… Are what again? As the following graphic from IBD demonstrates, for the first time in history, a majority of jobless workers over 25 have attended some college, and now outnumber those without a job who simply have a high school diploma or less. But at least those in the fomer category have tens of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to show for it.
Click on Image to Enlarge
.. Are what again? As the following graphic from IBD demonstrates, for the first time in history, a majority of jobless workers over 25 have attended some college, and now outnumber those without a job who simply have a high school diploma or less. But at least those in the fomer category have tens of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to show for it.
Where others may hear alarm bells (peak oil, 2012, global warming), a rising grassroots movement is answering the call — building a new planetary culture that is sustainable, full of meaning, and truly humane. The Evolver Social Movement invites all agents of change to connect and collaborate with fellow pioneering voices of this growing evolution during our first ever network-wide convergence. For this unprecedented weekend-long event (including Saturday night party), members of the growing transformational tribes and Evolver Spore chapters will descend upon Pittsburgh for a weekend of paradigm-bending talks, interactive workshops, visionary art, ritualistic fun, ecstatic dance, and positive manifestation with those working to address the global challenges tidal-waving towards us.
The Convergence will cover topics ranging from sacred economics to shamanic reemergence, permaculture principles to Occupy ideologies, bio-remediation to redesigning community, the psychedelic renaissance to the promise and perils of new technologies. This interactive journey is your chance to “find the others” and engage directly with the trailblazing thinkers, activists, and artists working to build “the better world our hearts know is possible.”
The First United Methodist Church of Pittsburgh
5401 Centre Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15232
PRESENTERS
Daniel Pinchbeck: author of “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” “Breaking Open the Head,” and CEO of Evolver and Reality Sandwich. Charles Eisenstein: author of “Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, & Community in an Age of Transition” and “The Ascent of Humanity” Rick Doblin (via Skype): president and founder of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Jonathan Talat Phillips: author of “The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic,” co-founder of Evolver, Bioenergetic Healer
Is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end?
Are the American Jews known for their liberal views distancing themselves from Israel?
Or is it simply an overstatement?
Do they support the current Israeli policies?
Does the Israeli lobby represent their views?
And do they have a strong connection to the Holy Land?
Cross Talk with Norman Finkelstein, Daniel Pollak and Mouin Rabbani.
Amazon Page Pending
Norman Finkelstein's new book on the American Jewish community has been both widely praised and criticized by influential writers. So is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end? Are the American Jews known for their liberal views distancing themselves from Israel? Or is it simply an overstatement? Do they support the current Israeli policies? Does the Israeli lobby represent their views? And do they have a strong connection to the Holy Land? CT-ing with Norman Finkelstein, Daniel Pollak and Mouin Rabbani.
Phi Beta Iota: Israel is not the only albatross around the neck of the USA, there are others, but Israel (its government, not its people) is the one that has most often committed atrocities and sabotaged the USA with espionage, corruption, and inducing US Jews to commit treason–we refer especially to all those holding Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances who are either publicly or in some cases silently dual-citizens. What has been done to the Palestinian peoples has been a long-running crime against humanity, right up there with undeclared wars that produce depleted uranium babies and destroy entire societies for no decent moral reason. The Zionization of US foreign policy–and the castration of US financial policy–are two great crimes against humanity that are directly linked to the Zionist state of Israel and its twin agents, Mossad and Goldman Sachs/AIG et al. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty did it for us–we would have wiped out the originating airfield and expelled the Israeli Embassy, and then removed the building from the planet, sowing salt in the dirt and making it a memorial to the perfidy of “friends.” We favor a two state solution that restores the Palestinian lands back to Biblical times, tears down the walls that Joseph Stalin would have been proud to call his own, and makes Jerusalem an international open city with a multi-religious governing council that excludes all state claims on any part of Jerusalem.
Newsletter writer “Reinhardt” joins me for his first public appearance anywhere. Concerned with the Enron debacle, Reinhardt discovered a repeated pattern of industrial and political corruption over history that applies to critical issues of today.
Starting in 1993, Reinhardt began a person business journal. Its was a journal of things that just did not seem right in the world of high finance. In the process of keeping a journal he learned what to pay attention to and why to pay attention to it. He looked at media, political, and business propaganda from a different perspective. He noticed which events got the most airtime were never the most important. It was always the under-reported events which were most important.” Reinhard thew away his history books as he studied booms and busts going as far back as 4000 BC. Reinhardt has applied that knowledge and critical thinking approach to his ongoing analysis of current events.
Enron . Tyco . 2008 Market Crash . Military movement provide cheap labor for trade routes . Dutch Settlement Scheme . Emmegration . Special Interest . Long View . Critical Thinking . Overview . modern silk road . northern distribution network . world trade . military use of trade routes . military industrial complex . corporate imperative . Afghanistan . US military . war . The fallacy of Adam Smith . the fallacy of ideology . the fallacy of free markets . government involvement in industry . trends in labor value . dutch east india company . socialism communism . divide and conquer . totalitarianism in our fascist regime . think tanks . loss of control
Phi Beta Iota: An extraordinary contribution by Warren Pollock and his guest “Reinhardt” of Newsweek. Tip of the Hat to Josh Kilbourn for the pointer.
The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.
In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results. (Here are two recent brutal assaults, one deadly, by police on hapless individuals: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/kelly-thomas-video-dad-they-are-killing-me-.html and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31364.htm )
The cost to society of the private financial system is even higher. Writing in CounterPunch (May 18), Rob Urie reports that two years ago Andrew Haldane, executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (the UK’s version of the Federal Reserve) said that the financial crisis, now four years old, will in the end cost the world economy between $60 trillion and $200 trillion in lost GDP. If Urie’s report is correct, this is an astonishing admission from a member of the ruling elite. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/the-true-costs-of-bank-crises/print
Try to get your mind around these figures. The US GDP, the largest in the world, is about 15 trillion. What Haldane is telling us is that the financial crisis will end up costing the world lost real income between 4 and 13 times the size of the current Gross Domestic Product of the United States. This could turn out to be an optimistic forecast.
In the end, the financial crisis could destroy Western civilization.
When Alexander the Great decided to leave Afghanistan, his plan was to exit via the Khyber Pass and march though what is now Pakistan and thence into India. But the Khyber was blocked by a warring Pashtun tribe. Legend has it that Alex's exit strategy was to bribe another Pashtun tribe to open the door by attacking and driving off the first tribe. The gambit worked and he escaped with his forces largely intact, Alexander looked shrewd in the history books. But is that the whole story?
I have often wondered if old Alex was snookered by two tribes in cahoots in a scheme to extort money and divide the proceeds from an invader desperate to leave. Of course we will never know if this actually happened, but as the following report in yesterday's Sunday Times suggests, my speculation has a quintessential Pashtun flavor and is therefore not outside the realm of probability.
Secret alliances threaten to undermine the West's strategy of handing more responsibility for security to local forces
By Miles Amoore and Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, May 20, 2012
THE two men should be sworn enemies. One is a Taliban commander waging what he says is a holy war against foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. The other is an Afghan army officer trained and paid by Nato to fight the Taliban.
Yet rather than do battle, the two men have forged a secret alliance. In the area of Ghazni province where both are based, just an hour's drive south of Kabul, they collaborate to loot Nato supply convoys, dividing up the proceeds. They even share intelligence about military operations.
If you woke on a beautiful spring Sunday in May on a pond in Maine, what would you do? A canoe ride on water as smooth as glass, and breakfast on the deck, perhaps — followed by disrupting international war criminal Tony Blair at Colby College graduation in Waterville!
With the BLAIR IS A WAR CRIMINAL sign I scrawled hastily in pink lipstick, we approached the back row of the outdoor ceremony where the former British PM, who lied about WMDs in Iraq and has the blood on his hands of thousands of innocent civilians, was to speak.
Before we even made it off the street we were approached by a man from Vermont who said, “Thank you for being here. I was disgusted that Colby would invite such a slimy speaker for graduation this year.” (More of the disgusted were heard from in Op-Ed News and the local newspapers.)
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As we left the campus I saw an acquaintance who works at Colby, in a pretty dress, standing obediently off to one side.
I feel that the passivity and complicity of US citizens in the dirty dealings of NATO and its member nations, blindly paying federal taxes every year to fund the slaughter of innocents, afraid to protest, afraid to rock the boat for fear of job loss or being seen as impolite, is actually the biggest threat to global security.
And that's why, as my compatriots were protesting the disgusting spectacle of the NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, I disrupted Colby College's graduation ceremony.
Phi Beta Iota: The unasked questions pertain to the judgment and moral vacuum of the university leadership that invited Blair in the first place, and the empty heads of the graduates that did not think to question the invitation. We are running short of good people with both intelligence and integrity. Evil is assuredly in the ascent.
