Week-end up-date

To consume or not to consume

Leading US Officials Support Terrorist Listed Group with Impunity
Michael Ratner Report: Supreme Court finds Telecoms won’t be prosecuted for illegal wiretapping
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US and Israel Recognize Iran Not Near a Bomb
In spite evidence Iran directing much of its supply of 20% enriched uranium for scientific purposes, “killer” sanctions continue
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  The VP Debate: What They Didn't Talk About
The moderator didn't question the right of US to project global power; no discussion about the cause of the crash or the the power of the big banks
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Aid Dependency, Unemployment Remain High in Gaza But Some Get Rich
For the majority of Gazans, life is unbearable under the Israeli blockade. But there's an emerging wealthy class, a group of new millionaires benefiting from the tunnel smuggling business between the Gaza-Egypt border.
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Sanctions Against Iranian Banks is Economic Warfare
Phyllis Bennis: Excluding Iranian banks from the SWIFT system of interbank transfers helped cause a devaluation of Iranian currency and great hardship for ordinary people
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October 10
	Gaza's People Blame Poverty on Israeli Blockade and Hamas Leadership For Gazans life remains unbearable, Amnesty International estimates that 70 percent of families live on less than one dollar per person per day Go to story | Go to homepage

Fueling the Food Crisis
Tim A. Wise: Bio-fuels are driving up the price of food everywhere and costing developing countries billions
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Elections Fair But Venezuela Lacking Independent Media
T. M. Scruggs: Presidential election was as Jimmy Carter said "best in the world", but Venezuela needs independent investigative journalism
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General Strike Solid in Greek Town Chania
The first general strike against the new coalition government boosts the confidence of left organisers in the Greek city of Chania
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Obama Lacks Populist Policies
Jeff Cohen: The way to defeat Romney is to say he's an agent of the 1 percent. The problem is that Obama's policies for years have really helped the top 1 percent and have not been that great for middle-class Americans
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Education-Fail

Why Johnny dies……
Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless…Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues

I thought I would follow up yesterday’s post and offer up a few more of my social observations and personal insights. Some may call me a social critic and that’s ok. But the one thing you will find out about me is my pragmatism bleeds into everything. I try not to offer an opinion or render a criticism without also stating what I believe is to be the root cause and why I hold those ideas. First, I attempt to identify what I think the problem is and second, support my position, either from personal experience or from objective observation, only then will try to look at possible solutions. As a parent, teacher or a human, whatever the role, I am not going to tell Johnny not to do this or that, unless I can find out some reason for what and why Johnny is doing that to begin with, and what and why I think another way is better. If I don’t know I will admit I don’t know, if I am wrong I will be the first to say so. What I will do is try to find someone that does know, but here is the kicker, if I do find the truth I will not dismiss it just because it goes against my original opinion. Sometimes it takes awhile to soak in before I can accept something new. And as I rethink my position I usually find the error in my own thinking. My pride is not so great that I am unable to admit my mistakes, my convictions to my conscience let new ideas replace old thinking with humility. I try to give away a part of me every time I post…..

Lets look in on Mrs. Weaver‘s class, my third grade teacher, my eliminatory educator, the art critic: Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to draw tree. Cool, we’re going to draw a tree!

And she would get up there with a green crayola and she’d draw this great big green thing. And then she put a brown base on it and a few blades of grass. Then she’d say, there is the tree. And all of us would look at it and someone, likely me, would say……That isn’t a tree. That’s a tootsie-pop. But she said that was a tree and pass out these papers and say, now draw a tree. She didn’t really say, draw a tree: the said, ‘Draw my tree.’ And the sooner you figured out that what she meant and could reproduce this lollipop and hand it to her, the sooner you would get an A on her art papers.

But here was little larry who knew that wasn’t a tree because I’d seen a tree such as this art teacher never experienced! I had fallen out of tree and broke my collarbone, chewed a tree, smelled a tree, sat in branches of a tree, listened to the wind blow through the leaves of a tree, and I knew her tree was a lollipop. So I got magenta, and orange, and blue, and purple and green , and scribbled it all over my page and happily brought it up and gave it to her. She looked at it and she said, “oh my God, brain damaged…..special class.”

How long does it take somebody to realize that what they are really saying is, I want you to reproduce my tree. And so it goes through the first, second, third, forth fifth, and right on into seminars in grad school. I have sat in on seminars in grad school, and it is amazing how many future teachers and enlightened educators do nothing but parrot, reinforce each other until this practice becomes engrained and embedded. Think? don’t be ridiculous. They (students) can give you the facts, verbatim, just as they have been given to them. And we blame those students because that’s what they’ve been taught. We say to them, “be creative,” and they’re fearful. “Teachers don’t really mean that, do they?’ And so what happens to our uniqueness, what happens to my tree?” All this beautiful uniqueness has gone right down the drain. Everybody is like everybody else and everybody else is happy. R. D. Lang says, “we are satisfied when we’ve made people like ourselves out of our children: frustrated, sick, blind, deaf, but with high I. Q.’s.”

Continue on and ignore reality, troubled children are not dumb. Stupid youth do not take the time to plan a successful assault on malls and schools, the smart one with no channel for self expression will find a way to make a statement, that is creativity, albeit negative. These ultimate acts of violence are not a spur of the moment idea. He does not get up one morning and think to himself, “today I am going to die and I am going to take as many as I can with me.” Or does he only commit, after month or years of thinking about it? Today I am going to die. How many others are now thinking about doing it tomorrow? I don’t have an answer, but we as a society had better find an answer quick or get used to the reality of what apathy breeds.

My answers are spiritual and with the publics approval society has legislated God out of the equation and has filled the vacuum with fantasies, a virtual life played out in the idealism of a make believe world found in the entertainment industry. The heroes never die, they always win, and sometimes the heroes are not even the good guys, but all the stories have happy endings. We want to shield from reality, from truth.

At least when I was young movies used to mirror life and reality on some level. There was value in them by learning to deal with, grief, disappointment, injustice and consequences for behavior, in this artificial environment I had the opportunity to deal with these feelings. Sometimes the hero died. Maybe I had the opportunity to learn some internal conflict resolution and deal with these feeling before life starts playing for keeps. While I didn’t cry old yeller died, I did cry when the pirate Lafayette was deported after helping the united states whip England during the struggle to keep our independence. I am very fortunate to have been born into a loving family that drug me, sometimes kicking and screaming, to church. I may have thought I was stupid in public school but I knew Jesus love me and would help me anyway.

Secularism is Americas official state religion today, it may be true, morality can‘t be legislated, but can and is being punished through irrational and irresponsible laws and education failures. Apathy and the narrow-minded are wining the hypocrisy for democracy wars today.

Ronald David Laing had some brilliant insights on human potential and the development of human potential. He also nailed the root causes of mental illness that still stand today. His ideas are not in the best interest of the drug companies or the psychiatrists that prescribe cures in little bottles, or the pharmacists that count out the little pills that dispense hope monthly. But hey, they work, little junior sits still and doesn’t want to kill himself…..today.

…. “We think much less than what we know. We know much less than what we love. We love much less than what there is. And to this precise extent, we are so much less than what we are.”…… R.D. Laing.

Dedicated in memory of John Lennon
9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980
There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain…in my life.
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Love is like a plant. You can't just stick in a cupboard and expect it to grow. You have take care of it and water it….John Lennon..............fighing the good fight, with our light as weapons
………………………kosmicdebris………………………………........



...................keep fighting the good fight, with your minds as weapons...... ...............kosmicdebris.................