The Sham: Broad Education Rants

I suppose it shouldn’t be all that difficult to actualize how the US can continue to claim its actions in the Middle East are dictated by their refusal to work with governments who support terrorists. These governments by virtue of their affiliations are terrorist nations in and of themselves. Right.

Who among our ‘elected’ officials and their incipient power machine needs be called to task for the US support of MEK in Iraq, or the Pakistani militant group Jundullah, or the most recent reports that our policy in Iraq (win at all costs) now involves supporting insurgent Sunnis in al Anbar who have turned on Al Qaeda jihadists. (I believe I must have missed a news cycle or two at the time when Al Qaeda morphed into the full blown instigator of the insurgency, please feel free to fill me in here). Nothing different here, the US never has no qualms about funding both sides in regional conflicts: it’s all about the need to be on the receiving end of lucrative, invasive bleeding of natural resources, global control and growing new markets for big business anyway. (Or at least that’s my hit on it.) The only one who ever wins regardless of outcome is the US. Everyone just accepts it.

Robert Fisk’s recent Independent article regarding MSMs abject failure to report on the reality on the ground in the MidEast. Once again, the power of AIPAC. The blind fidelity to Israel, our 51st state.

“it's really all about shutting the reality of the Middle East off from us. It's to prevent the British and American people from questioning the immoral and cruel and internationally illegal occupation of Muslim lands. And in the Land of the Free, this systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in the country's schools. Now the principal of a Connecticut high school has banned a play by pupils, based on the letters and words of US soldiers serving in Iraq. Entitled Voices in Conflict, …compiled the reflections of soldiers and others - including a 19-year-old Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq - to create their own play. To no avail."

I live in ‘blue state’ country, one of those small pockets of America regularly lambasted for its radical liberal viewpoints. I don’t know anyone who isn’t shamed by our government’s Mideast policy as well as control over the skys, airways and trade agreements. But I become increasingly terrified by the failure of mainstream America to take a hard look at what is occurring in our education system. Again, while the US continually publicizes the anti-American textbooks and the madrassas on the other side of the Atlantic, no one is screaming out about this administration’s subversive battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of our children.

Sure, there is mention of the swelling number of home schoolers in America, but little report on how the government voucher program pays enough to make home schooling a family of 3 kids a highly profitable endeavor. Enter stage right the dominionist movement and the insurgent Joshua Generation (is Obama calling forth his J generation to merge with these genetically engineered airheads?)

So what skill sets can we expect from the products of No Child Left Behind? If not the military, then perhaps future employees of Blackwater. By the time this administration completes its mission to privatize the military, job demand will be such that Blackwater can easily offer its employees a minimum wage as they assume control of military training bases and hire returning Vets as trainers…. already they are recruiting mercenaries from developing countries whom they hire for extremely low wages.

What I propose undoubtedly has all the ingredients of a paranoid conspiracy theory … but is anybody thinking about this? Is anyone putting all the pieces together? The propaganda campaign raging in America right now for the ‘hearts and minds’ of OUR children brings to mind the campaign the British Colonialists waged to cover up the brutal torture and internment of over 100,000 peasants; that, too, was about winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the British public over to support the re-education of indigenous peoples.

There is no doubt in the educational community about what constitutes the most effective processes to promote the emergence of a young population with highly developed critical thinking skills, a finely honed ability to transfer knowledge between domains, an ability to work collectively and productively, and generate new knowledge. Unfortunately, however, NCLB promotes 'teaching to the test', a paradigm based on highly uncontextualized simplistic rote learning guaranteed to create a generation of humanoid robots.

Are we offering our children any other cognate for beauty other than the biblical image of the rapture?

Lifelong learning experiences:

Why would someone as conservative as Rupert Murdock, someone who is championing the symbiotic relationship between the religious right and the government be at the same time the owner of ultra conservative media outlets and control shares in the porn channels available in homes and hotels across America? The stone throwers create, sustain and condemn. They fabricate our reality. Amazing how Janet Jackson’s boob gave the FCC license to even further remove us from actually experiencing reality as it happens. To enlarge, distort and saturate our consciousness for news cycle after news cycle with images they would have us believe have no rightful place in our public domain ….
Guns to Caviar

We are no longer playing in the same ballgame. As Naomi Klein says, we have now entered into an era where the peace incentive is no longer a viable option. Chaos promotes privatization.

“…there's an index called the Guns-to-Caviar index, which for seventeen years has been measuring an inverse relationship between the sale of fighter jets and executive luxury jets. And for seventeen years, this index, the Guns-to-Caviar index -- the guns are the fighter jets, the caviar are the executive jets -- has found that when fighter jets go up, executive jets go down. When executive jets go up, fighter jets go down. But all of a sudden, they're both going up, which means that there’s a lot of guns being sold, enough guns to buy a hell of a lot of caviar. And Blackwater is, of course, at the center of this economy.”


And for more about Blackwater, a Harper’s magazine reveals that Blackwater’s founder and former Navy Seal Erik Prince has contributed roughly $200,000 to Republican coffers; as if that isn't enough now the news that Cofer Black, former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U. S. State Department, and former Director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, is now serving as Vice Chairman.