Or So It Seems to Me Today
It seemed going into the third quarter that Georgia was going to wind up the US national champion in football last night, Monday, January 8, 2018.
Unfortunately Coach Sabin decided during the half to start a new quarterback during the second half, a freshman from Hawaii. The kid was a real phenomenon and he sparked Alabama, down 13-3 at halftime, to a 26-20 win in overtime, an exciting football game if ever there was one. Too bad Georgia had to lose. Having lived in Georgia forty-seven years now, having moved to Georgia Southern University as an associate professor in 1970, having spent my first twenty-eight years in Texas, I am beginning to feel like a real Georgian, especially during football season.
For the past week or so I had been working on the immediately below article dealing with the subject of football and war and winning and losing, which I published in the Effective Learning Report a few days ago. Since football is still on my mind today, I decided to repost the article here in the Effective Learning Digest, a part of the Effective Learning Report, which is a part of our Effective Learning Company, which includes Stapleton Learning Company, Effective Learning Publications, Games Educators Play, and the FreeFairProgressParty. I have two books for sale on the Effective Learning Publications page. Everything else is free, except Debbye’s hourly mathematics tutoring, which is real work for her and her tutorees. I do what I do just for the fun of it, “giving a little back” as they say in my retirement years at age seventy-seven.
As you may know, the Effective Learning Digest is a collection of linked Internet articles I consider relevant on the subject of business and politics published in Internet journals, blogs, websites, Facebook, and various places, with some of my comments about them. Basically they are articles I happened to select as relevant, of all the articles I read during the past few weeks, a drop in the bucket of all articles published around Earth during that period. So how relevant are they relative to the whole system? Who knows? There are scads of good articles published on the Internet every day, many more than anyone has time to read.
I started the digest thinking I would publish it on a regular monthly basis, including articles published in the previous month, but I have now decided this requires more discipline than I have left, so I have decided to publish it when the spirit moves me, including articles I consider relevant, but not necessarily published in the previous month.
Outstanding thinkers and writers with good reputations in their fields wrote most of the articles linked in the digest on various websites on the Internet. It seems to me anyone reading these articles might have a better picture of what is going on around Earth in her or his head than will people not reading them, knowing full well there is no way anyone could prove such a thing.
I would like to think anyone reading Effective Learning Digest linked articles would be better equipped to function as a voter in a democracy than most folks. But that too is a stretch. I sometimes wonder why I read them in the first place, much less write and publish about them, since nothing seems to do much good anymore for middle and lower classes. It does seem at times the game is rigged for large corporations and the elite rich: heads I win and tails you lose no matter who gets elected or which party is in control. How much longer even large corporations and the elite rich will continue to win remains to be seen.
Feel free to forward, share, repost, reprint, copy or otherwise disseminate the Effective Learning Digest any way you see fit.
Just click on the web addresses and the articles at their original sites will pop up.
A football game ain’t no war, Big Daddy
By Richard John Stapleton
Burl Ives playing Big Daddy told Paul Newman playing his son Brick Pollitt “Life ain’t no football game, boy” in the movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which I saw in 1958.
Big Daddy pretty much owned the town in Mississippi and much of the surrounding farmland, and Brick was a depressed ex-professional football player who was washed up as a sports hero, who had done little but drink for some time, who was back in Big Daddy’s big house with his beautiful wife played by Elizabeth Taylor, for a family visit. He had undergone a serious demotion from the life of a high school, college, and pro football hero, and sports commentator, back to life in the banal boring unfair world owned, controlled, and lorded over by his father, Big Daddy; and Brick saw no way out, other than alcoholic spirits. Perhaps Big Daddy should have cut him out of his will and withdrawn his support, forcing him to get a real job; but the story ended with Brick commiserating in a sympathetic conversation with Big Daddy, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Would Big Daddy dying and willing most of his wealth and power to Brick cure Brick’s psychological depression and his lack of sexual desire for his beautiful wife, the cat on a hot tin roof? Would he forget the sexual complications he and his wife had with his football teammate and longtime friend, who had died? Nobody knows. Neither Tennessee Williams nor a screenwriter wrote an answer for this problem in the fictional movie.
Having been a high school quarterback, it seems to me the game of football is similar in some respects to competitive economics and international politics, but it’s not a form of war.
Both war and football are physically grueling and entail opponents trying to defeat one another. There are various plays quarterbacks can call running an offense, even changing plays sometimes at the line of scrimmage, mixing up plays trying to fake the defense out of their jockey straps. Calling and running plays was satisfying to me. I got a real high being in control of the team during games and making things happen, when we were moving the ball down the field and winning. I can imagine generals fighting wars sometimes had somewhat the same feeling. We won eleven out of eleven games in 1953.
On the other hand, most of the time football produced emotional lows rather than highs. It’s interesting why boys and young men like to play football as much as they do considering how tiresome, grueling, miserable, and painful it can get. Most football players probably play the game for the satisfaction of playing on a team to win, trying to be better at it than somebody else, and proving it before cheering fans in the stands. They get some applause, admiration, appreciation, fame, however little and fleeting, and a little glory, sexier girl friends maybe, maybe a university football scholarship, and serious money if they are good enough to make it big in the pros, a long shot.
Most people have no idea how hard football players had to physically work and how much misery they had to endure to earn the rewards they got back in the 1950s. I have no idea whether it’s still that way today, with new training and practice methods, but I would bet most football players are a lot more miserable most of the time than most people realize. I dreaded workouts and games, thinking about what could happen, which was most of the time during football season.
On the other hand, it seems to me football is in general fairer and more humane psychologically than competitive business and political organizations competing against organizations within countries and against countries internationally. People rarely get killed playing football. Football games are refereed to make sure players play by the rules, and the best and fastest, smartest, biggest, toughest, meanest, and hardest-working players almost always win, which is not true in economic competition and politics, in which the game is generally rigged and contaminated by money, script messages, and family connections, especially money and resources one legally inherits to start with to play the game. In war, the end result of international economic competition, when diplomacy fails, players are not only supposed to beat their opponents on fields of battle, but kill them, with few rules.
Why is it almost all football games entail playing the national anthem and focusing attention on the US flag before the game starts, with fans standing at attention with their hands over their hearts, some with tears in their eyes, with people in military uniforms marching about carrying flags, sometimes with military aircraft flying overhead? What is the message here? Are they trying to say the purpose of football games is to glorify war? Are they trying to say football games are like war? Are they trying to say football players are like soldiers?
Almost all people in the stands participate in these rituals with alacrity. Almost all stand at attention. Most put their hands over their hearts, and stare with awe and admiration at the “American” flag. Colin Kaepernick, a pro football quarterback, disagrees, and he has paid a heavy price for courageously exercising his US right of free speech, by not only not standing at reverent attention when the national anthem was played, but by going down on one knee. Back when I was playing football the only time players went down on one knee on the field was because the coach told them to, generally because they were physically exhausted, and the coach wanted them to do some serious thinking about what they had been doing wrong. Kaepernick went down on one knee because he was tired of what Big Daddy and US citizens had been doing to African Americans, and he wanted them to do some serious thinking about what they had been doing wrong.
Wars have become increasingly effective doing what wars do. During the 20th Century humans took warfare to new levels in WWI in 1917, WWII in 1940, the Korean War in the 1950s, and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Not only did the grunt players, the soldiers, airmen, and sailors, become more effective doing their jobs, the generals with better weapons at their disposal invented new plays to call, new ways of killing that could kill thousands of people in short order, including thousands of passive non-combatant civilians sitting in their homes, killed by bombs dropped on them from airplanes, including two nuclear bombs dropped on civilians in two cities.
The United States, being physically separated by two large oceans from the battlefields of older civilizations, so far has not had any of its cities bombed by enemy nations in international wars, however much the US has done it to others, including North Koreans and Vietnamese, whose military teams were almost helpless competing against the powerful and accomplished US Air Force, having gained experience in WWII.
Some civilians were probably killed in towns in states of what is now the US in the so-called US Civil War of the 1860s, but mass civilian casualties in real cities in the US have not yet been caused by foreign enemies, not counting the civilian deaths in wars between the native original people of North America and the invasive European people starting in the 1600s, as Europeans took over and inexorably migrated west in the US, up to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 in South Dakota, the last battle of these wars.
There is now loose hubristic jingoistic talk between the born rich narcissistic grandiose supreme leaders of the US and North Korea–who never worked a day in their lives for a boss in a competitive real job–using Internet tweets to broadcast scurrilous infantilized macho threats to one another, and messages about their right and power to use their immense power to shoot nuclear bombs into US and North Korean cities using intercontinental rockets, as if both see themselves as playing some sort of video game.
Hopefully these two jokers, having no experience playing football, having no experience doing hard physical work of any kind, or fighting in a real war, or even knowing what it’s like to belong to a military unit, really are joking about shooting off their nuclear bombs with rockets, as if the rockets loaded with nuclear bombs were giant roman candles to play with celebrating a holiday.
What is the probability of nuclear bombs being shot into US and North Korean cities by these so-called leaders? It had better be zero, since it could cause millions of civilian casualties if it happened, and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.
It seems these bombastic immature tweets threatening nuclear war in international politics would cause an increased level of fear and anxiety among US citizens, and the citizens and subjects of all countries.
Adding to the consternation, anxiety, and worry caused by Trump’s and Kim Jong-un’s immature irrational behavior is irritation and agitation caused by the way the US domestic economy has evolved since the 1950s, caused by US politicians, their campaign donors, the voters who voted for them, and lobbyists for vested interests.
While the US economy today based on stock market indexes, the official unemployment rate, car sales, and construction appears to be in good shape, relevant facts paint a different picture. Yes, the official unemployment rate is low but the labor force participation rate is also low, caused by discouraged workers giving up on finding real jobs and ceasing to look for them, and thus not being counted as being unemployed. While the incomes and wealth of the elite rich have increased dramatically in recent decades, since the Republican Reagan administration of the 1980s, the wages, salaries, and wealth of middle and working classes have stagnated or declined, resulting in an aggravating ever-widening unfair unequal income and wealth distribution. The prices of corporate stocks in stock markets have been inflated by the quantitative easing and low interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve System that enabled corporations to borrow money at low interest and use the proceeds to buy back shares of their own stock, causing the prices of their stock to go up, enriching their top executives with stock options, which encouraged small retail investors and large institutional investors with pension money to buy stock, thus inflating stock prices even more to irrational levels. Thus there is now serious risk of another crash similar to the crash of 2008.
The 2017 Christmas-gift-for-the-rich tax reduction bill passed in December by the Republican Congress and signed into law by our billionaire president Trump, if history repeats itself, will not benefit middle and working classes but will enrich the rich even more, who do not have to work for a living, thereby increasing even more the gulf between the comfortable elite rich and everyone else in the US, while it dangerously increases both the US budget deficit and the total debt. It saved Trump’s heirs and Sam Walton’s heirs billions of dollars in estate taxes alone, money they did not need, more money than they can ever spend on rational and ethical human needs and wants.
The US now spends over fifty percent of its discretionary spending in the federal budget on military hardware, munitions, ammunition, bombs, and personnel, some 650 billion dollars per year, more than is spent on military budgets by the next eight largest military spending nations on Earth combined. How the US can justify this level of military spending in the absence of serious enemies and wars to fight is amazing. After several years of trying to find or create some serious enemies, so far the US military-industrial-intelligence complex has not found any, just puny national governments and military forces to tear up with bombs and bands of so-called terrorists to kill with drones and boots on the ground, in the Middle East and in North Africa, none of whom ever threatened US security.
How long these policies and ethical lapses can be continued without bringing on serious dislocations and losses remains to be seen. Chickens, after all, even in international politics, probably will come home to roost.
If interested take a look at my FreeFairProgressParty for some recommendations for the US government to enhance its functioning for all its stakeholders–as if it could operate like a good football team with a good quarterback, which for sure it can’t. It operates more like a bunch of hollering frenetic kids jumping and bouncing around in a Bounce House at a birthday party.
SOURCE: “A football game ain’t no war, Big Daddy,” by Richard John Stapleton, INTREPID REPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/23024, January 11, 2018.
January 14, 2018
Here is an excellent well-reasoned and well-written article by Courtenay Barnett, an international lawyer and social activist living in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Originally published in the Effective Learning Report. Well worth a read.
SOURCE: “President Trump and past and present cognitive dissonance,” by Courtenay Barnett, PAMBAZUKA NEWS, https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-governance/president-trump-and-past-and-present-cognitive-dissonance?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork.
January 14, 2018
If this does not prove we need a single-payer Medicare For All healthcare system nothing would.
SOURCE: “Hospital Staff Dumped a Mentally Ill Patient In Freezing Weather Wearing Only a Hospital Gown,” by April M. Short, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/hospital-staff-dumped-mentally-ill-patient-out-freezing-wearing-nothing-hospital-gown#.WltkpHnoZGM.facebook.
January 12, 2018
The banking system is sunk if everyone wants to convert deposits into cash. Here is an interesting article about what happened when a depositor wanted to withdraw $8,000 in cash.
SOURCE: “When your bank fails, don’t walk…run!,” by Brett Redmayne-Titley, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/23044.
January 11, 2018
Reich is right about one thing in this article: however obtuse and clueless Trump is in general he may be a genius of sorts in terms of emotional intelligence–as shown by his ability to emotionally manipulate the voters who voted for him,about twenty-five percent of US eligible voters, using simplistic, inane, sometimes anti-social and insulting, almost obscene, statements and tweets, using a fourth grade vocabulary.
SOURCE: “Robert Reich: Just How Stupid is Trump?,” by Robert Reich, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/robert-reich-just-how-stupid-trump.
January 10, 2018
Now here is an interesting story, some real news perhaps. Nobody in Trump’s family thought he would win, including Trump himself, and were horrified that he did win, including Trump himself.
SOURCE: “‘Melania Was in Tears–and Not of Joy’: New Book Reveals Family’s Shock at Trump’s Election Win,” Travis Gettys, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-family-didnt-think-hed-win#.Wlbp-1r-37A.facebook.
January 10, 2018
Can you believe this?
SOURCE: “Top general tells Marines to be prepared for a big fight,” by Amy Wang, MSN.COM, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/top-general-tells-marines-to-be-prepared-for-a-big-fight/ar-BBHc5r0?ocid=sf.
January 8, 2018
Can’t Believe This is Happening
Apparently Trump and his national security adviser H.R. McMaster want to give Kim Jong Un and North Korea a “bloody nose” with some sort of non-nuclear strike, which seems insane to me. Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, is apparently opposed to the idea, as is US Defense Secretary, James Mattis. The crux of the problem is whether Kim Jong Un would accept the bloody nose attack without escalating into a nuclear attack.
SOURCE: “Tillerson and Mattis are reportedly trying to hold Trump back from striking North Korea,” by Alex Lockie, BUSINESSINSIDER.COM, http://www.businessinsider.com/tillerson-mattis-trump-north-korea-strike-2018-1.
January 7, 2018
I wish all Democratic Party people would do this, so we members of the FreeFairProgressParty at http://www.effectivelearning.net/freefairprogressparty.html could take over and restore the normal functioning of the US.
SOURCE: “Jefferson County state senator ditches Democratic Party: Cheri Jahn says she will serve as an independent,” by Noelle Phillips, The Denver Post, https://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/30/cheri-jahn-colorado-democrat-indepedent/.
January 6, 2018
Jill stein, probably the best candidate in the 2016 US presidential election, whom I voted for, responds here to her recent charges of malfesance with the Russians.
SOURCE: “Fireside Chat,” with Jill Stein, video at https://www.facebook.com/drjillstein/?hc_ref=ARSaIxXz5eMnpMS499W8wExXrIkJ4KZwAzuwvr5VG1ObfGO3yxZpEykhEVRoFIboDO0&pnref=story.
January 3, 2018
Here is a listing of some script messages found on the Chain of Ego States Diagram published on page 187 of my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning at https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactiona…/…/0692584331. Unfortunately the diagram itself could not be pasted into this WordPress format. If you would like to see the diagram you can see it on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397. Last shared and posted on Facebook today, January 14, 2018.
“Figure 28.
THE CHAIN OF EGO STATES–A P–A–C Chain of Command Organizational Script Matrix.
PARENT CHAIN OF COMMAND MESSAGES: Be productive. Work hard. Make money. Be strong. Hurry up. Be firm. Be slow. Be pompous. Be polite. Be serious and reverent. Be silly and irreverent. Walk fast. Use emphatic hand gestures. Make small talk. Don’t violate the chain of command. Go through channels. Be attractive. Be unattractive. Be short. Be tall. Look harried. Please me. Be perfect. Make the organization look good. Use innocuous, euphemistic words. Take your glasses off, and point with them. Wear a pinstriped suit. Dress nicely. Drive a Buick Electra. Play golf. Drink scotch. Cross your legs nonchalantly. Stroll coolly. Have another beer. Have some wine. Don’t wear a tie or dress nicely. Go bowling with the guys/gals. Ride a bicycle. Get a Toyota. Be a nice gal/guy. Act/be old/young.
ADULT CHAIN OF COMMAND MESSAGES: Hiring costs are $100; firing costs are $97. We need one thousand more units a month to keep up with the present sales rate. Enrollment increased/decreased X percent. X percent of our students /trainees report back that our teaching/training was beneficial to them. X percent of our students think they learn valuable, rel- evant learning in our classes/courses/programs.
CHILD CHAIN OF COMMAND MESSAGES: Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t be powerful. Don’t feel what you feel, feel what I want you to feel. Don’t be close. Don’t be you, be what I attribute you to be. Don’t belong. Don’t be well or sane. Don’t be sexual. Don’t be intelligent. Don’t be imaginative. Don’t make it. Don’t feel glad. Don’t learn. Don’t achieve. Don’t grow up. Don’t be energetic and confident. Don’t be spontaneous.”
Different messages are transmitted on the chain of ego states from the Parent, Adult, and Child Ego States of the Leader to subordinates. Over time the organizational script will tend to mirror the life scrlpt of the dominant leader introjected from the parents of the leader as people are hired into and fired and sluiced out of the organization. Script messages transmitted vary from one organization to another depending on the life scripts of the leaders and the purposes and technologies involved. More people are fired for not being willing or able to conform to the organizational script than for not being able to produce the goods and services listed on their job descriptions.
Almost nobody can be truly free to be themselves as an employee in an organization. They have to adapt and flex to script messages such as these. Adaptability is being willing and able to conform to the Parent script messages of the dominant leader regarding how the organization should be run. Flexibility is being willing and able to flex to the Parent and Child ego state messages of the boss so as to produce desired personality satisfactions.
Trump’s major Parent messages are “Take care of yourself and to hell with everyone else, and look good.” There are no Adult script messages since there are no facts and analyses shared. The major Child script message is “Do what you’re told to do or you’ll get fired.” His administration is largely Parent and Child ego dominated, much more so than most administrations, an authoritarian command organization in which the boss makes the decisions using his covert Adult and overt Parent and Child ego state energy and messages and everyone else is supposed to act like an obedient child and/or nurturing parent relating to him or her.
There are two basic types of messages transmitted in organizations: social and psychological. Social level messages are overt and spoken; psychological messages are covert and ulterior. Social level messages in the diagram on page 187 of Born to Learn are depicted with a solid line and psychological messages are depicted with a dotted line. Number 1 in the diagram is the dominant leader, and Numbers 2,3, 4, etc. are his subordinates. In a hierarchical organization with several levels all subordinates in a chain of command diagram are also bosses to their subordinates. It may take some time for all the messages of Number 1 to saturate the whole organization. Most dominant leaders are not permanent enough to make this happen, so there can be different script messages in various pockets of the organization at various levels. In organizations like the federal government most lower level civil service employees are protected from irrational Parent and Child script messages emanating from Number 1.
SOURCE: Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning, by Richard John Stapleton, Effective Learning Publications, 2016, p 187, available at https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331.
January 2, 2018
Kaepernick paid a heavy price for going down on one knee to make his statement and take his stand, and so did the NFL. It seems to me Kaepernick had a right to do what he did, and the NFL did not have a right to do what they did, and we’ll have to wait and see what happens. In my opinion, Kaepernick was discriminated against for exercising his First Amendment right.
SOURCE: “The NFL Chose to Tank Its Season Rather Than Sign Colin Kaepernick: Billion dollar teams choosing to fail rather than sign Kaepernick is a scandal for reasons beyond wins and losses,” by Dave Zirin, The Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/the-nfl-chose-to-tank-its-season-rather-than-sign-colin-kaepernick/.
December 31, 2017
Our supreme leader Trump, having been raised in New York City skyscrapers, wants to send our farmworkers back to where they came from, on the other side of the wall he wants to build. He probably thinks we don’t need them because you can buy all the food you want at Walmart, or a fast food place.
SOURCE: “America’s farmworkers face poverty, neglect, and now deportation,” by Jim Hightower, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22953.
December 31, 2018
David Stockman, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, before Reagan fired him for criticizing what he was doing, as usual pulls no punches telling it like he sees it in this article. In my opinion Stockman is the most honest former government official I have run across, about my age. I remember when Reagan and his cronies ran him off.
SOURCE: “The Greatest Bubble Ever: Why You Better Believe It – Part 2,” by David Stockman, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-29/greatest-bubble-ever-why-you-better-believe-it-part-2.
December 31, 2017
To really appreciate what Trump has done to the US, you have to take a look at the faces of these people posted on Facebook, Trump’s Secretary of Education, his EPA Chief, his Attorney General, his Secretary of State, his Secretary of Labor, his Secretary of Housing, and his Secretary of Energy.
SOURCE: Facebook post by Oppressed People of America, https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397.
December 30, 2017
Here is a good overview of where we are in the US by Nomi Prins, between a rock and a hard spot, thanks to our cowardly, cynical, narcissistic, greedy, bought and paid for politicians, and the voters who voted for them.
SOURCE: “The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse Than the Last One,” by Nomi Prins, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one.
December 30, 2017
Here is an article I wrote three or four years ago about a way to get humanity out of its perilous straits using common sense and mathematical reasoning.
SOURCE: “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth, Incorporated,” by Richard John Stapleton, MWC News (Media with Conscience), http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31023&catid=38&Itemid=125.
December 29, 2018
The student debt situation is pathetic. Ellen Brown a top money and banking expert tells it like it is.
SOURCE: “Student debt slavery: Bankrolling financiers on the backs of the young,” by Ellen Brown, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22960.
December 29, 2017
A major issue with the Trump administration is what to do about the US military. It is now costing some $650 billion per year in discretionary spending, over half of discretionary spending in the US budget, and it has no serious wars to fight at present. At issue is which country is the most likely candidate to fill the bill. This article provides serious insight into the dynamics of the problem.
SOURCE: “2018–war or no war?,” by The Saker, http://thesaker.is/2018-war-or-no-war/.
December 29, 2017
Hopefully the article below in this post by Marc Slavo saying war with North Korea is possible within twelve weeks is pure sensationalism. Unfortunately we have no way of knowing, despite the sources he cites, given the way our government lies to us about what they intend to do, lying by omission by not telling us state secrets and classified information, ostensibly for our own good. We know for sure our supreme leader Trump and the supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un have been sarcastically threatening and taunting one another verbally for months now, and we know North Korea has been making progress toward operationalizing a rocket capable of hitting the US with a nuclear warhead. It seems to me a real war with North Korea is insane, sure to result in untold misery and suffering. On the other hand the experts in the US CIA and Pentagon hopefully know more than I do about this. Assuming the quotes in the below article are true some top military experts think it is “unacceptable” to allow North Korea to develop a serious nuclear arsenal, meaning war is the only option to stop them from getting one. It seems to me it would be better to let them get one and then pay them if necessary not to use it, given the consequences of starting an all-out nuclear war, but what do I, a mere civilian, know about these things? Would it be worse for North Korea to have a nuclear arsenal than Russia, China, the UK, France, Pakistan or Israel? There are enough nuclear bombs out there now to destroy Earth several times over. What difference would one more country make? Are we to assume North Koreans are crazier and less trustworthy than the others, not having sense enough to know shooting off nuclear bombs will surely result in their own destruction?
Following is a short passage taken from page 585 from my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, written by me in 2006:
“If progress is not made in the direction of more liberty, equality, and fraternity among all people aboard Spaceship Earth, jealously, shame, and hatred could cause humanity to self-destruct at some future date, just like some religious groups now prophesy. Several nuclear bombs shot off simultaneously all over Earth in multi-directions at various enemies would do the trick. Whether Jesus will drop down from the sky at that time with his band of angels and sweep the believers of these groups up to eternal bliss in heaven while billions of infidels and sinners are cast into eternal hell fire and torment remains to be seen. Such people have been wrong for over 2,000 years. Many early Christians believed the world would come to an end during the lifetime of Jesus. If more countries with irrational leaders like North Korea develop nuclear weapons and rockets capable of propelling their nuclear weapons long distances we may find out for sure whether nuclear blackmail will work. How much hard currency would the rich nations have to give these countries to equalize incomes enough to make sure the bombs were not shot off?”
Apparently some of our military experts and maybe the US supreme leader Trump do not intend to pay blackmail to insure the bombs are not shot off. Which is the lesser evil: paying blackmail to make sure nuclear bombs are not shot off or going to war trying to eliminate the possibility? This seems to me to be a no brainer. Unfortunately the us military industrial intelligence banking complex, aka the deep state, would probably disagree
Unfortunately the North Koreans remember what the US did to them during the North Korean war of the 1950s and will have no mercy killing us now if a real war breaks out.
Take a look at Business Voyages at https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schema…/…/B002GP76TA for more elaboration regarding this issue of war and peace.
SOURCE: “Intelligence Insider Warns of Imminent War: “Likely In The Next 12 Weeks…The Director of the CIA told me,”” by Marc Slavo, SHTFplan.com, http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/intelligence-insider-warns-of-imminent-war-likely-in-the-next-12-weeks-the-director-of-the-cia-told-me_12262017.
December 29, 2017
This article by Charles Hugh Smith in his Of Two Minds blog gets into the nitty gritty of what the elite rich spend much of their time doing. It’s one thing to get rich; it’s another matter to stay rich. This article points out some ways to do it. Staying rich is not as easy as most people think.
SOURCE: “The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Mechanism of the Super-Wealthy: Money-Laundering 2.0,” by Charles Hugh Smith, OFTWOMINDS.COM, http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-hidden-in-plain-sight-mechanism-of.html.
December 29, 2017
What kind of insanity could cause something like this? In case you haven’t heard, bees are now under attack from manmade chemicals injected into the environment, and are dying off in their collapsing hives; and bees are absolutely necessary to pollinate foods humans eat. Thankfully private beekeepers are taking care of more bees, increasing the production of bees, to replace those that die off, hopefully making sure we humans do not die off if too many bees die prematurely. Vandals like these ought to be shot on sight.
SOURCE: “Vandalism destroys half million bees, wipes out Sioux City honey business,” by Ty Rushing, Sioux City Journal, http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/vandalism-destroys-half-million-bees-wipes-out-sioux-city-honey/article_b883044a-8df8-5b54-95a8-46afcb6c8624.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share.
December 28, 2017
Here is a new progressive and effective voice I just discovered, Joseph M. Firestone, delivering a podcast with a new approach. He reads and discusses an article by Chris Hedges, probably the most active and effective progressive voice on Earth today, titled “The Permanent Lie.” Well worth a look and listen.
SOURCE: “The Permanent Lie,” an article by Chris Hedges, read and discussed by Jospeh M. Firestone, REAL PROGRESSIVES, at https://www.facebook.com/RealProgressive/videos/1942644919398262/
December 28, 2917
My book just keeps on getting more and more relevant the more decadent the US gets. As Kirkus points out the book emphasizes the value of transactional analysis to teachers in classrooms, but allows it applies to teachers everywhere, parents in homes, managers in businesses, leaders of all sorts dealing with their group members. I think it applies to anyone who does any teaching of any sort, even writers like me, especially people purporting to teach others about politics and appropriate behavior in society. You can read an e-book copy of Born to Learn for less than a six pack of beer costs, or a glass of red wine in a restaurant, a good deal considering how it might help you improve your functioning. Just because the world is going to hell in a handbasket for most people this does not necessarily mean you can’t improve your own lot in life and the functioning of your children, employees, and fellow citizens by learning some new and relevant concepts and tools. Whether this excuses you from doing something about the plights of others is another matter.
SOURCE: “A refresher course in transactional analysis,” by Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-john-stapleton/born-to-learn/.
December 27, 2017
Really makes you feel secure doesn’t it? Thank you, 9/11.
SOURCE: “Homeland Security’s Multibillion Dollar Comedy Show,” COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, by James Bovard, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/27/homeland-securitys-multibillion-dollar-comedy-show/.
December 26, 2017
If the US has 41 million people living in poverty and nine million have no cash income whatsoever, is it their fault, or is it the US brand of capitalism just isn’t working very well?
SOURCE: “Does capitalism work?,” by Dave Alpert, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22922.
December 27, 2017
Yes, I suppose it may have happened, a coup that is.
SOURCE: “JOHN KELLY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE MILITARY COUP, ” by Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/john-kelly-and-the-language-of-the-military-coup.
December 26, 20017
Nasty business this. Let’s hope the US does not follow a similar path in a few years.
SOURCE: “Whether or Not the Presidents Change, the Generals Remain Connected,” by Jaqnine Jackson, TRUTH-OUT.ORG, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42983-whether-or-not-the-presidents-change-the-generals-remain-connected.
December 26, 2017
One of the most dismaying stories of our time.
SOURCE: “Why We Can’t Ignore Libya, Enslavement and the Damages of US Intervention, by William C. Anderson, TRUTH-OUT.ORG, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42904-present-day-slavery-in-libya-how-us-intervention-made-things-worse-for-black-africans.
December 24, 2017
Here is an article of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire genre, asserting the US Empire is heading down the same road, becoming incompetent and decadent because of poor policies and corruption.
SOURCE: “The US has reached the last stage before collapse,” by James Traub, BUSINESSINSIDER.COM, http://www.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-2017-12.
December 23, 2017
Excellent article by William Hawes describing how we got here and what we have to do to survive indefinitely. It seems to me we have two alternative scenarios: keep on going like we are winding up in a full military and police state wiped out in a nuclear catastrophe or evolving along the lines described in this article.
SOURCE: “The Great Unraveling: Using Science and Philosophy to Decode Modernity,” by William Hawes, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/22/the-great-unraveling-using-science-and-philosophy-to-decode-modernity/.
December 22, 3017
Maybe even Trump’s new EPA stooge now understands that climate change was caused by humans and is not debatable.
SOURCE: “Pruitt’s Plan to Debate Climate Science Paused as Science Confirms Human Link to Extreme Weather,” by Julie Dermansky, TURTH-OUT.ORG, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43000-pruitt-s-plan-to-debate-climate-science-paused-as-science-confirms-human-link-to-extreme-weather.
December 21, 2008
Amazing how judges are as brainwashed as anyone else in early childhood by their parents and early experiences. Once a conservative always a conservative, no matter what law school you went to; once a liberal always a liberal, no matter what law school you went to. Very boring process. Interesting how McConnell is prouder about the prospect of putting more conservative brainwashed judges on the supreme court and district courts than he is ripping off a trillion or two more dollars for the elite rich with the new Repug tax bill.
SOURCE: “McConnell is happy about tax cuts, but even happier about stuffing judiciary with right-wingers,” by Jake Johnson, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22896.
December 21, 2017
Despite what you might have heard I’m not dead yet. Among other things i still do things with GA So Univ. I am a mentor working pro bono now and then with entrepreneurs at the City Campus with BIG (Business Innovation Group) and SCORE, what used to be called Service Corps of Retired Executives, sponsored by the US Small Business Administration. I still do research, write, and publish on business and economic affairs.
SOURCE: “Center Founding Professor Publishes New Book,” Business Innovation Group (BIG), Georgia Southern University, http://cob.georgiasouthern.edu/big/2010/12/10/center-founding-professor-publishes-new-book/.
December 18, 2017
Ann Rann crap
Unfortunately some of Ann Ran’s obtuse ideas have served as rationalizations for about one half of all US voters for about thirty five years, since Ronald Reagan, a movie star, got to be president. Her basic idea that if you are too sympathetic to the needs of others you will not work hard enough to lift yourself out of poverty, and you will remain mired in the poverty afflicting the masses under capitalism, may be true in some cases. Donald Trump, for example, believes this. He thinks most people are too moral to make any money. Ann Rans whole syndrome of selfish ideation however is seriously flawed, especially regarding not paying taxes. Reality has it, regardless of what Ann Rann says, if you and others do not contribute to creating and maintaining the physical and social infrastructure of your country, or planet, by paying your fair share of taxes, no matter how rich and free you get, you will inevitably suffer consequences caused by the misery you caused others, possibly even human extinction. We are all part of the same ecosystem and if we do not work to preserve it, paying our fair share of taxes, no one will have a happy peaceful life sooner or later.
See my article “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth, Incorporated,” for some common sense and mathematical ideas on how to get humanity out of its longstanding screwed-up mess, easily found on the Internet at http://mwcnews.net/…/31023-spaceship-earth-incorporated.html.
SOURCE: “It’s Ayn Rand’s America Now: How the GOP stripped the country of its last shred of morality,” by Neal Gabler, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22861.
December 18, 2017
Say it ain’t so Joe.
SOURCE: “The Dumbing Down of American: ‘The Numbers Speak Volumes’.” By Mac Slavo , SHTFPAN.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-18/dumbing-down-america-numbers-speak-volumes.
December 18, 2017
This says it all. We are a nation of Walmart customers and healthcare dependents, with the exception of Washington state, a Boeing military contractor dependent. Click on the map to get the full picture.
SOURCE: “This Map Shows The Largest Employer in Every State,” by Matt Gilligan, DID YOU KNOWFACTS. COM, http://didyouknowfacts.com/map-shows-largest-employer-every-state/?utm_content=inf_84_3493_2&utm_source=TSE&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TSECPC&tse_id=INF_cd476820e0de11e7b926579f881108d6.
December 18, 2017
Well said, Dave Lindorff. Most likely only catastrophe will be able to teach most humans that something has to be done about the actual causes of our predicament.
SOURCE: “Stupidity and Blindness Have Destroyed Whatever Democracy the US Ever Had,” by Dave Lindorff, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/15/stupidity-and-blindness-have-destroyed-whatever-democracy-the-us-ever-had/.
December 18, 2017
Hear Hear. An intelligent analysis of one of Spaceship Earth’s most troublesome decisions, by Luciana Bohne.
SOURCE: “Operation Jerusalem Capital: Second Balfour Declaration or Arab-Israeli NATO?”, by Luciana Bohne, COURNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/15/operation-jerusalem-capital-second-balfour-declaration-or-arab-israeli-nato/.
December 14, 2017
You fall into despair because you see tomorrow. You have no purpose in the new scheme of things at home, and there is little hope of becoming a hero. Maybe joining the military doing something overseas will do it. Maybe not. We need a whole new way of looking at things, doing things, and living on Spaceship Earth.
SOURCE: “Nobel Laureate ‘Discovers’ Cause of Opioid Crisis: Complete Economic Destruction of the ‘White Working Class,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-14/nobel-laureate-discovers-cause-opioid-crisis-complete-economic-destruction-white-wor.
December 14, 2017
Say it aint so Joe
SOURCE: “Donald Trump just changed the Internet as we know it,” by Aatif Sulleyman and Jeremy B. White, INDEPENDENT.CO.UK, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/net-neutrality-latest-update-fcc-vote-ajit-pai-regulation-internet-freedom-coporation-donald-trump-a8110726.html.
December 14, 2017
Amazing how this just sort of died out with no real truth about what happened coming to light.
SOURCE: “Las Vegas massacre survivors 2 months later: ‘We’re in the dark’,” CNN.COM, http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/14/us/las-vegas-shooting-2-months-questions/index.html
December 12, 2017
It’s almost as if some voters think hubris, chauvinism, and misogyny are qualifications for people seeking election to public office.
SOURCE: “Politics Trumps Religion: The Immorality of Republican ‘Christian’ Morality,” by David Rosen, COUNTERPUNCH,ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/12/politics-trumps-religion-the-immorality-of-republican-christian-morality/.
December 12, 2017
Unfortunately a lot of depressed people need a dopamine boost. one can build the case it’s amazing more people are not depressed living on this screwed-up planet. Facebook has not made things worse in my opinion. Society never “worked” for most people in my opinion. Society only “works” for the powerful and elite rich, people not required to “work” for a living. Maybe what we need is an international week of mourning, to give deep thought to what went wrong on Earth and what we might do to make things sustainable and fair.
SOURCE: “Former Facebook Executive Criticizes Social Network for ‘Destroying How Society Works’,” by Matthew Rozsa, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/former-facebook-exec-says-it-destroys-society#.Wi_w2qyjvuI.facebook.
December 12, 2017
Right on.
SOURCE: “Why the Documentary Must Not Be Allowed to Die,” by John Pilger, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/12/why-the-documentary-must-not-be-allowed-to-die/.
December 11, 2017
Say it aint so Joe.
SOURCE: “The US Military is the Biggest ‘Big Government’ Entitlement Program on the Planet,” by JP Sottile, TRUTH-OUT.ORG, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42829-the-us-military-is-the-biggest-big-government-entitlement-program-on-the-planet.
December 10, 2017
We are somewhat like balls in a pinball machine, getting knocked around in various directions on the pinball machine floor by inevitable/accidental external forces that depress buttons on the sides of the pinball machine case that activate flippers that strike us and propel us in various directions at various speeds around the possibilities of the game course to situations that we hit, ringing up with flashing lights, bells, and whistles various scores, accumulating a total score. Entropy causes us to gradually gravitate to a hole at the bottom of the slightly tilted pinball machine floor and case down which we inevitably fall, to be popped up again, after other balls ahead of us have been hit, to be thumped again after a spring-activated rod is turned loose to strike us and send us around the course, to be hit again by flippers, over and over, until the accidental/inevitable external energy force leaves us alone.
If you have any interest in mathematics here is a blog post with some good insights into how our convoluted lives happen.
http://colah.github.io/…/2014-07-Understanding-Convolutions/
SOURCE: “Tilt! Game Over,” Jeff Thomas, INTERNATIONALMAN.COM. http://www.internationalman.com/articles/tilt-game-over#.Wh66D-tqzGw.facebook.