"Education Costs" by Deb Milbrath

"Education Costs" - Deb Milbrath, Cartoon Movement

"Americans" by Ted Rall

"Americans" - Ted Rall, Universal Press Syndicate

"Fast Food Jobs" by Steve Breen

Steve Breen, San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego, CA, US

The Deep State and the Power of Billionaires - David Cay Johnston on Reality Asserts Itself

If you are a regular reader of my blog posts, then you will know how I love to talk about how people around the world has a false notion of democracy & think that voting is democracy. Here, in the first part of this interview, the investigative reporter, Mr. David Johnston, talks about how instead of "one-man, one-vote" concept of a true democracy, the whole governmental system is rigged in such a way that the concept of democracy actually becomes "more wealth, more votes."

The naive, or perhaps, ignorant, public thinks that their vote matters. Before every election, the public is cajoled by the media to get out & vote because "your vote matters." Heck, I also vote in every federal & provincial elections in Canada, but I also keep in mind that my vote won't have much of an effect on the final outcome because the system has already decided who will be the next "puppet" or public "face" of the government. Most importantly, the policies of the government never change, or at least, not materially enough, to help make life any better for the poor & stricken public. The rich keep getting richer regardless of who comes in the powerhouse.

Another interesting thing to think, coming out from the interview, is how our education system churns out people who cannot think critically about their surroundings. They only care about their next paycheque. They don't care, or perhaps, trained to think about their own lives only. They are put into such a financial position that they are running from one errand to next, without ever having enough time to sit down calmly & think critically about their situation & the world around them. That's what the governments around the world want their citizenry to be & do; be a compliant little worker, who works like a machine, devoid of any critical thoughts.

One other thing Mr. Johnston briefly touched upon is that the people around the world equate wealth with virtue. Somehow, we still think that if someone is wealthy, then they must be pious & virtuous. Even most Muslims around the world incorrectly assume that if their fellow Muslim is wealthy, then he/she must be a pious person. Why? How so? Most wealthy people nowadays become wealthy by wrong means; be it morally wrong or legally wrong. They try to influence the economic & political policies of the government in their favour. They think that their wealth let them wield more power & votes over the government & the poor masses. Although, those poor masses are the ones who made them that wealth. Consequently, the poor masses stay poor, wealthy keep politicians in their pockets, & the political establishment keeps a facade of democracy on the actual face of oligarchy.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0byZ1Rl8-8

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: What does that do to your vision of America?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Well, it's very troubling, largely because it's not seen by most people and it's not held to any kind of account. And one of the flaws in our notion that we live in a democracy is that a very narrow group of people select who we get to vote for. Someone like Dennis Kucinich might have a lot of popular appeal, but he will never be a serious candidate for president, because those people who have a lot of money in this country are going to use the system to make sure he isn't there.

JAY: And the media.

JOHNSTON: That's right. President Obama--look at how closely he's identified with Wall Street. I chuckle every time somebody says he hates white people. Almost everybody on the staff is white in the White House--overwhelmingly white. He's an enemy of Wall Street. Really? Really? Zero prosecutions of the big bankers for what are well-documented frauds, including by the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission, whose report Congress paid for and then threw in the round file 'cause they didn't want to look at it?

JAY: Yeah, African Americans may have voted for him, but he is the Wall Street candidate.

JOHNSTON: He absolutely is. And everybody who gets to run is the Wall Street candidate.

And so the fundamental problem we have is, look, most people want to live their lives, and if they can have a reasonably decent place to live and a car that'll start in the morning and a job with a reliable income and they can have a dog if they want one, they're pretty much happy. Part of that is because our education system is designed to make sure that we produce nice, compliant factory and office workers. You can have a better conversation about politics, sociology, wealth, culture with the average waiter in rural Ontario or rural Hungary or rural France than with the average MBA in a suit sitting in the first-class section of an American airplane. Trust me, I've tested this. Alright? And so we live in a society where we just put blinders on to these things we don't want to see.

I mean, think for a moment about this use of drones to take out people who I have no doubt are serious enemies of the United States, but which also have taken out wedding parties and children. Just imagine (and this, I think, can happen with the technology): somebody puts a drone up and they want to take out me because I'm seen as a horrible person, and in the process they take out a whole bunch of children who happen to be standing nearby. Do you think that we would react to that by saying, oh, well, that's just casualty of war? So we aren't thinking very carefully and deeply about the long run.

And, Paul, the biggest observation that all this has made me come to is if you look at our policies in America today, whether they're economic policies, political or diplomatic policies, if you believe, as James Watt, Ronald Reagan's interior secretary, said, that we'd better use up all the resources quickly, because Jesus is coming back and he'll be really ticked off, all of our policies make sense. But if you believe human beings are going to be here for way beyond any period of time they've already been here, our policies don't make any sense at all. We need to be thinking about the fact that we're just stewards for the time that we're here, and we should be thinking about the great-great-great-great grandchildren none of us alive today will ever see.
...

JOHNSTON: And we also have this ideology that if you're wealthy, somehow that's virtuous.
...

JOHNSTON: ... So within this sphere there are fractious elements, different elements, people who have different and contending interests, people who have no interest in this but care a lot about that.

But nonetheless, yes, there is a power elite, as C. Wright Mills called it. It operates on its own interests and behalf. And it certainly doesn't like people like journalists.

So what do you see has been going on now since the beginning of the age of Reagan? Bumper stickers: "I don't trust liberal media". Really? You're going to trust Fox News, where I can document to you beyond question they just make things up, and they don't correct when they're wrong, and they knowingly mislead? I mean, I've made mistakes. Journalists make mistakes. When journalist make mistakes, we not only run corrections, but the Jayson Blair episode at The New York Times, where this sociopath got loose in the newsroom, 90 percent of what he did was inconsequential stuff, didn't cause any damage--lying, but inconsequential--Times ran a 14,000 word Sunday front page self-exposé. When The Philadelphia Inquirer found out its star political reporter was the mistress of the Democratic political boss of South Philly, they ran--I think it was 32,000 words exposing how they had missed this and not seen it. You ever seen that on Fox News? And yet they tell lies all the time.

And so you understand that an important element of the wealthiest class in America maintaining its position is making sure that most Americans do not think critically about these things, that we have two-income families who are having trouble getting by, so that they are devoted entirely to trying to hold their family together and they don't have the ability to be involved in political activities, to then make it hard to vote, to reduce the number of voting machines, to challenge people's right to vote, to make these robo calls, if you go to the polls and you don't have your ID, you'll be arrested sort of stuff that is nonsense, but people who don't know better are afraid. And it's very, very troubling. And, by the way, many of the very, very wealthy people that I know in this country--and I know lots of them--they are as troubled as you and I are about this. They're just not going to assault it frontally.
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"Tax Bracketology" by Adam Zyglis

"Tax Bracketology" - Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News, Buffalo, NY, US

Saudi Arabia manipulating world media with petro-dollars – Reporters Without Borders

The oppressor is always afraid from the truth & hence, never wants the truth to be out in the world. Unfortunately, in this case, the oppressor is not a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Buddhist or some other 'kaffir' but is the Protector of the Two Holy Mosques in one of the two holiest places for Islam (the other one being Al-Aqsa mosque).

The demise of Saudi Arabia is not in some far-off future but in the very near future. The pride & hubris of Saudis of being the 'chosen' one (because Prophet Muhammad were one of them), its sole dependence on oil for its country's revenue (& using that God-given resource & resulting revenue to enrich its own citizens multiple folds), & trying to control & manipulate regional politics in its favour, going as far as colluding with Israel &, directly & indirectly, killing fellow Muslims, are all coming back to haunt it.

Its economy is falling in shambles. It embroiled itself in a war from which victory seems elusive. Its power play in regional politics coming undone. Its respect among Muslims around the world is cracking, if not fallen right off the cliff.

Islam is all about justice & truth. Justice doesn't require hiding truth from media using power & money. Actually, it's very hard, if not impossible, to hide the truth. It may keep hidden for awhile, but it eventually reveals itself. When the truth does come out, the oppressor is always punished in the name of justice.
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https://www.rt.com/news/272713-saudi-media-freedom-propoganda/

To paint a better picture of the Kingdom, Riyadh has been paying media across the globe as well as setting plans to ban reporters critical of the government from working in the country, Reporters Without Borders concluded after digging into WikiLeaks.

The so called ‘Saudi Cables’, revealed by the whistleblowing website, were used by Reporters Without Borders to give a better insight at the lengths the Saudi authorities are willing to go to in order to try to present a more positive image of the country abroad.

The non-governmental organization cites numerous examples dated from 2010 until 2015 including Saudi Arabia looking to fund media publications from around the globe – from Iran to Senegal.

“In 2011, for example, the Saudi embassy in London suggested funding Wesal Farsi TV (now called Tawhid), a London-based, Persian-language TV station owned by a Sunni Iranian citizen opposed to his country’s government. In return for monthly funding and allowing Saudi Arabia to appoint a representative to its board of governors, the TV station would respond to Iranian media criticism of Saudi Arabia,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) wrote on their website.

The cables also highlight how some media organizations would actually approach the Saudi’s themselves for funding. Reporters Without Borders cites the example of the Afghan media center Spogmai. Its head requested funding in 2009 for the creation of a news website, a daily newspaper, a magazine & a TV station that would act as counterweights to Afghan media outlets, which were funded by rivals Iran.

Not all media outlets are willing to be bought, but the Saudi government seems to have a solution for those not interested in petrol dollars, RSF says.

Infuriated by the Financial Times newspaper, which it had said had “published lies” about Saudi Arabia, authorities in the Kingdom forced the publication to withdraw its correspondent & shut down its bureau in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia even considered taking legal action against the newspaper if it did not issue an apology & seek to report on the Kingdom in a “neutral” & “objective” manner.

The Saudi regime has also targeted journalists, the report finds. The country’s embassy in Berlin paid 5 German reporters at least €7,500 per month in order to write positive articles about Saudi Arabia every 6 months. This came in response to an alleged campaign by the Israeli embassy in Berlin cooperating with German media publications to write against Arab countries.

“The embassies play a dynamic role in organizing and maintaining active pro-Saudi propaganda abroad. As they are familiar with the local media, they are best placed to monitor what the media are saying and to make suggestions to the Saudi government,” Reporters Without Borders stated.

Following the revelations by WikiLeaks, the Saudi government warned its citizens not to share documents on social networks as they said they could have been fabricated.
...

“We are seeing how the oil money is being used to increase influence of Saudi Arabia which is substantial of course - this is ally of the US and the UK. And since this spring it has been waging war in neighboring Yemen,” Icelandic investigative journalist & spokesperson for the WikiLeaks organization Kristinn Hrafnsson told RT.
...

"21st Century Beggars" by Gatis Sluka

"21st Century Beggars" - Gatis Sluka, Latvijas Avize, Latvia

"China as Banker" by Paresh Nath

"China as Banker" - Paresh Nath, India

Thailand's crackdown on 'wombs for rent'

As I previously blogged that how everything of ours, tangible or intangible, is up for sale, this story fits right in. Everything of ours has been commoditized & ready to be sold. These women are not doing it for the fun of it, but these Thai, Vietnamese, & even Indian (not in this story) women are put into such a dire position, financially, that they are ready to lease out their wombs.
 
Now, women, most likely from developed countries, who can't conceive child due to health reasons, or won't conceive child due to vanity (don't want to "destroy" their figure or can't take the pain of childbirth) can outsource this function to a poor woman in a developing country. It seems nothing is sacred enough to not outsource.
 
Similar to how outsourcing of manufacturing & clerical jobs to developing countries raised multiple ethical issues in regards to working conditions in those developing countries, this "womb-for-rent" program also raised several complicated & ethical issues.
 
Can a country effectively control this process & make it better through laws & regulations or simply shut it down? I think not. The process was already sort of running underground with some people abusing this program. Now, the laws will essentially further make this go underground & more women will be abused more severely, & the abusers will most likely won't be punished.
 
Why this process can't be improved through laws? Because, these poor women are especially sought out for these tasks & since, they need money desperately, they will be willing to do anything at any cost.
 
Also, this process won't grow much love & won't grow the bond stronger between a mother & her child. Why? Because, it's simply unnatural. The love between a child & a mother starts & grows stronger during those 9 months of pregnancy. Any mother will testify to it. Heck, the women in this story had a hard time giving those kids, for whom they were merely surrogates, to their biological parents. How can a mother who didn't endure those 9 months of pregnancy hardships can ever truly love a child, who is still her own flesh & blood, like a mother who goes through the pregnancy & has a spiritual, & flesh & blood link with that little fetus in her womb?
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When a surrogate baby scandal erupted in Thailand last year, many in the country did not know what to expect next.
 
First there was the young boy, apparently abandoned by the Australian couple who had commissioned a Thai surrogate mother to carry him.
 
The boy had Down's syndrome, but the couple had taken his twin sister back to Australia with them.
 
Then there were the 12 babies found living in a single apartment with nannies, all fathered by the same, mysterious young Japanese man.
 
Many more babies had already been spirited out of Thailand.
Today the Australian boy - named Gammy - lives with the woman who was paid to give birth to him, seemingly a loved member of his adopted family.
 
"I don't regret anything about the surrogacy", Pattaramon Chanbua told me. "I don't blame anyone. To me, Gammy is a blessing."
 
Mitsutoki Shigeta, the mystery Japanese man, is still fighting to get custody of the 12 babies he sired through various Thai surrogates.
 
Now, 5 years after it was first drafted, the Thai parliament has passed a law which it hopes will shut down the "wombs-for-rent" business for good.
 
Foreigners are banned from seeking surrogates in Thailand. Thai couples can find surrogate parents, but not through agents, or on any kind of commercial basis.
 
At the heart of the business are hard-up Thai women, who see 9 months carrying someone else's child as a relatively easy way to make good money.
 
Daeng, a factory worker living outside Bangkok, is another. A single mother in her 30s, she agreed to carry twins for Mr. Shigeta.
 
When the time came to hand them over, she admitted it was hard.
 
"I carried them for 9 months, & I loved them," she said. But she went through with the contract, & "would do it again - so would anybody - because of the money".
 
Daeng says she was paid the equivalent of 10 years' salary.
 
Other women have had unhappier surrogacy experiences.
4 years ago, 15 Vietnamese women were found in a Bangkok apartment, seven of them pregnant.
 
Some of them said they had been lured there with the promise of well-paid jobs; 2 said they had been raped.
 
A Taiwanese company called Babe-101 was accused by anti-trafficking groups of being behind the operation, but the police never pressed charges, & the doctor who supervised the conceptions & the births is still practising at a well-known Bangkok hospital.
 
Like much of Thailand's medical industry, the surrogacy business is profit-driven & poorly regulated.
 
The surrogate business in Thailand has often been a shadowy, unaccountable one. Now the practice has been more or less outlawed, there are justified fears that, with so much money on offer, it will simply be driven underground.
 
"We have no law enforcement", admits Dr Somsak Lolekha of the Thai Medical Council. "Just like drinking & driving. We have the law. But they never enforce it."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31556597

"Hanging on" by Olle Johansson

"Hanging on" - Olle Johansson, Norra Vasterbotten, Sweden

Latest trend in student housing: Luxe, off-campus condos

Not only education itself is becoming a business, everything related to it, e.g. student housing, is also becoming a business. Now, we got luxury condos for students. Frankly, these student condos are far better than the condos for the general public.
 
It seems like that everything in this North American & even European society is becoming multi-tiered:
 
1. healthcare: rich pay for the private services, while the poor suffer in public hospitals & clinics,

2. education: stark differences in quality of education being provided in public & private schools, colleges, & universities,

 
3. residences / housing: rich live in housing & places which are safer & well-maintained, whereas, poor is put into places where infrastructure is coming apart at the seams, safety & security is just for the show (if it exists in the first place), & industries nearby adversely affect the health of those poor people,

 
4. employment: as I've blogged several times, rich get ahead using their network, regardless of their competence & intelligence, while poor is left behind to fend for some jobs at the bottom of the pile, if there are any jobs left to fend for, in the first place.

 
5. what's next? Quality & availability of food, water, & heck, even air ... with increasing pollution, better quality products for the rich & lower quality for poor. Other utilities (electricity, sewage infrastructure) ... less public funds for maintenance of infrastructure, so blackouts for poor & rich get uninterrupted supply of electricity.

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High-end high-rises like Icon, in Waterloo, Ont., are the latest student housing trend in Canada. Owned by private companies & marketed to wealthy families & investors—who buy them & turn them over to management companies to rent to students—so-called “student condos” come with yoga studios, tanning beds, movie theatres, billiards rooms & rooftop patios. Since they emerged onto the Canadian market 3 years ago, they have drawn wide-ranging criticism from neighbourhood groups, some universities, & even the students they want to attract.

“The idea of luxury living as a student is kind of mind-boggling. I can’t imagine tanning in between classes,” says Tyler Valiquette, a graduate of the University of Guelph. As a commissioner for the university’s Central Student Association, Valiquette investigated the impact of a proposal by Toronto-based Abode Varsity Living to build a student complex with two linked towers on 17,000 sq. m near the Guelph campus, which he says caters to the 1%.

He calculated rents in the new buildings are likely to be $700 to $800 a month per person in order for investors to make their money back on the condo suites, double the amount he & most of his friends pay for accommodation now. That gentrification could come at a price to other students who cannot afford Abode’s development. “The emergence of these buildings with hundreds of units could really affect rent prices in Guelph, so that’s a huge concern.”

It wasn’t until the early 21st century that private companies began tapping the student housing market. The first was a Texas-based developer called American Campus Communities, which created a Canadian Campus Communities subsidiary soon after its initial public offering in 2004. According to senior vice-president Melinda Farmer, there are 2 projects in Calgary, 2 in Waterloo (the Luxe I & Luxe II are just four blocks from the Icon development) & 3 more in Ontario: Oshawa, Hamilton & London.

“Part of this is driven by the increased numbers of international students,” explains Scott Mabury, the University of Toronto’s vice-president of university operations. “They’re much more likely to take up our first-year residence guarantee. So we have need for more student housing—that’s part of the reason why we want to build a new residence.” As enrolment is growing, endowments are shrinking & government funding is drying up. Universities want more students, but can’t afford to house them all.

Meanwhile, in Vancouver, a local entrepreneur is turning a luxury hotel into housing for international students with rents between $900 & $2,500 in a city with less than 1% vacancy rate. CBIT Education group has 9 similar projects in the planning stages & wants to bring 5,000 new beds onto the market. Viva Suites, which already come with full kitchens with marble countertops, ensuite laundry & views of the nearby mountains & marina, will be renovated to provide 230 beds, while the developer plans to add airport shuttles, daily hot meal service, & access to tutors.

As universities are being run more & more like businesses & it gets easier & easier to get in, Valiquette says they attract a different kind of customer—one with lots of money. The students who choose to live off campus from the beginning will miss out on the residence experience that enriches & augments the classroom lessons & adds to the richness of university life.

Aside from their impact on cities & communities & the university experience, student condos represent a more fundamental problem. By prioritizing comfort, they are undermining the reason universities exist. For the vast majority of students, furthering their education is something they have to do in order to survive, not something they do because it comes with a tanning bed. The view that luxury is the defining aspect of student housing is rooted in the belief that money, not work, is the key ingredient to a student’s success. In this consumer model of education, getting a degree is a lifestyle that is chosen & ultimately purchased.

Until recently, the spirit of student housing remained largely intact. You took a room however it came & ate whatever they served you. You did these things knowingly, even willingly, because you understood that the struggles you encountered, the discomforts you endured, were a rite of passage.

 

 

http://www.macleans.ca/education/university/living-large-off-campus/

A Dark Truth, Quote 2

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Rich & Unhappy? You're not alone.

Very important advice in this day & age. If we all adhere to this advice of stopping our mindless consumption & helping others, then our society will become more equal & happy. BUT those people who really need to listen to this advice actually don't listen to this advice.
 
This drive of mindless consumption has very grave & negative consequences for us: on a personal level & on a social level.
Personally, we are tired & never seem to be happy with what we have. We always want more. We then do whatever we need to do, be it illegal or immoral, to achieve what we think we deserve.
 
Socially, this unending drive of earn more to consume more drives our society into more chaos. Inequality & class divisions starts to appear & widen, as can be seen, all over the world. A tiny elite controls most of the resources, even basic ones, like clean water & soon, air.
 
Even environment is suffering from our consumption. This unending drive is creating more garbage in the world, polluting our land, water, & air, & the end result is more suffering for all of us; not just the poor.
 
Islam says exact same; apply moderation in your lives (actually, that's what the article is about ... live in moderation). Always look to the people below you in society, so your heart is satisfied. Always help others. Helping others will immortalize you in this world; not the fountain of youth.
 
I think I read once somewhere that look in any of the obituaries, & you'll see that nobody talks about what they did in 9-to-5 jobs or careers, but what they did outside of that; helping others, volunteering, doing something noble for the people & the society etc.
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Today, he [Tim McCarthy] has a ready answer: Anhedonia. It’s the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable. Now semi-retired, living in his hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio, with more money than he really needs, he has been exploring our relationship to money & things, & what is the proper balance. His ideas have come together in a book whose title sums up many people’s lives: Empty Abundance.
 
After spending many years in advertising, he is familiar with what he calls “the hamster wheel of consumption” that pervades our lives. But he is concerned with the emptiness we can feel after spending.
 
At age 25, he had been moved by Viktor Frankl’s "Man’s Search for Meaning". His mother, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, always advised him to pursue moderation in all things – including moderation. He had to find meaning & purpose amid great wealth, avoiding empty abundance.
 
He first experienced anhedonia as he was rising up the career ladder, gaining more & more income but not more fulfilment. In the book, he says the notion that money doesn’t buy happiness has been backed by many studies. Gallup poll data show that residents of the US are three times richer than they were in 1950, but the happiness ratings haven’t shifted. A Princeton study in 2010 found that life satisfaction rises with income, but that everyday happiness changes little once a person reaches $75,000 a year.
 
Mr. McCarthy points to 3 non-anhedonians he knows:
 
A teacher who should be tired of kids at the end of the week but still volunteers at Bible school on Sundays.
 
A young executive making $150,000 a year who sits on a volunteer board that requires she invest five hours a week & significant money to their cause.
 
A friend of his wife’s who has a very busy house-cleaning business yet also provides overnight home care for elderly people, often for no pay.

“These 3 people ironically strike me as among the happiest people I know, while my anhedonian friends seem to chase their tails,” he writes. “Over time, I have found that the cure for anhedonia, at least for me, is service. Of equal importance is my work to become present in this moment. This moment, this time, this life – that’s all we have, since there will be no other.”

He has a foundation that pursues issues of importance to him. He also pays attention to warding off 2 other elements of empty abundance: Filling the void through unhealthy addictions, which is commonplace, & despair, which can consume us when robbed of pleasure.
 
He closes by stressing you shouldn’t avoid abundance: “Find your own abundance. Each person has a different view of abundance – it’s very personal. Find what abundance is for you, & enjoy it.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/life-at-work/rich-and-unhappy-youre-not-alone/article22923479/

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 11)

A great line for those people who are always told that their work is not changing anything in the society & what they are doing is all useless effort & waste of time.
Opposite for: "Go big or go home."

 

Class is something you are born with ...

Crappy movie, but loved this quote ...
 
Funny how people think that a brand name dress or shoes or living in a mansion or have powerful people in their network or driving expensive cars elevate them to a higher class in society. That class is like that chocolate egg, which is hollow from inside but covered in delicious chocolate ... but devoid of any nutrition.
 
Our world has become topsy-turvy now with low class people at the top, with the help of brand names in everything they own, & high class people at the bottom of the society.

 
On top of that, public itself has changed its perspective to hold these low-class people in high regard. General public doesn't hesitate from struggling in this world, to doing anything it can do, to emulate those low-class people (e.g. Kim Kardashian is the idol to several young girls or young women in universities, in Western & Eastern countries alike, pimping themselves out to "sugar daddies" to earn enough to buy brand name accessories).
 
People are ready & willing to do anything that will make them easy money, even selling oneself is not out of bounds, just so they can buy their way into the "high-class society".

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