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The Rationale Quest - Philosophy and Religion latent state challenged in global economic arena
Philosophy and Religion latent state is challenged and explored in the global economic arena. Suffering and Healing Prayer part of the Religon section.
Some posts are not necessarily the view of Tapsearch Com Editor and Artist Ray Tapajna
by Ray Tapajna
Feel free to copy the article below to your sites and blogs providing you leave the reference links intact. It is from our expert rated Ezine Articles library. You can also reweet it here too. It is also at bit.ly/potato-heads-plug-in with the feed at] Feed rss xml ( from the New Yorker Thaigalpat Blog Site. ) It applys to our global economic crisis today.
Mr and Ms Potato Heads Are You Unnetted? Time To Get Your, Ears and Mouth Plugged In
Are you a Potato Head still waiting for you ears, eyes and mouth? Are you unnetted? Do you have no voice in the process of Globalization and Free Trade in the Flat World? Tune in ABC, CNN, MSNBC or FOX and they will plug in your eyes, ears and mouth for you. Liberals turn to the left and chant all the political correct nonsensical phrases they give you. Conservatives turn to the right and follow the man who says Jesus is his favorite philosopher as he charges up a hill in bloody pre-emptive wars from his safe place in Washington DC.
All should read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman from the New York Times. It is really about President Clinton and President Bush walking hand in hand, down the global economic path together.
Stay away from The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man book by John Perkins, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now Org and Seymour Hersh from the New Yorker. They will just confuse you. Do not read any of the many books about Globalization by Manuel Castell or The Trap by Sir James Goldsmith.
It may be time to curse the darkness rather than just light one little candle. Token charitable causes where only one in thousands get help hide deep economic wounds. The Free Enterprise system is supposed to make it easier for all to be good. It obviously has failed its mission. We live off the suffering of the wage slaves of the world.
As the saying in the old movie Cool Hand Luke goes what we got here it the failure to communicate even in our global instant connected world with text messages and all. It seems we talk and write more than ever but something is missing. Could it be the pursuit of perfection has been flushed down the toilet? Have we compromised because we say perfection is only a word in the dictionary with a definition that can not apply to human beings. Yet, the word is there and it haunts us as we live and breathe in the confines of bodies that are decaying with each tick of the clock. All we want is to feel all together in one place at the same time but find these can be only rare moments in time as we fade away into eternity.
In the work world, we are told it is a good thing trying to match our ultimate end of what is right and what is wrong, but we also told we have to be realistic how we do it in the real world. Pragmatism becomes the rule. Utility is its tool. In the Globalist Free Traders world, the Bible phrase reverses itself. It says, do unto others before they do it to you. We see power politics marry economics consummating greed. The homeless lay on downtown streets and are ignored. The sun burns down on them in the summer and the cold winds of winter, freezes them, but it does not matter for their souls have been burned out or frozen solid already by a society that scurries by being too busy with the real world of things. Quote the statistics they give you to tell yourself the homeless and underclass do not exist in our good economy. However, things like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans exposes a Silent Depression residing in our land. Many say it is their fault they ended up the way they did.
It is not only workers on wages or without any wages who are suffering. Reportedly, 47 percent of all small business persons have maxed out their credit cards to keep their business afloat. They fall into a trap of usury interest rates over 18 percent and as high as 34 percent like everyone who uses their credit lines to back up their lost of jobs etc., there is no come back after this happens.
They should have been plugged into ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox News. After all there are good men like Cavuto on Fox who shows us things like the stock market being the soul of a good society where everyone can transform paper into profit by using the least among us to do the dirty work. People like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times writes a book called the Flat World and speaks at Harvard. People like a President of a Jesuit University say Amen and more workers are handcuffed in the world with the key thrown away. Bishops in Central and South America are martyred because they speak and act for the underclass. One of the first saints canonized by Pope Benedict was Father Alberto Hurtado who acted and spoke for the underclass in the 1940s and 1950s. Today Populism is rapidly coming our way from South America.
People like John Perkins do come forward and write a different kind of book called The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man that tells all about the bad things really going on in the global economic arena and but he is silenced by the main media channels. The academic community ignores him too.
President Bush says there are jobs in the USA that Americans will not do. This has happened after the U.S. sent more than 4000 factories to Mexico. It is obvious there are jobs in Mexico that Mexican workers will not take. Many of these factories are now moving to China where are willing to work for less. It is an endless stream of movement because millions are competing for the same jobs. Free Trade is about moving production from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets of the world. The main commodities are human beings put on a world trading block to compete with one another down to the levels of wage slave and even child labor.
The facts of life include the following:
In 1774, 1 percent owned 15 percent of the wealth. By 1973, 1 percent owned 32.6 percent of the wealth and by 1989, 1 percent owned 40 percent of the wealth. What is it today? ( Search on Silent Depression Economic Inequality for more data )
At age 65: 45 percent are dependent on relatives. 30 percent are dependent on charity. 23 percent are still working and only 2 percent are self sustaining. A note in our church bulletin reads Success is reaching Social Security age without having to declare bankruptcy. We know now that about 38 percent over the age of 45 did file for bankruptcy from 1992 to 2002.
85 percent over 65 do not even have $250.00
About 28 percent of all workers make less that $7.90 per hour
The lowest 20 percent bracket are paying state and local taxes at about twice the rate of the top 1 percent. 70 percent of all workers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. A person making only about $10,000 a years pays about 12 percent of their total gross income in payroll, state and local taxes. That is more than a $1,000 a year on just $10,000 in income.
About 70% of all workers make less money in real dollars than comparable workers did 20 years ago.
The poor are getting poorer and the Middle Class is fading away.
For more information See If this is a good economy, I would hate to see a bad one at Tapsearch Com Tapart News. The facts were updated from 1998 and most of the data remains the same today.
There was a time in Rome when it was better to be a slave than a Free-Man. The slaves had a roof over their heads and were allowed to get married in order to raise more slaves. The Free-Man had to hide and had very few opportunities make a living. History seems to be repeating itself now with a working poor class growing in the USA and impoverished and wage slave class growing outside the USA. The World Bank and other lenders capture victims with usury interest rates.
A statistical prosperity is still being proclaimed even though 39 percent of all over 45 have declared bankruptcy from 1992 to 2002. Finally only about 38 percent of all workers in the USA, qualify for unemployment insurance which indicates there is a vast pool of workers missing in action from any kind of real reporting. It also proves the unemployment rate is fabricated and it certainly can not be compared with any unemployment rate reported in the past.
Who says we have to compete like this in a global economic arena?
See Ray Tapajna Chronicles and Art that Talks globally at tapsearch.com/tapartnews and tapsearch com communications by rank or see tapsearch.com/flatworld Search under tapart news, tapsearch, tapsearcher, arklineart, Ray Tapajna, Tapajna-Clinton for more information or search under any of the key words and phrases of above.
By Chuck Lindell
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF - Austin Texas
Updated: 9:29 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010
Published: 8:28 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010
Plane crash: What makes someonedo this? ( Our response is below - see COMMENTS )
Online note strikes a chord with some; it shows internal spiral of anger, UT professor says.
Flying an airplane into a multistory, glass-covered building is a symbolically powerful act, even 8½ years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But it was Andrew Joseph Stack III's online manifesto describing a life of powerlessness in the face of government hostility and corporate greed that clearly struck a national nerve last week.
Reaction to his note raced through an already polarized America in a way that spoke volumes about the national mood. It was as if Stack, who authorities have said was the pilot, held up a mirror, and we saw what we wanted to see.
Some lauded Stack as a hero in the war against an oppressive government or a crooked tax system.
Others dismissed the Austin man as a terrorist or cowardly criminal who targeted innocents.
And somewhere in the middle were some who believed Stack, though misguided and wrong, articulated their frustrations with economic hardship made worse by unresponsive politicians or greedy corporate fat cats.
Like others driven to political violence, Stack's angry rant focused
Like others driven to political violence, Stack's angry rant focused on two themes class-based anger in a time of economic crisis and frustration over having no effective way to voice grievances or improve lives, said Dana Cloud, a University of Texas associate professor who studies violence as a political expression.
"What he wrote has tapped into some common concerns, and people are talking," Cloud said. "It speaks to a deep sense of disaffection and unsettlement. ... I think his action is an index of popular anger and frustration."
Shortly after Thursday's crash, Facebook pages praising Stack generated hundreds of followers and a flurry of comments, including these on a site titled "Joseph Andrew Stack, we salute thee":
"Wow, at least someone stood up for us."
"Stack was a terrorist. He is no better than those behind 9-11."
"He did what he did to make a point and clear up our vision, the only way our government would understand. I just hope people realize this, and do not dismiss him as another nutjob rebel stereotype."
And just like in many blogs or newspaper stories about the plane crash, commenters unleashed a stream of vitriol and ridicule directed at liberals, conservatives, conspiracy theorists or those striving for a middle ground.
Unsurprised by the strong reactionas UT classics professor Tom Palaima, who studies society and violence.
"Violence of any sort whether a tragic accident, a terrorist attack or something like this if it hits your psyche, it's impossible for human beings not to react on some level. I say the molecules of your soul have been moved around," Palaima said.
"There no such thing as an act of violence that does not send out shock waves that we all feel," he said.
The shock waves from the plane crash rolled across a nation experiencing economic turmoil and two wars in a frequently bitter political climate.
Think about December's jobless numbers, Palaima said. The U.S. economy lost 85,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate remained at 10 percent because so many people were no longer counted. They'd given up looking for work.
"What is that but a way of simply 'disappearing' human beings who are really suffering?" he said. "There are real problems in American society, a kind of fragmentation. People are feeling that they're isolated, that there isn't any sense of understanding of what individuals are going through."
Stack's manifesto arrived seething with frustration, sadness and self-pity into a climate where anger at the Bush administration swept Barack Obama into the White House, and a vocally angry tea party movement hopes to sweep him out again.
( For rest of article see :
at Statesman Com News Article - plane crash what makes someone do this )
See our response below in COMMENTS
What does it take to have a real economy? Save this page for easy reference or as a resource. Pass it to educators and students .
Ray Tapajna: Only local value added economies in balanced geopolitical settings work. Local could also include not only cities, but states, nations and even more if the setting is balanced in terms of taxes, regulations, government services and other costs that it takes to support a society or nation. The Free Enterprise must work properly and not chop up the economy into parts for the sake of investments and the stock market. This is economic segregation. If tarriffs are taken off products and put on workers or future generations by bailing out a failed system over and over again, the future is grim. Just imagine what people in 3000 will say about our generation. Explore the lost worlds in the globalist Flat World.
The real causes behind our global economic crisis - workers traded as commodities- by Ray Tapajna
We have written many articles about our failed economic systems from a real world perspective of the streets of USA.....from the real world of working men and women. Ask yourself how many workers does it take to support one government economist or commerce expert who makes $250,000 a year.
See the Tea Party may be brewing the wrong tea with comments about economic balances and statistics that play with your head The comments on this page will demonstrate many things how the statistics are flawed too. Note the part - Free Trade, Globalization and the so called Free Market is not Free Trade or go to Free Market is not Free Enterprise
And see also - Ethics in manufacturing
Our most popular article related to Free Trade being the scam of the century is Lend Lease was real Free Trade and not chop liver as in the globalist world If you search under this title you will find thousands of references and feel free to copy it to your site or blogs. All of our articles can be copied from Ezine Articles Expert Ray Tapajna sites.
See other top articles related to local value added economies above including We chopped up the goose that layed the golden eggs. Note too about Taps instead of Taxes.
It is obvious workers do not have a voice in the process of Globalizations and Free Trade. See Communications by Rank They are unnetted in the scheme of things - outside looking in at the celebration by the Free Traders and the investment communities who just got bailed out. The investment communities get paid for their failures while workers and future generations take the hit.
All this has happened even though workers and labor are the core of society - See our review of Pope Benedict's Economic Encylical
And search under.... Lech Walesa says America has lost its moral leadership. Walesa led the solidarity movement in Poland which played a major part in the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union. He also said - I do not know that much about business and economics but I do know that when only ten percent of all people control 100 percent of the wealth, something is very wrong.
Rolling the funny money dice in the global economic economy by Ray Tapajna
We were warned about the funny money games in the global economic casino years ago . It is not something new.
The financial crisis stems from making artificial money products independent of real production products from industry.
The stock market remains suspect as to its real mission of adding value to the economy.
Back in 1999, there were even money products where traders bet on the outcome of the Y2k crisis. Traders bet that the cost of money would surge in December of 1990. They bet computers could lose track of money transactions with banks then becoming reluctant to make loans. The Y2k crisis also funneled artificial money into the economy as governments and private business spent money they did not have in resolving the computer problems that were ignored for years related to the turning of the century to the year 2000.
There were also all sorts of hedge funds in motion. In 1999, Federal Reserve had to orchestrate a $36 billion dollar infusion of cash into a Long-Term Capital money game played by a consortium of major lenders - a group of top Wall Street's biggest banks The Federal Reserve had to react to a hugh speculative fund that invested money for rich people and large institutions. If they did not react, there would be a negative domino effect throughout the economy. The fund had fallen from $4.l billion dollars to $2.3 billion in one month's time. The 21 days later it fell to $600 million.
One Connecticut hedge fund, owned by the super rich also looked like it was going to bring down the world financial system. Long-Term Capital Management had borrowed tens of billions of dollars from pension funds and other savings around the world making super bets turn into sand. The bets involved so many financial products, many money experts feared a panic attack worldwide in the global economic casino. The core funds were derivative investments tied to securities worth more than $1 trillion dollars.
Many critics warn that bailing out these funds would send a signal to the super rich investors that they can bet all they want and get rescued if the bets did not go their way. It was high stakes played out in a global casino.
In the late 1990s in Clinton's land of is everything seemed to be based on what your own definition of is - is . The Long-Term Captial , left out what would happen if the Russian ruble would collapse as it did.
All the financial wars were hidden away during the Bush era while President Bush
kept everyone eyes on his pre-emptive shock and awe real wars. The supranational financial gambling went on. And the super rich and the super banks made mone by conning the workers of the world. They pushed free trade which deflated the value of workers and labor by moving production from place to place for the sake of the cheapest labor markets. However, as Manuel Castells, who predicted the "Bewildered New World" very bad things happen when the money products are separated from production. The little guy who was conned into buying a home at a variable interest rate was set up to be hammered.
Wall Street ended up cutting 3,400 workers and the executive who managed Merrill Lynch & Co.'s global risks was fired too. In addition, Salomon Smith Barney, the brokerage arm of the newly formed Citibankgroup cut 100 workers in is bond department.
The coming financial storms could have been forecasted easily. Instead many of these same people received bail outs by President Obama and given jobs to fix the economy that they broke. They played the funny money monopoply games and President Obama gave them the get out of jail card.
And the Bible tells us the only time Jesus became angry was when he encountered the money changer in the temple. I wonder why many of our spritual brethren to not connect all of the above with this, when they preach prosperity theology. Our economies based on making money on money instead of making things are burning out in the meantime.
Sources: Kathleen Day, Washington Post, Elizabeth Sullivan, ( current editorial page editor at Cleve Plain Dealer ) and articles from the Associated Press in 1999
The Detroit Newspaper strike told the story of things to come more than ten years ago
In March of 1999, Cardinal Adam Maida spoke about the Church's ( Rerum Novarum) endorsement in the 1890s, of the rights of workers to just wages and to organize for mutual support and protection. Today the AFL CIO Union private sector production workers only represent 15 percent of the membership with public sector government workers representing 50 percent of the total members. Back in the 1970's the validity of public sector workers being part of the AFL CIO would have been questioned as to why government workers were in a labor union instead of having a government union since the people are their employers. In the media , unions are still blamed for our economic mess with it being understood these unions are made up of production workers. No one in the media seems to know that these workers have been virtually gone for years. But this does not stop the rant against labor organizing.
My artwork below is now more than ten years old and a new generation of workers are bearing their cross now.
Workers still bearing their cross with a new lost generation of workers growing
Cardinal Maida in 1999, criticized two Detroit newspapers for using replacement workers when the workers struck the papers in July, 1995. At that time, city priests including Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbelton had been arrested at protests supporting the cause of the workers. Compare this with today with the Church evading these realities. Back then lawyer advocates call for the Church to be stronger in joining with the workers even though some priests were arrested. In recent years, the Church stood in the background as millions of workers lost their jobs due to free trade. Some Bishops even back illegal immigration which brings the value of all labor and workers down.
Back then, Robert Giles, then publisher of the Detroit News, did much of the same thing.
He amazingly got away with invoking Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" in applauding the replacement workers and praised them for defying their unions and crossing the picket lines. This is similar to those in the Church today who back up the illegal migrant workers coming to America. No one seems to ask why did all the illegal immigrants come even though the U.S. moved more than 4,000 factories to Mexico. This part of the story is left untold.
I recall this typical example after the Detroit newspapers strikes were settled . A worker had taken a part time job in order to feed his family and after the strike was settled he had to keep both the part-time job and the full-time newspaper job just to make the same amount of money as he did before the strike settlement. And this is how it goes today with many workers doing the same today.
John Carter, back then, was a 27 year veteran of the newspaper industry. He was being paid $16 an hour until the strike came. The only job he could find was a $6 an hour job aat a grocery store at $8.50 an hour. After the strike was over he was called back to his old job that paid only $12.50 an hour. To support his family, he had to work an extra 20 hours part time at the grocery store just to make the same amount of money. Other employees had their wages cut in half when they came back to the newspaper.
Today, all this is taken as a matter of fact. I worked in several factories while going to college in the 1950s. I made the equivalent of $15 to $20 an hour. At one job I even made more and enjoyed time and a half and even double time working overtime. If these jobs were available today, there would be thousands standing in line to get them including college graduates and even many with advanced degrees. President Obama bailed out the investment communities and big money while ignoring the plight of workers themselves. He is similar to President Reagan who pushed his "trickle down economy" from the top. However back then the top was in the private sector and now the top in President Obama's "trickle down economy" is big government. Workers are still vacant entities that have to wait for the "trickle" to reach down to them.
The Church's Rerum Novarum Encylical that stood the test of time for about a hundred years for human dignity in the work day seems to have been thrashed and no one seems to care or notice this event happening in our times. Many churches in our region are closing down. We now have both vacant churches and vacant workers. We wonder about this as we review Pope Benedict's new economic encyclical
About ten years ago I drew the illustration above of workers being locked out of their jobs after replacement workers took over their jobs and the employer hired company policemen to keep order. Is this the wave of the future in th Clinton-Bush-Obama world. They all still act as one in the scam of the century -free trade!
Liberalism wants to make everything one size fits all and the other side just waits to take advantages of their mistakes for the sake of profits
Cross of 9/11 Tangle of Terror - Who can untangle the terror globalization and free trade have bred by both poltical parties
Below is an article by Tom Palaima which provides different interpretations of the 1950s and my comments are added at the bottom as someone being from the 1950s
It comes down to this - Liberals try to make one size fits all and in the process they actually annul diversity. It comes down to this if you want to change what the founders of our nation or any organized group sets down as their guiding principles, then call it something else and do not try to add or change what was formulated by the founders .
A review by Thomas Palaima about Going by the Book from The Austin - Texas - Statesman with Tom being a regular contributor
The books that political figures write tell us lots about their future ambitions.
Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" re-released in 2004 and "The Audacity of Hope," published two years later, were written with 2012 in mind. They turned out to be just as useful in 2008.
John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" (1955) won the Pulitzer Prize and in 1960 gave him a much-needed brand of statesmanlike wisdom beyond his years. Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" signals that her real ambitions lie outside the Fox News studios.
We ignore the books of politicians at our own risk. Their books give us both the sheep's clothing and the wolves'. The classic example is Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Hitler's rambling narrative later became prescribed reading for the youth of Germany and newlywed couples. But the fascism, hatred of Jews and intellectuals and grandiose dreams of personal power and German hegemony were all there well before Hitler actually became leader.
Of the candidates for Texas governor, only incumbent Rick Perry has gone author like Palin. Not surprisingly, she has endorsed Perry: "He walks the walk of a true conservative." Palin likes Perry's opposition to abortion rights and to using federal money for education in Texas or to help unemployed and uninsured Texans. We don't know how Palin feels about the words Perry writes. But we should take the time to find out how we feel about them.
Perry's book, "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For," came out in February 2008. Although classified as a book on parenting and families and the Boy Scouts, they are the sheep's clothing.
George W. Bush gave us an unending war on terror. Perry, according to his publisher, gives us "a culture war that rages close to the surface of American life." The book recounts in great detail what Perry calls "the left's attacks on the Boy Scouts of America" and "takes dead aim at the moral relativism of the secular humanist movement, indicting its corrosive impact."
Perry describes rural Texas in the 1950s as a simple, homogenous Garden of Eden, from which we were cast out in the 1960s. In his view, the '60s were a dark period of "sexual revolution, anti-Vietnam War activism and opposition to government authority" that brought about our current "overemphasis on individualism" and failure "to teach children right and wrong."
He does not consider that the authority we defied in the '60s cost 57,000 American lives in Southeast Asia, kept black Americans separate and unequal, kept women locked up as little homemakers, kept gays and lesbians in the closet and viewed free political speech and thought as un-American activities.
Perry puts "attacks on Scouts" in three main categories: girls and women, God and sexual orientation or gay rights. He admits it was good that the Boy Scouts finally permitted women into all adult leadership positions in February 1988. But he refuses to see what many scouting organizations in other countries have already seen: Having adults of all sexual orientations being openly and naturally who they are is healthy for the youngsters and teenagers who need to have nurturing role models for their own developing identities.
And there is also no harm in finding out that adults can behave reverently as scout leaders even if they doubt or deny the existence of God. I was an active and caring scout leader for eight years and kept my agnosticism in the closet.
Do read Perry's book. He thinks he is fighting a culture war. You might want to know how he is fighting it and which side he thinks you are on.
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________
Ray Tapajna's response to the above article - Living and thinking in the 1950s
I grew up during World War 2 and in the early 1950s. The 1960s were strange to someone like me. There was a brief span of time before the Korean War where many believed there would never be another limited war due to the atomic bomb. It was also a time when individuality was much stronger than any prejudices. The commual parts pushed by liberals was a turn off and as a young boy working in our family food store, I found that liberals knew nothing about business while the other side would take advantage of every liberal mistake to cut out competition and fair trade for the sake of profits.
In my high school days, all kinds of prejudices surface and I ignored most of them or found a way to quietly counter them. Our secular high school was not allowed to play Catholic school in sports. I flunked a history course because the teacher had prejudices about religions and nationalities and I countered him. I challenged our local state library about not having some philosophy books on the shelf or when they put a philosophy book in the religious section. There were no marches but quiet individual encounters. Our prejudices were conquered quickly by meeting an individual who took our eyes off the color of their skin or any other differences. The common statement would be - he's a good guy even though he is this or that. Judgements were broken down that way. Frankly, I do not know how deep, prejudices are in me and I don't think anyone really knows that part of themselves. In the 1950s, we were coming out of an era where the saying - there are no atheists in a fox hole ruled - and the extension of that meant you had to get along with the person that may save your life no matter who or what they are. We came out of the 1940s knowing this in our relations to others. When a young soldier lost his rifle and you noted how afraid they were about the possible consequences, you did not care what color or whatever, they were, you found their gun. It was all about communal survival . However, if you had to go on a combat patrol and select who you wanted and where to place them, everything counted in the decision making process.
There is no one size that fits all. Liberals in many segments of our life try to fit the same shoe on everyone's foot. I see a future where diversity really means diversity which means a total freedom to do your own thing according to your conscience. And Cardinal Newman - a convert to the Catholic church said - everyone must follow their conscience even if that conscience is ill informed. Liberals in all their writings seem to tell me something different. They seemed to want to command a communual conscience that all should obey. I think liberalism leads to totalitarianism in the end more than conservatism. Conservatives at least try harder to follow what the founders set up.
For me President Obama was trained to be a white Ivy League thinker with a "plantation owner" mentality. And someone like Pat Buchanan is more humble in his belief systems and I am still working to digest his most recent book about World War 1 and World War 2 never having to happen. He does not claim it to be history but I think it is. Less we forget, liberal Democrat presidents started both of these wars. The 1940s and 1950s conservatives of good will followed the policies of balancing of power rather than war. The bad ones of course found ways to make profits from war after the liberals started them.
And the Civil War was not about slavery even though both sides used the issue. The real issue was states rights over a powerful central government. The South was more in tune with diversity than the North. With globalization we see a new kind of centralization that is moving so fast that it breeds more evil than good. When things are decentralized in smaller capacities, social justice and the common good have more of a chance to rise above it all. I see a post globalization era coming where things will divide by the quality of their essence with human dignity in the workday growing and not being thrashed in a universal way. I see an era where the indivdual right to be born will be more in balance.
Things like the Boys Scouts is not something correctable in universal ways. Like everything else they must be loyal to their founders or call themselves by a different name.
( After more than ten years in my advocacy for human dignity in the work day and fair trade - and real world trade, I write about my journey in the global economic arena at It's time to tell my story of my journey in the global economic arena and also note Communications by Rank - The Unnetted- Workers having no voice in the process of globalization and free trade - Who caused so many to be missing in action from any kind of reporting?)
Is it an economic crisis or a human nature crisis
Peter Maurin's essay on Human Nature tells us what caused the economic crisis
The above is taken from the essays of Peter Maurin who co-founded
the Catholic Workers movement with Dorothy Day - and who gives us deep insight how human nature guides our daily lives - asking do we need more priests or more policemen.
Liberalism is based on Rousseau who said human nature is naturally good
but society infects it with evil. John Dewey installed this concept in our state education system and it still remains the core of our public education. Society is made up of people trying to cope with one another at the highest levels possibe. Human nature is is not naturally good. It is flawed. It needs a helping hand. However, many well intended Conservatives and business people say Capitalism and the so call free market accomodates the flaws in human nature the best. They in essence are agreeing with liberal thinking in this matter. Human nature does not tell us to say - it is nothing personal - it is only business. Business does not have a life of its own. It is an interaction between people to provide for the needs of all. This interaction forms society.
Alan Greenspan in his book the Age of Turbulence went out of his way telling about the failures of the utopian religous New Harmony workers community experiment in defense of Capitalism. It is obvious that there must be something better than what we have now with raw Capitalism being unleashed in a global economic arena with free trade as its tool.
Both are wrong about human nature and that is the reason for religions to be more than religions but also away to provide mankind with priniciples like Jesus said, do unto others as you would have them do to you. Even Adam Smith held labor and workers as something sacred and the core of all society. Human nature is flawed but ready for goodness and real harmony with one another. Our secular societies make a big mistake by denying the power of religions to set principles of conduct in everyday life. The Monday workday follows the day of whorship where the members are supposed to carry it into the work week. Too many try to separate the two and many liberals do not even want to admit it exists in everyday life but our human nature calls us to fit our highest principles to everyday life and the work world. This does not surface automatically.
In the global economic arena, human nature is on trial and the economic crisis is really a human nature crisis. It is not human nature to compete with one another in a survival of the fittest way. It is not human nature to live off the impoverished workers of the world as so called free trade tells us to do. It is not human nature to shop for the cheapest price without considering how the prices came about. It is not human nature to shop our way out of our jobs. The phrase - do unto others as you would have them do to you- may come from the Bible but it is also a very pragmatic thing to do in order to have the good life for all in a setting of harmony instead of living in the free trade world dependent on the cheapest labor possible. This is not human nature.
(See more at Human Nature is on trial in our global economic crisis and communications by rank and the unnetted )
Human Nature is still on trial from the top to the bottom Religion and Philosophy are still late in their response to the global economic arena - even proportional ethics is taking over. Even proportional ethics is touted by top clergy and a Jesuit priest who is President of a Jesuit university proclaims Thomas Friedman's Flat World as an example of all that is good in the global economy. ( The Flat World of Friedman is a fable about the scam of the century - Free Trade. )
A 1971 several church groups and association compiled views on what lay people think the church ought to do to help them be responsible Christians in their occupational, political and social relationships. Not much has changed and in many areas things have become worst.
The groups including blacks and whites, men and women, young and old businessmen, housewives professors industrialists, arms manufacturers, technologists, union leaders, laborers, government employees, civil rights workers and lawyers. It should be noted that this happened in better economic times with most of our corporations and small businesses were still intact. With the new computer generation coming, there were even articles and studies about what to do with the coming new volume of leisure time which was predicted to follow computerization.
Here is the conclusion of the poll taken:
"Most Christians are involved in jobs and institutions which desparately need to come under the guidance fo our highest ethical and religious values." They concluded the church is in trouble because it is failing to minister to the people "where they live and work."
" It abandons us in our day to day activities," - They said the church serves the faithful within its own confines but offers little guidance to people "at the most crucial level in their lives - where they carry on their daily work and influence."
Christians today are in danger of despair because their faith is divorced from their world" -- religious decay is inevitable when "faith gets out of touch ith the institutions of society."
The 70 page report said most laymen still worship and serve in their churches but find little help in secular institutions where they spend most of their time.
Soon after reading about this, a friend and I started a group dedicated to approaching these issues. We could get only a few people interested. Then the economic work day took on even a darker side as Free Trade came and "survival of the fittest" thinking took over and President Franklin Roosevelt's adage became a reality - He said economic diseases are highly communicable. Today these deseases seem to be out of control while at the same time shoppers shop their way out of their jobs in a intense global economic arena where no one wins.
The first question to ask - and the preachers who claim their 10 percent tithing should ask this question first - is it only human nature to shop for the cheapest price possible without considering the conditions and events behind the given price ?
And are we doing unto others as we would like them to do for us?
In the investment communities and stock market - Is it just human nature to seek profit in a wholesale fashion or should we note things like people getting fired instead of hired for the sake of added profit ?
And Free Trade has opened pandora' box, letting out all the human ills into the world while relgion and philosophy seem befuddled by it all in a "bewildered new world." Even the new economic encyclical by Pope Benedict avoids direct references to dark side of so called Free Trade.
Economic diseases rampant while human nature is on trial - and is Free Trade really slave trade
What if? Causes and Effects behind U.S. policies
What if the U.S. did not support and fund Bin Laden during the Russian and Afghanistan war? In doing so, they seeded fields of violence that lead to the attack on the World Trade Center , 9/11/2001.
What if the U.S. asked why was the World Trade Center chosen for the first attack during the Clinton years. The first al Qaeda attack was 16 years ago in 1993 during the Clinton years. Our political leaders and the news media still do not ask why the World Trade Center picked twice by the al Qaeda to attack.
What if the elder President Bush while head of the CIA did not support and fund Sadaam Hussein in the Iraq Iran war. Would Hussien be able to rise to power as he did. And no one seems to want to talk about where the weapons of mass destruction came from. Most of them were not produced in Iraq. ( I saw a satirical comment on a forum saying Bush knew Hussien had weapons of mass destruction because he had receipts for them. I wonder how true this is . ) Why did the U.S. generals have to bury up to 50,000 Iraq soldiers in the sands with earthmoving equipment during the first Desert Storm war. The U.S. already had won the battles. Why did the U.S. military have to bombed the Iraqi soldiers and their families fleeing back to Iraq from Kuwait? What good could come from something like this.
What if President Bush listened to the former top weapons of mass destruction inspector - Scott Ritter or read some of Seymour Hersh's articles about the weapons being gone since 1992. What if the major media channels covered these stories. I saw Scott Ritter a few times on the major media channels but he was never provided the proper platform to state his case. He and Hersh for the most part were confined to radio talk shows and programs by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. Amy Goodman is also limited in her appearances on major media channels and I wonder why. She has plenty of credentials
What if President Clinton stayed out of the wars in the Balkans and instead supplied humanitarian help instead. President Clinton supposedly went into the Balkans to stop ethic cleansing. In the process, 750,000 Serbians and gypies fled their homes to save their lives. Many fled to Kosovo where they were attacked again. So President Clinton instigated a new form of ethic cleansing. Today Kosovo is virtually cleansed of Serbians with Serbia being a major part of Kosovo for centuries. How does Clinton's ethic cleansing differ from any other.And how does this stop the centuries old conflicts in the Balkans
What if President Clinton did not invite and bring the Islamic fighters to Bosnia. Some of these fighters ended up being part of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.
What if President Clinton did not bomb and fire missiles into Iraq on a consistent basis while he was in office. It seems like Iraq was being "softened" for a future direct ground attack. The Catholic Workers newspaper reported that about a million innocent Iraqi people lost their lives during this period due to the bombings and the sanction.
What if the U.S. people knew more about the makeup of Afganistan which is a culture of tribal communities. How can the geopolitical balances in this nation and surrounding regions be ignored. The Taliban and the Northern Alliances change by the day. Most likely, there are still former Russian trained officers too. How is this supposed to work for the short or long term.
Why do our top military experts ignore the historical balances. They know better. They must know that fighting against hundreds dirverse targets never really win a war. They know that the U.S. will leave Afganistan the same way all invaders have left in the past because the U.S. people like people in many other countries in history will not accept a 30 plus years war. No country was ever able to financially afford it. It was a major reason why the Soviet Union lost their empire.
Resources.... Ray Tapajna Chronicles that forcasted our economic storms
A message from history about all minds being wounded in wars - Ray Tapajna posts Thomas Palaima about irrational wars
By Thomas Palaima and Stephen Sonnenberg
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, December 06, 2009
'Unfortunately, over the past eight years, our Army has been no stranger to tragedy, but we are an army that draws strength from adversity."
We should take to heart what Gen. George W. Casey Jr., chief of staff of the Army, said to us immediately after the terrible violence at Fort Hood.
But we should also listen to what soldiers have been trying to tell us since the Athenians fought the Persians at Marathon 2,500 years ago. There are consequences for all members of societies that go to war.
Much about what led to the Fort Hood attack remains uncertain. The prime suspect has not been tried, and possible motivations religious, psychological or otherwise are far from clear. But discussion prompted by the incident is fruitful nonetheless.
Casey is right. Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been strangers to tragedy. But most of us citizens back home have been. In our view, we will face the risk that war's horror will echo at home if we continue to isolate our soldiers and the small cadre of mental health professionals who care for them.
We also believe that we, as citizens, have an obligation to understand better what effects war is having on all members of our society and to be actively involved in making sure the wounds that war inflicts on soldiers and civilians alike are healed. We further believe that we have a successful model for what we need to do to help prevent such future tragedies: the citizens of ancient Athens, who invented democracy and gave us the template for our own democracy.
The ancient Athenians lived in just as confusing and terrifying a world as we live in. Athenian politics was just as divisive. Their democracy, during its first 100 years, went through assassinations, foreign military interventions, economic crises, right-wing coups and radical populist extremism. The Athenians were at war almost every year in the century after the battle for freedom fought by their own greatest generation, the Marathon-fighters, in 490 BC. Marathon was their Normandy.
Near the end of that century, the Athenians, at their height of power, fought a 27-year, all-out war with Sparta. Athenian losses were staggering, the equivalent of the lost generation Great Britain and Germany suffered during World War I. Yet we have no reports of rogue actions by Athenian soldiers in the field. The few accounts we have of soldiers suffering from war trauma give no evidence that they committed acts of public violence. The Athenians must have been doing something right that we are not.
Athenian citizens understood war and its costs. They understood the need to look at war honestly, collectively and openly. They had no other choice. Every Athenian man, woman and child knew the hardships and felt the sorrows of war.
We have been sequestered from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a way unimaginable in fifth century Athens. Our all-out war on terror fostered fear of a mysterious enemy that could strike us anywhere, at any time. It gave us an out. We could know little about such an enemy, so we willingly left the conduct of the war in the hands of specialists.
We also went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq quickly with the army we had, and with limited public debate. Our exposure to the casualties of combat was also limited. Even images of flag-draped coffins were for a long time taboo.
In contrast, the Athenians displayed 11 coffins at their annual public funeral for fallen soldiers. Ten coffins contained the remains of citizen-soldiers from each of Athens' 10 tribes. An eleventh was for soldiers whose bodies could not be recovered.
The absence of a universal draft and the small size and demographics of our army further shelter us from the real tragedies of war. Our military is largely composed of men and women from the reserves or enlistees. These soldiers are brave and patriotic. But our situation stands in contrast with Athens, where all adult citizens, rich and poor, were soldiers. And the wealthier classes, armed infantry soldiers known as hoplites and soldiers in the cavalry, bore the brunt of their ground fighting.
The volunteer soldiers who do our fighting are redeployed too soon and too often. They experience stress beyond bearable limits. When they return from tours of duty, we know little about the hell they have been through and seem to care even less. We expect our dedicated military mental health professionals to care for our soldiers. Because many don't re-enlist, their numbers are shrinking dramatically. They are overstretched and overstressed.
Many soldiers returning from combat duty and their family members require intensive psychiatric therapy to heal the psychological wounds of war. Caregivers cannot be passive listeners. They must be there as fellow human beings. They hear stories of extreme pain, often in the absence of diagnosable post-traumatic stress disorder. They take in the pain of their patients. They share it, reshape it and help integrate it into a healthy post-war adaptation. But they cannot and should not do these things alone. Nor should our soldiers and their families.
We have placed our soldiers and therapy-givers in a psychological pressure cooker. Combat troops, their families, and military psychiatrists and psychotherapists live in lonely and painful isolation.
We propose that all Americans need to become citizens as the ancient Athenians understood the term. We need to take an active interest in what our soldiers and those who care for them are going through overseas and back home. They need to know that we know the trauma they have suffered in the wars we have sent them to fight.
In ancient Athens, the government sponsored annual public performances of tragedies and comedies. Through the tragedies, written by military veterans like Aeschylus and active soldiers like Sophocles, Athenian soldiers and veterans, their families and their fellow citizens worked through the painful experiences of war together. In the comedies by Aristophanes, aggressive public criticism, in which many soldiers participated, was directed at leaders whose decisions and policies cost Athenian lives or perpetuated a war that was going to cost many more.
A stunning example of communal participation occurred in 415 B.C., midway through their war with Sparta. The citizens of Athens by formal vote had directed Athenian soldiers to destroy the neutral island of Melos, put all its male inhabitants to death, and sell its women and children into slavery. Months later, those very soldiers sat together with other Athenians in the Theater of Dionysus, 14,000 strong, about one-third of the whole adult male citizen population of Athens. They watched a state-approved play, "The Trojan Women," in which Greek soldiers do the same horrifying things to the men, women and children of Troy. On subsequent days, other soldiers and citizens watched other plays together.
These plays were not impersonal productions. The performers were deeply connected to the roles they played, authentically feeling and portraying their parts, and connecting to their audience in very personal ways. As is well known, the tragedies were designed to cause deep feelings of sympathy and fear in members of the audience. And the audience members during each yearly festival included the citizen-soldiers of Athens.
We now think of "The Trojan Women" as an anti-war play. At the time, we propose, it was also simply a war play. The whole citizen body embraced and absorbed the experience of violence, metabolized it and detoxified it. They embraced their soldiers sympathetically and therapeutically.
No one comes out of war without post-traumatic psychological scars. Combat soldiers and their families suffer most. Overworked mental health care professionals suffer, too, especially if they assume responsibilities we all should share. Even civilian employees who work in places like Fort Hood share with soldiers and their families the pain of war trauma. And all suffer even more because we isolate and marginalize them from the mainstream the rest of us comfortably occupy.
The ancient Athenians knew that the traumas of war are best healed when we all take part. Recent performances of Sophocles off Broadway and of a play based on psychiatrist Jonathan Shay's "Achilles in Vietnam" specifically for veterans here in Austin (see Palaima's op-ed column in the Oct. 26 American-Statesman, http://bit.ly/54ZLTY) have proved again the power of authentically performed drama to promote healthy discussion of problems that, if repressed, can have horrible consequences.
We need to find a way for us all as a nation to share in a broad range of such experiences, citizens and soldiers alike. War must be fought by our entire culture, and its traumatic consequences healed by our collective efforts to share the burdens of our aggressive behavior and the aggression directed against us by our enemies.
About the authors
Thomas Palaima, a MacArthur fellow, is Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics at the University of Texas, where he teaches seminars on the human experience of war and violence. tpalaima@mail.utexas.edu
Stephen Sonnenberg is clinical professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences medical school in Bethesda, Md., head of the Education Department at the American Psychoanalytic Association and founding director of the Austin Center for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. ssonnenberg@austin.rr.com
Both are faculty fellows of the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas.
See my response to this article in below comment:
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