up for grabs, with China doing most of the grabbing.
Last year, the Emir of Qatar purchased a small island within a Natura 2000 zone on which to construct a palace. The island of Elafonisos (on the southern edge of the Peloponnese), with stunning back-to-back beaches and also within a Natura 2000 zone, is listed by the Guardian as one of the top 10 beaches in the world. It’s up for sale.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/greece-protests-sell-off-historic-buildings

"The government is constantly trying to convey the message that the economy is a success story but in reality that is not the case at all," said prominent leftwing campaigner Petros Constantinou. "The decision to put public buildings up for sale is not just proof that they are nowhere near reaching targets but plain wrong when they could be exploited for public benefit."

The decision to sell off public assets invested with such historic significance has not only angered anti-austerity leftists. It has raised howls of protest from reform-minded conservatives with many wondering whether Greece is finally enacting what Germany's tabloid press has long taunted it to do: sell off its cultural heritage to pay off its monumental debt.

"The rush to sell these assets … raises serious questions [as to] whether they are being purposely sold on the cheap in order to speed up the privatisation process," thundered Nikos Xydakis in the conservative daily Kathimerini, lamenting the decision to sell off properties imbued with such symbolic value around the Acropolis. "Will the outrageous proposal put forward by the German magazine Bild suggesting that Greece should sell or rent its island to cut its debt [next] come to pass?" he asked.



I remember posting back in 2011 about the drooling by WSJ about buying newly privatized assets. So, who has benefited from this austerity induced action? Clearly not the Greek public.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=34083

June 14, 2015

Dolezal's fractured fundy family

Something I have noticed about the Rachel Dolezal story has been the glimpses of family dysfunction in the various articles.

I spent a little time last night exploring these further and can say that the more I dug, the stronger the dysfunction shows. I'm not surprised she would want to disassociate herself from her relatives and past. I think she went too far in doing that and agree with those on DU who have expressed concerns about her co-opting experiences that are not her own and the possible damage from the allegations she has made regarding what she depicts as racist incidents. She may have started down this path with good intentions, but now is enmeshed in a tangled mess of deception.

Why would her parents choose to out her now, after all this time?

One reason might be that they are on opposite sides in a case involving her older brother. An article in the NY Daily News provides some information on that. The article also has an interesting comment from her uncle noting the bond between her and the person she later claimed was her father.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/rachel-dolezal-older-brother-accused-child-molestation-article-1.2257560

Joshua Dolezal, 39, was charged in 2013 with four felony counts of sex abuse of a victim who was a minor at the time, sources and court records confirmed.

~~~

Dolezal declined to speak with The News on Saturday but previously suggested the timing of her white Montana-based parents’ media interviews about her racial identity was somehow connected to the Colorado case — and designed to damage her credibility.

~~~

It’s been years since she spoke with her parents, Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal. She became estranged from the pair well before the criminal case was brought against her brother, sources have said. Dolezal cut off contact with them sometime after her 2004 divorce and increasingly embraced black culture and brought her adopted brother Izaiah Dolezal to live with her in Idaho and Washington when he was a teen.

She even began claiming a close friend, Albert Wilkerson, a black man, was her father.

Paternal uncle Dan Dolezal said Dolezal and Wilkerson shared a father-daughter type of bond, but that her characterization of him as her real father bothered her biological relatives.

Why the estrangement from her parents and latching on to someone else as her 'real' father.
I wonder how much of this is due to the fundy background of her parents.


http://www.cdapress.com/news/local_news/article_385adfeb-76f3-5050-98b4-d4bf021c423f.html?mode=jqm

Rachel did not have to use bows and arrows to hunt for her own food, Ruthanne said, and she never lived in South Africa or Colorado. Ruthanne said she, Larry and the younger adopted siblings moved to South Africa in 2002, and lived there until 2006. Larry was stationed there as an employee of the faith-based Creation Ministries International.

~~~

Dolezal's father, Larry, told The Press by email Wednesday that Dolezal worked hard at her education. She graduated with a 4.0 GPA and was one of many co-valedictorians from Christian Liberty Academy Satellite School.

"We chose the option with parental oversight and a complete high school transcript processed through CLASS," Larry wrote. "Rachel required minimal supervision, because she was a highly motivated and responsible student."

Creation Ministries International is a creationist organization that spreads its views through missionary work abroad. Apparently, that's why her parents went to South Africa.


http://creation.com/what-we-are

The South African office was established in June 2002 in the Cape Town region as a consequence of the vision of Dr Johan Kruger, currently Head of Ministry Outreach, who has a doctorate in zoology. (Prior to 2002, Joshua Gilbert of the Durban region, acted as the South Africa agent for Creation magazine. He continues specialist creation outreach (especially radio) in South Africa and surrounding countries. Joshua currently serves on the Board of CMI–South Africa.) In October 2003 Larry Dolezal joined the ministry as the General Manager. With Larry’s departure in June 2006 to manage the new CMI–USA office, Robert Zins now fills that position as CEO.

The children's page shows a dinosaur frolicking with people and assorted mammals.
http://creation.com/creation-for-kids


This looks to be a book written by her older brother, which gives some insight into how they were raised deep in the fundy beliefs. It also provides a possible glimpse of why their parents adopted the four children.

Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging
By Joshua Dolezal

My mother sometimes called me a survivor of the holocaust on the unborn, since I was born after Roe vs Wade. Her distrust of clinicians was so strong I was born at home, without a physician or midwife and only my father and the one witness noted on my birth certificate—Jesus Christ— to see me through.
Near the end of my senior year, my parents adopted the first of four children, determined to show their commitment to the pro-life cause, and I joined the crusade.

The information above provides more context for why one of Rachel's adopted brothers would seek emancipation and why she might reach out to protect him. It doesn't explain when or why they chose to depict themselves as mother and son rather than sister and brother. Maybe adoption afforded some legal or financial assistance or maybe expediency? Maybe part of breaking with the past?


http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-rachel-dolezal-identity/

CNN tried to reach Rachel Dolezal for comment by emailing and calling her, but was unsuccessful. The Spokane Spokesman-Review. newspaper reported, though, that she has framed the controversy surrounding her racial identity in the context of litigation over guardianship of her adopted brother.

According to court documents obtained by CNN, Rachel Dolezal's adopted brother, who is black, sought emancipation from Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal in 2010. The adopted brother, now 21, said the Dolezals used "physical forms of punishment" and had sent his brother and sister away to group homes because they didn't cooperate with the couple's religion and rules.

The adopted brother wanted to live with Rachel Dolezal "in a multiracial household where black culture is celebrated and I have a connection to the black community," the court papers said. The papers did not specify Rachel Dolezal's race.

The petition for emancipation was dropped. In a separate legal action in 2010, the court appointed Rachel Dolezal to be the adopted brother's guardian with the consent of Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal.

What does come through is someone looking to escape from a family that pushed fundy beliefs onto their children. She seems to have done quite a bit of good along the way in her escape from her past and recreation of herself. Her close connection to and identification with an alternate father figure may have been a large part of that. However, it's one thing to move past that upbringing and another to pretend to an identity that is not hers and to buttress that through misleading people and lying about her race and about malicious events directed toward her because of because of race.