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Against School
John Taylor Gatto
How public education cripples our kids, and why
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
Authoritarian Personality vs. Authoritarian Worldview
Austin Cline
[THE F-SCALE] The term "authoritarian" gets thrown around quite frequently in connection to the Bush administration and the Republican Party without it being clear that it can refer to more than one related issue. I'm guilty of this as well, so I'd like to correct that failure here. When we talk about "authoritarians," we might be referring either to those with an authoritarian personality or those with an authoritarian worldview. On a purely linguistic level it sounds like the two should overlap, but sociologically speaking we should keep them separate.
A person with an "authoritarian personality" is not one of those seeking to command and give orders, but rather someone who is looking for orders to follow, a social structure that narrowly defines all their options, and the comfort of a rigid hierarchy where ambiguity has been eliminated. An authoritarian personality is the person who does what they are told and who makes an authoritarian system function.
An authoritarian worldview, in contrast, is that promoted by those who are looking to lead, to give commands, and to set up an authoritarian system for those willing to follow orders. In some cases they may simply be cynical manipulators of others' fears for the purpose of amassing personal power; in other cases they may sincerely believe in the need for such a rigid system for the sake of order, safety, and civilization. In either event, they do not expect or intend to be limited in the same ways that everyone else will be.
Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World's Unfinished Business
Ramzy Baroud
The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the great military powers in signing and ratifying the agreement would have signaled – if even symbolically - the willingness of these countries to spare civilians’ unjustifiable deaths and the lasting scars of war.
Nonetheless, the incessant activism of many conscientious individuals and organizations came to fruition on December 3-4 when ninety-three countries signed a treaty in Oslo, Norway that bans the weapon, which has killed and maimed many thousands of civilians. The accord was negotiated in May, and should go into effect in six months, once it is ratified by 30 countries.
The Abduction, Secret Detention, Torture, and Repeated Raping of Aafia Siddiqui
Stephen Lendman
Post-9/11, the "war on terror" has been a jihad against Islam, the colonizers v. the colonized, or what Edward Said called "the familiar (America, Europe, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them)." Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is one of its most tragic, aggrieved, and ravaged victims. Her ordeal continues horrifically.
Boston Magazine's Katherine Oxment asked: "Who's afraid of Aafia Siddiqui? She went to MIT and Brandeis, married a (physician, lived in Boston), cared for her children....raised money for charities....did other volunteer work, hosted play groups in her apartment, (is) deeply religious....distribute(d) Korans to inmates in area prisons," and did nothing out of the ordinary. (She) "was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terrorist....a high-profile Al Qaeda operative," but we've seen these charges before, and each time they were bogus. They're egregiously so against Aafia - a woman guilty only of being Muslim at the wrong time in America or elsewhere if you're on Washington's target list.
The Spurned Child Syndrome
Steven G. Erickson
Either, or both, parents can pick one or more of their children that they'll spurn for a variety of reasons, or excuses.
A parent that resents a child for not having it as difficult, stressful, and for not having to do without enough food, parent attention, clothing, etc. will want to make their chosen child similarly suffer. A younger, or middle child, might resent their oldest sibling, and take it out on their oldest child. Many times the spurned child is of the same sex as the parent spurning them.
A child showing signs of joy, being relaxed, and content might be met with a parent ready to punish, and to cause as much stress and disruption in a child's sense of security, and even an adult child's life. This parental behavior can go from crib to grave, if the spurned child dies first.
No friend, spouse, significant other, job, school is good enough, or is too good. There will be constant comparisons, unsolicited advice, and the parent of their spurned children will do all they can unconsciously, or even overtly, to cause problems in relationships their spurned child has with others. They'll often automatically take the other side in any dispute. If there is divorce, the spouse that had everything wrong with him, or her, will suddenly become the most perfect, and worst loss. "You'll never get another one like that again".
Billions for Bankers - Nothing for Workers
Edgar J. Steele
"The future ain't what it used to be."
--- Yogi Berra
$700 billion to bail out the financial industry! Actually, over $800 billion once they got done "sweetening" the bailout package. That is what the US Congress voted to allow Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to hand over to his Wall Street buddies, with virtually no oversight. And that was just for openers.
The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury on their own have dispensed hundreds of billions more to financial firms. What's more, the Federal Reserve, which is a private company owned by foreign bankers, refuses to identify to whom it has given the US taxpayer dollars that it has loaned into existence out of thin air (created from debt that will hobble our children and their children).
Rotted From the Head: Senate Lays Bare Bush Torture System -- But So What?
Chris Floyd
At last, years late -- but better late than never, I suppose -- we have official recognition by the United States Senate of a fact that has been well-known to anyone willing to even glance at reality in past decade. We refer of course to the newly released report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which a bipartisan panel led by Carl Levin and John McCain states quite plainly that the top officials of the Bush Administration created and maintained a systematic program of torture against the prisoners captured (or kidnapped or renditioned or simply rounded up swoopstake in mass raids) in the Terror War.
The report, based on 18 months of investigation, lays out the process by which the White House and Pentagon instigated torture, perverted the laws to justify torture and spread torture throughout the world. The Washington Post reports:
The Waziristan problem
Amna Saboor
Waziristan constitutes a mountainous, rocky, inhospitable and extremely poor region in Pakistan’s northern territory having round about four and a half thousand square miles of area between eastern border of Afghanistan, NWPF province in the north, and Balochistan in the south.
The region has never been clearly a part of Pakistan or India before independence, or Afghanistan, and was in fact an independent tribal area loosely administered by British rule until the late 19th century. Waziristan is actually two agencies, north and South Waziristan, that are part of the seven agencies making up federally administered areas or FATA. Central authority of government is limited to non-existent in these agencies. The three million people, who are inhabitants of tribal areas, live according to an oppressively conservative tribal code of honour and behaviour that mixes brutality intolerance and extreme hospitality and generosity. Literacy rate is 17 percent and just 3 percent among girls and women.
US- Canadian political impasse: The patient is dead
Eric Walberg
The disastrous Bush years have left a legacy of war and financial collapse. They have also brought North America to a political impasse, bemoans Eric Walberg
The really extraordinary political event in North American politics as 2008 came to a close was not the albeit remarkable election of the first US black president, but the collapse of Canada’s parliamentary system. Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system allowed the Conservatives to form a minority government during the past three years with about 1/3 of the popular vote, supported by the Canadian equivalent of the Bushites (hardcore rightwingers -- Bible-thumpers and the very rich).
The Salvation Army's red kettle of trouble
Mary Shaw
It's that time of year again. Outside the shopping malls and supermarkets we encounter the bell-ringing representatives of the Salvation Army, dressed in paramilitary uniform, with their big red kettles, begging for a share of our holiday dollars.
And, as I do every year, I will ignore them.
Not because I am selfish or stingy. In the past few weeks, I have contributed a healthy sum in end-of-year donations to the non-profit agencies that I choose to support.
But I choose not to support the Salvation Army. My reasons? Read on.
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