Richard Schiffman - Why Our Children Should Be Taught to Meditate in School

If you have brought up children, or taught them as I have, then there is something that you have doubtless said scores of times a day -- "Pay attention!" Yet this can be the hardest thing for a child to do. Their minds are like monkeys swinging quickly from one branch of thought or feeling to another. And cellphones, iPods and numberless other handheld "weapons of mass distraction" have made it that much harder for our children to focus.

This is a real problem in school, where achievement depends on one's ability to concentrate on the work. It is not just the presence of electronic devices in the classroom, something which naturally alarms a lot of teachers. More damaging are the habits which they inculcate in the young -- the surfing mentality which is always looking restlessly toward the next image, message or sensation.

Granted, this is nothing new. Before there were Blackberries and gaming devices, there were paper airplanes and spitballs. Kids have always found ways to distract themselves from the task at hand -- and adults, too. It is a challenge for all of us to keep our attention focused productively in the here and the now. But we all know from experience that our success and happiness depend on it. To learn something new, to accomplish anything worthwhile, to appreciate a work of art, to think deeply and creatively about a problem, we need to be able to focus and to keep our attention from straying.

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Richard Schiffmanhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Our-Children-Should-Be-by-Richard-Schiffman-120513-421.html

Linh Dinh - Idiocy as WMD

Borges writes, "dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy." As a preeminent mind, Borges rightly considers the mind to be a man's greatest asset, for without mind, a man is nothing. The more oppressive a political system, then, the greater its assault on its subjects' minds, for it's not enough for any dictator, king or totalitarian system to oppress and exploit, but it must, and I mean must, make its people idiotic as well. Every wrongful bullet is preceded and accompanied, then followed up by a series of idiotic lies, but we're so used to such a moronic diet by now, our trepanned intelligentsia don't even squirm in their tenured chairs.

Sane men and women don't consent to kill, rob and rape, much less be killed, robbed and raped, least of all to enrich their masters, and that's why their minds must be molested as early and as much as possible. Hence our nonstop media brainwashing us from the cradle, literally, to the grave. Fixated by flickering boxes, even infants are now mind-conditioned to become scatterbrained idiots before they stagger into kindergarten, to begin a lifelong process of becoming docile and slogan-shouting Democrats and Republicans.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Idiocy-as-WMD-by-Linh-Dinh-120513-76.html

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - World edges closer to deflationary slump as money contracts in China

Narrow M1 data for April is the weakest since modern records began. Real M1 deposits – a leading indicator of economic growth six months or so ahead – have contracted since November.

They are shrinking faster that at any time during the 2008-2009 crisis, and faster than in Spain right now, according to Simon Ward at Henderson Global Investors.

If China were a normal country, it would be hurtling into a brick wall. A "hard-landing" later this year would already be baked into the pie.

Whether this hybrid system of market Leninism – with banks run by Party bosses – conforms to Western monetary theory is a hotly contested point. The issue will be settled one way or the other soon.

What seems clear is that China's economy did not bottom out as expected in the first quarter. It is flirting with real trouble. Yao Wei from Societe Generale says a blizzard of awful data "screams out for easing".

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9263196/World-edges-closer-to-deflationary-slump-as-money-contracts-in-China.html

German Pirate Party to rock Merkel’s boat?

Germany’s infamous Pirate Party took 8 per cent of the vote in the country’s biggest state, making it the fourth region where they have parliamentary seats. With the national elections set for 2013, could these political buccaneers threaten Merkel?

"We have written history today," said Michele Marsching, chairman of the state chapter of the Pirates, in tears of joy. “Now it is time to party, politics should be fun!" he added.

The Pirates won the support of voters in the parliament of Schleswig-Holstein in the North of Germany on Sunday, the same day that Merkel faced an embarrassing defeat against opposition in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The unorthodox party has enjoyed growing popularity throughout Germany recently, capitalizing on the votes of Germans disgruntled with Angela Merkel’s harsh austerity measures.

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http://rt.com/news/pirate-party-support-merkel-186/

Paul Buchheit - Five Facts That Put America to Shame

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education, and financial industries

1. We're near the bottom of the developed world in children's health and safety

According to a 2007 UNICEF report, the U.S. ranked last among 21 OECD nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the U.S. 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the U.S. ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).

2. We've betrayed the young people who were advised to stay in school

Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.

As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.

Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students are forced to accept menial positions. Yet delusions persist about our new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about today's young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs -- jobs that "don't yet exist."

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-0

Yves Smith - Barack Obama, the Great Deceiver

Barack Obama swept into office on a tide of giddy enthusiasm. His “Hope and Change” was a pledge to reverse Bush era policies, including socialism for the rich, adventurism in the Middle East, and attacks on civil liberties. He announced his intention to serve as a transformational leader, invoking Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Ronald Reagan as role models. Despite the frigid temperatures, people poured into Washington, DC to hear his inauguration speech, wanting to be part of a remarkable passage.

It wasn’t simply that Obama was the first black president, but also that the economic devastation of the financial crisis opened up a historic opportunity to remake the social contract, to punish the reckless and greedy, no matter how lofty, and to build new foundations and safeguards for ordinary citizens. Obama, with his youthful vigor, his technocratic command of policy details, his “no drama” steadiness, his mastery of oratory, seemed uniquely suited to this time of need. His personal history of repeatedly breaking new ground fed optimism that he could do so for the nation as a whole.

Those times of heady promise are now a cruel memory. Again and again, Obama has shown his true colors. It isn’t simply that Obama lied. Politicians lie. But there are norms for political lying. The depth and dependability of Obama’s misrepresentations constitute a difference in kind.

His pattern of grand promises producing at-best-in-name only and at worst outright bait and switch was well established by his 2008 campaign. Some close observers pointed out his past legerdemain, for instance, his misleading account of his years in New York, his record of fronting for finance and real estate interests in Chicago, his promise to bring a state-wide health care program to Illinois, which in the end was walked back to a mere study. And there were more decisive tells in 2008: the high level of Wall Street funding for his campaign, the inclusion of neoliberal “Chicago boys” in his economics team, his reversal on FISA after promising to filibuster it, which gave retroactive immunity to telecoms for aiding and abetting illegal wiretapping, and his whipping for TARP.

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http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/barack-obama-the-great-deceiver.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

'Over-consumption' threatening Earth

Spiralling global population and over-consumption are threatening the future health of the planet, according to a latest survey of the Earth's health.

The environmental conservation charity World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in a report released on Tuesday said the demand on natural resources has become unsustainable and is putting "tremendous" pressure on the planet's biodiversity.

WWF named Qatar as the country with the largest ecological footprint, followed by its Gulf Arab neighbours Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Denmark and the United States made up the remaining top five, calculated by comparing the renewable resources consumed against the earth's regenerative capacity.

The Living Planet Report found that high-income countries have an ecological footprint on average five times that of low-income ones.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/05/201251502351773351.html

Eric Margolis - France: The Hard Right On The March

”Apres moi, le deluge!” – After me, the deluge. So said French king Louis XV, and was he ever right. His successor faced the French Revolution and lost his head.

Much the same can be said of France’s outgoing president, Nicholas Sarkozy. The victory of his Socialist rival Francois Holland in last week’s presidential election not only eclipsed the political career of the widely unloved Sarkozy, it left his clumsily-named political party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), facing its own deluge.

As Europe’s conservatives watch in dismay and even horror, the second big shoe is about to drop in French politics. Far rightist Marine Le Pen appears set to emerge triumphant from the wreckage of Frances defeated center-right.

France holds two-round elections for its lower house, the National Assembly, on 10 and 17 June. Polls show Holland’s Socialists and their leftwing allies winning some 44% of the seats; the center-right UMP 36.5%. The Left already controls the upper house, the Senate.

Control of both houses would allow Holland’s Socialists to implement their vows to impose punitive taxes on the wealthy, hire 60,000 teachers (all Socialist stalwarts, of course), reject the EU austerity pact, boost spending and return the minimum retirement age to 60 from 62.

Meanwhile, the UMP faces questions of life and death. The party was cobbled together from four center-right parties made up of Gaullists, Liberal Gaullists, Liberal Radicals, and Christian Conservatives.

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 http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/43155/france-the-hard-right-on-the-march

Bill Van Auken - The Political Uses of the Latest “Terror Plot”

One day after publicly announcing that the CIA had foiled an Al Qaeda plot to bomb a commercial airliner, US officials revealed Tuesday that the would-be bomber was in fact an informant working for the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

This turn of events is in line with so many domestic terror plots “disrupted” by federal authorities, which—in the overwhelming majority of cases—have featured confidential informants acting as agent provocateurs, instigating stage-managed plots and providing targeted patsies with money, dummy bombs and fake weapons before they are rounded up.

The account given for this latest operation is decidedly murky. Officials have claimed that the plot originated with the infiltration of a group affiliated to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula by the CIA-Saudi double agent. Why the US government would choose to expose such a seemingly valuable mole by making the supposed plot public is unclear to say the least.

It is impossible to sort fact from fiction in the versions being reported by the media. A highly skeptical attitude toward the most basic claims about this episode is more than warranted. However, the saturation news coverage is itself an unmistakable indication that, with less than six months to go before the US presidential election, elements within the Obama administration and the state apparatus want to move the “war on terror” to the front burner of American politics.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30807

Naomi Wolf - The spectacle of terror and its vested interests

The news stories, which quickly surface, long enough to cause scary headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are stories about "bumbling fantasists", hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants.

They have become a litany in recent years. The terrifying 2003-2004 national news stories that a Detroit "sleeper cell" had sent Muslim terrorists to blow up Disneyland and other landmarks, including in Las Vegas, was later thrown out of court, with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, to almost no press attention – the same cycle of hype and failed convictions that have characterized many such stories. The evidence had included a home video taken in Disneyland, "doodles", and a guy with a credit card fraud problem, who had been pressured to diminish his own sentence by accusing his buddies.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/09/spectacle-terror-vested-interests