Obama, Hope, War and the Weather

With regards to Obama and HOPE I would like to make this point.

There are, in our world, two lobby groups - the political elites (including the corporations, banks) and the media, and then there's us, the people. We the people are by far the most powerful of these groups, given that we pay the governments wages.... and lots of us work for the government (public servants). They however are by far the most consistent, in terms of a willingness to keep doing what they do, and too bad if we are in the way - collateral damage, so to speak (which is, as we know, quite acceptable to those who launch wars).

The state of play is such that there is no time to wait and see how our Governments and their backers respond to the deeply felt need to act, thus we must start to PUSH real hard to do more than merely influence Government - we must direct it or subvert it. Non-violently of course!

We must do everything we can to shift POWER away from the executive, back to the grass roots.

So here's a critical analysis of my won, flawed as it is, which I would like you to comment upon, of the climate change mainstream movement that ties in most of the issues facing all of us. War and Climate Change are not seperate issues, but inextricably intertwined.

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1. Hey folks, geuss what! THE Climate changes. Always has and always will. Because of what we call natural dynamic equilibrium. A finely tuned balancing process that ALL LIFE ON EARTH IS ENGAGED IN. Fine.

2. Did you know that the billions of industrially farmed animals, (10 billion are slaughtered annually for the US) market fed on soy/grain processed foods, for which their stomachs are, in evolutionary biological terms, unprepared for, fart quite alot more than they would if they were grazing. They fart Methane. In fact they fart so bad, so frequently they have to be treated with medicines to stay alive.

Lots of methane! Lots of medicines. Someones making a killing.... excuse the pun.

Can you imagine what it's like to live with constant farting, just how uncomfortable that might be?

And in the USA where the car is king, the car is responsible for 3-4% of greenhouse carbon type gas emissions... Methane produced by the aformentioned murdered beasties accounts for 20% of carbon greenhouse gas emissions.

3. NOBODY in the mainstream climate change movement or in the IPCC is talking about this....( not true .... the chair of the IPCC Dr, Rajendra Pachauri,a vegetarian urges that we drastically reduce meat consumption, for all the above reasons and for human health reasons to....)

4. The bulk of the maisntream talk is about fossil fuels, plastic shopping bags, energy wastage etc etc and the suggested alternatives are green fuels, 'renweable energy', swiutching off at the powerpoint, and eco shopping bags. All useful, yet I have this nagging feeling......hmmmmmmm.

5. Did you know that the invisible 'externailsed' costs of manufacturing a car are in the region of ten to fifteen time the $ cost of the fuels used to power those cars ... and NO REMEDIAL action is being taken to deal with those costs, in environmental terms - such as loss of habitat, pollution, loss of livelihood for indigenous peoples, soil depletion, flooding etc etc etc... AND GREEN FUELS AIN'T GONNA MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE OTHER THAN MORE DEFORESTATION and NOBODY on the IPCC is talking about this (THE EXTERNALISED COSTS) either!

6. The single biggest activity our culture has engaged in since the time of the Babylonians is, along with WAR and SHOPPING, DEFORESTATION so as to create farmland, and in particular commodity crops - tea,sugar cane, cotton, flax, wheat, barley etc etc....

7. SO.. why not employ millions of people to plant premaculture type forests, for harvestable local food, for materials and for the animals to have some home again! Good work, healthy work, great fun, even children could get in on it!

Why not?

It's not going to be promoted by Government or Corporations - Because there is no easy PROFIT to get from it, thats why.

8. NOBODY in the mainstream or in the IPCC is talking about this....

9. The 'technological fixes' will of course be touted as the way out because those can be a source of profits....... as long as we can continue to work for others and shop to self medicate the psychic pain of being made dependent ...... instead of being self-reliant living creatures of Earth.

10. SO TO ALL CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS - WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP THINKING WITHIN THE LIMITED CONCEPTS THAT YOU HAVE BEEN FED TO THINK WITH, AND THINK WITH YOUR HEARTS AND YOUR INNER INTELLIGENCE.

11. (an extra free point, becuse I care) .... re point 10 .... NOBODY in the mainstream or in the IPCC is talking about this....

and finally

One other salient point - WE MUST STOP INDUSTRIALISED WAR as a prerequisite to any other changes.... because WE CAN, and THIS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE...

We need to do this because we know the harm it causes, because unless we stop this fighting we cannot ever hope to co-operate, and if we do make this happen, then those who are at the hard and bloddy end of the wars will see that WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY and that we're not doing this simply because we are fearful and wish to preserve our fat life-styles, by greening our 'economies' rather than changing the way we do things.

-------------------

ps :

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called 'neuroses', 'psychoses' and related forms of suffering are nothing to do with faulty biology; nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.

Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning).

Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.

One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society."

From David Smail..... (see my posting below ..... "Power, psychological distress and Society"

and pps : I have a new video out of a song called "I saw Vishnu" recorded live in Brighton, it's on youtube, facebook and myspace..

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k2JWV9QRwc8


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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Power, Gaza, indifference and compassion

To those who claim that Hamas or any of the resistance groups of the Palestinian nation (who are as the Maquis in France were to the German Occupiers in WWII) are equally to blame for the current war in Gaza I say this. 


When you live on the land, and eat of it’s fruits, drink it’s water, breathe it’s air, excrete your waste (which is manure more than it is waste, it is the return of what is not required, for re-use) you are truly made of that land, therefore you identify with that land and the land owns you more than you own it. 

That is why the Israeli Government pushed the settlement of occupied and annexed lands - they understand the power of that connection to land, to place that is built up by those who work land, whose food, water and air feeds and holds them. 

That’s a thing one protects to the end. The Palestinians in Gaza, once lived in what is now called Israel, and they ate of the land, they drank it’s water, tended the farms and olive groves, the shat on the ground and breathed it’s air - and the land owned them. 

They had been there a long time, time enough for each rock, each blade of grass, each olive tree to be embedded in the specific consciousness of their very lives, and their culture. 

The Palestinians were forced ( like may others in other placers throughout ‘history’ ) starting in 1947, to move from those lands, lands they had lived on for many, many generations, land they were deeply embedded in. Violently. 

Extremely violently. 

By the British Empire and the UK Government and by the Israeli Government. One a proxy for the other. Such is history. 

That violence unresolved, ignored, suppressed begets yet more violence is the dynamic the civilians of these lands are caught up in. Them and their children. And it is Governments that carry out the bulk of the violence. Both the occupiers and the occupied. 

This is the core issue regarding the specifics of the Israeli/Palestine War. 

For many people in the Western urban civilisation, this sense of land, this visceral connection to that which holds life, to that which sustains ones community, is an alien concept. 

For these people this natural relationship is no longer relevant, and is replaced by Nationalism or Ideology, concepts that are abstractions of reality, that exist merely to justify the concepts of centralised power and the ‘management of society’ which have grown out of the European led Industrial Revolution and for which more people have died needlessly, violently than any other single causative factor over the past 2000 years.


Thus the rootless well-schooled urban population fall prey to clever propaganda, and rarely if ever, look any deeper into the problem. If the Times/Sun says it, then it is! This illusion is being finally being dismantled by the net, and independent news outlets such as Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, The Real News, Indymedia and others are providing a much needed public service, funded by grass roots funding. 


So much for State Public Broadcasting! There is much activity around the world across a wide range of areas that is exploring the nooks and crannies of the SYSTEM OF POWER and day by day revealing the agenda of the system, POWER and it’s drivers, as well as working on the psychological and physical processes and memes that have been put in place to support the POWER and protect POWER from dissent and non-compliance. 


 The activities of the militant wings of Hamas are the actions of a desperate few, for whom the burden of daily humiliation, slaughter and indifference (on the part of the 'international community') have become too much to bear. 

That the bulk of Palestinians do their best to be good mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers and good citizens, good doctors, good teachers bears testament to the resilience and innate good-will of people. 

If only that were mirrored by those who claim the leadership roles. If only. 

To those who support the claim that Hamas or any of the resistance groups of the Palestinian nation (who are as the Maqui's in France were to the German Occupiers in WWII) are equally to blame for the current war in Gaza I say this. 

You have been conditioned to accept that others submit to the unacceptable. 

Get over it! 


 Kindest regards Cornelius Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
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Real Courage ........under fire!

I was sent this video : watch and learn.



http://december18th.org/

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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You Have To Be Asleep

To believe in The American Dream.

The contrast between Ban KI Moons address today from the ruins of the UN Food Distribution Centre in Gaza and Barak Hussein Obama's inaugural speech was clear.

The former expressed a profound loss of words to describe his feelings as he started to take in the full extent of the destruction wrought by the Israeli Military upon a civilian population in crowded into a tiny patch of land, a military that is funded and fully supported by the Government that President Obama now leads.

There was no attempt by Ban Ki Moon to grandstand the occasion, no attempt at hyperbole.

Obamas speech raised less cheers than his actual arrival on the podium, indicating the gulf between hope and real-politik and while replete with well delivered platitudes such as " for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you" : words that the Palestinian People might well utter in reply to the US abstention at the UN Security Council from a vote censuring the Israeli assault upon Gaza, a few weeks ago, even as their homes were being destroyed, only to be followed, day slater, by the destruction of the UN safe havens they were sheltering in!

Early days, give the man a chance - well he had his chance and he chose to remain silent! And he has often stated his support for Israel alongside his condemnation of 'terrorism' and of Iran. He, the leader of a nation that has directly and indirectly murdered 1.3 million Iraqis, not to mention the afghans, vietnamese, chileans, bolivians, peruvians, indonesians and countless others who have died by US made weaponry, weapons whose triggers were pulled by US/UK proxie Governments!

You have to be asleep to believe in the American Dream!



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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POWER, Psychological Distress and Society

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called 'neuroses', 'psychoses' and related forms of suffering are nothing to do with faulty biology; nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.

Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning).

Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.

One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society."


My Comments :

That adverse POWER, when exercised over any other living being, is at the roots of psychological and much physical distress should be blindingly obvious.

Recent events in Gaza are surely evidence enough, given the bland platitudes of political leaders, the cowardice of mainstream media, the bigotry of various citizens and the willful ignoring (verb) of human suffering by these various actors, not to mention what we know of our history and of the genesis of and use of so-called 'scriptures' as tools of control, rather than inspirational texts.

Yet all too often that is not the case!

What in the name of all that is good and beautiful that is of life is going on here?

Education, Psychiatry, Religion, Economics and Ideology as we know them in our society all share this quality of the exercise of adverse power over others. Of ignoring the true and terrible consequences of adverse POWER.

The process of denying a child the responsibility for and expression of her or his true feelings is the basis for all of the above, and in my mind, is the basis for all that is corrupt in our world. Corrupt in this context means isolated from the dynamic equilibrium inherent in what we call nature.

That dynamic equilibrium is at the core of the adpative ability of natural beings - an ability to read intelligently the multiple changes of any environment so as to retain optimum living balance. This implies an innate feedback process of cognitive understanding in order to function. That this exists and permeates all living systems is understood by science (at last), has been understood by indigenous peoples for millenia and is probably understood by all life forms - the indigenous peoples have said time andf time again that their knowledge of herbs, of plant and animal life comes direct from those life forms.

We know, for example, that there are 14,550 natural varieties of apple indigenous to England - that speaks volumes to the specificity of adaptation to locale, precise adaptation to subtle changes in environemnt that occur as the land flows. Similar variations account for the immense bio-diversity of the rain forests etc etc and that variety also affords these living systems their fundamental resilience.

Adverse POWER by it's very nature is an impediment to that feedback process. De-forestation as opposed to harvesting what has fallen. One cannot eat the fruit of a felled tree or nor the berries of a burned bush.

And that is at the core of the problems we are all faced with. POWER most often assumes that because others do not speak POWERS language that POWER is somehow superior. That is the meaning of 'experts' such as Lawyers, Priests, Rabbis, Imans, Psychiatrists etc etc. When in fact it is POWERS inability to empathetically connect and integrate feedback that is the problem.

We learn at home, in school, in our temples and at work that feedback is not appreciated - don't talk back! - and that such honest feedbcak can in fact be life/career threatening. And so we shut down that process within ourselves, and that leads directly to distress. Blocking our own internal flows of sensory information is deeply harmful.

The solution to this problems is so simple that it is overlooked by most of us. Certainly those in POWER, denigrate this approach in favour of over-complicated jargonised instituionalised narratives that are designed to "blind us with brilliance of baffle us with bullshit" and thus retain that adverse POWER. Psychiatry, Pharming, 'Experts' etc etc......... all wish to justify their positions......

The solution, as I see things, is ruthless self-honesty in the personal, familial and societal arenas of our lives and within our culture, founded upon an understanding and experience of Love as a joyful awareness of the wonder of being a living creature. Such an awareness can also be described as an expression of sensory acuity. It would naurally extend itself to all life.

Sensory acuity based around joyful awareness will always be sensitive to even the most subtle changes in the environment, and that in turn enables cognitive intelligent responses to those changes - sensory acuity is 'de facto' a neccessity so that this essential feedback loop process can function.

Here's a link to an article that I found useful, regarding the basis for a thankful life, written by Dr. Peter Breggin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/fifteen-principles-of-lif_b_34782.html



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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Compulsory State Education exposed ........

The fundamentals of State Control and the true agenda of Compulsory State Education (schooling) are revealed by the following quotations

Charles Pierce, the eminence grise behind William James and John Dewey, architects of Compulsory State Education in the USA wrote :

“Let the will of the state act, then, instead of the will of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young, having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated or expressed.

Let all possible cause of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehension. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard … unusual opinions with hatred and horror. Then, let all men who reject the established belief be terrified into silence….

Let a list of opinions be drawn up to which no man of the least independence of thought can assent, and let the faithful be required to accept all these propositions in order to segregate them as radically as possible from the influence of the rest of the world.”

Woodrow Wilson speaking to an audience of businessmen in New York City in 1909 :

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

This is the technology of modern management ……this is the doctrine which drove William James in “Principles of Psychology” (1890), to assign habit-training, not intellectual development, the place of honour in schooling :

“Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, it’s most precious conservative agent. It alone is what … saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor … it alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive (jobs) from being deserted. It holds the miner in his darkness. It keeps different strata of society from mixing.”

All of us who attended state schooling have been exposed to and conditioned to accept the imposed and limited ideas that are taught through that education, reinforced through the media and that underpin the success of marketing.

This is the core technology of psychological state control upon which the likes of Tony Blair, David Cameron and the leaders of Indusrty et al depend upon.

Of course they retain that other oh-so familiar stick, that of poverty, physical violence or imprisonment to curtail those few who escape this conditioning. That’s what the War Against Terror and the consistent attack on civil liberties is all about.




Reminding you and I that ‘we are either with us or against us”. And that there are penalties for non-compliance. You will be excluded!

With thanks to John Taylor Gatto, in whose most recent book, "Weapons of Mass Instruction", I found these and other quotes and resources.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com

Gattos book, "An Underground History of American Education" is published on-line at his website. In it he researched the international project to establish Compulsory State Education, from it's roots in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution to the 21st Century.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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Right or wrong, what works, works!

The factual recent history of Palestine is clear. 


 Utilising standards current in International Law, the Israeli Government is the aggressor, the US/UK Governments their supporters, the Palestinian and Israeli civilians are the victims, and the UN and the rest of us appalled and somewhat confused bystanders. Let me help clear some of the confusion. This situation has little to do with Religion, and a lot more to do with colonialism, conquest, Empire.

The Palestinians are 'guilty' of violent resistance. A somewhat lessor crime perhaps, though current International Law allows for armed resistance to military occupation by foreign powers, from invasion right through to departure. Thus guilt is the wrong word, even though I detest violence, the intentional causation of harm to anyone. 


 This aggression we are talking about is the aggression that is driven by power politics, often using religion or race as a 'white phosphorous" smoke screen. 

 Power politics is essentially about adverse control over the lives of others considered 'inferior' by those exercising that power - the power of life and death, full dining, charidee or scraps. 

 One can say that those who make the decisions to exercise that power in that any harmful way are culpable for they have transgressed the natural state of welfare and it is correct action, on the part of a mature adult, to confront that head-on... 

 We know that by conditioning children, such governments condemn those children as parents to become the instruments of that conditioning, innocently harming their own beloved children. 

 It is correct action, on the part of a mature adult, to confront that head-on. That means making accurate assessments - not to be confused with 'judging' which in common use means to see the other as inferior. To assess means to call the behaviour what it is, distinguishing that from the person. 

 A person thus confronted who denies and/or shows no remorse has judged themselves in the eyes of those who confront adverse dysfunctional behaviour. 

 Within the so called mainstream Peace and Environment movements there is far too much proto-Christian/hippy-psychoblather about the 'ego' and 'judgement', way too much political correctness, essentially an unwillingness to call it for what it is. 

If you feel it, then you feel it, so say it... Otherwise it's fear! 

 If only right and wrong was so easy to see…. If only........ 

Many people express this sentiment. Here's my take on it, for what it is worth. 

 Take the side of the civilians on all sides, and oppose the military power on all sides. 

 But as to the question right and wrong, in Gaza, right now for example, it is the right to life that is being violated and in that the Israeli Government is behaving in a way that is clearly anti-life, and doing so in a well organised, mechanised, industrialised way. 

 Their propaganda machine is well served by our western media and by a lack of critical thinking and feeble sentimentality. 

 Have you seen or read any of the work by Derrick Jensen? He is right on the ball with this void of critical analysis. Worth a watch. 

 Here's a quote, in which he debunks survival of the fittest, elegantly and precisely - I suggest you read it out loud : 

 "Those creatures that have survived in the long run have survived in the long run; you don’t survive in the long run by exploiting your habitat; you survive in the long run by actually improving your habitat; that’s what salmon do, that’s what merganzers do, that’s what bears do, that’s what everybody does; except us." 

 Thus, my question is this : what exactly have the Israeli Government done to improve the habitat of the Palestinians? 

  Precision Munitions 

 And another aspect of this connection to habitat is that we do have an innate and precise sensory ability that allows us, if we chose to use it, to listen to and comprehend all the elements in nature, from clouds to oceans, from mountains to clay. 

 Our hearts are neurally set-up to receive and transmit electromagnetic communications. All living beings emit electromagnetic information. These are signature transmissions. This has been scientifically measured. We are talking KNOWLEDGE here. Fact. 

 The ancients all claimed that their plant knowledge and herbal lore came direct from the plants themselves. We laughed at them, patronised them, slaughtered them and took their lands. 

 We know that in swarms of bats, that their ability to fly in huge swarms, at high speed, comes from their rapid 'reactions' - each individual is acutely aware of the seven around him, and as they fly in formation,  their so-called 'reactions' are 14 times faster than the human brain can think. 

They are using electromagnetic info to co-ordinate their efforts. 

This happens in all swarms, flocks, shoals etc etc.. 

 A mechanical instinct, driven by trial and error rather than direct comprehension is simply too blunt to craft this level of finesse. They think faster than we can! 

 In school, empire school, the one most of us went to, I was told that the ancients learned what they knew by trial and error! Profoundly arrogant and a fatal flaw in our ‘civilisation’. Fatal. 

  Precision - Natures Weapon of Mass Interaction 

 The point being that each living entity has within its being the facility to discern clearly what is appropriate for it's well being and what is not, to communicate with other life-forms and to thus adapt to a changing environment that is in dynamic equilibrium. And it is that that is at the core of the amazing diversity, vast co-operation and deep balance of nature. 

And it’s abundance. This quality/ability is missing in Israeli/US/UK governance. By reducing things to mechanics in order to understand them in a laboratory one gains knowledge of a bit, only in the case of urban civilisation, to than lose contact with the whole being. 

 In order to justify that loss, in itself an act of incredible stupidity and a functionally fatal one at that, intellectual philosophers and religious leaders of the city civilisations who evolved using that 'scientific' methodology had to create a disconnect, and elevate them selves ABOVE nature. As did the Constantine, the first Imperial Pope
.
Nature does not do right and wrong, nature does what works and what works is co-operation. Everything in nature that is alive works. What does not work, dies. Every creature devotes a large slice of it's being to improving the environment it inhabits. 

Apart from civilised humanity. And that does not work. Neither is the Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people ‘working’. 

  It is an insanity to suggest that either ever was, is, or might be working. 

 Kindest regards 

 Corneilius 

 Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
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Alice Miller, Pedagogy and Foreign Policy

Nice Video outlining the basics of Alice Millers understanding of how child rearing practices govern foreign policy.... I kid you not!




Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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The Roots of Violence

Nice Video outlining the basics of Alice Millers understanding of how child rearing practices govern foreign policy.... I kid you not! Watch it and make the link yourself!






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2uNfn_CtZw








And here's a fantastic short article covering the same ground, in a warm and touching, yet logically sound way.

http://knol.google.com/k/michael-pastore/the-mission-of-alice-miller/1g0dr1xj3zbds/4#


here's a part of it....

""Miller's argument, in The Truth Will Set You Free might be summarized as something like this:

1. Many adults manage their children with parenting and teaching methods which employ physical or emotional violence against the child.

2. Because of this violent treatment, the children grow up blind to the dangers of violent parenting, and out of touch with their true feelings and needs.

3. When these children grow to become teachers and parents, they will practice these same violent methods against their own children.

4. This cycle of "violence breeds more violence" can be broken, and abused adults can heal themselves and become nonviolent parents.

Miller begins by explaining, with many examples, how and why childhood reality is avoided "in six fields where we should expect precisely the opposite: medicine, psychotherapy, politics, the penal system, religion, and biography." ... Miller's next section, ‘How We Are Struck Emotionally Blind', offers an explanation for the remarkable and often-repeated story: "A father will beat his son and humiliate him with sarcastic remarks but not have any memory whatever of having been similarly humiliated by his own father.' ... In the third part of the book, Miller offers examples of courageous adults who have healed themselves despite long histories of parental abuse."


And another great video :



Short video outlining Alice Millers work and recent evidence to support it.



Pass this on!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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From a man who knows War.....

Chris Hedges has spent 20 years covering wars.

In these video segments he describes the reality of war, noting the three types as civil wars, 'conventional' wars of army to army and militarised occupations by a foreign force.

He speaks to the reality of the casualties of war, (civilians, women and children predominate) and why the toll is so high in Iraq and Gaza and else where.

Eloquent, passionate without losing his centre, these ten minutes are worth watching to get an idea of the reality in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and where ever occupations occur.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cL3ToWgtfDA - short introduction,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=221047753114925234&hl=en - full lecture with questions

This kind of clarity helps cut through the propaganda, spin and outright lies which are disseminated via the mainstream media.

Hedges also makes the distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murder’. Killing involves two armed sides hostile to one another.

Murder involves those who are armed versus those who unarmed, who pose no threat and who are simply I’n the way‘. Collateral Damage… is the euphemism now well worn and tattered.

Recently, currently in Gaza, we are being allowed to see the pictures of the carnage .... via the internet, youtube etc we are being allowed to sense the chaos and terror that missiles and automatic fire from an industrialised war machine inflict upon a civilian, urban area.

That same horror has been common place all over Iraq since March 2003. And the death toll is 1.2 million needless violent deaths amongst Iraqis, not to mention the woundings and trauma.

And who will help the Iraqis heal these wounds? Who speaks of this today? Why the silence?

How will this horror manifest in the following generations, in the psychology of the children of the traumatised and maimed Iraqis, Gazans, Afghans if there is no real resolution, no healing?

All of us have to think beyond the arguments of those who espouse violence, irrespective of their 'case' (' freedom fighters' et al) and argue the case for an outright ban by civilian populations on funding and industry for war or a military of any kind........ upto the right to hold national strikes to force this upon the political and corporate worlds - by right of the obligation and real need to defend civilians world wide from the degradation of war.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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