The History Behind Wars
Saturday, January 28, 2012
War versus Education: Obama's promise for Educational Funding is Double-speak
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Education in America desperately needs funding, and Obama, despite his words, will not solve the problem.
In a speech at Ann Arbor, Michigan, Obama proposed to increase the Perkins loan program from $1 billion to $8 billion, create a $1 billion grant competition, and a $55 million competition. Obama promised to make the pricing of school more transparent and to cap student loan payments at 10% of a student's monthly income after graduation.
In theory, these things sound good and Obama was understandably met with large rounds of applause. In reality though, they will create more problems than they will do good.
The most significant promise is the $7 billion dollars in more student loans. America is in the biggest credit bubble since the Roaring 20s, leading to this most inequality in decades, and more loans are not going to help the problem, regardless of the seemingly favourable terms.
The $1 billion dollars in grants, assuming there are 17.5 million students enrolled in post-secondary education in the US, equals $57.14 per post-secondary student. Let's take a low estimate that the average yearly tuition at an American college is $10,000 (many colleges charge much more), then Obama's grant promises to cover 0.57% of the cost of one year of American college. In this context, the $55 million competition is not even worth mentioning. Funding in the form a competition is a very obvious example of promoting the needs of a few over the needs of many.
The grant funding is a token to please ignorant voters, while avoiding making the needed ethical commitment to deal with one of America's most pressing problems.
Obviously this is not how the grants will actually be distributed, and some real students could benefit from receiving grants because they will receive hundreds or thousands of dollars, providing of course this funding actually makes it to students. Something is better than nothing, but the discrepancy between the amount of loan funding (which is a financial product made profitable by interest) and the grant funding shows the administration's priorities.
No mention is made of financial support for the primary and secondary schools in America that teach over 60 million students every year, and have a much bigger effect on people's overall education than college because people generally attend for at least 12 years. If they do not attend the full term, then it is the only formal schooling they will likely receive in their lifetimes.
Obama's real priorities are revealed later in the speech. Obama lists “things that will help us in the long term” as first “student loans and grants” and second as “a strong military.” First loans, then token grants that students will not have any chance of receiving if they are the product of a primary and secondary education lacking in funding. Then war.
Obama references war a second time in this speech, which is supposedly about education, saying: “We’re successful because we have an outstanding military -- that costs money."
Obama also carefully defers all responsibility for major problems onto congress. He says . "Congress needs to stop giving taxpayer dollars to an oil industry that’s never been more profitable" and "Congress needs to do more. They need to stop the interest rates on student loans from doubling this July."
Interest rates are set to double because of the expiration of a 50% interest rate cut on July 1, 2012. If Obama really cared about student loan interest rates he could write, or have someone else write, a proposal to extend the rate cut or to institute an even lower rate cut when this one expires or immediately. If he really cared about stopping subsidies for oil companies he would have that legislation preventing or removing subsidies written as well. Same things goes for the taxation of ultra-rich Americans. Obama talks tough about affordability, but his actions are meek.
The US president cannot directly propose legislation, but he can draft it and give it to a member of congress to propose. He chooses not to. He also has power to veto bills, like the NDAA, SOPA, and ACTA, but he chooses not to. Instead he defers the vote by pushing back the date so that the issue loses the public's attention and passes more easily.
So why is Obama not doing the things he could do to improve issues he says he cares about? Because he is a war-monger or a puppet used to pump the military. He makes token gestures towards education but actually intends to put students into more debt ($7 billion in loans versus $1.055 billion in direct funding) contributing to the education crisis and to America's worsening military-industrial complex. He serves other people who want to see education perpetuate the current system of inequality and militarism, through token gifts without actually doing the things he could be doing to solve the root problems.
Wake up America. Your government is drafting students to help build the next generation of robot drones. Obama's proposed military budget cuts are a double-speak sham in the same genre as his promises on education, see sources below. With the Federal Reserve accused of giving $16 trillion in shadow loans to financial companies, are we really going to expect that no military organizations are receiving funding on the side?
Obama sounds good when he talks, but his actions (and his lack of action on many issues) speak volumes. If Americans fail to protest and demand change now, the crisis will be much worse when a new president is voted in in November.
Sources:
Full text of Obama's Ann Arbor speech:
Military in education:
Defence cuts:
The Fed:
Friday, January 27, 2012
Obama's Failed State of the Union
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It was typical Obama, taking credit for what should be condemned. He's a fraud, a crime boss, a war criminal multiple times over, a moral coward, and serial liar.
His State of the Union address was beginning-to-end doublespeak, duplicity, coverup, and denial of failed policies complicit with Wall Street crooks, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites while popular needs go begging.
Not according to fawning New York Times writers, however. Suppressing truth and full disclosure, Helene Cooper headlined, Obama Speech Makes Pitch for Economic Fairness," saying:
Obama "pledged on Tuesday night to use government power to balance the scale between America's rich and the rest of the public....toward an economy 'built to last' and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused economic collapse."
Fact check
Throughout his tenure, Obama transferred trillions of dollars to Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and America's rich already with too much. In the process, he deepened a Main Street Depression. As a result, half of US households are impoverished or bordering on it. Hunger and homelessness grow. Nothing's done to help. Unaddressed human need is incalculable.
Over 25 million remain unemployed. Job creation is nil except for low wage/no benefit temp or part-time ones. Inequality in America is unprecedented. Obama supports austerity when massive stimulus is needed. Rich elites never had it so good at the expense of ordinary people left out.
Obama's Failed State isn’t fit to live in for growing millions.
Nonetheless, an accompanying Times editorial headlined, "The State of the Union in 2012," saying:
"A year ago....we applauded" Obama's plan to "put millions of struggling people to work (and his support for) wrestl(ing) down the deficit (by requiring) the wealthy (to pay) a fairer share of taxes."
Applause continued, ignoring Obama's duplicitous Tuesday address and agenda.
Fact check
It includes imperial wars, tax cuts for the rich, corporate handouts, and austerity for ordinary people losing out.
His America perpetuates permanent wars, disproportionate wealth extremes, spiraling debt, and unaddressed human need.
He ignores growing millions unemployed and impoverished. He cut Medicare for seniors and America's disabled as well as Medicaid for poor and disadvantaged recipients. He left growing millions of students debt entrapped, many for life.
He's destroying Middle America. His latest proposal involves looting pension funds to enrich mortgage lenders. Yet he's packaging fraud as a boon to ordinary people. It's typical Obama - say one thing, do another.
Nonetheless, major media scoundrels applaud. As a result, they're part of the problem, not the solution.
The editorial highlighted Obama's "achievements" and plans. It ignored his destructive agenda. It was typical Times, backing rogue politics.
Obama's address wreaked of failed state duplicity, coverup and denial. Throughout his tenure, rhetoric and gimmickry substituted for constructive policies. Tuesday was no different.
He left festering social and economic distress unaddressed, as well as the American dream in shambles. Expect continued business as usual to assure harder than ever times ahead.
He lied saying "The state of our union is getting stronger....In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs."
Progressive Radio News Hour regular, economist Jack Rasmus said Obama's "stimulus" programs consisted largely of corporate and personal super-rich tax cuts. As a result, they failed.
Corporations hoarded cuts and other subsidies. Job creation investments weren't made. Business benefitted. Ordinary people lost out. Economic recovery failed. Ongoing policies assure continued failure packaged as success.
According to Rasmus, Obama's agenda "failed because (it) relied on the private market sector to generate a sustained recovery, instead of on the government directly taking the lead to create jobs, rescue homeowners and resurrect housing, and stabilize state-local government finances long run."
He "bailed out banks that (don't) lend, rescued corporations that (don't) create jobs, and (inadequately) subsidized state and local governments for a brief period and then cut them loose to fend fiscally for themselves."
His agenda was and remains devastating for ordinary Americans. At the same time, corporations and rich ones flourish. His "built to last" economy favors them alone. He lied saying he wants to assure "everyone gets a fair shot." His notion of "American values" rewards the rich at the expense of everyone else.
He took credit for letting auto giants destroy jobs, slash worker pay and benefits, ban strike actions, and let corrupt union bosses serve as corporate enforcers. He said what Detroit did "can happen in other industries."
In fact, Detroit's "success" is bankruptcy and ruin. Motown became ghost town. In death throes, it symbolizes America's decline. In disrepair and decline, it's dying with shocking unemployment, poverty and unaddressed human need levels.
What Obama did to Detroit, he offers other cities packaged as populism. He took direct aim at destroying decades of painful labor struggles. They included taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling rogue bosses, police and National Guard forces, as well as paying with their blood and lives before real gains were won.
Now they're lost, including a living wage, decent benefits, and the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management. Obama deplores the idea and fights it.
What grassroots struggles achieved, he and other rogue leaders destroyed. All this in a nation claiming to be government of, by and for the people, most of whom are working class ones struggling to get by. What Reagan era politics began, Obama raised to new levels.
Praising "America's Armed Forces," he also assured permanent war. They "exceed all expectations," he said. "Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example." Perhaps he has destroying humanity in mind to assure unchallenged US hegemony.
Ron Paul Responds to Obama's Address
Obama "once again showed that he does not represent the fundamental change this country needs. Instead of offering solutions to the problems our country faces, (he) deliver(ed) a campaign speech....typical (of) Washington political gamesmanship that (got) us exactly nowhere close to improving the lives of the American people."
His policies assure "continue economic stagnation" and decline. He "claims to want an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules."
"Yet he remains committed to the same old system of debt, deficits, bailouts and cronyism that created our economic troubles."
"Of course, (he) refuses to even mention the role the Federal Reserve plays in creating an economic system where some are denied a fair shot or even to support my efforts at bringing transparency" to an opaque, secretive process.
"In the area of foreign policy and civil liberties, (Obama's) rhetoric" belies his agenda. It's "hardly 'change we can believe in.' " No wonder more and more Americans, especially young people, (reject his) phony alternatives (and those of) establishment Republicans.."
A Final Comment
Throughout his tenure, Obama waged multiple imperial wars, plans others, looted the nation's wealth, wrecked the economy, consigned growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, and institutionalized tyranny to target dissenters challenging political corruption, corporate crooks, or abuse of power lawlessness.
He also destroyed hard won labor rights, wants education commodified as another business profit center, and wages war on whistleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, Latino immigrants, and environmental and animal rights activists called terrorists.
He wrecked America, governs lawlessly, and threatens worse ahead. Imagine the unpalatable options facing voters in November between a lawless/crime boss/militarist/pro-war/anti-populist/morally corrupt president, and a rogue's gallery of alternatives looking more like a police lineup than legitimate candidates.
They assure continued pro-business/pro-war/anti-populist policies. They threaten Middle America's survival and perhaps humanity if they're not stopped.
Imagine a president taking credit for what should be condemned. Imagine an aroused public refusing to let him.
It's happening with legs but needs to grow. What OWS began, millions need to join and support. That's how great struggles are won. This one's the mother of them all.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA
If there’s one thing that encapsulates what’s wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden and extend existing intellectual property (IP) enforcement laws to the Internet. While it was only negotiated between a few countries,1 it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.’s annual Special 301 process. Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an "ACTA Committee" to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy.
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The Corporate Usurpation of the Internet
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In the wake of a public outcry against internet regulation bills such as SOPA and PIPA, representatives of the EU have signed a new and far more threatening legislation yesterday in Tokyo. Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members of the press from their hearings.
Under the guise of protecting intellectual property rights, the treaty introduces measures that would allow the private sector to enforce sweeping central authority over internet content. The ACTA abolishes all legal oversight involving the removal of content and allows copyright holders to force ISPs to remove material from the internet, something that presently requires a court order. ISPs would then be faced with legal liabilities if they chose not to remove content. Theoretically, personal blogs can be removed for using company logos without permission or simply linking to copy written material; users could be criminalized, barred from accessing the internet and even imprisoned for sharing copyrighted material. Ultimately, these implications would be starkly detrimental toward the internet as a medium for free speech.
The Obama Administration subverted the legal necessity of allowing to US Senate to ratify the treaty by unconstitutionally declaring it an "executive agreement" before the President promptly signed it on October 1st, 2011. As a touted constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama is fully aware that Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, mandates Congress in dealing with issues of intellectual property, thus voiding the capacity for the President to issue an executive agreement. The White House refused to even disclose details about the legislation to elected officials and civil libertarians over concern that doing so may incur "damage to the national security." While some may hang off every word of his sorely insincere speeches and still be fixated by the promises of hope offered by brand-Obama, his administration has trampled the constitution and introduced the most comprehensive authoritarian legislation in America's history.
In addition to imposing loosely defined criminal sanctions to average web users, the ACTA treaty will also obligate ISPs to disclose personal user information to copyright holders. The measures introduce legislative processes that contradict the legal framework of participant countries and allows immigration authorities to search laptops, external hard drives and Internet-capable devices at airports and border checkpoints. The treaty is not limited solely to internet-related matters,
ACTA would prohibit the production of generic pharmaceuticals and outlaw the use of certain seeds for crops through patents, furthering the corporate cartelization of the food and drug supply.
ACTA would allow companies from any participating country (which include EU member states, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Morocco) to shut down websites without any explanation. Hypothetically, nothing could prevent private Singaporean companies from promptly taking down American websites that oppose the Singapore Air Force conducting war games on US soil, such as those conducted in December 2011. By operating outside normal judicial framework, exporting US copyright law to the rest of the world and mandating private corporations to conduct surveillance on their users, all prerequisites of democracy, transparency and self-expression are an afterthought.
The further monopolization of the existing resources of communication, exchange and expression is ever present in the form of deceptive new articles of legislation that unanimously call for the implementation of the same austere censorship measures. Even if the ACTA treaty is not implemented, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Vietnam and the United States offers more extensive intellectual property regulations. Leaked documents prepared by the U.S. Business Coalition (which have been reportedly drafted by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Motion Picture Association of America) report that in addition to ACTA-style legislation, the TTP will impose fines on non-compliant entities and work to extend the general period of copy write terms on individual products.
Under the sweeping regulations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, individual infringers will be criminalized and sentenced with the same severity as large-scale offenders. Within the United States, the recently announced Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) H.R. 3782 regulation seeks to install policies largely identical to SOPA and PIPA. The Obama administration is also working towards an Internet ID program, which may be mandatory for American citizens and required when renewing passports, obtaining federal licenses, or applying for social security. Spreading these dangerous measures to other countries participating in these treaties would necessitate a binding obligation on the US to retain these policies, averting any chance of reform.
The ACTA will become law once it is formally ratified and cleared by the European Parliament in June. By petitioning members of the European parliament and educating others about the potential dangers imposed by this legislation, there is a chance of the treaty being rejected. Upon closer examination of the human condition with all of its inequalities, food insecurity and dire social issues, our governments have lost their legitimacy for giving such unwarranted priority to fighting copyright infringement on behalf of lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries. The existence of ACTA is a clear statement that surveillance, regulations and securing further corporate centralization dwarfs any constructive shift towards stimulating human innovation and self-sufficient technologies.
When former US National Security Advisor and Trilateral Commission co-founder, Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010, he warned of a global political awakening beginning to take place. Technology such as file sharing, blogging, and open source software has the potential to undermine the oligarchical governing interests seeking to centrally control our society and enforce the population into being entirely dependent on their commodities. The following excerpt from Brzezinski's book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, provides invaluable insight into the world being brought in; "The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
NYPD found promoting Islamophobia
NYPD found promoting Islamophobia - Press TV
Talat Hamdani lost her son Muhammad during the 9-11 attacks. She says she is outraged it was shown to New York public servants who are suppose to protect her rights.
Fear of Muslims in America continues to threaten worshipers of Islam who have been subjected to a number of recent attacks.
Representatives from dozens of Muslim and non-Muslim groups gathered at City Hall to demand the resignation of New York City Police Commissioner.
Ray Kelly and his deputy of public information Paul Browne. Both men at first denied the film was shown then later backtracked on their comments.
The Third Jihad is a 71-minute documentary that claims that much of the Islamic leadership in the US is preaching what they call "Jihad" to its followers. Kelly even gives a 14-second interview in the movie.
The movie was produced by the non-profit Clarion group which has ties to Aish HaTorah - an Israeli organization that opposes any territorial concessions on the West Bank. Documents reveal that more than 14 hundred police officers have seen this film.
The controversy comes as the NYPD has been challenged in court for placing spies and provocateurs in Mosques and community centers. It also happens as the US congress is once again set to hold hearings on the radicalization of Islam - proceedings that many have labeled as racist and inflammatory.
Kelly issued his regrets late Wednesday saying quote “I offer my apologies to members of the Muslim community, in particular, who would find the film inflammatory and it's airing on department property, though unauthorized, to be inappropriate.
The department claims a sergeant placed the film in a display loop that flashed on the walls of the training facility.
Through a number of statements, the NYPD has insisted that its officers are trained to protect all of the citizens of New York regardless of race or religion. But Muslim Americans say that is hard to believe especially if a matter of policy, those officer are shown films that depict them as radical and terrorists that deserve neither protection or respect .
This week it was revealed that more than a thousand New York police officers were shown the controversial film called “The third Jihad” while taking anti- terrorism training classes.
Talat Hamdani lost her son Muhammad during the 9-11 attacks. She says she is outraged it was shown to New York public servants who are suppose to protect her rights.
Fear of Muslims in America continues to threaten worshipers of Islam who have been subjected to a number of recent attacks.
Representatives from dozens of Muslim and non-Muslim groups gathered at City Hall to demand the resignation of New York City Police Commissioner.
Ray Kelly and his deputy of public information Paul Browne. Both men at first denied the film was shown then later backtracked on their comments.
The Third Jihad is a 71-minute documentary that claims that much of the Islamic leadership in the US is preaching what they call "Jihad" to its followers. Kelly even gives a 14-second interview in the movie.
The movie was produced by the non-profit Clarion group which has ties to Aish HaTorah - an Israeli organization that opposes any territorial concessions on the West Bank. Documents reveal that more than 14 hundred police officers have seen this film.
The controversy comes as the NYPD has been challenged in court for placing spies and provocateurs in Mosques and community centers. It also happens as the US congress is once again set to hold hearings on the radicalization of Islam - proceedings that many have labeled as racist and inflammatory.
Kelly issued his regrets late Wednesday saying quote “I offer my apologies to members of the Muslim community, in particular, who would find the film inflammatory and it's airing on department property, though unauthorized, to be inappropriate.
The department claims a sergeant placed the film in a display loop that flashed on the walls of the training facility.
Through a number of statements, the NYPD has insisted that its officers are trained to protect all of the citizens of New York regardless of race or religion. But Muslim Americans say that is hard to believe especially if a matter of policy, those officer are shown films that depict them as radical and terrorists that deserve neither protection or respect .
Parasite Capitalism: Human Awakening Calling Time On the Beast
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Listen to this fable. A man was lying in bed, tired and tormented. Tired because it was the early hours and yet he could not sleep; tormented because the cause of his tiredness was a mosquito, lurking somewhere in the darkness that would sporadically make its presence known by homing in on the man’s head, its whining buzz ringing in his ear. Try as he might, the man could not find any rest. Covering his head with the bed sheet only made him hot and breathless, the clammy discomfort made all the worse because of the climate.
Furthermore there was the hateful, capricious presence of his tormentor. Just when tiredness was overcoming the man, luring him to sleep, his tormentor would descend with its wicked whining on the other side of the sheet. Jolted by the sound, the man’s irritation would surge again, knowing that another hour of sleeplessness would have to pass.
His mind began to wander into squeamish thoughts. If he submitted to his tormentor’s desires by throwing off the sheet from his head, gaining some air to breathe and some badly craved minutes of sleep, then the mosquito would as sure as hell take its toll. The man pictured the ruthless parasite gorging on his blood while sleeping. He was nauseated by the idea of an alien creature being able to violate his skin with impunity and dipping into the well of his lifeblood, sucking his body’s vital fluid until its spindly belly became grotesquely bloated. The horribleness of the process disgusted him, terrorized him.
But also the squalid, gratuitous relationship filled him with anger. All at once his anger redoubled because he then realized that he – a man – had wasted so much of his precious rest time cowering under a sheet intimidated by an inferior speck of an insect, which in daylight he recalled is actually a very ungainly, insipid kind of creature that can easily be captured and crushed.
The man wasn’t yet working to a premeditated plan. Angry and exasperated, now fully awake, he simply decided to throw off the sheet and enjoy the cooling air. Lying full-square on his back, at first he felt a certain amusement from his petty show of defiance. What he would do next, wasn’t quite in his consciousness. He was just for the moment merely taking in fresh air.
Then out of the blackness, it came again, the wicked whining. Louder than ever, it seemed, the tormentor was drilling towards his bare face. But this time the man did not shirk or take shelter under the sheet. It was probably a mixture of irritation and anger that made his hands snap together in reflex, not consciously. He was surprised by his own quick, powerful action. And what was even more surprising to him was the subsequent silence. At first hardly believing his luck at catching his tormentor in pitch darkness, he then became elated by the sustained silence that meant that the torment was over. He had at last acquired rest and he luxuriated in the satisfaction of earning it. To be sure, in the scheme of things it was only a small victory, but nevertheless the man allowed himself the pleasure of knowing that he had asserted his will deliberately, purposefully for the comfort and peace of his mind and body. No longer would he be subjugated by a fiend. Henceforth, or at least for the rest of the night, this man would be the subject of his own fate.
The parasitical nature of late capitalism in the early 21st century is beyond comparison to a pest such as the mosquito. The lifeblood sucked from the body of society by a tiny ruling elite is oceans in volume by comparison; the human misery and suffering magnitudes worse. Prolific journalist Stephen Lendman can provide the shocking data on the United States of America in particular and how that society has within the space of a lifetime been bled utterly dry by the Wall Street banks, corporate oligarchs and their servile political Igors in both mainstream parties, including the occupant of the White House [1]. The same torment of the large body of people by a parasitical elite is replicated in Europe and elsewhere.
That is the ineluctable fiendish nature of global capitalism, which over generations feeds on the lifeblood of workers, and emaciates them and their families, while the system’s executors become bloated to the point of bursting, with all the wastefulness and destructiveness, including wars, that that entails. There is no way of legislating against such parasitism because the legislators are, or will sooner or later become, part of the parasitism – as the rich get richer and power and wealth inevitably polarize under capitalism. It is like a centrifugal force; always taking, taking, taking until the majority are left looking like a spent liquid to be discarded. Look at every nation state under the diktat of capitalism at this time in history, and dare say that that isn’t so.
The only protection to be gained is from crushing the system and replacing it with a different paradigm of relationships (democratic socialism – an alternative that has scarcely ever been given the chance to develop under the tyranny of capitalist imperialism).
In truth, this is not an impossibly tall order. The tormentor is in actual fact puny in number and size when compared with the collective body and power of the people. In many ways, the tormentor is only able to continue his parasitical tyranny because the people have chosen thus far to cower and take relative disorganized shelter. Or worst, they have fallen asleep from weariness, assigning themselves completely to the mercy of an insatiable feeding frenzy.
But signs are that the great body of humanity is finally beginning to rouse in anger, precisely from a painful understanding of how it has been and is being tormented. The world is awakening – thanks to global communications – and no more so than in the United States, where it is arguably most needed. And like the man in the above fable, a moment of determined organization could be all it takes to suddenly overturn a state of fear and torment into one of joy and freedom.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
NOTES
[1] America’s Great Divide Between Rich and Poor by Stephen Lendman http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28812
US: God is alive, due process is dead
US: God is alive, due process is dead by Bruce Fein
Nietzsche stumbled. God is alive, due process is dead
President Barack Obama is God. He holds the power of life and death over every creature on the planet.
The Roman Senate waited until Caesar Augustus's death for deification.
The United States Congress, by nonfeasance and appalling irresponsibility, has deified President Obama during his White House tenure.
Through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 and acquiescence in repeated executive usurpations, Congress has empowered President Obama to kill any person anywhere in the world who is secretly listed as an enemy on a list that's reminiscent of the Lord High Executioner's "Little List" in The Mikado. The putative "battlefield" is boundless. The standards for listing are secret. The evidence justifying a listing is secret. The legal justification for the assassinations is secret. The secrecy persists after the alleged enemy target is vaporized. No proof is proffered that the corpse had conspired or attempted or had actually engaged in hostilities against the United States; or, that capturing the victim for criminal prosecution or detention would have been unfeasible. Instead, the White House summons into being as its defense a counter-constitutional divine doctrine of presidential infallibility when it comes to killing suspected enemies. Due process is buried in the detritus of "collateral damage."
But enshrined in Article 39 of the Magna Carta, due process is the very wellspring of civilization - the most important concept in the history of mankind. It recognizes that humans are prone to err. Cravings for money, power, domination, fame and vanity routinely distort truth-telling. Events or actions are multi-dimensional, not one-dimensional, and lend themselves to competing rational interpretations. Justice and human dignity alike require listening to all relevant parties before decisions are forthcoming. Due process should be honored because of what it says about us as a people. It is not saluted as a concession to enemy suspects.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin killed opponent Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium poisoning in London, the assassination was censured in the United States as tyranny. When Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei assassinated Shapour Bakhtier, the last prime minister under the shah, the killing was assailed in the United States as state-sponsored terrorism. But when United States citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan and al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son were assassinated by President Obama in 2011 with predator drones, the United States applauded with virtually inaudible dissent.
In George Orwell's Animal Farm, all animals were equal, but some were more equal than others. In the United States Empire, all assassinations are equal, but assassinations perpetrated by the United States president are innocent, while assassinations perpetrated by others are criminal.
The Roman historian Tacitus observed as the Roman Republic surrendered to the Roman Empire: "The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV was prescient: "[T]here is nothing new under the sun."
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, 1981-83, and is author of American Empire Before The Fall.
Nietzsche stumbled. God is alive, due process is dead
President Barack Obama is God. He holds the power of life and death over every creature on the planet.
The Roman Senate waited until Caesar Augustus's death for deification.
The United States Congress, by nonfeasance and appalling irresponsibility, has deified President Obama during his White House tenure.
Through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 and acquiescence in repeated executive usurpations, Congress has empowered President Obama to kill any person anywhere in the world who is secretly listed as an enemy on a list that's reminiscent of the Lord High Executioner's "Little List" in The Mikado. The putative "battlefield" is boundless. The standards for listing are secret. The evidence justifying a listing is secret. The legal justification for the assassinations is secret. The secrecy persists after the alleged enemy target is vaporized. No proof is proffered that the corpse had conspired or attempted or had actually engaged in hostilities against the United States; or, that capturing the victim for criminal prosecution or detention would have been unfeasible. Instead, the White House summons into being as its defense a counter-constitutional divine doctrine of presidential infallibility when it comes to killing suspected enemies. Due process is buried in the detritus of "collateral damage."
But enshrined in Article 39 of the Magna Carta, due process is the very wellspring of civilization - the most important concept in the history of mankind. It recognizes that humans are prone to err. Cravings for money, power, domination, fame and vanity routinely distort truth-telling. Events or actions are multi-dimensional, not one-dimensional, and lend themselves to competing rational interpretations. Justice and human dignity alike require listening to all relevant parties before decisions are forthcoming. Due process should be honored because of what it says about us as a people. It is not saluted as a concession to enemy suspects.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin killed opponent Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium poisoning in London, the assassination was censured in the United States as tyranny. When Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei assassinated Shapour Bakhtier, the last prime minister under the shah, the killing was assailed in the United States as state-sponsored terrorism. But when United States citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan and al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son were assassinated by President Obama in 2011 with predator drones, the United States applauded with virtually inaudible dissent.
In George Orwell's Animal Farm, all animals were equal, but some were more equal than others. In the United States Empire, all assassinations are equal, but assassinations perpetrated by the United States president are innocent, while assassinations perpetrated by others are criminal.
The Roman historian Tacitus observed as the Roman Republic surrendered to the Roman Empire: "The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV was prescient: "[T]here is nothing new under the sun."
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, 1981-83, and is author of American Empire Before The Fall.
| Comment: The program "Fakir," had been added and of course, Obama fits the profile as an undercover right-wing nut case. Some of the characteristics of the fakir are as follows: 1. If you get to close to one you become one. 2. They are normally called beggars. 3. Most of them die leaving the outer appearance of the monk. 4. His great battle is with the Corporal which may consume him. 5. They have long known to be essentially stressed. |
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The GMO Report: Substantial Equivalence - anything but equivalent or substantial
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| © The GMO Report |
"GMOS are dangerous in that we really do not know the true extent to which molecular changes can occur and how those changes can effect humans, animals, soil, and the whole of the natural world."
Substantial equivalence. When looking at these two words many come away with the impression that they signify fairness, safety and adequate disclosure to consumers regarding the products those words are attached to. However, regarding the marketing of transgenic foods specifically genetically modified organisms in our food that is anything but the case. I think it is crucial that consumers are aware of what is in their food and how it may affect them and their children in order for them to be able to make informed decisions about what goes into their bodies. This knowledge is essential as a preventative measure to maintaining health and also regarding informing consumers about any other effects what they buy may have on the enviroment. Therefore, in discussing substantial equivalence in regards to GMOs and the underlayer of collusion involved in pushing them into the world I think it important to begin at the beginning.
This is the standard definition of "substantial equivalence":
"Substantial equivalence is a concept developed by OECD in 1991 that maintains that a novel food should be considered the same as a conventional food if it demonstrates the same characteristics and composition as the conventional food."This concept was pushed in regards to GMOs by the FAO and the WHO in the early 1990s. Its intent was the stripping away of years of testing of so called "novel" foods which can be prohibitively expensive and time consuming and therefore would have affected the profits of companies like Monsanto that have a virtual stranglehold on the FDA, USDA, and other regulatory agencies and governments that have afforded them special treatment in allowing them to use this planet and its species as one huge science experiment. The residual effects of applying these two words to GMOs and in allowing them to be foisted upon the world with little to no adequate testing already negates the validity of applying the substantial equivalence label to them.
Read complete article..
Related:
Monsanto: 'There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans'
Monsanto’s Infertility-Linked Roundup Found in All Urine Samples Tested
The Reality Behind the Coming "Regime Change" in Syria
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| © n/a |
After meeting again to decide Syria's fate, the Arab League again decided to extend its "monitoring mission" in Syria. However, some Arab League nations under U.S. diplomatic control are clamoring for blood. These countries - virtual sock puppets of U.S. foreign policy - want to declare the Arab League monitoring mission "a failure," so that military intervention - in the form of a no fly zone - can be used for regime change.
The United States appears to be using a strategy in Syria that it has perfected over the years, having succeeded most recently in Libya: arming small paramilitary groups loyal to U.S. interests that claim to speak for the native population; these militants then attack the targeted government the U.S. would like to see overthrown - including terrorist bombings - and when the attacked government defends itself, the U.S. cries "genocide" or "mass murder," while calling for foreign military intervention.
This is the strategy that the U.S. is using to channel the Arab Spring into the bloody dead end of foreign military intervention.
For example, the U.S. media and government are fanatically giving the impression that, in Syria, the native population would like foreign militarily intervention to overthrow their authoritarian president, Bashar Assad. But facts are stubborn things.
After spinning these lies, the New York Times was forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the Syrian government. These rallies are larger than any pro-government demonstration that the U.S. government could hope to organize for itself. The New York Times reports:
"The turnout [at least tens of thousands - see picture in link] in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus, the [Syrian] capital, once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country's two largest."The New York Times is forced to admit that the two largest cities - in a small country - support the government (or at least oppose foreign military intervention).
This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Syrian Qatar Foundation, preformed by the Doha Debates:
"According to the latest opinion poll commissioned by The Doha Debates, Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign."If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention - a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations - what about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which the United States has given immense credibility to and which claims to speak for the Syrian people?
The Free Syrian Army - like its Libyan counterpart - appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by route of its ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs:
"Why does the Syrian [government] military not rocket their [Free Syrian Army] position or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire."The article also quotes a Free Syrian Army member who states: "Every [Free Syrian Army] group in Turkey has its own job," Sayeed said. "[The Turks] gave us our freedom to move."
The article also mentions that the Free Syrian Army is calling for a "no fly zone" over certain regions of Syria, which would destroy the Syrian government military; the possible starting locations of this no fly zone are on the Syrian borders of either Turkey, Jordan, or Iraq - all three are either strong U.S. allies or client states.
A "no fly zone" is the new euphemism that means the U.S. and its European military junior partners in NATO will intervene to use their advanced fighter jets to destroy the Syrian military, as happened in Libya. In Libya the no fly zone evolved into a "no drive zone" and eventually a "no survival" zone for anything resembling the Syrian military - or anybody who armed himself in defense of the Libyan government.
As in Syria, Libya's largest city, Tripoli, never had large anti-government demonstrations. The anti-Libyan government, pro-U.S. paramilitary group that attacked Libyan forces was so tiny that it took months to take power after 10,000 NATO bombing sorties (bombing missions) that destroyed large portions of Libya's infrastructure, as documented by the independent Human Rights Investigations.
It's totally unimaginable that any large section of Syrian society would invite a NATO-backed no fly zone, i.e. war, into Syria. The examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are too glaring for any Middle Eastern nation not to notice. For the Free Syrian Army to demand a NATO invasion of Syria is enough to label the FSA a U.S. puppet group striving for political power, deserving to be condemned.
This strategy of using a proxy army to undermine an anti-U.S. government has a grisly past. This strategy is celebrated in the book Charlie Wilson's War, which tells the true story of the U.S. government sending weapons and cash to Islamic extremists to wage a terrorist campaign against the Afghan government, which was an ally of the Soviet Union at the time. The attacks eventually led to the Afghan government asking for Soviet military re-enforcements, whose presence in Afghanistan created a degree of popular support for the extremists who eventually became known as the Taliban.
The same scenario also played itself out in Kosovo, where the tiny, U.S.-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began a terrorist campaign against the government of Yugoslavia, intending to separate Kosovo into an independent nation. When the Yugoslav government attempted to defend itself from the KLA - while imitating its violent tactics - the U.S. and other western governments labeled it genocide, and invaded Yugoslavia, calling it a "humanitarian invasion." To this day the U.S. is one of few nations that recognizes Kosovo as an independent nation while Kosovo faithfully serves the interests of the United States.
The same proxy war strategy - by the U.S. and other European powers - played a crucial role in numerous wars throughout Africa, which culminated in the massive Congo War that killed over five million people, as French journalist Gerard Prunier describes in his book, Africa's World War.
In Syria history is repeating itself, and some non-U.S. allies are very aware of it. The New York Times reports:
"[Russia's Foreign Minister] said that foreign governments [the U.S., Turkey, etc.] were arming 'militants and extremists' in Syria."The Foreign minister also gave an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran:
Mr. Lavrov offered a similarly grave message about the possibility of a military strike against Iran, which he said would be a "catastrophe." He said sanctions now being proposed against Tehran were "intended to have a smothering effect on the Iranian economy and the Iranian population, probably in the hopes of provoking discontent."
Most ominously, the Russian Foreign Minister said that U.S. foreign policy in Syria and Iran could lead to a "very big war," i.e., a war that becomes regional or even international in scope, as other powers intervene to uphold their interests in the region.
Russia has offered a way to avoid war in Syria and is pursuing it through the UN Security Council; it is the same path being pursued by the pro-U.S. government in Yemen: maintaining the current government in power until elections are called. Unfortunately, Yemen is an ally of the U.S. and Syria is not - the U.S. and its allies are blocking the same approach in Syria in order to pursue war.
The Syrian government opposition bloc inside of Syria, the National Coordination Committee, opposes foreign military intervention. A leader of the NCC is Hassan Abdul Azim, who wisely states;
"We refuse on principle any type of military foreign intervention because it threatens the freedom of our country,"This is very likely the prevailing opinion inside of Syria, since the threat of no fly zones will result in the same mass bombings experienced by the citizens of Tripoli in Libya. The fake Syrian opposition outside of the country, The Syrian National Council, is yet another U.S. puppet - now allied with the Free Syrian Army - begging for a military invasion of Syria in order to "liberate" it. Of course the western media tells only the perspective of the pro-U.S. Syrian National Council.
The U.S. has proven on multiple occasions that military solutions solve nothing, having torn asunder the social fabric of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The working people of Syria and Iran do not desire "help" from the U.S. government and its allies to prevent bloodshed. The working people of these countries could liberate themselves from their authoritarian governments, as did the Tunisians and Egyptians, which is precisely the point: the U.S. is intervening militarily to re-gain control over a region that slipped out of its hands during the Arab Spring. This military approach serves to push the working people of the targeted country into the hands of their government while creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the invaded nation. The working people of the United States have no interest in aggressive war and have a responsibility to learn about U.S. government propaganda so that they can demand its end in the streets.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
ACTA: The International Treaty You've Never Heard of That Could Affect Internet Freedom
While there was massive attention last week to online anti-piracy bills -- SOPA in the House and the PIPA in the Senate -- ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, has received scant media attention yet poses a tremendous threat to online freedom.
RT reports on how the ACTA treaty will work:
Under this new treaty, Internet Service Providers will police all data passing through them, making them legally responsible for what their users do online. And should you do something considered "breach of copyright" like, for instance, getting a tattoo of a brand logo, taking a photo and posting it somewhere, you may be disconnected from the Internet, fined or even jailed.1TheRevolutionIsNow offers this video analysis of the treaty:
This, of course, threatens the entire founding idea of the Internet – the free sharing of information. But ACTA doesn't stop there. It goes beyond the Internet, bearing down on generic drugs and food patents. If passed, ACTA will enforce a global standard for seed patenting, which would wipe out independent, local farmers and make the world completely dependent on the patent owners (read "big corporations") for supplies.
While protests were able to pressure officials from moving forward with the SOPA and PIPA bills, President Obama already signed ACTA months ago. The International Business Times reports:
ACTA, on the other hand, was already signed by the United States on Oct. 11, 2011, and Obama was not required to attain the approval of any outside authority to do so: not the Congress, not the Supreme Court, and not the American public.And Wired.co.uk reports:
Now that it has been signed, the legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government also have little ability to challenge or amend the treaty, and Americans will be subject to a whole new scheme of laws, restrictions and regulations that could have them facing fines or jail through a process that would likely exist entirely outside the scope of the American justice system.
It has been negotiated, mostly in secret, between various countries and the EU over the last four years. Many states have already signed up for Acta, well before the widespread web furore over Sopa. So far, Canada, Japan, Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US have all signed up to Acta. The European Union, Mexico and Switzerland have supported the treaty and shown a commitment to signing it in the future. Acta was slipped through the European Council in an agriculture and fisheries meeting in December. Some of its more aggressive language has been removed from more recent iterations of the treaty, particularly concerning "disconnection of internet access". It is expected to be signed by the EU on Thursday, before the European Parliament has a chance to vote on it.Echoing protests last week when many sites "went black" in protest of SOPA and PIPA, Agence France-Presse reports that close to 100 websites in Poland went black Tuesday in protest of their country's plan to sign ACTA.
So who supports this far-reaching treaty? Wired.co.uk reports:
Acta is supported by major copyright holders including pharmaceutical companies, movies studios and record labels. Lobbying organisations include GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Monsanto Company, Time Warner, Sony, Verizon, The Walt Disney Company, the Motion Picture Association of America, News Corporation, and Viacom. It looks like the European Commission supports it but the European Parliament are unanimously against it.
Occupy The Courts - A Conversation with Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges
Occupy The Courts - A Conversation with Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges OccupyTVNY
On January 20th, occupiers across the country rallied together in protest against the insidious influence of the corporations over the judiciary. Shortly before the rally in Foley Square, New York CIty, Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges met in front of Occupy TVNY's cameras to discuss their vision of change.
On January 20th, occupiers across the country rallied together in protest against the insidious influence of the corporations over the judiciary. Shortly before the rally in Foley Square, New York CIty, Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges met in front of Occupy TVNY's cameras to discuss their vision of change.
Evidence of Revision -- Mind Control
Evidence of Revision -- Mind Control - The Sott Report
Excerpts from the 6 part, 10 1/2 hour documentary, Evidence of Revision.
This documentary is about to be re-released by the Quantum Future Group with subtitles and extra features. The monumental work to produce 10 1/2 hours of subtitles along with the special features has been a project of the Quantum Future Group in an effort to ensure that this important document reaches as many people around the world as possible.
If you would like to donate to this effort and others like it, please visit sott.net/donate
Excerpts from the 6 part, 10 1/2 hour documentary, Evidence of Revision.
This documentary is about to be re-released by the Quantum Future Group with subtitles and extra features. The monumental work to produce 10 1/2 hours of subtitles along with the special features has been a project of the Quantum Future Group in an effort to ensure that this important document reaches as many people around the world as possible.
If you would like to donate to this effort and others like it, please visit sott.net/donate
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Crisis of Education in America: "How to Become a Serf"
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| © Mr. Fish |
How to Become a Serf
Man is a pathetic creature; a brute trying to be god but traveling in the wrong direction.
Man is a pathetic creature; a brute trying to be god but traveling in the wrong direction.
Educational systems now train workers to fulfill the needs of companies. A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved. But there's a deep problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training. To paraphrase a very famous and renowned person, man does not live by work alone. Indeed, the knowledge and skills needed to earn a living in a capitalist industrial economy are of little use in human relationships, and human relationships are the core of everyone's life. Schools devoted to vocational training provide no venue for teaching cultural differences, for trying to understand the person who lives next door or in another country. Value systems are never evaluated; alternatives are never considered. As a result, although we all live on the same planet, we do not live together. At best, we only live side by side. At worst, we live to kill each other. Education as vocational training reduces everything to ideology, our devotion to which causes us to reject the stark reality that stares us in the face, because our ideologies color the realities we see and people never get wiser than those of previous generations. People have become nothing but the monkeys of hurdy gurdy grinders, tethered to grinders' organs with tin cups in hands to be filled for the benefit of the grinders. And this is the species we refer to as sapient. What a delusion!
For many years, I have been troubled by what I saw as the results of what passes for education in America and perhaps elsewhere too. Why is it, do you suppose, that one generation does not seem to get any smarter than the previous one? Oh, it may know more of this or that, but what it "knows" does not translate into smarts. In other words, why don't people ever seem to get wiser? Why do they repeat the same mistakes over and over?
For centuries, an education was thought to be comprised of considerably more than one providing the skills and requirements needed to carry on a trade or profession. For instance, consider this passage:
"Education is not the same as training. Plato made the distinction between techne (skill) and episteme (knowledge). Becoming an educated person goes beyond the acquisition of a technical skill. It requires an understanding of one’s place in the world—cultural as well as natural—in pursuit of a productive and meaningful life. And it requires historical perspective so that one does not just live, as Edmund Burke said, like 'the flies of a summer,' born one day and gone the next, but as part of that 'social contract' that binds our generation to those who have come before and to those who are yet to be born.
An education that achieves those goals must include the study of what Matthew Arnold called 'the best that has been known and said.' It must comprehend the whole—the human world and its history, our own culture and those very different from ours. . . ."
This idea of an educated person was often summarized in the phrases, a Renaissance man, and un homme du monde. But these expressions are hardly heard any more. Educated people no longer exist. We are nothing but the monkeys of hurdy gurdy grinders, tethered to grinders' organs with tin cups in hands to be filled for the benefit of the grinders.
"Governor Rick Snyder wants to tie retraining programs to companies' needs . . . and encourage more Michigan residents to earn math and science degrees under an initiative aimed at making workers more competitive in the global marketplace."
The hurdy gurdy grinder's monkey exists for the sake of the organ grinder; Governor Snyder wants Michigan's residents to educate themselves for the sake of companies. Workers are to fulfill companies' needs rather than vice versa. President Obama has said similar things.
But there's something wrong, something terribly wrong, with this picture. A society in which people exist for the sake of some non-human entity is a society enslaved. And this picture gets even more horrid with the realization that workers are expected to pay to acquire the required skills. Students are being asked to pay for the privilege of becoming serfs.
Living things in the natural world exist as ends in themselves. Everything they do is done for their own benefit or the benefit of their offspring. Horses in the wild do not acquire skills in order to perform tasks that benefit other horses. When a human being acquires a horse and trains it to perform a skill for the person's benefit, the person provides for all the natural needs of his horse. Horses don't come begging to be trained to be ridden. What kind of perversion is the requirement that people should beg to be trained to be serfs?
But neither a hurdy gurdy grinder's monkey or a riding horse are educated; they are trained. There is no such thing as a Renaissance monkey!
Education in America, and perhaps other places too, is as fractured as shattered glass. The federal agency called the Department of Education's only power is the ability to cajole schools mainly by offering them money. There are public and private schools, and the public ones are governed by local school boards, the members of which are not even required to be able to read or write. State school boards exist to have some influence over local boards, but again, the power of the states is limited. Education in America is a local affair. The people on these school boards are the ones that control what is and how it is taught. For instance, creationism is often given equal standing with evolution. Students are often required to engage in practices that are clearly unconstitutional. All of this is done to suit the views of school board members, not society or even students.
Teachers are certified by subject matter. Perfectly good mathematics teachers may not be able to write literate essays. English teachers are not required to understand even elementary algebra. The schools do not employ hommes de monde. And what is true in the primary and secondary schools is also true in colleges and universities. Les spécialistes rule the classroom. Trained monkeys all!
Now vocational training works, of course, if people know what industries need workers and if workers want those jobs. But often, especially in times of crisis, this knowledge doesn't exist. Yet there's a deeper problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training. To paraphrase a very famous and renowned person, man does not live by work alone. Indeed, the knowledge and skills needed to earn a living in a capitalist industrial economy are of little use in human relationships, and human relationships are the core of everyone's life.
Although the United States is often referred to as a multicultural melting pot, most highly developed nations today have multicultural populations. Different cultures embody different values. Those values often clash and erupt in violent behavior. If people understood these cultural differences, these clashes could be ameliorated. But schools devoted to vocational training provide no venue for teaching cultural differences, for trying to understand the person who lives next door or in another country. Various value systems are never evaluated, and alternatives are never considered. As a result, although we all live on the same planet, we do not live together. At best, we only live side by side. At worst, we live to kill each other.
Education as vocational training reduces everything to ideology. Religion is an ideology and no one ever questions a person's right to her/his own. Economics, although often touted as a science, is an ideology. Part of free marked economic theory is the belief that when an established industry falters and declines, some new industry will come forth and employ the newly unemployed. But nothing in economics can compel that to happen. This belief is akin to the belief in a Second Coming. It is purely ideological. Even science has become an ideology. People believe, for instance, that science will discover solutions to all of our problems. But again, there is nothing in science that compels that. It is perfectly possible that, as human beings destroy their environment, science will be unable to correct the damage and that life on this planet will perish. Worse, ideologies contribute to human stupidity; our devotion to them causes us to reject the stark realities that stare us in the face. (See here and here.)
So what is required if we are to make one generation smarter than the previous one? We need to educate Renaissance men who comprehend the whole human world, its history, our own culture, and those very different from ours. Vocational training will never produce such people.
John F. Kennedy was glorified when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." Shouldn't he have been vilified? Do countries exist to benefit their peoples or do their peoples exist to benefit their countries? What good is a country that requires the sacrifice of its people?
Since the Enlightenment, it is generally agreed that legitimate governments are those that govern with the consent of their peoples. Does anyone really believe that people would consent to living in a nation that made it clear that the lives of most citizens would be fated to live for the benefit of the few who control the nation's institutions? Isn't that exactly what slavery is?
Analytical thinking, even when valid, can lead people down invalid roads, because analysis alone tends to overly simplify questions. When used to answer the question, What must be done to put unemployed people to work?, it leads to attempts to make education equivalent to vocational training. But when put into practice, it results in people who lack the ability to understand their value systems and evaluate them properly. They end up being hurdy gurdy monkeys or, as Arnold put it, the flies of a summer, born one day and gone the next. If a nation's institutions do not exist to benefit its citizens, the institutions, not the people, are faulty.
In Classical Greece it was known that the unexamined human life is not worth living. Vocational training never presents people with opportunities to examine one's life; so people end up relying entirely on ideologies which have no intellectual basis and are often absurdly false, but "falsehoods are not only evil in themselves, they infect the soul with evil."
If human beings wish to endure, their ideologies must be subjected to serious criticism; otherwise, no generation will ever be smarter than its predecessors and continuing to refer to ourselves as sapient is a sheer delusion.
John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.
Drowning in Hypocrisy
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| Dees Illustration |
The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.” (Source)
If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo.
Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?
Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars. The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment by equating free speech with terrorism and spying. Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in the City of Chicago. The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.
Read complete article..
Robert Redford on How Truth-Telling, Challenging Power Fuels Passion for Independent Film
Robert Redford on How Truth-Telling, Challenging Power Fuels Passion for Independent Film - Democracy Now
democracynow.org - Robert Redford is well known as an actor, a director, a producer and activist. Since 1980, through the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford has helped independent voices develop their craft — in film, in theater and music — to reach larger and newer audiences. Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman speaks with Redford about how independent cinema became his passion. "To me, stories worth telling are stories about what's the truth beneath the truth you were given, or think you know ... I wanted to focus on independent films to keep alive the independent spirit through storytelling and movie-making."
democracynow.org - Robert Redford is well known as an actor, a director, a producer and activist. Since 1980, through the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford has helped independent voices develop their craft — in film, in theater and music — to reach larger and newer audiences. Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman speaks with Redford about how independent cinema became his passion. "To me, stories worth telling are stories about what's the truth beneath the truth you were given, or think you know ... I wanted to focus on independent films to keep alive the independent spirit through storytelling and movie-making."
| Comment: G. I. Gurdjieff the master teacher who taught Oupsensky what he knew in ISOTM, said that the intellectual center was our weakest point and this is reflected in America with the corruption of science stemming out of what once was the idea of harmony. |
Shades of an American Kristallnacht?
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© Wikipedia 1938: Interior of a Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht. |
Watching the spectacle of the Republican primaries evokes deep sadness over the unavoidable truth that now, in the wake of Citizens United, it has become totally legal for rich people to run politicians the same way they might run horses or greyhounds. Just like that.
Maybe that's what provides the eerie, zombie-like atmosphere in politics these days. You really have the sense that most politicians, especially the ones at the top echelons of power, are like old-fashioned Kabbalistic golems, animated out of clay by skilled magicians who can control them from afar.
Of course, that's been going on for a long time. Remember George Bush, a wind-up man getting remote control instructions through his earphone in the 2004 Presidential debates?
But it's getting worse and worse. That's why I can't stand to watch Gingrich and Santorum and all the other Republican wax model men mouth their lines on the stage these days. You know they'll say whatever they're told...whatever they think it will take to win.
Democrats, pay attention! You may be feeling dispirited and grumpy, not much in the mood to get all fired up about yet another election, but meanwhile, the Republicans are rabid to take back the White House. They've been busy as hell redistricting and installing those sketchy electronic voting machines all across the country.
It's very possible that Mr. XY Zombie Republican could seize power in November, with the backing of endlessly deep pockets like the Koch brothers, Big Energy, and Big Finance, and the blessing of the Supreme Court.
What then?
If the Republicans controlled all three houses of government, they could ram through the legislation they've been concocting during the past decade or so: legislation powering up the assault on the environment, on health, on social services, destroying any kind of safety net for people, animals or the environment.
They could escalate the war on dissidents who dare to oppose their plans. In short order, the United States could turn into just another big banana republic, with a military-backed regime of elites governing through the indiscriminate use of fear tactics, with violence applied as necessary to keep the people in line.
It happened not so long ago in many countries in Latin America - think Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador - in the 1970s, when wealthy politicians wielding military power and complete control over the ballot boxes ruled their countries with iron fists, "disappearing" anyone who might remotely be a threat, including thousands of innocent students. Often the shift from democracy to fascist dictatorship happened literally overnight.
Lately I have been re-reading Margaret Atwood's marvelous sci-fi novel The Handmaid's Tale, and finding it chillingly prophetic. In Atwood's dystopia, environmental catastrophe has rendered the elites infertile, and pushed them to withdraw into gated communities where food shortages are common, and people are regularly hung in the public square to keep everyone fearful and docile.
The narrator remembers how just before her world fell apart, there were signs of repression: books being banned and burned, identity cards being issued and required, mobility restricted, media censored. All of a sudden, one fine morning, it was no longer possible for her and her family to get in their car and drive away to seek safety in Canada. All of a sudden, they were trapped in a nightmare that went quickly from bad to worse.
As in Germany before the Kristallnacht, none of us here in the U.S. wants to believe that anything could happen to destroy our cherished freedoms, our vaunted "American way of life." We don't want to admit, even to ourselves, the extent to which our freedoms are already being encroached upon, day by day.
Just last week, for example, there was an outrageous episode in Arizona, where the government declared a whole long list of books to be unsuitable for school use, and went so far as to direct the school librarians and teachers to pull them from the shelves, box them up and put them into deep storage.
Among the authors banned are some of my favorite writers - Gloria Anzaldua, Elizabeth Martinez, Paulo Freire.
Yes, that Paulo Freire, the famous Brazilian educator and free thinker who wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a brilliant analysis of the way that traditional education indoctrinates students into conformity and submission to authority.
Freire proposed that instead of a banking style of education, where knowledge is deposited into students, who are then required to spit it back upon demand, education worth its salt should empower students to think for themselves.
Such a simple idea, but so powerful, too. Education should teach people to think for themselves, and to work with each other to come to consensus on issues of importance to the larger society.
Isn't that just what the Occupy movements have been trying to do? If Freire were alive, he would be out there in the thick of the Occupy action, inspiring the young to shake off the false animation of Zombiland, and insist on dancing to their own authentic beat.
This reminds me of another beloved science fiction book, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, where the sinister IT controls all the inhabitants of a city by forcing them to conform to ITS rhythm. Their hearts pulse to ITS rhythm, their eyes twirl to ITS rhythm, their thoughts are entirely subsumed by IT. The only way to break ITS control is to think for oneself, to be creative, resilient and determined.
The children Meg and Charles Wallace succeed in rescuing their father from the clutches of IT by dint of their own powers of creativity and love, with a little help from some eccentric and freethinking guides.
Will the science fiction we're living through now have that kind of happy ending?
Oh right, this isn't science fiction, is it.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Lubricated False-flags, Weapons sales, and the Psychopaths
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| © unknown |
Are dark forces at work this Monday? To find out, as always, if you're online, you can connect the dots rather easily. Online bloggers and the alternative current have already begun to reveal the tall stack of lies on the horizon. But M$M is the most hurtful of all this connectivity now present with the goon show that is currently being televised by the most deceitful bunch of all, the mainstream military complex on the presidential election.
According to Paul Craig Roberts who has now regained a lot of his prestige (he had previously retired if you remember) in journalism, he writes that the M$M is sidetracking Ron Paul into the lingua of the Libertarians as a ploy to clog his chances from the predominantly instream folks who see Libertarians as nut cases and vultures wanting to steal their benefits. This certainly has some truth in it but this ponzi scheme only works for those willing to succumb to its abusive nature which has a lock-jaw on feeding insurance profits interlaced within an increasingly depressing medical mafia that must extend the profits from the overall disease by simply slipping you more medication that has no primary effects on the true problem but rather on appeasing it.
I'm sorry to say, but getting an occupy movement candidate in at least the primaries does not seem to be happening as per the corruption that seems to be the side story of the election process that is clogging our arteries. It does seems to lead to the same aspects that preppers openly display as the analogy to those instream who would blow your head off to save their retirements. What's the difference? It all comes back to a monetary system that refuses to root itself and the deeper psychological aspects.
Now, if you thought that was slippery, we also have this very system preliminarily being cranked up for world domination and it seems that we're going to be presented with a show from M$M to strengthen that terrorist IMF ideology through continued weapon sales. The "buy our petro," may get a boost for the 1% as part of the false-flag debacle in the Persian Gulf because of sanctions that must lead to closure of Hormuz and the profiteers will be pleased. However, it looks as though part of this plan to watch out for is the Nuclear Powered U.S.S. Enterprise, an old dog that may serve well as disposal in the Persian Gulf which will quickly need replacing. But of course, we have already learned that wars do not help economies, especially one that is in the shape this one is in.
Anyone who speaks out against the almighty dollar is flagged for class warfare, some just want it to change and are willing to be ready, but some are way too worried about their own personal lives and willing to turn their back on everyone else. These are the signs of a pathocracy especially with the hysterical nature of the news out of South Carolina. It is similar to the crying people in North Korea, it just isn't done in the same way. Again, these are tagged in the class game as baby boomers.
Until we are capable of understanding how these ideologies are manifested and used by psychopaths, who are the principle drivers that now seem to be the wanton for lack of a better word, we'll remain in the clutches of these screwy and deadly forces. Stay online, keep reading and sharing.
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