Monday, April 30, 2012

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges | The Implosion of Capitalism
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 3:01 PM
Subject: Chris Hedges

                              

Chris Hedges | The Implosion of Capitalism

 

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki's pregnancy, Hulk Hogan's sex tape and Kim Kardashian's denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. "[A]t times when the page is turning," Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in "Castle to Castle," "when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!"

The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society's version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of "primitive" societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet's ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.

The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. "The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx" is a series of observations derived from Marx's reading of works by historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that "lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants." He wrote of the Aztecs, "Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families." He went on, "… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household." Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel's vision of communism.

Marx, though he placed a naive faith in the power of the state to create his workers' utopia and discounted important social and cultural forces outside of economics, was acutely aware that something essential to human dignity and independence had been lost with the destruction of pre-modern societies. The Iroquois Council of the Gens, where Indians came together to be heard as ancient Athenians did, was, Marx noted, a "democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it." Marx lauded the active participation of women in tribal affairs, writing, "The women [were] allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own election. Decision given by the Council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois." European women on the Continent and in the colonies had no equivalent power.

Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The pre-modern societies of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—although they were not always idyllic and performed acts of cruelty including the mutilation, torture and execution of captives—did not subordinate the sacred to the technical. The deities they worshipped were not outside of or separate from nature.

Seventeenth century European philosophy and the Enlightenment, meanwhile, exalted the separation of human beings from the natural world, a belief also embraced by the Bible. The natural world, along with those pre-modern cultures that lived in harmony with it, was seen by the industrial society of the Enlightenment as worthy only of exploitation. Descartes argued, for example, that the fullest exploitation of matter to any use was the duty of humankind. The wilderness became, in the religious language of the Puritans, satanic. It had to be Christianized and subdued. The implantation of the technical order resulted, as Richard Slotkin writes in "Regeneration Through Violence," in the primacy of "the western man-on-the-make, the speculator, and the wildcat banker." Davy Crockett and, later, George Armstrong Custer, Slotkin notes, became "national heroes by defining national aspiration in terms of so many bears destroyed, so much land preempted, so many trees hacked down, so many Indians and Mexicans dead in the dust."

The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the "beast."

The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.

In William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," Prospero is stranded on an island where he becomes the undisputed lord and master. He enslaves the primitive "monster" Caliban. He employs the magical sources of power embodied in the spirit Ariel, who is of fire and air. The forces unleashed in the island's wilderness, Shakespeare knew, could prompt us to good if we had the capacity for self-control and reverence. But it also could push us toward monstrous evil since there are few constraints to thwart plunder, rape, murder, greed and power. Later, Joseph Conrad, in his portraits of the outposts of empire, also would expose the same intoxication with barbarity.

The anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who in 1846 was "adopted" by the Seneca, one of the tribes belonging to the Iroquois confederation, wrote in "Ancient Society" about social evolution among American Indians. Marx noted approvingly, in his "Ethnological Notebooks," Morgan's insistence on the historical and social importance of "imagination, that great faculty so largely contributing to the elevation of mankind." Imagination, as the Shakespearean scholar Harold C. Goddard pointed out, "is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two. ... Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets."

All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that have the power to transform us, are being steadily extinguished by our corporate state. Art. Education. Literature. Music. Theater. Dance. Poetry. Philosophy. Religion. Journalism. None of these disciplines are worthy in the corporate state of support or compensation. These are pursuits that, even in our universities, are condemned as impractical. But it is only through the impractical, through that which can empower our imagination, that we will be rescued as a species. The prosaic world of news events, the collection of scientific and factual data, stock market statistics and the sterile recording of deeds as history do not permit us to understand the elemental speech of imagination. We will never penetrate the mystery of creation, or the meaning of existence, if we do not recover this older language. Poetry shows a man his soul, Goddard wrote, "as a looking glass does his face." And it is our souls that the culture of imperialism, business and technology seeks to crush. Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism is not only a formation "conditioned by religion," but is an "essentially religious phenomenon," albeit one that no longer seeks to connect humans with the mysterious forces of life. Capitalism, as Benjamin observed, called on human societies to embark on a ceaseless and futile quest for money and goods. This quest, he warned, perpetuates a culture dominated by guilt, a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. It enslaves nearly all its adherents through wages, subservience to the commodity culture and debt peonage. The suffering visited on Native Americans, once Western expansion was complete, was soon endured by others, in Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed. There is a kind of justice to this. We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Friday, April 27, 2012

is it too late to save Democracy?


wrong, Ted.  Very wrong. 
Because I believe that history repeats itself, and because I believe that
those ruled by Greed will not compromise or give a single inch in their
quest to claim everything as their own, and because I see the American
People being misdirected and in great confusion, this does not mean that I
am looking forward to open warfare. 
Let me clamber up here on my soap box and repeat what I've said many times
over. 
"War does not end violence.  Violence does not bring peace.  Hatred only
begets hatred." 
Am I coming through?  Because I believe we are on a crash course with
violence and human suffering, is not something that I am advocating. 
My intent is to help spread some light on the atrocities being committed and
supported by our American Empire.  My hope is that we can energize enough
people to begin slowing down the World Corporate Empire from consolidating
power. 
Of course, without billions to back our cause, we must rely on word of mouth
and the internet.  Now even the free internet is becoming a target. 
We have already lost the Mass Media and any censorship of the internet could
bring us to desperate times. 
And yes, the Civil War was America's most costly war in human life.  We must
do what we can to avert the murder of our fellow Americans.  But even so,
this Class War is costing lives.  Every child who dies because they did not
receive decent health care is another soldier lost in the battle.  Each
elder who suffers from neglect, all of the street people facing unknown
horrors, each family turned out of their homes, all children attending
crumbling, under staffed and under funded schools, every bridge and road
that becomes unusable from neglect, all of this and more count as War
Losses.  No one is lining us up in front of long ditches, gunning us down
and dozing over our still warm bodies.  But that does not mean that this
Class War is not causing mass suffering and death. 
We have no knight in shining armor rushing up to save us.  The Ruling Class
has set conditions
 so to be almost impossible for that to happen.  So instead, we need
thousands and millions of regular citizens taking control of our government.
Can we do it at this late date without blood shed?  I guess we won't know
until we give it our best efforts. 
 
Carl Jarvis

----- Original Message -----
From: ted chittenden <mailto:tchittenden@cox.net
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
<mailto:blind-democracy@octothorp.org
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 3:48 PM
Subject: RE: govt by emergency manager


Claude and Carl:
I really get the impression that you and others on this list would
welcome just such a war. For the record, I would not! I happen to believe
that human lives are worth more than the ideas that may flow out of their
heads or the disagreements we may have with each other.
--
Ted Chittenden



_________

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

rush Limbaugh, get Thee hence.


Rush Limbaugh is not one of ours.  It doesn't matter how he got his start or who his parents are.  Rush Limbaugh sold his Soul to Greed many years ago.  He has been well rewarded for his loyalty and so he will not alter his course. 
Once people stop listening to, and stop talking about Rush Limbaugh, he'll fade away. 
Why do we get upset over some Lap Dog of the Rich, snuffling about calling real Americans silly names?  As if his opinion matters?  You and I know that the American college student is being taken to the cleaners in trade for a piece of Sheep Skin that will not come close to promising a job much less a career. 
Whenever I hear the likes of a Rush Limbaugh heap insults on these young bright eyed hopefuls, our future America, I quickly turn him off...forever.  He and his kind have no place in the America that we should be shaping for our children. 
 
Curious Carl

Whee Hee! Let's Party!

Subject: Whee Hee! Let's Party!

Just came back in the house after waving Cathy and her sister off.  Ten day trip to Merced, California to visit Marlene's son and family.  First a fast swing by Renton, to pick up their sweet old mother(the Saint), and then South down I-5.  They'll make an overnight at Grant's Pass and then on through to Merced. 
So here I sit, not quite all alone.  Three horses to feed and care for, one big shaggy dog to track in all the mud on the Great Olympic Peninsula, and Winston the Blind Wonder Cat. 
I'm thinking "Party Time!"  I'm easy to find.  Just cross the Hood Canal floating bridge and head down #101 toward Olympia.  We're just about 100 miles east of Nowhere, nestled right up against the Olympic National Forest.  Take a right at the first Black Bear and try not to run down any cougar, deer, or Elk. 
It's going to be a toasty 56 degrees today, tomorrow and for the next 4 days.  We'll crank up the old Bar BQ.  I got a freezer drawer full of steaks, some Franks and all the fixings.  You'll need to bring your own jug of hootch. 
Some fun, huh? 
Now it's time to get real and go feed the horses. 
 
Carl Jarvis
 
****
The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
 
Henry Wallace

Was Jesus Gay?

Subject: Was Jesus Gay?

Well said Rick. 
But of course you might save your breath when talking to a really serious Believer in the infallible, Devine Word of God. 
Now, as an old Agnostic, you have my agreement on everything except the certainty of God as we seem to think we know Him. 
Of course a  Universe that just appeared out of nowhere is as hard to accept as some kindly old white haired Father waving His mighty hand.  But somehow all this vastness came to be.  We limit our ability to understand it when we decide that we have the absolute Truth.  It does make some folk feel more comfortable, believing that they and their concept of God, have all the answers.  But that doesn't get us down the road very far. 
We know so much more about our Universe and about our own bodies than we knew when Jesus walked the Earth.  Most of what we know we learned in spite of our religions, not because of them. 
 
Curious Carl
 
 
Subject: Re: [acb-chat] Was Jesus Gay?
 
From Rick,
 OK.  Here is my take on this.  First of all, a disclaimer.  I am a liberal
Christian.  Yes, we still exist.  I do not take the Bible literally, but I
take it seriously.

My answer to the question to the subject line can be summed up in two words,
insufficient information.  The Gospels were written at least forty years
after Jesus died.  I believe that many of the traditions about him were
passed on before ever being written down.  Often, they were embellished, and
the Gospels used them selectively.  We have no objective biography of Jesus.

the Fourth Gospel, attributed to John, was probably the last one written.
Many of its incidents and speeches have no equivalents in the Synoptic
Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke.  In those Gospels, Jesus had an inner
circle, and only the Fourth Gospel mentions the Disciple whom Jesus loved,
without giving him a name.

I also think that we know little about the culture.  My understanding is
that in many non-Western cultures, men will embrace and kiss much more
frequently than in our culture.  My understanding is that the concept of
sexual orientation is relatively new in origin.

So, this is an issue without conclusive evidence and is probably of not much
importance to our understanding of Jesus.

_______________

none of that propaganda for me

One of the signs that propaganda is effective, is when those being propagandized think that they are being fed the Truth Everlasting. 
When I was a boy in Grade School, I eagerly read my history books.  I knew, from these true accounts, that we lived in a Free Land and were different than other people.  We only wanted the entire world to be as Free as we were.  We loved everyone, except those evil Nazis and Japs.  We Christianized our friends, the Savages who lived here, and gave them their own reservations on which they could continue living their simple lives.  We brought lots of folks in from around the world and gave them jobs.  Oh sure, we did have some few years when we actually had slaves, but we freed them, thanks to Honest Abe Lincoln, and now they share in our Freedom. 
We are very lucky to have such hard working Captains of Industry, looking out for us and creating jobs at good wages.  It's just too bad that the rest of the world can't see how wonderful our Land of the Free is, and copy us instead of being jealous and trying to destroy us. 
And most of all, we are so glad that we have access to the real Truth and none of that propaganda that clouds the minds of the rest of the world. 
 
Curious Carl
 

Monday, April 23, 2012

Jesus' Dirty Little Secret

To All who want to make a buck. 
 
In event you are tired of just plodding along in the lower end of our Land of Opportunity, here is a quick way to turn a fortune. 
Write a book.  The title is the most important part, and I'm giving it to you for free. 
"Jesus' Dirty Little Secret". 
Yup, after the title you can make up anything you want and folks will buy it.  Tuck in a few free-hand drawings and lots of quotes from the Bible.  Then just fill it up with smut and dirty innuendos
Make sure it is at least 375 pages.  Folks like to think they're getting their money's worth.  In fact, 796 pages is even better. 
List lots of references...I'll help you make up some good ones, and suggest that much of your information comes from recently discovered ancient scrolls smuggled out of the Vatican City. 
Good luck, and just mail me a copy when it's done. 
 
Carl Jarvis
--

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Uproar Over Oreo Ad With Breastfeeding Baby

Subject: Re: A bit bizarre! Uproar Over Oreo Ad With Breastfeeding Baby

How dare Oreo make something so coarse out of our number one sex symbol.  Big tits are not to be sucked on by babies.  Ugh!  How could I think of putting my eager mouth over a nipple that has baby slobber and Oreo cookie crumblies on it.  Sheesh!  Expose the entire boob, but keep them nipples covered and sacred. 
 
Curious Carl
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 4:44 PM
Subject: A bit bizarre! Uproar Over Oreo Ad With Breastfeeding Baby


 
 Hello,
    I saw this on Care2 and thought you'd like it as well.

A bit bizarre!
Uproar Over Oreo Ad With Breastfeeding Baby
by Kristina Chew April 21, 2012 11:06 pm 140 comments  Facebook  Reddit

A new Korean ad for Oreos, "milk's favorite cookie," created by Cheil
Worldwide, Kraft's ad agency, has sparked its share of discussion. The ad
(you can see it here) shows a baby "caught in the act" of nursing at his
mother's breast, holding onto an Oreo cookie. The ad, says Mary Elizabeth
Williams in Salon, appears to be "heavily Photoshopped": The baby's
Oreo-clutching hand is awkwardly positioned (suggesting that the hand and
arm in the ad are not actually attached to the rest of the baby) and his or
her skin, and that of his or her mother, are quite blemish-free.

Kraft has insisted that the ad was made for "a one-time use at an
advertising forum and was not intended for public distribution or use with
consumers." Fox Nation has said the ad is a "shocker" while ABC News has
called it "controversial" due to its showing an "exposed nipple."

At a time when Janet Jackson's 2004 Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" has
led the FCC to fine CBS $550,000 for "fleeting nudity" - a fine which the
Obama Administration has asked the Supreme Court to review - it's not
surprising that the nursing baby Oreo addhas attracted such attention,
whether or not it has actually been used or not.

But why should the image of a baby breast feeding be  considered so
controversial? Williams cites MSNBC writer Kavita Varma-White, who
criticized the ad as "kind of. icky. about the way this ad blatantly
sexualizes breast-feeding" and declared the ad to be of the
"women-being-objectified" sort.

Williams argues that the image is not "automatically sexualized" at all, but
is "a memorable photo, it's the knowing look in the baby's eyes, combined
with intimate closeness of the scene, that makes it compelling." Saying that
the nursing baby ad is "sexualized" show how, for some segments of our
society, the image of a naked breast (horrors!) means one and one thing only
(sex). This is thinking that contributes to banning, or attempts to ban,
breast-feeding in public.

Frankly, I raised an eyebrow at the ad because it shows a baby holding onto
the Oreo as if to say, please do start kids eating sugary products as soon
as possible. That is a troubling message and even more so when there have
been reports of younger and younger children needing extensive dental work
for a dozen-plus cavities, not to mention the rising number of children who
are overweight. The nutritional advantages of feeding a child breast milk
are well-documented - Oreos aren't exactly the basis of a healthy diet, at
any age.

Related Care2 Coverage

The Real View of Free Formula Samples - Open Your Eyes

Facebook Sends Mixed Messages to Breastfeeding Moms


Regards,
Claude Everett
"Labor is prior to and independent of
capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if

labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln,
Congressional address 1861

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Fw:

 
Well, to each his/her own. 
Would it matter if Jesus was Gay or Straight?  He turned European for the Western world and it didn't do much good in so far as spreading Love and Peace and Respect for all of God's creation.  So let's make Him Gay for a while.  But a warning to Gays and Lesbians.  If you think you've been persecuted before, look out! 
Jesus was a Jew, and see what that's done for Jews?  His mother was a Virgin and we really get off raping and violating virgins.  His adopted father was a carpenter and we bust up their unions any chance we get and call them Blue Collar Labor. 
So why stop at Jesus being Gay.  Let's take a good look at all of the disciples, sitting around together eating and getting soused on new wine.  Did we ever hear of any of their wives?  Or their many children?  No! 
But then the whole Human Race began on an incestual basis.  God made Adam and took from him a rib from which He created Eve.  This made Eve part of Adam just as sure as if she were his sister.  And they had two sons, Cain and Able, who had to travel to the Land of Nod to seek wives.  Now since God had only created Adam and Eve, we can only surmise that Cain and Able met and had sex with Apes.  This is nothing against apes, but it would go a long way toward explaining today's people.  Naturally we're all messed up. 
Maybe it's time we invented a new God and wrote a book that makes sense. 
 
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 3:48 PM


   Excerpt: "After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I
felt I was left with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a
century of my Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been
homosexual."
 
A Good Friday procession along the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem's old city this
year. (photo: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)



Was Jesus Gay? Probably By Paul Oestreicher, Guardian UK
 
*******
   Excerpt: "After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I
felt I was left with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a
century of my Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been
homosexual."
 
A Good Friday procession along the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem's old city this
year. (photo: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)



Was Jesus Gay? Probably By Paul Oestreicher, Guardian UK

22 April 12

 

I preached on Good Friday that Jesus's intimacy with John suggested he was
gay as I felt deeply it had to be addressed.


reaching on Good Friday on the last words of Jesus as he was being executed
makes great spiritual demands on the preacher. The Jesuits began this
tradition. Many Anglican churches adopted it. Faced with this privilege in
New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, my second home, I was painfully
aware of the context, a church deeply divided worldwide over issues of
gender and sexuality. Suffering was my theme. I felt I could not escape the
suffering of gay and lesbian people at the hands of the church, over many
centuries.

Was that divisive issue a subject for Good Friday? For the first time in my
ministry I felt it had to be. Those last words of Jesus would not let me
escape. "When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing
near, he said to his mother, 'Woman behold your son!' Then he said to the
disciple. 'Behold your mother!' And from that hour the disciple took her to
his own home."

That disciple was John whom Jesus, the gospels affirm, loved in a special
way. All the other disciples had fled in fear. Three women but only one man
had the courage to go with Jesus to his execution. That man clearly had a
unique place in the affection of Jesus. In all classic depictions of the
Last Supper, a favourite subject of Christian art, John is next to Jesus,
very often his head resting on Jesus's breast. Dying, Jesus asks John to
look after his mother and asks his mother to accept John as her son. John
takes Mary home. John becomes unmistakably part of Jesus's family.

Jesus was a Hebrew rabbi. Unusually, he was unmarried. The idea that he had
a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene is the stuff of fiction, based
on no biblical evidence. The evidence, on the other hand, that he may have
been what we today call gay is very strong. But even gay rights campaigners
in the church have been reluctant to suggest it. A significant exception was
Hugh Montefiore, bishop of Birmingham and a convert from a prominent Jewish
family. He dared to suggest that possibility and was met with disdain, as
though he were simply out to shock.

After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I felt I was left
with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a century of my
Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been homosexual. Had he been
devoid of sexuality, he would not have been truly human. To believe that
would be heretical.

Heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual: Jesus could have been any of these.
There can be no certainty which. The homosexual option simply seems the most
likely. The intimate relationship with the beloved disciple points in that
direction. It would be so interpreted in any person today. Although there is
no rabbinic tradition of celibacy, Jesus could well have chosen to refrain
from sexual activity, whether he was gay or not. Many Christians will wish
to assume it, but I see no theological need to. The physical expression of
faithful love is godly. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a kind of
puritanism that has long tainted the churches.

All that, I felt deeply, had to be addressed on Good Friday. I saw it as an
act of penitence for the suffering and persecution of homosexual people that
still persists in many parts of the church. Few readers of this column are
likely to be outraged any more than the liberal congregation to whom I was
preaching, yet I am only too aware how hurtful these reflections will be to
most theologically conservative or simply traditional Christians. The
essential question for me is: what does love demand? For my critics it is
more often: what does scripture say? In this case, both point in the same
direction.

Whether Jesus was gay or straight in no way affects who he was and what he
means for the world today. Spiritually it is immaterial. What matters in
this context is that there are many gay and lesbian followers of Jesus -
ordained and lay - who, despite the church, remarkably and humbly remain its
faithful members. Would the Christian churches in their many guises more
openly accept, embrace and love them, there would be many more disciples.

 

Regards,
Claude Everett
"Labor is prior to and independent of
capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if

labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln,
Congressional address 1861

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Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
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Friday, April 20, 2012

Secret Service

Subject: Re: Secret Service

Borowitz is always fun reading.  Sad to say however, the underpaid hooker is getting more coverage than the last 12 drone bombings.  Maybe coverage was a bad choice of words, but I didn't want to say she had been uncovered.  
Still, it speaks poorly of a service that is supposed to be secret.  They can't even go undercover without being uncovered. 
 
Carl Jarvis
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 12:45 PM
Subject: FW: Secret Service



-----Original Message-----
From: borowitzreport.com
[mailto:andy=borowitzreport.com@email.borowitzreport.com] On Behalf Of
borowitzreport.com
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 12:48 PM
To: miriamvieni@optonline.net
Subject: Secret Service

April 20, 2012

Hookers Downgrade US Credit Rating

Shortchanging by Secret Service Draws Strong Rebuke

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - Days after Secret Service agents
shortchanged a group of prostitutes in Colombia, the international trade
group representing hookers downgraded the United States' credit rating from
AAA to B.

The strong rebuke from the International Alliance of Professional Escorts
came after a Secret Service agent reportedly paid one of its members $30 for
an $800 service, or only 4% of the stated price.

The statement from the International Alliance of Professional Escorts said
that in downgrading the United States' credit rating it was sending a clear
message that its "members should be aware that doing business with the
government of the United States carries with it a significant risk."

"We are urging our members to avoid conducting transactions with the United
States and to focus on more reliable customers, like the International
Monetary Fund," the statement added.

Just hours after the announcement from the escorts' group, the U.S. Congress
passed the following resolution blasting the Secret Service for its actions:
"We strongly denounce the Secret Service for consorting with prostitutes,
which has traditionally been Congress's role."

But it was not all bad news this week for the Secret Service, which today
reported a 5000% jump in enlistment.

The agency said that enlistment offices across the country have been packed
with prospective agents, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who abruptly
dropped out of the Presidential race to join. Get a free subscription to
the Borowitz Report here.

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Americans have a lot invested in believing themselves to be the "Good Guys."

Subject: Americans have a lot invested in believing themselves to be the "Good Guys."

After reading this article you will understand why I cannot vote for President Obama.  He is owned by the same International Corporate Empire that has seized control of most Western governments. 
Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, and Reagan differ only in personality, and probably brains.  But their Master is the same.  And that Master is growing stronger by the year. 
As you read, remind yourselves that what the UK and the USA did to the people of the Chagos islands, they can do to you and your loved ones. 
 
Carl Jarvis
(Dad to some and Grandpa to others)
 
Americans have a lot invested in believing themselves to be the "Good Guys."
Leaving aside the fact that that moniker (along with the "Bad Guys") is
embarrassingly childish, it also betrays an ignorance of history.  We are
not "special."  We are people.  Like other people.  We are just as
corruptible as anyone else.  Yet it's stunning how many Americans don't want
to believe it.  When someone like journalist John Pilger catalogues a few of
our crimes and atrocities, he's shunned and denigrated. 
But he continues.  As we must.  We who believe in the importance of
resistance.  Of resisting injustice and calling it out.  Even when we feel
like giving up.  -Lisa Simeone
 
The world war on democracy
by John Pilger
 
Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent
woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was
the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy. I first
glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a
tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian
Ocean. The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a
hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers
the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, "Keep smiling girls!"
Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, "I didn't
have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in
the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six
children there. That's why they couldn't legally throw us out of our own
homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they
tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread
rumours we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs."
In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed
to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony,
be "swept" and "sanitised" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base
could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were
inseparable from our pets," said Lizette, "When the American soldiers
arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick
shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded
up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the
trucks' exhausts. You could hear them crying."
Lisette and her family and hundreds of islanders were forced on to a rusting
steamer bound for Mauritius, a distance of 2,500 miles. They were made to
sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertiliser: bird shit. The weather was
rough; everyone was ill; two women miscarried. Dumped on the docks at Port
Louis, Lizette's youngest children, Jollice, and Regis, died within a week
of each other. "They died of sadness," she said. "They had heard all the
talk and seen the horror of what had happened to the dogs. They knew they
were leaving their home forever. The doctor in Mauritius said he could not
treat sadness."
This act of mass kidnapping was carried out in high secrecy. In one official
file, under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", the Foreign Office legal
adviser exhorts his colleagues to cover their actions by "re-classifying"
the population as "floating" and to "make up the rules as we go along".
Article 7 of the statute of the International Criminal Court says the
"deportation or forcible transfer of population" is a crime against
humanity. That Britain had committed such a crime -- in exchange for a
$14million discount off an American Polaris nuclear submarine - was not on
the agenda of a group of British "defence" correspondents flown to the
Chagos by the Ministry of Defence when the US base was completed. "There is
nothing in our files," said a ministry official, "about inhabitants or an
evacuation."
Today, Diego Garcia is crucial to America's and Britain's war on democracy.
The heaviest bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan was launched from its vast
airstrips, beyond which the islanders' abandoned cemetery and church stand
like archaeological ruins. The terraced garden where Lisette laughed for the
camera is now a fortress housing the "bunker-busting" bombs carried by
bat-shaped B-2 aircraft to targets in two continents; an attack on Iran will
start here. As if to complete the emblem of rampant, criminal power, the CIA
added a Guantanamo-style prison for its "rendition" victims and called it
Camp Justice.
What was done to Lisette's paradise has an urgent and universal meaning, for
it represents the violent, ruthless nature of a whole system behind its
democratic facade, and the scale of our own indoctrination to its messianic
assumptions, described by Harold Pinter as a "brilliant, even witty, highly
successful act of hypnosis." Longer and bloodier than any war since 1945,
waged with demonic weapons and a gangsterism dressed as economic policy and
sometimes known as globalisation, the war on democracy is unmentionable in
western elite circles. As Pinter wrote, "it never happened even while it was
happening". Last July, American historian William Blum published his
"updated summary of the record of US foreign policy". Since the Second World
War, the US has:
- Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them
democratically-elected.
- Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.
- Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
- Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
- Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in
69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The
"enemy" changes in name - from communism to Islamism -- but mostly it is the
rise of democracy independent of western power or a society occupying
strategically useful territory, deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands.
The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the
west, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications,
nominally freest journalism and most admired academy. That the most numerous
victims of terrorism - western terrorism - are Muslims is unsayable, if it
is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of
the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme
jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of western policy
("Operation Cyclone") is known to specialists but otherwise suppressed.
While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War
in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from
Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion.
Under the Indonesian tyrant Suharto, anointed "our man" by Thatcher, more
than a million people were slaughtered. Described by the CIA as "the worst
mass murder of the second half of the 20th century", the estimate does not
include a third of the population of East Timor who were starved or murdered
with western connivance, British fighter-bombers and machine guns.
These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record
Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of
power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime
of un-coercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of consumer
advertising to sound-bites on BBC news and now the ephemera of social media.
It is as if writers as watchdogs are extinct, or in thrall to a sociopathic
zeitgeist, convinced they are too clever to be duped. Witness the stampede
of sycophants eager to deify Christopher Hitchens, a war lover who longed to
be allowed to justify the crimes of rapacious power. "For almost the first
time in two centuries", wrote Terry Eagleton, "there is no eminent British
poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the
western way of life". No Orwell warns that we do not need to live in a
totalitarian society to be corrupted by totalitarianism. No Shelley speaks
for the poor, no Blake proffers a vision, no Wilde reminds us that
"disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original
virtue". And grievously no Pinter rages at the war machine, as in American
Football:
Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things...
We blew their b---s into shards of dust,
Into shards of f---ing dust...
Into shards of f---ing dust go all the lives blown there by Barack Obama,
the Hopey Changey of western violence. Whenever one of Obama's drones wipes
out an entire family in a faraway tribal region of Pakistan, or Somalia, or
Yemen, the American controllers in front of their computer-game screens type
in "Bugsplat". Obama likes drones and has joked about them with journalists.
One of his first actions as president was to order a wave of Predator drone
attacks on Pakistan that killed 74 people. He has since killed thousands,
mostly civilians; drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of the
lungs of children and leave body parts festooned across scrubland.
Remember the tear-stained headlines when Brand Obama was elected:
"momentous, spine-tingling": the Guardian. "The American future," wrote
Simon Schama, "is all vision, numinous, unformed, light-headed ..." The San
Francisco Chronicle's columnist saw a spiritual "lightworker [who can] usher
in a new way of being on the planet". Beyond the drivel, as the great
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had predicted, a military coup was taking
place in Washington, and Obama was their man. Having seduced the anti-war
movement into virtual silence, he has given America's corrupt military
officer class unprecedented powers of state and engagement. These include
the prospect of wars in Africa and opportunities for provocations against
China, America's largest creditor and new "enemy" in Asia. Under Obama, the
old source of official paranoia Russia, has been encircled with ballistic
missiles and the Russian opposition infiltrated. Military and CIA
assassination teams have been assigned to 120 countries; long planned
attacks on Syria and Iran beckon a world war. Israel, the exemplar of US
violence and lawlessness by proxy, has just received its annual pocket money
of $3bn together with Obama's permission to steal more Palestinian land.
Obama's most "historic" achievement is to bring the war on democracy home to
America. On New Year's Eve, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA), a law that grants the Pentagon the legal right to kidnap both
foreigners and US citizens and indefinitely detain, interrogate and torture,
or even kill them. They need only "associate" with those "belligerent" to
the United States. There will be no protection of law, no trial, no legal
representation. This is the first explicit legislation to abolish habeus
corpus (the right to due process of law) and effectively repeal the Bill of
Rights of 1789.
On 5 January, in an extraordinary speech at the Pentagon, Obama said the
military would not only be ready to "secure territory and populations"
overseas but to fight in the "homeland" and provide "support to the civil
authorities". In other words, US troops will be deployed on the streets of
American cities when the inevitable civil unrest takes hold.
America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the
consequence of a "market" extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the
transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall
Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated
African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic
corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but
neither is it democracy in any recognisable form, regardless of the placebo
politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential
campaign, says the Washington Post, will "feature a clash of philosophies
rooted in distinctly different views of the economy". This is patently
false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is
to create the pretence of political choice where there is none.
The same shadow is across Britain and much of Europe where social democracy,
an article of faith two generations ago, has fallen to the central bank
dictators. In David Cameron's "big society", the theft of 84bn pounds in
jobs and services even exceeds the amount of tax "legally" avoid by
piratical corporations. Blame rests not with the far right, but a cowardly
liberal political culture that has allowed this to happen, which, wrote
Hywel Williams in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, "can itself be a form of
self righteous fanaticism". Tony Blair is one such fanatic. In its
managerial indifference to the freedoms that it claims to hold dear,
bourgeois Blairite Britain has created a surveillance state with 3,000 new
criminal offences and laws: more than for the whole of the previous century.
The police clearly believe they have an impunity to kill. At the demand of
the CIA, cases like that of Binyam Mohamed, an innocent British resident
tortured and then held for five years in Guantanamo Bay, will be dealt with
in secret courts in Britain "in order to protect the intelligence agencies"
- the torturers.
This invisible state allowed the Blair government to fight the Chagos
islanders as they rose from their despair in exile and demanded justice in
the streets of Port Louis and London. "Only when you take direct action,
face to face, even break laws, are you ever noticed," said Lisette. "And the
smaller you are, the greater your example to others." Such an eloquent
answer to those who still ask, "What can I do?"
I last saw Lisette's tiny figure standing in driving rain alongside her
comrades outside the Houses of Parliament. What struck me was the enduring
courage of their resistance. It is this refusal to give up that rotten power
fears, above all, knowing it is the seed beneath the snow.
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/the-world-war-on-democracy

Higher Education's Role in Occupy and Related Social Justice Movements

Subject: Re: Higher Education's Role in Occupy and Related Social Justice Movements

Many white collar professionals, including those in higher education, feel that they are "safe", even if they see a general unraveling of democracy around them.  They are fearful, although they might deny it, of being pushed out of their safe nest if they make waves. 
There is always a sense of, "If I keep my head down I'll be all right".  This has always turned out to be the wrong road to travel, but travel it they must. 
The Ruling Class will steal from them everything including their dignity.  And when the outcasts rise up and take control, those who tried to play it safe will be cursed and thrown to the wolves just the same as the Ruling Class. 
But they never learn.  And that is sad because they could be on the cutting edge of change.  If only they had courage. 
 
Carl Jarvis
 
 

Obama holds his future in his own hands


We're all flawed.  But it seems to me that many on this list are less flawed than folks I hear on...say, Fox TV.  There's a difference between you and I having a pissing match over some little detail that we disagree on, but still agree on the more global issue, than with those whose flaws are Black Holes to human destruction. 
Regarding the Florida presidential scam.  The presidential election was stolen.  Jesus Christ could have been running and Bush would have had enough phony votes, and enough Jesus Christ votes would have disappeared, to throw the election. 
If I decide to vote for someone other than Obama, and he loses the election, it will not be my failure.  Obama could have a huge majority vote if he would stand up for the American People and stop catering to the whims of the Ruling Class. 
 
Carl Jarvis
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 7:52 AM
Subject: Re: Activists Gather in Washington to Debate the Future of the Corporation

I agree that Ralph Nadar has contributed mightily to the common weal and has done much more good than harm.
 
But, he like all humans is flawed on some occasions, and exhibited some self-defeating and Narcissic tendencies when he ran for prez in 2000. While not exclusively his fault alone he did contribute especially in Florida to the election of G.W. Bush.
 
Again I forgive him for that and applaud most of his efforts over the years, but facts are indeed facts...For that matter hindsight is also still twenty twenty too.
 
 
 
 

Fw: My thoughts on this latest ObamaGate deal.

Subject: Re: My thoughts on this latest ObamaGate deal.

We just love a good scandal.  It takes no effort to blabber along over Secret Service staff and Hookers.  But to discuss issues that might bring down our nation?  Gads!  That takes some time and some thinking.  I hear that the brain must be exercised in order to maintain its size and its usefulness.  My bet is that if we went about opening the heads of people we would find little walnut sized brains bouncing about. 
 
Curious Carl
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 8:08 AM
Subject: My thoughts on this latest ObamaGate deal.

I think that what's going on here with the Secret Service Scandal and the
GSA fiasco is that people dig things up merely because of the guy who's in
office.  There have been scandals and improprieties that have taken place
with each president, whether it is Obama, the bush crowd, Nixon or Kennedy,
and now that we have internet, cellular service and youtube, things are a
never-ending carnival of video.
The race thing plays right into, and you can tell by listening to the
republican the talking heads, whose mission it is to find the most ugly,
obscene and disgraceful news and put it on the front pages of their news
rags or on their lousy three hour radio shows.  Oh,
Romney put his dog on the roof of his car; so, when Obama wrote his book, he
admitted that he ate dog, so he's worse. 
Bush 41 didn't know what a scanner was; and
Gore made up climate change.  Nixon had a
Chinese hooker or mistress; Jimmy
carter was the most incompetent president ever. 
When it comes down to it, everyone has baggage; nobody's perfect. 
Romney will come to the center and piss off
Tea
Baggers, while Obama will anger his base by saying things he needn't say to
gain favor for the majority of votes. 
When it all comes down to it, you pull you lever and takes your chances. 
Dogs a

More Journey to the center of the mind

Joe and All Old Timers(pre 1960)
 
Well, my dad set  up his radio repair shop in half of my bed room in 1938.  So from the time I was 3 years old, I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Big Bands and Popular Radio Programs.  I have managed to enjoy some of every type of music that followed those swing years.  Somehow I even go back further, to the music of the twenty's and earlier.  Maybe it was also being played on the radios that my dad was repairing.  While I can work my way through almost any musical innovation, the one complaint I have that is common to most of today's music is that singers can't get the sound to come from any further down than the back of their throats.  We were taught that we had something called a diaphragm, and we were to always sing from it.  I swear that I feel as if some of our modern song birds sound as if they have been seized by the throat and are being strangled. 
This also makes understanding of lyrics difficult.  Both the strangulation and a tendency for our youth to try mumbling without moving their lips...while being strangled. 
 
I can only hold my own breath in anticipation of what next year will bring. 
 
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 5:42 PM
Subject: Re: Journey to the center of the mind

It was prettypsydoleic or whatever though at the time wasn't it?
 
Man, brother we must be getting old.
 
Now, we know how we punks in the sixties felt about those old timers who though say big band music was boring and didn't understand how it might have been either revolutionary or at least well performed for its time.
 
Ok so revolutionary isn't the right term and certainly not in a political context.
 
 
But, many things are pretty differnt or were. some things touch chords, so to speak, and still others will fade in to the nether world.
 
This song isn't revolutionary but it is a good tune and one that is a part of my nostalgia as expressed.
 
It doesn't make Nugent a hero or a villain in and of itself. He's a bastard on other accounts.
 
But, he did, and I won't alter this opinion have a certain ammount of talent as vacuous as that is.
 

Journey to the center of the mind

Joe and Lovers of All Music, Everywhere.   
If you promise to keep this between the two of us, I have a dirty little secret.  I have everything Dylan ever wrote and recorded.  When I crank up the old Victrola, Cathy runs for the truck with her hands covering her ears. 
Just because I was forced to sing from the diaphragms, and believe that this produces the most pleasant tones, doesn't mean that I don't get down with some really great stuff that has been forced out through pinched nostrils. 
So much of what we love in music is connected to those special memories. 
In my drinking days, or should that be spelled, daze, I hung around several taverns and dance halls where swing music came from the western side, forced through the noses of the likes of Webb Pierce or Hank Snow.  My little heart flutters whenever I put on an old Louis Armstrong, and even those strange sounds coming from the mouth of Fats Domino thrill me. 
But I do have to confess that music has fallen to a new level in artists efforts to explore where no instrument has gone before.  There is stuff that, to my poor ears, is a jumble of off-key discords with no possible beat for the toes to tap to. 
But I say, "Fine!".  If that's your thing, go for it.  But don't look shocked if I run for the door with my hands clapped over my ears. 
 
Carl Jarvis
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 6:06 AM
Subject: Re: Journey to the center of the mind

You know Carl I come from another generation.
 
But that's ok.
 
I mean I actually love dylan for example and he didn't sing from his diaphram. In fact he didn't sing from his throat. He has sung every song through his nose.
 
Still I love it for some strained reason.
 
Maybe I'm twisted, but it is good stuff.
 
At least for me it is.
 
Now I've got younger brothers who just hate this stuff.
 
But it is a matter of personal taste I guess.
 
And I've got folks in my family who think that swing is the "Cats Pajamas".
 
Personally most of it is formula to me but really good to dance too, and way better than that disco crap imo.
 
Regardless, in a former life I was a white man who could dance and strutted around the town in a "Zoot Suit" with a gold chain leading to the loins of my disaffection and, even real affection for that matter, for a pretty lass who would not sing, but rather would swing, with me around the dance floor.
 
Oh my even in my age and in revistations with those I knew when sighted this blind man can dance, though he can't sing a lick.
 
some of us defy stereotypes! Grin...
 
Again I wish I was around in the day for sure when dancing was king and I have a fondness for swing on that account.
 

Why Do We Yawn

Subject: Why Do We Yawn

So this goes a long way toward explaining why we in the Northern States are so,o,o,o much smarter than our Southern neighbors. 
And now that we can be consumed with worry that our next yawn indicates that our brain is too hot, or that we are about to have a stroke or heart attack, perhaps we might begin a study of the common belch...or the meaning of excessive farting. 
 
Carl Jarvis
 
----- Original Message -----
From: J.Rayl
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 5:34 AM
Subject: [acb-chat] Why Do We Yawn

By Dr. Mercola
Yawning is usually associated with boredom or being tired, but new research suggests
there's far more to this behavior than meets the eye.
The first clue that yawning serves a much greater purpose?
We do it involuntarily, like breathing, and it starts even before we're born (as
early as 11 weeks after conception).
There are a number of theories out there for why we yawn, but one of the most compelling
is being explored by a Princeton University researcher and his colleagues, whose
studies suggest yawning performs the important function of cooling your brain.
Yawning Might Keep Your Brain Cool
A study in Animal Behavior
i
 explains the hypothesis that "yawning serves as a thermoregulatory mechanism that
occurs in response to increases in brain and/or body temperature.
The brain-cooling hypothesis further stipulates that, as ambient temperature increases
and approaches (but does not exceed) body temperature, yawning should increase as
a consequence."
Indeed, previous research by Andrew C. Gallup, PhD, now a postdoctoral research associate
at Princeton University, and colleagues revealed that frequency of yawns more than
doubled
ii
 among parakeets when their ambient temperature increased.
New research, this time on humans
iii
, also showed that more people yawned when it was winter compared to when it was
summer (45 percent versus 24 percent, respectively), which supports Gallup's theory
that people should yawn more in cold weather because the cool air you inhale helps
regulate your brain temperature.
He told Discovery News
iv
:
"Brains are like computers... They operate most efficiently when cool, and physical
adaptations have evolved to allow maximum cooling of the brain."
To put it simply, it's theorized that the influx of cool air that occurs when you
yawn helps cool and increase blood flow in your neck, face, sinuses and head, which
together acts like a radiator to cool your brain. Writing in the journal
Medical Hypotheses
v
, Gallup and colleagues suggest this process may also involve your sinuses (the actual
function of which is also up for debate):
"The thin posterior wall of the maxillary sinus may flex during yawning, operating
like a bellows pump, actively ventilating the sinus system, and thus facilitating
brain cooling. Such a powered ventilation system has not previously been described
in humans, although an analogous system has been reported in birds."
This finding is in line with previous research that shows brain temperatures increase
when you're sleep deprived, which may be one reason why exhaustion triggers excessive
yawning. Gallup also suggests that excessive yawning may even be a symptom of health
conditions that increase brain and/or core temperature, such as central nervous system
damage.
Does Yawning Have Social and Cognitive Implications, Too?
Another theory for why we yawn revolves around its social, rather than its physiological,
effects. It's known, for instance, that yawning is contagious among humans, chimps
and even dogs, a behavior that is thought to indicate a capacity for empathy
vi
. In the journal
Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience
vii
, it's suggested that:
"... contagious yawning is a primitive expression of social cognition, namely empathy.
Susceptibility to contagious yawning is correlated with the speed in recognizing
one's own face, theory of mind processing, and is also associated with activation
in regions of the brain that have been associated with social cognitive processes.
This suggests that contagious yawning may be an evolutionarily old process that begot
a higher level of social cognition in certain species."
Yawning has even been associated with arousal
viii
 or a change of state, such as going from being alert to sleepy or vice versa, according
to Dr. Robert Provine
ix
, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland. For now it's safe to say there's
much more to be discovered about exactly why virtually all mammals yawn, but in the
event you feel you yawn excessively, be aware that it could have physiologic implications.
At the very least, it might mean that you could use a good night's sleep, in which
case you can review my
33 sleep aid secrets
.
It could also be caused by a vasovagal reaction, which is caused by the action of
the vagus nerve (the tenth cranial nerve that runs from your brain stem down to your
abdomen) on your blood vessels. This could be a sign of a heart problem and should
be checked out by your health care provider. Excessive yawning may also occur before
a seizure in people with epilepsy, or prior to the onset of a migraine, so keep this
in mind if you suffer from either.
References:
 i
Yawning and thermoregulation in budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus,
Animal Behavior
, January 2009: 77(1); 109-113, Andrew C. Gallup, et al.
 ii
 See Reference i.
 iii
 Contagious Yawning and Seasonal Climate,
Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience Variation
, 2011: 3(3); Andrew C. Gallup and Omar Tonsi Eldakar.
 iv
 The Yawn Explained: It Cools Your Brain,
Discovery News
, December 15, 2008: Jennifer Viegas.
 v
 Human Paranasal Sinuses and Selective Brain Cooling: A Ventilation System Activated
by Yawning?,
Medical Hypotheses
, December 2011: 77(6); 970-3, A.C. Gallup, G.D. Hack.
 vi
 Contagious Yawning in Chimpanzees,
Proc. Biol. Sci
., December 2004: 7(271); JR Anderson, et al.
 vii
 Yawn, Yawn, Yawn, Yawn; Yawn, Yawn, Yawn! The Social, Evolutionary and Neuroscientific
Facets of Contagious Yawning, Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience, 2010: 28;
107-12, S.M. Platek.
 viii
 If Sex Is a Yawn, You may Actually Be Turned On,
MSNBC.com
, July 7, 2009: Brian Alexander.
 ix
 Robert Provine - Research,
UMBC.edu
.
Source:
Medical Hypothesis December 2011; 77(6):970-3
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