Job Discussion Forums

[sixthchild]

This question came up in class yesterday, from an 11 year old, asking if the police were trained to shoot first and ask questions later!
I thought in the light of recent events, he must feel relieved that he lives in a place like Turkey, despite it short comings police only kill young people when they protest and riot, not for waving a toy gun around at 12 years old!

[johnslat]

Protect and serve? Not according to to the right-wing Supremes:

"Published: June 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

Regards,
John

[scot47]

Wasn't there a Pete Seeger song about that. "What did you learn in school today ?"

[johnslat]

Indeed, scot47,

"What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody's free,
And that's what the teacher said to me.
Chorus
That's what I learned in school today,
That's what I learned in school.

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.


What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our Government must be strong;
It's always right and never wrong;
Our leaders are the finest men
And we elect them again and again.


What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad;
I learned about the great ones we have had;
We fought in Germany and in France
And someday I might get my chance."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucczIg98Gw


Regards,
John

[sixthchild]

Yes, well, as a certain Mr Robert Zimmerman once sang," A hard rain is gonna fall". Quite rightly so methinks!

[scot47]

I think the hard rain already started. WW3 began a while back but the commentators have not noticed yet.

[Mushkilla]

So,

What did you learn in this forum today
Dear little boy of him?

I learned that Washington told a lie.
I learned that soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I learned that WW3 has started in Iraq
I learned that everybody's free to lie ...
..
...
I learned that Pete Seeger is a lifelong communist

[johnslat]

Dear Mushkilla,

He was so much more - and "What did you learn in school today" is still all too true these days.

"In death as in life, Pete Seeger brought Americans together, then divided them into warring ideological camps. To oversimplify, one can lump the political reactions to Seeger’s death on Monday at 94 into two groups. There are those, generally on the center-left, who praise Seeger heartily, accenting his stand against the House Un-American Activities Committee, while quietly—if at all—acknowledging his disturbingly durable devotion to Communism. And there are those, mostly on the right, who acknowledge Seeger’s importance and praise his less political songs while arguing, in essence, that his politics sadly tainted the rest of his career.

Both approaches offer serious problems. Seeger’s political record—as a whole, not taken selectively—is exactly the point. As Andrew Cohen wrote in his appreciation, Seeger was often described as “anti-American”:

I think the opposite was true. I think he loved America so much that he was particularly offended and disappointed when it strayed, as it so often has, from the noble ideals upon which it was founded. I don't think that feeling, or the protests it engendered, were anti-American. I think they were wholly, unabashedly American.

Seeger’s beliefs sometimes led him to grievously wrong conclusions, but it’s not un-American to be wrong, and that same politics is what also led him to stand up to McCarthyism, fight for the environment, and march with labor unions, too. (To which one might waggishly add, can anyone to whom Bruce Springsteen had dedicated a tribute be anything other than All-American?) Nor can one separate his music from his politics, something former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer tried to do.

To understand why the full range of Seeger’s political activities are indivisible from his music, you have to begin with his childhood and entry in the folk scene through his parents' involvement. There’s an instructive comparison here with Nelson Mandela, whose relationship with the Communist Party was a newly contentious topic in the days after his death. Unlike Mandela, whose alliance with Communism seems to have been a brief and opportunistic response to the brutal apartheid regime, Seeger’s was deeply rooted. Unlike the rural folk musicians he emulated, Seeger was no naif. His father was a Harvard-educated musicologist and his stepmother a composer, both early folk aficionados; he himself enrolled at Harvard. Later, Seeger also worked as an intern for the great folk-song collector Alan Lomax. The recordings that early 20th century collectors made are the basis of what we now know as American music, from blues to old-time country. It's easy to mock folkies as bearded hippies today, but the early folk movement was overtly and radically political, reaching across class boundaries and celebrating of common people. The participants were preserving what seemed to them to represent an important part of the American identity, a part that was in danger of disappearing under pressure from the modern world. The class consciousness of that movement easily (perhaps inevitably) led to socialist and communist politics. As my colleague Rebecca Rosen notes, even Seeger’s choice of an instrument was charged. Like James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (or for that matter The Grapes of Wrath), the early folk collectors evinced a belief in the wisdom of the common people, but also an anger at their destitution—all the more extreme in an era before New Deal infrastructure projects and labor reforms. Even after FDR, that radicalism remained. There’s a reason that the New York folk scene was viewed with suspicion by anti-Communists in the 1950s and 1960s: Many of them were Communists.

This worldview led Seeger to some distressing and dangerous positions. He opposed American involvement in World War II up until the moment Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Though he’d quit the Communist Party by 1950, he never owned up adequately to having served as a useful idiot for the regime. The apology he delivered in his 1997 autobiography, quoted by Dylan Matthews, is shockingly terse and grudging:

" Today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was simply a 'hard-driver' and not a supremely cruel misleader. I guess anyone who calls himself or herself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. could consider apologizing for stealing land from Native Americans and for enslaving blacks … for putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps—let's look ahead."

Here is some of what gets "taught" in some schools here;

"Religious Right leaders in Texas have been waging war against science and history for the past few decades. A primary target and battleground has been the state’s public schools, in particular the statewide approval process for textbooks. People For the American Way Foundation first started working with Texans to resist Religious Right takeovers of textbooks back in the 1980s.

The Religious Right has invested so heavily in Texas textbooks because of the national implications. School districts in Texas have to buy books from a state-approved list, and Texas is such an enormous market that textbook publishers will generally do whatever they can to get on that list. Textbooks written and edited to meet Texas standards end up being used all over the country. So Religious Right leaders in Texas can doom millions of American students to stunted, scientifically dubious science books and ideologically slanted history and social studies books. Advances in printing technology make it easier to prevent that from happening now, but it will take vigilance to keep publishers from following the path of least resistance.

The war heated up in recent years after far-right groups won a working majority on the elected state board of education and Gov. Rick Perry appointed the ringleader of the far-right faction, dentist Don McLeroy, as chair of the board in 2007. Since then, the Religious Right faction focused on standards for the approval and purchase of science textbooks for the next decade. McLeroy and his allies stripped any mention of the age of the universe from the science standards (those millions and billions of years are annoying to young-earth creationists who insist the universe is only 6,000 years old). In addition, the new standards will essentially require the teaching of evolution denialism and climate change denialism.

The most recent battle, over the standards for new social studies textbooks, culminated in May with the adoption of social studies standards that give the far-right faction and its Religious Right advisors far too many victories in their efforts to replace history with ideology and turn public school classrooms into Heritage Foundation seminars.
The New Social Studies Standards

By the time the Religious Right faction of the board of education was done with the standards, they had created a mess. Some of the information is just wrong. Some of it is lifted from Wikipedia. Much of it is brazenly partisan and political. And it just doesn’t add up to anything coherent. In fact, more than 1200 historians and social studies professors recently said that the revised standards are going to make it hard for teachers to teach and for students to get what they’ll need to succeed.

Of course, that’s not how Religious Right leaders see it. Right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly recently praised the standards for kicking “liberal bias” out of the standards. “Texas textbooks will now have to mention ‘the importance of personal responsibility for life choices’ instead of blaming society for everything and expecting government to provide remedies for all social ills,” she crowed. Schlafly didn’t mention that she herself had been added to the list of figures required for study, along with Newt Gingrich, the Moral Majority, and the Heritage Foundation.

One goal of the board’s far-right faction was the whitewashing of Joseph McCarthy, so they required the teaching of historical material that they believe (wrongly) shows he was vindicated. The board dropped labor and civil rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta; and took out Ted Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the U.S. Supreme Court. References to the slave trade were replaced with “triangular trade.” Right-wing advisors to the board wanted them to drop Thurgood Marshall, the historic civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court justice, but Marshall made the cut.

The board also turned the teaching of religious liberty and the First Amendment on its head. It rejected an amendment about the importance of the founders’ decision to include the First Amendment to prevent the government from favoring one religion over another. Instead, board members included language to require textbooks to “compare and contrast”the language of the First Amendment with the concept of separation of church and state.

The board changed language regarding the study of civil rights movements, like women’s suffrage and the African American civil rights movement. Board members voted to focus not on the decades of strategic thinking and organizing that went into building support for democratic change but on the majority which ultimately bestowed those rights.

Among other problems with the standards, identified by the Texas Freedom Network, which has closely monitored and challenged the Religious Right’s efforts:

A revised standard that downplays the central role that the issue of slavery played in causing the Civil War
A new requirement that students contrast the ideas in Confederate President Jefferson Davis's inaugural address (which didn't even mention slavery) with speeches by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln
Downplaying the significance of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from the 1750s to the present
Revised standards that exaggerate religious influences on the Founders and the founding documents
Removing the concept of "responsibility for the common good," which one board member criticized as too communistic

Those pushing the radical charges won't hear anything else. Sean Hannity asked former Clinton advisor Dick Morris, "So is this just another Obama radical being elevated to the highest levels of our government?" But when Morris repeatedly told Hannity that Kagan had been a moderate-to-conservative voice in the Clinton administration, and predicted based on his experience working with her that she would be a moderate voice on the Court, Hannity would hear nothing of it, cutting Morris off to insist "no way."

"One of those historians, my colleague and former Southern Methodist University department chair Kathleen Wellman, testified at the SBOE public hearing this month. She told the SBOE that the effect of the TEKS requirement to find biblical origins for the Constitution would be to make Moses the “first American.” Some historians give that honor to Benjamin Franklin. Whoever might merit it, Moses definitely does not qualify."

Regards,
John

[scot47]

007/Mushkilla/King Cobra has Macarthyite views and is stuck in the 1950s. He reminds me of Barry Goldwater. Remember him ?

His spiritual and political home is here -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

[Mushkilla]

What did you learn in this forum today
Dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in this forum today
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned that the Holyrood old man told a lie.
I learned that John Birch Society followed Christian principles
I learned that John Birch Society opposes totalitarianism, collectivism, and communism
I learned that communism destroys the life of people
I learned that Goldwater accomplished his Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986

[johnslat]

Dear Muskilla,

Actually you have learned nothing - which is why you would make a great Bircher.

Bob Dylan: Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues

"Well, I was feelin’ sad and feelin’ blue
I didn’t know what in the world I wus gonna do
Them Communists they wus comin’ around
They wus in the air
They wus on the ground
They wouldn’t gimme no peace . . .
So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the John Birch Society
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin’ down the road
Yee-hoo, I’m a real John Bircher now!
Look out you Commies!
Now we all agree with Hitler’s views
Although he killed six million Jews
It don’t matter too much that he was a Fascist
At least you can’t say he was a Communist!
That’s to say like if you got a cold you take a shot of malaria
Well, I wus lookin’ everywhere for them gol-darned Reds
I got up in the mornin’ ’n’ looked under my bed
Looked in the sink, behind the door
Looked in the glove compartment of my car
Couldn’t find ’em . . .
I wus lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere
I wus lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair
I looked way up my chimney hole
I even looked deep down inside my toilet bowl
They got away . . .
Well, I wus sittin’ home alone an’ started to sweat
Figured they wus in my T.V. set
Peeked behind the picture frame
Got a shock from my feet, hittin’ right up in the brain
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones
Well, I quit my job so I could work all alone
Then I changed my name to Sherlock Holmes
Followed some clues from my detective bag
And discovered they wus red stripes on the American flag!
That ol’ Betsy Ross . . .
Well, I investigated all the books in the library
Ninety percent of ’em gotta be burned away
I investigated all the people that I knowed
Ninety-eight percent of them gotta go
The other two percent are fellow Birchers . . . just like me
Now Eisenhower, he’s a Russian spy
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy
To my knowledge there’s just one man
That’s really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell
I know for a fact he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus
Well, I fin’ly started thinkin’ straight
When I run outa things to investigate
Couldn’t imagine doin’ anything else
So now I’m sittin’ home investigatin’ myself!
Hope I don’t find out anything . . . hmm, great God!"

Regards,
John

[Mushkilla]

What did you learn in this forum today
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned that Bob Dylan admitted heroin habit and suicidal thoughts
I learned that Bob Dylan admitted to a $25-a-day heroin habit

I earned that Bob Dylan was dismissive of his music, which he said would not get him into heaven or save him!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8530141/Bob-Dylan-tapes-singer-admitted-heroin-habit-and-suicidal-thoughts.html

"Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me / I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to / Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me / In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Mr Tambourine Man (1964) - it is commonly thought that Mr Tambourine Man is a reference to a drug dealer.

[Sashadroogie]

The Party has learnt the existence of counter-revolutionary tendencies present in posters can be efficiently cured by a short, sharp spell in a re-education facility in an eastern location...

[johnslat]

Dear Mushkilla,

Still ignorant, I see. It's likely chronic. Oh, and by the way, your post is a very good example of the ad hominem fallacy:

"In newly released audio from a March 1966 interview, Bob Dylan claims he kicked a heroin habit after moving to New York City. "I got very, very strung out for a while," he says in excerpts released by the BBC. "I kicked the habit. I had a $25 a day habit and I kicked it." He was speaking to New York Times writer Robert Shelton on a plane from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver while on his legendary 1966 electric tour.
This may sound like a huge revelation, but Dylan has been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career. He was particularly prone to fabricating stories in the mid-Sixties. In another 1966 interview with Shelton, Dylan claimed to have worked as a prostitute when he first arrived in New York. "Sometimes we would make one hundred a night, really, from four in the afternoon until three or four in the morning," he said. "Cats would pick us up and chicks would pick us up. And we would do anything you wanted, as long as it was paid...I almost got killed...I didn't come down to the Village until two months later. Nobody knew that I had been hustling uptown."

That story is obviously complete fiction, but Shelton ran it with little skepticism in his 1986 Dylan biography No Direction Home. That fact that he left out the heroin part seems to suggest that he probably found it to be even less credible. A new edition of Shelton's book was released earlier this month to coincide with Dylan's 70th birthday.

In a 1984 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan refuted the idea that he ever had a "drug period." "I never got hooked on any drug," he said. "Not like you'd say, uh, 'Eric Clapton: his drug period.'" During the 1966 tour, by most every account, he was taking huge amounts of amphetamines. In a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner, Dylan did that say it was a rough time. "I was on the road for almost five years," he said. "It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things. A lot of things just to keep going, you know? And I don't want to live that way anymore." In that same interview he was asked if drugs influenced his songs. "No, not the writing of them," he said. "But it did keep me up there to pump 'em out."

In many interviews he gave in the early Sixties, Dylan claimed to have dropped out of school at a young age to work in a traveling carnival. "I was with the carnival off and on for about six years," he told Cynthia Gooding in 1962. "I was clean-up boy. I used to be on the main line, on the Ferris wheel, uh, do just run rides. I used to do all kinds of stuff."

Some Dylan experts feel that many of the fascinating details in his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume One are completely made up. "Jesus Christ, as far as I can tell almost everything in the Oh Mercy section of Chronicles is a work of fiction," Dylan biographer Clinton Helyin recently said. "I enjoy Chronicles as a work of literature, but it has a much basis in reality as [Dylan's 2003 film] Masked And Anonymous, and why shouldn't it? He's not the first guy to write a biography that's a pack of lies."

None of this proves that Dylan was lying about his heroin addiction, but the worst source of info about Dylan's past is often Dylan himself."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-admits-heroin-addiction-in-newly-released-1966-interview-20110523

He's a fabulist, not unlike those people who think of themselves as being James Bond.

Regards,
John

[grahamb]

Sasha, your prescription for deviant behaviour sounds remarkably like the late William Whitelaw's "short, sharp shock" policy for young offenders. I fear you are drifting inexorably to the right.