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U.S. Army Deployed Against The People


Sick. They call it "dwell-time, Homeland patrol" First non-emergency deployment of an active duty unit. Just in time for the riots, should enough people wake up and see the largest robbery ever, cynically called "bailout," taking place this week.

2008 Sexy: Libriarians!!


Despite the slavish attempt by the Republicans
to co-opt the "look" of this movement,
with the admittedly hot MILF, Mrs. Palin;

the truth cannot be denied:

Librarians can be HOT.

Here is a story from JEZEBEL on some librarians
fighting to preserve your freedom of privacy.
You go girls ! !

Eyes  Wide  Θ Θ  Shut   — — 


It would be a mistake to conclude that the entire American public genuinely believes the hype they are sold, but as Adorno observed some 60 years ago "The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them" [Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 167].  Just as people swallow up a mass culture that is manifestly contrived to fool them into consumption, they compulsively play along with the political charades as if they fell for it:

"People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them the most fleeting gratification, they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it, they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all."
    --Theodor Adorno ['The Culture Industry Reconsidered' in The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, Routledge (2001), p. 103]

Whoever wins the megaspectacle of the 2008 elections, it will simply be the system submitting to a vote which it has itself commanded. 

John Taylor Gatto, January 23rd 2008 (speaking on a radio talk-show)
John Taylor Gatto believes that the downfall of our schools as an institution is not a recent phenomenon.  In a book that he makes available online for free, The Underground History of American Education, Gatto outlines a well-researched worldview that frames what we see in schools today as an intended product. 


The former schoolteacher argues convincingly that the origins of our schools derive from the influence of a small group of cultural, intellectual, and monentary elites in the late 19th century. He recounts evidence that these elites, over generations of hereditary fortunes, have hoarded wealth and influence by controlling banks, currencies, politics, and yes, public institutions, the most important of which are our schools.

Gatto presents the case, which cannot be ignored, that the organizing influence of these social engineers is loosely based upon their own moral justifications. According to New York’s much-awarded Teacher Of The Year (New York State-once / NYC-three times), these beliefs are drawn from some of the lesser publicized writings of Darwin, Galton, and other 19th century intellectuals. Specifically, Gatto says these intellectuals believed, as he summarizes:

“[. . . ]that most people are evolutionary dead-ends, that only a small elite was actually evolving, and everyone else . . . just ‘got in the way.’ So now they felt morally justified in setting up a series of institutions – with schools being the most important of these – that would teach people to . . . ‘keep themselves in their place.’

Now, I will simplify this very quickly by saying: ‘by removing their . . . capacity for intellectual development’, and truthfully, ‘by removing their capacity for moral development,’ but let’s just stick with the intellect for a moment . . .

It becomes fairly very easy to do when you can drain all the children out of the community, and you can establish the standards for what a fine mind is: the one you get an ‘A+’ for.