Boomer Bob's Open Salon Blog

Greenheron's Open Call; Can You Draw Me?

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:05:52 -0400

OK. Here's my Best Foot Forward. Enjoy and eat your hearts out, you connisuers of fine art.

For the best effects possible, I've provided some very complex extra-sensory enhancements for your viewing pleasure. However! Please keep this under wraps as I'm in the middle of contract negotiations with I-max.

AND by popular demand, it is in 3 D now too. Grab some of the 3D devices below for your 3D pleasure

PRIVATIZING EDUCATION; YET ANOTHER ELITIST SCAM

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:05:34 -0400

In 1988, my first and only child was born and with her birth came the almost indescribable and unimaginable mixture of emotions that I’m certain most new parents experience. The minute she appeared, I knew without hesitation that someone with a severely twisted sense of humor was standing over some cosmic blender creating ad hoc a numbing concoction of torturous emotions.

This twisted chef with green drool dripping from its evil grin, glowing eyes and demonic chuckle was tossing in equal parts of excitement, trepidation, fear, angst, joy, hope, worry and some extra “holy shit; what in hell did we do?” then for a little extra fun pours in some exhaustion and some god-awfully smelly diapers; turns on the blender to puree and sits back to enjoy the fun.

And there you have it; the very reason(s) my daughter is an only child AND my utter confusion as to why the rest of the world fails to see and utilize the easiest, cheapest, most natural form of population-limiting birth control available; the experience of the first child.

What person bearing any semblance of sanity whatsoever would do such a thing more than once??? Even in my youthful stupidity I learned after the first time not to jump out of the back of a pickup onto the gravel road while traveling at 30mph, so I ask; why does ANYONE repeatedly slam their heads against the proverbial concrete sidewalk?

As if the concoction wasn’t quite right, the demon cook, now bored with the original maelstrom swirling around in the pureed mass of what was once a stable, happily married, fun-loving, human couple belatedly tosses in education to spice it up a bit.

What to do! Where to go! How do we know what’s right for her? “Holy shit; what in hell did we do?”

In California, shortly after the human can of gasoline was tossed into our fire, a hotly debated issue began to emerge during what can easily be seen now as the dawn of the decline of the world’s seventh largest economy; a debate centered around what, perhaps arguably was once the premier system of easily accessible higher education as it began showing the signs of failure and in fact is now literally coming apart at the seams. Granted, we had a few years to worry about higher education, but the immediate concern of primary education was even then a system that was already in the throes of decay.

If one studies education in the United States they can readily see a less than stellar system from the very beginning. We have, rather than education, a means to instill conformity and rudimentary training, the development of which, curiously enough coincided with the Industrial Revolution.

For the average Jack and Jill in the United States we don’t actually have a system of personal education and never have; what we do have is a hodgepodge of the six “Rs” - readin, rote, ritin, rithmatic, religion and racism; all traits that were necessary to work in the United States’ industrial complex developed simultaneously with the “education” system of the mid 19th century, the system that still exists (all be it in a dilapidated form) today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - “We learn nothing rightly until we learn the symbolical character of life….I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.”

Also, in the womb of American education was a system developed in the far northeastern sector of the United States, a system of vouchers which would allow a student to attend a public school in a local community outside that in which the student lived as a stop-gap measure for small townships which could not afford to establish a formal education system on their own.

However! In the mid 1950s, an economist and metacapitalist by the name of Milton Friedman promoted the concept of vouchers for an entirely different reason – to promote privatization of public education. Friedman’s theory was that privatizing the education system would promote “healthy competition,” thereby improving the quality of education. Given the fact that this debate was considered as long ago as 62 years, gives reason to believe that education in America was less than stellar even then.

Friedman’s theory of “free market education” is widely accepted by most, if not all right-wing ultra-conservatives (and to be fair, a small congregation of “Democrats” as well) including billionaire John T Walton (son of Walmart’s founder Sam Walton), Grover Norquist, David Boaz and Ed Crane of the Cato Institute; conservative author Dinesh D'Souza; Dean Clancy, who was an education policy analyst for House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert; and Howard Phillips, the once president of the Conservative Caucus.

Wisconsin State Representative Chris Sinicki, who was a Milwaukee School Board member when vouchers began in Milwaukee in 1990, says there is no doubt that vouchers "are a Republican strategy to take down public education and the unions. This is partisan politics, completely."

Other very notable conservatives include John McCain and the Republican Party’s heir-apparent, Willard Mitt Romney.

When you look at the true underlying reasons in support for privatization of education, you quickly realize that it has absolutely nothing to do with education in and of itself, in fact I dare say that most of the supporters probably couldn’t care less about the benefits of real education for those in what they perceive as the lessor ranks of America’s society; or perhaps they do care and fear the results that educating the masses would give rise to; at any rate the issue emanates purely from political and economical classification; it divides the classes more effectively than anything else other than direct ethnic and racist policies.

From an ultra-capitalist’s “republic” perspective, the privatization of education accomplishes the following:

Creates a multi-billion dollar windfall for corporations
Aids in the ever-present goal of the conservative’s superiority concept of separating the cream from the milk so to speak
Reduces the concept of public sector
Drastically reduces, if not totally disbanding unions related to education, one of the few remaining union strongholds and arguably the most influential
Redistribution of wealth and political power

The name of another supporter should be of no surprise to you for his home state continues to make attempts to privatize education and George W Bush continues to promote his reign’s failures in education policies.

In less than a month, on June 22, King George II will bring his charade-parade to Las Vegas to continue his promotion of separating the economic and social classes in the U.S. He will be speaking (if one can logically use that term within the same sentence as George W Bush) at Mandalay Bay during a meeting of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities – APSCU an organization that promotes furthering the already misuse of more than 32 billion dollars in OUR tax money for private business, a presentation sponsored by an organization highly suspect in fraudulent use of non-profit funds to influence politics – Pearson

Pearson is a large, publicly-traded, corporate conglomerate diversified in publishing textbooks (ask ANY student about the absurd costs of textbooks and see for yourself the wondrous effects of capitalism in education), testing and certification, education software development and consumer publication.

Any time King George II is in town, I will be there along with the rest of Occupy Las Vegas, to protest the continued funneling of tax dollars to private organizations. We need to improve education for our children and for the future of this country, not hand over to Wall Street our tax money to do what we’ve seen them do best – destroy our future.

There are social benefits that should NEVER be privatized; education, healthcare, fire and police protection, social aid and government itself and I worry the latter on the list is not far away as we continue to see our social programs be consumed as rapidly as we consume fossil fuels.

I worry about the future of my daughter and the future of all Earth’s children as our politicians continue to give what wealth we have remaining to the private corporations to expand the ever-widening gap between the elite and the rest of us.

For more on this story, see David Halperin’s article on “Huff Post.”

Obama's Plans to Occupy Africa

Sun, 20 May 2012 01:05:45 -0400

Obama’s Elitist Corporate Food Machine Heading To Africa

Published on Friday, May 18, 2012 by Common Dreams

Obama's 'Poverty-Relieving' Plan for Africa a Profit Boon for Giant Agribusiness

$3 billion investment from BigAg leaves sustainable agriculture, small-scale farmers' voices behind

- Common Dreams staff

President Obama's announcement today of $3 billion in private investments in a poverty- and hunger-relieving plan for Africa is set to be a boon for giant agribusiness, a move critics say leaves small-scale farmers and agro-ecological methods in the dust.

“The rhetoric is all about small-scale producers,

but they haven’t yet been a part of the G-8’s conversation,”

Lamine Ndiaye of Oxfam said. (photo: Oxfam International)

The pledged investments come from agricultural behemoths including Dupont, Monsanto and Cargill.

The G8, now meeting in Maryland, has presented a view of private investments as a way of solving poverty.

“The G8 must not give in to the temptation to make bold and convenient assumptions about the private sector as a development panacea,” said Gawain Kripke, Director of Policy and Research at Oxfam America.

Raj Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, argued that a public-sector solution to alleviating hunger is "highly unlikely." Kripke, however, dismisses that claim.

“There is no evidence that the growing focus on private sector engagement at the expense of other approaches will truly deliver for the fight against hunger,” said Kripke.

The planned investment does not bring the voices of small-scale farmers to the table, but does set a plan for massive profits to be reaped by giant agribusiness. “The rhetoric is all about small-scale producers, but they haven’t yet been a part of the G-8’s conversation,” Lamine Ndiaye of Oxfam said. Giant agribusiness' "objective is not to fight against hunger; their objective is to make money” Ndiaye said.

Ronnie Cummins, Director of Organic Consumers Association, states that the Obama approach to alleviating hunger through the investment of corporations is "misguided." "To help the world’s two billion small farmers and rural villagers survive and prosper we need to help them gain access, not to genetically engineered seeds and expensive chemical inputs; but rather access to land, water, and the tools and techniques of traditional, sustainable farming: non-patented open-pollinated seeds, crop rotation, natural compost production, beneficial insects, and access to local markets."

"Bill Gates, Monsanto, and Barack Obama may believe that genetic engineering and chemical-intensive agriculture are the tools to feed the world, but a look at the 'fatal harvest' of modern agribusiness tells a different story. Not only can climate-friendly, healthy organic agriculture practices feed the world, but in fact organic farming is the onlyway we are going to be able to feed the world,” added Cummins.

* * *

Reuters: Obama to announce $3 billion from private sector to relieve hunger in Africa

U.S. President Barack Obama will announce a new public-private partnership program on Friday, seeking to spur this weekend’s summit of the wealthy G8 to focus on market methods to boost production, particularly among hardscrabble small-scale farmers in Africa who may hold the key to improved world food supplies. [...]

Other partnership projects include seed product packs tailored to African farmers from Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta, improved telecommunications access from British telecoms firm Vodafone and a potential African site for a proposed $2 billion fertilizer production facility planned by Norway’s Yara International.

* * *

McClatchy: Obama to announce Africa farm plan to relieve poverty

President Barack Obama will announce an alliance Friday with nearly 50 companies to boost productivity among small farmers in Africa with the goal of lifting 50 million people out of poverty.

Business executives from agricultural giants such as DuPont and Monsanto will join Obama, along with the leaders of three African countries who have pledged policy changes that U.S. officials say will improve business climates and encourage investment.

* * *

Statement from Ronnie Cummins, Director of Organic Consumers Association:

“Study after study has shown that organic, agro-ecological farming practices on small diverse farms can boost yields in Africa and the developing world from 100-1000% over the yields of chemical-intensive or genetically engineered mono-crop farms. To help the world’s two billion small farmers and rural villagers survive and prosper we need to help them gain access, not to genetically engineered seeds and expensive chemical inputs; but rather access to land, water, and the tools and techniques of traditional, sustainable farming: non-patented open-pollinated seeds, crop rotation, natural compost production, beneficial insects, and access to local markets. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) reduce crop yields, and increase pesticide use, even according to USDA statistics. Bill Gates, Monsanto, and Barack Obama may believe that genetic engineering and chemical-intensive agriculture are the tools to feed the world, but a look at the “fatal harvest” of modern agribusiness tells a different story. Not only can climate-friendly, healthy organic agriculture practices feed the world, but in fact organic farming is the only way we are going to be able to feed the world.”

* * *

Tamra Gilbertson of Carbon Trade Watchexplains:

'CDM support can end up rewarding companies for their failure to abide by the law. It subsidizes fossil fuel exploitation, and can undermine efforts to promote waste separation and reduction, while offering little or no financial benefit to the host country and causing harm to local communities.'

The United Nation's carbon offset mechanism is rewarding pollution, and could lead to a land grab for industrial biofuels, tree plantations, genetically modified crops and biochar projects in Africa

A new briefing, titled 'The CDM in Africa: marketing a new land grab', produced by the Gaia Foundation in collaboration with the African Biodiversity Network, Carbon Trade Watch, Timberwatch Coalition and Biofuelwatch, examines the experience of the United Nation's carbon market, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and looks at emerging threats.Photo by Timberwatch.

Through the CDM, developed countries claim to offset their emissions, by paying to support developing country projects that are supposed to either reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or absorb carbon dioxide. Until now, only 2% of CDM projects have been located in Africa, as the majority of current projects are connected to industrial emissions. However, increasing numbers of African biofuel and industrial tree plantation projects are entering the CDM pipeline. Further proposals to include other land-use methodologies could lead to an aggressive African land grab.

The briefing finds that the CDM creates perverse incentives for polluting activities. In the Niger Delta, an oil company is currently paid to stop its illegal gas flaring. In Durban, South Africa, a controversial toxic rubbish dump and community health hazard, which should have been closed years ago, is gaining CDM credits for generating 'clean electricity' using methane from the dump as fuel.

* * *

Apparently the destruction of Africa by Shell Oil and the rest of big oil and “Making Mermaids Cry” isn’t enough for backers of the U.S. political machine, so they’re now going after their food production too.

FROM COWS TO FIATS

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:05:33 -0400

The world is literally packed with news of political, or more appropriately social dissention today. Revolution is so ripe in the air one can almost taste it with our eyes; we need not even look beyond the first page of Google News to see it, in black and white and frequently red; blood red. You can’t miss it! Even in its most hushed presentation, typically benign through design, you cannot escape it. Some examples from today’s news:

Washington Post – “Head of Syrian opposition group offers to resign amid criticism, infighting.”

CNN – “The trillion dollar question: Will Greece exit the euro?”

Chicago Tribune – “At least 44 killed in offensive on Yemen militants”

Huffington Post – “Nonviolent and Community Action Produces Results in Mideast”

The New America – “U.S. Special Forces Being Deployed to Protect "Security" of Yemen”

And the list, which doesn't include the massive unrest in the Arab world of the past few months, nor the protests in Europe is virtually endless.

But, even in all its seemingly ageless similarities there’s a prominent novelty in today’s unrest; a struggle that feels, sounds, looks, smells and tastes different.

Is it the fact that the United States continues to bully the world that’s novel?

Although that is surely prevalent and is a concern that almost transcends the very definition of “being concerned,” that's not it, but that is another story for another day. Moreover, this new unrest is appearing in droves within the United States as well, so I dare say that it isn’t, of its own accord the issue. Not even the political divides created by the worlds myopic and inept politicians, nor the differences in culture, ethnicity, or race can be attributed to this angst.

What, then is the issue that seems to be devouring the world’s population from within?

Today’s unrest is firmly and deeply entrenched in the very roots of a commonality so firmly ingrained in the human condition that you might even think it could be traced in our DNA and that common thread is simply, the activity of trade.

Trade; an exchange of one thing for another, or in a slightly expanded definition it would be; an exchange of one thing, or service for another thing or service.

If we could break the issues of the entire world out, one by one to the most basic of mankind’s issues and analyze them to amplify the root cause, above ALL else, trade is undeniably the single source of today’s angst; it owns the eternal patent to the dubious claim on today’s worldwide unrest; beyond racism, bigotry and religious divide, it is irrefutably the most divisive and troubling paradigm amongst the population of the world today.

Please keep in mind that this is not a study in economics for I am not, even by the most generous use of the term an economist, nor is it a detailed history of the progression of economy. What it is, however, is an encapsulation of the evolution of the human condition related to the culture of trade as we know it today. To detail such a cultural change would take far more than a simple blog to outline, much less detail.

The concept of trade which is almost as old as man himself is, in its simplest of forms, exchanging something one has for something one needs or wants and likewise, in it’s simplest form, both necessary and good; a barter for resources or service for the mutual benefit of the participants.

“A barter for resources or service for the mutual benefit of the participants.”

This is a key phrase, for within that phrase lies the very answer to both the world’s ailments and to the world’s remedies “for the mutual benefit of the participants.”

Think about it. Man has traded since he's been around; of course the act of trading has evolved significantly and quite nefariously so, but it has been here with us just as firmly as our DNA. From trading cattle for goats, or a fresh kill from a hunt shared for a group’s mutual and most basic needs of food, safety, shelter and survival, the act of trading began as an automatic, almost predetermined behavior to ensure survival of self, of community and ultimately, humanity.

As in any root cause analysis, one would and SHOULD then logically ask; how is trade an issue? And if it is; why?

As we explore the evolution of trade, we can see a gradual shift from trading for needs to trading for desires which in itself is a basic need. Desires move people forward, they motivate us to change, to seek knowledge pertaining to our surroundings and to improve conditions in which we exist. For thousands of years, trading was basic, it was a method of fulfilling needs that we couldn’t provide for ourselves and for providing to others needs they in turn could not provide for themselves. Mutual benefit.

However! As desires grew beyond the basic needs of mutual benefit to a desire for power, items of necessity became items of currency and a slow, imperceptible shift took root and that root is now the behemoth redwood of trade we have today, a tree containing economic philosophies sprouting limbs of a mixture of economic and social philosophies; limbs of mercantilism, capitalism, socialism, communism and this tree contains a plethera of smaller branches stemming from the larger in endless ideals, theories, rules, regulations, politics, etc. Trade grew from the root of basic needs to market-oriented mercantilism; economic change to the end result of ownership of scarce resources and with that ownership comes control and control transforms to power.

Power! In a grossly over simplified version of the history of trade and the human condition, we have gone from trade for the mutual benefit of the participants to the trade for the benefit of trade itself and ultimately for the benefit of those with control over precious resources; resources literally made scarce by and for the sole benefit of those controlling those resources.

In its most grotesque and thoroughly corruptible form, trade has evolved from trading cows, to having more cowrie shells than the next person, to mercantilism to the purest form of absolute greed and control the world knows; the free, unmitigated, thoroughly corrupted, socio-economic system of capitalism.

In an estimated history of 11,000 years, we have gone from; you have two cows, I have none, let’s trade for something you need, to; I have all the damned cows and not just the cows, I have the milk, the meat and the manure as well and you aren’t getting any of them without due subservience.

Currency - trade evolved to the use of currency, a form of which we now use, a monetary system that has virtually no value – fiat money and like that money, the values that have been connected to it are literally worthless, yet we're bound by them as surely as captives for slave trade were bound by the vast oceans.

We are now literally inundated with economic theories, most as propositions to apply Bandaids to stop the profuse bleeding from the carotid artery. I dare say that there is a high probability of the existence of a ratio of 1:1 in theories to economists and while we’re being inundated with those self-serving economic theories, we’re drowning in politicians seeking to placate the owners of the cows so they may have a bit of the milk and I can gurantee that those politicians aren’t going to kill their own milk supply by enacting legislation to control those who own the cows; now are they?

No! In fact, those politicians are going to do virtually anything and everything to ensure their flow of milk continues including controlling (and even excluding) their constituents, to waging war on other countries who may either own additional cows or will try to obtain their own milk from the owners.

And the owners of the cows grow their farms with every piece of legislation they direct their politicians to enact.

We are continually manipulated and ruthlessly forced into battle against one another to determine which politician we wish to watch drink milk from the cow.

As if we are Michael Vick’s dogs in a pit, fighting for an owner who has absolutely no interest in our well-being, rather interest in the ultimate outcome, we scratch, bark, bite, howl and die; all so the owners of the cows and their politicians are safe and cozy, eating meat, drinking milk and heaping manure upon our dead bodies. In the words of Noam Chomsky; "Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that's where the action is"....These days they're sometimes called the "precariat" - people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society."

We don’t need more politicians,we don’t even need different politicians; we need NO politicians and we need an end to cow ownership.

There is an alternative to this madness and the alternative is so amazingly simple, so utterly obvious and so benign that it scares the hell out of the cattle rustlers and the horses they rode in on, their politicians; the fix will absolutely rid us of both and it will return us to harmony with nature, eliminate social disparity and will advance us beyond anything we have dreamt so far.

We will see an end to wars, for there will be no need or cause for them, an end to poverty, to greed, social stagnation and end to crime and and end to the world strife that we are witnessing today; for the world strife is seeking that of which I speak – social change.

We are not (or at least we should not be) seeking a change in direction using the same old broken vehicle, we are seeking a new vehicle entirely. The world is seeking an end to the ever-increasing patchwork of efforts to keep the cows in the pastures of the greedy, we are seeking to distribute them to all. For the mutual benefit of all.

There are no shortages of resources, there is only an unwillingness by the elite to participate in equitable distribution of those resources and they use their political pukes to control us; you and me, the mass of Earth’s population, for one purpose only - so they can own all the cows, thereby owning the power they hold over our heads to control us with.

We need but return to the centuries old practice of exchanging resources for the mutual benefit of all. It is extraordinarily simple, it is absolutely achievable, sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially balanced; we need but end our polarization and forget left and right, stop fighting in the pit and simply say; “no! No longer will we participate in your deceit, greed and hate-mongering.

Join the rest of the world in saying No! Here’s how you can do that:

Together, we can make REAL , SUSTAINABLE , MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL change.

OUR CHERISHED YOUTH

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:05:03 -0400

Sometimes, we gotta take the time to listen to the young and just chill!

Best in full screen mode

Harvard's Baseball Team in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Half way accross the country, SMU Women's Rowing Team in Dallas, Texas responds