Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world that HAS been handed them rather than to embrace the power within themselves to create a new world or get the old one back – the one we see in the vision of our past.
Impossible is NOT a fact…
…it is an option.
…Something is only impossible because you think it is in a moment in time, an instant that you can move through and beyond all the way to the possible because you willed it so.
Impossible is the opportunity inside a problem or a crisis. It’s what’s behind door # 3.
To achieve the impossible can mean the difference between life and death, success and failure, and sometimes begins with something as simple as deciding – making a choice to put one foot in front of the other toward a common goal – in this case that most uncommon state of affairs in the society of men: Liberty.
Which moment will you live in?
Someday you will realize that the only hallowed ground there is is the little piece of earth you’re standing on right here– that one small portion of earth that is free because you are on it and by you being there today, unwilling to be moved, have already liberated those who will stand here tomorrow.
No one will remember who stole life and liberty from us if we lose it – infamy has a way of receding back into the darkness whence it came. But if we lose this today, if it falls to us, today’s guardians of the nation's character, to be holding the torch when the flame of freedom sputters and dies out, we will be remembered for that and we will be despised through all eternity..
What do YOU want?
…and What is this place?
What was it yesterday and the day before that or a hundred years or two hundred years ago?
What have we earned but the responsibility to pass this nation down to the next generation? And what will you pass down– what are you willing to let be your legacy? Change? Change what?
What got you here wasn’t change…it was constancy and faith and yes, even that most uncommon of virtues, common sense. The gift of freedom is yours by right but only because freemen before you made it so - it does not fall to us to default on the debt we owe both to our past and to the generations of the future.
WHO ARE YOU TO GIVE THAT AWAY?
This is our time, today…at the moment this is still a time for ideas and discussion; it may not be so for much longer. What is the right thing for us to do today?
This is our epic moment and mere good intentions will not be enough to see us through. Courage, boldness, creativity, and the will to win through every problem and setback based on our experience as a free nation is what is expected of us.
This is not a time for arrogance. That is what we expect from the corrupt who have sought to contaminate our legacy. It is for us now a time to prepare for difficulties.
Unfortunately, we have things to relearn in our adversity and we will rediscover in ourselves those who came before us, whose deeds shine forth a ten-fold beacon in the night: the path of Duty, Honor, Country - the by word of every American Soldier.
In these recent months we in the new movement for America have discovered our capacity to form positive alliances of spirit and leadership and the strength of a shared vision for this country.
Pessimism and doubt, the enemy of every soldier and statesman, magnify the discomfort of uncertainties and inhibit advancement especially when we see that the threat comes as much from within as from without.
However, we share an important, worthy goal, and that is the survival of a great idea put into practical application so many years ago in long winters of deprivation and setback, a time when hope seemed itself forlorn and might have been the end of America before it really had a beginning but for the spark that refused to die out. In small victories hard won through nothing more than determination and perseverance, intelligence and the passion to remain free, the mercenary, the professional soldier, not even the traitors in our midst were no match for the citizen soldier who saw beyond himself to a day when he had to be free or he had to die trying.
AND THEY WOULD NOT BE DENIED.
The approbation of future generations is the only acceptable goal for us today. That, or history will prove us despicable for losing.
Will it be duty fulfilled or duty abandoned? Ask the people of Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos that question – when we abandoned that battlefield to the darkness. That is the face of duty unfulfilled, not, however by the soldiers, sailors, airman, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines who fought and died there for freedom, for Viet Nam, and for each other. No, it was men of an entirely different character who abandoned their duty - and their honor, who were responsible for that.
To overcome today precisely because we will face what is necessary today and not give up our fundamental values but instead rededicate ourselves to them - that is the lesson we must pass to our own Posterity. Let it be said of us.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Friday, September 25, 2009
Substitute teaching
After substitue teaching in 38 schools over a 4 1/2 month period in Connecticut, I quit. I had taught pre-K, grammar, middle school, high school, Job Corp, magnet schools, alternative schools, English as a Second Language, and special education classes.
The experience gave me a unique perspective - an inside view of the public school system and not connected to any school district or to the oppressive teacher’s union. I found it a dysfunctional system that dedicated teachers, new buildings, massive budgets, and busing can’t save. In this era of mega budgets that taxpayers are expected to accept without whining, it surprised me to learn that teachers spend money out of their own pockets for their classrooms or on individual students.
It seems that every manner of new program is employed and discarded and replaced by an improved program. Whatever has been tried fails, so they move to a different solution. There’s always a new plan. In one city, for instance, reading and math programs together with their textbooks and ‘supplemental’ material are changed almost with the seasons. The costs associated with inconsistent curriculum planning are both material and human. What are all of these highly paid ‘administrators’ doing to earn their wages?
Kids are given laptops, counseling, in-classroom support and lots of face time but fall short anyway. I’ve been in some classrooms that had three teachers and two para-professionals for 16 kids. How much of this expensive support do you need?
Ultimately, school budgets are approved by taxpayers…or not: With each passing generation Americans seem increasingly distanced from their own past. School critics, with justification, often lay responsibility for not teaching what it means to be an American or that our citizenship, unique in the world, is disappearing in the collective hive.
Our form of citizenship identifies us as sovereign: citizens who are above the government but not above the law. Such a citizenry could say “NO” to government, whether on policy or budget matters (the two are often linked) and expect the government, whom we elect and appoint, to conform to our wishes and not the other way around. But to teach that concept, which is the foundation of American liberty, is incompatible with and contradicts current schema of public education which is to reengineer American society away from individualism into one of groupthink.
In 1993, I formed the a Parent Commission in my home town. We were an informed and influential group or parents – and a few teachers – who exerted pressure where it was needed: The school superintendent’s contract was not renewed and one principal got his walking papers. We warned parents that a new system of education was being placed in our schools, one that strangely favored emotions over academics and relationships over fact-based learning. We got rid of the superintendent but the system stayed.
That system, schemata that teaches children to accept change and to welcome it without question, has been in place now for 14 years. This generation just elected a president.
The academic results: our kids rank lower in academic comparisons to many other industrialized nations (from 1st to 14th). We tried to warn our neighbors that our kids were getting, not ‘school,’ but a management system based on international educational standards that use financial and other incentives to prepare students for “Mastery Learning” and to become multicultural persons open to all beliefs and lifestyles but where accuracy, literacy, and our own history fade in this process of standardizing ‘human capital’ - your kids.
One third of Hartford’s kids don’t graduate. A significant number of the girls leave pregnant, without a husband or man around to help with the new baby. And the poverty and crime cycle is held up to society as a threat: You’d better fix this or else you’ll pay me welfare for the next 30 years and you might be my next crime victim. Such reasoning eliminates the reasonable expectation of society for personal responsibility. To accept it is an admission of failure and impotence.
It isn’t the school’s responsibility to fix everything that’s wrong in a student’s life and it’s a cop-out to advocate that every problem facing youth, wherever they live, has a school-based solution. The disaster in education begins inside the home where it fails because parents will not hold their kids responsible for their own behavior or for their performance in the classroom.
Forty years ago, America was number one in the world for producing high school graduates. Today we are eighteenth. Between 1994 and 2005, math and reading skills declined sharply.
Fifty years ago, hard work and education were considered the only practical means to achievement. Today, many entering the workforce believe that achievement is a matter of, not earned merit, but luck and who you know. When hard work and education is not considered practical, luck and who you know may indeed determine what you get and when you don’t get what you want you can always blame somebody in today’s America.
Measuring achievement disparities between whites and minorities in Connecticut has produced alarming observations: We are now 50th out of the 50 states in producing black and Hispanic high school graduates on a per capita ratio in comparison to whites. Only 20% of minorities in Connecticut graduate with the proficiencies necessary to go to college and one must ask, is this racial or cultural phenomenon? To ask that question is to open one to criticism. To not ask that question, and expect an answer, is irresponsible.
Hartford, Connecticut, which is more than 90% ‘minority,’ has a proficiency level of under 50% in measurements of math performance when the state average is 80%. What do teachers do? The kids don’t have the skills so they begin to teach to the test, the CMT’s to be exact. But testing is only a measurement of what is deficient. When your strategy is to teach to the test, an effort that takes from September to March in Connecticut, you begin to measure only what is left to learn rather than prepare students to expect they will be required to demonstrate how much they know.
In order to make these assessments teachers spend much of their time data gathering instead of teaching. In the end, they are often forced to make loaded assessments so the schools will pass even if the kids cannot.
Proficiency, a measure of competence, is retreating. Standards that were expected to be attained not long ago are only hoped for goals today. 50% of American freshmen entering college need to take remedial courses in math and English just to be able to perform at the university level. Employers face the same issue when they hire college graduates because new hires can’t do basic math, can’t spell, and can’t write competently. Employers spend enormous amounts of money on curative programs to raise employees’ basic skills.
Of Connecticut eighth graders, only 35% are proficient at math, 37% are proficient in reading, and 33% are proficient in science. When they get to high school these students can’t do the work and they slow everyone else down.
In comparisons between Connecticut cities, which are overwhelmingly minority, and the suburbs, which are overwhelmingly white, graduation ratios are profoundly clear. The cities on average graduate about 20% of their freshmen and the suburbs graduate about 80%.
Forty years ago, Connecticut had one of the highest technologically proficient workforces in the world. As that workforce ages and begins natural attrition, which is right now, there aren’t enough graduates with the competencies needed to replace them.
The Quiet and Orderly Classroom.
The first order of government is to provide for the public safety. In the schools, it is the administration that is the government. The breakdown in public educations’ approach to classroom discipline is quite simple and can be summed up in one word: abandonment.
Overpaid administrators in general fail to address discipline issues, just ask the teachers who shuffle from class to class the petty tyrants that plague them all day long because ‘the office’ won’t take them and you can’t any longer get rid of them through suspensions or expulsions.
Dealing with discipline is expensive. Not dealing with discipline issues is more expensive. Not dealing with discipline issues is also dangerous because teachers are placed in untenable and sometimes vulnerable positions: The kids know that there are no real consequences to what they do and as a result, some kids, often the same ones, disrupt classrooms beyond recovery. Everyone’s academic performance suffers when refractory and antisocial delinquents are allowed to steal class time with impunity.
When kids have never had serious limitations placed upon their behavior they learn that they can live with the consequences. Worse, they learn that there are no consequences. Teachers cannot and should not be expected to deal with these problems and students who want to learn are robbed, literally, of opportunity as much by school policies as by delinquency in the classroom.
Retired or moonlighting police and corrections officers patrol hallways with uniformed security guards that carry walkie-talkies. It is an act of surrender to accept this chaos as it is practiced in too many schools. Yes, students have a choice: sit down, shut, up, pay attention, and do the work. Or get out.
I am well experienced dealing with diverse cultures and a wide variety of human conditions. At one time, I spoke ten languages, two dialects, and of the ten languages four are aboriginal languages learned from native speakers on four continents. I taught ESL at Boston University. While I was a substitute teacher I overheard many conversations between students who were unaware that I spoke Spanish.
In Iraq in 2004-2005, I taught tactics and some English to Iraqi’s that served on my counter terrorist teams. Part of my training and experience is in the area of threat assessment. I believe that there is an underclass in the school systems that pose a threat to American society. This underclass will augment in the coming years as greater and greater numbers refuse to avail themselves of educational opportunities.
Personal experiences.
I arrived one day at a middle school to begin a substitute assignment in an 8th grade class. As I walked to my classroom two female teachers were in the hallway yelling at a kid to stop running and return to where they were standing. “F_ _ _ you,” said the runner, and she disappeared around the corner at the end of the hallway. This student was known to the teachers. I asked them if they needed any help and they meekly replied, “No, this is normal around here.”
The students in my classroom - a ‘bridge class’ of mostly Spanish to English speakers - were completely out of control when I walked in. A para-professional in the room was perfectly at ease with the pandemonium, cheerful, buoyant, and smiling even as she pointed to the only four students who were doing the assignment she handed out. The others, in a class of more than twenty, were shouting, wandering around, chatting, and some were mock-fighting. I was told by this paraprofessional that all was well, this class was just, “noisy.”
The kids who were sitting quietly and working seemed bewildered. I asked them if they thought the room was noisy and one said, through a smile, “It’s always like this.” I asked her if she wished it were quieter. She looked at me as though I suggested I could part the ocean. “Okay, Mister, if you can do it,” she said in a thick Spanish accent. And then it began.
I threw two students out immediately – something they did not expect. One refused to leave. I called the office to have someone come and remove him. I could go on with a litany of things that happened next, but why bother - use your imagination.
As I lined up my class to leave the cafeteria after lunch, a student nearly knocked me over by slamming into me from behind saying he “just bumped into me” and told me I was standing in the wrong place, anyway. He disappeared before I could get another teacher to watch my kids while I took him to the office.
While in the lunch line, a girl told a male teacher who was standing next to me that if he did or did not do something that she would have to ‘smack him.’ He politely told her, “Now, I know you are just kidding, but you really can’t say those things and blah, blah, blah…” That was a pretty weak response to the most egregious disrespect you can give an authority figure…the implied threat of physical violence. I met three male teachers at that school each of whom seemed to have the same medical condition: no backbone.
As we were lining up for lunch, a girl tried to embrace me in what I perceived as an attempt to compromise my reputation. The implications of such behavior, if it had culminated in any sort of contact which it did not – are nightmarish.
Other male students hugged female teachers and some kids kept trying to shake my hand and ‘high five’ me. That kind of ‘familiarity’ between staff and students sends the wrong message – discipline erodes and it makes some students feel that they have something that others, who do not seek that kind of ‘friendly’ relationship, do not have.
After lunchtime, and in the hallway as we were returning to the classroom, one of my students mockingly wriggled her hands into my face and laughed. The Vice Principal, a man obviously well known to these students, was standing right there next to me.
This girl must have known she could get away with anything. He didn’t say anything until I made her get out of the line and tried to send her to the office. I asked him if he knew where the office was…he only then identified himself as the vice-principal and suggested to this girl that she “knows that’s not nice and what do you say to this man…”
I asked him, “Who did you say you are?” and he told me again. I said, “I am the Vice Principal.” “OK,” I said, “Then you take her to the office because I don’t want her back in my classroom until she makes a trip to the office.”
He then suggested to me, in the hallway and within earshot of everyone, “Wait a minute - I think you have got the wrong idea of what we are trying to do here. These are just children and the kids are the reason we are all here. You need to take your edge off.”
The kids just smiled. They had won. At that point I said to him, “You know, I do not need to be here. I feel that I am at risk here and I am leaving.” I asked him to escort me to the office.” I had been there less than 2 hours.
I felt very much at risk in this environment. When the one student blindsided me and nearly knocked me off my feet it was an act of physical aggression. The attempt at physical contact by the girl was, I felt, a deliberate device employed to compromise me.
The administration was completely under water, drowning in a sea of its own making and taking the teaching staff with it. The children cannot benefit from such a lack of management.
Notwithstanding all of this, Mr. Liam O’Reilly was boastful of his school, “We have a better attendance record here than they do in Avon because, for many of our kids, we are a refuge from what they find at home – if they have a home.”
That’s sad, but you don’t have to run an asylum while you are providing asylum to some kids who may be at risk and schooling – an education – to everyone else who shows up thinking that an education is what they’ll get when they cross the threshold.
Somewhere between a Dickensian nightmare and Star Trek lies the answer to teaching in the 21st Century. After the experience at that Middle School it seems that the best they are trying for is to attain the beautiful hell.
The experience gave me a unique perspective - an inside view of the public school system and not connected to any school district or to the oppressive teacher’s union. I found it a dysfunctional system that dedicated teachers, new buildings, massive budgets, and busing can’t save. In this era of mega budgets that taxpayers are expected to accept without whining, it surprised me to learn that teachers spend money out of their own pockets for their classrooms or on individual students.
It seems that every manner of new program is employed and discarded and replaced by an improved program. Whatever has been tried fails, so they move to a different solution. There’s always a new plan. In one city, for instance, reading and math programs together with their textbooks and ‘supplemental’ material are changed almost with the seasons. The costs associated with inconsistent curriculum planning are both material and human. What are all of these highly paid ‘administrators’ doing to earn their wages?
Kids are given laptops, counseling, in-classroom support and lots of face time but fall short anyway. I’ve been in some classrooms that had three teachers and two para-professionals for 16 kids. How much of this expensive support do you need?
Ultimately, school budgets are approved by taxpayers…or not: With each passing generation Americans seem increasingly distanced from their own past. School critics, with justification, often lay responsibility for not teaching what it means to be an American or that our citizenship, unique in the world, is disappearing in the collective hive.
Our form of citizenship identifies us as sovereign: citizens who are above the government but not above the law. Such a citizenry could say “NO” to government, whether on policy or budget matters (the two are often linked) and expect the government, whom we elect and appoint, to conform to our wishes and not the other way around. But to teach that concept, which is the foundation of American liberty, is incompatible with and contradicts current schema of public education which is to reengineer American society away from individualism into one of groupthink.
In 1993, I formed the a Parent Commission in my home town. We were an informed and influential group or parents – and a few teachers – who exerted pressure where it was needed: The school superintendent’s contract was not renewed and one principal got his walking papers. We warned parents that a new system of education was being placed in our schools, one that strangely favored emotions over academics and relationships over fact-based learning. We got rid of the superintendent but the system stayed.
That system, schemata that teaches children to accept change and to welcome it without question, has been in place now for 14 years. This generation just elected a president.
The academic results: our kids rank lower in academic comparisons to many other industrialized nations (from 1st to 14th). We tried to warn our neighbors that our kids were getting, not ‘school,’ but a management system based on international educational standards that use financial and other incentives to prepare students for “Mastery Learning” and to become multicultural persons open to all beliefs and lifestyles but where accuracy, literacy, and our own history fade in this process of standardizing ‘human capital’ - your kids.
One third of Hartford’s kids don’t graduate. A significant number of the girls leave pregnant, without a husband or man around to help with the new baby. And the poverty and crime cycle is held up to society as a threat: You’d better fix this or else you’ll pay me welfare for the next 30 years and you might be my next crime victim. Such reasoning eliminates the reasonable expectation of society for personal responsibility. To accept it is an admission of failure and impotence.
It isn’t the school’s responsibility to fix everything that’s wrong in a student’s life and it’s a cop-out to advocate that every problem facing youth, wherever they live, has a school-based solution. The disaster in education begins inside the home where it fails because parents will not hold their kids responsible for their own behavior or for their performance in the classroom.
Forty years ago, America was number one in the world for producing high school graduates. Today we are eighteenth. Between 1994 and 2005, math and reading skills declined sharply.
Fifty years ago, hard work and education were considered the only practical means to achievement. Today, many entering the workforce believe that achievement is a matter of, not earned merit, but luck and who you know. When hard work and education is not considered practical, luck and who you know may indeed determine what you get and when you don’t get what you want you can always blame somebody in today’s America.
Measuring achievement disparities between whites and minorities in Connecticut has produced alarming observations: We are now 50th out of the 50 states in producing black and Hispanic high school graduates on a per capita ratio in comparison to whites. Only 20% of minorities in Connecticut graduate with the proficiencies necessary to go to college and one must ask, is this racial or cultural phenomenon? To ask that question is to open one to criticism. To not ask that question, and expect an answer, is irresponsible.
Hartford, Connecticut, which is more than 90% ‘minority,’ has a proficiency level of under 50% in measurements of math performance when the state average is 80%. What do teachers do? The kids don’t have the skills so they begin to teach to the test, the CMT’s to be exact. But testing is only a measurement of what is deficient. When your strategy is to teach to the test, an effort that takes from September to March in Connecticut, you begin to measure only what is left to learn rather than prepare students to expect they will be required to demonstrate how much they know.
In order to make these assessments teachers spend much of their time data gathering instead of teaching. In the end, they are often forced to make loaded assessments so the schools will pass even if the kids cannot.
Proficiency, a measure of competence, is retreating. Standards that were expected to be attained not long ago are only hoped for goals today. 50% of American freshmen entering college need to take remedial courses in math and English just to be able to perform at the university level. Employers face the same issue when they hire college graduates because new hires can’t do basic math, can’t spell, and can’t write competently. Employers spend enormous amounts of money on curative programs to raise employees’ basic skills.
Of Connecticut eighth graders, only 35% are proficient at math, 37% are proficient in reading, and 33% are proficient in science. When they get to high school these students can’t do the work and they slow everyone else down.
In comparisons between Connecticut cities, which are overwhelmingly minority, and the suburbs, which are overwhelmingly white, graduation ratios are profoundly clear. The cities on average graduate about 20% of their freshmen and the suburbs graduate about 80%.
Forty years ago, Connecticut had one of the highest technologically proficient workforces in the world. As that workforce ages and begins natural attrition, which is right now, there aren’t enough graduates with the competencies needed to replace them.
The Quiet and Orderly Classroom.
The first order of government is to provide for the public safety. In the schools, it is the administration that is the government. The breakdown in public educations’ approach to classroom discipline is quite simple and can be summed up in one word: abandonment.
Overpaid administrators in general fail to address discipline issues, just ask the teachers who shuffle from class to class the petty tyrants that plague them all day long because ‘the office’ won’t take them and you can’t any longer get rid of them through suspensions or expulsions.
Dealing with discipline is expensive. Not dealing with discipline issues is more expensive. Not dealing with discipline issues is also dangerous because teachers are placed in untenable and sometimes vulnerable positions: The kids know that there are no real consequences to what they do and as a result, some kids, often the same ones, disrupt classrooms beyond recovery. Everyone’s academic performance suffers when refractory and antisocial delinquents are allowed to steal class time with impunity.
When kids have never had serious limitations placed upon their behavior they learn that they can live with the consequences. Worse, they learn that there are no consequences. Teachers cannot and should not be expected to deal with these problems and students who want to learn are robbed, literally, of opportunity as much by school policies as by delinquency in the classroom.
Retired or moonlighting police and corrections officers patrol hallways with uniformed security guards that carry walkie-talkies. It is an act of surrender to accept this chaos as it is practiced in too many schools. Yes, students have a choice: sit down, shut, up, pay attention, and do the work. Or get out.
I am well experienced dealing with diverse cultures and a wide variety of human conditions. At one time, I spoke ten languages, two dialects, and of the ten languages four are aboriginal languages learned from native speakers on four continents. I taught ESL at Boston University. While I was a substitute teacher I overheard many conversations between students who were unaware that I spoke Spanish.
In Iraq in 2004-2005, I taught tactics and some English to Iraqi’s that served on my counter terrorist teams. Part of my training and experience is in the area of threat assessment. I believe that there is an underclass in the school systems that pose a threat to American society. This underclass will augment in the coming years as greater and greater numbers refuse to avail themselves of educational opportunities.
Personal experiences.
I arrived one day at a middle school to begin a substitute assignment in an 8th grade class. As I walked to my classroom two female teachers were in the hallway yelling at a kid to stop running and return to where they were standing. “F_ _ _ you,” said the runner, and she disappeared around the corner at the end of the hallway. This student was known to the teachers. I asked them if they needed any help and they meekly replied, “No, this is normal around here.”
The students in my classroom - a ‘bridge class’ of mostly Spanish to English speakers - were completely out of control when I walked in. A para-professional in the room was perfectly at ease with the pandemonium, cheerful, buoyant, and smiling even as she pointed to the only four students who were doing the assignment she handed out. The others, in a class of more than twenty, were shouting, wandering around, chatting, and some were mock-fighting. I was told by this paraprofessional that all was well, this class was just, “noisy.”
The kids who were sitting quietly and working seemed bewildered. I asked them if they thought the room was noisy and one said, through a smile, “It’s always like this.” I asked her if she wished it were quieter. She looked at me as though I suggested I could part the ocean. “Okay, Mister, if you can do it,” she said in a thick Spanish accent. And then it began.
I threw two students out immediately – something they did not expect. One refused to leave. I called the office to have someone come and remove him. I could go on with a litany of things that happened next, but why bother - use your imagination.
As I lined up my class to leave the cafeteria after lunch, a student nearly knocked me over by slamming into me from behind saying he “just bumped into me” and told me I was standing in the wrong place, anyway. He disappeared before I could get another teacher to watch my kids while I took him to the office.
While in the lunch line, a girl told a male teacher who was standing next to me that if he did or did not do something that she would have to ‘smack him.’ He politely told her, “Now, I know you are just kidding, but you really can’t say those things and blah, blah, blah…” That was a pretty weak response to the most egregious disrespect you can give an authority figure…the implied threat of physical violence. I met three male teachers at that school each of whom seemed to have the same medical condition: no backbone.
As we were lining up for lunch, a girl tried to embrace me in what I perceived as an attempt to compromise my reputation. The implications of such behavior, if it had culminated in any sort of contact which it did not – are nightmarish.
Other male students hugged female teachers and some kids kept trying to shake my hand and ‘high five’ me. That kind of ‘familiarity’ between staff and students sends the wrong message – discipline erodes and it makes some students feel that they have something that others, who do not seek that kind of ‘friendly’ relationship, do not have.
After lunchtime, and in the hallway as we were returning to the classroom, one of my students mockingly wriggled her hands into my face and laughed. The Vice Principal, a man obviously well known to these students, was standing right there next to me.
This girl must have known she could get away with anything. He didn’t say anything until I made her get out of the line and tried to send her to the office. I asked him if he knew where the office was…he only then identified himself as the vice-principal and suggested to this girl that she “knows that’s not nice and what do you say to this man…”
I asked him, “Who did you say you are?” and he told me again. I said, “I am the Vice Principal.” “OK,” I said, “Then you take her to the office because I don’t want her back in my classroom until she makes a trip to the office.”
He then suggested to me, in the hallway and within earshot of everyone, “Wait a minute - I think you have got the wrong idea of what we are trying to do here. These are just children and the kids are the reason we are all here. You need to take your edge off.”
The kids just smiled. They had won. At that point I said to him, “You know, I do not need to be here. I feel that I am at risk here and I am leaving.” I asked him to escort me to the office.” I had been there less than 2 hours.
I felt very much at risk in this environment. When the one student blindsided me and nearly knocked me off my feet it was an act of physical aggression. The attempt at physical contact by the girl was, I felt, a deliberate device employed to compromise me.
The administration was completely under water, drowning in a sea of its own making and taking the teaching staff with it. The children cannot benefit from such a lack of management.
Notwithstanding all of this, Mr. Liam O’Reilly was boastful of his school, “We have a better attendance record here than they do in Avon because, for many of our kids, we are a refuge from what they find at home – if they have a home.”
That’s sad, but you don’t have to run an asylum while you are providing asylum to some kids who may be at risk and schooling – an education – to everyone else who shows up thinking that an education is what they’ll get when they cross the threshold.
Somewhere between a Dickensian nightmare and Star Trek lies the answer to teaching in the 21st Century. After the experience at that Middle School it seems that the best they are trying for is to attain the beautiful hell.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Death by Cause in the USA
Death by Cause in USA ANNUALLY:
1. Smoking 435,000 deaths.
2. Overweight / Obesity 365,000.
3. In-hospital medical errors, 195,000.
4. Alcohol 85,000 deaths.
5. Infectious diseases 75,000 deaths.
6. Toxins 55,000 deaths.
7. Motor vehicle collisions 43,000 deaths.
8. Firearms deaths (accident, homicide, suicide, in that order) 12,000 deaths.
9. Errors in prescribed medications 7,000 deaths (1.5 million preventable medication errors annually).
Top Ten Myths of American Health Care SEE: Sally Pipes, author of “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide.” Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
THE “UNINSURED” IN AMERICA:
10 million are NON-citizens
18 million earn over $50,000, with 10 million of those earning over $75,000 so they can afford something in the way of Health Care Insurance.
14 million are already eligible for some form of Medicare, Medicaid or SCHIP…they just have not signed up for it…this figure includes the roughly 6 million children you hear about.
Some of the above figures overlap each other…but the bottom line is that there are no where near the number of people who are uninsured because they cannot afford it. That smaller figure…about 5 – 10 million are the ones who need an assist with obtaining health coverage…
• Why should we cover the NON-citizen?
• Why should we cover the above average wage earners who refuse to plan smartly?
• Why should we cover the ones who are already eligible, yet fail to avail themselves of help…where dollars are already allocated for them?
The Census Bureau states that “insurance coverage may be significantly higher” than their own report indicates because people underreport coverage for a variety of reasons.
Smokers can quit, the morbidly obese could benefit from eating less and exercising more, alcoholics can take the cure along with the drug addicts, and if they don’t they can take the consequences for their behavior and the government should not force me to do so.
1. Smoking 435,000 deaths.
2. Overweight / Obesity 365,000.
3. In-hospital medical errors, 195,000.
4. Alcohol 85,000 deaths.
5. Infectious diseases 75,000 deaths.
6. Toxins 55,000 deaths.
7. Motor vehicle collisions 43,000 deaths.
8. Firearms deaths (accident, homicide, suicide, in that order) 12,000 deaths.
9. Errors in prescribed medications 7,000 deaths (1.5 million preventable medication errors annually).
Top Ten Myths of American Health Care SEE: Sally Pipes, author of “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide.” Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
THE “UNINSURED” IN AMERICA:
10 million are NON-citizens
18 million earn over $50,000, with 10 million of those earning over $75,000 so they can afford something in the way of Health Care Insurance.
14 million are already eligible for some form of Medicare, Medicaid or SCHIP…they just have not signed up for it…this figure includes the roughly 6 million children you hear about.
Some of the above figures overlap each other…but the bottom line is that there are no where near the number of people who are uninsured because they cannot afford it. That smaller figure…about 5 – 10 million are the ones who need an assist with obtaining health coverage…
• Why should we cover the NON-citizen?
• Why should we cover the above average wage earners who refuse to plan smartly?
• Why should we cover the ones who are already eligible, yet fail to avail themselves of help…where dollars are already allocated for them?
The Census Bureau states that “insurance coverage may be significantly higher” than their own report indicates because people underreport coverage for a variety of reasons.
Smokers can quit, the morbidly obese could benefit from eating less and exercising more, alcoholics can take the cure along with the drug addicts, and if they don’t they can take the consequences for their behavior and the government should not force me to do so.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
July 4, 2009 Speech, Norwich, Connecticut
Public Address, July 4, 2009, Norwich, CT Town Green:
I read this the other day: Top 10 Best States for Personal Freedom; published in Human Events, 06/30/2009
The freest state is New Hampshire, followed by Colorado, South Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Arizona, and North Dakota. New York is the least free, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland.
….CONNECTICUT IS NEAR THE BOTTOM…
I am from Hartford, Connecticut, one of the original 13 colonies. Connecticut’s colonial and revolutionary history was well known to me even as a boy. I lived in Hartford’s South End which was only a short bike ride to where a backwater of the ‘long tidal river’ (the Connecticut River) forms the cove at Old Wethersfield - Connecticut’s oldest town. There are 300 landmark historic houses in Wethersfield, 50 of them built before the American Revolution.
As a boy I knew that George Washington and the French General Rochambeau planned the Yorktown Campaign at the Joseph Webb house in Wethersfield. Webb’s home was General Washington’s Headquarters for a while.
Silas Deane, Joseph Webb, and Isaac Stevens, all Wethersfield men whose names were as familiar to me as friends and I was a recurrent visitor to their Colonial homes, which were open to the public.
I visited these and other sites maintained by the Colonial Dames and the Wethersfield Historical Society, places kept as living museums, many furnished with Colonial Era antiques and in some cases with possessions owned by the families.
Nathan Hale, from Coventry, Connecticut, rode with Tom Knowlton’s Rangers while under the command of Connecticut General Israel Putnam.
In college I lived less than a mile from the Hale Homestead and had already been to the Hale residence many times before then.
General Putnam was an original member of the legendary Roger’s Rangers, named for Major Robert Rogers, Father of the American Ranger and author of ‘Roger’s Standing Orders.’
The point: Those who once inhabited these places where America was born were not abstractions to me - the boy who wandered in and out of their kitchens, sitting rooms, hallways, and barns.
That boy felt kinship and attachment to their lives as well as to their passion for and commitment to American liberty, a devotion that I was to make my own precisely because of their example which was both close and distant.
The rich colonial history of Connecticut and the independent, hard working, innovative spirit of the Connecticut Yankee was as much a part of my cultural heritage as my European ethnicity.
Connecticut is called the Constitution State because the ‘Fundamental Orders of Connecticut’ was the first written document to create a system of self-governance – ANYWHERE.
The Fundamental Orders established local (State’s) rights, preserved individual rights as the foundation of a just government by consent and under God, and put limitations on government in 1639…
…150 YEARS BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
Connecticut was known as the Provisions State because Connecticut supplied most of the food and cannons for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary war.
In fact, the Stanton-Davis Farm of Stonington, right down the road there, was a Revolutionary War Provisioner. It is still in operation today and has not missed a harvest since 1654!
It was Connecticut beef and corn that kept Washington’s Army from starvation at Valley Forge.
And Connecticut has been known as the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ for the many firearms and munitions manufacturers that have called Connecticut home.
In Viet Nam I carried an M-16 rifle and a Colt .45 automatic pistol manufactured by Colt’s in Hartford, shotguns and ammunition made by Remington Arms, of Bridgeport, and a machete manufactured by the Collins Company of Collinsville.
I might have been 10,000 miles away from home but the people of Connecticut, their sweat, their toil, and all of their skill was with me in things I could hold, use, and depend on to keep me alive. I knew that then, I remember it now.
It was my honor as much as it was my duty to serve my State and my nation in the jungles of Viet Nam…and 34 Years later again, in the deserts of Iraq…
BUT IT WAS NOT MY RIGHT TO DO SO.
It was and remains a privilege to serve in the armed forces, the privilege of military service a concept handed down in the ancient Code of Chivalry that the man at arms serves only at the pleasure of God and King.
Does anyone remember when police were called ‘Peace Officers?’
A Peace officer focused on keeping the public peace, the people’s well being was the focus.
Now we have ‘Law Enforcement Officer’s whose focus is on enforcement of the law; “Force” being the operative concept…
TODAY we have a ‘Brother’ in the white house alright – ‘Big Brother,’ and Barrak Hussein Obama is absolutely Orwellian in every measure of the word.
In Obama…
• We have a President who can’t find his Birth Certificate but the Government of Kenya has established his birthplace there as a national monument.
• We witnessed the inauguration of a President where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court omitted key words.
• We have a President who believes in and is an outspoken advocate of late term Abortion.
• We have a President who Bowed To the Saudi King.
• Obama dishonored the Flag and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in a public place.
• He dare not speak without a teleprompter.
• He has Communists for friends and supporters.
• His preacher for more than 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, hates America.
• And Barrack Hussein Obama is a friend to Bill Ayers and Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dohrn – SDS terrorists who allied themselves to the NVA during the Viet Nam War.
I WAN’T TO ASK YOU,
Do we have a Communist in the White house or just a run-of-the-mill Socialist? Maybe you can tell the difference – I can’t. To me one is just in more of a hurry than the other…
Here are some quotes from Marx and Lenin, appropriate for THIS 4th of July, 2009, in Norwich, CT.
• “Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded." Karl Marx (Was talking about the NEA?)
• “Democracy is indispensable to socialism.” V.I. Lenin
• “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Karl Marx
• “The goal of socialism is communism.” V.I. Lenin
REMINDER : WE DO NOT LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES FOR US A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN ARTICLE IV, SECTION 4.
So who were Obama’s supporters’s during the Campaign: Here is a partial List:
President of Iran – Mahmud Ahmadinejad
Bill Ayers
Fidel Castro
Raul Castro
Hugo Chavez
Communist Party of Illinois
Communist Party USA
Scads of SDS terrorists like Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted for over a decade.
Jane Fonda – you remember her – Hanoi Jane?
NARAL (Abortion Lobby: you know them: Save the Whales, Kill the Babies…)
Planned Parenthood (the largest single Abortion Provider in the country and heavily funded with your tax dollars.)
NEA and all of the little ‘EA’s: among the greatest consumers of government largesse with so little to show for it. Remember Hillary’s, “IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD?” Well, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said: “IT TAKES A SCHOOL TO BANKRUPT A VILLAGE.” Our kids rank lower on comparative scales with the rest of the developed world and because of what they do not learn in school they are increasingly disconnected with their own heritage.
Black Panther Party (New)
ACORN
NORMAL (Marijuana legalization lobby) – ‘Potheads for Obama,’
Cora Weiss, (Collaborator with the NVA and Hanoi Politburo; Director of the Committee of Liaison – tried to force families of POW’s to make propaganda in exchange for contact with their POW family members held by Hanoi. No POW family accepted her tainted offer.)
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
Progressive Caucus (US House of Representatives; socialist; linked to the DSA)
Daniel Ortega, (Sandinista), Communist President of Nicaragua and friend of Chris Dodd
Moamar Qadhafi - Libyan Dictator and terrorist mastermind.
Socialist Party USA; Socialist Party of Connecticut
Young Communist League
Muslim American Society: Originally, ‘Muslim Brotherhood,’ they endorse suicide bombings as "martyr operations…not suicide.”
Speaking of suicide bombers, do you know Code Pink Founder, Jodie Evans - Obama met with Jodie Evans, at his $5 million Hollywood fundraiser and was photographed with her there. Evans supported the terrorists in Iraq and said in an interview that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had a "valid argument" for attacking America on Sept. 11, 2001. Yep – another friend of B.O.
I know what’s right with America. I don’t have any trouble talking about what is right with America; what concerns me is what is WRONG with America TODAY:
How far is New London from Norwich? 20 miles? Do You Remember The Little Pink House in Norwich? Kelo v. City of New London? Suzette Kelo? Norwich took her house and gave it to another person to sell for a profit…And the Supreme Court is ok with that…
In America today the police can drag a mother from her car for not wearing a seatbelt, handcuff her, take her kids out of their car seats and put them into state custody as they haul mommy off to jail, and the Supreme Court is ok with that, too.
Our armies are all over the world and we are in a weakened state right here at home and cannot protect our own borders - but what does that matter when politicians on their own initiative create ‘sanctuary’ cities like New Haven and Hartford, and welcome illegal immigrants with access to social services that we as taxpayers pay for? (Pause)
We are in an Orwellian state of PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE.
BTW: More Americans were murdered in California than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in 5 years
And speaking of the Americans in uniform who risk everything for this country – THEIR country - Remember when Janet Napolitano of the DHS said this:
"The possible passage of new laws relaxing restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergency of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”
DON’T YOU LOVE THEIR WAY WITH WORDS?
…I don’t know about you, but a politician who won’t trust me with a gun I don’t trust with my vote…
AND - Who said this?
Barrack Hussein Obama:
“A Marxist radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is the President of the United States…
"THIS IS A WATERSHED ELECTION WHICH CHANGES THE FATE OF THE WORLD. The world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result.
"Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of American presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date.
"It’s a faint hope – THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA, FREEDOM AND ALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION WILL CERTAINLY BE REJOICING TODAY.”
(The Spectator.co.uk; Melanie Phillips, 4 and 5 November 2008. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips)
Why is Bill Ayers, that REVOLUTIONARY, TERRORIST, AMERICA-HATING toad from Chicago, even worth mentioning?
Because he is what he is and he is a friend and mentor of Barrack Hussein Obama and THIS is what Bill Ayers, the Professor of Children’s Education, wrote in his book, Prairie Fire:
"Our final goal is the...the seizure of power, and the creation of socialism."
Ayres' Book, Prairie Fire, is dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan – convicted killer of Robert F. Kennedy.
Obama launched his political career in Bill Ayer’s living room. On that day, Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn welcomed the Obama’s and members of the media into their living room where they had a copy of the FBI’s ‘Ten Most Wanted’ book displayed on their coffee table, OPEN TO THE PAGE OF Ayer’s wife, Bernadine Dohrn who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for 10 years.
Under an Obama presidency the links to our brilliant American Past, let us hope, is only interrupted. The uniquely American character of opportunity, innovation, and optimism has been replaced by uncertainty as the Obama socialist agenda wraps our future in its web and injects the heart and soul of America with its venom.
A vote for Obama was a vote for the ACLU, the National Lawyer’s Guild, and the parasitic Socialist International, known in Congress as the ‘Congressional Progressive Caucus.’ Look it up – they are all Democrats.
We have lived under a one-party system since at least the administration of Woodrow Wilson - one party with one idea: Separate you from your wealth with oppressive taxation and use the money to strip you of your rights.
One party with two factions – Democrat and Republican:
• Under the veil of compromise the Democrat and Republican Party delivers conspiracy.
• The Democrat and Republican Party promises reform but delivers revolution.
• And the Democrat and Republican Party at every level profanes the sacred institutions of this nation as it dismantles our past for a collectivist future.
The Democrat and Republican Party has for decades pursued an agenda that has brought America to the edge of extinction, encumbered our liberties with chains, and daily subjects us to the arrogance and effrontery of office-holders who have nothing but contempt for the American people and for our country.
THEY DON’T BELONG HERE ANYMORE.
My last words to you on this 4th of July of 2009 come to us from a long ago time, when the future of America was also in doubt:
I quote:
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own (Suzette Kelo, are you listening?); whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, UNDER GOD, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.” GEORGE WASHINGTON, [address to the Continental Army before the battle of Long Island, Aug. 27, 1776]
AND
“We should never despair. Our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth New Efforts and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.” GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Major General Philip Schuyler, Jul. 15, 1777
Washington’s light shines to us through the ages, driving out the darkness pledged by Barack Hussein Obama and his legion of conspirators. He is not alone in this conspiracy.
We must survive the next four years…
…AND SEND SOMEONE TO CONGRESS WHO KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN.
THANK YOU…
The Roman
I read this the other day: Top 10 Best States for Personal Freedom; published in Human Events, 06/30/2009
The freest state is New Hampshire, followed by Colorado, South Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Arizona, and North Dakota. New York is the least free, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland.
….CONNECTICUT IS NEAR THE BOTTOM…
I am from Hartford, Connecticut, one of the original 13 colonies. Connecticut’s colonial and revolutionary history was well known to me even as a boy. I lived in Hartford’s South End which was only a short bike ride to where a backwater of the ‘long tidal river’ (the Connecticut River) forms the cove at Old Wethersfield - Connecticut’s oldest town. There are 300 landmark historic houses in Wethersfield, 50 of them built before the American Revolution.
As a boy I knew that George Washington and the French General Rochambeau planned the Yorktown Campaign at the Joseph Webb house in Wethersfield. Webb’s home was General Washington’s Headquarters for a while.
Silas Deane, Joseph Webb, and Isaac Stevens, all Wethersfield men whose names were as familiar to me as friends and I was a recurrent visitor to their Colonial homes, which were open to the public.
I visited these and other sites maintained by the Colonial Dames and the Wethersfield Historical Society, places kept as living museums, many furnished with Colonial Era antiques and in some cases with possessions owned by the families.
Nathan Hale, from Coventry, Connecticut, rode with Tom Knowlton’s Rangers while under the command of Connecticut General Israel Putnam.
In college I lived less than a mile from the Hale Homestead and had already been to the Hale residence many times before then.
General Putnam was an original member of the legendary Roger’s Rangers, named for Major Robert Rogers, Father of the American Ranger and author of ‘Roger’s Standing Orders.’
The point: Those who once inhabited these places where America was born were not abstractions to me - the boy who wandered in and out of their kitchens, sitting rooms, hallways, and barns.
That boy felt kinship and attachment to their lives as well as to their passion for and commitment to American liberty, a devotion that I was to make my own precisely because of their example which was both close and distant.
The rich colonial history of Connecticut and the independent, hard working, innovative spirit of the Connecticut Yankee was as much a part of my cultural heritage as my European ethnicity.
Connecticut is called the Constitution State because the ‘Fundamental Orders of Connecticut’ was the first written document to create a system of self-governance – ANYWHERE.
The Fundamental Orders established local (State’s) rights, preserved individual rights as the foundation of a just government by consent and under God, and put limitations on government in 1639…
…150 YEARS BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
Connecticut was known as the Provisions State because Connecticut supplied most of the food and cannons for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary war.
In fact, the Stanton-Davis Farm of Stonington, right down the road there, was a Revolutionary War Provisioner. It is still in operation today and has not missed a harvest since 1654!
It was Connecticut beef and corn that kept Washington’s Army from starvation at Valley Forge.
And Connecticut has been known as the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ for the many firearms and munitions manufacturers that have called Connecticut home.
In Viet Nam I carried an M-16 rifle and a Colt .45 automatic pistol manufactured by Colt’s in Hartford, shotguns and ammunition made by Remington Arms, of Bridgeport, and a machete manufactured by the Collins Company of Collinsville.
I might have been 10,000 miles away from home but the people of Connecticut, their sweat, their toil, and all of their skill was with me in things I could hold, use, and depend on to keep me alive. I knew that then, I remember it now.
It was my honor as much as it was my duty to serve my State and my nation in the jungles of Viet Nam…and 34 Years later again, in the deserts of Iraq…
BUT IT WAS NOT MY RIGHT TO DO SO.
It was and remains a privilege to serve in the armed forces, the privilege of military service a concept handed down in the ancient Code of Chivalry that the man at arms serves only at the pleasure of God and King.
Does anyone remember when police were called ‘Peace Officers?’
A Peace officer focused on keeping the public peace, the people’s well being was the focus.
Now we have ‘Law Enforcement Officer’s whose focus is on enforcement of the law; “Force” being the operative concept…
TODAY we have a ‘Brother’ in the white house alright – ‘Big Brother,’ and Barrak Hussein Obama is absolutely Orwellian in every measure of the word.
In Obama…
• We have a President who can’t find his Birth Certificate but the Government of Kenya has established his birthplace there as a national monument.
• We witnessed the inauguration of a President where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court omitted key words.
• We have a President who believes in and is an outspoken advocate of late term Abortion.
• We have a President who Bowed To the Saudi King.
• Obama dishonored the Flag and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in a public place.
• He dare not speak without a teleprompter.
• He has Communists for friends and supporters.
• His preacher for more than 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, hates America.
• And Barrack Hussein Obama is a friend to Bill Ayers and Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dohrn – SDS terrorists who allied themselves to the NVA during the Viet Nam War.
I WAN’T TO ASK YOU,
Do we have a Communist in the White house or just a run-of-the-mill Socialist? Maybe you can tell the difference – I can’t. To me one is just in more of a hurry than the other…
Here are some quotes from Marx and Lenin, appropriate for THIS 4th of July, 2009, in Norwich, CT.
• “Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded." Karl Marx (Was talking about the NEA?)
• “Democracy is indispensable to socialism.” V.I. Lenin
• “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Karl Marx
• “The goal of socialism is communism.” V.I. Lenin
REMINDER : WE DO NOT LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES FOR US A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN ARTICLE IV, SECTION 4.
So who were Obama’s supporters’s during the Campaign: Here is a partial List:
President of Iran – Mahmud Ahmadinejad
Bill Ayers
Fidel Castro
Raul Castro
Hugo Chavez
Communist Party of Illinois
Communist Party USA
Scads of SDS terrorists like Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted for over a decade.
Jane Fonda – you remember her – Hanoi Jane?
NARAL (Abortion Lobby: you know them: Save the Whales, Kill the Babies…)
Planned Parenthood (the largest single Abortion Provider in the country and heavily funded with your tax dollars.)
NEA and all of the little ‘EA’s: among the greatest consumers of government largesse with so little to show for it. Remember Hillary’s, “IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD?” Well, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said: “IT TAKES A SCHOOL TO BANKRUPT A VILLAGE.” Our kids rank lower on comparative scales with the rest of the developed world and because of what they do not learn in school they are increasingly disconnected with their own heritage.
Black Panther Party (New)
ACORN
NORMAL (Marijuana legalization lobby) – ‘Potheads for Obama,’
Cora Weiss, (Collaborator with the NVA and Hanoi Politburo; Director of the Committee of Liaison – tried to force families of POW’s to make propaganda in exchange for contact with their POW family members held by Hanoi. No POW family accepted her tainted offer.)
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
Progressive Caucus (US House of Representatives; socialist; linked to the DSA)
Daniel Ortega, (Sandinista), Communist President of Nicaragua and friend of Chris Dodd
Moamar Qadhafi - Libyan Dictator and terrorist mastermind.
Socialist Party USA; Socialist Party of Connecticut
Young Communist League
Muslim American Society: Originally, ‘Muslim Brotherhood,’ they endorse suicide bombings as "martyr operations…not suicide.”
Speaking of suicide bombers, do you know Code Pink Founder, Jodie Evans - Obama met with Jodie Evans, at his $5 million Hollywood fundraiser and was photographed with her there. Evans supported the terrorists in Iraq and said in an interview that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had a "valid argument" for attacking America on Sept. 11, 2001. Yep – another friend of B.O.
I know what’s right with America. I don’t have any trouble talking about what is right with America; what concerns me is what is WRONG with America TODAY:
How far is New London from Norwich? 20 miles? Do You Remember The Little Pink House in Norwich? Kelo v. City of New London? Suzette Kelo? Norwich took her house and gave it to another person to sell for a profit…And the Supreme Court is ok with that…
In America today the police can drag a mother from her car for not wearing a seatbelt, handcuff her, take her kids out of their car seats and put them into state custody as they haul mommy off to jail, and the Supreme Court is ok with that, too.
Our armies are all over the world and we are in a weakened state right here at home and cannot protect our own borders - but what does that matter when politicians on their own initiative create ‘sanctuary’ cities like New Haven and Hartford, and welcome illegal immigrants with access to social services that we as taxpayers pay for? (Pause)
We are in an Orwellian state of PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE.
BTW: More Americans were murdered in California than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in 5 years
And speaking of the Americans in uniform who risk everything for this country – THEIR country - Remember when Janet Napolitano of the DHS said this:
"The possible passage of new laws relaxing restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergency of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”
DON’T YOU LOVE THEIR WAY WITH WORDS?
…I don’t know about you, but a politician who won’t trust me with a gun I don’t trust with my vote…
AND - Who said this?
Barrack Hussein Obama:
“A Marxist radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is the President of the United States…
"THIS IS A WATERSHED ELECTION WHICH CHANGES THE FATE OF THE WORLD. The world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result.
"Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of American presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date.
"It’s a faint hope – THE ENEMIES OF AMERICA, FREEDOM AND ALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION WILL CERTAINLY BE REJOICING TODAY.”
(The Spectator.co.uk; Melanie Phillips, 4 and 5 November 2008. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips)
Why is Bill Ayers, that REVOLUTIONARY, TERRORIST, AMERICA-HATING toad from Chicago, even worth mentioning?
Because he is what he is and he is a friend and mentor of Barrack Hussein Obama and THIS is what Bill Ayers, the Professor of Children’s Education, wrote in his book, Prairie Fire:
"Our final goal is the...the seizure of power, and the creation of socialism."
Ayres' Book, Prairie Fire, is dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan – convicted killer of Robert F. Kennedy.
Obama launched his political career in Bill Ayer’s living room. On that day, Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn welcomed the Obama’s and members of the media into their living room where they had a copy of the FBI’s ‘Ten Most Wanted’ book displayed on their coffee table, OPEN TO THE PAGE OF Ayer’s wife, Bernadine Dohrn who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for 10 years.
Under an Obama presidency the links to our brilliant American Past, let us hope, is only interrupted. The uniquely American character of opportunity, innovation, and optimism has been replaced by uncertainty as the Obama socialist agenda wraps our future in its web and injects the heart and soul of America with its venom.
A vote for Obama was a vote for the ACLU, the National Lawyer’s Guild, and the parasitic Socialist International, known in Congress as the ‘Congressional Progressive Caucus.’ Look it up – they are all Democrats.
We have lived under a one-party system since at least the administration of Woodrow Wilson - one party with one idea: Separate you from your wealth with oppressive taxation and use the money to strip you of your rights.
One party with two factions – Democrat and Republican:
• Under the veil of compromise the Democrat and Republican Party delivers conspiracy.
• The Democrat and Republican Party promises reform but delivers revolution.
• And the Democrat and Republican Party at every level profanes the sacred institutions of this nation as it dismantles our past for a collectivist future.
The Democrat and Republican Party has for decades pursued an agenda that has brought America to the edge of extinction, encumbered our liberties with chains, and daily subjects us to the arrogance and effrontery of office-holders who have nothing but contempt for the American people and for our country.
THEY DON’T BELONG HERE ANYMORE.
My last words to you on this 4th of July of 2009 come to us from a long ago time, when the future of America was also in doubt:
I quote:
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own (Suzette Kelo, are you listening?); whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, UNDER GOD, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.” GEORGE WASHINGTON, [address to the Continental Army before the battle of Long Island, Aug. 27, 1776]
AND
“We should never despair. Our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth New Efforts and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.” GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Major General Philip Schuyler, Jul. 15, 1777
Washington’s light shines to us through the ages, driving out the darkness pledged by Barack Hussein Obama and his legion of conspirators. He is not alone in this conspiracy.
We must survive the next four years…
…AND SEND SOMEONE TO CONGRESS WHO KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN.
THANK YOU…
The Roman
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Big Brother Knows You Are What You Eat
Codex Alimentarius (World Food Code) - Summarized in 7 Points
HealthFreedomUSA.org, the website of the Natural Solutions Foundation, is beholden to no one: our only interest is health freedom.
Rima E. Laibow, MD, successful natural medicine physician since the 1970s, has studied 16,000 pages of Codex documentation. Her conclusion is that people who say that Codex is “consumer protection”, “voluntary”, or “harmless” are, at best, seriously mistaken.
see: Codex in Depth: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=161
Codex Alimentarius
1) Started in 1962 by UN, Imposed by WTO Sanctions
Codex Alimentarius was created in 1962 as a trade Commission by the UN to control the international trade of food. Its initial intentions may have been altruistic but it has been taken over by corporate interests, most notably the pharmaceutical, pesticide, biotechnology and chemical industries.
Codex Alimentarius is backed up by the crippling trade sanctions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any non Codex-compliant nation would face huge economic punishment since they would automatically lose in any food-trade dispute with a Codex compliant country.
2) “Nutrients are Toxins” Is Junk Science
Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) has two committees which impact nutrition.
One of them, the “Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses” (CCNFSDU), is chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, a physician who believes that nutrition has no role in health. This is the “top-guy” for Codex nutritional policy, and he has stated that
“nutrition is not relevant to health”.
As unbelievable as it may sound, Dr. Grossklaus actually declared nutrients to be toxins in 1994 and instituted the use of toxicology (Risk Assessment) to prevent nutrients from having any impact on humans who take supplements! It is worth mentioning that Dr. Grossklaus happens to own the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on this issue. This company makes money when its toxicology services are used for the “assessment” of nutrients. Here in the U.S. we call that a “conflict of interest”.
Codex is made up of thousands of standards and guidelines. One of them, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), is designed to permit only ultra low doses of vitamins and minerals (and make clinically effective nutrients illegal). How can the VMG restrict dosages of vitamins and minerals? By using Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess nutrients.
While Risk Assessment is a legitimate science (it is a branch of toxicology), it is the wrong science for assessing nutrients! In fact, in this context, it is actually junk science. Biochemistry, the science of life processes, is the correct science for assessing nutrients. Codex Alimentarius treats nutrients as toxins, which is literally insane.
Nutrients are not toxins - they are essential for life.
No matter what Codex Alimentarius officials say to convince you that Risk Assessment is a “science-based” approach to nutrients, it is not.
And it is worth repeating that Dr. Grossklaus, the head of Codex Alimentarius, owns the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on the “benefit” of using Risk Assessment to assess nutrients.
3) Not Consumer Protection - That’s Propaganda
Contrary to the propaganda, Codex Alimentarius has nothing to do with consumer protection. Nothing! Codex is about the economic ambitions of multi-national corporations, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry.
Using their multi billion-dollar marketing budgets, these industries have launched a massive media propaganda campaign to paint Codex Alimentarius as a benevolent tool of “consumer protection”, as well as to negatively taint the image of natural health options and mislead people to fear them as “dangerous”, so they will take drugs (which really are dangerous). Natural health products and options have an amazing safety record and are remarkably effective, especially when compared to pharmaceutical drugs.
Unfortunately, one-time defenders of health freedom such as National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) and Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) have joined the propaganda bandwagon and are spreading false information saying that Codex Alimentarius is either “harmless” or benevolent “consumer protection”.
Neither is true.
The membership of these one-time defenders of health freedom has become permeated by people from the pharmaceutical industry (for example, CRN counts as its members corporations such as Monsanto® and Bayer®).
4) Codex: Serious Threat to Health and Health Freedom
If Codex Alimentarius is implemented in the United States of America, therapeutic dosages of vitamins and minerals (and all other nutrients soon to follow) will become unavailable because they will literally become illegal.
Here’s how it would work, in a nut-shell:
Due to the junk science use of Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess supposedly toxic nutrients, a false belief is being engineered saying that “nutritional supplements are dangerous to people’s health”.
Using this false belief generates calls to “protect” people from these “toxic” nutrients. After the calls come the bills to set ultra low permissible dosages (remember, nutrients are deemed “dangerous toxins” under this false belief). If enough of us and our Congressional delegates buy this nonsense, we and Congress would blindly comply with Codex Alimentarius’ VMG. And blind compliance is what the industries behind Codex Alimentarius intend.
Blind compliance goes hand-in-hand with lack of activism. This lack of activism allows our protective laws, classifying nutrients as foods with no upper limits (such as DSHEA), to be easily repealed and replaced with draconian laws to classify nutrients as toxins. And “harmonization” with the pro-illness, pro-pharmaceutical industry Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is there to fill the void.
Only intentionally ineffective, ultra low dose supplements would be legal, with or without a prescription, on the VMG list. If enough people do not take action, we can expect to watch nutritional supplement manufacturers and, thus health food stores, to go out of business, in a domino effect.
The only player left standing would be Big Pharma.
Therapeutic grade vitamins, minerals, and amino acids would be eliminated from the marketplace (although a few low-dose supplements would be allowed by Codex, as a symbolic measure to avoid suspicion about their ulterior motive).
Natural health professionals would lose the tools of their trade (nutritional supplements) and health conscious people would be unable to choose natural health options for health promotion and disease treatment.
And that is, in a nutshell, how Codex Alimentarius is poised to make Natural and Nutritional Medicine (NNM) disappear from the legal health world and go underground. Who benefits? Big Pharma.
It would take a few years for the above scenarios to be feasible (Codex Alimentarius is meant to go into full global effect by 2010). The slower the process takes, the less alarmed people will be. That’s probably the logic of the architects of Codex Alimentarius.
5) Serves Economic Interests of Sickness Industries Through WTO and Napoleonic Code
More and more people are turning to natural health products globally. The “wellness” trend is a major trend in today’s society. The more natural health products people use, the fewer drugs they buy. The pharmaceutical industry, which is part of the “Sickness Industry”, fears the inevitable shift toward natural health care.
Instead of accepting the will of the people and rethinking the future of the pharmaceutical industry, the industry has decided upon an unethical course of action: the use of deception and deceit to eliminate natural health products completely.
Codex Alimentarius is a shrewd vehicle for protecting the pharmaceutical industry from the loss of income it stands to suffer due to the inevitable growth of natural healthcare.
Codex Alimentarius is the resistance of the dinosaurs to inevitability: the burgeoning desire of humanity for a healthier, saner, and more sustainable way of life.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) intends to force Codex Alimentarius upon the nations of the world, including the U.S. This would be done under the threat of massive economic sanctions if WTO-countries do not comply with Codex Alimentarius.
Furthermore, Codex is based in the Napoleonic Code, not Common Law. That means that under Codex Alimentarius, anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. Under Common Law, we hold that anything not explicitly forbidden is permitted. The difference is the difference between health freedom and health tyranny. Codex Alimentarius would be able to ban supplements by default.
6) DSHEA Protects America From Codex Alimentarius
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA, 1994), an American law classifying our supplements and herbs as foods (which can have no upper limit set on their use), was passed by unanimous Congressional consent following massive grass-roots support organized by health food stores. Millions of American activists told Congress, in no uncertain terms:
“Protect nutritional supplements as foods or we will remove you from office”.
Congress listened and carried out the will of the people.
DSHEA appropriately classifies nutritional supplements as foods which can have no upper limits set on their use. DSHEA recognizes that people use nutrients safely to deal with their individually differing needs for nutrients. The concept of biochemical individuality means that people have different needs for nutrients at different times. Are nutrients toxins? No, they are not toxins. They are substances essential to prevent, treat and cure any chronic condition, in differing doses at different times in different people.
DSHEA protects the US from Codex Alimentarius’ deadly Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. We must reach our Congressional members, educate them about the facts on Codex Alimentarius and direct them to vote against anything that would threaten DSHEA.
Congress holds the keys to our health freedom. And it is their job to listen to us. Let’s not allow cynicism to tell us otherwise. We did it for DSHEA in 1994. We can do it again this year.
7) Your Action is Needed Now!
DSHEA is under significant legislative attack right now. Your letter-writing is crucial: if the members of Congress know that voting against health freedom means losing their jobs come election time, they will listen. Our job is to make sure they get the message loud and clear. Take action via our 3 easy steps and send personalized emails to Congress right now.
After taking action on HealthFreedomUSA.org, consider getting together with others in your area and visit your Congressional members in their home offices. If we wait, we lose our health freedoms. Once we “HARMonize” with Codex, by the way, we no longer have the right, while we belong to the WTO, to repeal or change that “HARMonization”!
Conclusion
The objective of the pro-Codex Alimentarius multi nationals is to “boil the frog slowly” so that we do not wake up to it in time to avoid Codex.
Once we have “HARMonize” to Codex Alimentarius, as long as we are in the WTO, we cannot amend or change what we’ve been “HARMonize” to.
Codex Alimentarius will go into global implementation by December 31, 2009, unless We, the People, avert it. We must act now because right now, with $758 Million spent on declared Congressional lobbying by Big Pharma last year, there are members of Congress who are trying to overturn DSHEA and allow Pharma-friendly free reign for Codex.
If protective laws like DSHEA are destroyed, the sanctioning power of the autocratic WTO kicks in, and it will be impossible to get out from under Codex Alimentarius. We can protect our access to high potency nutrients and stave off an adulterated food supply only by putting pressure on Congress.
If you would like more in-depth information about Codex Alimentarius before taking action, please click here.
DID YOU KNOW:
The Natural Solutions Foundation developed the "Codex Two Step Process", a protective legal mechanism by which any country can protect itself from any standard or guideline promulgated by Codex without fear of World Trade Organization (WTO) sanctions and embodied that process in the seminal "Codex Two Step Book" and videos to provide critical information and increase self-funding.
Get Involved - Talk about health freedom and Codex to everyone you know.
Start (or join in) a discussion forum about health freedom and Codex Alimentarius on Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups. Tell your friends about Codex. If you maintain an online journal or web log, publish about Codex Alimentarius and link to this website.
Join the fight to PROTECT HEALTH FREEDOM.
The Natural Solutions Foundation is doing major work to protect your health and health freedom. With your help, we can magnify our effectiveness.
Facilitate discussion groups.
Host Natural Solutions Foundation video screenings.
Organize fund-raising parties.
But most of all - TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND NEIGHBORS
The Natural Solutions Foundation holds bi-weekly conference calls with members and friends to discuss strategies the latest news about Codex Alimentarius.
Visit: get-involved@healthfreedomusa.org Your country needs you.
HealthFreedomUSA.org, the website of the Natural Solutions Foundation, is beholden to no one: our only interest is health freedom.
Rima E. Laibow, MD, successful natural medicine physician since the 1970s, has studied 16,000 pages of Codex documentation. Her conclusion is that people who say that Codex is “consumer protection”, “voluntary”, or “harmless” are, at best, seriously mistaken.
see: Codex in Depth: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=161
Codex Alimentarius
1) Started in 1962 by UN, Imposed by WTO Sanctions
Codex Alimentarius was created in 1962 as a trade Commission by the UN to control the international trade of food. Its initial intentions may have been altruistic but it has been taken over by corporate interests, most notably the pharmaceutical, pesticide, biotechnology and chemical industries.
Codex Alimentarius is backed up by the crippling trade sanctions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any non Codex-compliant nation would face huge economic punishment since they would automatically lose in any food-trade dispute with a Codex compliant country.
2) “Nutrients are Toxins” Is Junk Science
Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) has two committees which impact nutrition.
One of them, the “Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses” (CCNFSDU), is chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, a physician who believes that nutrition has no role in health. This is the “top-guy” for Codex nutritional policy, and he has stated that
“nutrition is not relevant to health”.
As unbelievable as it may sound, Dr. Grossklaus actually declared nutrients to be toxins in 1994 and instituted the use of toxicology (Risk Assessment) to prevent nutrients from having any impact on humans who take supplements! It is worth mentioning that Dr. Grossklaus happens to own the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on this issue. This company makes money when its toxicology services are used for the “assessment” of nutrients. Here in the U.S. we call that a “conflict of interest”.
Codex is made up of thousands of standards and guidelines. One of them, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), is designed to permit only ultra low doses of vitamins and minerals (and make clinically effective nutrients illegal). How can the VMG restrict dosages of vitamins and minerals? By using Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess nutrients.
While Risk Assessment is a legitimate science (it is a branch of toxicology), it is the wrong science for assessing nutrients! In fact, in this context, it is actually junk science. Biochemistry, the science of life processes, is the correct science for assessing nutrients. Codex Alimentarius treats nutrients as toxins, which is literally insane.
Nutrients are not toxins - they are essential for life.
No matter what Codex Alimentarius officials say to convince you that Risk Assessment is a “science-based” approach to nutrients, it is not.
And it is worth repeating that Dr. Grossklaus, the head of Codex Alimentarius, owns the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on the “benefit” of using Risk Assessment to assess nutrients.
3) Not Consumer Protection - That’s Propaganda
Contrary to the propaganda, Codex Alimentarius has nothing to do with consumer protection. Nothing! Codex is about the economic ambitions of multi-national corporations, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry.
Using their multi billion-dollar marketing budgets, these industries have launched a massive media propaganda campaign to paint Codex Alimentarius as a benevolent tool of “consumer protection”, as well as to negatively taint the image of natural health options and mislead people to fear them as “dangerous”, so they will take drugs (which really are dangerous). Natural health products and options have an amazing safety record and are remarkably effective, especially when compared to pharmaceutical drugs.
Unfortunately, one-time defenders of health freedom such as National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) and Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) have joined the propaganda bandwagon and are spreading false information saying that Codex Alimentarius is either “harmless” or benevolent “consumer protection”.
Neither is true.
The membership of these one-time defenders of health freedom has become permeated by people from the pharmaceutical industry (for example, CRN counts as its members corporations such as Monsanto® and Bayer®).
4) Codex: Serious Threat to Health and Health Freedom
If Codex Alimentarius is implemented in the United States of America, therapeutic dosages of vitamins and minerals (and all other nutrients soon to follow) will become unavailable because they will literally become illegal.
Here’s how it would work, in a nut-shell:
Due to the junk science use of Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess supposedly toxic nutrients, a false belief is being engineered saying that “nutritional supplements are dangerous to people’s health”.
Using this false belief generates calls to “protect” people from these “toxic” nutrients. After the calls come the bills to set ultra low permissible dosages (remember, nutrients are deemed “dangerous toxins” under this false belief). If enough of us and our Congressional delegates buy this nonsense, we and Congress would blindly comply with Codex Alimentarius’ VMG. And blind compliance is what the industries behind Codex Alimentarius intend.
Blind compliance goes hand-in-hand with lack of activism. This lack of activism allows our protective laws, classifying nutrients as foods with no upper limits (such as DSHEA), to be easily repealed and replaced with draconian laws to classify nutrients as toxins. And “harmonization” with the pro-illness, pro-pharmaceutical industry Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is there to fill the void.
Only intentionally ineffective, ultra low dose supplements would be legal, with or without a prescription, on the VMG list. If enough people do not take action, we can expect to watch nutritional supplement manufacturers and, thus health food stores, to go out of business, in a domino effect.
The only player left standing would be Big Pharma.
Therapeutic grade vitamins, minerals, and amino acids would be eliminated from the marketplace (although a few low-dose supplements would be allowed by Codex, as a symbolic measure to avoid suspicion about their ulterior motive).
Natural health professionals would lose the tools of their trade (nutritional supplements) and health conscious people would be unable to choose natural health options for health promotion and disease treatment.
And that is, in a nutshell, how Codex Alimentarius is poised to make Natural and Nutritional Medicine (NNM) disappear from the legal health world and go underground. Who benefits? Big Pharma.
It would take a few years for the above scenarios to be feasible (Codex Alimentarius is meant to go into full global effect by 2010). The slower the process takes, the less alarmed people will be. That’s probably the logic of the architects of Codex Alimentarius.
5) Serves Economic Interests of Sickness Industries Through WTO and Napoleonic Code
More and more people are turning to natural health products globally. The “wellness” trend is a major trend in today’s society. The more natural health products people use, the fewer drugs they buy. The pharmaceutical industry, which is part of the “Sickness Industry”, fears the inevitable shift toward natural health care.
Instead of accepting the will of the people and rethinking the future of the pharmaceutical industry, the industry has decided upon an unethical course of action: the use of deception and deceit to eliminate natural health products completely.
Codex Alimentarius is a shrewd vehicle for protecting the pharmaceutical industry from the loss of income it stands to suffer due to the inevitable growth of natural healthcare.
Codex Alimentarius is the resistance of the dinosaurs to inevitability: the burgeoning desire of humanity for a healthier, saner, and more sustainable way of life.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) intends to force Codex Alimentarius upon the nations of the world, including the U.S. This would be done under the threat of massive economic sanctions if WTO-countries do not comply with Codex Alimentarius.
Furthermore, Codex is based in the Napoleonic Code, not Common Law. That means that under Codex Alimentarius, anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. Under Common Law, we hold that anything not explicitly forbidden is permitted. The difference is the difference between health freedom and health tyranny. Codex Alimentarius would be able to ban supplements by default.
6) DSHEA Protects America From Codex Alimentarius
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA, 1994), an American law classifying our supplements and herbs as foods (which can have no upper limit set on their use), was passed by unanimous Congressional consent following massive grass-roots support organized by health food stores. Millions of American activists told Congress, in no uncertain terms:
“Protect nutritional supplements as foods or we will remove you from office”.
Congress listened and carried out the will of the people.
DSHEA appropriately classifies nutritional supplements as foods which can have no upper limits set on their use. DSHEA recognizes that people use nutrients safely to deal with their individually differing needs for nutrients. The concept of biochemical individuality means that people have different needs for nutrients at different times. Are nutrients toxins? No, they are not toxins. They are substances essential to prevent, treat and cure any chronic condition, in differing doses at different times in different people.
DSHEA protects the US from Codex Alimentarius’ deadly Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. We must reach our Congressional members, educate them about the facts on Codex Alimentarius and direct them to vote against anything that would threaten DSHEA.
Congress holds the keys to our health freedom. And it is their job to listen to us. Let’s not allow cynicism to tell us otherwise. We did it for DSHEA in 1994. We can do it again this year.
7) Your Action is Needed Now!
DSHEA is under significant legislative attack right now. Your letter-writing is crucial: if the members of Congress know that voting against health freedom means losing their jobs come election time, they will listen. Our job is to make sure they get the message loud and clear. Take action via our 3 easy steps and send personalized emails to Congress right now.
After taking action on HealthFreedomUSA.org, consider getting together with others in your area and visit your Congressional members in their home offices. If we wait, we lose our health freedoms. Once we “HARMonize” with Codex, by the way, we no longer have the right, while we belong to the WTO, to repeal or change that “HARMonization”!
Conclusion
The objective of the pro-Codex Alimentarius multi nationals is to “boil the frog slowly” so that we do not wake up to it in time to avoid Codex.
Once we have “HARMonize” to Codex Alimentarius, as long as we are in the WTO, we cannot amend or change what we’ve been “HARMonize” to.
Codex Alimentarius will go into global implementation by December 31, 2009, unless We, the People, avert it. We must act now because right now, with $758 Million spent on declared Congressional lobbying by Big Pharma last year, there are members of Congress who are trying to overturn DSHEA and allow Pharma-friendly free reign for Codex.
If protective laws like DSHEA are destroyed, the sanctioning power of the autocratic WTO kicks in, and it will be impossible to get out from under Codex Alimentarius. We can protect our access to high potency nutrients and stave off an adulterated food supply only by putting pressure on Congress.
If you would like more in-depth information about Codex Alimentarius before taking action, please click here.
DID YOU KNOW:
The Natural Solutions Foundation developed the "Codex Two Step Process", a protective legal mechanism by which any country can protect itself from any standard or guideline promulgated by Codex without fear of World Trade Organization (WTO) sanctions and embodied that process in the seminal "Codex Two Step Book" and videos to provide critical information and increase self-funding.
Get Involved - Talk about health freedom and Codex to everyone you know.
Start (or join in) a discussion forum about health freedom and Codex Alimentarius on Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups. Tell your friends about Codex. If you maintain an online journal or web log, publish about Codex Alimentarius and link to this website.
Join the fight to PROTECT HEALTH FREEDOM.
The Natural Solutions Foundation is doing major work to protect your health and health freedom. With your help, we can magnify our effectiveness.
Facilitate discussion groups.
Host Natural Solutions Foundation video screenings.
Organize fund-raising parties.
But most of all - TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND NEIGHBORS
The Natural Solutions Foundation holds bi-weekly conference calls with members and friends to discuss strategies the latest news about Codex Alimentarius.
Visit: get-involved@healthfreedomusa.org Your country needs you.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Pakistan: A THird World Nation, No Water to Drink But Nuclear Weaponized
Pakistan, an impoverished and underdeveloped country, has suffered from decades of internal political disputes and a costly, ongoing confrontation with neighboring India. Pakistan, a nation in Southern Asia, borders the Arabian Sea and lies between India on the east, Iran and Afghanistan on the west, and China in the north.
The Indus Valley civilization, one of the oldest in the world and dating back at least 5,000 years, spread over much of what is presently Pakistan.
During the second millennium B.C., remnants of this culture fused with the migrating Indo-Aryan peoples. The area underwent successive invasions in subsequent centuries from the Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Arabs (who brought Islam), Afghans, and Turks.
The Mughal Empire flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries; the British came to dominate the region in the 18th century.
The separation in 1947 of British India into the Muslim state of Pakistan (with West and East sections) and largely Hindu India was never satisfactorily resolved, and India and Pakistan fought two wars - in 1947-48 and 1965 - over the disputed Kashmir territory.
A third war between these countries in 1971 - in which India capitalized on Islamabad's marginalization of Bengalis in Pakistani politics - resulted in East Pakistan becoming the separate nation of Bangladesh.
In response to Indian nuclear weapons testing, Pakistan conducted its own tests in 1998.
The dispute over the state of Kashmir is ongoing, but discussions and confidence-building measures have led to decreased tensions since 2002.
Mounting public dissatisfaction with President MUSHARRAF, coupled with the assassination of the prominent and popular political leader, Benazir BHUTTO, in late 2007, and MUSHARRAF’s resignation in August 2008, led to the September presidential election of Asif ZARDARI, BHUTTO’s widower.
Pakistani government and military leaders are struggling to control Islamist militants, many of whom are located in the tribal areas adjacent to the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani government is also faced with a deteriorating economy as foreign exchange reserves decline, the currency depreciates, and the current account deficit widens.
Poverty levels have decreased by 10% since 2001, and Islamabad has steadily raised development spending in recent years, including a 52% real increase in the budget allocation for development in FY07.
In 2007 the fiscal deficit - a result of chronically low tax collection and increased spending - exceeded Islamabad's target of 4% of GDP.
Inflation remains the top concern among the public, jumping from 7.7% in 2007 to more than 11% during the first few months of 2008, primarily because of rising world commodity prices.
The Pakistani rupee has depreciated since the proclamation of emergency rule in November
Per Capita Income: $2,400 (2007 est.)
Literacy: Less than half the nation can read and write and only one third of the females are literate.
Pakistani Labor Force: 48.23 million work in a population of 176 million in a nation roughly twice the size of California. Pakistan experiences extensive export of labor, mostly to the Middle East, and use of child labor as of 2008 is high.
The US is Pakistan’s largest export trading partner: US 18%, UAE 10.4%, Afghanistan 8.4%, China 5.2%, UK 4.7% (2007)
Pakistan is a significant transit area for Afghan drugs, including heroin, opium, morphine, and hashish.
Question: How did this desert nation with few resources, a largely illiterate population where most of the people do not even have access to potable water, develop nuclear weapons?
The Indus Valley civilization, one of the oldest in the world and dating back at least 5,000 years, spread over much of what is presently Pakistan.
During the second millennium B.C., remnants of this culture fused with the migrating Indo-Aryan peoples. The area underwent successive invasions in subsequent centuries from the Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Arabs (who brought Islam), Afghans, and Turks.
The Mughal Empire flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries; the British came to dominate the region in the 18th century.
The separation in 1947 of British India into the Muslim state of Pakistan (with West and East sections) and largely Hindu India was never satisfactorily resolved, and India and Pakistan fought two wars - in 1947-48 and 1965 - over the disputed Kashmir territory.
A third war between these countries in 1971 - in which India capitalized on Islamabad's marginalization of Bengalis in Pakistani politics - resulted in East Pakistan becoming the separate nation of Bangladesh.
In response to Indian nuclear weapons testing, Pakistan conducted its own tests in 1998.
The dispute over the state of Kashmir is ongoing, but discussions and confidence-building measures have led to decreased tensions since 2002.
Mounting public dissatisfaction with President MUSHARRAF, coupled with the assassination of the prominent and popular political leader, Benazir BHUTTO, in late 2007, and MUSHARRAF’s resignation in August 2008, led to the September presidential election of Asif ZARDARI, BHUTTO’s widower.
Pakistani government and military leaders are struggling to control Islamist militants, many of whom are located in the tribal areas adjacent to the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani government is also faced with a deteriorating economy as foreign exchange reserves decline, the currency depreciates, and the current account deficit widens.
Poverty levels have decreased by 10% since 2001, and Islamabad has steadily raised development spending in recent years, including a 52% real increase in the budget allocation for development in FY07.
In 2007 the fiscal deficit - a result of chronically low tax collection and increased spending - exceeded Islamabad's target of 4% of GDP.
Inflation remains the top concern among the public, jumping from 7.7% in 2007 to more than 11% during the first few months of 2008, primarily because of rising world commodity prices.
The Pakistani rupee has depreciated since the proclamation of emergency rule in November
Per Capita Income: $2,400 (2007 est.)
Literacy: Less than half the nation can read and write and only one third of the females are literate.
Pakistani Labor Force: 48.23 million work in a population of 176 million in a nation roughly twice the size of California. Pakistan experiences extensive export of labor, mostly to the Middle East, and use of child labor as of 2008 is high.
The US is Pakistan’s largest export trading partner: US 18%, UAE 10.4%, Afghanistan 8.4%, China 5.2%, UK 4.7% (2007)
Pakistan is a significant transit area for Afghan drugs, including heroin, opium, morphine, and hashish.
Question: How did this desert nation with few resources, a largely illiterate population where most of the people do not even have access to potable water, develop nuclear weapons?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
China's Economy - State Run and Paid for with Capital from Western Investment and trade
Bernake’s monetary policy and the Fed’s bailout plan has and will continue to flatten economic growth like a cow pie drying in the sun.
China’s growth will slow but nowhere near U.S. levels, so China has pulled the “thanks, but no thanks” to U.S. stocks because it knows that the U.S. stock market won’t rebound for some time. They know that layoffs in the U.S. manufacturing jobs will result in new hires in their country, and foreign investors are fleeing U.S. markets.
Projection: China’s growth will hit 8% in 2009 compared with the U.S. growth of 2%
The Chinese banking system is dominated by four big state-owned banks that can write a whenever the party – and the Army – tells them to, and to whom, and with $1.4 trillion in cash there’s no liquidity crisis in China.
China is using its capital to build more infrastructure: roads, bridges and cities at record pace.
The McKinsey Global Institute reports that:
“In 20 years, China’s cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today.”
“By 2025, China will have 221 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people.”
“By 2030, 1 billion people will live in China’s cities…170 mass-transit systems could be built…40 billion of square meters of floor space will be built in five million buildings—50,000 of which could be skyscrapers.”
By the year 2025 China will have 221 cities with more than one million people living in them, you can only imagine the kind of money that is going to be made, as China’s newfound consumer class enters the marketplace and replaces the American consumer as the supreme driver of world growth.
..And we paid them to do it…while dumbed down Americans remain blinded by the daily news about petty issues and the ups and downs in the Dow…
China’s growth will slow but nowhere near U.S. levels, so China has pulled the “thanks, but no thanks” to U.S. stocks because it knows that the U.S. stock market won’t rebound for some time. They know that layoffs in the U.S. manufacturing jobs will result in new hires in their country, and foreign investors are fleeing U.S. markets.
Projection: China’s growth will hit 8% in 2009 compared with the U.S. growth of 2%
The Chinese banking system is dominated by four big state-owned banks that can write a whenever the party – and the Army – tells them to, and to whom, and with $1.4 trillion in cash there’s no liquidity crisis in China.
China is using its capital to build more infrastructure: roads, bridges and cities at record pace.
The McKinsey Global Institute reports that:
“In 20 years, China’s cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today.”
“By 2025, China will have 221 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people.”
“By 2030, 1 billion people will live in China’s cities…170 mass-transit systems could be built…40 billion of square meters of floor space will be built in five million buildings—50,000 of which could be skyscrapers.”
By the year 2025 China will have 221 cities with more than one million people living in them, you can only imagine the kind of money that is going to be made, as China’s newfound consumer class enters the marketplace and replaces the American consumer as the supreme driver of world growth.
..And we paid them to do it…while dumbed down Americans remain blinded by the daily news about petty issues and the ups and downs in the Dow…
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