EFFECTIVE LEARNING DIGEST—APRIL 2018

Or So It Seems To Me Today

By Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA

During the past month the major concern has been wars and threats of wars and what President Trump might do about them. Unfortunately we are living in increasingly insecure and threatening times. Every day new reports of unrest, violence, and human suffering flash across our TV and computer screens.

Perhaps the biggest worry is the president himself. He says he is a smart stable genius. We were expected to believe from the beginning that he must be highly intelligent since he was so rich, and the implication was he was qualified to be president because of the experience he gained promoting business deals. Maybe so, but how could a fully rational intelligent person have the life history he has, including two failed marriages, several bankruptcies, a history of not paying his bills on time, and promiscuous sexual behavior with women of various sorts outside his marriages, which we have constantly heard about since he has been in office.

There is no evidence he has ever excelled in any sort of intellectual pursuits, good grades in school, serious academic study, or books or papers authored and published. You can tell by listening to him that he has a limited vocabulary and difficulties clearly and logically expressing facts, reasoning, and conclusions. He talks in short disjointed sentences mostly expressing predetermined dogmatic opinions, many of which are ad hominem slurs against critics and antagonists.  He sounds like a New York City mafia boss in an old gangster movie.

Is this the sort of person you want making life or death decisions affecting millions if not billions of people around Spaceship Earth?  Why couldn’t we have somebody like Captain Kirk on Star Trek for a leader?  For sure he’s not what I would want; but he’s what we’ve got, thanks to about half the voters who voted in the 2016 election. Since about fifty percent of eligible voters do not vote in US presidential elections, that means about twenty-five percent of the total eligible voters in the US elected Trump. You might say we are being ruled by a tyranny of a minority, thanks to fifty percent of US voters irresponsibly not voting. I voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party in the last presidential election, a highly intelligent articulate woman with a MD degree and a good working knowledge of US and international politics.

Despite his many shortcomings Donald Trump promised when he was running for office he would get the US out of stupid wars (his words), increase spending on US infrastructure, and deal with foreign countries rationally. Instead, he has given the US military the largest budgetary spending increase in history, we are still fighting stupid wars, and little or no infrastructure has been constructed, with the possible exception of a few miles of work done on the wall between the US and Mexico he promised his voters.

A week or two ago Trump tweeted one day he was going to get us out of Syria, that he would be bringing the troops home, very soon, where they belong. A few days later he was tweeting he had decided to bomb Syria very soon because Assad had used chemical warfare against his own people, again. A few days later he was tweeting he had decided we might not bomb Syria very soon, implying we might not bomb them at all. A few days after that he went on television and told us the US had shot missiles into Syria, again, and may god bless America.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen now. It’s now been a few days since the missiles were fired and there have been scant reports of casualties or property damage. It appears they may have targeted places where few people would get killed, more or less faking a serious military attack. So far there have been no serious retaliations from the Russian government, and Trump is again tweeting we will be getting out of Syria soon, again, if the Syrians do not use chemical weapons against their own people, again.

All this happened despite the fact there is no proof showing the world that the Syrian government did in fact use chemical weapons against its own people, again. It may have been another false flag operation. There are several other ways chemical weapons could have been released other than by the Syrians, and as numerous reporters and analysts have pointed out Assad and the Syrian army would have had to be falling down stupid to use chemical weapons where they were found, in a part of the country in which the Syrian army had already defeated and routed the rebels.

Regardless, most likely we are going to have to put up with this sort of thing from now on, as long as Trump is in office, listening to him change his mind in tweets with no good leadership on anything. Some say Trump has been seriously threatened recently by the deep state and military people surrounding him in his administration are now telling him what to tweet and do.

It seems to me the only hope for indefinite human sustainability is to evolve better political, economic, and religious systems, and better ways for humans to relate to one another. While I have no fantasies about this happening anytime soon, it seems to me it might happen through time through synergistic learning, a phenomenon I have covered in my article “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth Incorporated,” first published by MWC News (Media with Conscience) at http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31023&catid=38&Itemid=125.  I first encountered synergistic learning, learning in whole systems not predicted by observing subsystems of the whole, in Buckminster Fuller’s book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.

A major assumption of transactional analysis is that human feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are caused by stimuli people are exposed to as they live their lives and, therefore, it seems to me, if this is true, then people are not to blame or praise for what they feel, think, or do, and If this is true then all people are equally OK, not especially good or bad, but OK. In this light a poor homeless person considered mentally ill would be equal to someone like Donald Trump, having been caused by the same sort of causative forces.

As I point out in my TA books, it seems to me there are three basic types of OKness: existential, subjective, and objective. Existential OKness is what I just discussed, people being equally OK by virtue of coming into this world without asking for it, and being gradually shaped and formed by stimuli as they live. Subjective OKness is how a person subjectively perceives and judges her or his self, other individuals, groups to which one belongs, other groups one perceives as different, and the world in general. While these perceptions vary in terms of positive and negative social merit existentially they are equally OK because they were automatically caused to happen. Objective OKness is how OK one is in light of measurable criteria, for health, wealth, education, strength, intelligence, achievements, accomplishments, and the like. It seems to me global OKness would significantly increase if all people would take into account the relevance of all three types of OKness. While objective OKness would necessarily be most relevant in daily working lives, world peace and Earthian OKness would be increased if existential and subjective OKness were acknowledged by all people in all groups and organizations around Spaceship Earth.

In a nutshell, as I discussed and demonstrated using matrix algebra in my article, “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth Incorporated,” it seems to me for long term survival the human species must evolve a computerized mathematical management system to produce and fairly distribute the necessities of life for a reduced human population aboard Spaceship Earth, which requires something like a one woman/one child rule for several generations to peacefully reduce the human population through natural attrition, natural deaths exceeding births.  There is no way humans can have infinite population growth on a planet with finite resources that are rendered useless or harmful in production and consumption processes.

Most mainstream media play a psychological Game of GREENHOUSE, participating in a societal Happiness Racket designed to lull people into a sense of security and to make federal and state governments, their politicians, their political parties, their rich donors, their locust lobbyists, and their voters look good, or at least make it seem they are doing a better job of governing than they are. For more on psychological Games and Rackets, read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning at https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331.

For more on the fallacy of composition as it applies to organizational life, i.e. harming or destroying the whole system by maximizing subsystems, read my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds at https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810.

Following in the EFFECTIVE LEARNING DIGEST are some outstanding articles and one audio interview recently published in various media around Spaceship Earth, primarily Internet media, shining light on relevant states of affairs.  As Romeo said in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, as time was running out for the star-crossed lovers, “More light and light it grows, more dark and dark our woes.”

I am a Certified Transactional Analyst, a CTA, explained at http://www.itaaworld.org/what-transactional-analysis-training.

Feel free to forward, share, copy, abridge, reprint, or otherwise disseminate this Effective Learning Digest any way you see fit.

Just punch on the web addresses and this month’s selections will pop up.

Richard John Stapleton, Editor & Publisher, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, www.effectivelearning.net.

 

April 11

As I pointed out in my “Br’er Trump Burrowed Up In His White House Briar Patch” article in the Intrepid Report at http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/23879, in some ways Donald Trump is a psychological Victim, and if Luongo’s article immediately below is correct Trump’s fate will not be a good one. The raid on his lawyer’s office may have been the coup de grace. As I pointed out in my Br’re Trump article I think Trump basically wanted to do the right thing for ordinary people when he ran for office, and here lately he has shown signs he still wants to do it, however confusing his ways might be; but assuming Luongo is right in this article he has now been neutralized by the shadow state. As Luongo shows with compelling logic in this article it appears somebody has been writing fake tweets for him in the last day or so, or at least changing words in those he does write.

Luongo believes Internet media making it possible for ordinary people to learn facts around Spaceship Earth in real time is making it possible for them to really understand what is going on, enabling them to reduce the power of military-industrial-intelligence complexes to start wars with fake news and lies, since ordinary people for the first time in history knowing what is going on can take corrective political action. If so this is a major breakthrough for humanity around Spaceship Earth.

SOURCE: “The Coup is Complete – Trump is Done,” by Tom Luongo, TOMLUONGO.COM, https://tomluongo.me/2018/04/11/the-coup-is-complete-trump-is-done/.

 

April 16, 2018

This US Marine in a great video minces no words telling us why we should not bomb Syria.

SOURCE: “When A US Marine Drops A Massive Truth Bomb,” by Ken O’Keefe, NEONNETTLE.COM, a video at https://www.facebook.com/neonnettle/videos/1180361458730023/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDM0OTY1MTE4NjoxNzQ3MTA3MjkxOTc3NTc2/ .

 

April 16

Could not agree more.

SOURCE: “The American Military System Dissected: How to explain the paradox of a superb military that never gets the job done?,” by Andrew J. Bacevich, TRUTHDIG.COM, at https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-american-military-system-dissected/ .

 

April 16

So it seems.

Here is one of Mad Dog Mattis’s more famous quotes in 2005: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/02/gene-f07.htmlFeb 7, 2005 – “You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up front with you, I like brawling.” The general, also known as “Mad Dog Mattis,” led the 1st Marine Division during the initial invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and returned to command marines during the occupation of Iraq, where …

Fun to shoot “some people”,  including women and children?

SOURCE: “Trump is Done, Mattis Won, Thank the Gods” by Tom Luongo, TOMLUONGO.ME, https://tomluongo.me/2018/04/14/trump-is-done-mattis-won-thank-the-gods/.

 

April 16

Say It Aint So Joe.

SOURCE: “Take The Red Pill – The History Of Syrian False Flags,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-15/take-red-pill-history-syrian-false-flags-exposed.

 

April 16

Was the Syrian bombing a criminal offense? We shall see.

SOURCE: “Syria: What Just Happened?,” by Eric Zuesse, STRATEGICCULTURE.ORG, https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/15/what-just-happened.html.

 

April 15

Well worth a read.

SOURCE: “Market Farce,” by Frank Scott, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/23920.

 

April 15

Mouthpiece Trump’s mouthpiece Nikki Haley in the UN is even more clueless than he is.

SOURCE: “Global Leaders Condemn Trump’s ‘Scorn for International Law’ as Haley Threatens More Possible Air Strikes,” by Julia Conley, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/23920.

 

April 15

Robots are nothing to worry about.

SOURCE: “ROBOTS causing millions of job losses could lead to the rise of communism,” by Jerry Lawton, DAILYSTAR.CO.UK, https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/696123/robots-cause-job-losses-could-lead-communism-bank-of-england.

 

April 15

It’s beginning to look like the UK ruling class is as greedy and power hungry as the US deep state.

SOURCE: “The British Government’s Legal Justification for Bombing is Entirely False and Without Merit,” by Craig Murray, CRAIGMURRAY.ORG, https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/the-british-governments-legal-justification-for-bombing-is-entirely-false-and-without-merit/.

 

April 14

Trump’s tweets do make interesting reading sometimes. Take a look at this selection.

SOURCE: “’These Freedom Fighters Fly Planes Into Our Buildings’—A List of the Times Trump Warned Against Attacking Syria,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-14/these-freedom-fighters-want-fly-planes-our-buildings-heres-list-all-times-trump.

 

April 14

Another good summary of world affairs by Jim Rickards.

SOURCE: “Russia’s Real Endgame,” by Jim Rickards ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-12/russias-real-endgame.

 

April 14

Another sane analysis.

SOURCE: “Taking the World to the Brink of Annihilation,” by Rick Sterling, ORIENTALREVIEW.ORG, https://orientalreview.org/2018/04/10/taking-the-world-to-the-brink-of-annihilation/.

 

April 12

David Stockman lays it out in this three part article series. Trump has been taken over by the deep state that is determined to have another war come hell or high water. I used to give the Pentagon and the CIA credit for knowing more about whether we should  go to war than most people. But no more.  Look at what has happened because of destroying Iraq.

Not only is Stockman a great writer, he has walked the walk of politics and economics, having served as a US budget director under Ronald Reagan and as a US Representative in Congress, before a career on Wall Street.

SOURCE: “The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 1: There Will Be War,” by David Stockman, ZEROHEDGE,COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-12/deep-state-closes-donald-part-1.

 

April 13

Stockman in part 2 nails it. Trump has fully capitulated to the deep state, and thus he announced the US attack on Syria tonight, along with the UK and France. We are all victims now and we can only wait to see how many people will be killed and how much more property and treasure will be destroyed, probably including US citizens on US territory if WWIII gets triggered.

SOURCE: “The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 2: Mueller’s War,” by David Stockman, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-13/deep-state-closes-donald-part-2-muellers-war.

 

April 14

David Stockman, one of the best blogsters out there, tells it like is regarding Trump and his predicament, in Part 3.

SOURCE: “The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 3: The Capture is Complete,” by David Stockman, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-14/deep-state-closes-donald-part-3-capture-complete.

 

April 13

On the march toward a full blown police state in the US.  This is an excellent article by a constitutional lawyer.

SOURCE: “The slippery slope to a Constitution-free America,” by John W. Whitehead, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/23934.

 

April 13

Another audio economic update by Richard Wolff, must listening for anyone wanting to stay informed about relevant economic problems and issues.

SOURCE: “Economic Update: Distorting Economic Truths,” Audio presentation, by Richard Wolff, TRUTH-OUT.ORG, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/44155-economic-update-distorting-economic-truths.

 

April 12

Another article by Paul Street, a great writer.

SOURCE: “When is Hysteria Treason,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/12/when-is-hysteria-treason/.

 

April 13

Another blogster has been paying attention.

SOURCE: “Hot War and Cold Markets,” by Raul Ilargi Meijer, THEAUTOMATICEARTH.COM, https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2018/04/hot-war-and-cold-markets/.

 

April 12

There will always be wars and rumors of wars – the Christian bible. This dogmatic statement still rings true, but let’s hope it gets proved wrong before too long. Excellent essay by one of the best bloggers out there.

SOURCE; “Warmonger’s Remorse,” by James Howard Kunstler, KUNSTLER.COM, http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/warmongers-remorse/#.WtF2tziWgsw.facebook.

 

April 13

This is not false or fake news just because the foreign minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, said it. It is beginning to seem that the UK and France are about as dependent on manufacturing war weapons and materials for export as the US. The US, UK, and France are now allies in Eastern Europe fighting for resources in the Ukraine and elsewhere against Russia. Germany and Italy dropped out of the war against Syria. It’s going to get lonely if Germany and Italy ally with Russia and China. One can build the case the US, UK, and France should also cooperate with Russia and China rather than try to undermine them. One can build the case all nations should cooperate with one another rather than try to undermine one another, but they probably won’t do it because it would put military-industrial-intelligence complexes out of business.

SOURCE: “Russia Has ‘Irrefutable Evidence’ UK Staged Syrain Chemical Attack,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-13/russia-has-irrefutable-evidence-uk-staged-syrian-chemical-attack.

 

April 12

Some great wisdom here.

SOURCE: “I’m Not Right, Left, Or Center – I’m A Free-Thinking Human…,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-12/im-not-right-left-or-center-im-free-thinking-human.

 

April 9

Here’s another excellent essay by Courtenay Barnett in which he chronicles recent events involving the US and the UK and their new leaders Trump and May showing how both countries have tried to slander and undermine Russia with fake news about chemical warfare in the UK and Syria.

This article contains an embedded video of US President Dwight David Eisenhower delivering his famous warning about the threat posed by the US military-industrial complex when he left office in 1961.

SOURCE: “A Sermon of Two Blunders,” by Courtenay Barnett, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/a-sermon-of-two-blunders/.

 

April 12

Good question and a good analysis by Patrick Cockburn, a world class investigative reporter.

SOURCE: “How Can We Know If a Chemical Weapons Attack Took Place in Syria,” by Patrick Cockburn, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/12/how-can-we-know-if-a-chemical-weapons-attack-took-place-in-syria/.

 

April 12

Why go to war in Syria? To destroy the Assad government? That might start a war with Russia? Are people nuts or what?

Pathetic warmongering. Complacent population. Seem to think war is fun. Last week Trump said we would be coming home from Syria very soon, where we belong. Now all of a sudden, after Bolton, his new military adviser, got in the White House everybody seems to think for some unknown reason war with Syria sounds like a great idea. Are people bored? Or what. Do they really think destroying another weak government would be a fun, moral, or profitable thing to do? It’s insane. No more war! Unless a nation should seriously threaten the US militarily. People, buildings, homes, and treasures get destroyed in wars. Why do it if you do not have to do it to protect yourself? Call it what it is, vandalism and theft. Several wrongs do not make a right. Just because the leaders of France and the UK want to destroy Syria, that does not mean the US should.

SOURCE: “Corporate Media Reprise Iraq in Beating War Drums for Trump Attack on Syria,” by Jake Johnson, TRUTH-OUT.ORG, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/44144-showing-they-learned-nothing-from-iraq-corporate-media-help-beat-war-drums-for-trump-attack-on-syria.

 

April 13

Here is the best map I have seen showing what is going on in Syria.

SOURCE: “A Map Of The Syrian War: Who Is Who (And Where),” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-13/map-syrian-war-who-who-and-where.

 

April 13

Here we go again as if watching fireworks on the fourth of July.

SOURCE: “Trump Orders Syrian Military Strikers, 3 Waves of Airstrikes Launched at Various Targets,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-13/watch-live-president-trump-expected-announce-military-strikes-syria-tonight.

 

April 13

The tragedy in Syria

Bombs, Bombs, and more Bombs

I knew when I wrote this article there was some chance Trump would bomb Syria, but I did not know how probable or imminent it was. I thought there was some chance Trump might refuse to go along with the deep state, but I was wrong. He is now a mouthpiece for the deep state. He is a victim, the deep state is the persecutor, and the immediate victims are the Syrians who will die in the bombing. If this sets off WWIII we the people of the US will be victims too.

SOURCE: “Br’re Trump Burrowed Up In His White House Briar Patch,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/brer-trump-burrowed-up-in-his-white-house-briar-patch/.

 

March 23

Here’s another great article by Courtenay Barnett, an historical overview explaining how the US developed some of its most significant foreign policies.  Be sure to watch this video along with the article at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSLF1gYhzek.

SOURCE: “Today’s sermon – hope for America,” by Courtenay Barnett, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/todays-sermon-hope-for-america/.

 

March 22

Lest we forget how far astray the US can be led, let this be read.

SOURCE: “The Phoenix Program, My Lai and the ‘Tiger Cages’,” by Douglas Valentine, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-phoenix-program-my-lai-and-the-tiger-cages/.