foreigners gain liberty

In what some are calling a dire blow to America’s cultural heritage, the White House today approved a controversial deal to sell the property known as Independence National Historical Park to a consortium owned in part by investors from Saudi Arabia and Macau. “We’re excited to maximize the profit potential of our new investment,” said Ibn Faik alMaz’zoud, spokesperson for the consortium, speaking from the steps of the former government property, in downtown Philadelphia. “Entrance fees to the site will rise in accordance with increased security and a shared desire to keep out all but the best and most economically-viable visitors.”

Other historical sites up for sale are the Gettysburg battlefield in central Pennsylvania, George Washington’s birthplace in Virginia, as well as Battery Park in New York City. Various monuments in country’s western states are being considered for increased ore and mineral extraction, to the delight of lobbying groups and mining companies hungry to profit from the sale of soil-bound resources, which since the nation’s inception have belonged to all Americans, equally.

“We can’t have this stuff just sitting around costing America money,” said a White House staffer speaking (leaking) on condition of anonymity. “The more we can shift upkeep, tour guiding, maintenance, hauling, and extraction tasks to corporations - foreign or domestic, it’s all the same - the more cash America will have on hand to do things like launch cruise missile strikes on Syrian villages and give tax breaks to wealthy citizens.”

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

Grigovia blocks pipeline

After reviewing numerous environmental and economic feasibility studies, the Grigovian government is blocking a plan to drain local aquifers and export the water via pipeline. The decision is based primarily on concerns for the country's future independence and enduring water security. AguaMundo Holdings Ltd. (AHL), the Argentinian-Indian company that first proposed the idea, claims that the pipeline will bring prosperity to parched communities throughout Central Asia. “By moving water from these pristine limestone aquifers to the rain-deprived steppes of Grigovia's neighbor nations, we will help impoverished people gain self-sufficiency through agriculture,” said Armando Gupta, chief operating officer for AHL. “With access to these reserves and a 40 year exclusive contract to carry water anywhere in the Yalung River watershed or floodplain, our company will be able to operate at a relatively low cost to the consumer.”

News of the proposed pipeline (as well as the selling off of Grigovia's sovereign resources) sparked protests and indignation. Tens of thousands of people carrying signs and banners have gathered in front of the nation's parliamentary buildings to protest the pipeline talks; some three hundred environmentalists have set up a tent village in Free Speech Square, just down the road from the prime minister's house, where they plan to remain until the threats to Grigovian sovereignty and national resources have passed; and a group of vocational-technical college students is traveling on foot in the areas along the pipeline's proposed route to record the flora and fauna that live there and upload their videos to Youtube, in order to showcase the ecologically-diverse landscapes that would be threatened. “We will not rest until the threat to our homeland has passed,” said a masked protester in Free Speech Square who was perched atop a lamppost talking to passers-by. “We do well in Grigovia because we protect our resources, using them wisely and slowly, using them so that we all share equally of our natural bounty. This foreign company, however, wants to take our water and sell it to the Tajiks and the Uzbeks, our kind and generous regional neighbors. We love our oppressed brothers and sisters, and we wish them the best, but we refuse to let outsiders drain our aquifers and pipe our water – the very lifeblood of our people – beyond our borders and down into the dry and the dusty plains.”

Initial support for the pipeline came from a group of politicians from the Grigovia Forward Grigovia First Party (ЮВЮД). The group, which is known as the Kremlin 7 for their close ties to Russian business and political leaders, was also behind efforts to privatize Grigovia's national forests and open strip-mining concessions in the Yiptlong massif. Despite receiving less than 10% of the votes in national elections, ЮВЮД maintains influence in Parliament due mostly to its sizable war-chest, which is estimated to be as large as the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka and Liechtenstein, combined.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Grigovia establishes preserve

In efforts aimed to negate growing pressure from a half dozen American-owned consortia to open their pristine high valleys to nub-logging for hardwoods and strip-mining for precious-earth-metals, the government of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) – authorized by a majority of its citizens, 99% of whom voted in the referendum – protected large swaths of its pristine countryside from runaway economic development. Named for Queen Pylta Pyltandyennd, who ruled the country for over a half century, from 1842 to 1897, the Pylta The Terrible National Ecological Protection Area (PTTNEPA) encompasses nearly half of the country's entire landmass, an area roughly the size of America's state of Connecticut.

Dubbed 'The Terrible' by a proto-Russian czar who had tried and failed nearly a dozen times to add her relatively small realm to his, Queen Pylta is celebrated within GROG as an early adopter of electricity (she was close friends with Nikola Tesla), as the inventor of the sweet-yet-spicy fermented green-tuber borscht, and as a gentle matriarch who sacrificed greatly for her subjects. She is remembered on the first Thursday in April, on Pyltafessd, a national holiday during which the people of Grig and the inhabitants of even the smallest village recharge their flashlight batteries and clean out their cupboards, at dusk going from house to house to share with each other the last of their winter stores, singing local folk-songs and lighting the way with their dazzlingly-bright pocket torches.

“We Grigovians are not against mining, or logging,” said Ristlünnd Yindlong, spokesman for the Resources Extraction Council, a voluntary national organization that researches and develops techniques for minimally-invasive resource extraction. “Miners and lumberjacks make up about 5% of the workforce and contribute roughly 10% to our overall gross domestic product. We, however, are against practices that are done hastily and without regard for biodiversity; that do not consider the needs of this nation's citizens and wildlife; and that violate the many rights of Nature, as defined by our Constitution. Personally, I signed the referendum in part to protect our high valleys, the only place in the world known to harbor drop-and-crawl moss, or autokineticus grigovianus. I invite you to stop by my flat this April, and pick up a jar of spiced apple butter.” In addition to establishing PTTNEPA, the national referendum also placed a ten year moratorium on new taxation and made it a crime to get all up in someone else's personal business.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit