Ownership defined: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership

Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive possession or control of some thing, which may be an object or some kind of property.

Common Axiom: Possession is 9/10ths Law.

Somewhere along the evolution of Law, Law took the road that skewed the concept of ownership. Ninety percent of Law deals with ownership.

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/1.html

#1) Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy

Without the threat of evictions and seizures, the Legal concept of ownership fails. Not many would continue to service the lender and landlord without this inherent threat. Still, the desire to own one’s home is strong and the situation is tolerated. When large numbers of home owners or renters find themselves in an economy where eviction or seizure is threatened, the stress will be focused back up stream and conflict may ensue.

Homestead (Random House Dictionary)

1. a dwelling with its land and buildings, occupied by the owner as a home and exempted by a homestead law from seizure or sale for debt [or taxes, if I may add]. 2. Any dwelling with its land and buildings where a family makes its home.

There's no place like Home.

This is classic. The push for credti card debt is overwhelming. One needs to go no further than their mailbox to confirm the daily barrage of credit card offers. And for those who have just gone through bankruptcy, the push not only comes from credit cards, but from car dealers who are willing to finance that new car.

But then, would anyone expect anything different from a debt based monetary system?  

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11credit.html?hp&ex=1134277200&en=6fed47cc35f492cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

"The theory is that people who have just declared bankruptcy are a good credit risk because their old debts are clean and now they won't be able to get a new discharge for eight years," said John D. Penn, president of the American Bankruptcy Institute, a nonprofit clearinghouse for information on the subject.

But the new law makes for an even better gamble for lenders, consumer groups say. It not only makes bankrupt debtors wait eight years to clear their debts again, but it also requires many of those who do go back into bankruptcy to pay previous credit card bills that may have been excused under the old law.

Consumer groups say the new law has put millions of Americans at risk of being in a continuous debt loop through their credit cards. And while the banks have taken a short-term financial hit because of the new filings - leaving banks holding the bills - they will benefit in the long run because the new law makes it much easier to make money on people who live near the edge every month on their credit cards, some consumer groups say.

Credit cards are the most profitable part of the banking industry, with late fees and high interest charges helping make them so. Last year, more than five billion solicitations for new cards were sent out, nearly double the number from eight years ago.

a third of low- and middle-income American households reported using credit cards for basic living expenses - rent, groceries and utilities - in any 4 of the last 12 months.

Those with the worst credit card debt were people ages 50 to 64, who owed $9,124 on average, the study found.

"The people I'm seeing right now, they're mostly middle or lower middle class," said Jack Burtch, a bankruptcy lawyer in Washington State. "In a good many of the cases, credit cards are what got them into trouble. And I don't see how credit cards will get them out of it."

Though published in 1934, The Merchants of Death still resonates with a truth that still applies to today.

The modern arms maker is the result of the Machine Age. Rapid technological development and mass production in the arms industry raised the problem of markets and business methods. The sales methods which the arms merchants evolved in the course of time are fundamentally the same as those employed by Big Business everywhere. But because the arms merchants dealt so largely with governments and because their activities so frequently played into national and international politics, their business methods have been subjected to a much closer scrutiny.

The arm industry is undeniably a menace to peace, but it is an industry to which our present civilization clings and for which it is responsible. It is evidence of the superficiality of many peace advocates that they should denounce the arms industry and accept the present state of civilization which fosters it. If the arms industry is a cancer of the body of modern civilization, it is not an extraneous growth; it is the result of the unhealthy condition of the body itself.

One may be horrified by the activities of an industry which thrives on the greatest of human curses; still it is well to acknowledge that the arms industry did not create the war system. On the contrary, the war system created the arms industry.

Our civilization has permitted and even fostered war-making forces, such as nationalism and chauvinism, economic rivalry and competitive capitalism, imperialism and colonialism, political and territorial disputes, race hatred and pressure population. The traditional way of establishing an equilibrium between these rival forces has been and is violence, armed warfare.

The system of industrial mobilization is a long step toward placing war in the center of our economic life, or to put it another way, to make the arms industry the hub of our industrial machine. An alliance of governments with war industries threatens to make the arms makers supreme in economic life and after that in government. A world dominated economically and politically by the armament industry will eventually result, if wars continue unabated.

Modern war involves the entire economic life of the nation. Without making undue demands on the imagination, it can readily be seen what a gigantic economic task is involved in modern war. In order to prepare for this "emergency," the U.S. government has already made contracts with 15,000 industrialists, instructiing them in detail what will be expected of them in war.

It would almost seem as though governments exist merely to prepare for war.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

The Lazy Native

Leopold’s will treated the Congo as if it were just a piece of uninhabited real estate to be disposed of by its owner. In this the king was no different from other Europeans of his age, explorers, journalists, and empire-builders alike, who talked of Africa as if were without Africans: an expanse empty space waiting to be filled by the cities and railway lines constructed through the magic European industry.

To see Africa instead as a continent of coherent societies, each with its own culture and history, took a leap that few, if any, of the early European or American visitors to the Congo were able to make. To do so would have meant seeing Leopold’s regime not as progress, not as civilization, but as theft of land and freedom.

Talk of the lazy native accompanied the entire European land grab in Africa, just as it had been used to justify the conquest of the Americas. To an American reporter, Leopold once declared, “In dealing with a race composed of cannibals for thousands of years it is necessary to use methods which will best shake their idleness and make them realize the sanctity of work.”

To Europeans, Africans were inferior beings: lazy, uncivilized, little better than animals. In fact, the most common way they were put to work was, like animals, as beasts of burden. In any system of terror, the functionaries must first of all see the victims as less than human, and Victorian ideas about race provided such a foundation.