Government Schools and Concentration Camps, I mean Classes

Now I want to make one thing clear. As a child I attended school. With that being said, I was educated at home. I say this because many of us do not or cannot see the difference between school and education. Schooling is just that, sending kids to a building where they will unnaturally be around people their own age, learning to be instructed in whatever the system operating the school desires to be taught.

Me, I was reading before first grade, learned addition, subtraction, division, fractions and square roots all at home. Not to mention I learned every type of rock, plant, animal and chemical there was – all at home and prior to any formal government school instruction. I call it government schools because that is what my folks used to call it. They made it clear that the government public schools (at least in the 1960s) didn’t really want to teach African Americans anything of value. So it was common place to learn at home and hope the school supplemented that lesson. Those days are gone and now we have forgotten the mandates of government public schools – to do the bid of the state. Regardless if that means suspending African America males disproportionately to other races, sending students into severely overcrowded class rooms, and graduating a population with a high school degree but 80 percent of the graduates can’t read or do math on a functional grade level when in college.

Even as a kid (and yes I read Hegel at age eleven), I understood the Hegelian Dialectic or "Consensus Process." Simply put it is plain old brainwashing. To quote William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906 (1835-1909), “Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.” But what could be expected, the political father of the modern day public government education system was Woodrow Wilson. As then president of Princeton and addressing the Federation of High School teachers he stated: 'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks,' thus designing a school system that would prevent 'the masses' from learning anything liberating when they got there. Even the courts assert such. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in its Palmdale School District opinion, November 2, 2005 read: a “parents…”fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished. The constitution does not vest parents with the authority to interfere with a public school decision as to how it will provide information to its students or what information it will provide, in its classrooms or otherwise [See Yoder, 406 U.S. at 205].

The reality is that with a closed educational system we will never have an open political system. But politicians and leading educators in history didn’t hide this fact. It was John D. Rockefeller, whose family ironically founded the National Education Association, who said: "I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers." Even Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence even advocated that “our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property.”

This our hypocrisy, on the one hand broadly proclaiming the importance of individuality yet at the same time ignoring that we promote a one-size-fits-all schooling that is forced on us. Thus we proclaim our schools are free when they are not, over-looking that a "free education" is nothing more than a state-owned and socialized education. I suggest this because if the state pays and provides the area of what should be instructed, then they can only accomplish what John Stuart Mill characterized as shaping “people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.” This is not hard to see, as a parent or a teacher, it is obvious that as Curriculums become more standardized, government from the county to the feds end up having more and more control in the schooling process – notice how I didn’t say education. And since the public school system is funded by tax dollars, the more teachers and administrators are protected and seen as the main stakeholders as compared to the students and parents. It is supply and demand in reverse.

In last year’s state of the Union address, President Obama advocated that every state should require that “all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18,” which in simple terms is a federal. This is a bad idea and an omen. On the real, government public schooling isn’t education at all and serves to advance political dogma in the form of reducing opposition to wealth transfers via the old communist instructional tactic that such is the American democratic way (namely because systems of state-controlled and managed schools will only be free to teach whatever the state desires).

The Public government school System is in creation to continue “social re-engineering of the minds of our children. Folk forget or rather don’t know that the government public education machine prevalent today is rooted in what Massachusetts did around 1850, and that the people resisted, even with guns until the 1880's when the state militia forcibly took children to school. I can even give a real life example. My daughters school is teaching that General Olgethorpe was a great man. Ironically I had talked to her about it when she was in the first grade when she asked “who invented Georgia.” I told her about Oglethorpe, his treachery and the manner in which helped to colonize (take Georgia from the people who lived there) America. I received a not from her teacher indicating that my daughter, all seven years old of her stood up and informed here teacher that General Oglethorpe was not a hero in her eyes as the school was attempting to teach. The teacher shared it with the other teachers in the school and she asked me if we talked about that type of stuff a lot. I responded yeas, and she knows all the halogens on the periodic table also.

If America was truly free, then Obama would not make such a statement - a free nation doesn’t compel parents to send their children to school. If history is any indication and the objectives of the individuals I quoted are on the inside looking out, then it is no wonder that in most cases if one is an African American in an urban areas, our kids generally receive a poor quality of education. Making a segregated world exist even if the law states otherwise for the gap between the haves and have-nots, is growing. Some states are so open with it that they have set different standards of academic performance based on racial ethnicity. Other states have even stopped teaching certain subjects like algebra based on race. Maybe this is why the government and others are against home schooling, because it makes people think for themselves and produces people like me. I do not want to even think of where I would have been if my parents and realitives had not instructed me, or taught me the constitution at age 9 or how to hunt or fish. I know for certain I would not have learned such sitting in a Government Concentration Camps, I mean Classes, especially if I expected them to teach instead of school me.

Obama’s Neoliberalism Bites him in the Libyan Ass

As I write, this, I already anticipate a backlash from the mass of Obama felatio administrators within the African American community, but I know all too well as Huxley wrote, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored and that one cannot argue with an idiot for they will beat you down with experience and win every time.

The situation which the US find’s itself in Syria was all our doing and 99.9 percent of the blame can be placed at the feet of the current Administration, President Barack Obama in particular. For it is President Obama's incoherent and fatuous policy in Libya based on the use of force when he wants to when US national security is not even in jeopardy that got Ambassador Steven’s killed.

It all started last year. First when President Obama ignored the Constitution and decided without Congressional approval, albeit he didn’t agree with such when the same thing was done by former President George W. Bush just four years ago. In fact while a Senator Obama when being interviewed by the Boston Globe said: “The president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. History has shown us time and again…that military action is most successful when authorized and supported by the legislative branch.”

The fact is that this same man singlehandedly committed the US to war against Libya, ignoring that the US had neither been attacked by nor was in danger from Libya and had no constitutional reason for any military intervention at all. I repeat, the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

But it was clear that being a constitutional scholar, he was not concerned about this. In an address to the nation delivered from the National Defense University in March 2011, a day before the military effort against Gaddafi’s forces, the President spoke of US military action in Libya and indicated that NATO would be taking the lead from the US adding that Americas’ role in Libya would be to defend those under attack by Gadhafi’s forces. This he said although the U.S. runs NATO, finances 22 percent of NATO’s budget and is the nation that gives all the marching orders. In essence Obama unilaterally decided to invade a sovereign nation as Bush did before him. Strangely enough, based on his assertion that military action in Libya was in the vital interest of the US. This was his position albeit Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted that the events in Libya were not in the “vital national interest to the United States.”

Despite Obama’s incessant statements suggesting that the operation is only to protect civilians, the military intervention aid the rebel factions in their advance against the African leader. Although he will not admit to such, President Obama is interventionists who on the one hand stated he had no desire for US military intervention in Libya, noting that the US will not use military invention, yet imposed a no-fly zone which in fact is “direct military intervention.”

What the President called US “humanitarian intervention” directed at a nonexistent US aggressor, undermined the concept of collective security, international law and worse of all is arbitrary. Obama’s Libyan policy was historically the same as his predecessor and allowed him, on behalf of America, to exploit weaknesses and divisions in the nations they interfere with all Willy nilly.

His prose had continued to justify these actions. He said, “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.” But words and fancy slogans do not make up for the observation that he had never considered the ramifications of such actions. The question remains Mr. President if this was an issue of US national security, did your actions in Libya make America safer?

Attacking Gaddafi got him lynched and one wonders if the administration ever asked or thought if this outcome would endear and make Libyan thankful for this? A nation which is already hated in which view America as constantly attacking Islam and taking their oil. Not to mention, was there any after thought that what has just occurred with the attack on the US mission, that killing or attacking Gaddafi’s without destroying his regime is just asking for increased terrorism against Americans? Or whether or not replacing him with insurgents who include other sponsors of terrorism, namely al Qaeda really a good idea?

This is the backward neoliberal foreign policy logic that Obama uses and was adopted and modified based on Bush’s neoconservative policy. We support dictator in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and say nothing, yet maintain a different standard for the same actions as it pertains to Libya and currently Syria.

Obama policy in Libya in concert with the senseless deaths of Libyan people is what created this opening for those who would love to nothing more than destroy America. The recent events even give more substance to the position of China and Russia regarding Libya then and Syria now which was: “If you try to impose anything on others, the result will be disastrous.”

 Obama’s foreign policy, for a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is the antithesis to the concept of state sovereignty, for it appears that state sovereignty is only problematic to the US when it is applied to places like Libya or Syria. Notwithstanding nations who have had decades of general peace, which Obama policy has now replaced with war and violence and instability. The Obama Administration’s foreign policy is typical of US progressive Presidents who take any self-selected event or issue as a reason to self-invite the U.S. to enter conflicts it has no reason to join, especially if national security is the standard (Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt).

Obama said “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

Are we different Mr. President? Again are we safer Mr. President? Aren’t the images of slaughter still occurring? or have you asked the mainstream media not to report on them?

Neoliberalism and Foreign Policy in the Obama Adminisration

Undoubtedly the Obama Administration inherited a complete mess from the prior administration covering both the economy and foreign policy. And true to form, he in many respects has continued the aforesaid policies of the former president from the bail out of the Auto industry, TARP, extending the Bush tax cuts and even Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy undertakings. In the classic sense, a large assemblage would propose that Obama’s foreign policy strategy is diametrically opposite to the neoconservative hawks of the prior administration. Maybe, but in the verity of evidence suggest that the present administration has only morphed neoconservative dogma into neoliberal dogma.

This case can be made singularly by presenting the current Obama administration policies regarding Iran, Israel, Libya, and even tertiary nations like Nigeria, Somalia and the Congo, IT IS NOT FAR FETCHED TO draw the aforementioned parallel within a historical context. As a nation the foreign policy approach of the Obama administration to be fair, remains in the tradition of the fallacy of the first crusades which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks in 1099. This remains to be the premise of what we see between the west (US and Europe) and the East (Arabs, Persians and Asians).

What do I mean you may ask? Well today as then, the US is a representation of the crusader state – meaning that our goals through foreign policy are to promote a universal culture of values “that must be spread throughout the world in the righteous cause of peace.” This is the basic tenant of Wilsonian idealism the way I have understood political history and put in action by both Obama and Bush. Neoconservative appears to be conservative yet support and favor big government, interventionism, and hostility to religion in politics and government.

Neoconservatives played a small role in the Ronald Reagan Administration, but came out the closet during the George W. Bush Administration after 2001. In comparison, the same can be said of Obama whose primary foreign policy goal demonstrates zeal to expand world peace and preserve American exceptionalism at any cost.

As I recall, Obama campaigned against President Bush’s policies, yet he continues most of these policies today. Like Bush, he has increased funding for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and has quadrupled overseas deployments. In Somalia for example, the Obama administration “has put in place policies to limit food aid to the region, using food as a weapon of war and killing hundreds of civilians weekly via its use of US drone strikes. Recently he has sent US troops to oil rich Uganda (Uganda has yet to produce a single barrel of oil) to intervene militarily to help Uganda fight the rebels of the LRA who are currently in the Central African Republic. Recently, more information has surfaced asserting that the U.S. Army has been making “preparations for possible direct military intervention in Nigeria.”

All I am saying is that the manner in which many pundits attacked neoconservative foreign policy was appropriate and the same amount of scrutiny needs to be directed at this new neoliberal foreign policy of Obama. The only difference between the two is not idealism but rather methodological. Bush proffered a less technological approach than Obama currently employs.

Although the present administration is providing the appearance of getting of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama continues to stay the of Bush neoconservative policy in the Middle East pushing out longtime rulers, as was the case in Libya and as he is attempting to do in Syria. Albeit his first act as President was signing an executive order to close the facility holding terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay within a year, he still maintains the policy of the former administration as well as has continued a version of the Bush practice of renditions. I wonder how essential it was to hold and water boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a secret prison in Eastern Europe to help get info to identify Osama bin Laden’s couriers?

Also, Obama in concert with Eric Holder continue the practice of indefinite detentions and continue to trample the civil liberties of US citizens just as Bush did with the Patriot Act and the FBI’s ability to obtain certain phone records without warrants. The Obama’s Justice Department has given legal authority for the continuation of these policies.

Now I did not get a chance to speak on the example of Ira and Israel, but I will and soon, just not here. The only point I wanted to try and make that the neoconservative philosophy many conservatives applaud today has not been removed from the current Whitehouse. In fact it has changed and mutated into a more vile policy perspective, that has taken us even further back to the times of the crusades, one which says to the world it is our way or the high way. My only concern is that other nations don’t forget the pangs of neocolonial practices they see make nations like the US richer, while they barely have food to eat and water to drink.

When Clinton Let the Foxes Run the Hen House

Imagine if I told you that during sometime in the first ten years of the twenty first century that a savvy plutocrat from a southern state would get this country on a path to economic collapse by implementing laws that would allow banks to run amuck. If I asked you to name this person, this public relations officer in chief of the most powerful nation in the world, would you concede that he would be a democrat names William Clinton?

Yep, Bill Clinton. Too me, the two most egregious actions against our economic prosperity was put in place by him. And what makes this so bad is that he was smart enough to know better, being vehemently more competent and astute as President in comparison to his replacement; for he should have known that Wall Street Bankers were merely a monopoly. Albeit they fly different flags – a pirate is still a pirate.

The first was the commodities Futures Modernization act, which II have written extensively about in past years. Although put in place in the late 1990s and the brain child of Senator Phil Graham of Texas, this is not what I am targeting, but rather Clinton’s abrogation of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Sure there were inordinate acts signed into law before and after the great depression including the Underwood Tariff Act, the Robinson-Patman Act and the Sherman Anti-trust. All were relatively ineffective, especially the last one. Glass-Steagall is (or was) the most instrumental and effective of all the banking or anti-trust laws implemented after the great depression. Politicians were always aware of the powers of the big banks, especially since the times of the Greenback. But as early as 1911, politicians were aware of the amassed power the Wall Street Banking Cartels had and is why Woodrow Wilson at the time called the “money monopoly.”

Prior to it becoming law, the Pujo Committee noted that the concentration of credit in the hand of a few on Wall Street was both a threat and danger to the nation. In particular since bankers were both capital users and capital supplying entities that made their loot using the loot of others (sounds familiar?) Practices that had been growing since the 1890s with the proliferation of investment banks and finance capitalism. By finance capitalism investment banks were both responsible for the selection and issuing of stocks and setting their prices. Meaning for the investment banker, a guaranteed return on invested capital was more important than national economic progress.

In essence, Glass-Steagall was a means to liberate credit systems from Wall Street control and end the perceived special privileged enjoyed by this sect via a rigged credit system. It was also an attempt to address the massive maldistribution of wealth and engaged reckless speculation of Wall Street investment houses. Moreover, the insider trading, pyramid schemes, speculation, unloading worthless securities and the fact that the general misuse of buying power had been responsible for the economic meltdown put a bright light on the obvious criminal practices of the banks such that laws had to put on the books to keep it from happening again. More importantly, it assisted in ending the incessant discrimination against small business in terms of access to credit, especially if they were outside of New York or Washington, D.C.

Glass-Steagall was signed into law in June of 1933. We have to give both Carter Glass and Henry Steagall of Alabama big props for this. Especially Steagall – who was responsible for instituting the FDIC into law to insure customer deposits? Strange is like today, Republicans who described insuring deposits as “socialism.” I would also have to give props to Duncan Fletcher and Sam Rayburn for their bill to regulate Wall Street and thee stock market. Here two, republicans and bankers argued that Wall Street could police itself.

Glass-Steagall prohibited commercial banks from collaborating with full-service brokerage firms or participating in investment banking activities. With one deft stroke of a pen, Clinton actions would proffer to show how Keynesian economic theory was wrong: that trying to obtain maximum employment was good and that liquidity, profit expectation and consumption are not enough to propel economic growth. Why, because equilibrium and underemployment are incompatible theoretical suppositions when conjoined. Clinton ended Glass-Steagall in essence letting the fox guard the hen house,

Yet we still act as if such is the Michael Jordan of economic jump starts, when we ignore the truth that no matter how much loot the government drop as stimulus, folks just gone buy stuff made in other nations, creating jobs over there, because we do not make anything that we or any other nation wants to buy – what we do make (movies and music) can be bootlegged (LMBAO).

not mine

History can be a judicious teacher. However, not all have the aptitude to learn from the past. With Respect to Iraq, this can be stated in inordinate respects. It is understandable the Bush Administration did not heed the lessons of the thirty some odd years the British were in Iraq. Nor have they learned that one cannot build an army in a country that is occupied by the US – at least not the last four or five times the US has invaded a sovereign nation and attempted to build an army (Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua to name a few).

Most prominently is not learning from Haiti in 1915. Like the Bush Administration, the Woodrow Wilson Administration fabricated a reason to enter a foreign country. The U.S. Occupation of Haiti was said to have been implemented to keep the Germans from establishing submarine bases in the country. The real reason for Wilson’s use of the military was to protect US business interest. History shows us that US presidents recurrently use the military (marines specifically) to protect financial interest abroad. Wilson like Bush desired to impose an American solution on a country that was unable to govern itself. We have failed miserably at building armies across the glob and usually, we end up with an autocratic despot or dictator in charge. Yes, this has happened each time we have removed leadership in power of sovereign nations and attempted to drop American political attributes on non American populations.

The concern is that Bush won’t tell us, the citizens of the United States of America the truth – what business interest are we protecting? Not Mine!