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gduncan969 · 5 years ago

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“Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String”

2 Corinthians 4:16 - 18 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.,”

It’s been somewhat of a tough haul this past week. I am still behaving as a (relatively) law-abiding citizen staying at home in the middle of this pandemic and going to church on Sunday by sitting with my ipad on my lap as we listen to our pastor encourage us with songs and scriptures and a good gospel message but I must confess it’s just not the same as the real thing and I long to get back to normalcy where we can visit each other, hug each other, laugh together, sing together, pray together and eat together. Still, I’m amazed in these days of quarantine, how inventive people have become with all kinds of new ideas on how to socialise without actually being together. Zoomer meetings, podcasts, Twitter tweets, video calls and a host of other means of staying in touch are being used to the full and all are helping to keep us sane in the comfy prison cells we call home but it’s just not the same as the real thing. Also, there’s an added danger that these new ways of communicating become the new normal, a new way of living together with our friends and neighbours! Social distancing may be good science but it’s a bad lifestyle in a world already in the grip of another pandemic—loneliness! My daughter, Susan Tucker, now has a regular Facebook livestream on Sunday evenings at 7.00 where she plays her guitar and sings the old favourite hymns and songs of the church while we all tune in to join her and make requests for our own favourites. Amazingly, she now has friends from USA, England, Central America, Africa and who knows where else joining in. That’s wonderful but I miss hugging my kids and grandkids who won’t let me within six feet of them because they are afraid they might infect us with the dreaded Covid-19 virus.

I have now run out of projects to complete around the house and having walked for miles and miles around the golf course behind our house, I find myself on the edge of what John Bunyan in his book Pilgrim’s Progress called “the Slough of Despond” which I call the mud-hole of self pity. So, it’s time for me to start counting my blessings and quit feeling sorry for myself. A song popped into my head as I sat down to write this blog, a familiar song everyone knows from The Sound of Music—“My Favourite Things”:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens Brown paper packages tied up with strings These are a few of my favourite things... I simply remember my favourite things and then I don’t feel so bad.

That’s actually good advice whenever we begin to lose track of how blessed we are, especially in the midst of a world pandemic. My opening sentence above mentions it has been a tough week. On Monday, we got word that a dear saint and friend from Northern Ontario had died in hospital at age 93. Dying in hospital is a lonely experience these days since visits are not allowed but thankfully, her daughter and granddaughter were allowed to be with her singing her favourite choruses as she passed into the presence of her Saviour. On Tuesday, we got word that another dear friend, ill with cancer, had been given only hours to live and his son was appealing for prayer for his dad who is 72. On Wednesday and Thursday Eleanor spent sleepless nights battling pain in her ear, probably from exposure to the frigid temperatures these last few days as we try to maintain our daily exercise routine. So, with the “Sound of Music” ringing in my ears I got to thinking about “some of my favourite things” like the good times we’ve had with Betty and her family over many decades; about Al, one of the most gentle men I have ever met and 54 years of marriage to the only woman who can put up with me. As these memories come flooding back, I don’t feel so bad. Betty’s daughter just related the story of her mom’s first date with her dad, how she told him she had never seen a bear before despite being raised on a farm near Englehart, Ontario. Steve, her new boyfriend drove her to the local garbage dump, got out of the car and grabbed the first bear cub he saw and brought it up to the window so she could get a good look at her first bear. I wouldn’t have believed that story if I didn’t know how typical that was of the man I had known for 30 years. They are now together again with the Lord and I’ve no doubt he’s showing her around Heaven. Also, after much prayer by many these past two days, the doctors are now hopeful that Al may survive for several more weeks so we will continue to pray that those weeks become months and even years.

In 2 Corinthians 4:16 - 18, Paul tells us not to lose heart as we take on life’s challenges. The restrictions forced upon us by this dreadful virus and the restrictions placed upon us by the ravages of time (for all us senior citizens) are a “light affliction which is but for a moment, working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” and so we do not focus our attention on “the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen”. A pastor friend who was somewhat overweight used to say of himself, “Inside this fat body there lives a thin man”. Now that I’m well into my seventies, I tell others “Inside this old body there lives a young man”. The outward appearance that others see is not who we really are. The real question is how do we see ourselves and with what eyes? To be able to see the “things not seen” we need a different set of eyes and these are given to us by the Holy Spirit. In our younger days following the Lord, these eyes, yet undeveloped, see the unseeable “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12) and so we find it easier to put more trust in our physical eyes but as age takes its toll on our bodies our focus turns more and more sharply to the things that are unseen and eternal. As the world struggles to find its footing in the midst of this great upheaval, one which is yet to reveal the true enormity of its impact to our natural eyes, we must take to heart that God is at work in our midst turning the eyes of the world on Him. Let’s begin to get excited rather than worried “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” (2 Corinthians 1:20)

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shellymetals-blog · 8 years ago

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Nap-In with Barbara Bickle My personal reflection and perspective SIUC – March 8, 2017 Barbara Bickle is my professor this semester in an art history credit class called “Art as Social Practice: Applications and Theories”. The “Nap-In” is a project of hers and her colleagues and has be performed many times all around the world. My classmates and I were invited on March 8, 2017 to take part in this project held in the rotunda of SIUC’s library. We began by sewing and stitching little pillows that were stuffed with lavender and mug wort. Once the pillows were completed we all sat or laid around the central dream scroll at the center of a tape labyrinth and were encouraged to fall asleep with the thoughts of diversity in mind. We only had 20 minutes for this part so I unfortunately did not fall asleep. I think a few of my classmates did but for me that was an awkward spot with too many surrounding noises for me to fully relax into a dream state. Although I could not fall asleep I was thinking of someone that means a lot to me who shortly after the most recent presidential election tried to enter the USA. This friend typically would travel to and from the states through Florida but this time was going through US customs in Texas. He was detained for over 12 hours, thankfully not roughed up but interrogated by several immigration officers, made to wait with no food or water and then interrogated again and again. After the first hour of being hassled he was more than willing and offering to just go back to Columbia, South America but the racist Texas officers kept him in a holding room for far longer. After this extremely long waiting period they stamped his passport to make it illegal for him to enter the USA for the next 5 years! This friend yes, is a light skinned brown man who speaks English just not without his Columbian accent. He is a talented blacksmith that has shared his knowledge and techniques with many adults and children across the United States over the last several years. Blacksmithing communities have requested his presence and teachings at many conferences. He is compensated for his time with room and board and travel expenses. It makes very little sense that he was treated so poorly in Texas, beyond that the USA has now elected a racist head that wants to go to great lengths to keep out immigrants. This friend of mine has enriched and inspired the furthering of the blacksmithing arts and knowledge for so many and it is very disappointing to see what this country is headed towards on a whole. He was not in any way trying to move here or do anything illegal, he was just teaching and sharing, not even being paid. No longer is the USA a melting pot of culture and diversity, it’s an arrogant white supremacy totalitarian place of the top 1% ruling in a practically Hitler-like way. This country is reversing in its progressive ways and everything from human rights, female rights, environmental rights, animal rights are all on the chopping block. I am devistated by how this is the world I currently live in. To come back to the Nap-In, After our 20 min of dreaming/nap/thinking time was up we were asked to create something to add to the central scroll. I made a little heart like pillow that had several multi-colored knots/bows as a tail, like a kite or balloon might have. Asleep or awake I dream of a world that is more accepting, loving and community based. Around the time that the Nap-In occurred a FOX reporter was trolling student newspapers for stories they could slant upon. It’s outrageous that FOX can even still have the word “news” in their title since they are nothing more than a fabricated entertainment show rather than an actual news broadcast! On top of that Fox is primarily filled with arrogant, sexist, racist white men with perhaps one token man of color. Thankfully, there has recently been several white male FOX anchors that are beginning called out on several sexual assault charges. Beyond the males on FOX the women they have employed as news casters portray themselves as nothing more than unintelligent sexy dressed distractions that agree with the men on everything as if they have no brains of their own. This broadcast slant on the Nap-In was trying to say that parents are paying for their children to get a degree in sleeping! On top of that they had an interview with a mini-me FOX reporter/student from SIU that was not even in the slightest way aware of the purpose or intent of the Nap-In. However, she fit the stereotypical architype of female FOX prefers so of course she was the one to be the face of this internal interview not Barbara or any of the other facilitators of this project who could clearly explain the project. Interestingly enough, my class attended the Nap-In on International Women’s Day, March 8th. So, in conjunction of Trumps attack on women’s rights during this week this slant broadcast aired just a few days after. It was absolutely planned shenanigans and brain washing bull-shit. How are people buying into this crap? They must still have ratings that are keeping them on the air, but really? How can people keep listening to fake news and not question the spoonful’s of crap they are being fed? A short while after the slant broadcast was aired, Barbara held a panel session to discuss further the project and the benefits of taking resting moments. Most interestingly for me there was a Neuro-scientist on the panel that has proof through MRI brain scans that our brains are very active during a resting/dreaming state. Our brains function at 70% while resting and only 1-3% higher when we are fully awake and cognitive! Even if you aren’t in a dream state, just closing your eyes and relaxing for short periods of time can be extremely beneficial to re-focusing and being more productive. This world we live in is overly stimulating and distracting. There is always 101+ things to do all at the same time, especially as a student. With digital media bombarding us across our phones and computers we are saturated with distraction as the norm and focus can be a true challenge. In a somewhat related way, while I was working towards my undergraduate degree I took many classes in Asian art Studies and Histories. During one of these art history classes I did a project on Kum Nye. I attended regularly a 2 hour Sunday Kum Nye class held at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California for that entire semester (and continued this practice long after). Kum Nye is an ancient Tibetan medical spiritual technique that refreshes and revitalizes both the body and mind and was developed and brought to the states by Tarthang Tulku. In the simplest and possibly mis-represented way for me to explain this, it’s essentially a type of slow movement and breathing yoga that helps to align and center the body and mind. To begin with I had no idea that I would connect with or get so much out of this extra class. In closing one’s eyes, paying attention to one’s breath going in and out of their body and slowly moving their appendages according to a particular exercise, this practice can open up tension and relieve stress and distraction. Many people taught this class but my favorite was Santiago. He and I spoke often after the classes. I felt like an obvious amateur in this practice but he assured me that just like physical creations the more practice given to Kum Nye the more accomplished and centered I would feel in some of the more difficult poses. He also said that of course it’s nice to have the Sunday 2 hours to practice but that even the 10-15 minutes I could give to this during the week would prove to be beneficial to my existence in this world. He could not have been any more right. I’ve taken many forms of yoga that help to keep me flexible however I have not had another class where my brain and body become flexible and open at the same time. I am so thankful to have had this experience and do continue to practice from memory and books I acquired while still living in California. I do see and feel a beneficial similarity with Kum Nye practice and Barbara Bickles Dreaming Diversity Nap-Ins.

#Nap-In barbarabickle shellycournoyer SIUC

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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"Three years into his presidency, Donald Trump owns the events and outcomes in Iraq and Iran, as he does in North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Middle East, Russia, China and Hong Kong. Having diminished our State Department, intelligence agencies and military, the very institutions that could have helped him construct an effective national security and foreign policy, he is now on his own. He may like it that way, but a change in his secretary of state’s travel plans won’t be enough to save the day, let alone the decade."

Attack on US embassy in Iraq shows Trump is failing. He walked into Iran's trap.

Trump's policies have been devastating to US interests. He should have stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and made full use of sanctions and diplomacy.

WENDY R. SHERMAN, OPINION COLUMNIST | Published January 2, 2020 11:30 AM ET | USA TODAY | Posted January 2, 2020 |

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo started having a tough 2020 only one day into the new year. He was forced to postpone his trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, this week to attend to the new crisis in Iraq. As fraught as Pompeo’s visit to Kyiv was going to be, in the shadow of the impeachment battle, Iraq trumped Kyiv after the New Year’s Eve attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

It is President Donald Trump’s failed policy toward Iran that has brought us to this combustible moment.

Iraq is a tough country under any circumstances, made more so after the 2003 U.S. invasion that upended the Middle East and cost so much in U.S. lives and treasure. But Iraq also created strange bedfellows. The U.S. troops worked alongside Iraqi and Iranian militia to destroy a common enemy, the Islamic State group. And even as the United States was confronting Iran over its nuclear program and malign behavior elsewhere, we maintained an uneasy coexistence in Iraq, where Tehran holds considerable sway.

That uneasy balance was destroyed when Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Like other critics of the agreement, Trump believed it should have resolved all of America’s issues with Iran. Trump believed we were giving Tehran benefits without a requisite return. He thought a "maximum pressure" campaign would ultimately bring Iran to its knees, or incite a popular uprising against its theocratic regime.

Trump Policies Devastate US Interests

Like much of Trump’s national security and foreign policy, his Iran approach is tactical and not strategic. The results have been devastating to U.S. interests. Iran’s most extreme hardliners, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force, who never wanted the nuclear deal, have gained more power, arguing that the United States couldn’t be trusted to honor any agreement. Iran’s nefarious activities in the region have increased, since terror is not an expensive undertaking and so is largely immune from economic sanctions. Indeed, the IRGC has happily returned to controlling the lucrative black market under Trump’s sanctions. And Iran, after complying with the deal for nearly three years, now confronted with "maximum pressure" and no diplomatic track, has begun to unwind its compliance.

In Iraq, Iranian backed militia, led by Kataeb Hezbollah, have worked to increase their power as the Iraq central government has nearly collapsed under the weight of months of popular protests against government corruption. A rocket attack by the Kataeb Hezbollah militia last Friday killed an American contractor and injured many. The Trump administration retaliated with airstrikes two days later, leading to the Dec. 31 attack on our embassy.

Most would agree that the United States had to respond in some way to the death of an American, but whether the airstrike was the right and proportionate measure is debatable. Regardless, if the Trump administration really understood the dynamics of Iraq, it might have anticipated a move like the attack on the Embassy. Administration officials might have worked more closely with the Iraq government to think through the best way forward. Instead, in essence, Trump walked into Iran’s trap. For many Americans, the Baghdad militia chants of "Death to America" echoed the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, raising the specter of another hostage crisis.

Iran Nuclear Deal Was Solid Progress

The immediate emergency at our embassy in Baghdad has subsided. Kataeb Hezbollah has withdrawn its militia from outside the embassy, declaring that they have delivered the necessary message to America. They want the 5,000 American troops out of the country. But perhaps even Pompeo understands that a longer term challenge remains, and thus his change of travel plans. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to withdraw American troops from just about everywhere. However, a withdrawal from Iraq at this moment only serves Iran’s desire to exert greater control over Iraq. To much of the world, it would signal U.S. disengagement and weakness — not strength.

Even some of the harshest critics of the Iran nuclear deal now understand that the perfect is, indeed, the enemy of the good; that in volatile international situations, solid, incremental progress trumps chaos. The Iran nuclear deal was meant to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, since such a capability would project even greater Iranian power in the Middle East and deter the ability of Washington and its allies to build a lasting peace in the region.

Concerted action to curtail Iran’s malign behavior, human rights abuses, unlawful detention of Americans and state sponsorship of terrorism remains very necessary. Had President Trump stayed in the Iran deal and used not only the remaining sanctions in the U.S. toolbox but also built a coalition of diplomatic partners to challenge Iran to truly join the community of nations, we would be in a very different place today.

Three years into his presidency, Donald Trump owns the events and outcomes in Iraq and Iran, as he does in North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Middle East, Russia, China and Hong Kong. Having diminished our State Department, intelligence agencies and military, the very institutions that could have helped him construct an effective national security and foreign policy, he is now on his own. He may like it that way, but a change in his secretary of state’s travel plans won’t be enough to save the day, let alone the decade.

Wendy R. Sherman, a professor and the director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, was undersecretary of State for political affairs from 2011-15 and led U.S. negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal. She is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of “Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence." Follow her on Twitter: @WendyRSherman

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As Iraq violence flares, how do we stop wars from happening in the 2020s?

In order to protect ourselves, we cannot withdraw from the world, we must learn to manage conflict.

Lionel Beehner, Opinion Columnist | Updated 2:21 PM EST Dec. 31, 2019 |

USA TODAY | Posted Jan. 2, 2020 |

The sign along Manhattan’s West Side Highway is unmistakable: C-3PO glares down, next to him the Star Wars logo reimagined as a stop sign that says, “Stop Wars.”

As the 2020s get underway, are we any closer to ending wars?

The sad fact is that there are more conflicts raging than when we rang in the last decade. Cities are ablaze in anti-government protests. Sure, violence is down from previous centuries, a point heralded by folks like Harvard’s Steven Pinker, but conflict is as prolific as ever.

Even the United States' highly secure embassy in Baghdad was breached by Iraqis protesting US airstrikes that targeted Iranian proxies in Iraq.

Why? Why hasn’t man figured out the futility of solving problems with guns?

The answer is too complicated to unpack but a few pieces of evidence are worth unraveling.

U.S. Troops In Every Corner Of The Planet

First, the US military is virtually everywhere in the globe. If that weren’t the case, one can imagine that war might even be more frequent and more intense. Ditto for UN peacekeepers, operating across 13 missions in the world’s worst troublespots.

The flipside to this argument is that US forces — and to some degree UN peacekeepers — do not always keep the peace, and in some ways contribute to conflict, either by arming unsavory actors (Saudis, etc.) or by creating perverse moral hazards — why train my own forces if Uncle Sam can protect me? — and leaving security vacuums (Europe, Asia-Pacific, etc.). With the US about to pull its forces out of Africa, there is also concern that it will leave behind security vacuums filled by Chinese workers or Russian mercenaries like the Wagner Group.

Here’s a gloomy prediction: The US will not “win” another war, at least not in my lifetime.

The US has to get off its early-20th century high-horse that it can somehow still win conflicts. The wars of tomorrow are unwinnable. At best all we can hope to do is manage them.

That simple fact has huge ramifications for our ballooning defense budget, which is still oriented to fighting and winning conventional wars against “near-peer competitors,” which is US military-speak for Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. But all we need is enough firepower to deter these potential foes and to extend deterrence among our allies. There is no need to spend $738 billion on expensive fighter jets or space programs that will not make us any safer. The second half of the 20th century is littered with money pits and military pipedreams — remember the Future Combat Systems?

We now sit at the edge of a precipice in modern war: with artificial intelligence and social media reshaping the character of warfare, there is a real risk that the US government will dump untold billions into unproven technologies, simply to keep up with the Russians and Chinese, without partnering with the private sector or enlisting the best and brightest in these fields.

Defense dollars would be more wisely spent on fixing our schools, improving our K-12 education, and making college more affordable. We are losing to these countries when it comes to teaching the next generation of scientists, engineers, military planners and policymakers.

Our Expectations of Victory Must Be More Realistic

Money lavished on the Pentagon could also have gone toward revitalizing our broken diplomatic corps. To avoid war requires dedicated civilian diplomats on the ground and properly staffed embassies to take preventive action. A case in point is Ethiopia, one of Africa’s rare success stories. Yet, as Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group points out, the country faces a real risk of splintering along ethnic lines, a war that would spread.

Stopping war is a noble goal but untenable option. Ignoring conflicts like those in Syria, Yemen, or Ukraine is not an option. Nor is intervening militarily in every brushfire. There are those who think that a well-armed United States surrounded by high walls is the only way to fully secure the homeland and protect our allies.

This is a recipe for failure, bankruptcy, and free-riding behavior. The US has tinkered with a grand strategy that ultimately intervenes where US vital national security interests are present — such as the Middle East or Indo-Pacific region.

Yet, as Harvard’s Joseph Nye and others have pointed out, our main ace in the hole is not our military strength but our American values of inclusivity, pluralism, and liberty — sometimes referred to as “soft power.” Boots on the ground are not what’s needed.

We are too unimaginative when it comes to predicting tomorrow’s conflicts and taking preventive action. A recent survey by the Council on Foreign Relations queried experts yet found a list of conflict zones my 7-year-old son could have conjured up: North Korea, the Middle East, Venezuela.

The world remains a dangerous place. It does not need a tougher sheriff, issuing empty threats by Twitter or arming itself with the biggest weapon systems. It needs leadership, backed by a cadre of experienced diplomats, that can manage festering crises before they escalate.

A more realistic sign for C-3PO in the year 2020 would be one that read: “Manage Wars.”

Lionel Beehner, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is an assistant professor and director of research at West Point's Modern War Institute.

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clubofinfo · 7 years ago

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Expert: Our capitalist elites have used propaganda, money and the marginalizing of their critics to erase the first three of philosopher John Locke’s elements of the perfect state: liberty, equality and freedom. They exclusively empower the fourth, property. Liberty and freedom in the corporate state mean the liberty and freedom of corporations and the rich to exploit and pillage without government interference or regulatory oversight. And the single most important characteristic of government is its willingness to use force, at home and abroad, to protect the interests of the property classes. — Chris Hedges, “Corpses of Souls” Here’s a thought experiment for social workers assisting homeless, recovery (drug, alcohol), re-entry (coming out of prison), and those diagnosed with mental and physical health challenges: Take a college educated “professional,” George, and then a “homeless” person, Julia, and put them in the same tattered clothes, take away phone, ID, money, credit cards, blindfold them, transport them from say Portland, Oregon, and to Toronto, Canada, or Buffalo, NY, and drop them off in an alley in a run-down part of town at 3 am on a Monday. Then challenge them to get back to square “go.” We know the homeless person, or the former incarcerated person, or the recovering addict will be home — Portland – within 48 hours. The professional, either in FIRE (finance insurance real estate) or any number of elite fields, will tank quickly. Especially if we were to drop that person off outside of town into a homeless camp. In my field of social work, many employers I talk to would rather have a former inmate, a former felon, who has gotten his or her life back on track, on the job. Really. There are even Harvard (who cares that it’s Ivy League, by the way?) studies to that effect. Of course, the rationale is based on company loyalty; an ex-con would really appreciate his freedoms now; hard work – workaholic – since all that time in the lobotomizing prison system would kick in an obsessiveness toward keeping busy, keeping moving. Then, some employers I talk to think most workers or potential workers are the problem, would steal time, money, goods, and things from the company. So, the felon has already done time, knows the depravity of prison systems, and would stay on the up and up without jeopardizing incarceration. Plus, in the US, companies get a tax break for hiring former felons! The fields of social work are growing, yet the pay is shrinking, the work conditions are ramped up, the management are bizarre examples of former social workers themselves (very anti worker, very hard on outside-the-box thinkers, and completely blank on what radical social work is and how to even apply the principles of that form of social work). Most non-profits do the dirty work of what a society is looking more and more to not provide for – mental health care for a bigger and bigger share of the USA population; disability services for a larger and larger swath of Americans mentally, psychologically, intellectually, socially, physically, and spiritually broken or disabled; financial, employment, education, housing assistance for an ever-growing population of humans who are not able to work and live and transport and find health care for themselves in this New Gilded Age. The non-profits I have worked for are top-heavy, have very little money put aside or earmarked or grant-provided for the workers; many of the non-profits hire development associates, upper management shills, PR folk, marketing and events coordinators; many are in shining and remodeled digs while casting shadows on the street people they supposedly care about. Some of us in social services have come from other professions, and like me, many are former teachers. Very few are radical thinkers, and many are just trying to hang on. When you work in an at-will state, where organizing and workplace coordinating is akin to communism, and when you work for people younger and the same age as yourself who once had their lives more or less put together but who are today on the streets, in shelters, in vans on the side of the road, and who have to pay for legal debts – hospital bills, legal financial obligations, debts coming at them via mean-assed debt collectors and repo men — the idea of Six Degrees of Separation comes cold like melting glaciers as really Only One Degree of Separation. Manfred Max Neef calls this country, USA — richest, biggest land rip off abusing, military mightiest, vastest financial thieving, culturally insanest — underdeveloping. I mean, your country is the most dramatic example that you can find. I have gone as far as saying — and this is a chapter of a book of mine that is published next month in England, the title of which is Economics Unmasked. There is a chapter called “The United States, an Underdeveloping Nation,” which is a new category. We have developed, underdeveloped and developing. Now you have underdeveloping. And your country is an example, in which the one percent of the Americans, you know, are doing better and better and better, and the 99 percent is going down, in all sorts of manifestations. People living in their cars now and sleeping in their cars, you know, parked in front of the house that used to be their house — thousands of people. Millions of people, you know, have lost everything. But the speculators that brought about the whole mess, oh, they are fantastically well off. No problem. No problem. This short piece – rare for me at DV, LA Progressive, and other places, since I still believe that concision is not a favorable tool to understanding the complexities of our society and systems thinking – is all tied to really what many Americans WAY WAY before Trump’s family set foot in this country have always believed about Mexico or New Orleans or Dominican Republic or South Africa or Philippines or Afghanistan (just replace a country like Haiti with any number of 120 countries in the world) have said, stated, written and professed undiplomatically and through the Economic Hit Men: They are ALL shitholes. I have had plenty of people in my 61 years living on this planet, after being in dozens of countries (I have lived and worked in), fellow (sic) Americans (sic) who thought my white skin and my little lists of three college degrees and my male status entitled my fellow Americans to rant on and on about how dirty, backward, primitive, slow-witted, poor, inefficient, shady, criminal this or that country is — countries from which I lived, traveled and worked and those many have not stepped foot in, beyond FOX News and Hollywood propaganda. That Trump now voices what Americans have believed, and economists have practiced, and our military branches have reflected – America is Great, and the rest of the rabble (well, maybe not Norway or Finland — that’s about it for that pure white race places) are part and particle the shitholes Trump so undiplomatically states the world is. In reality, though, if we look at the definition of “shit”/”hole,” it all comes back to this warring, militant, earth-killing, global lording over country called the United States of America. Infantilized, lobotomized, one-paycheck/broken bone/auto accident/employment termination/criminal justice involved/foreclosure AWAY from shithole status. This poor white and now multi-race co-opting country of people who have zero idea how and why its more or less isolated little status among the global actors is set in their minds as “okay . . . Great/Yes We Can/Make It Great Again/Numero Uno” because of the shit we serve up to the rest of the world vis-à-vis military and economic and resource plundering insanity. While our own country is full of shit-holes– full of systems of penury and debasement and depravity and delusion and destruction and increasing wrath upon its own populations – we see this spasm of protestations from the Liberal Democrats Who Support All Those Democratic Party apparatchiks of regime change and collateral damage carried out on what Bush or Obama see as the “shit hole Iraqis and Afghans and Libyans and Yeminis and Somalis.” Imagine, the democrats crying about Trump and his redneck Americanism. Which party said we had to bomb them back to the stone age? Which party wrapped up Japanese Americans in barbed wire luxury? Which party helped to wipe out 3 million Vietnamese? Who bombed, razed, illegally mined, economically double-triple tapped the world’s other shit holes? Way-way before two-bit The Apprentice got raves and ratings and millions. It’s Trump who is still on record ranting about the Central Park Five, found to be falsely convicted and held in prison (now released), stating months ago, after the five men were acquitted, found to be innocent and released, that “they are guilty of the rape, man.” His Trump Faulty Towers Corp. paid or two full page ads in the NYT ranting about “their guilty” after they were found innocent. Again, a reset button is necessary when looking at the big billionaire’s motley mind and fourth grade thinking style: who is he, how did he get here, where did he learn, how did he exist in this country, what is his American soul made of . . . . The who, why, when, what, where and how are questions Americans of all political stripes never ask. We can tap dance around those “deplorables” voting for George Wallace or Barry Goldwater or George Bush or Donald Trump, or dance around those millionaires who see other shitholes producing other super predators, or two-step into more delusion when Super Rich Hollywood defines You and Me and Success and Failure, or when Amazon dot com comes crashing into your local bricks and mortar, or how the millionaire media or celebrities come into your living rooms via cable or iPhone and kidnap your loved ones, young and old. Seriously, which shithole shall we concentrate on in the US of A, the engine of shit holes, the Mother of All Shitholes, coming to a neighborhood nearby, or Flint Michigan, or Charlottesville, or Fortune 1000 boardroom or dis-education college faculty and administration? Who in your group of friends and acquaintances even knows what economics is for? Manfred Max Neef again: One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy. Two, development is about people and not about objects. Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth. Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services. Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible. And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life. I am sorry to say in my years as a journalist, college teacher, union organizer, social worker, environmentalist, urban planner, etc., I have run into more shithole thinkers in this country than all the countries I’ve been to combined, by far. If you want to run into real thugs, real criminals, real depravity, delusional thinking, disgusting thinking, real retrograde philosophy, real illiteracy, real infantilism, come to a town near me – Pacific Northwest, or Texas or Arizona, or anywhere I have done my time in. Not many anti-Trump people would question the root cause of his shithole role running this shithole country, and the mirror is not large enough for self-reflection: biggest military in the world, biggest land mass stolen from original nations, biggest area cleared of natural ecosystems, biggest group of la-la-land thinkers. Magical thinkers, the lot of us, really. Let the knee-jerking go on and on as Americans attempt to parse out who they are in that mirror mirror on the wall! Unless you have ended the mythical belief in this country’s prowess and greatness and stopped hiding from this society’s advanced malignant cancer called predatory and consumer capitalism, then you are the Trump in that mirror, without or without the orange glow! Max-Neef: First of all, we need cultured economists again, who know the history, where they come from, how the ideas originated, who did what, and so on and so on; second, an economics now that understands itself very clearly as a subsystem of a larger system that is finite, the biosphere, hence economic growth as an impossibility; and third, a system that understands that it cannot function without the seriousness of ecosystems. And economists know nothing about ecosystems. They don’t know nothing about thermodynamics, you know, nothing about biodiversity or anything. I mean, they are totally ignorant in that respect. And I don’t see what harm it would do, you know, to an economist to know that if the beasts would disappear, he would disappear as well, because there wouldn’t be food anymore. But he doesn’t know that, you know, that we depend absolutely from nature. But for these economists we have, nature is a subsystem of the economy. I mean, it’s absolutely crazy. http://clubof.info/

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Wilmer Cabrera, loyal lieutenant in Colombia’s dream team, thriving in MLS

Houstons new head coach was a stable presence in the maverick Colombian team of the 1990s and hes brought calm and clarity to the MLS pacesetters

Glory and brutality were companions in Colombian football during the 1990s as the national team reached three World Cups amid a bloody drug war that did not spare sport. If Carlos Valderrama, Rene Higuita and Tino Asprilla were the maverick stars, Wilmer Cabrera was a more stable and less erratic presence.

Cabrera has brought calmness and a clarity of vision to his post-playing careers, first in a role where those qualities are indispensable as a helicopter pilot then in a febrile sphere where they are less common. In a measured rise over 14 years he has progressed from coaching youth teams in New York to his current role in charge of an MLS pacesetter in the embryonic 2017 season.

The Houston Dynamo have two wins from two games, like their opponents this Saturday, the Portland Timbers. Its the style as much as the results that have drawn attention: Cabrera deployed a rambunctious 4-3-3 in a 2-1 opening-weekend win over last years MLS Cup champions, the Seattle Sounders, and a 3-1 victory over the Columbus Crew.

There were handsome goals from the Honduran winger, Romell Quioto, and the Mexican striker Erick Torres, who arrived as a costly Designated Player in 2015 and finally found the net against Seattle after 22 fruitless MLS appearances. He also scored against Columbus.

Talking this week at the Dynamos training ground, Cabrera painted himself as above all a pragmatist, ready to adapt his tactics to his resources. Under a predecessor, the former Bolton and Burnley manager, Owen Coyle, the reverse seemed true.

I dont want to force our players to play the possession, team-oriented [approach] that I used to play because they dont feel that way, the personalities are different, Cabrera said. They like to run, they have speed and they want to attack. Our transition is quick from defending to attacking so whyre we going to change? The players are the ones that are dictating what is the best for them and right now, so far, this is the way were going to play because this is the type of player that we have.

Born in Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, Cabrera spent most of his 20s with Amrica de Cali and won 48 caps for Colombia. The defender was an unused squad member in Italia 90, missed USA 94 through injury but played in every minute of all three of his countrys matches in France four years later.

Before 1990, Colombia had only once reached a World Cup in 1962. But their 1990s sides had personalities as big as their hair, little turnover of key players, technical excellence, an inspired creator in Valderrama and an effervescent style that lifted the nation. The team had a carefree quality despite the bloody unrest being wreaked by drug lords such as Pablo Escobar, which seeped into soccer.

We were very naive in a lot of aspects. It was just playing soccer the way we felt how to play soccer, Cabrera said. Rene Higuitas scorpion kick famously illuminated a dull goalless draw with England in a friendly at Wembley in 1995.

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Less well remembered, at least in England: the goalkeeper was released the year before after seven months in prison when he was accused of acting as a go-between to help arrange the release of a girl kidnapped in a drug cartel feud. Asprilla, the gun-toting former Newcastle forward, reportedly moved to Europe after death threats.

Cabrera said that it was not until he moved to the US and saw outside media narratives about his countrys troubles that he fully understood the turbulence. Definitely it was an unbelievable time. When I talk with my kids about it, when I talk with people about it, they are amazed, Cabrera said. We didnt realise until now, when you start looking back, and you realise that it was a very rough, very tough moment and a very dangerous environment to be playing soccer.

The defender Andres Escobar was murdered outside a Medellin nightclub 10 days after scoring an own goal in a 2-1 defeat by the US in the 1994 tournament, perhaps because of the result and his blunder.

It just changed your perspective in all aspects because you never imagine that playing soccer brings you into a threatening environment, Cabrera said. For us it was fun, for us it was the way we used to live it was our lifestyle. It became a little bit difficult, it became complicated.

Wilmer Cabrera takes on Michael Owen during the Colombia-England game in 1998. Photograph: Olivier Morin/EPA

Cabrera hoped to follow Valderrama into MLS but a move never materialised. He finally arrived in New York in 2003 with a view to working as a helicopter pilot, a skill he had learned in Colombia and one that aligns with the seemingly-contradictory parts of his character and coaching strategy: cool rationality with a spirit of adventure.

He was sucked back into football, joined the Long Island Rough Riders, took coaching qualifications and rose through the ranks of the American game, including a stint as a fan development manager for MLS. I started to work on soccer from the moment I arrived, tried to learn the language, start from the bottom, and its been quite a long journey but its been very positive for me because Ive been able to work at all the levels here in the United States, he said.

In 2012-13 he was an assistant at the Colorado Rapids under his friend and former international teammate, Oscar Pareja, who is now at FC Dallas. In 2014 the 49-year-old won plaudits for the exercise in damage limitation that was life as head coach of Chivas USA in their final MLS season, which included coaxing a 15-goal campaign from Torres.

Last year, he worked for a Dynamo affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley FC Toros. They reached the United Soccer League playoffs, going a league-record 758 minutes without conceding a goal.

He was picked by Houston ahead of their interim head coach, Wade Barrett, who lifted the team to levels of obduracy and organisation reminiscent of Dominic Kinnear, Coyles long-tenured predecessor, without notably improving results. In 2016 the Dynamo finished bottom of the Western Conference.

Amid the cooing over Houstons exciting debut it has been overlooked that in their first two MLS fixtures last year they drew 3-3 with the New England Revolution then battered Dallas, 5-0. But Coyle left in May (soon surfacing in Blackburn, albeit fleetingly) during a second season of muddled performances and mixed results.

A real strength of Wilmers is that hes very clear with what he expects from the guys positionally and within the framework of the team and he knows that those points need to be reinforced on a very regular basis. I think what stands out with Wilmer is hes just as much a teacher as a coach and thats something that is really important in our league, said Matt Jordan, the Dynamo vice-president/general manager.

Cabreras bilingualism and background was a plus for US Soccer when it appointed him in 2007 to be the first Hispanic head coach of a male American national side the under-17s. The obvious influence of South American is something that weighed into our decision, Sunil Gulati, the US Soccer Federation president, told Soccer America.

It also helps in Houston, where the Dynamo play in a city that is roughly 40% Hispanic and have a roster that features eleven players born in South or Central America.

Guys from England are always, I guess, going to bring in the most money and earn the most money, but if you want to win youve got to look elsewhere. You can only have three DPs on a team so its about finding the other role players, said AJ DeLaGarza, an off-season signing from the Los Angeles Galaxy.

First of all, you want to look for good players whose characteristics translate to Major League Soccer and historically, players from countries like Honduras and Colombia and Argentina and Costa Rica and Panama, those are markets that the players transition well to our league, Jordan said.

Its an added bonus that those profiles fit the demographics of our city. On top of that, when you look at the climate here, the conditions that we have to play in here, we want players to embrace that and feel very comfortable here.

Like Parejas Dallas, Houston aim to be devastating on the counter-attack. Still, when fatigue and summer heat bite, theres the question of how an aging back line will cope against fast, incisive opponents, especially since a three-man midfield offers limited protection down the flanks. The back four against Seattle was DeLaGarza (29), Adolfo Machado (32), Leonardo (29) and DaMarcus Beasley (34). The only starters under 28 were the three forwards: Alberth Elis (21), Torres (24) and Quioto (25). But the Sounders XI was no younger.

The Dynamo had only 36% of possession against Seattle and 40% against Columbus, according to league statistics. Broken down into five-minute intervals, Houston had more of the ball than their opponents for just 25 minutes of those 180.

The bright side is were winning and were still not playing, I would say, very well. Were very dynamic going forward but defending and keeping the ball we know we have to get better, and playing a full 90-plus minutes, said DeLaGarza.

Coyle made energetic and sincere attempts to embrace MLS but ended up as another statistic confirming the truism that the leagues idiosyncratic some might say arcane nature makes it all but impregnable to outsiders.

If Cabrera thrives in Texas it will be as much a tribute to the American development system as to the legacy of the experiences he absorbed in his native land. Im a local coach like any other coach, he said. Ive lived here in the United States for 14 years, so now my lifestyle is American style. Im an American coach.