China destroys the ancient Buddhist symbol of Lhasa City in Tibet – CNN iReport

John Zerzan: We Heard Screaming

1966 was a banner year for murder sprees, a break-out year ahead of its time. Although Charles Starkweather killed eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958, it was ’66 that introduced things to come. In that year Richard Speck stabbed eight student nurses to death in their Chicago apartment; and Charles Whitman left a suicide note, climbed a tower at the University of Texas, and shot fourteen people to death. After a few years’ relative lull, in 1983 multiple shootings by post office workers engendered the term “going postal.” Since that year there have been 35 homicides in eleven incidents involving postal employees. A slowly rising number of workplace killings included, for example, an Atlanta office shooting in 1999: thirteen dead. It was in the late 1990s that the term “school shootings” entered common usage. In Springfield, Oregon in 1998, Kip Kinkel gunned down his parents, then shot 24 fellow Thurston High School students, two of them fatally. More famously, in 1999 two boys at Columbine High near Denver achieved a death toll of fifteen. Several more school rampages followed, along with shootings at shopping malls, such as the nine fatalities at an Omaha mall in 2007. There were 33 killed at Virginia Tech in 2007, and twelve dead at the Fort Hood army base in Texas in 2009, on and on, including the "Batman movie" horror at a Denver suburb this summer and now the CT elementary school body count
[snip]
U.S. data, by the way, is increasingly duplicated in other developed and developing countries. Evidently, the more technological the society, the more likely carnage will occur. And this cuts across cultural differences by and large, underlining the importance of the technological factor. Technology can’t be said to be the only factor, but it is very much related to what I think is the bottom-line reality behind these near-daily rampages: the disappearance of community––face-to-face community.

Adbusters: 1% Art

recent economic research has established a direct connection between skyrocketing art prices and income inequality, showing that “a one percentage point increase in the share of total income earned by the top 0.1% triggers an increase in art prices of about 14 percent.” It is now painfully obvious that what has been extraordinarily good for the art world over the past decades has been disastrous for the rest of the world. In the United States it is difficult to imagine any arts organization or practice that can escape the economic structures and policies that have produced this inequality. The private nonprofit model–which almost all US museums as well as alternative art organizations exist within–is dependent on wealthy donors and has its origins in the same ideology that led to the current global economic crisis .. Progressive artists, critics and curators face an existential crisis: how can we continue to justify our involvement in this art economy? At minimum, if our only choice is to participate or to abandon the art field entirely, we can stop rationalizing that participation in the name of critical or political art practices or–adding insult to injury–social justice. Any claim that we represent a progressive social force while our activities are directly subsidized by, and benefit from, the engines of inequality can only contribute to the justification of that inequality

Gay marriage: And now on to polygamy | The Economist

Adbusters: Mein Campus

A cultural shift is happening on university campuses across North America. Students are lining up for mental health services faster than they can be treated. This shift is defining a generation and marks a profound change in the mental environment on campuses today. There was a time not so long ago when students used to reach out for help with a particular life crisis: a broken relationship, the death of a loved one, difficulty with a major decision. Today, however, students are complaining that their life is the crisis, an all-pervasive sense of bleakness about themselves and their future that didn’t exist a generation ago .. More than two-thirds of student health centers say they don’t have enough resources and counselors to deal with the growing numbers of clients. Thirty-four percent of centers have ongoing waitlists

The Iraq War and Moral Injury

“Rhoda” gives lessons in life — and death – Salon.com

Adbusters: The anti-preneur manifesto

I don’t want to be a designer, a marketer, an illustrator, a brander, a social media consultant, a multi-platform guru, an interface wizard, [] a brand, a representative, an ambassador, a bestseller or a chart-topper. I don’t want to be a human resource or part of your human capital ... I want to be a lover, a teacher, a wanderer, an assembler of words, a sculptor of immaterial, a maker of instruments, a Socratic philosopher, [] an erratic muse, [] a disrupter, a creator, an apocalyptic visionary, a master of reconfiguration

Arundhati Roy: Decolonize the consumerist wasteland – Re-imagining a world beyond capitalism and communism

If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them. The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars

Labor of Love, The enforced happiness of Pret A Manger

Pret workers[] are required to master what the company calls the "Pret Behaviours," which in addition to the usual requirements—courtesy, efficiency, etc.—include "has presence," "creates a sense of fun," and "is happy to be themself" [sic] .. Pret doesn't merely want its employees to lend their minds and bodies; it wants their souls, too .. Noting that one Pret worker in London got fired soon after he tried to start a union .. Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A "mystery shopper" visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus

Glenn Greenwald: MLK’s Vehement Condemnations of US Militarism are More Relevant Than Ever

Obama's policies are a manifestation of exactly the militaristic mindset which King so eloquently denounced. Obama has always been fond of invoking King's phrase "fierce urgency of now", yet ironically, that is lifted from this anti-war speech, one that stands as a stinging repudiation of the continuous killing and violence Obama has spent the last four years unleashing on many countries around the world (Max Blumenthal suggested that Obama's second inaugural speech be entitled "I have a drone")

Jared Diamond: Do Hunter-Gatherer Societies Raise Their Children Better Than Americans Do?

Adbusters: The Great Mystery

Foremost among the great mysteries is whether or not there are other Gaias out there .. [But] If we really are the first intelligent super organism, then perhaps we are destined to populate all of existence .. If we ever achieve that, then Gaia will have reached puberty, for she will have then become reproductive, nurturing the spark of life on one dead sphere after another. From our present vantage point we cannot know such things. But I am certain of one thing: if we do not strive to love one another, and to love our planet as much as we love ourselves, then no further human progress is possible here on Earth

What Will Be Different After 12/21/12

The Moral Animal – NYTimes.com

End of the World: Hear the 2012 Prophecy … Direct from the Mouths of the Mayan Priests | Global Research

Zoe Weil of Institute for Humane Education at TED Conference on Effect of Advertising on Youth

Adbusters: The Psychic Economic of Occupy

It is common that a patient who comes in suffering from depression is actually experiencing an identity crisis that threatens their marital illusions, professional goals, political convictions or social status. That is what characterizes the start of Depth Psychotherapy: a crisis in meaning, a structural crack in our individuality. Suddenly, whether we realize it or not, the system that supported our identity – that validated our self-image and gave coherent sense to our thoughts, feelings, and actions – breaks down. It becomes insufficient or outdated. But this breakdown can’t be processed or even experienced in its entirety by our conscious ego; it is simply too complex, too painful, and too threatening. Psychologically speaking, this is why we generate a symptom: to have something that is painful enough to get us moving, but bearable enough to allow us to move. In the case of Occupy, the economic strife of the 19 percent that stands between the top 1% and the bottom 80 percent – the middle class, who is uncomfortable enough to notice something is wrong, but comfortable enough to do something about it – is the symptom ... It is important not to confuse the symptom with the spirit of psychic (or social) movement. The symptom is what detonates the movement in a conscious level. It triggers deliberate protest and reflection. But the movement that is taking place is much more complex than the housing crisis, unemployment, or drug dealing. The abuse of the top one percent and the problems of the first world middle class is what started the movement, but the spirit of the movement involves an economic system that includes every inhabitant of the planet. Not everyone occupies, but everyone suffers the consequences of financial oppression. The unseen bottom 40 percent, however, cannot protest, essentially because they live in survival mode. If Occupy is to be truly revolutionary, then, it has to reach the usually hidden social consequences of our financial system. If this movement is to truly move us, it has to operate both within and without – it has to awaken both an emotional and sociopolitical movement in all of us who participate in it. The entire psychic economic system has to be examined – individually and collectively

Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife – Print View – The Daily Beast

Sioux Nation Races to Buy Back Sacred Lands | Common Dreams

Lakota: The Revitalization of Language and the Persistence of Spirit

Bhutan Aims to Be First 100% Organic Nation

The Aftermath of Occupy Will Surpass the Gains of 1960s Activism

Adbusters: Cognitive Illusions

We live in a world where a constellation of cognitive illusions – that infinite growth can be sustained on a finite planet, that consumerism can make us happy, that corporations are persons – are dragging us into an ecological apocalypse. These cognitive illusions won’t disappear because they’ve been proven false – they must be overcome at a deeper level. We need something other than rationality, statistics, scientific thought … we need something more, even, than what has passed for activism thus far. We must spark an epiphany, a worldwide flash of insight that renders our blind spots visible once and for all. This collective awakening begins the moment we look inward and ask ourselves: Am I caught inside a grand cognitive illusion?

Why do we believe in God? and more