College Blues
What a lousy way to have to start your 'college life experience'. As if post-secondary education wasn't hard enough, with dorms and dorm-mates and classes and study and all that stuff. And choosing a career path and getting good grades and things. But now, having to be faced on campus, for the first time, by lying liars who lie. Not only lying liars who lie, but lying liars who lie and are aided and abetted by liberal Deans and Boards of Governors and college administrations. And even if you do 'name them' and 'call them' on their lies, it won't matter, they'll just go on lying because they're haters, too. And haters just hate and that's why they lie.
Got it? A career in liberal arts is going to do this gal an awful lot of good. One day she might run a library, or teach a class of kids, or shoulder a weapon and fight for her country. But it's highly unlikely she'll ever stop to ask why?
Why do haters hate - is that genetic? Why do liars lie? Is that the result of nature, or nurture? Why don't people see the same incident from the same perspective and what makes the difference?
Is truth absolute? Or is our 'truth' coloured by experience and emotion? Is our truth more valid than someone else's? If this gal graduates college thinking about this stuff she'll be on her way to an open mind.
As it is, she's had the benefit of a 'planned' holiday in Israel. It's obvious the 'plan' worked. She's learned that Israel's new Eden is threatened by evildoers who don't want it to exist. And they're here in America telling their side of her story - and she doesn't want to hear it - more than that, she doesn't want them to say it.
Sadly, there is a significant part of the population of North America to-day, perhaps even the world, who reason like the gal above. For them 'truth' is relative ... to them and to how they feel. They are the ultimate arbiters of their own existence. And it follows that they filter all their relationships through that sieve. As St. Matthew so simplistically quoted the Son of God, "You are with me, or you are against me."
With a subtle difference that they 'can't be with' the Son of God and adhere to this philosophy of a subjective truth. They, in setting themselves up as 'God', omit a good number of admonitions and caveats about 'doing unto others' and judging and forgiveness. But this isn't about religion, and being told what to do by somebody else is so passe.
Moral relativism is the norm in societal behaviour these days. Looking out for number one is considered 'smart'. And looking out for somebody else usually means an opportunity for some forward-thinking entrepreneur to take some advantage. In fact there's a whole economy predicated on it.
Disasters are such opportunities. And there are such an increasing number of these in the news that a pattern is developing in how they're handled.
The first stage is awareness. The news media goes out of its way to 'cover' the story 24/7 for a week or so (unless something else more newsworthy appears) pity the disaster that happened during the OJ trial for instance - aside from the Oklahoma City Bombing it was more than likely a blip. After that comes the mobilization of resources. Usually local resources are the first involved - neighbors with needed equipment or facilities pitch-in to help. In many places this is where it stops - the locals are on their own. In more civilized places regional assistance is available and various governmental levels have assistance to provide. In some places NGOs are available to assist - some 'in country' and often some international services. Foreign governments often assist by sending aid, manpower or equipment. But eventually 'private enterprise' shows up, looking for opportunities to make money.
In some sad cases that 'money making opportunity' starts well up the timeline of assistance. Helpful neighbors are often willing to help whoever can pay them the most. And 'security' forces are often the first assistance to arrive on scene, to protect private property. Looting is a real problem at times of emergency, but rather than use security to try to ensure equitable distribution of something that will be lost anyway - and pre-planning for that - people get killed by security protecting the property of absent owners. That's probably the worst thing about disasters. Because we often can't see them coming before it's too late, we generally haven't given much thought to avoiding them or coping better with them. We - all of us - certainly don't practice enough.
Disaster has engendered an insurance industry. Whether the disaster is personal or domestic, self-caused or the result of an interaction with another person or thing, insurance sells. Predicated on the notion that not everybody is going to have bad things (claimable events) happen to them, and that, provided you can get and use their money to develop resources and assets, a company can take 'risk' in order to generate a profit. This might have started as betting on whether or not a 17th century trading vessel was going to make it back to port but it was soon realized that spreading the risk of loss among a number of ' investors', for a price was good business. Shares could be repaid if the venture was successful, and those shares meant that failure wasn't a total loss. That notion spread to property and eventually to life and longevity, to health, to body parts - some famous - to, in our age, insuring banks against bad loans.
Insurance helps, if you have it. But it doesn't eliminate disaster. You can't buy insurance that will cover you if you're fortunate enough to go to college, or that will pay your way into a good university. There are some kinds of investments that you can buy that will assist - sort of an EIF. But they don't guarantee a tranquil education. And that's the truth.
THE 'ROYAL' CANADIAN.....the ravings of somebody who's been out in the 'Big White' too long.
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Saturday, October 04, 2008
It Ain't Who You Know
It's what you don't know, that's going to get you.
There's that old saw about ignorance being bliss, and in a way it is. If you don't know anything, you won't worry and you won't gripe about anything until it's too late to do something about it. That, I believe is what our governments are using as a standard operating procedure. If it doesn't get into the papers it's good. But just make sure the papers are full of the stories you want to be in there.
And so our papers are either full of inconsequential pap, or the kind of 'sky is falling' horse-pellets designed to get us all genuflecting in unison. The press of late is no exception.
The US election is the BIG news - shy of a universal pandemic dropping people out in front of the Mall, it won't get bounced. Even the Wall St. meltdown is viewed through the prism of the 'greatest game on earth'.
We had both as-yet-to-be elected candidates acting all presidential to broker the same deal for the Wall St. titans, while the ruptured duck resident of that office quacked the same tune. It would have been great had one of them taken the Nader approach - F**k Wall St, or the 'trickle up' economics of a nation-wide 'bail out of Main St.', so wisely espoused by a CNN pundit. But America don't work like that - too soialistickal, ya know?. And so newspapers, even ours, were filled with their exertions.
A minor story buried in Newsweek about a sophomoric protest at a west coast college, last week, got the deep six from the major media. It was remarkable. Remarkable that EVERYBODY agreed with the immediate police investigation - that no 'crime' was involved and that, considering most people on the Christian campus never saw the protest before it was removed, the Dean could deal with it. Nuff said. No divisiveness.
The protest was about increasing the number of 'disadvantaged' students on campus by some equal opportunity action, and it involved suspending a cardboard cut-out of a prominent black Democratic presidential candidate by the neck, from a campus tree.
Now, we all know and congratulate the USA on the way it has improved relations between the races. At least relations with Blacks - who now seem to have most of the rights that other Americans have, even if the distaff still looks down on them with some distaste. There are other races in that big melting pot still in questionable states. The Spanish-American seem to be tolerably-well accepted providing they're signing up and carrying out some military service and they're not illegally hanging around anybody's community stealing jobs. Asians, particularly south and west Asians, still have a National Security mindset to overcome. No 'Little Mosque on the Prairie' down south, yet. But they do run a good flea market.
But the reaction to a lynching, even a fake one, is more than a non-story given the first time ever a Black man has run for leader of a country outside Africa or a former Caribbean slave state. The 'good housekeeping' approach to see no evil leaves the mentality that a lynching joke, even a dopey one, is somehow 'OK' intact for the next time. Had it been somebody pasting a photoshop of Mrs Palin's whoo-hoo on the campus clock, there might have been a greater reaction - there was to Obama's 'lipstick on a pig' remark. Spare us, we know somebody has already faked that whoo-hoo on the internet .. probably the one where she "dressed like Tina Fey". But I digress into the stuff of current press.
Our Canadian election putters-on in its 'good government' sort of way. The only real oh-ohs are a couple of boners on the Prime Ministers staffers, and a propensity to steal somebody else's ideas, or at least their words in speeches. Ho freaking hum!
There was a debate last week, all the candidates sitting around a table battling it out eyeball-to-eyeball in French and the next night, again, in English. Wonder if our Yankee cousins noticed that?
They are 5 individuals running - each one a good caricature. The little green lady made a surprising amount of sense, too bad she didn't look like MS Palin, because she'd be the next PM, I'd bet. Even all the retired bikers couldn't top a good looking, and intelligent green. But voting green might just allow that sorry SOB Stevie Harper to sneak in again, perhaps with a majority depending how the votes fall. I like May's idea of representation by vote - it makes more sense than a 'mandate' given by 38 percent of the electorate.
One of the topics that hasn't come up is Canada's role in the future North American prosperity and security union (Egad that sounds like the thing the Japanese tried on East Asia 60 years ago.) I would think that an agreement to have the Thunderin' 804th US mechanized infantry come rolling across the Queenston bridge to restore law 'n order in Hamilton might be debatable to some candidates. I thought such an idea was a joke until I read, this week, that for the first time since the Indian Wars, a regular US Army unit is being assigned to exactly that - homeland security in Centcom: the US 1st Infantry Division, starting in October, will be posted south of the Great Lakes to 'assist civil authority'. They used to have a law about that, but a Presidential directive changed it. Discussions for a revised trade zone featuring linked economies, freer trade, transportion and 'linked' security has been 'on the table' for some time now. We wouldn't think that was important, would we?
Add to that a developing notion that businesses are deputies of the FBI in the great fight against terror. Now what, you might ask, can businesses do to assist the forces of law and corder. Well surveillance comes to mind - employees first, customers next. And turning-in a bad guy - or even a suspected bad guy - is a large part of the work that needs to be done. Can't see Walmart Canada, being 'out-of-step' with head office.
Another little American 'gem' is another one of those presidential fatwas enabling the powers that be to seize the property of anyone they deem to be interfering with the Iraqi/ Israeli/Afghan/Colombian/fill-in-the-blank struggle for freedom. I'd imagine that new unified North American whatever would need the same kind of laws too, eh? No more safe harbour for terrorists in the GWN!
Having your feet checked for explosives, and your baggage x-rayed as you leave the airport probably makes sense to somebody, but I'd bet he'd be wearing a badge and a bad attitude about the enemas of his country.
All this unanimity of spirit might have been a good idea when Red was entertainin' Otis at the Scuttlebutt Lodge. Back then only drinking was of concern. But nowadays our usually good-natured neighbours have a hate on for just about the whole world. Their media is designed to keep them that way, and our media is starting to be the same way - as a lot of Canadians adopt that paranoia that comes with having been attacked, well almost.
What you know is becoming more important.
http://www.projectcensored.org/
There's that old saw about ignorance being bliss, and in a way it is. If you don't know anything, you won't worry and you won't gripe about anything until it's too late to do something about it. That, I believe is what our governments are using as a standard operating procedure. If it doesn't get into the papers it's good. But just make sure the papers are full of the stories you want to be in there.
And so our papers are either full of inconsequential pap, or the kind of 'sky is falling' horse-pellets designed to get us all genuflecting in unison. The press of late is no exception.
The US election is the BIG news - shy of a universal pandemic dropping people out in front of the Mall, it won't get bounced. Even the Wall St. meltdown is viewed through the prism of the 'greatest game on earth'.
We had both as-yet-to-be elected candidates acting all presidential to broker the same deal for the Wall St. titans, while the ruptured duck resident of that office quacked the same tune. It would have been great had one of them taken the Nader approach - F**k Wall St, or the 'trickle up' economics of a nation-wide 'bail out of Main St.', so wisely espoused by a CNN pundit. But America don't work like that - too soialistickal, ya know?. And so newspapers, even ours, were filled with their exertions.
A minor story buried in Newsweek about a sophomoric protest at a west coast college, last week, got the deep six from the major media. It was remarkable. Remarkable that EVERYBODY agreed with the immediate police investigation - that no 'crime' was involved and that, considering most people on the Christian campus never saw the protest before it was removed, the Dean could deal with it. Nuff said. No divisiveness.
The protest was about increasing the number of 'disadvantaged' students on campus by some equal opportunity action, and it involved suspending a cardboard cut-out of a prominent black Democratic presidential candidate by the neck, from a campus tree.
Now, we all know and congratulate the USA on the way it has improved relations between the races. At least relations with Blacks - who now seem to have most of the rights that other Americans have, even if the distaff still looks down on them with some distaste. There are other races in that big melting pot still in questionable states. The Spanish-American seem to be tolerably-well accepted providing they're signing up and carrying out some military service and they're not illegally hanging around anybody's community stealing jobs. Asians, particularly south and west Asians, still have a National Security mindset to overcome. No 'Little Mosque on the Prairie' down south, yet. But they do run a good flea market.
But the reaction to a lynching, even a fake one, is more than a non-story given the first time ever a Black man has run for leader of a country outside Africa or a former Caribbean slave state. The 'good housekeeping' approach to see no evil leaves the mentality that a lynching joke, even a dopey one, is somehow 'OK' intact for the next time. Had it been somebody pasting a photoshop of Mrs Palin's whoo-hoo on the campus clock, there might have been a greater reaction - there was to Obama's 'lipstick on a pig' remark. Spare us, we know somebody has already faked that whoo-hoo on the internet .. probably the one where she "dressed like Tina Fey". But I digress into the stuff of current press.
Our Canadian election putters-on in its 'good government' sort of way. The only real oh-ohs are a couple of boners on the Prime Ministers staffers, and a propensity to steal somebody else's ideas, or at least their words in speeches. Ho freaking hum!
There was a debate last week, all the candidates sitting around a table battling it out eyeball-to-eyeball in French and the next night, again, in English. Wonder if our Yankee cousins noticed that?
They are 5 individuals running - each one a good caricature. The little green lady made a surprising amount of sense, too bad she didn't look like MS Palin, because she'd be the next PM, I'd bet. Even all the retired bikers couldn't top a good looking, and intelligent green. But voting green might just allow that sorry SOB Stevie Harper to sneak in again, perhaps with a majority depending how the votes fall. I like May's idea of representation by vote - it makes more sense than a 'mandate' given by 38 percent of the electorate.
One of the topics that hasn't come up is Canada's role in the future North American prosperity and security union (Egad that sounds like the thing the Japanese tried on East Asia 60 years ago.) I would think that an agreement to have the Thunderin' 804th US mechanized infantry come rolling across the Queenston bridge to restore law 'n order in Hamilton might be debatable to some candidates. I thought such an idea was a joke until I read, this week, that for the first time since the Indian Wars, a regular US Army unit is being assigned to exactly that - homeland security in Centcom: the US 1st Infantry Division, starting in October, will be posted south of the Great Lakes to 'assist civil authority'. They used to have a law about that, but a Presidential directive changed it. Discussions for a revised trade zone featuring linked economies, freer trade, transportion and 'linked' security has been 'on the table' for some time now. We wouldn't think that was important, would we?
Add to that a developing notion that businesses are deputies of the FBI in the great fight against terror. Now what, you might ask, can businesses do to assist the forces of law and corder. Well surveillance comes to mind - employees first, customers next. And turning-in a bad guy - or even a suspected bad guy - is a large part of the work that needs to be done. Can't see Walmart Canada, being 'out-of-step' with head office.
Another little American 'gem' is another one of those presidential fatwas enabling the powers that be to seize the property of anyone they deem to be interfering with the Iraqi/ Israeli/Afghan/Colombian/fill-in-the-blank struggle for freedom. I'd imagine that new unified North American whatever would need the same kind of laws too, eh? No more safe harbour for terrorists in the GWN!
Having your feet checked for explosives, and your baggage x-rayed as you leave the airport probably makes sense to somebody, but I'd bet he'd be wearing a badge and a bad attitude about the enemas of his country.
All this unanimity of spirit might have been a good idea when Red was entertainin' Otis at the Scuttlebutt Lodge. Back then only drinking was of concern. But nowadays our usually good-natured neighbours have a hate on for just about the whole world. Their media is designed to keep them that way, and our media is starting to be the same way - as a lot of Canadians adopt that paranoia that comes with having been attacked, well almost.
What you know is becoming more important.
http://www.projectcensored.org/
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