Tom Inglis: Sex Crimes for God's Sake

Tom Inglis provides an eagle-eyed analysis of why Irish society could have tolerated prolonged institutional abuse of children in his article in the Irish Times on Saturday 30th May 2009 - extract follows:

..."Bourdieu, another French theorist, argued that there is a realm of thought called doxa: a realm of unquestioned orthodoxy in which things cannot be thought or let alone said. There was only ever one form of bad thought in Catholic Ireland.

It is when we put these two factors together, the huge numbers of reformatories and industrial schools in Ireland and the silence about sex, that we get the type of sadism and sexual perversion.

The absence of any thinking outside the box, let alone criticism and resistance, meant that very few people questioned the policy, particularly of religious Brothers, of taking young boys, barely teenagers, and sending them off to novitiate houses. Those who ran these novitiates operated within forms of repression, discipline and control that were copied in the schools.

The young men and women who ran these schools were servants of a system of power that was beyond question, they were Roman foot-soldiers. They were caught in a regime of Catholic thought and practice from which, effectively, there was little escape. There was no mechanism by which they could talk about themselves, their desires and frustrations. They took their anger out on the children. The children became their scapegoats..."

Read it all at: How we became an international disgrace - The Irish Times - Sat, May 30, 2009

Enemies out of time

Here's a sceptical take on investment culture:

- Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However,
since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.
They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys. -

http://cooltribe.com/blog/wednesday-joke-financial-crisis

True Friends

Jerry Fish was in the band An Emotional Fish in the '80s, scoring a big international hit with "Celebrate".

For the last while, he's sang with The Mudbug Club and has merged pop music with circus acts during his shows. To be properly experienced, he should be seen live where he puts his heart and soul into entertaining his audience with magic. Here is a lovely later song "True Friends" that has stayed popular

Were we all abused?

While not detracting from the grave injustice of abuse in its various tyrannical forms, the way society sanctions behaviour also changes with time, has its own fashions and trends, as the following information circulating a while ago suggests:

- If you lived as a child in the 60's,70's or the 80's, looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have........
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention hitchhiking to town as a young kid!) We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No mobile phones. Unthinkable. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents? We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugary pop but we were never overweight.........

We were always outside playing. We shared one bottle of pop with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this? We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X Boxes, video games and all 99 channels on Sky Digital TV, video tape movies, surround sound personal mobile phones, Personal Computers, Internet chat rooms........

We had friends. We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it? We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law, imagine that! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to. We were the ones that had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good! -

Birthday Poem

It was Morrissey's 50th birthday last Friday 22nd May. After a website requested contributions to mark the occasion, I composed the following wee verse in acknowledgement of his influence:

TRUE TO ME

More is he sounding true
Than all the rest that
Have been tried and tested.

When he comes riding through town,
Wide open are flung doors and windows,
And a bee-line is cut to his shows.

He scurries on stage: it’s Himself,
His vibes washing over our grime.
We swing with him, royal and divine.

In between, time weighs, mud is slung,
But memories embraced rock mundanity,
And rout daily gilt-edged chicanery.
- goinghome

Children in Pieces

This song was a b-side to Morrissey's 2008 single "All You Need Is Me". It says it all.

- Children in pieces
in Irish industrial schools
Nuns called mothers
and their christian brothers
kick the shit out of very frightened children

Judges and priests and police and cardinals
they look the other way
when the weekend comes they'll make you suffer

Children in pieces
in Irish industrial schools
Nuns called mothers
and their christian brothers
kick the shit out of very frightened children

You say you wanna go home
you say you wanna be left alone
and so you turn to me
but instead of sympathy I find
my sentimental heart hardens
my sentimental heart hardens
Get your hands off me
Kid, you must be bad luck
My sentimental heart hardens -
MORRISSEY

Suffer Little Children

Fintan O' Toole's article "Law of anarchy, cruelty of care" written in the Irish Times newspaper Saturday 23rd May a couple of days after the release of the Government-approved report on Institutional Child Abuse, is a comprehensive analysis of how such dark days could come to pass:

"...Such institutions are not rare, but they are usually associated either with totalitarian regimes or with the brutalising effects of war. Ireland did not have a totalitarian regime, nor was it at war, but it managed to create, especially for poor children, the effects of both conditions. Some of the methods used in the industrial schools are queasily reminiscent of images from gulags or concentration camps: the shaved heads; the use of humiliation and disorientation to destroy the inmate’s sense of personal identity; the turning of fire hoses on inmates; the setting of dogs on inmates; the beating of inmates while they were hanging from hooks on a wall. Dr Norman Stewart, who lived beside Artane industrial school, and later beside Dachau, was struck, as he wrote to The Irish Times, by the similar local experience of “observing lines of desultory prisoners as they trudged through the neigh- bourhood on their way to and from their workplaces”.

And the effect on inmates, as one survivor explained, was very like that of having been in a war: “It’s like men at war who experi- ence things cannot bring these things back to people in the street because people would not under- stand the situation that they were in. They dehumanised themselves. They dehumanised their enemy in order to be able to psychologically deal with killing them. The same is true when I came out of Daingean and I am looking at all of these people in the street and I am thinking they don’t know where I have been and they couldn’t understand me...

...WITH THIS DEGREE OF outside knowledge, the internal culture of brutality should not have sur- vived. It did so for three reasons: power, sex and class. The perpetrators abused chil- dren because they could..."

The full article is at:
Law of anarchy, cruelty of care - The Irish Times - Sat, May 23, 2009

Years of Refusal - Morrissey

Lost Highway Records: Morrissey

I Refuse - Ailbhe Smyth

At this year's Banulacht conference in Dublin, an encouraging position of personal power was put forward by the author, starting at about 5 minutes 20 seconds into this video:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNedLhgPuNc

www.banulacht.ie

The Muppets Greatest Hit

'Mahna mahna', contains no other words and is really a nonsense song that stole the hearts of millions. Sometimes there can be too many words, or words just are not what is needed. No harm to take a break from the endless recession discussions anyway...

Mahna Mahna

Thought-Watching is Corrective - M. Gladwell: Blink

Malcolm Gladwell's 2005 book "Blink" deals with rapid cognition.

In the concluding chapter he explains:
"We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility. Taking our powers of rapid cognition seriously means we have to acknowledge the subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious...Too often we are resigned to what happens in the blink of an eye. It doesn't seem like we have much control over whatever bubbles to the surface from our unconscious. But we do, and if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition."

An overview of the book on the Business Summaries website runs through the main points made, each backed up by fascinating anecdotes:

..."Remember that sometimes extra information is not helpful at all. Sometimes too much information confuses rather than helps when finding a solution or making a decision.

Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instructive thinking. Deliberate thinking is a wonderful tool when you have the luxury of time and a clearly defined task.

In good decision making, as well as in making snap judgments, less is more. Overloading the decision makers with too much data and information makes decision-making harder and not easier...

...The rock musician known as Kenna is an example of the sort of person who is constantly at odds with your expectations. This is reflected by his songs (which are hard to classify) and his career (which was difficult to launch).

People who truly know music love him. They hear one of his songs and in a blink of an eye, their instinct tells them that he is the kind of artist whom other people are going to like. But this is where the problem comes in. Whenever there is an attempt to verify this instinct, such as a market survey or research, the results turn out to be disappointing...

... Executives and decision-makers like market research because it provides certainty. Market research is a score or a prediction that executives can point to if someone asks why he made that decision was made.

Unfortunately, few realize that in making the most important decisions, there can be no certainty. This is the reason why musician Kenna did badly when he was subjected to market research. His music was new and different, and being new and different is always vulnerable to market research...

...First impressions vary from one person to another and only people who are experts in their field are able to reliably account for their reactions. These experts can express their first impressions and gut feels more accurately and more extensively.

It does not mean that the reactions of people outside their areas of passion and experience (i.e. not experts in a particular field) are always wrong. It just means that reactions from non-experts are hard to explain and easily disrupted...

Read the rest at: Business Summaries - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

W. Buiter and the Fatal Flaws of Economic Theory

Willem Buiter is Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science; former chief economist of the EBRD, former external member of the MPC; adviser to international organisations, governments, central banks and private financial institutions.

He runs a blogsite called 'Maverecon', courtesy of the Financial Times and recently put on record his opinion about the defunct state of mainstream economic theory, and the need for it to go 'quantum':

"...Most mainstream macroeconomic theoretical innovations since the 1970s (the New Classical rational expectations revolution associated with such names as Robert E. Lucas Jr., Edward Prescott, Thomas Sargent, Robert Barro etc, and the New Keynesian theorizing of Michael Woodford and many others) have turned out to be self-referential, inward-looking distractions at best. Research tended to be motivated by the internal logic, intellectual sunk capital and esthetic puzzles of established research programmes rather than by a powerful desire to understand how the economy works - let alone how the economy works during times of stress and financial instability. So the economics profession was caught unprepared when the crisis struck...

...Both the New Classical and New Keynesian complete markets macroeconomic theories not only did not allow questions about insolvency and illiquidity to be answered. They did not allow such questions to be asked...

...Beyond this simple ‘impossibility of complete markets’ proposition, there is the deeper point, that the assumption of complete markets in most of the New Classical and New Keynesian macroeconomics assumes away the problem of contract enforcement. This problem is especially acute in trade over time or intertemporal trade, where the net value to each party to a contract of fulfilling the terms of the contract varies over time and can change sign. In a world with selfish, rational, opportunistic agents, able and willing to lie and deceive, only a small set of voluntary transactions will ever be observed, relative to the universe of all potentially feasible transactions...

...The conclusion, boys and girls, should be that trade - voluntary exchange - is the exception rather than the rule and that markets are inherently and hopelessly incomplete. Live with it and start from that fact. The benchmark is no trade - pre-Friday Robinson Crusoe autarky. For every good, service or financial instrument that plays a role in your ‘model of the world’, you should explain why a market for it exists - why it is traded at all. Perhaps we shall get somewhere this time...

...The Bank of England in 2007 faced the onset of the credit crunch with too much Robert Lucas, Michael Woodford and Robert Merton in its intellectual cupboard. A drastic but chaotic re-education took place and is continuing.

I believe that the Bank has by now shed the conventional wisdom of the typical macroeconomics training of the past few decades. In its place is an intellectual potpourri of factoids, partial theories, empirical regulaties without firm theoretical foundations, hunches, intuitions and half-developed insights. It is not much, but knowing that you know nothing is the beginning of wisdom."

FT.com | Willem Buiter's Maverecon | The unfortunate uselessness of most ’state of the art’ academic monetary economics#more-667

Strings for Kaku and Cosmic Music

Noted physicist Michio Kaku co-founded string field theory, a branch of string theory, which is the leading contender in the quest for a theory of everything.

"...What appeals to me about string theory is that it is gorgeous. It is the only theory with a symmetry large enough to swallow both relativity and the standard model. It is the only game in town - all rivals have been shown to be inconsistent. In string theory, we have a startling new picture: the subatomic particles of the universe - electrons, quarks, and neutrinos - are all different resonances of a string vibrating much like a rubber band.

Each "note" of the string represents a different subatomic particle. For thousands of years, back to the Greek philosopher Democritus, it was assumed that all matter could be broken down to points, not strings. This "string" picture is so different that it could only have been discovered by accident - and it was. And the new theory allows the whole of physics to be reduced to the harmonies of these strings. Chemistry emerges as the melodies we play on these strings. The whole universe consists of a symphony of strings, and the "mind of God", about which Einstein wrote so eloquently, is cosmic music resonating through 10 and 11-dimensional hyperspace..."

See the rest at: Essay: Unifying the universe - physics-math - 16 April 2005 - New Scientist

John Martineau wrote "A Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System" in 2002, providing an erudite yet intuitively aesthetic account of the universe's inter-relationships and concomitant concords and melody-making. He uses words like 'kissing', 'dancing', 'touching' to explain how the stars' influences collide! Sarah Reaves White posted a keen review on the Readers Read website:

- A Little Book of Coincidence is all about the planets in our solar system and how their orbits relate to geometry. The "coincidences" are the interesting little facts that relate the orbits of the planets to geometry, mathematical facts and to music. The ancient mathematicians assigned seven musical notes to seven planets. Later mathematicians like Kepler were able to calculate how the orbits of the planets were related to music. The coincidences are fascinating little facts about numbers and their relationships to each other. This beautifully illustrated book can prod a long dormant passion for math in any reader. It might even tempt some readers to try to find that long since discarded toy of childhood called a Spirograph, and give it long overdue respect. Drawings at the end of the book show an amazing resemblance to this toy, but they are all about the ratios of the planets to their orbits. This short book can enhance not only the reader's appreciation of mathematics, but will bring up amazing facts about our planetary system and the amazing network of attractions that hold it together. -

A Little Book of Coincidence by John Martineau

The Beatles - Money Can't Buy Me Love, In My Life

YouTube - The Beatles - Can't Buy Me Love

Can't buy me love, love
Can't buy me love

I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright
'Cause I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

I'll give you all I got to give if you say you love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love

Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so
Can't buy me love, no no no, no

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love



There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
[ Find more Lyrics on www.mp3lyrics.org/e3 ]
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never ever lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more
Lyrics: In my Life, Beatles

Love and the Value of Money

The reason why money can't buy love is because, ultimately, love is the value that money represents. Money is a proxy for value and value is that which holds us together and makes us relevant, love. This feels cheesy or even embarrassing because we have broken our social contract with value. Specifically, we have inappropriately imbued money with a value of its own, disassociating money from its role as an intermediary, as a temporary representation of value in a chain of transactions. Money has become the object as opposed to the expedient. It is my thesis that value creation must be the frame within which wealth creation fits; that our humanity can no longer be subjugated to our economy due to a false primacy of our intermediary for value, cash. I believe that our economy should serve our humanity....

...Bernard Madoff intentionally defrauded his clients but the calculus of what he did is no different than what our global financial institutions have done to all of us. Their sole concern was how money could make more money, completely divorced from creating anything real. To be sure, the new money could then been used to build, hire, educate, serve, etc, but, as is my thesis, that is the tail wagging the dog...

...Our current system with its overly abstracted and evidently exploitable assignation of value constrains the network to have fewer and inflated hubs and any nuance or complexity in the definition of value is lost in the translation through currency. Value creation should be a market design principle. Wealth creation is a market participant motivation. An effective market should ensure value creation while facilitating wealth creation, not the other way around. Additionally, an effective market would leverage our social (human) network defining "valuable" more accurately by harvesting connections to what we value. Again, the reason to have an economy is to serve humanity...

Read the complete article at:
Social Entrepreneurship - Change.org: Reimagining "Value" For A Post-Crisis Economy

Mark Twain's Comeback

True, he never went away, being at least as good as Oscar Wilde for a prickly succinct quote, but now some of his compositions never previously published are being made available ever so posthumously, according to The Writer's Blog:

Previously unpublished stories, essays and letters by Mark Twain will be published in April, even though the author wanted them burned.
"You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain wrote to his brother in 1865, "for I don't want any absurd 'literary remains' and 'unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted." Despite this, a collection of previously unpublished stories and essays by the great American writer are due out this April, almost 99 years after his death.

The title of the collection, Who is Mark Twain? is a reference to Twain's essay Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture, included in the book. In the essay, Twain relates how – anxious that no one would attend – he plastered New York with advertisements to promote his talk. He later observed two men looking at the ads. One asked, "Who is Mark Twain?", to which the other responded: "God knows – I don't."

Another essay, Jane Austen, sees Twain – born Samuel Clemens in 1835 – ask if Austen's goal is to "make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters", while the previously unpublished short story The Undertaker's Tale is a tongue-in-cheek piece about the funeral industry.

HarperStudio, the publisher of the 24-piece collection put together by Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, said that Twain left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any 19th-century American author. "The pieces themselves are wonderfully, hilariously contemporary, and deserve as wide an audience as possible," said publisher Bob Miller.
We may be disregarding the author's wishes, but the documents will be of great interest to scholars and readers alike.

Writer's Blog: Previously Unknown Mark Twain Documents to be Published

The Endurance of the Hedgehog

Whatever Muriel Barbery’s intention when she wrote The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it has become the personal manifesto of thousands of readers worldwide since it was first published in 2006 in France. Now available, in paperback, in an English translation from Europa Editions, Barbery’s book is remarkable for the wide range of people who have found inspiration, encouragement, strength and solace from the wisdom expressed by its two main characters, Renée Michel, a stereotype of the frumpy, 50-ish female concierge at a posh Paris apartment building, and Paloma Josse, an introspective, fiercely intelligent 12-year-old resident who has decided that she is done with this world.

Excoriating critics of the insipid, vain and meaningless lives of the upper classes, exemplified by the residents of 7, rue de Grenelle where they live, Renée and Paloma defend themselves with a reverse form of snobbery. They cultivate secret lives protected by an armor of resentment and ridicule. Privately, Renée indulges in literature (Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina are favorites), film (subtle social commentaries made in the 1950s by Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and American blockbusters like Blade Runner), art (still lifes by 17th-century Dutch masters are at the top of her list) and classical music (she can identify the Confutatis in Mozart’s Requiem when it accompanies the flush of a toilet as camouflage). Believing she must downplay her intelligence, Paloma takes refuge in Japanese Manga and two journals she keeps, one of her profound thoughts and one that records significant “Movements of the World,” examples of human behavior that reveal great truths...

...It turns out that Ozu and Renée share very precise loves in the realms of art, music, literature and fine pastry. He sees behind the frumpy concierge mask she wears by day and sets out to, gently, unmask her. Through Ozu, Renée and Paloma form a bond, and soon a sense of possibility replaces their internal chaos. At one point, Renée decrees, “Those who seek eternity find solitude.” But as she and Paloma discover, those who find eternity do so through the deep and enduring power of the friendship.

The full review is at: STUDIO-ONLINE » The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

While the book speaks of prickly creatures in the metaphorical sense of living in a secretive defensive mode, this little video stars an actual hedgehog who has nothing to hide -

The Courage of Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, born in about 1797, was a woman of remarkable intelligence despite her illiteracy. Truth had great presence. She was tall, some 5 feet 11 inches. Her voice was low, so low that listeners sometimes termed it masculine, and her singing voice was beautifully powerful. Whenever she spoke in public, she also sang. No one ever forgot the power of Sojourner Truth's singing, just as her wit and originality of phrasing were also memorable.

Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. Straight-talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women--indeed, for all strong women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as a radical of immense and enduring influence; yet, unlike them, what is remembered of her consists more of myth than of personality. She was a complex woman who was born into slavery and died a legend. Inspired by religion, Truth transformed herself from a domestic servant named Isabella into an itinerant pentecostal preacher; her words of empowerment have inspired black women and poor people the world over to this day. As an abolitionist and a feminist, Truth defied the notion that slaves were male and women were white, expounding a fact that still bears repeating: among blacks there are women; among women, there are blacks.

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it, the men better let them."

Isabella Van Wagenen was born into slavery in Hurley, New York in 1797. She was one of 13 children but she never got to know her brothers and sisters because they were quickly sold a slaves.

Her master, Mr. Dumont arranged for her to marry a slave named Thomas. She had 5 children with him, but her master sold some of them.

She was released following the New York Anti Slavery Law of 1827, however slavery was not abolished nationwide for 35 years. She lived for a time with a Quaker family who gave her the only education she ever received. They also helped her get back one of her children.

She became an outspoken advocate of women's rights as well as blacks' rights. In 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth . Everywhere she spoke she made a lasting impression. She was physically strong and over six feet tall and she had a powerful, booming voice.

She actively supported the Black troops during ther Civil War and helped get the government to give these soldiers land. She continued to travel and preach throughout the northeast and midwest from her home in Battle Creek. Michigan where she died at the age of 84 in 1883.

Ain't I a Woman?
Sojourner Truth gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. (The women's rights movement grew in large part out of the anti-slavery movement.) No formal record of the speech exists, but Frances Gage, an abolitionist and president of the Convention, recounted Truth's words. There is debate about the accuracy of this account because Gage did not record the account until 1863 and her record differs somewhat from newspaper accounts of 1851. However it is Gage's report that endures and it is clear that, whatever the exact words, "Ain't I a Woman?" made a great impact at the Convention and has become a classic expression of women's rights.

- Sojourner Truth, Ain't I a Woman?

THE RECORDED SPEECH:
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
From: Modern History Sourcebook: Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman

Islam Exposed

The website newageislam.com is an abundant collection of views and links to cultural treasures from the civilisation of the 'East'. For both Muslims and those of other faiths, the vast range of educational tools here represent a rich mine to tap into repeatedly.

New Age Islam: Mapping an Agenda for the Twenty-first Century..............Islam and terrorism, Islam, terrorism, Political Islam and the west, Radical Islamism and the West, Islamic extremism in Pakistan, Islamic fundamentalism, Modern se

One of many videos accessible there is this one where Indian poet, lyricist and script writer Javed Akhtar tells Wajahat S.Khan, 'Time for women to rule now':

More Prejudices - Rugby Rituals

Seeing how the All Blacks were motivated by performing "The Haka" before their world cup games, some wit imagined how the other nations might respond when asked to suggest pre-match rituals of their own, and shared with the world:

The England team will chat about the weather, wave hankies in the air and attach bells to their ankles for a while before moaning about how they invented the game, and gave it to the world, and how it's not fair that everyone can beat them now.

The Scotland team will chant "You lookin' at me Jimmy?" before smashing an Irn Bru bottle over their opponents heads.

The Ireland team will spilt into two, with the Southern half performing a Riverdance, while the Northerners march the Traditional route from their dressing room to the pitch, via their opponents dressing room.

Unfortunately the Welsh suggestion has been vetoed by the RSPCA.

Argentina will unexpectedly invade a small part of opposition territory claim it as their own "Las In-Goals-Areas" and then be forcibly removed by the Stewards.

Two members of the South African team will claim to be more important than the other thirteen whom they will coral between the posts whilst they claim the rest of the pitch for themselves.

The Americans will not be there until half time. In future years they will alter the records to show that they were in fact the most important team in the tournament and Hollywood will make a film called "Saving No 8 Lyle".

Five of the Canadian team will sing La Marsaillaise and hold the rest of the side to ransom.

The Italian team will arrive in red penis substituting cars, sexually harass the female stewards and then run away.

The Spanish will sneak into the other half of the pitch mow it and then claim that it was all in line with the European "grass quotas". They will then curl up under the posts and have a kip until half time.

The Japanese will attempt to strengthen their team by offering good salaries to the key opposition players (over 35) and then run around the pitch at high speed in a highly efficient manner before buying the ground (with a subsidy from the UK Government).

The French will declare they have new scientific evidence that the opposition are in fact all mad. They will then park lorries across the halfway line, let sheep lose in the opposition half and burn the officials.

Risqué Business Definitions

Unless you are sure of your accord in dialogue, the following stereotypical cliches about public interactions, in common circulation a while back, are best avoided and do not fit the category of non-violent communication (but are rather amusing, if taken with a pinch of salt). :o

SOCIALISM:
You have 2 cows and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:
You have 2 cows, the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM:
You have 2 cows, the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM:
You have 2 cows, the Government takes both and shoots you!

BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 cows, the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells, the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images
called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.

HINDU CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

AN ISRAELI CORPORATION:
So, there are these two Jewish cows, right?
They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people?

AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
That one on the left is kinda cute...

Non-Violent Communication

"Growing up in an inner–city Detroit neighborhood Marshall Rosenberg was confronted daily with various forms of violence. Wanting to learn what he could about the causes of violence and what could be done to reduce violence he chose to study clinical psychology and received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin.

In addition to his studies in Clinical Psychology, he also studied comparative religions, the lives of peacemakers throughout history, and other research to identify what human learning contributes to violence and what human learning contributes to compassionate giving and receiving. From his research, he identified thinking, language, communication skills and means of influence that reduced violence and supported compassionate relationships. He integrated what he learned into a process he named Nonviolent Communication.

Offering Nonviolent Communication to others and seeing how it empowered people to create change nonviolently and its to contribute to compassionate ways of living, he founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Marshall and members of the Center for Nonviolent Communication organized and trained teams of people in the following countries to apply Nonviolent Communication where it can best support compassionate ways of resolving conflicts and fulfilling the needs of all.

The Center for Nonviolent Communication now has more than 200 people certified to offer the training in these countries. In addition to people developing the process with the help of certified trainers, thousands of people around the world receive it from friends and family members whose lives have been enriched by it fulfilling the adage, “Each one teach one.”'

For very substantial resources on this topic, goto:
New to this site? | The Center for Nonviolent Communication

Intermediate/Green Technology

The Greentech Media Webcentre features detailed marketting data and up-to-the-minute coverage of new eco-positive technologies in what has become a very rapidly expanding area.

Greentech Media | Home

A model electric bus during its initial operation is one of the items reviewed in the following video collection -

Greentech Media | Multimedia

Hark the Green Horn for Cornucopia!

The possibilities for acting that can be determined under the traditional range of economic theory amounts to no more than a hill of beans. (Fee Fie Fo Fum!!) Because of unusual challenges in the world including climate change effects, growing inequality, unpredicted wild market oscillations, possessing excellent knowledge of the intricacies of standard economic responses may actually pose as much of a blinding miasma as do the sitting fundamentalists. The thing is to identify those proposals amongst all the disciplines that fit the problems, and amalgamate them into something grounded, not too muddy but not too loftily ivory-tower-bound either. A multi-faceted approach that works for people, with less of the obsessive-compulsive headlights on money. Such as this one from Brian Milani back in 2001 -

"Designing the Green Economy looks at the ecological economy as a stage of human development, as real postindustrialism. The author argues that new productive forces based in human cultural development have redefined the nature of wealth—from quantitative to qualitative. Real development can now only be defined in terms of individual, community and ecological regeneration—and yet these growing potentials have been increasing suppressed or distorted by industrial institutions over the last century. Archaic definitions of wealth—as money and material—threaten to destroy the planet and what remains of human community, creating crisis, inequality and environmental destruction.

The author argues that real social change today involves not just opposing exploitation and injustice, but implementing social and ecological alternatives which directly target human development and ecological regeneration. Postindustrial social movement strategy involves a fundamental shift in focus from opposition to alternatives. These alternatives must inextricably involve individual/spiritual change, community development, and ecological renewal.

Designing the Green Economy attacks the dominant pop interpretations of postindustrialism--which reify computer hardware and the information revolution--as propaganda which justifies current trends of superindustrial globalization. By contrast, real potentials for qualitative development, for "doing more with less", and dematerialization of economic life, depend on an ecological restructuring which would make information, like money and matter, simply a means to the end of serving human and planetary need. The author argues that mainstream forms of economic development serve to support corporate profit through the reproduction of scarcity. Since the Great Depression, waste has played the primary role of artificially generating scarcity. The creation of waste has also acted to suppress growing human and ecological potentials, and to reinforce relationships of domination. But this waste has also become a major source of crisis and stagnation for the System.

Part I describes industrial capitalism as a system of quantitative development, based in a definition of wealth as money and matter. It also looks at industrialism as a class society, which has had to maintain scarcity to perpetuate class relationships. It highlights the role of waste in artificially maintaining scarcity after the collapse of the classical market system in the Great Depression. After looking at the role of waste in the postwar Fordist/Keynesian economy, and that system's collapse in the late seventies, it goes on to examine new forms of waste and exploitation in the emerging global Casino Economy.

Part II examines the alternative to Post-Fordist corporate globalization--which goes far beyond industrial state socialism. It surveys potentials for human and ecological development in key sectors of the economy. Part II identifies real postindustrialism as an egalitarian, knowledge-based economy in which human and environmental need are prioitized, as money and material are confined to a role as MEANS of economic development, not the ends. After reviewing principles of green economic development, key sectors of the economy are considered: the built-environment, energy, manufacturing and resource use, money and finance, and finally the state.

Special attention is paid to strategies for economic conversion, and to the new postindustrial "ecology of politics" which necessitates that social movements prioritize the creation of concrete alternatives over narrowly oppositional activity."
from Designing the Green Economy

The core recommendations of the book are set out here - S/R 37: What Is Green Economics? (by Brian Milani)

Some of the actual content can be viewed here -
Designing the Green Economy: The ... - Google Book Search

Mon Coeur Sans Sang

BLEEDING HEART

They say I’m a maudlin, sentimental bleeding heart
Who over-sympathises with the world’s wretched oppressed.
They criticise social justice as not smart,
As proof that straight procedure is transgressed.

Indeed, when I contemplate humankind’s every calamity-
Misfortune, sickness, acts of God and war,
Mental strain, confusion, greed and man’s brutality-
Melancholy descends, since loving peace seems far.

But principally these days my inner chambers leak,
Pierced through by your beat, that ran my circulation.
In vain I track your rhythm, my pressure ebbing, weak:
No cosmic sacre coeur now, less your hale stimulation.

- goinghome

Sweet Nostalgia with The Beatles

In My Life By Beatles - Click here for more free videos

Hosted at: In My Life By Beatles - Video

Malcolm Gladwell Lecture: Work in Passion

Meaningful Work through Passion
At the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the ground-breaking The Tipping Point and Outliers, gives two examples of hard work that later was deemed "genius": Bill Gates - who got up at 2am to program as a teenager; and the Beatles - who played together 1200 times, far more than most bands, before they ever become famous.

Success, Gladwell believes, is most often the result of putting your heart and mind into something and cultivating successful, meaningful work.

Here is that lecture, hosted on integral praxis on 5 March 2009:

Covey's 7 Habits Free Download

Dr Stephen Covey's inspirational book - 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People®

Dr Stephen Covey is a hugely influential management guru, whose book The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, became a blueprint for personal development when it was published in 1990. The Seven Habits are said by some to be easy to understand but not as easy to apply. Don't let the challenge daunt you: The 'Seven Habits' are a remarkable set of inspirational and aspirational standards for anyone who seeks to live a full, purposeful and good life, and are applicable today more than ever, as the business world becomes more attuned to humanist concepts. Covey's values are full of integrity and humanity, and contrast strongly with the process-based ideologies that characterised management thinking in earlier times.

Stephen Covey, as well as being a renowned writer, speaker, academic and humanist, has also built a huge training and consultancy products and services business - Franklin Covey which has a global reach, and has at one time or another consulted with and provided training services to most of the world's leading corporations.


Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People®
habit 1 - be proactive®
This is the ability to control one's environment, rather than have it control you, as is so often the case. Self determination, choice, and the power to decide response to stimulus, conditions and circumstances

habit 2 - begin with the end in mind®
Covey calls this the habit of personal leadership - leading oneself that is, towards what you consider your aims. By developing the habit of concentrating on relevant activities you will build a platform to avoid distractions and become more productive and successful.

habit 3 - put first things first®
Covey calls this the habit of personal management. This is about organising and implementing activities in line with the aims established in habit 2. Covey says that habit 2 is the first, or mental creation; habit 3 is the second, or physical creation. (See the section on time management.)

habit 4 - think win-win®
Covey calls this the habit of interpersonal leadership, necessary because achievements are largely dependent on co-operative efforts with others. He says that win-win is based on the assumption that there is plenty for everyone, and that success follows a co-operative approach more naturally than the confrontation of win-or-lose.

habit 5 - seek first to understand and then to be understood®
One of the great maxims of the modern age. This is Covey's habit of communication, and it's extremely powerful. Covey helps to explain this in his simple analogy 'diagnose before you prescribe'. Simple and effective, and essential for developing and maintaining positive relationships in all aspects of life. (See the associated sections on Empathy, Transactional Analysis, and the Johari Window.)

habit 6 - synergize®
Covey says this is the habit of creative co-operation - the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which implicitly lays down the challenge to see the good and potential in the other person's contribution.

habit 7 - sharpen the saw®
This is the habit of self renewal, says Covey, and it necessarily surrounds all the other habits, enabling and encouraging them to happen and grow. Covey interprets the self into four parts: the spiritual, mental, physical and the social/emotional, which all need feeding and developing.


Stephen Covey's Seven Habits are a simple set of rules for life - inter-related and synergistic, and yet each one powerful and worthy of adopting and following in its own right. For many people, reading Covey's work, or listening to him speak, literally changes their lives. This is powerful stuff indeed and highly recommended.

This 7 Habits summary is just a brief overview - the full work is fascinating, comprehensive, and thoroughly uplifting. Read the book, or listen to the full tape series if you can get hold of it.

In his more recent book 'The 8th Habit', Stephen Covey introduced (logically) an the eighth habit, which deals with personal fulfilment and helping others to achieve fulfilment too. The book also focuses on leadership. Time will tell whether the The 8th Habit achieves recognition and reputation close to Covey's classic original 7 Habits work.

From: stephen covey's seven habits of highly effective people review

The free download can be accessed here; Download The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen R. Covey | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Audio Book abridged | Audible Audiobooks | Audible.com

The Politics of Housework - P. Mainardi, 1970

This article was originally published by Redstockings in 1970. It concentrates on stark inequalities commonly noticed but not before so academically identified, in the division of labour in the traditional family unit.

Redstockings was an early women's liberation group centered in New York and was responsible for a number of influential writings.

An excerpt, directed towards women in relationships, follows:

"Participatory democracy begins at home. If you are planning to implement your politics, there are certain things to remember.

1. He is feeling it more than you. He's losing some leisure and you're gaining it. The measure of your oppression is his resistance.

2. A great many American men are not accustomed to doing monotonous, repetitive work which never issues in any lasting, let alone important, achievement. This is why they would rather repair a cabinet than wash dishes. If human endeavors are like a pyramid with man's highest achievements at the top, then keeping oneself alive is at the bottom. Men have always had servants (us) to take care of this bottom stratum of life while they have confined their efforts to the rarefied upper regions. It is thus ironic when they ask of women-Where are your great painters, statesmen, etc.? Mme. Matisse ran a military shop so he could paint. Mrs. Martin Luther King kept his house and raised his babies.

3. It is a traumatizing experience for someone who has always thought of himself as being against any oppression or exploitation of one human being by another to realize that in his daily life he has been accepting and implementing (and benefiting from) this exploitation; that his rationalization is little different from that of the racist who says, "Black people don' t feel pain' (women don't mind doing the shitwork); and that the oldest form of oppression in history has been the oppression of 50 percent of the population by the other 50 percent.

4. Arm yourself with some knowledge of the psychology of oppressed peoples everywhere, and a few facts about the animal kingdom. I admit playing top wolf or who runs the gorillas is silly but as a last resort men bring it up all the time. Talk about bees. If you feel really hostile bring up the sex life of spiders. They have sex. She bites off his head. The psychology of oppressed peoples is not silly. Jews, immigrants, black men and all women have employed the same psychological mechanisms to survive' admiring the oppressor, glorifying the oppressor, wanting to be like the oppressor, wanting the oppressor to like them, mostly because the oppressor held all the power.

5. In a sense, all men everywhere are slightly schizoid-divorced from the reality of maintaining life. This makes it easier for them to play games with it. It is almost a cliché that women feel greater grief at sending a son off to a war or losing him to that war because they bore him, suckled him, and raised him. The men who foment those wars did none of those things and have a more superficial estimate of the worth of human life. One hour a day is a low estimate of the amount of time one has to spend "keeping" oneself. By foisting this off on others, man has seven hours a week-one working day more to play with his mind and not his human needs. Over the course of generations it is easy to see whence evolved the horrifying abstractions of modern life.

6. With the death of each form of oppression, life changes and new forms evolve. English aristocrats at the turn of the century were horrified at the idea of enfranchising working men-were sure that it signaled the death of civilization and a return to barbarism. Some working men were even deceived by this line. Similarly with the minimum wage, abolition of slavery, and female suffrage. Life changes but it goes on. Don't fall for any line about the death of everything if men take a turn at the dishes. They will imply that you are holding back the revolution (their revolution). But you are advancing it (your revolution).

7. Keep checking up. Periodically consider who's actually doing the jobs. These things have a way of backsliding so that a year later once again the woman is doing everything. After a year make a list of jobs the man has rarely if ever done. You will find cleaning pots, toilets, refrigerators and ovens high on the list. Use time sheets if necessary. He will accuse you of being petty. He is above that sort of thing (housework). Bear in mind what the worst jobs are, namely the ones that have to be done every day or several times a day. Also the ones that are dirty-it's more pleasant to pick up books, newspapers, etc., than to wash dishes. Alternate the bad jobs. It's the daily grind that gets you down. Also make sure that you don' t have the responsibility for the housework with occasional help from him. "I'll cook dinner for you tonight" implies it's really your job and isn't he a nice guy to do some of it for you.

8. Most men had a rich and rewarding bachelor life during which they did not starve or become encrusted with crud or buried under the liner. There is a taboo that says women mustn' t strain themselves in the presence of men-we haul around 50 pounds of groceries if we have to but aren't allowed to open a jar if there is someone around to do it for us. The reverse side of the coin is that men aren't supposed to be able to take care of themselves without a woman. Both are excuses for making women do the housework.

9. Beware of the double whammy. He won't do the little things he always did because you're now a "Liberated Woman," right? Of course he won't do anything else either.... "

Read the essay in full at: -
The Politics of Housework - CWLU Herstory Project: The Online History of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union

Modern Times Film

The first few scenes of Charlie Chaplin's classic 'Modern Times' which still delivers relevant social messages about dehumanising work practises and the imposition of technology stultifying the individual voice, can be enjoyed here: