When Indoctrination Is Enlightenment

"I get all the news I need on the weather report" goes the old Simon & Garfunkel lyrics.

"I get all the enlightenment I need from the government report" might be the lyrics today:

Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

The Bush White House pulled in a great quantity of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, the IGs reported. They questioned the legal basis for the effort but shielded almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

(Tulsa World, emphasis added). It is a no no not to tell congress when the president is illegally wire tapping them or even wee the people, however, what they were doing to us is a secret we cannot know.

Yet, our government is traveling around the world telling nations how to be good democracies, sometimes at the end of a gun held to their heads, and not even blushing or feeling shame!

Yet even symbolic gestures of protest cause seizure of freedom or property, while the actual non-symbolic violation of patriotism by violating the constitution goes on unpunished because administrative doctrine today is that violations of the U.S. Constitution are "policy decisions".

As if that were not enough, some of our well-known scholars declare that our educational system is "a form of indoctrination", and that one of the main purposes of business is to deceive the people.

It gets down to a process whereby indoctrination is our enlightenment, which can hardly qualify us to become cosmic adults.

Next post in this series is here.

The Evolution of Cosmic Adults

The G8 Nations are meeting again.

Those nations are France (65,073,482), United States (306,869,000), United Kingdom (61,612,300), Russia (142,008,838), Germany (82,060,000), Japan (127,433,494), Italy (60,045,068), and Canada (33,708,000), which together have a population of about 878,810,182 people.

That G-8 population figure represents about 15% of the earth's population which is about 6,000,000,000 people.

Which means that 85% of the world population is left out of G8 summits.

China (1,500,000,000) and India (1,200,000,000) were not there, even though those two nations alone represent about 45% of the earth's population.

Even among the fraction that was represented at the G8 summit, they cannot agree among themselves exactly how to proceed to solve the mounting and fast approaching problems that will bring catastrophe to their populations and economies.

Will this lack of agreement increase or decrease when most of the world's population is represented in a G-All summit?

The evolution and religion we teach in our institutions on this planet is not yet producing even planet-wise adults, in terms of which ideology and behaviour is dominating within human endeavours, much less producing cosmic adults.

Under the tenets of ecocosmology our teachers and our entire earth culture must do much better than that.

In fact, the teachers and the earth culture must eventually produce cosmic adults if the children of mother earth are to survive.

A recent Pew Research Study reveals some promising and some disturbing factors about the U.S. public's view of science, and the government's suppression of it.

The next post in this series is here.

Why We Can All Get Along After All

Really, it has to happen in a very real sense.

Humanity is the species most likely to carry the ball and band together to save the planet, save the nations, and save the human race.

It really does have to happen no matter who your king, queen, president, prime minister, dictator, Pope, Guru, Supreme Leader, or other leader is.

We have bigger fish to fry than this planet alone, and we ignore this reality at our certain peril.

So it is axiomatic that the improved rhetoric of the president is a good thing which every person can hope will become the serious reality we really do need to implement big time.

Saturn - Home of the Hexagon Mystery

This post has been moved to the Ecocosmology blog.

Alaska - Land of the Midnight Mystery

Spontaneous Uplift

Just to remind us that we don't know everything about this planet, a 1,000 foot section of beach near Homer, Alaska suddenly and mysteriously rose the height of a two story building, which is about 20 feet. 

It happened overnight a few days ago. 

Scientists are still figuring this one out, but so far they have been ruling out earthquake activity as the cause; instead, the main theory at the moment has to do with a 12,000 year old landslide.

Sun Spots Reappear

This post has been moved to the Ecocosmology blog.

Get Back Joe Joe, Get Back Loretta

We hypothesized in a post here that a daze had set in during the Bush II years that was not limited to the bushies, but that it was a widespread daze.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has proven the case conclusively.

The GAO has shown that if terrorists were real and wanted to do serious damage in the U.S.A., it would be really be a piece of cake to accomplish:

It only took 27 seconds for him to smuggle live bomb components through security detail in a federal building. Later, he assembled a bomb in the restroom, and then walked around the facility undetected.

...

Investigators from the the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, were able to penetrate all 10 of the undisclosed federal buildings it tested across the United States.

(ABC News). It is time to shake the fairy tale about the monster under the bed and rejoice that, like WMD in Iraq, the scary "turrisssstsss are everywhere" movie was only a self induced nightmare.

It is good that the world is not out to get us, but instead is out to get us to stop torture, indefinite prison for detainees, invasions, and occupations while we claim to be the true source of democracy on this planet.

The world and most Americans know we have slipped up and that it is time we admitted it fully; and time we remember to "get back to where you once belonged" as the Beatles song lyrics counsel.

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The Science Police

The scientist being arrested in the photo probably wonders who thought up the idea of the federal science police:

Each year, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) investigates dozens of charges of scientific misconduct. And each year, the ORI adds a handful of names to a list of researchers found guilty of falsifying figures, fabricating data, or committing other academic infractions. As of April 1, 2009, this Administrative Actions list, presented on the ORI Web site, carried 38 names. These people are barred from receiving federal funds and/or serving on a Public Health Service committee, typically for a period of 3–5 years. Once the debarment term is up, the name disappears from the list. In theory, the punishment—and the shame — of the ordeal is over.

(The Scientist, Life After Fraud). Yet the reality is that these scientists who stuff their test tubes are treated like sex offenders:

But even then, the stain of guilt can pursue them through every aspect of their life, professional and personal.This is surely not the intention. Any system of justice worthy of the name must mete out the applicable punishment alongside opportunities for rehabilitation and measures of crime prevention.

(The Scientist, Fairness For Fraudsters). Gosh golly gee, sex guy and the science guy being put on lists, like terrorists? Whoa!

Dredd Blog has complained about the expanding universe in a tongue and cheek post, however, we did not mean to push Uncle Sam And The Pharoahs over the edge into Wooly Bully land and into ever expanding lists.

Run Climate Change Deniers, Run!!! And if Sarah Palin becomes head of this agency, Run Einstein Run!!

Wikipedia has an article on the Office of Research Integrity which focuses on scientific misconduct.

Does anyone else worry that this type of government office could become a political football to push or prevent certain scientific endeavours?

Scientists confirm that the Bush II regime suppressed science that did not agree with the regime's political platform:

Most scientists had heard at least a little about claims that government scientists were not allowed to report research findings that conflicted with the Bush administration’s point of view. And the vast majority (77%) says that these claims are true.

(Pew Research). When you combine government science police with government suppression of science the government does not agree with, you can easily have the institutionalization of propaganda.

The next post in this series is here.

Independence From What?

Of the many grievances listed in The Unanimous Declaration, the following is a most interesting one:

He [the king] has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

(Declaration of Independence). One of our warrior presidents warned us that this rendering of "the military independent of and superior to civil power" was a danger that was threatening to become institutionalized into our system:

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

(President Dwight Eisenhower, emphasis added). In other words our independence as a free nation depends on there being no rendering of "the military independent of and superior to civil power", or the nation as we have known it will perish from the face of the earth, and something else will rise in its place.

The "there is a shadow government" proponents say that what we declared our independence from, and what Eisenhower feared would happen, has happened behind the scenes; and for the most part happened so slowly as to be undetected.

There is undoubtedly behind the scenes dynamics that account for much of the strange goings on the popular TV Series Burn Notice depicts:

WEAPONS inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his ­mysterious death.

He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the ­British and American invasion.

(Daily Express, UK). Whether those mysterious deaths we hear about from time to time are official or rogue operations by military commanders is only one possibility.

Michael, the burned agent on Burn Notice, recently told the Miami Police investigator "we are on the same side", which is the gist of the matter ... are we?

The Fog of War - McWarster McNamara

Robert McNamara has died.

I did not like him during the Vietnam war; but did like him after his confessions to war crimes in the documentary The Fog of War; which interestingly had to do with WW II and the "campaign" against Japan, not Vietnam.

At least I liked his final grasp of honesty and his willingness to share it.

The mother of all wars loves her children, like all mothers who eat their own young do.

The McNamara type remorse currently being felt in the U.S., and the world at large, is causing neoCons to be busy about moving their money, power, and influence over to the democratic party, and away from the increasingly losing republican party and the intense scrutiny it is pulling to itself.

It explains why Bush II and the bushie warsters are not being prosecuted for anything from criminal torture to other war crimes. McNamara explained why this happens.

Notice some patterns; McNamara was a republican Secretary of Defense, like Gates; bipartisan rhetoric abounds; the republicans seem to be self-destructing with media help; Obama is morphing to the right and has talked about one term only; like Johnson eventually did.

While history in no way follows fixed structures, it does help to notice patterns if we are to grasp some of history's lessons.

Keep your eye on the morph which begins within those exposed to power.

Complete Idiot's Guide To Green Jobs

The actual title of the book I am reading is "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Green Careers", written by Barbara Parks and Jodi Helmer.

There is a letter on the inside front cover of the book which is addressed to the reader.

Among other things, that letter says:

Green careers are more than just a trend. Consider this: In 2007, Congress passed the Green Jobs Act, a $125 million investment to train workers for careers in renewable energy, energy-efficient transportation, and green building. The Apollo Alliance, a national coalition dedicated to the advancement of the green economy, has proposed a $300 billion influx of federal funding over the next decade to support environmental initiatives, which would lead to the creation of more than 3 million green careers.

The media buzz over green jobs has Americans scrambling to understand what a growing green job market means. What, exactly is a green job? Are they hard to find? Where do you look? That's where we come in.

(ibid). Well there is much talk about jobs, and a "career" is really just a long lasting job.

There is a Dredd Blog post "Clean Coal Mythology", where it is pointed out that there are more jobs in wind energy generation than there are in coal mining even as we speak!

So, this revolution is already in the making, so lets continue to make it so.

Check it out.

If, in the final analysis, we do have to save this human species ourselves, perhaps it will be done one job and one career at a time.

Lets make a career out of saving our planet and our species and have green fun doing it.

9/11 Conspiracy Theorists Take A Hit - 3

Several medical and mental health doctors have joined together to deal another blow to official 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

One of the co-founders, Jonathan Weisbuch, MD, MPH, has an impressive medical career, and questions the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Another co-founder, Dr. Barry Komisaruk, PhD, also questions the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

I have provided posts, as have other publishers, concerning missing airliner documentation, and missing jet fuel quantity which also bring doubt down upon the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

We are waiting for replies from those who formulated the official 9/11 conspiracy theory to clear up these doubts, and when that information is provided this post will be updated accordingly.

Meanwhile, hundreds of professional architects will be in Washington D.C. in a few days for a July 14 - 16 professional convention.

Some of them will be talking to peer professionals and congress members about the weakness in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Who Would Allah Vote For?

My recent take on the Iranian election was that the Iranian neoCons had fooled some progressive election integrity folk here in the U.S.A.

Evidently many mullahs in Iran have not been fooled, however, and they are now making more noise:

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
...

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

(NY Times). This seems to be evidence of a difference of opinion which the neoCon crushers of the demonstrators will not be able to subdue willy nilly.

This dissent comes from a substantial Iranian source.

A source that can mould opinion, and which has the type of respect which the Ahmadinejadians will not be able to taint by frivolous references and allegations of ties to external western corrupting influences, such as the CIA or MI5; nor can they pin this on the Mossad of Israel.

The plot thickeneth.