THE EARTHIAN

Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, www.effectivelearning.net , September 10, 2018

Or So It Seems to Me Today

By Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, Editor & Publisher

My weltanschauung has not changed much since the publication of The Earthian – 2 last month, so I have reposted in this introduction some of what I said last month. It’s not easy to accept the idea of being Earthians and active stakeholders in an imaginary virtual Spaceship Earth, Inc. So maybe another dose of some of the basic ideas might be helpful.

It seems to me today that the Doomsday Clock is now even closer to Midnight.

The purpose of The Earthian is to advocate for preserving all species aboard Spaceship Earth, not just right wing or left wing political humans, especially rich oligarchs now constructing themselves underground bunkers to survive what they call “The Event” that they think will wipe out most Earthians. The purpose of The Earthian is not to cause humans to learn something just for the sake of learning it, or something that might make their personal lives better, but to learn something that might make for smoother sailing for all Earthians aboard Spaceship Earth, hopefully helping humans become better stockholders and managers of Spaceship Earth.

For more ideas on how a real Spaceship Earth, Inc. might eventually happen read my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.”

This issue of The Earthian as usual links and cites recent articles written by clear and deep thinking hard hitting independent writers in various open fearless Internet publications dealing with current ecological, economic, military, religious, and political affairs around Spaceship Earth in the last month or so. Cited again in this issue is an article I recently wrote titled “De-Gaming And Saving Democracy,” in which I assert democracy is waning in the Western World and capitalism has failed to satisfy a majority of Spaceship Earth stakeholders. I proposed in the article a way to rejuvenate democracy. The upshot of the article is that the fate of Spaceship Earth depends on people like you. Read the article and set up a De-Gaming Democracy group in your community.

Humans spending more and more time staring at computer and cell phone screens looking at faces, hearing voices, and reading fake news, gossip, and even truthful news has not resulted in economic and political progress. Something new needs to be tried. As Albert Einstein pointed out, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is insane.

And it seems to me it’s even more insane to do the same thing over and over pretending you want a different result that never happens, which is what happens much of the time in groups and organizations that really want to preserve their status quos to protect their vested interests.

To supposedly improve things experts and power people often get together in committees and decide what kind of information, excuse me, rules, algorithms, dogma and party line doctrine to inflict on their subordinates down the chain of command, usually via the lecture method of teaching with victims, er, subordinates sitting in seats, chairs, and desks in neat rows and columns obediently trying or pretending to memorize what is laid on them for some sort of test or task. Most people enjoy lecturing others standing rigidly erect pointing with their index fingers with a stern look on their faces. Even five-year-old kids can sometimes be seen taking pleasure lecturing other kids.

What I recommend in “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy” is not doing this, but, rather, having learners and teachers sit in circles using a spinner to randomly select the leader of the day to start a democratic discussion of relevant problems or opportunities. This entails everyone being equally ok and having an equal chance to be the leader, which is the essence of democracy.

I included a good bit of detail in my introduction to The Earthian – 2 such as my definition of an Earthian and transactional analysis theory as I think it applies to the problem of managing organizations and groups. Assuming you did not read that issue or if you need a refresher you might want to go there and read my August “Or So It Seems To Me Today,” introductory essay, so this essay will make more sense.

I took my own advice and tried to set up a De-Gaming democracy group in Statesboro two months ago as explained here. I invited 153 people on my Internet list, told them I was hosting a forum in our Stapleton Learning Company offices, what I called the Ogeechee Economic Forum, using principles outlined in “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy,” and announced the time and how to get there.

One person showed up. Obviously you can’t have democracy with only one person and no group. But the discussion was randomly started nevertheless. Something in the person’s mind showing up caused the person to bring up the problem discussed during the assigned hour of the forum, namely the sad state of affairs now bedeviling Georgia Southern University in Statesboro and Armstrong State University in Savannah caused by the University System of Georgia deciding to merge the two universities. It was an interesting discussion and made interesting content for this article.

So, as my experiment during July showed (one person showing up), it will not be easy to set up De-Gaming Democracy groups for bottom-up democratic discussions around Spaceship Earth, the reason being most people do not like face-to-face democracy. Most people may actually prefer being told what to believe and do in authoritarian top-down systems, on TV, on their cell phones, in homes, in churches, in schools, in militaries, at workplaces, in political parties.

I held another Ogeechee Economic Forum on the third Saturday of August, and again one person showed up.

The person showing up this time was a former student who took several of my case method courses in the 1970s, having spent a career teaching and consulting in Asia, providing interesting conversation about happenings there, promising to come back for the September forum and bring a friend.

Maybe two people will show up for the September Ogeechee Economic Forum, on the third Saturday of this month, September 15, 10-11 a.m. The public is again welcome, including you.

It looks like I will be teaching a business planning course pro bono, at no cost to participants, at the BIG Building, the Business Innovation Group, at the Georgia Southern University City Campus in downtown Statesboro starting on September 24, lasting ten weeks, meeting once a week from 7-9 p.m. on Mondays, in which I will use a democratic de-Gamed case method process. I will furnish free copies of my book Business Voyages to serve as the course bible. The course will be conducted much like a Sunday School Class, no tests and no grades. I will suggest certain passages from various pages in the book non-sequentially at various times during the course for group reading outside of class which a de-Gamer selected person will analyze in class for some sessions. Most of the time of the sessions however will be consumed by de-Gamer selected participants talking about their own cases, relating their fact-based cases to passages they find anywhere in Business Voyages, much like a preacher would relate a passage in his/her bible to the topic of her/his sermon on a particular day, except the cases in this business planning course will be discussed by all participants on the spot as soon as the de-Gamer selected person tells his/her story. You can take this course if you wish, if it indeed makes. The last I heard five participants wanted to take it.

According to the philosopher Karl Popperit’s possible for humans to know about phenomena in three worlds, as shown in a passage taken from Business Voyages:

“World 1 includes hydrogen and helium, the heavier elements, liquids and crystals, and living organisms; World 2 includes consciousness of self and of death, and sentience or animal consciousness; and World 3 includes works of art and science and technology, human language, and theories of self and of death.”

Writers can only write about what they know about and can imagine. I have formally studied in degree programs economics, organizational behavior, management science, and transactional analysis; and for sure I can recall verbatim only a small fraction of what I read and studied. Hopefully I can remember the gist of most of it, and I shall recall or imagine here what is most relevant for what should be written in this blog. I should know more about these subjects than most people not having my experience and training, but no one knows right answers for problems that require knowledge from all three of Popper’s Worlds. The best hope is to develop consensual answers in democratic discussions that work better than others for all Earthian species.

That said, it seems to me democratic discussion methods generally work better than authoritarian methods, since they produce answers created by more than one person. On the other hand, it is not always true, it seems to me, that consensual answers get better and better as more people contribute to their creation. Sometimes you need completely new answers starting from scratch.

One can build a plausible case that provably true “right” answers do not exist in social, economic, and political affairs.

TO RESPOND:

Do Your Duty! As an equal virtual Spaceship Earth, Inc. stockholder, owning one share of virtual stock, just like everybody else around Earth, tell other stockholders what you think the problems and opportunities are, what the alternatives are, and what you think should be done to better manage Spaceship Earth, Inc.

Go to my Facebook Page and say whatever you want to say in regard to anything I have said above or to anything anyone has said in an article posted below.

But, no slanders and no profanity. Say whatever you want to say in response to the facts of what was said, pro or con, but please no ad hominem attacks, i.e., don’t try to prove you are right in your argument by citing your low opinion of the character, integrity, or personal characteristics of the person you are arguing against.

Just type your response at the top of my Facebook Page where it says What’s On Your Mind? You will start a conversation if no one else has responded that day. I will respond to your post if I think a response is appropriate, as may others. If someone else has started a conversation that day you can respond on that Facebook post for the day, letting people know what you think about that particular conversation in a particular issue of The Earthian.

As I read articles from various publications here and yon on the Internet I post some of them to my Facebook page and then use many of them as sources for The Earthian. After you get to the Facebook page you can find most of the articles listed as sources in The Earthian posted on the Facebook page, and you can respond beneath them with any comment you want to make about the article or what anyone has said about the article.

SOURCES:

September 10, 2018

Paul Street goes where most people fear to tread in their thinking. Here he quotes scientists who assert there are millions of planets in the universe capable of supporting life and posits that human-like life on many of them may have become extinct because of industrializing, that humans aboard Spaceship Earth are in the process of doing the same thing, implying the Luddites and Mennonites were right all along about technology being the work of the devil. Street agrees we are now in an Anthropocene, better, he says, called a Capitalocene, a new era of decay and destruction brought about by human-caused climate change, laying the blame on the advent of capitalism in the 1600s, starting seriously with the burning of coal to power steam engines around 1850, then taking off with a fury around 1900 with the burning of fossil fuels in internal (infernal) combustion engines. He includes a long quote by Noam Chomsky who casts Donald J. Trump as the prime devil now leading us all to hell on Earth. For an alternative scenario, read my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.”

SOURCE: “Climate of Class Rule: Common(s)er Revolt or Common Ruin,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/07/climate-of-class-rule-commonser-revolt-or-common-ruin/.

September 9

Trump is either a lunatic or he is doing a very good job pretending to be one. Or he may be crazy like a fox, smarter than you might think. What is he really after? Most likely power, recognition, and stimulus, trying to stave off boredom in his life, having done everything he could think of to entertain himself before running for president. He probably would like to be president for life as he has said. On the other hand, if he waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, well, yes, he probably is a duck, i.e., a mentally deranged human being. But so what you say? Since probably at least twenty-five percent of eligible US voters are mentally deranged, enough to elect a deranged president thanks to the deranged US Electoral College. Trump’s performances before audiences are as fake as professional wrestling matches, but millions of people watch him anyway, most probably thinking it’s real.

SOURCE: “Trump Goes Really (Really) Off Script,” FACEBOOK WATCH, https://www.facebook.com/thetrumpsterfirebyhuffpost/videos/199841417310866/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDM0OTY1MTE4NjoxOTYwNTEzNzc3MzAzNTky/.

September 8

There is no such thing as a federal govt payroll tax. There are social security insurance contributions (FICA) (Federal Insurance Contribution Act payments) that can be increased, and the SS system trust fund can also start asking the US govt to pay back more per year of the money it has borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund, surplus money generated by the SS system since the 1930s, about three trillion dollars, to balance the cash inflows and outflows of the SS system for many years with no sweat. If the fed govt wants to balance its own cash inflows and outflows it can cut the salaries of its senators and representatives and civilian and military employees to compensate for having to increase their loan payment obligations to the SS trust fund. Fed govt congressional politicians and administrative employees, and others, including presstitute media, lying to the public by telling people increasing payroll taxes (which don’t exist) is the only way to balance Social Security Insurance cash flows is unethical and heinous.

SOURCE: “The Pension Crisis is Bigger Than The World’s 20 Largest Economies,” by Simon Black, SOVEREIGNMAN.COM, https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/this-financial-crisis-is-bigger-than-the-worlds-20-largest-economies-24103/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sm_notes&utm_campaign=notes&utm_content=201897_pension_crisis.

September 8

Trump’s nitwit idea for a trade war doesn’t seem to be working yet.

SOURCE: “China’s Trade Surplus With US Hits Record High At Worst Possible Time,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-08/chinas-trade-surplus-us-hits-record-high-worst-possible-time.

September 8

Another nitwit idea.

SOURCE: “Trump says he could use the MILITARY to build his wall if Congress won’t fund it through Homeland Security’s budget – and he won’t rule out another government shutdown to get his way,” by David Martosko, DAILYMAIL.CO.UK, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6144837/Trump-says-use-MILITARY-build-wall-Congress-wont-fund-DHS.html.

September 7

Yep, creepy all right

SOURCE: “Billionaires Plan Escape From Apocalypse,” by Robert Hunziker, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/07/billionaires-plan-escape-from-apocalypse/ .

September 7

Look at the look in humble reverent Trump’s eyes, caught in the act engaging in his favorite pastime, projecting fake body-language messages. The man is full of hate in this picture not reverence, with good reason, if Pence really is the mysterious NYT op-ed writer.

SOURCE: “BBC Uses Linguistics Program to Conclude Mike Pence Is Likely Author of NY Times Op-Ed,” by Scott Alden, GRITPOST.ORG, https://gritpost.com/bbc-linguistics-mike-pence/.

September 7

Say this ain’t so Joe

SOURCE: “Freedom Rider: John McCain, Trump Derangement, and false black consciousness,” by Margaret Kimberley and Ann Garrison, INTREPEDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/25041.

September 7

Say it ain’t so Joe

SOURCE: “A diabolic false flag empire,” by Edward Curtin, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/25036.

September 6

Who cares what they’re called; they’re losers trying to tear others down because they can’t build themselves up.

SOURCE: “They’re Not White Nationalists – They’re White Supremacists,” INTREPIDREPORT.COM, https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397.

September 6

Say it ain’t so Joe

SOURCE: “America’s first black billionaire gets police involved after hotel refuses to check him in,” by Walter Einenkel, DAILYKOS.COM, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1793435/-First-black-billionaire-has-Florida-hotel-call-police-on-him-after-they-didn-t-allow-him-to-check-in.

September 6

Oh, really

SOURCE: “Warm ocean water has penetrated deep into the Arctic interior portending year round loss of sea ice,” by Pakalolo Community, DAILYKOS.COM, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1793435/-First-black-billionaire-has-Florida-hotel-call-police-on-him-after-they-didn-t-allow-him-to-check-in.

September 5

Why 2040?

SOURCE: “‘Old TV Show That Warns Of The End of Civilization in 2040 Found As The Elite Warn Earth’s Landscape ‘Set To Undergo Major Transformation’,” by Michael Snyder, THEAMERICANDREAM.COM, http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/old-tv-broadcast-that-warns-of-the-end-of-civilization-in-2040-found-as-the-elite-warn-earths-landscape-set-to-undergo-major-transformation.

September 5

Hope the preparations work

SOURCE: “Tenth Anniversary of Financial Collapse, Preparing for the Next Crash,” by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/05/tenth-anniversary-of-financial-collapse-preparing-for-the-next-crash/.

September 5

Talk about an ill-fated conference, not completely rained out, but almost, by a monsoon, no less, in Kerala, India. As shown here I have been a member of the International Transactional Analysis Association over forty years.

SOURCE: “Initial Reflections on the Kochi Conference,” by Diane Salters, ITAA President, ITAAWORLD.ORG, https://www.itaaworld.org/sites/default/files/itaa-pdfs/the-script/script-2018/ITAA%20The%20Script%202018-09.pdf#page=1.

September 4

Now here is a news item for you, the dumbest US president in history, Bush II, at McCain’s funeral, playing the fool as usual.

SOURCE: “George W. Bush sneaking a piece of candy to Michelle Obama is warming my heart,” by Roland Scahill, CAITLINJOHNSTONE.COM, https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/09/02/stop-humanizing-war-criminals/.

September 4

Why can’t the US govt keep its nose out of other nations’ business–always stirring up trouble to justify military activity and sell more US manufactured weapons, even to neo-Nazi governments such as the one in Ukraine? Very sad

SOURCE: “Ambassador Kurt Volker: US to Drastically Expand Military Assistance to Ukraine,” STRATEGIC-CULTURE.ORG, https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/09/03/ambassador-volker-us-drastically-expand-military-assistance-ukraine.html.

September 4

One reason currencies melt down is that power hoggers want to discount the price of goods produced in a country in world markets, hoping to sell more internationally at the expense of countries that don’t devalue their currencies in a trade war. Unfortunately if most countries do it almost nobody wins. Trump’s tariffs increased the price of goods produced in other countries sold in the US, another tactic in a trade war. Unfortunately if all countries do this they will all wind up producing and selling less, causing a global recession or worse.

SOURCE: “The Global Financial System Is Unraveling, And No, the U.S. Is Not Immune,” by Charles Hugh Smith, CHARLESHUGHSMITH.BLOGSPOT.COM, http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-global-financial-system-is.html.

September 4

Who really was involved in plotting 9/11/01 and for what purpose? To create a justification for the so-called War on Terror?

SOURCE: “‘Never Forget’: Gov’t Said the Air Was Safe, Now Thousands of 9/11 First Responders Have Cancer,” by Derrick Broze, THEFREETHOUGHTPROJECT.COM, https://thefreethoughtproject.com/never-forget-govt-said-the-air-was-safe-now-thousands-of-9-11-first-responders-have-cancer/.

September 4

Will this be another million dollars in the bank for Woodward, as if ‘we are in crazytown’ is anything new since Trump’s election?

SOURCE: “‘We’re In Crazytown’ – Woodward’s Explosive New Book Exposes ‘Nervous Breakdown’ Of Trump Presidency,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-04/hes-gone-rails-trump-mocks-sessions-mentally-retarded-orders-assassination-assad.

September 4

Are the US and the UK birds of a feather joined at the hip? Unable to manufacture consumer goods competitively to produce real employment? Having to make non-competitive weapons of war instead? Needing Russia to serve as a demand creator and rainmaker to sell their war products?

SOURCE: “Britain prepares for war against Russia,” by Brian Cloughley, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/25016.

September 4

More intelligent strategic thinking by Paul Craig Roberts

SOURCE: “Provocations have a history of escalating into war,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/25018.

September 4

If this is victory I would hate to see what defeat is, which, I would assume, would be worse; but who knows whether in today’s Alice in Wonderland Orwellian world in Washington, where down is up, or any other thing they choose to call anything.

SOURCE: “The US Military sees Endless War as a ‘Victory’,” by Nick Turse, TomDispatch, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-military-sees-endless-war-as-a-victory/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

September 4

Which is why you need to get in groups that focus on real problems rather than identities and ideologies

SOURCE: “Being reminded of your political bubble can stop you from breaking out,” by Scott K. Johnson, ARSTECHNICA.COM, https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/being-reminded-of-your-political-bubble-can-stop-you-from-breaking-out/.

September 4

So, time really does fly by faster the older you get. Retiring in 2005 I noticed this was happening to me within two or three years, and time’s elapsing seems to continue accelerating. Although in good health, I’m almost dead already of old age.

SOURCE: “Scientists found brain’s internal clock that influences how we perceive time,” by Jennifer Ouellette, https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/scientists-found-brains-internal-clock-that-influences-how-we-perceive-time/.

September 3

Right on

SOURCE: “Our Rulers’ ChiCainery,” by Robert Gore, STRAIGHTLINELOGIC.COM, https://straightlinelogic.com/2018/09/02/our-rulers-chicainery-by-robert-gore/.

September 3

Medicine too strong for most people

SOURCE: “Nike Launches Ad Campaign Starring Colin Kaepernick,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-03/nike-launches-ad-campaign-starring-colin-kaepernick.

September 3

Another hard-hitting article by Paul Craig Roberts, one of the best truth tellers of our time in Internet media.

SOURCE: “A book for out time, a time that perhaps has run its course,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/25009.

September 3

Paul Street pulls no punches, including this statistic: the upper one tenth of one percent of the US population own as much US wealth percentage-wise as the bottom ninety percent, which is well documented in this article.

SOURCE: “The McCain Death Tour Reaches Its Imperial Apotheosis,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/03/the-mccain-death-tour-reaches-its-imperial-apotheosis/.

September 2

We are being ruled by less than twenty-five percent of US eligible voters, thanks to the disastrous deranged US Electoral College.

SOURCE: “I finally pinpointed what it is exactly that I resent the most about Trump voters,” by beerfinger, DAILYKOS.COM, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/28/1791595/-I-finally-pinpointed-what-it-is-exactly-that-I-resent-the-most-about-Trump-voters.

September 1

Say it ain’t so Joe

SOURCE: “There is no limit to presstitute hypocrisy,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24973.

September 1

Here is another gripping poignant article by Lihn Dinh, a native survivor of Vietnam during the US bombing spree of the 1960s who lived in the US thirty years who is now living back in Vietnam. Compared to this guy most people in the US are snowflakes. He tells it like it is now in Vietnam. One of his most gripping points about the servant’s tale is that this is what US workers have to compete against now with global free trade, having been thrown to the wolves by US corporations outsourcing US jobs to Asian sweatshops since the 1970s.

SOURCE: “A servant’s tale,” by Linh Dinh, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24979.

August 31

Here’s an article about a legal case my longtime friend William John Cox, a retired attorney in Long Beach, California, handled pro bono for Mel Mermelstein, now age 92, that established the Jewish Holocaust as a legal fact under the legal doctrine of Judicial Notice, posted here as a story published in the Smithsonian Magazine a few weeks ago. Events and facts leading up to and including the trial were used for a movie by TNT, Never Forget, starring Leonard Nimoy and Dabney Coleman, with Coleman playing Willian John Cox. This was quite a feat for a country boy who grew up on a cotton farm in Northwest Texas. Wm and I sat in the same Methodist Sunday School class in 1948 at Wolfforth, Texas. The post includes some video footage of the movie. Mel and Wm were real heroes.

SOURCE: “Mel Mermelstein Survived Auschwitz, Then Sued Holocaust Deniers in Court,” by Patrick Sauer, SMITHSONIANMAG.COM, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/mel-mermelstein-survived-auschwitz-then-sued-holocaust-deniers-court-180970123/.

August 31

Say it ain’t so Joe

SOURCE: “How Donald Trump is the Bernie Madoff of Politics,” by Lucian K. Truscott IV/Salon, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-donald-trump-bernie-madoff-politics#.W4lOfPt83Rk.facebook.

August 30

Trump won’t give about two million US civilian employees a pay raise but he will give about 1.3 million US military employees a pay raise. The man has little or no respect for context, causes, consequences, fairness, and rationality. What about some 3.7 million independent contractors who feed at the federal trough? Will they get a pay raise? I suppose we are now supposed to believe Trump is seriously worried about the federal debt, after he gave himself and his rich cronies a trillion or so dollars worth of tax cuts, vastly increasing the federal debt. Add one more nitwit decision to Trump’s collection.

SOURCE: “Trump cancels pay raises for federal employees,” by Kevin Liptak, CNN.COM, https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/30/politics/trump-cancels-federal-employee-pay-raises/index.html.

August 22

Karl Popper has been one of my favorite philosophers, primarily because of his stance against dogmatism and people thinking they know something that is unknowable, having been brainwashed about it in some sort of fascist authoritarian learning process, such as a family, church, corporation, or military unit, asserting you cannot prove any proposition to be true, that all you can do is prove a proposition to be false. In this Scientific American article you get to see how Popper functioned in his last years and learn about a confrontation he had with Ludwig Wittgenstein, another favorite philosopher of mine, who said “The case is all there is,” and “Everything that happens happens by accident.” Apparently Wittgenstein was a bit more dogmatic than Popper. I discussed Popper and Wittgenstein and these issues in more detail in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds.

SOURCE: “The Paradox of Karl Popper,” by John Horgan, SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-paradox-of-karl-popper/.

August 29

Yes, but the insurance companies, healthcare companies, and pharmaceutical companies don’t, and they have enough money to make politicians vote their way.

SOURCE: “Most Americans and doctors support universal healthcare,” by Stephen Lendman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24965.

August 29

Paul Street nails it again. Why the demo party is as bad as the repug party. If so what do we do then? Fall into despair? No, support the Green Party

SOURCE: “No Remorse: Reflections on Radical ‘Purism’,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/29/no-remorse-reflections-on-radical-purism/.

August 28

I agree with Jonathan Cook’s brilliant summarizing article below about UK politics. I am definitely in his second camp. The elite rich just keep getting relatively richer as everyone else stagnates or declines, maybe throughout the Western World. All the elite rich have to do is count the money their already pilled up money provides them. No work required. Communism failed for the same reason capitalism failed: greedy power hoggers at the top. The US and the UK it seems to me are in pretty much the same kind of political boat and predicament.

SOURCE: “Corbyn is Being Destroyed, Like Blowing Up a Bridge to Stop an Advancing Army,” by Jonathan Cook, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/28/corbyn-is-being-destroyed-like-blowing-up-a-bridge-to-stop-an-advancing-army/.

August 28

When I retired as a university professor in 2005 it was obvious student loans were problematic, becoming one of the major drivers of higher education. See my cases “Georgia Southern Business School,” “Games Educators Play,” and others in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds.

SOURCE: “How U.S. Education Became A “Debt Sentence,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-28/how-us-education-became-debt-sentence.

August 28

Right on, brother, eveybody’s deplorable but you and me and sometimes I wonder about you

SOURCE: “What? Me Deplorable?,” by Andrew Levine, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/28/what-me-deplorable/.

August 28

Communism failed for the same reason capitalism failed: greedy power hoggers at the top. for more detail read my editorial “Or So It Seems To Me Today”.

SOURCE: “New Film Reveals Life of Civil Rights Activist Jack O’Dell,” by Rami Katz, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/new-film-reveals-life-of-civil-rights-activist-jack-odell/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

August 27

Say it ain’t so Joe

SOURCE: “The Tectonic Plates of Geopolitics are Starting to Shift,” by Michael Krieger, LIBERTYBLITZRIEG.COM, https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/08/27/the-tectonic-plates-of-geopolitics-are-starting-to-shift/.

August 27

Say it aint so Joe

SOURCE: “One Minute to Midnight: Latest US Sanctions Propel Nations Towards Risk of War,” by Martin Sieff, STRATEGICCULTURE.ORG, https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/21/one-minute-midnight-latest-us-sanctions-propel-nations-towards-risk-war.html.

August 27

It is an established fact that the Jewish Holocaust happened, recognized as a matter of Judicial Notice, established in the Mel Mermelstein case posted above.

SOURCE: “Against Holocaust Denial,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/04/against-holocaust-denial/.

August 27

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Trump really was the greater evil in 2016 and I should have voted for Killary instead of Jill Stein of the Green Party.

SOURCE: “This is a Freak Show, Not a Democracy (Thanks, Founders),” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/24/this-a-freak-show-not-a-democracy-thanks-founders/.

August 26

About time

SOURCE: “Sanders praises Dem move to limit role of superdelegates in picking nominee,” by Tal Axelrod, THEHILL.COM, http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/403601-sanders-praises-decision-to-limit-role-of-superdelegates-after-2016-primary#.W4NoJIF3Sb8.facebook.

August 26

An infallible pope begs for his god’s forgiveness, but what is he going to do about pedophile priests, regardless of whether his god forgives him?

SOURCE: “Pope ‘begs for God’s forgiveness’ for sexual abuse scandal,” by Catherine Marciano, YAHOO.COM, https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-hold-giant-mass-dublin-abuse-victims-rally-030337491.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb.

August 23

There is no justice under the sun, as Solomon figured out in the bible. Have the too big to fail Wall Street banks, and big non-bank capitalistic corporations, bailed out by US charity and socialism in the 2008 financial crisis with US tax money and US funny money created by the Federal Reserve, enjoyed their filthy luchre? Especially the money the big Wall Street banks saved by not having to pay off on their credit default swaps they sold to Greek creditors? Pity the poor Greeks who were sacrificed for the global gods of finance.

SOURCE: “Genocide of the Greek nation,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24921.

August 23

Truth dies if all you care about is having the power to get what you want.

SOURCE: “The Orange King, Yellow Journalism, and the Death of Truth,” by John G. Russell, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/23/the-orange-king-yellow-journalism-and-the-death-of-truth/.

August 23

Amen

SOURCE: “Julian Assange and the Fate of Journalism,” by Lawrence Davidson, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/23/julian-assange-and-the-fate-of-journalism/.

August 22

Say it aint so Joe

SOURCE: “‘We are climbing rapidly out of humankind’s safe zone’: New Report warns dire climate warnings not dire enough,” by Jon Queally, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24907.

August 23

Agree

SOURCE: “Trump Supporters: the Joyous Cult Bound by Shared Story and Ritual,” by Kenneth Culton, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/21/trump-supporters-the-joyous-cult-bound-by-shared-story-and-ritual/.

August 17

This article contains one of the best videos I have listened to on how to get the world, especially the US, out of its ongoing financial predicament. For more detail on how this scenario might sort out read my article,“The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc”.

The anonymous creator/narrator of this video attended Harvard Business School. I hold three degrees from the Texas Tech business school.

SOURCE: “The Annals of Roacheforque: Implications of a free gold market and transition to the next global monetary system,” anonymous narrator, https://roacheforque.blogspot.com/search?q=rob+kirby.

Feel free to forward, share, print, reprint, copy or otherwise disseminate this issue of The Earthian any way you see fit.

TO RESPOND:

Do Your Duty! As an equal virtual Spaceship Earth, Inc. stockholder, owning one share of virtual stock, just like everybody else around Earth, tell other stockholders what you think the problems are, what the alternatives are, and what you think should be done to better manage Spaceship Earth, Inc.

Go to my Facebook Page and say whatever you want to say in regard to anything I or anyone else has said herein

But, Please, no vicious attacks, no slanders, no profanity. Say whatever you want to say in response to the facts of what was said, pro or con, but please no ad hominem attacks, i.e., don’t try to prove you are right because the person you are arguing against in your opinion is not OK, or less OK than you are, by virtue of personal characteristics, beliefs, feelings, or behaviors.

Just type your response at the top of my Facebook Page where it says What’s On Your Mind? You will start a conversation if no one else has responded that day. I will respond to your post if I think a response is appropriate, as may others. If someone else has started a conversation that day you can respond on that Facebook post for the day, letting people know what you think about that particular conversation in a particular issue of The Earthian.

As I read articles on the Internet during a month from various publications here and yon I post some of them to my Facebook page and then use most of them as sources for The Earthian. After you get to the Facebook page you can find most of the articles listed as sources in The Earthian posted on the Facebook page, and you can respond beneath them with any comment you want to make about the article or what anyone has said about the article.

Like a reincarnation of Don Quixote I gain satisfaction from trying to give moral support to Earthians of any sort in their battles for survival, giving back a little in my retirement years, having survived many personal threats and battles in my long life, still standing in relatively good shape. I got bored with hunting, fishing, playing golf, and traveling some time ago, especially after being forced to obey and accept militaristic TSA attitudes, rules, intimidation, indignities, and stress to board airplanes, thanks to Bush II’s insane War on Terror, an aggressive offensive war that did irreparable harm to the social fabric of the US, not to mention the incomparably greater irreparable harm inflicted on millions of humans and other Earthians in other nations, caused by dropping bombs on them.

I have no desire to sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for this blog, but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you have gained value from this blog or any page on our website and want to reciprocate please go to our Effective Learning Publications page , Amazon.com , or any brick and mortar bookstore and purchase one or more of my books.

Best wishes, RJS

THE EARTHIAN

Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-earthian-2/, August 1, 2018

Or So It Seems to Me Today

By Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, Editor & Publisher

It seems to me the Doomsday Clock aboard Spaceship Earth keeps ticking ever closer to Midnight.

I have used the word Earthian since encountering it in the 1970s in Buckminster Fuller’s book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, one of the most relevant books I have read. It is my understanding that Fuller invented the word Earthian, and the appellation Spaceship Earth, implying Earth is something that has to be managed by humans monitoring regular interdependent physical processes in the infinity of airless time and space–trees and other plants emitting oxygen that humans and other animals breath–with humans, other animals, and various processes emitting carbon dioxide that plants ingest–to make new oxygen in hopefully never ending co-dependent systems. Such production systems have to stay in synchronous interdependent regularities, requiring not cutting down and burning too many trees, and not putting too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere burning fossil fuels, as most humans should know by now given what they have heard, seen, and read in various media about global warming, evidenced by the heat and wildfires burning anything that will burn right now on various spots of terra firma around Spaceship Earth.

What is an Earthian? The term applies mostly to humans aboard Spaceship Earth, aka Planet Earth; but it includes more than humans: it includes all sentient species of fauna and flora.

In other words, the purpose of The Earthian is to advocate preserving all species aboard Spaceship Earth, not just right wing or left wing political humans, especially rich oligarchs now constructing themselves underground bunkers to survive what they call “The Event” that they think will wipe out most humans. The purpose of The Earthian is not to cause humans to learn something just for the sake of learning it, or something that might make their personal lives better, but to learn something that might make for smoother sailing for all species aboard Spaceship Earth.

This issue of The Earthian as usual links recent articles written by clear and deep thinking hard hitting independent writers in various open fearless Internet publications dealing with current ecological, economic, military, religious, and political affairs around Spaceship Earth. I included in this issue an article, not the clearest and deepest of this issue by any stretch, I recently wrote titled “De-Gaming And Saving Democracy,” in which I point out democracy seems to be waning in the Western World and capitalism has failed to satisfy a majority of citizens. I proposed in the article a new way to rejuvenate democracy. The upshot of the article is that the fate of Spaceship Earth depends on people like you. Read the article and set up a De-Gaming Democracy group in your community.

A decision was made in June of 2018 to encourage the formation of De-Gaming Democracy groups around Spaceship Earth to facilitate relevant face-to-face discussions about economic and political affairs affecting Earthians. Humans spending more and more time staring at TV, computer, and cell phone screens, now about eight hours per day per human on average in the US, looking at faces, hearing voices expounding and manipulating mostly about gossip, politics, sports, and soap operas, and hearing and reading fake news, and even some truthful news, has not resulted in economic and political success and satisfaction for all. Something new needs to be tried. As Albert Einstein pointed out, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is insane.

And it seems to me it’s even more insane to do the same thing over and over saying you want a better state of affairs and never getting it, which is what happens much of the time in institutions, such as schools, colleges, universities, churches, political parties, legislatures, congresses, and corporate and military units, who really want to preserve their status quo to protect their vested interests.

Most of the time supposed experts and power people get together in committees and decide what kind of drivel, excuse me, dogma and party line bullshit to inflict on their subordinates down the chain of command, usually via the lecture method of teaching with victims, er, subordinates sitting in seats and desks in neat rows and columns obediently trying or pretending to memorize what is laid on them for some sort of test or task. Most people enjoy standing rigidly erect pointing with their index fingers with a stern look on their faces lecturing others. Even five-year-old kids can sometimes be seen taking pleasure lecturing other kids.

What I recommend in “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy” is not doing this, but, rather, having learners and teachers sit in circles using a spinner to randomly select the leader of the day to start a democratic discussion of a relevant problem or opportunity. This entails everyone being equally ok and having an equal chance to be the leader, which is the essence of democracy.

I took my own advice and tried to set up a De-Gaming democracy group in my town Saturday July 21, 2018, as explained here. I invited 153 people on my Internet list to what I called the Ogeechee Economic Forum, telling them I was hosting a forum in our Stapleton Learning Company offices, using principles outlined in “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy,” and announced the time and how to get there. One person showed up, not enough to democratically select anyone in a group, but the discussion was randomly started nevertheless. Something in the person’s mind showing up caused the person to bring up the problem discussed during the assigned hour of the forum, namely the uncertain state of affairs now agitating what used to be Georgia Southern University in Statesboro and Armstrong State University in Savannah caused by the University System of Georgia in Atlanta deciding to merge the two universities under one name, Georgia Southern University. It was an interesting discussion and made interesting content for this article.

So, as my experiment Saturday July 21, 2018 shows, it will not be easy to set up De-Gaming Democracy groups for bottom-up Game-free democratic discussions around Spaceship Earth, the primary reason possibly being that most people really do not like face-to-face democracy. They may actually prefer being told what to believe and do in authoritarian top-down systems, on TV, on their cell phones, in video movies, in schools, in homes, in churches, in workplaces, in military units, etc.

But we should keep trying to save democracy it seems to me. I intend to by hosting another Ogeechee Economic Forum at the same time and place this coming third Saturday of August. Maybe more people will show up this time. Read my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn for more data, information, and background on learning, democracy, and the beneficial results of randomly selecting discussion leaders.

Earthians have been on a long business voyage evolving from one-celled amoebas slithering about in the soup and mists of primordial time, dealing with the business of survival as best they could, as long as they could. Some evolved species have survived up to now, most of the originals became extinct, and most of the current survivors may become extinct if human affairs keep trending as they have been around Spaceship Earth.

The smartest specie, homo sapiens, has not only adapted to its environments to survive it has changed its environments, learning how to create ever more sophisticated production and consumption systems in ever more complex organizations.

Early humanoids initially evolved as individuals, soon evolved into family and tribal groups, and later evolved into members and leaders of business, ethnic, religious, political, social, civic, governmental, military, corporate, and cultural groups and organizations. The quantity and quality of learning and knowledge produced in this Earthian evolutionary process is mind-boggling, far too much for any one human to comprehend. Some humans know more than others, but all are dummies relative to everything there is to know now.

According to the philosopher Karl Popper, taken from a passage on page 100 of Business Voyages, it’s possible for humans to know about phenomena in three worlds:

Writers can only write about what they know about and can imagine. I have formally studied, taught, researched, and published in degree programs that focused on economics, organizational behavior, management science, and transactional analysis. Despite the fact I can now recall verbatim only a small fraction of the content I was exposed to in those programs, hopefully I shall recall or imagine here what is most relevant for what should be written in this blog today. I should know more about these subjects than most people not having my experience and formal training, but no one knows right answers for all relevant problems and opportunities that require knowledge from all three of Popper’s Worlds. The best hope is to develop consensual answers in democratic discussions that work better than others for all Earthian species.

For all practical purposes a case can be made that “right” answers for real world problems and opportunities do not exist.

That said, it seems to me democratic discussion methods generally work better in human affairs than authoritarian methods, since they produce answers created by more than one person. On the other hand, it is not necessarily true, it seems to me, that consensual answers get better and better as more and more people contribute to them. It seems to me new tweaks might make consensual answers worse, not better.

Unfortunately, most people are like my father, who tried to teach me, “There can be only one boss.”

It seems to me the most relevant issue is not whether democratic learning methods are better than authoritarian methods, but rather how can humans overcome a natural bias toward authoritarianism and fascism embedded in human nature. Children, after all, have to be controlled and dogmatically taught in their early stages in many cases for their own protection; but what would it hurt to let the child express his or her opinion about what is wrong and what to do in some cases? Most of the time no harm would result, and the child’s self-esteem and confidence would be increased.

It seems to me in most groups, families included, most parents and parent-like people–supervisors, cops, politicians, prison wardens, FBI directors, presidents, managers, preachers, parents, teachers, coaches, sergeants, generals, corporate CEOs, etc.–enjoy being the boss, and they hog all the power they can get their hands on by forbidding one way or another others from participating in democratic discussions, and if this goes on over and over again enough even underlings and underdogs begin to enjoy it and feel good about it, and begin to withdraw from any sort of dialectical face to face human contact and communication; and if everybody does this a stagnant society will ensue, a society that is only concerned about preserving the status quo, which is about where humans are now around Spaceship Earth, despite mounting evidence significant unplanned changes are about to happen regardless of what humans think, wish, or believe.

As any transactional analyst knows the most significant human learning is script-based. Children are programmed by social and psychological messages transmitted by parents and others before the age of eight to adopt a life script that includes the do’s and don’t’s for living their lives in their families and environments.

“Wash behind your ears”, “clean those nails”, “study hard”, “work hard”, “get along”, “make something of yourself” are common verbal social messages transmitted from the Parent ego states of parents to the Parent ego states of children.

At the same time, children are programmed by psychological non-verbal messages, called injunctions, transmitted from the Child ego states of parents to the Child ego states of children. Following is a common listing of script injunctions taken from a passage on page 160 of Business Voyages:

“Don’t Be; Don’t Be You (the sex you are); Don’t Be a Child; Don’t Grow; Don’t Make It; Don’t; Don’t Be Important; Don’t Be Close; Don’t Belong; Don’t Be Well (or sane); Don’t Think About X (forbidden subject); Don’t Think What You Think, Think What I Think; Don’t Feel; Don’t Feel X, Mad, Sad, Glad, Scared, etc.; Don’t Feel What You Feel, Feel What I Feel.”

These authoritarian social and psychological messages cause family scripts to stay much the same generation after generation. Certain family scripts fit various kinds of organizational scripts in society better than others. Thus people with the same kinds of family scripts tend to populate the same kinds of organizations generation after generation, such as various political parties and religious denominations. This early script-based teaching before humans are eight years old is difficult to change, almost impossible some say, making it difficult to change national scripts causing deleterious and disastrous feelings and behaviors, such as fear, greed, hatred, hubris, chauvinism, and aggression, that cause poverty, inequality, war, environmental pollution, and specie extinctions.

According to Eric Berne, MD, a psychiatrist, and the euhemerous of transactional analysis, script messages laid on children in families produce three kinds of generic life script outcomes: winner, loser, and non-winner. If true, this evolved process for determining human outcomes is grossly unfair for humans scripted to be losers and non-winners, an unfair process for which no human can be blamed, caused by ineluctable inevitable accidental cause-effect chains of evolutionary forces, in the infinity of time and space.

Here is a passage I wrote about human scripts taken from page 157 of Business Voyages:

“As Shakespeare pointed out, the world’s a stage and everyone must act a part. It is theoretically possible not to act out a part or script in life by autonomously making rational decisions given actual cases using Adult ego states in the here and now. Whether anyone has ever actually accomplished this cannot be proved. According to Berne, a script is an on-going life plan decided upon by a child before the age of eight–which includes such basic decisions as the life position of the person (whether I’m OK–You’re OK, I’m OK–You’re Not OK, I’m Not OK–You’re OK, I’m Not OK–You’re Not OK), what type of person to marry, how many children to have, the nature of role in life, the nature of life outcome, whether winner, loser, or non- winner, and who will be around when life ends (Berne, 1970). The early influence and programming of parents and the commitment of offsprings to the influence and programming determine scripts. Once the offspring decides to accept the influence and programming it becomes a part of the script that is acted out on the stage of life. In this sense a child less than eight years old determines most lives. Some scripts work out well and some do not. Criminals, entrepreneurs, saints, and sinners are generally what they are because of scripts, not autonomous feelings, thinking, and doing in the here and now. Therefore they are not to blame or praise. People do in the present what they decided to do in the past regarding important matters. According to Berne, only trivial matters are decided by reason in the here and now.”

About the only hope for changing script-based feeling, thinking, and behaving it seems to me is by getting people with disparate scripts together in Game-free democratic dialectical discussions that enable participants to compare their script messages with those of others in relation to particular problems and opportunities confronting everyone so as to construct new consensual answers that are acceptable for everyone.

This is hard to do, impossible some say, because “Birds of a feather flock together,” only associating with their own kind, hearing the same authoritarian messages over and over from their elders, leaders, and managers, and their peers, in a process that creates an addictive psychological security blanket for themselves and their group. This human behavior ironically and unfortunately, when summed internationally, causes all species to become less secure. This happens because the process precludes the development of consensual answers for common problems and opportunities among groups that would have precluded conflict and future problems–and most disastrously the process causes isolated group leaders and members to develop feelings of superiority and self-righteousness that lead to discounting and hating other groups, ultimately leading to serious tissue-tearing wars, global warming, and specie extinctions, possibly also including sooner or later homo sapiens.

Power-hoggers at the highest levels in organizations such as the US government and congress and in most other countries, in the UK, India, France, Germany, Russia, China, Syria, Japan, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, Holland, Iran, Turkey, or wherever, and in multinational corporations of any national origin, having no Game-free democratic open dialectical discussions among themselves generating consensual answers for problems at their level have now brought Spaceship Earth to its most dangerous state of affairs of all time, largely caused by their hogged power being greatly increased, relative to that of their analogous power hoggers of the past, by the collective accumulated learning and knowledge of humans through time in Worlds 1, 2, and 3 that enabled humans to learn, mostly in the last one hundred years or so, how to generate and transmit electricity to power countless electrical devices; learn how to power automobiles, tractors, airplanes, tanks and other mobile devices by burning fossil fuel; learn how to detonate nuclear bombs to kill people in wars; learn how to use two digits, zeros and ones, to create words, numbers, pictures, and sounds in computers and cell phones; learn how to use digits to create data bases, money, and computer programs capable of controlling almost anything that moves; and learn how to do almost anything but cause ordinary humans to communicate and live together in harmony, peace, tranquility, and satisfaction.

Power hoggers at the top of countries around Spaceship Earth don’t cause ordinary humans to live in harmony, peace, tranquility, and satisfaction because they need them to fight one another so the power hoggers can continue to hog their power, and hog the money and wealth their hogged power enables them to steal. Yes, the international behavioral system of trade, commerce, and war at the highest power level around Spaceship Earth is now a system of unorganized and unregulated crime–theft–top power hoggers in all countries stealing and trying to steal whatever they can lay their hands on from underdogs in their own countries and from underdogs in other countries, ostensibly for the good of underdogs in their own countries.

Topdog power hoggers around Earth still use the time-honored and tested strategy of divide and conquer to weaken underdog power hoggers in their countries, bribing, paying, and rewarding them to satisfy, muzzle, and corral underdogs down the chain of command under their control, much like kings and dukes did to underdog barons, knaves, and serfs during the Middle Ages, making sure underdogs stay chained in their places in their groups, talking only to one another at their level about local gossip, daily chores, politicians, sports, children, parents, and what have you, maintaining a banal status quo, a banal status quo that gets so boring from time to time that many local underdogs actually look forward to traveling around Earth to fight in a war, possibly getting killed, yet possibly coming home a hero because of killing others.

Humans throughout recorded history have always been at war somewhere around Spaceship Earth; and the biggest promoters of war today are the power hoggers at the top of the US Deep State.

Figuring out how to eradicate power hogging, the most virulent, vicious, ubiquitous, insidious, pain-causing, lethal, possibly fatal mental illness contaminating the human species, is the best alternative for insuring long term human life aboard Spaceship Earth, or so it seems to me today.

Read my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” for more ideas on how this might happen.

SOURCES:

August 4, 2018

Here is a voting system, The Voters’ Bill of Rights, conceived and written by my long time friend from the 1950s at Wolfforth, Texas, one of the greatest supporters of democracy of our time, William John Cox, a retired lawyer and now political activist, that allows you to vote right now on whether to amend the US Constitution so as to guarantee a right to vote for all US citizens, which, you probably do not know, we do not have now. Take a look at the Voters’ Bill of Rights and cast your vote, now, to amend the US Constitution to include the Voters’ Bill of Rights at

https://thevote.io/.

August 4

Here is why we need Wm Cox’s amendments to the US Constitution rather than the Koch Brothers’ amendments

August 2, 2018

Sounds like complete gobbledegook to me. Economic theory does not prove diddily squat

“No, We Haven’t Drained the Earth’s Resources,” by Jonathan Newman, MISES.ORG, https://mises.org/wire/no-we-haven%E2%80%99t-drained-earth%E2%80%99s-resources.

August 2

Who has the time to keep up with this?

“A Fork-in-the-Road Approaches: The Short List – 95 Revelations from July, 2018,” by Doug “Uncola” Lynn, THE TOLL ONLINE.COM, https://thetollonline.com/2018/08/01/a-fork-in-the-road-approaches-the-short-list-95-revelations-from-july-2018/.

August 2

Say it ain’t so Joe

“The consciousness of hate,” by Renee Parsons, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24722.

July 31

Just what we need

“Participatory Democracy: A Tool for Social Change,” by Alexander Kolokotronis, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/participatory-democracy-a-tool-for-social-change/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 31

Sad indeed

“Why wages are going nowhere,” by Robert Reich, INTREPID REPORT, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24709.

July 30

Pathetic state of affairs

“Argentina Militarizes the Drug War,” by Brian Saady, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/30/argentina-militarizes-the-drug-war/.

July 30

Here’s a new article by Effective Learning Report colleague Joyce Wilson. Sounds like good advice given the nature of today’s world. Back in my day in grade school all it took was a metal lunch box, a pencil, some crayolas, construction paper, glue, scissors, ruler and maybe a protractor. I learned the ABCs while eating Campbell’s vegetable soup at home, and just ran around outside doing whatever I wanted to do with friends after getting home from school. It was a bit of a problem fitting in with the other kids in school for me in the first grade.

“How to Set Your Kids Up for a Successful Stress-Free New School Year,” by Joyce Wilson, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/how-to-set-your-kids-up-for-a-successful-stress-free-new-school-year/.

July 29

Here’s an upbeat post

“Ireland Divests,” by The Years Project, https://www.facebook.com/YearsOfLiving/videos/576588436076184/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDM0OTY1MTE4NjoxODk1ODczMzUzNzY3NjM1/.

July 29

One more nail in the coffin of democracy

“Jewish Nation-State Law: Why Israel was never a democracy,” by Ramzy Baroud, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24692.

July 29

Another must read article by John Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer

“No doubt about it: The Deep State is real and Trump is its latest tool,” by John W. Whitehead, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24694.

July 28

It appears most sheeple just want to keep up the insane circus conducted by ringmaster Donald Trump and forget about it

“The Burning Hot Planet,” by Robert Hunziker, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/the-burning-planet/.

July 28

Say it ain’t so Joe

“You Can’t Eat GDP”: Reminder That Most Workers Are Struggling as Trump and Corporate Media Tout Economic Growth,” by Jake Johnson, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/most-workers-are-struggling-as-trump-and-corporate-media-tout-economic-growth/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 28

Here is a great article by Joan Roelofs brought to you by way of Paul Craig Roberts, one of the greatest truth tellers around Spaceship Earth today, posted by Tyler Durden, editor of ZeroHedge.

It’s a shame we are so dependent on the socialism of what Joan Roelofs calls the military industrial congressional and everything else complex. I too have been a recipient of a lucrative and beneficial contract with the US military, a teaching position with Troy State University Europe, now Troy Univ, in Montgomery, Alabama, that had a contract with the Air Force, to teach management systems to Air Force personnel from all ranks working on a master’s degree, including some nationals of the countries, on US NATO bases at Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey; Hellinikon Air Base near Athens, Greece; Soesterberg Air Base near Soesterberg, Holland; Hessich Air Base near Hessich, Germany; and Aviano Air Base near Aviano, Italy, during 1982-83. I taught three month long courses at each of the locations, Soesterberg and Hessich concurrently.

I admired and was amazed by the operations and culture of the “World’s Largest Airline,” the US Air Force, and did my best to teach my students some things to improve their operations. The Air Force was by far the least racist and fairest organization I had ever experienced. It was a superb example of socialism and meritocracy in action. I expect much the same could be said about internal air force, navy, and army operations today.

It’s unfortunate the MIC’s reason to exist is to kill people in other countries, and it’s pathetic that the US treasury cannot use its copious supply of real tax money, borrowed real money, and funny money–created by punching digits into computers at the Federal Reserve System to buy treasury bonds, thereby putting so-called money in the US treasury to buy things with and to make payrolls–to create and fund non-military meritocratic socialistic systems to improve the internal operations and culture of the entire US economy and society, and Spaceship Earth itself, rather than waste most of it on the military industrial congressional and everything else complex, fostering conflict and hatred around Spaceship Earth, a funded parasitical system shielded and protected from the discipline of free market capitalism, providing good jobs and incomes for only a special, some say heroic, segment of the US population.

I come from a long line of Calvinist preachers, teachers, and military leaders in the US, a militaristic aggressive nation from its inception a little over two hundred years ago. One of my great grandfathers many times removed The Reverend Doctor James Maury, a French Huguenot, taught four US presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, in a boarding school in Virginia. A distant cousin, Matthew Fontaine Maury, a West Point graduate, and a commodore in the confederate navy, taught physics at the Virginia Military Institute and was one of the founders of Virginia Tech. He is the author of the book, famous in its time, Physical Geography of the Seas: The Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology,” which is still in print. Another distant cousin, Dabney Herndon Maury, also a West Point graduate, was a general fighting for the South in the War of Secession. He published a book titled, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars. On the other hand, a great great grandfather of mine, Thomas Sanford Gathright, opposed the South seceding from the Union and was a confederate draft dodger. Despite this, he was the first president of Texas A & M University, recommended for the post by Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. He was fired after a few years at Texas A & M and was replaced by a retired confederate general. President Gathright wanted Texas A & M to be more or less a liberal arts college rather than a military school.

I took ROTC one year at Hardin-Simmons University at Abilene, Texas, a Baptist college, during 1958-60, which was required for all male students for two years, but got out of it after one year after learning I could never become an officer because three vertebra in my spine had been fused in a surgery, regardless of the fact I was attending Hardin-Simmons on a basketball scholarship. I quit basketball and gave up the scholarship largely because of twisted ankles and blisters caused by the original birth defect causing the back surgery, and transferred to Texas Tech as a junior. The spinal fusion later caused a doctor to tell me during my Army draft examination at Amarillo, Texas for the Vietnam War that, “I’m sorry, but you are permanently disqualified from military service,” which was fine with me, considering how much I detested the bullshit of disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling “my baby,” my M-1 rifle, shining brass, and saluting and marching on the drill field for “inspections,” for academic credit during my one year of Army ROTC. Plus I had no desire to go to Vietnam and “get my ass shot off,” as a lot of kids called it in those days.

For more detail see my article, “A Synopsis of My Family Background,” by Richard John Stapleton, at http://www.effectivelearning.net/rjs-family-history.html.

“Paul Craig Roberts Exposes The All-Pervasive Military-Security Complex,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-27/paul-craig-roberts-exposes-all-pervasive-military-security-complex.

July 28

Say it ain’t so Joe

“American Society Would Collapse If It Weren’t For These 8 Myths,” by Lee Camp, TRUTHDIG.COM https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-society-would-collapse-if-it-werent-for-these-8-myths/.

July 28

This is the first time i have seen something like this, a rich man taking such a stance. I seriously regret the humanitarian trade-off it may entail, but I basically agree. It seems overpopulation is one of Spaceship Earth’s major problems, a major cause of global warming and climate change, and other problems, such as wars and mass killings. To save all of humanity individuals may have to sacrifice some of their parental feelings and needs, and have fewer children. I think we need a one woman one child rule for several generations to peacefully shrink the human population back down to a sustainable level. And capitalism has to change. Unfettered economic growth as a goal as we know it will have to go if the human species is to survive indefinitely around Spaceship Earth.

“Millionaire Democrat Wants To Tax Parents With More Than Two Kids As ‘Irresponsible Breeders’,” by Mac Slavo, SHTFPLAN.COM, http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/millionaire-democrat-wants-to-tax-parents-with-more-than-two-kids-as-irresponsible-breeders_07252018.

July 27

Seems to me a big problem is that many US citizens are disillusioned or hypocritical. They have learned too much or not enough about how the world really works, thanks to the Internet and psychological defense mechanisms, including learning how vicious US government is and has been in many cases. It’s not that they should not have learned it, since it is the truth; but learning it came at a cost to their mental and physical well being. How can any reasonably intelligent US citizen be truly happy knowing what foul deeds the US and its agents, such as the CIA and the military industrial complex have done to victims in the last two or so centuries? Whether US govt has been too vicious is debatable when you consider a government being vicious may be required for a nation to survive on a planet dominated by aggressive vicious governments, at least until one of them viciously shoots off a bunch of nuclear bombs from missile silos, as if shooting off fireworks celebrating a national holiday.

“Sorry, Bernie, We Need Radical Change,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/sorry-bernie-we-need-radical-change/.

July 26

Once again Paul Craig Roberts tells it like it is

“More lies from the corrupt elite,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24662.

July 25

Now here is an example of free market capitalism if ever there was one, actually socialism, by that great Republican exemplar of capitalism, Donald Trump, who caused the need for the $12 billion rescue welfare handout by starting a trade war. Where is the money to come from? The same place the socialized non market military industrial intelligence people get their money. Funny money of course, if all else fails. All Trump’s US Treasury employees have to do is sell the Federal Reserve System some more treasury bonds, which the Federal Reserve will pay for with digits they call money they will punch into their computers, if nobody else wants to buy the bonds, and the US Treasury will use that so-called money to relieve the distressed farmers. Sooner or later there will be a day of reckoning.

“Trump to Provide $12 Billion in Aid to Farmers, Critics Cry “Welfare”, by Yuval Rosenberg, MSN.COM, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-to-provide-12-billion-in-aid-to-farmers-critics-cry-welfare/ar-AAAmNJN?ocid=ob-fb-enus-280.

July 28

I think trump’s personality and character and most of his actions as president are and have been abominable, but in this case I agree with Paul Craig Roberts: this Russiaphobia media coverage is an insane overblown distraction, primarily to save face for Hillary and the Democrats, and to provide an enemy for the US military security complex to justify their existence and to acquire US tax money and funny money to fund their positions, ambitions and egos. Assuming some Russian subjects did hack the DNC, causing Trump to win, what difference does it make? There is still no proof Trump is the greater evil as president, and Russia is still no threat to the security of the US, except from nuclear bombs, which the Russian govt is smart enough not to shoot off, unless the US shoots at them first with nukes. If what the alleged Russian hackers found out and disclosed about Hillary and the DNC caused her to lose maybe we are better off for it, especially considering her war mongering proclivities disclosed during the campaign. Some of the dirty linen disclosed about Hillary, her husband, and her fund raising during the campaign was seriously egregious, regardless of who was responsible for disclosing it, Russian hackers, Seth Rich, wikileaks, or whomever.

“Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace With Russia,” by Paul Craig Roberts, PAULCRAIGROBERTS.ORG, https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/07/16/is-president-trump-a-traitor-because-he-wants-peace-with-russia/.

July 23

Here is my report about my first Ogeechee Economic Forum

“First Ogeechee Economic Forum,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVELEARNINGREPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/first-ogeechee-economic-forum/.

July 21

Pathetic situation. Brave reporting by a brave lady. So sorry the US is a part of this

“As Millions Face Starvation, American-Made Bombs Are Killing Civilians,” by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/video/as-millions-face-starvation-american-made-bombs-are-killing-civilians/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare

July 20

Say it ain’t so Joe

“It’s all fake: Reality TV that masquerades as American politics,” by John W. Whitehead, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24636.

July 20

Oh yes it does. It’s necessary for the US Military-Security Complex to get paid $700 billion per year by the US treasury without looking like greedy grown-up boy scouts enjoying jamborees around Spaceship Earth

“War Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore,” by Tom Streithorst, THEAMERICANCONSERVATIVE.COM, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/war-doesnt-make-sense-anymore/.

July 20

I don’t believe they are doing this intentionally but I agree many of them inadvertently are creating causation in this direction

“Crazed US presstitutes drive the world to nuclear war,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPID REPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24619.

July 19

Fake news everywhere

“The Crummy Good Economy and the New Serfdom,” by Frank Stricker, COOUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/18/the-crummy-good-economy-and-the-new-serfdom/.

July 19

Excellent Amy Goodman interview of two experts regarding the Helsinki meeting of Trump and Putin. I could not agree more with Glenn Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist

“Is Trump-Putin Summit a Danger or Crucial Diplomacy Between Nuclear Powers?” by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, https://truthout.org/video/is-trump-putin-summit-a-danger-or-crucial-diplomacy-between-nuclear-powers/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 18

The US constitution has enslaved a majority to the whims and prejudices of a minority, and it should be changed, as Paul Street’s magnificently crafted treatise here shows

“Time to Stop Playing “Simon Says” with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/13/time-to-stop-playing-simon-says-with-james-madison-and-alexander-hamilton/.

July 17

Say it ain’t so Joe

“Oil Underground in Neuquen, Argentina – and a New US Military Base There,” by W. T. Whitney, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/17/oil-underground-in-neuquen-argentina-and-a-new-us-military-base-there/.

July 17

Does it matter?

“Percentage of Americans Who Believe Climate Change is Real Reaches New High,” Jerri-Lynn Scofield, TRUTHOUIT.ORG, Naked Capitalism, https://truthout.org/articles/percentage-of-americans-who-believe-climate-change-is-real-reaches-new-high/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 17

Say it ain’t so Joe

“Commandos Sans Frontieres: The Global Growth of US Special Operations Forces,” by Nick Turse, TomDispatch, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/commandos-sans-frontieres-the-global-growth-of-us-special-operations-forces/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 17

This lady minces no words

“Peace Talk Between Nuclear Superpowers Offends America’s Assholes and Morons,” by Caitlin Johnstone, MEDIUM.COM, https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/peace-talk-between-nuclear-superpowers-offends-americas-assholes-and-morons-14158ef5cade.

July 17

Say it ain’t so Joe

“The Global Reset Will Come Like A Thief in The Night,” by Egon Von Greyerz, KINGWORLDNEWS.COM, https://kingworldnews.com/alert-greyerz-the-global-reset-will-come-like-a-thief-in-the-night/.

July 16

Agree

“Undermining Trump-Putin Summit Means Promoting War,” by Dave Lindorff, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG., https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/16/undermining-trump-putin-summit-means-promoting-war/.

July 16

Agree

“When Did Russia Become an Adversary?” by Gary Leupp, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/16/when-did-russia-become-an-adversary/.

July 16

Scary

“Global Temperature Projections Could Double as the World Burns,” by Dahr Jamail, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/global-temperature-projections-could-double-as-the-world-burns/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 15

One of the biggest ripoffs of all time

“Big Pharma and the Rise of Gangster Capitalism,” by Charles Hugh Smith, CHARLESHUGHSMITH.BLOGSPOT.COM, http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2018/07/big-pharma-and-rise-of-gangster.html.

July 15

Say it ain’t so Joe

“World’s Largest Shipping Company Collapses As Trade War Reality Strikes,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-13/worlds-largest-shipping-company-collapses-trade-war-reality-strikes.

July 15

Maybe this self-described stable genius Trump is not quite as mindless as he seems

“Americans Voted for Real Change And It’s Coming,” by Eric Peters, CIO, One River Asset Management, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-15/hedge-fund-cio-americans-voted-real-change-and-its-coming.

July 15

Say it ain’t so Joe

“The Military is A Jobs Program…For Immigrants & Many Others,” by Ryan McMaken, MISES.ORG, https://mises.org/wire/military-jobs-program-%E2%80%94-immigrants-and-many-others.

July 14

Say it ain’t so Joe

“A New World Order: Brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State,” by John W. Whitehead, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24580.

July 13

One of the most depressing articles I have read in some time

“Survival of the richest: the wealthy are plotting to leave us behind,” by Douglas Rushkoff, CNBC.COM, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/11/survival-of-the-richest-the-wealthy-are-plotting-to-leave-us-behind.html?__source=sharebar|facebook&par=sharebar.

July 12

Say it ain’t so Joe

“What’s Happenng in Nicaragua?” by Task Force On The Americas, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/12/whats-happening-in-nicaragua/.

July 12

A good long article on why climate change is real

“The Sinister Underbelly of Climate Change Denial,” by David Mattson, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/12/the-sinister-underbelly-of-climate-change-denial/.

July 11

Say it ain’t so Joe

“America bombs, Europe gets the refugees. That’s evil,” by Eric Zuesse, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24541.

July 11

Sad to say

“The Discovery of Central American Suffering,” by Nick Alexandrov, COUNRTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/10/the-discovery-of-central-american-suffering/.

July 11

Say it ain’t so Joe

“Coarse Culture Resurgent Racism,” by Tom H. Hastings, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/11/coarse-culture-resurgent-racism/.

July 11

Say it ain’t so Joe

“King Trump,” by Paul Hillier, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/11/king-trump/.

July 11

Say it ain’t so Joe

“Trump’s Supreme Court: Capitalism and Democracy Can No Longer Exist,” by Sharmini Peries, The Real News, TROUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/video/trumps-supreme-court-capitalism-and-democracy-can-no-longer-coexist/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare.

July 10

No surprise here

“Experts now rank the United States Among the world’s ‘declining democracies’,” by Hunter, DAILYKOS.COM, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/7/1778307/-Experts-now-rank-the-United-States-among-the-world-s-declining-democracies.

Feel free to forward, share, print, reprint, or otherwise disseminate this issue of The Earthian any way you see fit. RJS

By Joyce Wilson

Summer seems like it just started, but before you know it, your kids will be heading back to school again. A new school year can be a source of excitement for many children, but for those with anxiety, it can be a source of major stress. You can help relieve your child’s fears of going back to school, by working to ease them into their new routines. From encouraging learning to finding ways to help them relax, here are a few ideas to get your kid started on the right foot for the new school year:

Get the Right Gear

When it comes to getting back to school, helping kids pick some new gear is a good way to get them excited about going to class. One of the easiest ways to take some of the stress out of homework is to pick up a laptop for your kids. Buying your child their own laptop will encourage them to use technology to find information, explore the world and make getting their work done a bit easier. As an added bonus, you can ease some of your own anxiety by not having to worry about sticky hands and spills on your own computers. Refer to this guide to make a thoughtful choice on a kid-friendly laptop to help them take on the next school year.

Start Mornings Right

A smooth start in the morning can reduce your child’s anxiety throughout the day. So if mornings are typically hectic in your house, find ways to makeover your mornings before school starts again. Waking up a little earlier can allow time for you and your kids to get ready at a slower pace. You can even make time in the mornings for some calming meditation, a proven remedy for anxiety and tension. Set up a meditation space in your home and dedicate a few minutes each morning to using it. If your kids are having a hard time getting started, use an app to guide them through their meditation practice and help them breathe with intention. Don’t forget to get in a filling breakfast too, to help boost your child’s focus and concentration in school.

Stick to a Regular Routine

One of the best ways to help your kids beat anxiety about their school schedule is to set up a regular routine during the summer. Keeping kids on a normal schedule can help reduce the stress they feel by a sudden routine shift. A regular schedule can also help children get to bed easier, so they can get the sleep they need to perform well in school and stay in control of their emotions. During summer break, have kids go to bed and wake up as they would during the school year. Fill their days with engaging, educational activities to keep their brains sharp and ready to tackle academic challenges at school. If you work full-time, look into local summer camps that will keep your kids busy.

Help Them Relax at Home

School can be a major source of stress for your kids. From pressure in the classroom to pressures from friends, it can be hard for kids to escape tensions at school. Make sure they have plenty of ways to relax when they are back at home. Create calm in your child’s room by keeping it organized and free of clutter. Encourage your children to talk to you about the stress they experience at school, or have them express their anxiety in productive ways like art or journaling. Journaling is a good way for kids with anxiety to write out their worries and relieve their brains of any stress that is preventing them from relaxing.

Thinking about starting a new year at school can cause tension for many children. Help relieve your child’s anxiety by using these tips to calm their worries and get them ready to face any challenges they may face when they head back to school again.

Contact Joyce Wilson at [email protected], Teacherspark.org.

 

By Richard John Stapleton

The first Ogeechee Economic Forum took place Saturday, July 21, 2018, from 10-11 a.m. in the Stapleton Learning Company offices at 32 East Main Street in Statesboro, Georgia, USA.

The day of the forum started for the moderator at eight o’clock with a steak biscuit and a cup of coffee paid for at Daylight Donuts on his way to his office (Lewell Akins’s bookkeeping office in the old Akins Hardware Store), consumed at his desk, which is at the back of the now Parker Realty Building, across a side street from the Sea Island Bank parking lot, which is donated for a Farmer’s Market some Saturday mornings, offering locally grown farm produce, home cooked delicacies, and arts and crafts.

Soothing folk music produced at the Farmer’s Market, heard around the town square and the Bulloch County Courthouse, helped create an upbeat peaceful atmosphere in the early hours of a sunny Saturday morning.

A farmer delivering to the market a full load of ripe watermelons stacked in the bed of his small 1960s-era Chevrolet pickup was reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.

The Ogeechee Economic Forum is conducted free of charge to the public.

The forum is designed to provide open, free, fair, democratic face-to-face discussions of relevant economic problems and opportunities as explained in “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy,” by Richard John Stapleton, the forum moderator and the founder of Effective Learning Company.

Effective Learning Company is a holding company for Stapleton Learning Company, a provider of mathematics tutoring and economic education services, and Effective Learning Publications, an international publisher of economic, entrepreneurship, small business management, business policy, and transactional analysis books, blogs, and articles.

The ventures were started by Richard and Deborah Stapleton at 32 East Main Street when they retired from GA SO Univ in 2005, Debbye retiring as an assistant professor of mathematics and Rick as a professor of management.

The Ogeechee Economic Forum is non-partisan politically and theistically, neither advocating nor opposing any political party or religious denomination. The purpose of the forum is to discuss the causes and cures of economic problems, and related political, social, educational, and military problems in a fact-based manner. On the other hand, forum participants may express their religious beliefs on a first come first serve basis with no interruptions in a collegial manner.

The local Democratic Party had a meeting of their own a few blocks away at twelve noon on the same Saturday as the first Ogeechee Economic Forum meeting at ten o’clock.

The problem discussed in the first Ogeechee Economic Forum was caused by recent events affecting Georgia Southern University, starting with the surprise business decision by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents over a year ago to merge Georgia Southern University in Statesboro with Armstrong State University in Savannah, which has caused considerable consternation, stress, anxiety, and uncertainty in the academic communities of both universities, especially since the unfortunate departure of the well-liked and well-qualified Dr. Jaimie Hebert, the last president of GA SO Univ, who lasted almost two years, and the appointment by the University System of Georgia’s Chancellor’s Office of an acting GA SO Univ president, an employee in the Chancellor’s Office, not holding a doctorate, an MBA in accounting, with little or no faculty input at GA SO Univ.

Faculty at Georgia Southern still do not have their contracts for the 2018-19 academic year and it’s uncertain when they will learn whether they will get a raise for the year.

There is a plan in place involving over one hundred committees to complete the merger of GA SO and Armstrong that was overseen by Dr. Hebert.

Hopefully this top-down corporate-like merger of two universities will be consummated somehow in the near future without seriously increasing the existing levels of stress, uncertainty, consternation, and anxiety in the GA SO Univ academic community. If this peremptory top-down administrative behavior continues unabated most likely fully-qualified competitive GA SO Univ faculty with excellent academic credentials, like Dr. Hebert, will be migrating to more democratically managed universities, if they can find open positions there.

As a two-year member of the GA SO Univ Retirees Association Council, it was obvious to me that retired faculty were not pleased that the traditional GA SO Univ Retiree’s Luncheon, funded by GA SO for decades, was unceremoniously cancelled with no excuses this past spring.

I was also surprised to learn this spring that over one hundred thousand dollars of principal and accrued interest deposited in a bank account by the Georgia Southern Faculty and Staff Club, mostly contributed by the members of the original GA SO Faculty Club, of which I was an active dues-paying member for some thirty years,which had not been active for over a decade, had been recently given by a committee to GA SO Univ for a program that would give the money away in $500 grants to individual GA SO faculty and staff members who experience unexpected hardships in their lives.

No attempt was made to contact the living members of the Old Faculty Club, and younger members who joined after the club was renamed, to explain why it had suddenly become imperative to do something with the accrued Faculty and Staff Club money, rather than let it continue to accrue interest in a bank account as it had been for ten or more years, and secure their input about what to do with it. The committee processes were not made public and the decision about what to do with the money was of questionable appropriateness. While giving the money away in charitable $500 grants to individual faculty and staff members would be laudable in some cases, it seems to me the money would be more appropriately spent in support of the collective interests and activities of all retired faculty and staff of GA SO Univ, or in support of students in the form of merit-based academic scholarships.

It seems to me the principal and accrued interest of the Old Faculty Club, which had been renamed the Faculty and Staff Club, should be returned to the bank account in that name and all living club members that contributed monetarily to building the account balance should have an opportunity to vote on what to do with the existing balance, which at the time it was turned over to GA SO, according to some estimates, was about $140,000.

Unfortunately we cannot know with certainty what is the true state of affairs in this case, as is true in most economic and business cases. Have the University System of Georgia Board of Regents and the Chancellor’s Office acted inappropriately deciding to merge GA SO and Armstrong? Did the Chancellor’s office inappropriately appoint one of its own employees with an MBA the acting president of GA SO? Is the economic situation of GA SO so uncertain that faculty could not be issued contracts as usual, at least by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year? Did administrators at GA SO inappropriately disperse Faculty and Staff Club funds?

There are no provably true right answers for any of these questions since we do not have sufficient facts to know the true state of affairs, and for sure we do not know what are the true causes. Facts are costly and few people have sufficient time, money, and expertise to dig up enough of them to achieve certainty in real world cases. So most of the time we have to admit the higher ups may know more than we do and may have done the right thing. It may be the economic situations of GA SO and Armstrong have deteriorated more in recent years than most people realize and top down austere arbitrary measures are justified to deal with them. It may be the wages and salaries of some faculty and staff people are now so low that GA SO Univ needs a slush fund such as the Old Faculty Club money to help those in dire need. Time will tell in some cases, as more facts naturally come to light.

The next meeting of the Ogeechee Economic Forum will be Saturday, August 18, 2018 at the same location and time, 10-11 a.m., again the third Saturday of the month.

Hope to participate with you then and there face-to-face.

 

Feel free to forward, share, email, snail mail, print or otherwise disseminate this article any way you see fit.

Richard John Stapleton, Editor & Publisher, Effective Learning Report, Effective Learning Publications, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, July 23, 2018

 

by Richard John Stapleton

I argued in my article “Moving Farther West to Escape Problems at Home is No Longer an Option,” published August 29, 2013 in the Intrepid Report, that capitalism and most religions are now almost obsolete; and, given the advent of modern computers, computer programmers, computer software and the Internet, it is now technologically feasible to construct a new economic system vastly more efficient, effective and fair than what now exists on Earth.

Reading Buckminster Fuller’s book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) back in the 1970s stimulated some of these ideas.He was the first person I read to suggest computers are the best hope for human survival on Earth, that humans should never do work that machines can do better, and that unemployment can be eliminated overnight by governments issuing mind grants to all citizens, paying them to think.

Progressives now argue something must be done about poorly regulated quasi-obsolete economic systems, political systems, religious systems, legal systems, production systems, and distribution systems that have resulted in the richest 20 percent of Earthians, of about seven billion humans now alive on Earth, consuming about 76 percent of all goods and services produced every year on Earth, with the bottom 20 percent consuming about 1.5 percent of all goods and services, while a small free Earthian elite, about 26 million humans own and control about 40 percent of Earth’s wealth, living in luxury with almost unlimited options for travel and entertainment, living cheek by jowl among billions of humans mired in poverty, owning almost nothing, doing almost the equivalent of slave labor day in and day out all their lives, yet living in constant fear of being fired from their jobs for disloyalty or slackness, who are condemned to poverty by their wages, in most cases within miles of where they were accidentally born, where they grew up with little or no opportunity to learn relevant knowledge about how the world works, in some cases not even having had an opportunity to learn how to read.

I am not advocating abolishing capitalism, communism, socialism, theism, atheism, or any religious ism, since I think certain aspects of capitalism and most religions are humane and beneficial in certain ways, such as, in the case of capitalism, the decentralization of production at the entrepreneurial and small business level and people being rewarded for creating new ideas, products and services.On the other hand, I think the inevitable centralizing of wealth and power in large corporations and in the hands of the elite rich caused by capitalism is an abomination, causing many of Earth’s most threatening problems, including global warming.But I do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Here’s an idea that happened to me that entails using a management science technique to eventually solve the Earthian inequality problem, a major cause of today’s North African and Middle Eastern civil war tragedies. To my knowledge I am the first Earthian to whom such an idea happened, first published in 1970 in my doctoral dissertation, An Analysis of Rural Manpower Migration Patterns in the South Plains Region of Texas, and later in 2008 in my book Business Voyages, a business bible for people who would like to do the right thing for all Earthians.

An Earthian is any individual member of any species of fauna or flora aboard Spaceship Earth.

Buckminster Fuller informed me in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth that he believed computers would eventually save humanity; but I, to my knowledge, am the first Earthian to show in some detail how it could be done with computers, computer programming, and the management science technique linear programming. Buckminster Fuller invented the appellation Spaceship Earth and the word Earthian.

Here is my schema for how Buckminster Fuller’s general idea might be brought to fruition to save Spaceship Earth from self-destructing, from my book Business Voyages, first published in 2008, from a passage embarking on page 617:

“It still seems to me Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) that I first read in 1973 had some of the most creative and cogent ideas I have read for getting humanity out of its ongoing mess. One of Fuller’s ideas was that people should not do work that machines can do better. Another of his ideas was that people should be paid to think with mind grants to maintain full employment. Bringing this about in World 1 would require a lot of change, possibly entailing decreasing the human population aboard Spaceship Earth through lower birth rates over time, but it seems to me Fuller’s ideas about the nature of work, full employment, and prosperity for all could be implemented, perhaps within a century or so. According to Fuller (1969), we need more great pirates, modern-day equivalents of world traders of the past who regulated affairs around the globe because of what they learned sailing their trading ships from one world to another.

“I do not think any of the economic ideas I have heard from Republican or Democratic political candidates in the US in the last year (2003-2004) will do anything to solve problems such as overpopulation in poor countries and jobs being outsourced to poor countries. Seemingly politicians of all stripes will not or cannot face up to the fact that wages are low in poor countries because there are billions of poor people in such countries willing to work hard for a pittance compared to wages and salaries in rich countries, and so long as such conditions exist workers in rich countries will experience inexorable downward pressure on their wages and salaries because of the iron laws of economic competition and supply and demand, which can only be temporarily suppressed in the short run by politicians bending the rules of the game for their favored few through measures such as tariffs, subsidies, currency manipulation, deficit spending, tax reductions, interest rate reductions, and money-printing.

“The long-term solution is for all people aboard Spaceship Earth to get rich, free, and friendly, but to reach that happy state of affairs much patience and sacrifice will be required of billions of poverty-stricken people around the globe–social heroes and martyrs who peacefully live their lives knowing they inherited a relatively mean, short, brutish and unfair fate (Hobbes, 1651).

“Although some biological constructivists think humanity is involved in a meaningless drift in the infinity of time and space, it’s possible most people aboard Spaceship Earth could achieve satisfying lives devoid of economic insecurity and threat of terrorism and military attack within one hundred years. It seems to me this is possible with current rates of progress using free enterprise market systems and democratic political processes, coupled with the ongoing evolutionary bottom-up discovery and application of scientific knowledge (Stapleton & Stapleton, 1998), assuming humans do not blow themselves up with weapons of mass destruction or render themselves extinct with environmental pollution in the meantime. On the other hand, it’s possible that new economic, social, and political alternatives can be tried that might accelerate the current rate of progress; assuming human beings are intelligent enough and creative enough to co-construct them.

“Being a good entrepreneur, or any other kind of good human being, is not easy these days. Despite the gathering storm clouds clearly visible ahead and the wind, heat, and choppy water we are now experiencing caused by religious fanaticism, terrorism, overpopulation, energy depletion, and global warming, the entrepreneur remains the captain of his or her ship.

“It’s not easy to remain positive and work hard every day running a tight ship dealing with the problems and details of one’s particular daily existence while one is constantly reminded by news media that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. While the world may be going to hell in a hand basket at some time, it is not going to self- destruct today, this year, or this decade. Despite the problems of World 1, there remain myriad opportunities–right now–for entrepreneurs all over Earth to invent, produce, and sell new products, services, and processes, and get rich, as many are doing.

“The problem is that if everyone should ignore global warming, overpopulation, religious fanaticism, energy depletion, and terrorism, focusing solely on her or his personal life problems, goals, and ambitions, problems of global warming, overpopulation, religious fanaticism, energy depletion, and terrorism are sure to worsen; and if negative trends caused by these problems continue indefinitely, the “world” could come to an end as prophesied by religious fanatics. To help insure this does not happen, the time may come when all conscientious and intelligent human beings, including self-interested entrepreneurs in the process of getting rich, must contribute a significant portion of their time and money to solving the world’s problems if “the world” is to continue to exist.

“Solving problems caused by global warming, religious fanaticism, overpopulation, energy depletion, and terrorism may become the moral equivalent of fighting in world wars, as President Jimmy Carter of the US pointed out regarding the energy crisis of the 1970’s, requiring courageous efforts of mythic proportions and the sacrifices of millions of heroes.

“It seems to me a mathematical formulation exists that one day may develop for Earthians power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc² in physics. This formulation is Max or Min CjXj, subject to, AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi, which is a general form of the linear programming model, which has been around for many years in management science, operations research, and linear algebra courses. It seems to me Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi symbolizes knowledge that gives the human species about as much potential power to perpetuate itself as E=mc² symbolizes knowledge that gives the human species the power to exterminate itself.

“The upshot of this linear programming discussion is that if computers and computer programs become powerful enough, they might eventually store data in matrices for food, clothing, shelter, energy, transportation, and medicine requirements for every single human living on Planet Earth. These requirements could be summed to develop the total requirement for food, clothing, shelter, energy, etc. for Earth as a whole, per week, month, year, or whatever. An Xj matrix stored in a magnum computer system might contain all the various products required by humans, a Bi matrix in the linear programming formulation might contain all the types of resources available to produce the required goods, which will constrain production below some limit, an Aij matrix in the LP model might contain the amount of various resources required to produce one unit of each necessity of life, or Xj, and a Cj matrix in the linear programming formulation might contain the relative utility of each alternative good, or Xj.

“The Magnum Computer System could then scientifically compute the optimum number of units of alternative products to produce for humans then alive on Earth, once data have been read into the requisite data bases, by someone clicking an icon energizing a “Do loop” of the magnum program to do the processing of the Magnum Production Schedule. Once the goods are produced the Magnum Computer System could then scientifically distribute them among all humans living on Earth using another quantitative management science technique known as the transportation model to minimize transportation costs from raw materials to finished products to consumers. Such a process would insure the world’s resources necessary to sustain human life were used in an optimum manner and were consumed in a generally fair manner.

“Computers can not only store and manipulate data in two dimensional matrices in rows and columns on one plane; they can store and manipulate data in three dimensional matrices that not only go east-west in rows and north-south in columns on one plane, but up and down on different planes. Instead of only having an M x N matrix, you can have an M x N x O matrix, and tell a computer to store data in the cell located at the intersection of the Mth row, the Nth column, and the Oth plane, much like you would park an automobile in a particular space of a multi-story garage. And you can have many more dimensions if you like. You can put M x N x O matrices in larger labeled matrices, and put those labeled matrices in even larger matrices, and so on. Xt,k,c,q,n,p,g, stored in a computer, could be a variable representing the gth good required by the pth person, in the nth city, of the qth state, of the cth country, of the kth continent, of the tth year, entailing accessing data in 7 interrelated matrices, or dimensions. Subscripts attached to variables such as X in this example tell the computer how to track down specific values through the maze of interrelated matrices. Numbers for the subscripts can theoretically increment from 1 to any finite number (the number of cells in the matrix) and entail that many passes through nested do-loops (7 in this example) in the overall computer algorithm (sequence of iterative mathematical steps) to develop aggregate totals. The process is similar to storing data in labeled files on your personal computer, putting those labeled files in labeled folders, and then putting those labeled folders into other labeled folders, etc., and using subscripts to keep track of what value you put in what variable in what file of what folder.

“Writing a computer program to manage a global economy would require many thousands of man-hours of flowcharting and programming time and a magnum computer system. Such requirements for such a project might approximate the man-hour and technical knowledge and skill requirements of the Manhattan project that produced the first atom bomb, or the US space program that put the first man on the moon. Writing such a program would require flowcharting and programming skill many orders of magnitude greater than mine. I have not written a line of computer code since earning my doctorate in 1969, and I learned only one computer language, Fortran IV.

“Using linear programming to schedule world production and distribution of the necessities of life is at present little more than business science fiction, however mathematically feasible this is or shall become as computers and computer software become more powerful and sophisticated. On the other hand, such a system may evolve through time through synergistic learning as more and more humans comprehend what is going on. For more on synergistic learning and comprehension refer back to Buckminster Fuller’s definitions of synergy and comprehension in Chapter 1 of Business Voyages, “Where to Go.”

“It’s possible a computerized global economic system shall evolve for the production and distribution of the necessities of life–food, clothing, shelter, and medicine–with the national identities, cultures, political systems, economic systems, religions, and so forth of the some 200 nations now on Earth remaining intact. Free enterprise might exist for everything but the production and distribution of the necessities of life. I have no idea what are the probabilities of any of these things happening, but it seems to me they are possible, which, it seems to me, is hopeful for all mankind.

“Today in reality the market system, composed of billions of isolated customers voting for the producing of various goods by buying things, is used to decide what to produce and how to distribute the produced items. The market system works pretty well for billions of people on Earth, but poorly for a billion or so, those who go to bed hungry at night. Politicians and bureaucrats spasmodically intervene at various times and places based on impulses, fears, power needs, sympathy, and other motivations to provide charitable aid for fellow humans clearly in need of help, regardless of where the people needing help might have been unlucky enough to have been born on Earth, and regardless of global market determinations, in a loose system of governments and charitable organizations including the United Nations that has enabled the human species as a whole to muddle through.”

“Management scientists using something like linear programming to schedule, produce, and distribute the necessities of life for all humanity as outlined above would prove those in control of the Magnum Computer System truly cared about every single human alive on Earth, creating a World 1 in which every man, woman, and child alive on Earth would know for a fact she or he was truly appreciated and protected by a rational fair global system during her or his infinitesimally short existence on Earth. The implementation of such a system might finally untie the Gordian knot that has kept much of mankind threatened and terrorized by fear, ignorance, poverty, hunger, disease, misery and violence since time immemorial.”

According to the philosopher Karl Popper, quoted in Business Voyages,”World 1 includes hydrogen and helium, the heavier elements, liquids and crystals, and living organisms; World 2 includes consciousness of self and of death, and sentience or animal consciousness; and World 3 includes works of art and science and technology, human language, and theories of self and of death.”

To read inside Business Voyages and read a review and maybe buy yourself a copy go to https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810.

It seems Earthians must make major changes or live with the probabilities of an environmental catastrophe. Better birth control measures are needed to reduce overpopulation, a major cause of global warming; and changes must be made in economic strategies and belief systems that inevitably cause Earth’s resources to wind up in the hands of fewer and fewer humans while most of Earth’s population becomes poorer and poorer, while the environment is polluted more and more, having possibly already passed a tipping point.

Here’s a an idea for dealing with the over-population problem, which would peacefully shrink Earth’s human population from generation to generation until a sustainable population level is reached, by Earthian human females having no more than one child each, of either sex, assuming they were sanctioned to do so.

A solution for the Earthian plight probably entails humans inventing a bottom-up religion and a spiritual god, similar to the god and religion advocated by Michael Adzema and Native American Elders. Adzema defines a spiritual god as the highest moral, ethical and spiritual state individual humans are capable of achieving, becoming an Atman, using pure subjectivity. Native American elders conceive of god as the Great Spirit that exists in all nature, spiritually present in Earth itself, in its waters, mountains, and animals. These gods are not commanding gods ruling from above, but rather exist in the minds of humans who feel their presence here on Earth.

Native Americans worshiped their ancestors, sensing, feeling and reliving the ego states, beliefs and behaviors that had been introjected into their ancestors’ neuronal networks, from first-hand exposure to mothers in their wombs, and continuing outside their wombs interacting with their parents and grandparents who showed and used ancestral ego states, which were passed like a baton between runners in a track race every generation since time immemorial, causing the last generation produced to feel, think and do in the here and now much as their ancestors had, which like all human processes on Earth produced both good and bad effects from one perspective or another depending on circumstances.

Both the old God of the Book and the new US surveillance and drone technological god of computers and the Internet rely on threats, fear and intimidation to cause humans to do the right thing in the opinion of the gods, using top-down quasi-legal systems with built-in punishments for wrongdoers. The old God also promised a fantastical reward in a heaven throughout eternity as his major incentive for sinners who signed up for his program and who met his expectations and requirements when alive on Earth.

One can build the case what humans need now is a non-commanding bottom-up belief system that supports the interests of all Earthians that will produce learning that will cause them to do the right thing for themselves and others, causing them to do what is necessary for all to survive and experience satisfaction during their infinitesimally short lives, simply because the right thing is the right thing for all species on Earth, with no thought of earning a fantastical eternal reward in some sort of heaven.

The old God fostered economic and legal systems that encouraged the selfish acquisition of land and goods, including offspring; the new bottom-up god would peacefully encourage the sharing of resources so as to enhance the welfare and survival of all Earthians, not merely the richest, most powerful, most manipulative, most callous, most hypocritical, most deceitful, and most obedient humans.

From a practical standpoint, a program similar to the one above would probably entail the internationalization of most large corporations and industries so as to produce and distribute the necessities of life in a fair way.This would entail an overhaul of the way people work and live and their human relationships. In this New World all humans would be born free and empowered; and, like those born truly rich today, they would not have to worry about ever having to work for a living as long as they lived.

Under this new regime, everyone born on Earth would inherit at birth the same number of stock shares in Spaceship Earth, Inc., which would pay sufficient dividends to provide a decent life year after year until death.

Some onerous repetitive maintenance jobs in house cleaning, health care, farming, construction, manufacturing, and the like probably can never be fully automated; and some humans will have to do these jobs; but many humans could be motivated to do those jobs by allowing the market system to take care of this much as it does now, if there was no risk of workers doing this work losing their birthright Spaceship Earth, Inc. dividend checks.

Anyone lucky enough to inherit strong fast muscles, height, weight and good coordination and a will to win with a willingness to train and work hard could still make extra money playing professional sports.The same goes for people who might inherit exceptionally sexy physiques and artistic and entertainment talents of all sorts. I suppose it might be fair for some of these athletes and entertainers to get filthy rich as they do now, while retaining their Spaceship Earth, Inc. dividend checks; but the main thing would be to make sure every Earthian born had a good life guaranteed with Spaceship Earth dividend checks.

This, surely, would finally get rid of the need for large expensive military forces and wars to keep people employed and to kill people to reduce human populations to prevent famines.

Most Earthians satisfied with their dividend checks from Spaceship Earth, Inc. could spend their time reading, writing and solving math problems, visiting with one another, communicating on the Internet, doing scientific experiments, mowing their own grass with push lawnmowers, perhaps growing some of their own eggs, milk and vegetables in their back yards, cooking their own food, attending plays and art shows, and traveling now and then on trains and airplanes to see firsthand new, beautiful and inspiring sights around Earth.

For ramifications see Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, a business bible for people who would like to do the right thing for all Earthians.

 

Richard John Stapleton is an emeritus professor of business policy, ethics and entrepreneurship who writes on business and politics at https://www.effectivelearning.net. He is the Editor & Publisher of the Effective Learning Report, and The Earthian.

Please feel free to forward, share, print, reprint, or otherwise disseminate this article any way you see fit.

 

THE EARTHIAN ­       –         1

THE EARTHIAN is a digest of linked articles containing facts, events, analysis, perspectives, and comments concerned about existential states of affairs around Spaceship Earth.

Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, www.effectivelearning.net, June 15, 2018

Or So It Seems to Me Today

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, Editor & Publisher

I have used the word Earthian for many years, since encountering it back in the 1970s in Buckminster Fuller’s great little book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, one of the most satisfying books I have read. Apparently Fuller invented the word Earthian, and the appellation Spaceship Earth, implying Earth is something that has to be maintained by humans monitoring regular interdependent scientific processes in the infinity of airless time and space, by keeping trees and other plants emitting oxygen that humans breathe, humans that emit carbon dioxide that plants ingest, to make more oxygen in perpetual motion closed systems. Such production systems have to be kept in synchronous interdependent regularities, requiring not cutting down and burning up too many trees, and not putting too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere burning fossil fuels, otherwise serious trouble can happen, as most humans should know given what they have been exposed to in various media about global warming.

 What is an Earthian? The term applies mostly to humans aboard Spaceship Earth, aka planet Earth; but it includes more than humans: The word Earthian covers all individual members of all species of fauna and flora living aboard Spaceship Earth.

A major purpose of The Earthian is to encourage learning that might help preserve all forms of life aboard Spaceship Earth in any country or political entity, for sure not just right wing or left wing political humans living in the United States, or in any other country.

I can’t keep from thinking there is a resemblance between President Trump in the White House and the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, especially since his performance discussing tariffs at the last G7 meeting in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada June 8-9, the 44^th such meeting, where he pissed off every good ally of the US with his rude crude boorish off-the-wall comments and threats. Seems about the only international friends he has left are Kim Jong Un, Netanyahu, and the new King of Saudi Arabia. There is no way to predict what he might say or do at any given moment.

Not long ago Trump blurted out in a cabinet meeting in his White House, “Where are my tariffs? Get me some tariffs,” like an impetuous king demanding some sort of favorite food or candy, and by golly his underlings got him some tariffs, apparently a lot of them, enough to set off a trade war. Another US president who liked tariffs was Herbert Hoover before the Great Depression started, who also raised interest rates. The US Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates. Let’s hope the Mad Hatter does not bring on another great depression with his impetuous demands. The Great Recession of 2008 we are now supposedly out of was bad enough.

According to mainstream media the US economy is now in fabulous shape, thanks to the Mad Hatter, with unemployment, counting only unemployed people looking for jobs, of only 3.8 percent and economic growth of about four percent, with about two percent inflation. Unfortunately counting all people of working age not in the work force, counting unemployed people who have given up on finding a job, no longer looking for a job, unemployment in the US is about twenty percent, and the four percent economic growth number counts a lot of jobs that do not pay a living wage and a lot of jobs that do not produce anything real, such as the reported profit increases of too big to fail banks, apartment rents, gambling profits, and what have you; and inflation may be as high as ten percent when you count price increases in drugs and medicine, education, food, and other things.

Hopefully the Mad Hatter and his buddy Mad Dog Mattis in the White House will not impulsively decide one day the way to get the US out of its depression and make it great again is to start World War III, since WWII worked for getting the US out of the Great Depression started in the Republican Hoover administration in 1929 with a trade war because during the Democratic Roosevelt administration in the 1940s WWII created lots of new real jobs in factories making tanks, airplanes, bombs and such in massive quantities, and because the US had relatively little debt at the time.

There is no telling what will happen if Trump starts WWIII with the US down its Alice in Wonderland financial rabbit hole, with over 21 trillion dollars in debt already piled up, most of it coming from real money, not funny money created out of thin air by simply punching digits in computers at the Federal Reserve and calling the resulting numbers money, which is used to “buy” US treasury bonds creating spending money for the US federal government to pay its worldwide standing army, navy, air force, and its military hardware manufacturers – and its obligation to the US Social Security Trust Fund for money it borrowed from the SS Trust Fund, over three trillion dollars, SS surpluses generated through decades caused by SS cash inflows paid by citizens making their FICA payments for their social insurance system exceeding outflows remitted to SS insurance beneficiaries. Unfortunately SS cash outflows to beneficiaries now exceed inflows from FICA contributions, but it will take a long time for the federal government to pay back with yearly payments what it owes US citizens who produced the SS surplus with FICA payments deducted from their paychecks, paying back what the SS Trust Fund loaned the federal government, which was thought necessary by politicians to balance the federal government’s total cash inflows (composed of real money tax receipts, borrowed real money, and borrowed funny money from the Fed) and cash outflows (mainly military cash needs and social security Trust Fund loan payments).

In the short run there is no danger the federal government cannot balance its budget: if worst comes to worse it can just keep on having the Fed punch more funny money digits into its computers and use the resulting numbers to buy more treasury bonds from the federal government, presto, producing money in treasury accounts for the US to pay for its standing worldwide military machine, and what have you, manna from heaven you might say. Unfortunately if the US keeps making funny money for too long, making too much of the stuff, eventually interest payments on the debt will become absurdly large and the debt itself will become absurdly large, so large that hyperinflation will ignite in the economy at large, causing financial hell on Earth.

What’s the chance the US would default on or repudiate its debt in WWIII? Pretty high I would say. What sort of chaos, anguish, and suffering would that cause for citizens with savings and pension plans? Would all intangible assets, including so-called money, become worthless? It’s happened before in collapsed countries.

And then there’s the suffering, tragedy, and chaos of the millions of people dislocated, killed and crippled–and the property and cultural treasures reduced to rubble–in countries in which soldiers invaded and on which bombs dropped, likely including people living in the US the next time around.

According to the US Congressional Budget Office the federal budget deficit was $600 billion during the first half of 2018. Forget about Trump’s tax cuts eliminating the deficit through trickle-down voodoo economics, like he said they would. Cutting the corporate tax rate from thirty percent to twenty percent will cause the rate of increase in the federal debt to increase, not go away, like he said it would. It will enrich the rich and make things tougher for everyone else.

This sort of risky and precarious financial behavior is not confined to the US and its Federal Reserve System. The central banks of China, Japan, the European Union, and England are essentially doing the same thing. Thus Spaceship Earth is awash in debt that will never be paid back, and central bankers, like Odysseus lost at sea, are attempting to sail a course between two siren-calling monsters:  the Charybdis of runaway inflation and the Scylla of extreme morbid deflation, attempting to give their populations hope and some additional prosperity by creating enough funny money to cause some economic growth without igniting hyperinflation, while at the same time not failing to create enough funny money to prevent extreme illiquidity, morbid deflation, maximum unemployment, and a maximum collapse of aggregate demand, causing the worst of depressions, under capitalism.

As I point out in “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth Incorporated,” the long run solution in my opinion entails getting Earthians off the treadmill of pursuing constant economic growth that ruins the ecology of Spaceship Earth by reducing the human population through peaceful attrition, natural human deaths exceeding natural births, causing more prosperity and economic security for individuals by dividing a shrinking global economic pie by an Earthian human population that shrinks even more, thereby causing natural Spaceship Earth ecological processes to improve enough to eliminate the possible fatal consequences of global warming. It’s better to do it via natural peaceful attrition than World War III.

Economic, religious, military, and political affairs aboard Spaceship Earth seem to be worsening, especially now in Yemen, the most poignant hellhole on Earth at present; and here we are stuck with this Mad Hatter-like president only caring about himself and his right wing voters, most of whom having no idea what is really going on, wildly stirring the global political pot any way he can to get personal attention, while the US aids and abets the Saudi attack on the helpless Yemenis.

As usual in the Effective Learning Digest, now named The Earthian, this month’s issue links and cites recent articles written and published by clear deep thinking hard hitting independent writers in various Internet publications on current ecological, economic, and political affairs around Spaceship Earth. I included an article, not the clearest and deepest in this issue by any stretch, I recently wrote and published in the Effective Learning Report titled “De-Gaming And Saving Democracy,” in which I point out democracy is waning in the Western World and capitalism has failed to satisfy a majority of citizens. I proposed in the article a democratic way to rejuvenate democracy. The upshot of the article is that the fate of Spaceship Earth depends on people like you. We need your help. Read the article and set up a De-Gaming Democracy group in your community.

This The Earthian issue includes an interesting article by Effective Learning Report colleague Courtenay Barnett titled “Defaming the World’s Fastest Human,” and an article by a new ELR colleague Joyce Wilson titled “Something to do in the summertime.”

HAPPY READING!

June 15, 2018

Here is my latest article in the Effective Learning Report.

SOURCE: “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/1126-2/.

June 14

Yemen: possibly the worst current tragedy aboard Spaceship Earth

SOURCE: “With Explicit US Backing, Saudi Attack on Yemen’s Humanitarian Lifeline Begins,” by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/with-explicit-us-backing-saudi-attack-on-yemens-humanitarian-lifeline-begins/.

June 14

As usual when a government in South America does not do what the US deep state wants send in the CIA and get rid of it. To heck with what their own people want.

SOURCE: “Media scoundrels urge coup d’etat in Venezuela,” by Stephen Landman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24302.

June 13

Say it ain’t so Joe.

SOURCE: “Predatory Gambling in the USA,” by Russell Mokhiber, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/13/predatory-gambling-in-the-usa/.

June 13

Here is another sermon by international lawyer Courtenay Barnett on problems meting out justice for Olympics athletes.

SOURCE: “Defaming the World’s Fastest Human,” by Courtenay Barnett, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/defaming-the-worlds-fastest-human/.

June 13

Enterprising ideas for educators by Joyce Wilson a new ELR colleague

SOURCE: “5 Ways Teachers Can Make Summer Side Gigs Last Through the School Year,” by Joyce Wilson, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/something-to-do-in-the-summertime/.

June 13

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

SOURCE: “Antarctica Is Melting Three Times as Fast as a Decade Ago: The continent’s rate of ice loss is speeding up, which is contributing even more to rising sea levels,” by Kendra Pierre-Louis, NYTIMES.COM, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/climate/antarctica-ice-melting-faster.html.

June 13

Can you believe this?

SOURCE: “No Coke, no Pepsi: Bottlers leave Mexico city hit by crime,” by Mark Stevenson, YAHOO.COM, https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-coke-no-pepsi-bottlers-leave-mexican-city-210937975.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb.

June 13

And we thought democracy was in sad shape here in the US.

SOURCE: “113 Politicians Have Been Killed Ahead of Mexcio’s Election. There Are Still Two Weeks To Go,” by Karla Zabludovsky, BUZZFEED.COM, https://www.buzzfeed.com/karlazabludovsky/113-politicians-killed-this-election-season-in-mexico?utm_term=.yj0X1DyQO&ref=mobile_share#.weAVlmBJ8.

June 13

We’ve got more complexes than I knew we had.

SOURCE: “‘If only We’d Listened to Ike…’ – Inside The Deep State,” by Kevin Paul, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-12/if-only-wed-listened-ike-inside-deep-state.

June 13

Trump thinks he is more powerful than kings were after Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

SOURCE: “There is no ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for the president,” by John W. Whitehad, INTREPID REPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24247.

June 12

Repug administrations have tried to ruin just about everything for we the people, and this is the next step. Do what you can to make sure the House of Reps goes along with the Senate and overrules the corrupt bums in the Trump admin on net neutrality.

SOURCE: “Net neutrality ends, battle to save it continues,” by Stephen Landman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24283.

June 12

This is a very sad commentary on Spaceship Earth’s political and economic system. See my 2013 article “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth Incorporated,” at http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31023&catid=38&Itemid=125   for a better perspective.

SOURCE: “The War of Hunger That Afflicts the World’s Poor,” by Vijay Prashad, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/12/the-war-of-hunger-that-afflicts-the-worlds-poor/.

June 12

This article provides new insight into the root causes of political troubles. Well worth a read.

SOURCE: “American Rage,” by William Hawes, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/12/american-rage/.

June 5

Here are some videos created by my longtime friend William John Cox. Wm says he is getting tired of writing books and articles and just wants to talk about what is on his mind in the morning. Well worth a listen.

SOURCE: “Somethings Can’t be Said in 280 Characters: William John Cox discusses our Rights of Liberty and Consent…” YOUTUBE.COM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSZ9Uf3R1Js.

June 5

This article is about as pessimistic as it gets, but it’s worth a read.

SOURCE: “Very little or no hope,” by Missy Comley Beattie, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24195.

June 5

Here’s another hard hitting truthful article by Paul Craig Roberts.

SOURCE: “Democracy is fighting to survive the rise of Western authoritarianism,” by Paul Craig Roberts, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24220.

June 4

Here’s another great article by Courtenay Barnett.

SOURCE: “Sermon – reflections on war.” By Courtenay Barnett, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/sermon-reflections-on-war/.

June 3

Somewhat similar to what Israel is now doing to the Palestinians.

SOURCE: “How the Nez Perce were kicked off their land and never allowed to return, despite repeated promises,” by Meteor Blades, DAILYKOS.COM, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/28/1766504/-How-the-Nez-Perce-were-kicked-off-their-land-and-never-allowed-to-return-despite-repeated-promises.

June 3

Here is another article explaining principles, procedures, problems, and opportunities posed by educators using a Classroom De-Gamer in teaching and learning situations.

SOURCE: “The Classroom De-Gamer,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-classroom-de-gamer/.

June 3

Here is another relevant article by ELR colleague Courtenay Barnett on his efforts to instantiate Free Child Caribbean ego state energy and culture into his Critical Parent London culture during the 1970s.

For more on what it is to instantiate ego states read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning at https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactiona…/…/0692584331.

We now desperately need to instantiate more Free Child ego state energy into US culture to combat creeping fascism and the bowling alone phenomenon.

Richard John Stapleton, Editor & Publisher, Effective Learning Report, June 3, 2018.

SOURCE: “Sermon – My Civilizing Mission,” by Courtenay Barnett, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397.

June 1

Very sad it’s come to this.

Has the NFL also outlawed Tebow’s kind of kneeling on the field?

Kaepernick had a good cause but one unfortunately outlawed by the NFL because it hurt its bottom profit line.

Consequently Kaepernick has been persecuted, and he can no longer find a job playing pro football, despite his considerable competitive skills as a quarterback, having been blacklisted by owners of teams in the NFL.

What was the big deal in the first place about his kneeling instead of standing for the national anthem?

Kaepernick courageously refused to pretend to cathect his Adapted Child ego state in a ritual designed to force obedience to and reverence for the militaristic powers of the US.

For more on what an Adapted Child ego state is read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning at https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactiona…/…/0692584331.

SOURCE: “Colin Kaepernick vs. Tim Bebow: A Tale of two Christians on their knees,” by Michael Frost, WASHINGTONPOST.COM, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/09/24/colin-kaepernick-vs-tim-tebow-a-tale-of-two-christianities-on-its-knees/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.db39af6f1216.

June 1

Well, here it is folks. The US govt admits it uses fake news to manipulate its own people. It’s no wonder mainstream media is saturated with fake news.

SOURCE: “The Council On Foreign Relations Says Domestic Propaganda is Necessary,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-31/council-foreign-relations-says-domestic-propaganda-necessary.

June 1

Say it ain’t so, Joe

SOURCE: “Taxpayer-funded mercenaries serving both U.S. & foreign aristocracies,” by Eric Zuesse, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24193.

May 31

Here is an egregious example of the media letting us know in the last few days that over four thousand people died in Puerto Rico in the last hurricane there, September 20, 2017, not less than one hundred as we were told up until the last few days. How is it news like this can be suppressed this long? To quote that intellectual paragon Bush II, the stupidist president of US history, this was a heckuva job investigating and reporting (ie, ignoring and suppressing) by media reporters and publishers for eight months, no doubt as instructed by the current lying US federal administration.

SOURCE: “May You Live in Stupid, Corrupt and yet Fascinating Times,” by Michael Krieger, LIBERTYBLITZKRIEG.COM, https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/05/30/may-you-live-in-stupid-corrupt-and-yet-fascinating-times/.

May 31

Say it ain’t so, Joe

SOURCE: “The can-do people of America have forfeited thinking to the Corporatocracy who have colonized them,” by Denis A. Conroy, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24177.

May 31

Positive evolutions and gruesome machinations in the electric power industry.

SOURCE: “Trump has plenty of accomplices in his reckless energy policies,” by Harvey Wasserman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24180.

May 30

Another great article by Ellen Brown who knows more about money and banking than almost anyone.

SOURCE: “Blackstone, BlackRock or a public bank?” by Ellen Brown, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24169.

May 30

Say it ain’t so, Joe

SOURCE: “I Pledge Allegiance to the United States of Sociopathy,” by Elizabeth Keyes, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/30/i-pledge-allegiance-to-the-united-states-of-sociopathy/.

May 30

Repugs have about ruined everything.

SOURCE: “Blue Cross Blue Shield exec blames Republican obstruction of Obamacare for rising premiums,” by Wagatwe Wanjuki, DAILYKOS.COM, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/23/1759894/-Blue-Cross-Blue-Shield-exec-blames-Republican-obstruction-of-Obamacare-for-rising-premiums.

May 30

Say it ain’t so, Joe

SOURCE: “Making Sense of America’s Empire of Chaos,” by Tyler Durden, via TomDispatch.com, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-28/making-sense-americas-empire-chaos.

May 29

The following chart at least helps.

SOURCE: “US Foreign Policy Explained: David Sylvan and Stephen Majeski reveal the imperial logic behind US diplomatic and military interventions around the globe…” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-29/visualizing-imperial-logic-us-foreign-policy.

May 29

Not much of a surprise here.

SOURCE: “Pharma paid and Trump delivered,” by Martha Rosenberg, INTREPIDREPORT.COM, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/24134.

May 29

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was a big mistake.

SOURCE: “Europe and the US: Dawn of an Era of Mutual Indignation,” by Gary Leupp, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/28/europe-and-the-us-dawn-of-an-era-of-mutual-indignation/.

May 28

Say it ain’t so, Joe

SOURCE: “The Cost of War at the End of Empire: It’s a lethal machine to exstract profit,” by William Rivers Pitt, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/the-cost-of-war-at-the-end-of-an-empire/.

May 27

A fine kettle of fish. Here we have this beautiful military as Madelyn Albright called it, the most powerful military force in history to protect and expand the US empire, and yet it cannot win any wars. The Romans used to just crucify large numbers of people and leave them alive, their cries and moans audible for all to hear, nailed hanging on crosses on roads leading into towns to cow local populations into submission; but nothing the US military does now with all its airplanes and bombs cannot cow any enemy into submission. Somebody started the war on terror by knocking down the World Trade Towers supposedly with hijacked airplanes that cost about four hundred thousand dollars, but the US military after spending some five to seven trillion dollars cannot end it. Absurdity of absurdities.

SOURCE: “The United States is a Force for Chaos Across the Planet: The US’s endless war has resulted in endless failures,” by Mark Karlin, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/the-united-states-is-a-force-for-chaos-across-the-planet/.

May 27

Capitalism run amok, proving it does not work for most people.

SOURCE: “When CEO’s Earn 5,000 Times as Much as a Company’s Workers,” by Sarah Anderson, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/25/when-ceos-earn-5000-times-as-much-as-a-companys-workers/.

May 27

A sad commentary on human nature and life, replete with tragedies, and joys, indiscriminately distributed among the lot, inevitably and accidentally caused, a tale of human lives prematurely ended en masse.

SOURCE: “You Can’t Commit Genocide Without the Help of Local People,” by Robert Fisk, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/25/you-cant-commit-genocide-without-the-help-of-local-people/.

May 27

Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows, because nobody knows what will cause what in international affairs; but here is a man who knows more than almost anyone else.

SOURCE: “Noam Chomsky on Donald Trump and the ‘Me First’ Doctrine,” by C.J. Polychroniou, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-foreign-policy-under-trump-follows-me-first-doctrine/.

May 27

Not the country I thought I was born in.

SOURCE: “With Haspel Sworn in as CIA Director, Let’s Stop Pretending That Her Atrocitie4s Run Counter to American Values,” by Maha Hilal, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/with-haspel-sworn-in-as-cia-director-let-s-stop-pretending-that-her-atrocities-run-counter-to-american-values/.

May 22

Wish it weren’t so, but it probably is, sad, inevitable, stupid. The human world has always been an unfair screwed-up place, and things are coming to a head. How long it will take for the collapse to happen is another matter. Nobody knows.

SOURCE: “The Coming Collapse,” by Chris Hedges, COMMONDREAMS.ORG, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/21/coming-collapse?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork.

May 21

You don’t say?

SOURCE: “Fake News No Problem: Internet Totally Dominates Advertising in the US. Only 2 Companies Divvy up nearly 60% of the Spoils,” by Wolf Richter, WOLFSTREET.COM, https://wolfstreet.com/2018/05/18/internet-dominates-advertising-2017-u-s-2-companies-divvy-up-nearly-60/.

May 21

Well said.  No, it’s about a lot more than guns, primarily males who fell through the cracks developmentally caused by not being able to learn how to relate to people in general caused by the social environments in which they accidentally or inevitably had to live as children.

SOURCE: “You Think It’s All About Guns?” by James Howard Kunstler, KUNSTLER.COM, http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/you-think-its-all-about-guns/#.WwOUTcPccY4.facebook.

May 21

Another article on the changing of human consciousness.

SOURCE: “The Friendly Mask Of The Orwellian Oligarchy is Slipping Off,” by Caitlin Johnstone, MEDIUM.COM, https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-friendly-mask-of-the-orwellian-oligarchy-is-slipping-off-b896a0a25b5f.

May 21

Say it ain’t so, Joe

SOURCE: “An Extreme Climate Forces Extreme Measures as Worst-Case Predictions Are Realized,” by Dahr Jamail, TRUTHOUT.ORG, https://truthout.org/articles/an-extreme-climate-forces-extreme-measures-as-worst-case-predictions-are-realized/.

May 21

Another sermon by Courtenay Barnett on a bad mistake.

SOURCE: “Sermon – East Jerusalem: A capital provocation,” by Courtenay Barnett, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/1078-2/.

May 10

… and all those one tenth of one percent richest people earned all their money by doing honest hard work with their minds and hands, don’t you know, and there’s no reason for them to give you any of it, especially by paying higher tax rates than poor people … and now it’s time to go seepy-seep, and put your pretty little head on your pillow, and don’t you worry about a thing …

SOURCE: “The American Dream is Dead: The top 0.1% owns as many assets as the bottom 90%,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-08/american-dream-dead.

Feel free to forward, share, print, reprint, or otherwise disseminate this issue of The Earthian any way you see fit.  RJS

 

 

By Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA

A decision was made in June of 2018 to encourage the formation of De-Gaming Democracy groups around Spaceship Earth to facilitate relevant face-to-face discussions about economic and political affairs. Earthians spending more and more time staring at computer and cell phone screens looking at faces, hearing voices, and reading fake news, gossip, and even truthful news has not resulted in economic and political progress. Something new needs to be tried. As Albert Einstein pointed out, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is insane.

The Classroom De-Gamer™ is a three-quarter-inch-thick circular board twelve inches in diameter with concentric circles of numbers affixed to accommodate teaching and learning groups of various sizes. I have published articles describing the purpose and use of the device in Research in Education (1978), the Transactional Analysis Journal (1979), and The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review (1990).

The Classroom De-Gamer™ De-games psychological Games in face-to-face learning processes by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims, essential roles for psychological Games, from the discussion. No teacher or learner in a De-gamed process can psychologically feel or think s/he is being persecuted, rescued, or victimized if randomly selected by the Classroom De-Gamer™ to answer questions in the whole group. All group participants have an Adult contract to socially participate in the process using their Adult ego states. The Drama Triangle, a prerequisite for psychological Games, around which Rescuers, Persecutors, and Victims switch roles as they transact with one another, is disallowed in the process.

The De-Gaming process engenders liberty, equality, and fraternity among participants. It engenders response-ability that helps people get their needs met. It causes people not to discount the emotional and intellectual worth and abilities of themselves and others. The process is democratic, not authoritarian.

The De-Gaming teaching and learning process will work regardless of whether you understand transactional analysis concepts such as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, transactions, scripts, rackets, discounts, the Drama Triangle, OKness, and I’m OK – You’re OK life positions. For more information and understanding of what they are, if interested, 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 information showing how I applied this De-Gaming process over five years in a US manufacturing corporation doing business internationally involving some three hundred employees from all departments and levels of a plant read my e-book Recommendations for Waking Up From the American Nightmare at https://www.amazon.com/Richard-John-Stapleton/e/B001KHS3P6

The major objective after the Classroom De-Gamer™ has been spun is answering all three Adult Questions below as best you can if the spinner lands on you:

What is the problem or opportunity?

What are the alternatives?

What do you recommend?

Most likely some participants will disagree with your answers after you lay them out and the group will then discuss alternative answers, hopefully developing a consensus by the end of the discussion about what is right. If not, that’s OK. Being left hanging at the end of a session may motivate you to think of better answers later, maybe in your dreams. Better answers may be brought up in later sessions. Deciding what is the most important problem you know about is the most difficult decision you will have to make if the spinner lands on you. That’s what leaders do; decide what problem to focus on. Most of the time the spinner will only be spun one time per session, at the very beginning. In most sessions most of the time of the session will be spent discussing answers laid out by the De-Gamer-selected person, the most powerful person in the group that day, the randomly selected leader selected by fate at the beginning of the session, the start of a new day. On the other hand, some days the De-Gamer might be spun more than once, if a discussion runs out of steam, in which case the last person pointed out will spin the De-Gamer again to select another leader and set of answers for a different problem or opportunity.

True democracy entails individual humans having an opportunity to influence and vote for actions and people that reflect their factual experiences, thoughts, decisions, and recommendations regarding how families, schools, businesses, social and civic groups, and political organizations should be run. It seems to me all people should have a fundamental right to think about and discuss problems and opportunities facing the organizations that shape and control their lives.

Spaceship Earth, among many other things, is a giant classroom in which humans learn how to deal with current reality wherever they live.

All humans around Spaceship Earth, Earthians, learn something every day in various ways, working, playing, and merely existing, from others, from various media, from schools and churches, and from being exposed to facts of experience doing life tasks. The problem is most humans do not learn as well as they might qualitatively and as much as they might quantitatively because of getting set in their ways and because of political and social forces that cause them not to learn, forces that cause them not to think about certain problems and opportunities, not to feel what they feel, and not to say and do what they think is right.

Discussing the three reality questions in De-gamed groups will give isolated individuals feedback from others in the group regarding what they feel, think, do, and want, and will teach and enable them to learn alternative ways of feeling, thinking, doing, and wanting.

De-gamed discussion groups importantly are dialectical, meaning people will argue with facts and reasoning about different answers, which tends to develop workable consensual synthetic answers over time, thereby reducing the pernicious effects of dogmatic and doctrinaire polarizations.

Humans are enslaved around Earth in various ways to obsolete scripts, dogmas, and doctrines by familial, religious, business, political, and military forces, having been taught by authoritarian teachers that tell their subjects what to feel, think, and do. They primarily teach their subjects to obey and memorize, not to think and learn.

Conformity is the order of the day in human history, humans feeling, thinking, and doing the same things the same way day after day generation after generation.

A way out of this box is for everyone to become a teacher and a learner in a bottom-up democratic process starting with the basics of reality confronting any child, woman, and man around Spaceship Earth, dealing with three fundamental survival questions:

What is the problem or opportunity?

What are the alternatives?

What do you recommend?

And the process starts with you. You have to get people from various walks of life and ages in your community together for face-to-face democratic discussions, and explain the rules:

1 – A leader will be randomly selected to start all discussions by spinning the De-Gamer

2 – All randomly selected leaders will answer the three basic Adult survival questions if pointed out by the spinner

3 – No one may interrupt anyone in the discussions

4 – Holding up your hand to force someone to force everyone to remain silent so you can talk is outlawed

5 – You may say whatever you want after the randomly selected person finishes presenting his or her answers, but you have to assert yourself and start talking before anyone else does

6 – And so it goes throughout the time of the discussion

7 – How long good discussions should last is up to you but they will generally last an hour or so

8 – Verbal and physical attacks are outlawed

9 – All members of the group must listen to what the person currently talking wants to say regardless of whether they agree. After the person currently talking stops talking you can then rebut or say what you want if you can start talking before anyone else does. Otherwise you have to wait until the person beating you to the punch stops talking before you can try to talk again

10 – Communicating with individuals sitting to your left or right, or anywhere in the circle, is outlawed, except when you are responding to an individual about something s/he has said to the whole group or in response to you about something you said to the whole group

11 – Smirking and negative body language messages of all sorts are outlawed

12 – There can be no private conversations during a discussion session

13 – All cell phones and electronic devices must be fully disabled during a discussion session

14 – If you are not willing to abide by the laws and rules of the process then you cannot be a member of the De-Gamed democratic community discussion group.

You may need other rules for your groups, depending on unique circumstances, but the above rules cover the basics. You get the idea. Everyone should have a chance to be the leader of the day. This is not a novel idea. The Greeks had this idea for how to do democracy as early as the Sixth Century BCE. True enough only free Greeks were eligible for random selection for discussions but at least leaders were freely and democratically chosen from a relatively large pool. The process is known as sortition. Everyone is a free Greek in the De-Gaming democratic process. There are no slaves. All participants, including you, learn by doing, by saying what they truly feel, think, and recommend and by getting feedback from members of the group that generates new Game-free discussion and learning for all participants.

How often should you get your group together for discussions? Ideally several times a week for several years, but any frequency will be better than none, once a week, once a month, once a year, whatever.

In the interests of full disclosure I used the De-Gaming discussion process teaching with the case method thirty-six years in business schools primarily using paper cases written by casewriters at Harvard and Stanford, and the University of Alabama, while using the process using current facts as the case consulting with various groups, such as the above mentioned manufacturing plant. I have described the process in various media, and I have reprinted and included articles, cases, and chapters dealing with complications and conflicts using such a process may entail, caused by agitated threatened teachers and learners in the environment not approving of the De-Gaming discussion process, especially the teacher and learners sitting in circles, also providing data and evidence the democratic De-Gaming discussion process works, in my books Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds and Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning, both published by Effective Learning Publications, available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331.

You can find four articles I published in 1978, 1979, 1990, and 1998 on De-Gaming democracy processes in the Transactional Analysis Journal, a refereed professional journal at

http://journals.sagepub.com/loi/tax.

I also described the De-Gaming process in two out-of-print books of readings and cases I researched, wrote and used in my small business and entrepreneurship courses, published by University Press of America, Managing Creatively: Action Learning in Action (1976) and The Entrepreneur: Concepts and Cases on Creativity in Business (1985) – and in one out-of-print trade book published by Effective Learning Publications, De-Gaming Teaching and Learning: How to Motivate Learners and Invite OKness (1979).

For more information and some of my current thoughts on how I used the De-Gamer in my classrooms read my article, “The Classroom De-Gamer,” published June 6, 2018 in the Effective Learning Report at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-classroom-de-gamer/. This article discusses in more detail some of the procedures, problems, opportunities, and advantages of using a Classroom De-Gamer teaching and learning.

It seems to me the best strategy for homo sapiens getting out of their on-going mess, now trending towards global fascism or anarchy, and chaos, is for all humans to become good citizens aboard Spaceship Earth, considering themselves the rightful owners of the planet, and assume responsibility for making political and business decisions necessary to successfully manage planetary affairs in a bottom-up process in the interests of all inhabitants. It seems to me principles of management I espoused in “Academic Entrepreneurship: Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis to Simulate Competitive Business Markets,” reprinted in full in Business Voyages, apply to citizens and owners of Spaceship Earth as well as they do to business students, small business owners, and employees of large fascist organizations. This article was originally published in the Organizational Behavior Teaching Review (now Journal of Management Education), Vol. XIV, Issue IV, 1989-90.

For more on how to manage Spaceship Earth according to me, read my recent Internet article “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth Incorporated,” first published in 2013 by MWC News (Media With Conscience) at http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31023&catid=38&Itemid=125.

Awareness has been growing among independent Internet writers and publishers for several years that democracy in the Western World is in decline. Governments have become increasingly dysfunctional meeting the needs of citizens. The ideals of the French and US revolutions – liberty, equality, and fraternity – incrementally achieved to some degree in the West from about 1800 to about 1980 – are now waning. Since the Reagan administration in the US and the Thatcher administration in the UK in the 1980s the aristocrats have gotten richer and the peasants, serfs, and slaves have gotten poorer, while the bourgeoisie has shrunk. Inequality of incomes, wealth, and quality of life among citizens has skyrocketed in the last few years, while liberty and fraternity have plummeted. Overpopulation, environmental pollution, and global warming increasingly threaten the sustainability of human life itself. It is now obvious that unfettered capitalism does not work for most Earthians. Quasi-communist countries and quasi-dictatorships such as China and Russia are now in some ways as democratic and capitalistic as the US and the UK.

If trends continue … there is a good probability Earthians regardless of what kind of economic and political system they now live under will wind up through time being governed by an authoritarian totalitarian global military police system that rules all countries now geographically delineated aboard Spaceship Earth using a magnum computerized central control system, programmed at the top by a technocratic elite, with robots doing most of the physical work around Earth, with most humans doing what they are told living on handouts in reservations–or after a military nuclear catastrophe what’s left of the human species will atomize into superstitious tribal groups with no control system, with individuals living short hard brutish lives in poisoned inhospitable environments.

There is also some probability a system will evolve that enables humans in groups to democratically decide how to govern and manage their affairs around Spaceship Earth producing consensual approaches that produce peace and prosperity instead of war, and equality of opportunity and respect instead of hatred, while retaining the advantages of life-enhancing scientific and technological discoveries and innovations.

Capitalism in the West and communism in Russia failed because they allowed and encouraged weak-minded greedy unethical individuals at the top of centralized hierarchical organizations to acquire and monopolize more and more power and money through time causing widespread hatred, corruption, and dysfunction in the whole system.

Decentralized ground-up De-Gamed democracy has never been tried around Spaceship Earth. It’s time to give it a shot. Bring out the Classroom De-Gamers and let’s see what real people can come up with.

You don’t need a manufactured circular piece of wood with numbers and a spinner attached to De-Game your face-to-face community democratic discussion groups. Anything that will spin on a firm level surface will work, such as a bottle. The best size for discussion groups in my opinion is from ten to thirty people, but they can be larger. Some case method classes in business schools contain as many as one hundred students.

De-Gamed fact-based teaching and learning processes should not be limited to teaching elite students in elite schools that will use what they learn to manipulate economic and political systems to only benefit themselves after they graduate when they reach the top level of large fascist organizations: De-Gamed fact-based discussion groups can cause effective learning to occur in anyone aboard Spaceship Earth in any community, village, town, or city in any sort of clearing or physical structure.

Have your participants sit in a circle and put your spinner in the middle of the group, spin the spinner, and give it a go, answering the three survival questions and discussing the answers, answering the questions yourself if the spinner lands on you:

What is the problem or opportunity?

What are the alternatives?

What do you recommend?

For once give anyone a chance to feel, think, and say what s/he wants face-to-face in a response-able Game-free democratic group of people.

Feel free to forward, share, print, reprint, publish or otherwise disseminate this article any way you see fit, on the Internet or elsewhere.

Richard John Stapleton, Founder & Owner, Effective Learning Company, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, www.effectivelearning.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon – an interest in Nesta Carter findings; passion; and pain.

By Courtenay Barnett

Dear beloved, I am perplexed and perturbed by the recent International Olympics Committee (IOC) ruling concerning Nesta Carter ( member of the 2008 4 x 100 Jamaican relay team at theBeijing Olympics).

My sermon deals briefly with the background to and the outcome of the findings; and then I shed a few tears, wiped from my computer screen, before I dispatched this lament.

Nesta Carter happens to have been one of Usain Bolt’s team mates in the 4 x 100 meters relay race in which the team won a gold medal ( one of several thereafter) and set a world record ( one of many) and Bolt in the process launched himself further into the stratosphere of athletics international stardom.

Simply stated, the governing body for international athletics accused Carter of cheating by way of having taken a performance enhancing drug in 2008. Subsequently, after an appeal, Carter lost his case and in consequence lost the gold medal which he and his team mates won. Since Carter is compelled, along with Bolt and the other members of the team, to return the medal to the IOC, there is a reduction in Bolt’s overall gold medal haul. ‘Collateral damage’ for Bolt; embarrassment for Jamaica. Carter lost his final appeal to the International Olympic Committee Disciplinary Panel – and- procedurally that is as far as he can go.

However, viewed through a lawyer’s eyes and based on fundamental principles of natural justice, there are a few problems arising, which can honestly be placed and posed as questions:-

A. Why does it take fully eight(8) years before the allegation about drug cheating is raised against Nesta Carter, regarding the Beijing Olympic games?

B. Why is it that prior drug tests effected at the time in 2008 when Carter competed in Beijing gave him and all his team mates a clean slate and did not produce any evidence of drug cheating, but must now be reversed?

C. Was the stimulant methylhexaneamine, said to be found appearing in a retest in 2016, expressly on the ‘ban list’ of substances that athletes were prohibited from using in 2008?

Issues A and B relate mainly to factual content; issue C goes more to substantive and procedural matters.

So far as issue C is concerned an accused person is entitled to have a fair hearing and in matters of serious allegation, such as under the criminal law or where an infraction will have a serious deleterious impact on a person’s reputation and/or life generally, then the rule against retrospectivity applies. In the world of the Olympics and Olympic athletes the rule, as an element of the Rule of Law, would translate in the individual athlete’s mind to mean a reasonable expectation that, in any competition their actions therein must be considered by a future Tribunal or Court only by reference to the Rules or Laws applicable at the time of the competition. One cannot be held guilty of an ‘offence’ which at the material time of the factual event in question, was then not an offence. It is an apparent violation of this Rule, in a somewhat peculiar set of circumstances, which seems to have adversely impacted Mr. Carter.

When issues of banned substances arise then, in the absence of absolute strict liability ( i.e. purely factual culpability as distinct from intentional wrongdoing – as a consideration distinct from the ‘retrospectivity rule’) the following seems to be precursory matters that should be taken into consideration for fair adjudication and fair consideration as regards any alleged infraction:-

i) The substance should be specifically named and be clearly stated on an established accessible standard list which comprises the official list of banned substances.

ii) The scientific tests applied should be rule based, consistent and credible so as to exclude any unintended appearance of the substance in a person’s system, such as being an innocent by product after digestion.

iii) Every alleged finding should be weighed in consideration whether or not the source of any alleged ingestion from a banned substance was from a source wherein the manufacturerhad or had not actually listed the ingredient on the container from which the substance was obtained (i.e. fairly weighing the mental, intentional aspect of the alleged infraction).

I cannot, in my legal mind, find any logical and/or acceptable reason for the IOC applying a ban retrospectively on a substance back to 2008 then penalising an athlete for taking same. Yet, put that one aside for a moment and consider the actual IOC reasoning at points 9 to 11 of its official Decision:-

” 9. This choice was made in view of the fact that during the transfer of the samples from the Beijing laboratory to the Lausanne Laboratory, the A-Samples were not individually resealed nor transported in sealed containers.

10. At that time, resealing of A-Samples (or transport in sealed containers) was not a requirement pursuant to the then applicable ISL (2008).

11. However, it was felt that the option to rely on the B-Sample constituted an additional precaution securing the strength and reliability of the analytical process.”

(See: https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/Who-We-Are/Commissions/Disciplinary-Commission/BRT-III-005-Decision-of-the-Disciplinary-Commission-Nesta-CARTER.pdf)

So now there is a double-breach against the rule against evidential integrity and against the rule prohibiting retrospectivity. First, in 2008 there was no procedural requirement of strict evidential integrity of preservation of samples, concerning the nature of transportation of substances due for testing; secondly, there was no ban on the substance said to have been found in Carter’s system. Thus, with that existing factual situation – then – how in jurisprudential terms – is Carter legitimately found to have committed a violation of any then existing IOC rules? The mind boggles.

Finally, the IOC convicted Carter on this basis, as best I can discern:-

” 90….

In prior lists, including the WADA Prohibited List 2008, applicable in this case, methylhexaneamine fell within the scope of the general prohibition of stimulants having a similar chemical structure or similar biological effect as the listed stimulants. Under the then applicable system, stimulants which were not expressly listed, were presumed to be Non-Specified Prohibited Substances.

91. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) has confirmed that the presence or use of substances falling within the scope of generic definitions of the Prohibited List, can be used as a basis of establishing anti-doping rules violations.”

N.B. “stimulants which were not expressly listed, were presumed to be Non-Specified Prohibited Substances.”

So, it is “not specifically listed” and “non-specified” but it is still being interpreted as being specifically prohibited? I, at this stage of my life, do not knowingly drink alcohol ( that is a fact and decision of mine). However, I do drink coffee. So, for argument’s sake, I have a drink from a bottle labelled “Coffee Aphrodisiac Black”. I read the label and did not find any indication or statement that it had alcohol in it and then drank the contents. After love-making I am tested and it is found that I have a trace of alcohol in my system. Thus, I am found guilty and banned henceforth from….? Trite? Parallel? But – logical?

Yet, I am a preacher of sermons and a mere humble lawyer ( when not so preaching). Thus, probably an exalted logician and/or person with immaculate scientific training might proffer the explanation and answer to the question that my legal mind has been, so far, unable to fathom.

My concern is that Jamaica’s and the world’s first athlete to have delivered the triple- triple in the 100 – 200 and 4 x 100 meter races in three consecutive Olympics is to have his perfect record compromised and reduced when he has never been found guilty of any drug violation during the course of his some 15 years of an unblemished international career; but, his team mate, under the circumstances here described, is adversely to impact Usain Bolt’s record(s).

At this juncture I am heading to the Privy Council on the first of four matters intended to be heard on appeal. This process shall be making great demands on my time, so I am compelled to have a hiatus from my usual sermons. Interestingly, in the first matter, a murder appeal, I am advancing in argument the Joggee and Ruddock decision* regarding joint enterprise, where after 30 years the Privy Council and Supreme Court reversed their prior decision(s) and said that it had previously gotten the law wrong and were applying the wrong test. I am inclined to inform the IOC in the Carter case, likewise. At a later stage I shall report for resumed duties.

· R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8

In closing and with a heavy heart I cannot, at all, on this occasion say Hallelujah – so:-

AMEN!

Courtenay Barnett is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, has been arrested for defending his views, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He lives and works in the Caribbean.

By Joyce Wilson

5 Ways Teachers Can Make Summer Side Gigs Last Through the School Year

When you’re a teacher, having whole summers off can be a welcome break. But for many teachers, summer is the perfect chance to supplement their income with side gigs and temporary jobs. But what if you could make a little extra money while you’re teaching as well? If you’re interested, there are plenty of side gigs that will fit in perfectly with the school year. Here are a few ways you can make side gigs work for you without interfering with your normal teacher-related duties.

Tutor Children and Adults

If you absolutely love teaching, why not make a little extra money helping others? You can focus your attention on providing one-on-one lessons for students struggling with traditional subjects like math and science. Some students, and adults, may even benefit from getting a better grasp on English, if it’s the second language in their homes. You can even teach online on your own schedule! Know another language? Try teaching children and adults how to speak it. Conversational language lessons can build skills faster, and you’ll get paid just for talking.

Get Paid to Pet Dogs and Cats

Watching dogs and cats is a great way to make a little extra money. More and more pet owners are turning to in-home pet care to keep their pets safe while they’re away on summer vacations. You can open up your own home or stay in theirs. Don’t have the time to pet sit during the school year? Weekends and holidays are prime pet sitting times, so consider caring for pets then. Advertise your services online or spread the word through family and neighbors.

Put Those Writing Skills to Work

For most teachers, grammar comes naturally, but that isn’t the case for others. Many working professionals struggle when it comes to putting together a cover letter and resume and will pay top dollar to have someone do it for them. So put those writing skills to work and help people land their dream jobs in the process. Not into professional writing? There are lots of ways to make extra income through your words. You can help put together grant proposals or make a little extra cash proofreading textbooks. An added bonus to freelance writing? With a good laptop and internet connection, you can get your work done pretty much anywhere.

Get Extra Income Out of Your Car

Ridesharing has become pretty popular, and it’s a great way to make extra income without overworking your schedule. You can work for companies like Lyft or Uber, and summers are pretty busy with parties and events, making it the perfect time to start your new side gig. When the school year starts, you can choose to work after class or only offer rides on the weekends and special occasions. In fact, you can make more money working on holidays or during busy events. So fill up your tank, crank some tunes, and bring in some extra cash while helping people get around town.

Set Yourself Up for Success

Working over the summer can be a great way to earn extra income, especially if your side gig fits in with your school schedule later. Just make sure you’re not burning yourself out. Schedule hours that don’t leave you exhausted. If you don’t have a functional home office set up already, create a little space where you can focus on your side gig. Get a comfy chair and a calendar to keep your schedule on track. Whether you’re working your side gig over the summer or during the school year, always make time for self-care. Get plenty of exercise, eat healthy foods, and make sure you can still get enough sleep at night.

If you want to make some extra money this summer, then a side gig may be a perfect opportunity for you. Whether you want to buy more supplies, grow your savings, or take that dream vacation, side gigs can provide the financial tools to help you reach your goals. So get out there and try one out today to see if it’s right for you!

Joyce Wilson, [email protected], Teacherspark.org

 

by Courtenay Barnett

Dear beloved the topic of war is on my mind.

War has been in people ( psychologically); on people ( bombs); and – all around people for centuries. Why?

At the altar of the almighty truth there is a challenge here. This sermon does not lend itself to any one eternal and/or everlasting truth in answer – but rather – the nature of the question goes more to a series of interpretations as to – why war?

What category of war is being contemplated and considered here? War in the sense of tribes – nationalities – nations in conflict with each other. I rely on the Oxford English Dictionary definition of war and accordingly, “war” is defined as, “A state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country.”

There is a work on war more than a few centuries old written by Sun Tzu, entitled ‘The art of war’. It is Chinese and the thoughts are profound. Although having been written over a thousand years ago, it is still relied upon not only in military matters for strategy but has impacted other spheres of human activity. Consider:-

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

I start here because I realise that the approach of a rationalist academic analysis would potentially launch into a multiplicity of explanations such as considerations of conflict in the context of control of vital global resources : which I single out for special comment – but leave the others merely as being illustrative of the vast nature of the question- such as holding on to power and maintaining the status quo ( Apartheid South Africa); tribal differences ( Rwanda); political jostling for control over state power ( the Vietnam war); nationalism ( Nazi Germany in World War 11); jostling for regional power (Iraq under Saddam Hussein during the 8 year war with Iran); expansion of territory ( Israel); balance of power conflagrations ( the Balkans); religion ( the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s fought between Croatian Christians and Muslim Bosnians) – and on and on and on.

Compress, simplify and explain. How so?

Since Sun Tzu dealt with the inevitability of conflict as a state of being and Machiavelli, in his famous work ‘ The Prince’ wrote of self -serving, brutal, realistic and amoral conduct at its ‘best’, I use that duality. It was no less a person than former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger who made it appear that ‘The Prince’ was his ‘Bible’ for diplomacy, scheming, conniving and duplicity( see: footnote 1). Here, I am compressing as between Eastern versus Western thought processes based on dualistic modes of thought in the latter instance. The West sees and focuses primarily on the outer while the East starts with the inner, in the sense of conquest over one’s self as a first step to reach the victory in the external broader worldly sense. And so the attempt at a compressed explanation as to – why conflict – flows from these three, identified initial steps.

Compression at the extreme would take us – stones – spears – bow and arrow – cross bow – explosives – advancing stages of bombs – guns – canons – missiles – atomic – nuclear – and any other sorts of weaponry the human mind dreams up.

Simplification thus – the cave man, like the ape, has a physical fight over the woman he wants. The tribe has a fight with the neighbouring tribe. The nation seeks control over territory – and so on.

Explanation accompanied by compression and simplification might be this. Let’s use only two motivational factors and parameters for warfare. Our human historical experiences and our psychological motivators. History encompasses the geopolitics of war. Our inherent human motivational triggers such as need, greed, conceptual constructs such as ‘Empire’ and fulfillment of religious fate explains a lot, but there is more. So, as much as we explain, there remains something outside the box. So be it – we have already put quite a lot in the box in a very short time – so let us then transfer from the conceptual, confined and contained box to the world out there.

For purposes of illustration, the sermon confines itself to the post World War 11 era and contiguous decolonisation period from 1945 onwards. The Iraq war of 2003 will serve later as an illustrative talking point.

The war to end all wars ( and another one nevertheless). Some good however, after World War 11, in that there is the establishment of the United Nations and a number of Geneva Conventions setting out at an international level attempts to ‘civilize warfare’. I am born after these events and so walk a path along my birth line.

In the 1960s I attended St. Georges College, a Jesuit institution in Jamaica. The teachers were a mix of priests from Boston and some Jamaican lay teachers. At the time of the Vietnam War we had two sets of priests who made comment on the war. The older ones in the main could see no wrong with America’s war in Vietnam. Their logic ran that America was seeking to do good and was fighting the ungodly communists who wanted fully to take over Vietnam. The younger Jesuits, without any exceptions as far as I recall, were vocally and staunchly against the war. They taught us that napalm was being used and agent orange also; while the older Jesuits told us stories of how evil the Communists were because they told little children to ask God for ice cream and after none came then they were instructed to ask Uncle Ho for ice cream and they were rewarded. One group saw a war of liberation; while the other saw a war of profiteering and oppression. Not much has changed over the years as I amble towards the Iraq war many years later.

In the years between the 1972 end of the Vietnam War and the onset of the 2003 Iraq war, I did a lot of growing up while advancing into adulthood towards a better understanding of just how the world really works (see again: my commentary at footnote 1).

There is in every war a plethora of lies told; hypocrisy; tremendous economic cost; and – of course – killing, maiming and lasting psychological trauma. Yet, over and over again states set off to war. In 1959, an academic, Kenneth Waltz, published an analysis entitled, ‘Man, the State, and War’. Stated succinctly, he said that, “wars occur because there is nothing to prevent them”. Atruism. He has much more to say and it is accurate to say that every advanced student studying international relations in the Western world would have to contend with Waltz’s ideas. To compress his thoughts, he is saying that the international system lacks any central sovereign authority and so competition becomes endemic. A nice way of saying that if a state is powerful enough it will use its power for reason of lack of effective constraints on use of said power. Again, the Iraq war becomes my reference point in deference to Waltz and out of an acknowledgement of realism.

In purely theoretical terms, states, based on the application of rational thought, should never go to war. The human cost is too great and in the end no one really is the victor. The doubting Thomases will shout that if there had not been a war against Adolph Hitler, then the world would have been a sorry place faced with post-war Nazi victory. If a pre-war negotiated truce is not possible ( and here we invoke Mr. Chamberlain’s name) then of course, self-preservation; self-defence; and the ‘just war’ doctrine all dictate that war is inevitable in response to an aggressor and Article 51 of the UN Charter so condones:-

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of collective or individual self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

But, before returning to contemplation of the madness which war is, let us use a little rationality.

Leonardo da Vince had worked in Venice designing munitions. It is recorded that he shelved some of his designs, having weighed the implications that if man devised a flying machine then the destruction from dropping munitions from such heights would be devastating for humans. Maybe footnote 2 reflects this ( see below).He was correct, but time overtook him, as did rationalistcompassion and the lunacy has extended to even greater heights. Some questions might be posed:-

1. If two nuclear armed powers can each blow the world up one time over, and they then proceed to acquire more ‘un-useable nuclear arms’ to be able to blow the world up five or ten times over – then what is the advantage of such additional weapons considering that the use of the first set would be MAD and lead to( Mutually Assured Destruction)?
2. If a nuclear power demonstrates that it can and will destroy other countries which do not have the capacity for retaliatory nuclear strikes – then – what incentive does any country have to engage in a denuclearisation agreement?

Note: The obvious and immediate cases in point are – Iraq – Libya – North Korea vis- a- vis – the United States of America.

1. Is there more sense in increasing the production of:-
2. i) Internationally banned and/or prohibited chemicals and biological capacity for warfare; and
3. ii) WMDs generally; and

iii) Nuclear weaponry in particular; and

1. iv) Shouldn’t there be a global treaty prohibiting climate manipulation as an instrument of warfare;

and, via treaty and agreements de-escalating each of the above and safely and sensibly redeploying resources on the welfare of a nation’s people? The US can be noted, as a case in point, in Afghanistan and Iraq, for in just those two wars the US has lost over 7,000 lives, expended over US$ 6 trillion and not yet, counting or including the maimed, psychologically damaged and over 1 million Iraqi lives lost. All of this is just numbers, one can say. Just numbers. Yet, behind each number is a human face, a person, a family – an actual person and many people stacked high in those numbers. Is this rational; does this make sense; is this desirable – and – even if desirable for some – is it over time sustainable?

Having posed the questions – I doubt that I am likely to obtain any rational justifications. Explanations as to why wars break out – yes – as regards consciously doing the following:-

1. Spanish American war commenced with a staged explosion in Havana Harbour.
2. The Vietnam War commenced with a falsehood. It was announced the day before that in the Bay of Tongkin, the USS Maddox was attacked by the North Vietnamese. The only problem was that President Johnson announced the incident that day before it actually happened, having failed to take into account the international date line for the right time to announce the “attack”.
3. The 2003 Iraq war based on the allegation and falsehood that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions.

The 2003 Iraq war. This resonates with me in memory, in terms of international law ( violations thereof) and in straightforward human and humanitarian terms. Let’s consider.

Just before the Iraq war I made a bet with an ex US Navy man I knew. I told him that there would be no invasion of Iraq and bet him US$100 with 4 to 1 odds. I lost; he won.

My thinking was based on strictly legal analysis and not on the realpolitik motivating the illegal invasion of Iraq. I had studiously followed the work of the UN Chief Weapons Inspector, an international lawyer named Hans Blix. He was not willing to tell lies and he informed accurately what his team had found and been convinced by, which did not tally with what President George Bush Jr. wanted to hear. Blix went as far as offering a final, further six weeks to do additional investigations then make an ultimate report, with a view not to rush to war. Bush rejected the offer and – as they say – the rest is history ( see: footnote 3).

I observed in the United Kingdom at the time that two prominent persons lost their lives with reference to the Iraq invasion. Robin Cook was the British Foreign Secretary who resigned in March 2003 in protest over the invasion of Iraq:-

“The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner–not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council”

Professor Waltz was correct in his analysis; it is about power; not legality. They can do it – so – just do it.

Dr. David Kelly was a distinguished scientist on biological warfare, in the service of the British Government.

Cook died allegedly from a heart attack suffered in August, 2005. There was never any serious investigation into the nature and cause of his death. Cook seems to have been divulging confidential information going back to the Iraq invasion, contrary to the prohibition placed on him by the Official Secrets Act. Kelly died supposedly from suicide. He had spoken to a BBC journalist named Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan made reference to details provided by Kelly and to the UK Government’s dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Parliament summoned Kelly to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee while investigating Gilligan’s report and Kelly, two days later, was found dead.

So, there you have it. He who tells the truth may pay with his life.

My moral position is one of forever seeking a road to peace as the first recourse. If all else fails then self-defence becomes inevitable for logical reasons of self-preservation. I do not relish conflict; do not glorify militarism, yet seek to understand – why war? Sun Tzu is particularly helpful to me in comprehending on a philosophical level – the reasons why. He sees conflict as inevitable and war thus as a necessary evil. He also notes philosophically ways to avoid “war” in the extreme: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” – and – he penetrates the inner self in response to the outer confrontation with warfare – for as he says – “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

At this juncture I have very little left to say.

My sermon, on this occasion, was compelled to abandon its normal mission of truth seeking. My absolutist approach, if one can call it that. “War” by its pervasiveness and existence as a global reality has directed me along a path of an appreciation of relativist reality. Noting the reality that war was here before me – has persisted all my life – and – shall be here after I close my eyes for the final time.

To the extent that I have pursued the truths behind the Iraq war, my piece was said back in 2006 when I published ‘Oil, conflict and the future of global energy supplies’. Having revisited it, there is nothing I wish to change and continue to note reality as it is ( see footnote 6).

Having come to those conclusions, my farewell adopts a realistic tone:-

War – Oh hell! – AMEN!

Footnotes

1. http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/alfred_nobel_and_the_real_prize_peace

2. The American Muslim (TAM) theamericanmuslim.org Alfred Nobel and the Real Prize – Peace “I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankin

3. http://www.da-vinci-inventions.com/aerial-screw.aspx

4. Leonardo da Vinci’s Aerial Screw Invention www.da-vinci-inventions.com Nearly four hundred years before the invention of the helicopter, Leonardo da Vinci invented a flying machine that used a revolving platform to gain flight.

5. ‘Disarming Iraq’ by Hans Blix ( published 2004).
6. https://www.globalresearch.ca/oil-conflict-and-the-future-of-global-energy-supplies/1781

 

Courtenay Barnett is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, has been arrested for defending his views, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He lives and works in the Caribbean.