what market is that to which you refer???

One of the most significant problems for the objectivist libertarians and their Randian/Straussian forebearers is the notion that a unfettered market will solve all the problems. It is a problem because it requires them to acknowledge a core paradox within their own arguments; that people will make the market choices that are best for them without regulations and so forth, but that the vast majority of the people are stupid idiots. It is a highly elitist position, hierarchically dependent upon a number of factors and positions, but most especially on the coercive threat and use of physical violence as the arbiter of market conflicts. Most people are stupid, and thus they will be poor and choose to give all their money to us, and we won't want to ever give any of it back to them, so we need armies to keep it for us. This is the same classist battle that has gone on for a dozen millenia under whatever new names each subsequent generation wants to call it. I prefer the neo-feudal lords of capital version for this early 21st century post modern era. But those that foment for private property rights and freedom from any control on their accumulation of wealth and demands for armies to protect them, are the ones that are stupid here. And this essay by James K. Galbraith illuminates this better than i can: The Predator State!!!

WHAT IS THE REAL NATURE of American capitalism today? Is it a grand national adventure, as politicians and textbooks aver, in which markets provide the framework for benign competition, from which emerges the greatest good for the greatest number? Or is it the domain of class struggle, even a “global class war,” as the title of Jeff Faux’s new book would have it, in which the “party of Davos” outmaneuvers the remnants of the organized working class?

The doctrines of the “law and economics” movement, now ascendant in our courts, hold that if people are rational, if markets can be “contested,” if memory is good and information adequate, then firms will adhere on their own to norms of honorable conduct. Any public presence in the economy undermines this. Even insurance—whether deposit insurance or Social Security—is perverse, for it encourages irresponsible risktaking. Banks will lend to bad clients, workers will “live for today,” companies will speculate with their pension funds; the movement has even argued that seat belts foster reckless driving. Insurance, in other words, creates a “moral hazard” for which “market discipline” is the cure; all works for the best when thought and planning do not interfere. It’s a strange vision, and if we weren’t governed by people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, who pretend to believe it, it would scarcely be worth our attention.

The idea of class struggle goes back a long way; perhaps it really is “the history of all hitherto existing society,” as Marx and Engels famously declared. But if the world is ruled by a monied elite, then to what extent do middle-class working Americans compose part of the global proletariat? The honest answer can only be: not much. The political decline of the left surely flows in part from rhetoric that no longer matches experience; for the most part, American voters do not live on the Malthusian margin. Dollars command the world’s goods, rupees do not; membership in the dollar economy makes every working American, to some degree, complicit in the capitalist class.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/05/predator_state.html

so many new threats in 24 hours

I start out early in the morning with some idea of what i want to write about. Today it was going to be about my grandparents and great grand parents, or maybe about what it meant to perform acts of eco-vandalism 46 years ago, but i get up and read the posts and news and discover the world is marching ever closer to complete chaos.

In the past, when these sorts of crises manifested across large swaths of the planet, most people retained a sense of hope about their futures, increasing memes for peace and great prosperity. Today, we have significant empowered majorities in leadership roles around the continents who have no other concerns but to destroy, kill, and end life as we know it for some bizarre religious memes. We are in deeper and deeper poo poo: economically, environmentally, socially, militarily. Wholesale, privately-funded nationalism is replacing the diplomatic arena, individuals of greater and greater wealth are lining up against one another to lay claim to what is left of the planet and the resources after they insure the death and destruction of most of the population of humans and other species. "Nuke Iran" is a rally cry among what used to be sane and well-intentioned US citizens. Are they out of their fucking minds? But lo, who would gain from nuking Iran? ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco billionaires using their economic and political capital to fund military expansionism to control all of the MidEast oil fields and keep them away from the wealthy asian and former soviet oligarchs.

We are killing thousands upon thousands of native Africans, perhaps several million in the last fifteen years, all through pursuit of mineral and energy wealth. Our neo-feudal lords of capital don't care how many must die to insure supremacy of the resources at the point of guns and nukes and privatized militaries. Desperate US citizens realize that their own financial lives are predicated on these systems rally support for these acts for no other reasons than self-preservation and the preached belief that in the end they will rise to heavens as yet never known. We are destroying the earth, each and every day so that a few very rich folk will be able to leave crumbs of sustainability for their offspring, who will be locked in biospheres isolated from the billions of people dying outside all around them. The biospheres will provide sanctuary from the toxic nuclear and chemical pollution spreading around the earth.

I am not making this up. Listen to their voices on the nightly news and in their blogs. Each time someone advocates for a new amerikan century and killing muslims, mexicans, moghuls, mongols etc., know that the vast majority of these voices have no clue that they too are headed for deaths. When the US economy finally floats belly up, and millions upon millions of people will no longer have any material means of acquiring life sustaining necessities, they will turn on each other and kill those that threaten them, even though the threats are long past existing. It will just be over.

Vacca foeda: yet another lost history lesson

My how the media has chosen to ignore history in the following blurb fest. Even the WaPo, the paper of record in the 70's failed completely to mention the most mundane but significanly important facts in their version of this piece. To whit:

Former president Gerald R. Ford offered public praise yesterday for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, criticizing a group of retired generals who have called for Rumsfeld's resignation.<> Ford, a Republican, wrote to defend Rumsfeld, who served as chief of staff in Ford's White House and as his defense secretary from 1975 to 1977. Over the past two weeks, retired generals have been speaking out against Rumsfeld amid claims that he has ignored his military leadership and failed to properly plan and execute the war in Iraq. "I have been extremely troubled by the efforts of a group of retired generals to force the resignation of our Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld," Ford, 92, wrote. "President Bush is right to keep him in his post. It is the President's decision -- and his alone."

<>
Former President Gerald R. Ford; wow that sounds powerful and reinforcing doesn't it. A former President of the US supporting his friend and confidante. But it would have so helped to have just a few little facts regarding the Ford/Rummy relationship upon which this blurb was engendered and most likely crafted in Ford's name. Start by the only fact mentioned in the fluff. Why was Ford president when Rummy was his White House Chief of Staff?? OOhh because Nixon resigned. Yes people, Ford was the appointed VP successor of the indicted and convicted Agnew (tax evasion to cover up complicity in CIA heroin smuggling by Maryland Mafia), and deeply involved in the White House coverup, much of which was orchestrated by Rummy's patron Henry Kissinger and the infamous leadership who mentored Rove, Reed, Cheney, et al.

<>Ford has been regarded as the least intelligent president in US history. It was often said he had played too many football games with his helmet off; and he hit more people with golf balls during his White House days than most people would do in a lifetime. Ford was a stupid puppet of the regime that was, until this Bushco affair, the most corrupt unconstitutional one ever. The puppet masters fingers weren't that far from the dumbed down POTUS. Ford's VP was Rockefeller, his chief of staff after Rummy (who became Sec of Defense) was DICK CHENEY , his CIA director was GHW Bush, his Sec of State Kissinger and so forth. Ford was Charlie McCarthy with ten hands up his ass. He couldn't possibly have written this praise for Rummy at the age of 92, so who did?? Well look again at that short list and say "D'oh." When Nixon was flying back to CA after resigning, Ford's first official act as Pres was to pardon Dickie for all his sins and those of his buddies and confidants. One member of the Cabal cabinet was Caspar Weinberger, later pardoned by GHW Bush to avoid spilling the whole Iran/Contra constitutional corruptions.

<>So whose hands are on Ford?? Cheney definitely, Rummy for sure, Kissinger oh yes, and the rest are just window dressing. Ford the dumbest to the rescue of his friend Rummy. Now that is a ringing endorsement.

<>

why do they keep lying..

even about the trivial stuff. Yesterday Cheney fell asleep at the meetings between bushco and china central command. When questioned about it, his staff immediately declared he was not asleep, but reading his notes. Of course anyone who notices the picture of him sleeping also notices he doesn't have on his glasses. His glasses, seen on his face in every single picture of him taken in the last 20 years. His glasses, without which he cannot see at all very well. "Reading his notes?" How could he be reading his fucking notes without his glasses? Even if we accepted these idiotic lies at face value, and recognized the dickhead's apparent failing vision, the notes would need to have been printed in 70pt font sizes, and thus would extend to dozens of pages of material for even one paragraph of information. Yet he didn't turn a page. mmmmm

They lie because they cannot comprehend reality any longer. They lie because they have no capacity in their minds to express facts and truth. They lie because they are insane.

What do AIPAC, Swift Boaters, and Bushco have in common?

Character assassination. If you have been in some other universe, or are fortunate to live outside the US, you wouldn't remember the young GOP operative appointed by bushco to oversea the public pronouncements of NASA. It was discovered that he had no experience per se, nor was he at all truthful about his own resume and personal history. But that didn't matter, because these three groups have that one thing in common. They lie, and they lie about others, to destroy the messenger, because they know they can't prevent the truth in the message. For example:

Climate change scientists have earned Washington D.C.’s highest compliment—being treated like political threats to those abusing government power. That makes them whistleblowers, however involuntary, and a bureaucratic endangered species. That also triggered the two related responses to any serious dissent—shift the spotlight from the message to the messenger by smearing the latter, and engage in strategic retreats through rhetorical reforms with as little substance as possible. These cynical tactics have polluted the increasingly heated debate on global warming the last few months. The good news is that these early attacks often are the first signs of necessary changes to come.

Character assassination has been the essential core message of AIPAC since its beginnings, hiding behind the name FLAME. If anyone dared criticize the zionist terrorists for attacking and killing Palestinians during the middle part of the 20th century, they were immediately labeled as anti-Semetic and reminded of the Holocaust. The dysphemic branding of all of those who criticize, regardless of the veracity of the criticism, was seen as a most efficient and effective tool to thwart public awareness, and destroy the credibility of those who in many cases, truthfully presented the facts. Jewish zionism quickly turned guilt into a weapon of convenience, used unmercilessly, much like the Israelis behaviors in expanding their 17% holdings of land in Palestine in 1946 to the 77% they control today. That was done with violence and terror, accomplished with the financial support of US interests, kept in line by the threat of brand labelling.

So effective has this simple psychological abuse been, that the power elites in the US quickly became adherents of it. The SwiftBoat liars and their associates, beginning with the personal attacks on Clinton and others, lying and branding their enemies with not one whim whether what they said was true, since that never mattered. All that mattered, from the lessons of anti-semetism, was to get the public to repeat the brand link and dissassociate them from the mainstream. Few in the US can tolerate being labelled anti-semetic even though the label is for the most part meaningless and in no way represents what is in most cases truthful about the person labelled. Likewise the SwiftBoaters and their predecessors have been strikingly successful at coopting the tactic and castigating those they want demeaned. The minds of the victims are piling up.

Now we have bushco using the same tactic against any and all perceived to be at odds with their views. Truth is no longer relevant in any way whatsoever. All that matters to them is their faith in constructing a faux reality that an apathetic majority will find tolerable, and then branding and labelling those who are opposed or dissent with dysphemisms. That has moved now unto the factual realms. Fact is bad; facts are indeed becoming the anti-semetic guilt. If you are a scientist, trained in facts you are the enemy, and all that you say is wrong. If you are a reporter and you report factual truths you are evil and part of a cabal of enemies, even anti-semetic and anti-christian. NASA is the enemy of the state. Biologists are the enemy of the state. We have moved from anti-semetism to anti-christian guilt associations. Teachers who insist on teaching facts are liberal anti-christians; pharmacology researchers insisting that medicines be properly tested and available if safe to everyone are anti-christian; military leadership who demand that their orders represent the realities of the battlefield are anti-christian; and so far forth.

How easy it is to forget the playground rhyme, sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Call me anti-semetic, liberal, anti-christian, radical, communist, anti-capitalist, hippy freak, etc., etc., et al. It won't change the facts, it won't stop the truth.

outside/inside closing the spiral

I am sure i am not the first to wonder or ponder the following proposal. It must have come up from time to time in various universities and colleges when discussions of identity politics are raised in relation to our diverse national culture. The point is that the idea doesn't need to be forgotten.

Wayback in the wayback machine with Mr. Peabody, a compatriot and i were working on a discussion of ritual time as that construct related to shamanic rituals and ceremonies. At one point we were presenting some of our theoretical work in our graduate seminar with Jacques Maquet, a professor of Anthropology. Maquet was a colleague and peer of the French philosophers of the period (50's and 60's), and he was prone to interjecting critiques that were later to be memed as deconstructionist/ post-modernist in academia and beyond. If Dawkins and Dennett are found to be ultimately correct, then the PoMo meme was a consensual human packet of information making its presence cognizant to many of us at about the same time around the world. I would later, in my own teaching and furtherance of my doctoral work, discover that my own understanding of the history of religions and philosophy was indeed informed by the contemporary continental thinkers of my time, rather than the more accepted and common peer based views grounded in pragmatism and realism (later analytical and rationalist).

Professor Kees Bolle was my doctoral mentor during this period and for a while felt that my split work with Maquet was possibly detrimental to my own efforts to more fully comprehend the religions of the indigenous peoples of the north american great plains. I mention this because decades later, Bolle in one of his last efforts dedicated his book THE ENTICEMENT OF RELIGION, to Jacques Maquet. Yet back in the early 70's there was a rift, and the debate regarding ritual and ceremonial time was critically important in both fields.

Now that i have tangented sufficiently from the initial point, i return (hahaha that time thing again--as in Eliade's Myth of the Eternal Return) to that day in the seminar. My colleague and i argued that from conversations with shamen (male and female) in the americas, ritual time was viewed to be cyclical, as were the seasons and wake/dream rhythms and so forth. Suddenly Maquet got up out of his chair, walked over to the blackboard (yes the days of real blackboards and chalk) picked up two pieces of chalk, one in each hand, and in moderated by his seductive franglais drew two overlapping spiraling figures from one side of the board to the other saying that time was not cyclical, even to these people, but spiralling ever spiraling. It was the perceptions that limited the criteria for the shaman forcing them to express the completion of cycles into circles. I never forgot that, and went on to craft a chapter on that for my friend's own dissertation and book a couple of years later.

So what has this got to do with the proposal? Nothing and everything that may have to do with paradigm shifting and cultural change. Last night i watched a replay of the GLAAD media awards. I came across it when channel surfing and witnessed Jessica Alba give out the tv drama series award. I pondered for a bit why it was that we have a professed heterosexual "sexiest" female presenting an award for a tv series that is rooted in the homosexual agenda. This led to my thinking that we have media award programs, funded by all manner of interest groups and identity politics, from GLAAD to NAACP, from hispanic to disabled, from asian to indian, and that we don't have a WASP award program. We need that. Really. Think about it. Without one, we are left with the assumption that the dominate awards are the WASP ones: the Oscars and the Golden Globes, the Emmys and the Tony's, the Grammys and the People's Choice. If we had a very clear white american english speaking male-dominated protestant awards program, then the big ones could rightly be viewed as those that are culturally free from their relativistic baggage of being those belonging to the dominant culture. We could complete the circle of identity politics, and by doing so, reinstill the diversity and liberated signifiers to our mainstream awards. We need to start thinking that if the Oscars need to have GLAAD or NOW awards then the Oscars are WASP only awards. And if the Oscars are not WASP only, then where are the WASP awards themselves. Getting the population to comprehend that we have a diverse multi-gendered, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual culture in the US that celebrates not only its greatest attributes of diversity individually, but that we can also put all of that aside and celebrate singular accomplishments that rise above and beyond the identity. If we can't do that, and there are certainly huge systemic infrastructure impediments to that, then we fall further out of the ability to close the spiralling circle. That leads to destruction and devastation.

nuclear so whats??

Brian Cloughley writes:

The Bush Administration is preparing for a series of air strikes (or Divine Strakes) on Iran. There is a chance that the Christian fundamentalists of Washington could be persuaded that attacking the country would be insane, but the hard core of loonies will probably win, and there will be yet another war.

The consequences for the US and the rest of the world will be terrible. Lots of people will die, but since that is irrelevant to Bush zealots in any context there is no point in examining their plans from the perspectives of morality or international law.

An April LA Times' poll showed that 48 per cent of Americans want war on Iran, while only 40 don't, when answering the question "If Iran continued to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, would you support or oppose military action?" They've been brainwashed, just like the millions who still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, and the Washington mind-benders are licking their lips.

Well, lots of people dying is not irrelevant to Bushco actually. It is the point, the intent of it all, after all. We, as a nation, have already toxically polluted most of the region with DU dust, a radiological hazard that happens to have a half-life equal to that of the planet. We, again as a nation, have set upon a path to continue to use as many of the remaining natural resources of the planet as we can, and in doing so we are destroying the capability of the planet to maintain the human life-sustaining carbon/nitrogen balances. We also are complicitous in empowering the bushco to destroy the US economy for the sake of a very few, who are using their accumulation of great wealth to fortify sancturaries, wherein they will ride out the death and destruction encouraged upon the other 95% of the planet's human population. Nuking Iran is just another furtherance of the process.

We don't really want to stop the spread of malaria and AIDS in Africa, in fact our policies and economic decisions are increasing the dangers. We certainly have no interest in losing our grasp on the increasingly more valuable and decreasingly less available energy resources, so we are more than willing to toxically pollute the regions where those resources are held. Doing so lowers the population in those regions, and allows highly funded, specially-trained, security and technology forces to get at those resources with much less hassle. We will soon re-invade South America for just that purpose. Impoverishing ourselves will reduce our population and our demands on products that increase the flow of financial instruments away from us. Once we are dying of diseases and famine, the high security burbclaves of the elites will be safer for them to use, and protected from rising ocean levels, flooding rivers, nasty intense thorms, and desperate citizens.

Why do we care about their trying to get a nuclear weapon in the first place? It only affects the relationship Iran has with Israel and our bases we hope to use to control Mid-East oil reserves. Israel has nuclear weapons, and we don't seem at all concerned about that. What will happen when the elites of that nation decide that the elites in ours are a threat to their precious energy resources. Do we then nuke Israel as well??? Well duh! No, deaths are not irrelevant, they are necessary for the future of those who have the will and power to sustain themselves and their progeny past the planetary chaos of 2020.

Capitalist wolves in progressives' skins

From the Center for American Progress we get the same old tired "elitist" consumer capitalist agenda disguised in the cloth of education reform based on meritocratic (read fascist) ideology.

Good teachers are the most important part of good schools. Today, we require teachers to obtain many credentials before going into the classroom, but then do little to distinguish among teachers once hired. In a new paper from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, Center for American Progress Senior Vice President Robert Gordon, Harvard Professor Thomas Kane, and Dartmouth Professor Douglas Staiger argue that we should flip this system around--requiring fewer credentials on the front end, then using measures of teacher effectiveness to raise the bar for getting tenure and to raise pay for high-performing teachers in poor schools. In a column in today's Wall Street Journal, "It's the Teachers, Stupid" (subscription required), David Wessel writes that, "These proposals won't change the world. But they would make it better. And they could change what's become a sterile debate over how best to remedy one of America's biggest weaknesses: its public schools. That alone would be a good thing."

Does the new proposal make sense? Are there better ways to improve the effectiveness of America's teachers?

Simple and complete answer for first question: NO, not ever!!
Simple and incomplete response for second question: Probably but that comes later!!
There really is only one responsible retort to this new version of the same old crappy vintage wine, and that is to get rid of the economic first principles and replace them with enlightened ones. Interestingly the progressives here use economists whose lives and tax rates are predicated on the success of globalization and supporting the expansion of their markets to reward themselves. They are in essence promoting an educational reform that serves no other purpose than to increase the hierarchical architecture of arranging the population based on economic status, linked to the elites determination of just what is effective for them. Ponder if nothing else that a columnist for the Wall Street Journal is weighing in on this and being honored for that by the Center for American Progress. This is another sham on their part to play like radicals for change but honing ever closer to the promotion of capitalist agendas at every turn. Remember these are the people who are against the Iraq war, not because it is wrong, but because it wasn't prosecuted and executed correctly.

To encourage capitalist economists to enter the education debate, but to shut out the marxist and socialist economists reeks of such philosophical absurdity that the stink you smell is more children dying in the US from neglect and poverty. The system these proto-fascists (they are wannabee or maybe they really are part of the entourages and courtesans of the neo-feudal lords of capital) wish to reform is one they never ever wish to engage on its failing philosophical merits. It is the philosophy of public education, hell all education, that is the most serious problem with it. We have not once, since the end of the nineteenth century, opened up the discussion regarding educational philosophy as it applies to why we have and fund public schools. The automatic unwritten assumptions are all capitalistic; all reflecting the premises of wealth and profit and markets, rejecting out of hand premises of healthy planet, diversity of species and languages, and harmonious and sustainable living practices. Why??

Well gee, if you are vested in our system of consumer capitalism, and you control the money process through whatever means, you certainly will never want to question or challenge a system that encourages and increases your wealth. Public education in the US is a $600 billion a year industry, and it is just that: an industry. One that produces products, mining the minds of children as the ore and energy to run the system, throwing out the tailings and toxic remains of those that aren't assayed as the finest quality, and only treasuring and honoring the few that are real gems. When you realize that this is what it is, you quickly see the new CAP proposal for what it is: mining the minds of the teachers in the same way it is done to the children. I can't wait to start seeing the ever expanding landfills of the scrap waste of our nation's teachers, where the real and honest creative, innovative, earth- centered, ones will lie broken for the rest of time.

old, new, borrowed, brew

SUPPLICATION

1a. Webster defines supplication as the "humble and earnest request of" some entitity to pay attention to the supplicant. I find this a useful and most appropriate definition, in line so much with life as with education. For the education of children by a culture is really nothing more than a relationship of supplicants communing across the specturm of human desires of, and understanding about, the future.

1b. Children are ever the special supplicants of all of us. They embrace a sense of being which is, in its genetic pre-conditioned coding, essentially both humble and earnest. We, as adults, ascribe typical childlike characteristics to persons who reflect the innocence and charity of those humble and earnest creatures. Supplication then is a "really real" human condition; and if a proper and respectful relationship of supplication can be established amongst teachers and students then educational environments coevolve beyond formalized structure, indeed beyond imagination.

2. The essential goals and purposes of public education, of suppliantly manipulating children to be better prepared for their future lives within a broad range of cultural parameters and paradigms, are derived from collections of symbolic representations of individuals' thoughts, beliefs, and visions about the future. These collections can be broadly characterized by the Marxian adage so well adopted by George Orwell in 1984: "He who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past."

3. From the earliest archaeological interpretations of artifacts created by homo sapiens, the passing on of information has been the single, most significantly-documented, human activity. Regardless of any technological and cultural iconography, all humans have demonstrated the recognition of the need to earnestly communicate a relatively coherent concept of survivability in a predictable future context to their offspring.

4. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, humans, throughout the Gaian bio-sphere, are collectively attempting to supplicate themselves to their own children using such phrases as: "We don't know what the world will be like in twenty years but... There has been so much knowledge created in the last five years that no one knows what's going to happen... The advances of technology can help solve all of the problems created in the last century... You have more information available to you than any person has ever had before, so use it to help yourselves..."

4b. The basic tenet of all the messages is that the future is so unknowable, or more precisely so horribly unthinkable, that the only appropriate generational transfer of knowledge and information should be blessings of hope and good luck. Indeed, many of the themes put forth by those espousing supplication to some non-earthly entities involve a rejection of, or turning away from, those elements that would invoke thoughts or concerns of the future. Thus our current generation of "school children" have been described by all manner of media and academia as the most 'cynical and apathetic generation ever.'

5. This ignores the truly obvious need to provide our children with the best possible foundations upon which they can build new cultures, societies, and yes, civilizations. My immediate thought turns to the late 1800's life of the Lakota/Nakota peoples, faced with the death of all life as they knew it, and yet required by their own humanity to pass on something of themselves to their children. They had only bad dreams of the future. The presence of so much evil in their world could not be dealt with by thinking of going back to the old ways. We have the Ghost Dance to show how this is so. No, it was those shamen who could see beyond the shadows of the days ahead, who were capable of envisioning a generation of Lakota who could live, survive, and endure in the unknown without fear of the darkness and malevolence.

6a. It is the necessary conditionality of visions which opens the future to our supplication. Without vision there can be no doorway to embracing a future at all. Children are constantly presented with visions of the future through their education, whether taken from: books, TV, movies, music, class discussions, peer relations, natural environmental conditioning, genetic encoding, and neuro-transmitter imprinting. If the visions of the supplicants are limited through neglect or lack of attentive foresight then the future is correlatively limited and necessarily bleak.

6b. Likewise, if the visions are limitless, infinite, and overflowing with possibilities, then the children are given the gifts of unimaginable potentiality.

7. The question then becomes: "How do we access visions of the future and 'know' which of these are most possible?" I intend to address three pathways of future prognostication. The first i call statistical massage , the use of quantitative analyses of past and present conditions to predict possibilities for specific cases. The second path could be described as revelations and manifestations , the pathway built through paying attention to dreams, deja-vu’s, and other moments of recognizable "outside of time" experiences. The third and most useful path is the shamanic, that venue of intentioned seeking of visions of the future through all streams of consciousness inclusive of physics, ethno-pharmacology, divination, vision quests, etc..

8a. I intend to examine three arguments that coalesce into the basic premise for the need to revolutionize 21st Century public education. The first involves English as being fundamentally inappropriate for children who must become citizens of a sustainable, bio-diverse GAIA. American English is the language of corporate capitalism and substantially co-creates the egocentric, male-dominated hegemonic, mind-set that destroys life for sake of profit, the system, and the elite. This process begins in childhood when children must learn to use a syntax and grammar which is ego first person singular based while life at this stage {the Body Being} is absolutely dependent upon others to exist. The language conflicts with natural human development. More appropriate and supportive communication skills would be developed through accessing the diversity of languages from indigenous cultures using their syntax’s and grammatical structures to redesign childhood English.

8b.1 My second argument is built around the “natural manifest destiny of Western Civilization”. Most of the founding principles for education in America, and all of the tenets and canons of corporate elitist capitalism, are premised on the “facts” which seem to support the literal domination by one chosen people to control the planet.

Whether we admit it or not, human history shows that one race of people were able to use various technological developments and ideas to control the entire planet. Our greatest good comes from our belief in Jesus and our power and strength in technological solutions to life. We are free from the constraints of species identification with the empathetic being and can dictate to all other beings how life should be lived.

8b.2 I believe i can show quite clearly that this notion is philosophically damaged and damaging. It seems to me that the flows of GAIAN evolutionary development enable various programmed systemic genetic codings to “test out” the forms of life to the maximal azimuth of existence. Then when these forms begin to destroy others, the GAIAN wisdom moves to eliminate them and support those that have demonstrated cooperative capabilities and interdependent sharing of existence. This would be exampled by the persistence of indigenous cultural memes even within the individual human beings coding as well as in the supple logical relativity of the Buddhist position, especially with respect to compassion. There is a significant contradiction in the notion that suffering builds character versus the alleviation of suffering for all sentient beings. A society that places an educational value on suffering, especially through coercion, cannot be viewed to be caring, nurturing, nor supportive of bio-diversity and GAIAN wisdom.

8c.1 The third argument grows from the requisite perspective for desiring to be alive in the 21st Century. Major fundamental changes in behavior are absolutely demanded if there is to be human life, as we can conceive of it, in the future. These changes presuppose that much of the current trends in both corporate greed and planetary toxifications continue unabated for one more generation. There is, after all, no intelligent reason to assume that capital will promote radical environmental reform in the face of downsizing and mushrooming baby boomer aging. Therefore it is imperative that efforts be made to support children in their efforts to live in chaotic relations rather than in orderly ones. The relationships children now demonstrate in terms of their own survival in chaos can be used creatively and positively to form intentional community boundaries.

8c.2 By this i mean encouraging groups of students to support their own values and social structures on into the future, rather than dictating moral and ethical coding which only creates order ripe for entropic decay. Likewise offering more creative programs, that address their natural developments and archetypal genetic coding, would build foundations for future community and survival. Examples of this would include: rights of passage, ritual celebration of seasons, staging structured rights of social ordering, etc.. All in all, some major educational reforms must occur for humans to live beyond the imposition of massive deaths that are being encouraged by the elitists who control the capital and governments.

9. I think another question we need to ask is: “Do we as human beings want a better quality of life for ourselves and our children?” If the answer is “YES!” then the fundamental role of all education whether it be publicly or privately supported is to subvert the dominant paradigm. Children must be empowered to destroy the traditions of their progenitors in order to be able to live as truly human beings!!

10. The binding force for all American institutions is the American tradition. Tradition maintains the flow of American ideals and principles as set forth by the makers and preservers of tradition. Advertisers establish tradition through the branding of their product. They create the need for a traditional item. The haute couture debate in academia is currently focused on how the 90’s purveyors of cultural paradigms and traditions are misusing and abusing the counter-cultural activities and values of the 60’s. As the American indigenous native peoples would say, “this is truly a frozen Begging Way.” Americans hold a deep respect for tradition and its rightness of ways. We have been conditioned to need tradition--to keep faith in the established way. The FALLEN STAR BOY MYTH of the Plains tribes speaks directly to the need to destroy the bearers of tradition who hold life hostage by fear.

11. I feel as though i am advocating an educational environment that strongly focuses on the shamanic and on the process of the development and ritualization of OTHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM. There seems to be more and more material that supports my view that the weakness in space/time continuums can be exploited through various shamanic techniques. The non-material substance of the universe becomes malleable; the freedom of Reichian orgone being to literally travel through space and time by non-action in non-space and non-time seems most appropriate.

12. Coulianu's work especially, asserts my own belief that the frameworks of consensually agreed upon ‘universe’ are illusory, and that 'ALL' THERE IS can be accessed through the mind mirror. In other words, rather than sending matter through space at enormous expense of energy, it is simply a "matter" of bringing the place in space to the mind. Inherent within each dollop of a four-dimensional referent of space/time are all of the manifestations, structural configurations, and potentialities of the "creation of" and OTHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM in that object of consciousness.

13. My concern is to "show" the possibility of utilizing the archaic techniques to access this state. Obviously a mass media form requires the mythic struggles within, thereby opening the doors of perception and common sense to awareness. It is then the "story" that is important in the communication. The merging of myth with vision as process to revelation has always been an essential part of creation. This series of essays and annotated bibliography are infused with the ‘process’ as ongoing revelation and manifestation of creatively swimming in the oceans of possibilities of OTHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM. I quite literally let the books open where they would, i let the myth tell me where to look and how to use the texts, i used my three visions to open the paths to reflection and truth---all as process for confirming my faith in the accuracy of my thought.

14. For a GAIA to survive with the requisite complexity and diversity of life, all human educational systems must be destroyed and recreated. The Phoenix of the Wakinyan will guide the future generations towards the harmony and joy that bio-regionally supported, ecologically sustainable, economies will provide for all life.

it was 40 years ago today, that the Pranksters taught me to play

Forty years ago (in an hour or so) today i took my first individual, guided LSD trip. I remember it today, as clear as any memory i have of any point in my life. I remember it because, even as i remember my first LSD trip the month before at an acid test in LA surrounded by cacaphony and wild abandon and wondrous textures of three-dimensional atmosphere, the trip i took with a guide was even more amazing and powerful. Five hundred mics of the purest Sandoz crystal, suspended in a solution of athletic dorm apple juice, led me to discover that what we assume comprises the matter and substance of the world in which we live, is much less solid and so much more temporary and ephemeral.

The great debate today in the entheogen community stems from moments such as mine forty years ago. The research side of the community desperately wanting to share their own similar epiphanies and discoveries with the world condemn those who advocate letting the world have at it themselves. If there had not been the first recreational use of the molecule, the now so famous bicycle ride of St Albert, then we would never have known the possibilities existed for what could be experienced. And yet, the researchers insist and demand that all recreational use be stopped, so that their precious research can proceed to study possible treatments for migraines or PTSD or a host of other psychological impairments. But there is a trick here, and it involves the age of those that insist that those such as myself are not helping. It seems that only a very few of these advocates are old enough to have used LSD legally, and even fewer of the age to have used it solely in research settings. Thus all the use by those too young must necessarily have been recreational, though i am sure they would have described it as personal focussed guided research.

Well, screw them and their hypocrisy. Without the acid test, i would not have taken the follow up dose a month later. Forty years ago today, i saw such beauty and wonder in the simplest of matter. Miles of rainbow aftertrails following the flight of birds, of baseballs, of dogs, of runners, brought smiles deep from the core of my being. Human hair, well cleaned, seemed to be so stunningly beautiful. Each singular leaf on every tree called out to me, each petal on the blooming spring flowers demanded my attention. Dew drops on blades of grass, water splashing off my arms and hands as i swam in the pool later in the day, excited me with beingness and presence. Trust me on this: there is nothing in your life that will matter so much more than a really good LSD trip.

a lila washté wichasha wakhan

From now on, whenever i think about that person whose name i will not say (but take a character from SouthPark or the one who warns Arthur of the nasty dreaded rabbit and you have it), i will focus on the John Trudell documentary i saw last night. Everything that is wrong with objectivist libertarianism is on crystal clear display in that film; it presensts every indictment against those that hold those views, or those that insist that empire-building, war-making, nationalism is appropriate and necessary to protect precious wealth and property, and especially those that demand all others to kowtow and bow down to their earth destroying capitalism.

As we move from mining and extracting all the energy of the earth, to mining and extracting all the energy of the minds of our children and of all those of the next seven generations, we must recognize that this behavior has real and terrifying limits. The secret lies in understanding that the Earth will take back what was taken from it, at a cost so unimagineable, that all the accumulation of wealth and power and property will not prevent the catastrophe. Remember, that when it comes for you, there will be no one to help you; you will be on your own and you will deserve all that happens.

Táku cha yachin he?

how can i resist?

According to both administration and GOP insiders, we’re hearing here at CNN that Press Secretary Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John Snow could be the next ones to be shown to the door.

Now, why McClellan? Several sources familiar with the thinking of new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten say that immediately, right out of gate, he began on focusing on improving White House communications in order to regenerate the White House’s — the administration’s message, the performance — you know those poll numbers are really lagging right now. One White House insider says there’s been “a lot of dissatisfaction with the state of communications.”

<>
I can only assume that there are actual limits to the satisfaction index when so many are constantly lying and deceiving in their daily utterances to the public, and one another. Replacing one liar with another doesn't seem like that will do much for the happiness of bushco. The fact that Scotty has been left out to spin and spin twirling like a pinata as the press uses plastic fungo bats on him. Bushco should feel blessed really, that Scotty has been such a nice guy that the press do not pound him into dust as they should. I am sure that whomever they pick next, there will be no marked improvement in the poll numbers nor in the expression of truth uttered.


UPDATE:
this just in from the white horse press corps:

McClellan asked if he’s on the way out.

From today’s press gaggle: “QUESTION: Have you had any thoughts that you might be leaving soon? MCCLELLAN: I don’t speculate on any personnel matters. QUESTION: You’re not speculating for yourself. MCCLELLAN: I’m focused on helping the President advance his agenda, just like the rest of the team at the White House.”

<>this guy is a fucking robotic moron, how could they replace him, he is the perfect tool for the job.

do we really need this??

There are hundreds of thousands of examples that demonstrate the problem with capitalism's disregard for the Earth; actually there are probably millions of such examples, including most of the richest people alive. Be that as it may, the following one is rather flagrant and illustrative for our purposes.

the world's leading distributor of licensed children's dinnerware and a top producer of trend-focused everyday tableware and eating-on-the-go products, seeks administrative project support for our International Department. This person will coordinate and maintain the product development timeline process between the various departments, licensors and Sara Rose International (our company in the orient) to meet development deadlines.

This example was taken from the local newspaper's classified employment advertisement. In its brevity it still tells us why this company need not exist; and that its continued existence is detrimental to the quality and health of the planet. Starting with the concept "children's dinnerware" we immediately discern the underlying capitalistic component that stimulates the greed factor. Do children need dinnerware?? Of course not, why would they. How is it possible that for more than a hundred thousand years, human beings survived just fine without children's dinnerware, and now this "world's leading distributor" is seeking to increase their monopolization of the market share of a product that is not needed?

There are just so many things wrong with this company, and with its profile to produce economic gain at the expense of the earth. Distributing materials is energy intensive and usually inefficient, especially when we are talking about all over the world. We know from the ad, that the company ships from Asia, the products most likely made in China from raw materials generated from immense use, and waste of fossil fuels and minerals. Shipping raw materials in, and finished products out uses vast quantities of energy resources; completely wasted use, and massive planet damage (carbon release) as the products themselves are not needed at all. "Eating-on-the- go" products, in and of themselves, represent the very worst of planetary damage: generating revenue from intentionally marketing a product line that encourages waste in so many forms: energy, fossil fuel, thermo pollution, CFC's, irreducible plastic trash, hazardous and toxic production materials and solvents, etc.

"Everyday tableware" has the ring of something useful and necessary. Unfortunately it also reminds us that this polite euphemism means plastic, rather than recycleable and biodegradeable clay-based products. Again we picture wealthy account executives calculating profits and negotiating trade balances while licensing and distributing toxically manufactured products that will become non-reduceable wastes littering the planet. There is nothing whatsoever sustainable about this company, nor is there anything necessary for it to exist. It is middle men, passing along some designs to generate a flow of capital and profit to them, at the expense of the planet, and without doubt at the health and expense of the lives of those that make the products. It is a company we do not need; it is a company that is in every way despicable and vile.

I could of course also suggest that it is un-amerikan, in that it promotes the manufacturing and production of its products for sale here and around the world, by making sure that the labor costs are paid at the lowest possible rates outside of the US. Not only is this company bad for the planet, but it is bad for the trade imbalance, the US economy, and for US national interests. When we really start looking at what is fundamentally necessary for the sustainability of our communities and the health of our environments, companies such as this are clearly unnecessary and need to be unwelcome. How much better would we all be without it?? We certainly don't need it.