Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has a post up on a book about the Idle No More movement with stories and poems and such. I haven’t read it, but would love to have a copy of what sounds like a wonderful historical book. She notes that the royalties will benefit the indigenous youth.
Category Archives: ethics and morals
Bad Whiskey, mental institutions; Andrea Yates
City Jackdaw has the reasons you could have been admitted to a mental institution in the 19th century.
Masturbation and, well, being a woman from all the “ailments” associated with being female. Freud was an influence, I’m sure.
Note the reading of a novel was reason enough to be admitted! No doubt this was directed at a woman, because women were discouraged from educating themselves. Truly, the medical profession said women would “shrink” their uterus if they went to college. They based this genius on the observation that women who went to college were not as likely to have children, not have as many children. Yep.
I wish I could say that the psychiatric profession has progressed passed the misogyny, but if you read the DSM, their diagnostic manual, it has “diseases” that describe the symptoms of being…a woman. It’s a very vague description that has no reasoning behind it.
Related to this~
I was watching a documentary on Andrea Yates yesterday. Her case always troubled me. I felt at the time that she is mercury toxic for her to suddenly start acting mentally ill.
My intuition has been heightened by more clues — she became non-verbal (autistic symptoms) with her children, even though she performed regular duties such as fixing them lunch. Her father had Alzheimer’s, so he and she were probably exposed to mercury (my belief that mercury and aluminum are direct causes of Alzheimer’s). Her father was of Irish ancestry–another strong clue of inability to detox mercury.
She began to act irrationally after the birth of her fourth child. This is crucial because if she were already mercury burdened at her own birth (possibility), and received Rho-Gam shots, she received more mercury via the shots. After the fifth birth, she absolutely would have more toxicity and the mercury amount probably pushed her over the edge.
Those around her described her as loving before she became ill. Her symptoms match mercury/heavy metal toxicity: anxiety, depression, autistic symptoms, bags under her eyes (adrenal fatigue/thyroid), self-mutilation, and on top of that, the very drugs she was prescribed most likely caused more harm than good.
I hope that someone around her with some intellect will look into heavy metal poisoning as the root cause of her illness. I just feel it in my gut.
Radiation from Fukushima found in soil in Canada
Soil sample collected near Agassiz contains radioactive metal.
…but officials say…wait for it…don’t worry, it’s not that much…yeah, we should worry.
We should be worried, too, looking at this map. It’s not just on the tip of the coast, but quite a ways inland. Just look at the relation to the U.S.
Can you imagine this, combined with Keystone and the pipelines that have already leaked, combined with pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms…
Brainless model stands up to Terry Richardson
Well, this was heartening when I read it…a young woman is not taken in by Terry Richardson’s manipulation, bullying, and exploitation.
I admire her, as many young women are unsure of themselves, which Richardson exploits. I can feel it in my bones that the young women are most likely the victims of prior molestation or products of a home life that devalued them. It’s hard to think you have the right to set boundaries when your boundaries were violated by someone you trusted…whether that be in a sexual way or in violation of your sense of self–your own autonomy.
…and the question is: how many women have to be allegedly assaulted by this guy before authorities nab him?
My former post here.
A personal experience: the blast in East Harlem NY
Raginghorse blog has a personal story up on the blast yesterday in New York. Understandably, the first concern is what happened and how to take care of the kids if something bad is going down. (Think an online educator is going to do that…?/snark)
I think it illustrates the need to not taking anything for granted. You never know what the new day will hold. Living in the moment…
Mohawks continue civil disobedience
…to stand for missing and murdered First Nations women. Good for them.
Fact-Checking Eva Moskowitz; Dangerous Bipartisan collusion
Diane Ravitch has posted this on Eva Moskowitz’s loose version of the facts.
Moskowitz’s Success Academy 4 has almost none of the highest special needs students as compared to nearby Harlem public schools. In a school with nearly 500 students, Success Academy 4 has zero, or one, such students, while the average Harlem public school includes 14.1 percent such students. With little sense of irony or embarrassment, Moskowitz has attacked Bill de Blasio for preventing the school’s expansion inside PS 149. Her school’s expansion would have come at the cost of space for students with disabilities. The school has already lost “a fully equipped music room … A state-mandated SAVE room … A computer lab… Individual rooms for occupational and physical therapy … and the English Language Learners (ELL) classroom,” due to earlier Success Academy expansions in the same building.
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Moskowitz made a number of other claims during her Morning Joe appearance. She said “we are self-sustaining on the public dollar alone.” In fact, Success Academyspends $2,072 more per student than schools serving similar populations. This additional funding comes from donations by the very same hedge fund moguls who have donated over $400,000 to Governor Cuomo’s re-election campaign (charter supporters in the financial and real estate sector have contributed some $800,000 to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).
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Jan Resseger posts about the dangerous bipartisan conventional *cough* wisdom.
As early as 1989, President George H.W. Bush, responding to fears that the United States was becoming uncompetitive, launched a movement based on standards, assessments, and accountability by convening an education summit of the nation’s governors, chaired by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, to agree on national education goals. Through the 1990s states began to embrace test-based accountability. Then in 2001, when Congress—under President George W. Bush—reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, with a new name, “No Child Left Behind,” the federal government mandated test-and-punish.
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Once again, the Bushes and Clintons responsible for so much destruction and misery.
Today, DN hosted a debate between public schools and charters. The car salesman, er I mean, charter school proponent, Steve Barr,of Green Dot, who was behind the fiasco of Los Angeles schools, Parent Revolution, and Brian Jones , a public school teacher now pursuing a doctorate.
Barr did the usual charter proponent schtick: he tried to once again pull the wool over the public’s eye and say that charter schools were public schools; he refused to answer direct questions (because he knew it would make charters look bad); and repeatedly stated he was a “progressive”. Yeah, right. Just like Bill Clinton is a progressive. Wink, wink. Nod, nod.
He was pushing the “progressive” schtick a little too much in hopes that would make opponents back down, I guess, because he’s a “good guy”. Pffft. He also lied about charters NOT being about profit. Thankfully, he got called on that….but some key points were not countered by Amy or Juan. I was disappointed in that.
Finally, Reclaim Reform has a post up on Diane and the FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt propaganda campaign to destroy public education. This is one of the psychological techniques used in communications that turned my stomach and why I would never be in PR. Fear, sex, anger, and love are the top communications techniques to persuade people….keep that in mind, folks, whenever you view any type of media: spoken word, radio, TV, internet, printed, etc.
Related to this, the local school administration said this on the radio: “A teacher can ask the student how many nickels equal a quarter…but if they go to a computer, it can be illustrated how many nickels equal a quarter, and then a dollar, and so on…” (may not be verbatim, but close). What I heard from that is two things: 1) teachers are boring, so we have to have computer animation; and 2) another way to slip online/computer learning as a replacement of live, human beings. I personally would have illustrated how many nickels equal a quarter by bringing out five nickels. I would always use visual cues to help kids understand. This is especially important for dyslexics, of which I am one.
And a question that keeps rolling around in my head is…why are these people called philanthropists? Isn’t philanthropy giving money away, not expecting anything in return? ‘Cause the Broads, Clintons, Bushes, Gates, and billionaires boys clubs absolutely expect to gain from their so-called philanthropy. Absolutely. So I don’t see that this is philanthropy, but should be called “investment”…
Another model comes forward on Terry Richardson
Another model has come forward on being allegedly sexually assaulted by sleazebag photographer Terry Richardson. My prior post on him here.
This report explains one of the manipulative techniques of Richardson–calling the girl a prude and telling her she needs to loosen up. I’m glad to see a couple of models formerly photographed by Richardson are taking positive action against this predator.
And the question of the hour is…why do people, especially celebrities, who have a lot going for them, are intelligent and compassionate, associate themselves with this manipulative exploitative creep?
He is a dark one. He is beneath contempt. Associating with him and promoting him is feeding the dark side, in my opinion. It’s saying that his behavior is acceptable…it’s okay. And it’s not.
It’s a crazy experience to celebrate the female body as beautiful, and then degrade her because she’s a woman. Crazy.
So much of what is wrong in the world today is by the degradation of women. Wars, violence, greed, all thrive because the feminine–the softness, compassion, empathy, nurturing, and nature–is not respected. Not given equal weight. Not honored.
For example, the Earth, which is feminine, is stripped of oil and then left polluted and scarred…not unlike sexual violence. Wars are the same.
We all can be violent or compassionate. We can feed the dark or light. It’s our choice, our free will.
Jeffrey Thompson charged **edited
Jeffrey Thompson is apparently deeply involved in D.C. politics and has been charged with violating local and federal campaign finance laws.
One campaign he contributed to was Hillary Clinton. Damn, I guess she’ll have to get another donor to finance her presidential campaign…
I’ll bet he’s regretting that cool $500k he spent on her ill-fated campaign….just think of the people that money would have fed..housed…gotten medical care for…sent through a pretty decent college…employed in a job for years…but we can’t do that, can we? We need to spend millions on campaigns.
Washington Post also has the story here.
**edited to change wording. I called Clinton a client in error. Chalk it up to Spring Fever. Oy.
Chicago Teachers Under Fire
Ken Previtti has this up on the bullying of Chicago Teachers….a modern day twist of McCarthyism, where if you don’t tow the line, you’re blacklisted via losing certification.
Democracy, meet dictatorship.
This is unconscionable. The teachers refuse to subject the kids to it. The parents don’t want it. And the kids certainly don’t benefit from it. As Ken states, the only people that benefit are the education profiteer$ who sell the test prep, the tests, scoring the tests, and anything else they can think of to profit.
Are the parents not taxpayers? Are the teachers not taxpayers? And the public taxpayer who does not want CCSS? Again I ask, if the taxpayers don’t want this…then why are their wishes being ignored?
Meanwhile, in Indiana, they are going to push online learning to make up for all the snow days we had this winter….nice way to shoehorn the kids into online learning…
…and get rid of teachers altogether.
Eagle 
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