One Step Forward, Two Back

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/la-me-mental-health-20101224,0,4869113.story

Now Powelson's son, identified in court papers as T.G., is one of 20,000 students across California whose mental health services may be in jeopardy in the new year because of a line-item veto by the governor. In October, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger slashed $133 million in funding for what are known as AB 3632 services, a 25-year-old program that requires state and local education and mental health agencies to jointly provide education-related mental health services.

Rant On, Charlie

http://www.counterpunch.org/manson12282010.html

If we often define "freedom" in entirely political terms, we will understandably focus on the recent assault on civil liberties, notably in the United States. Yet in today's all-encompassing, profit-driven Marketplace (erroneously termed a "society"), most people are "indefinitely detained" in economic servitude. Abjectly dependent upon imperious corporations for survival itself, an employed person readily sacrifices his first and fourth amendment rights in order to earn a paycheck in the privately-owned workplace.

An Army Against One

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/12/cops-man-shoots-self-at-oak-lawn-hilton.html

Several police patrol units went to the Oak Lawn Hilton this afternoon after learning that a man who brandished a gun at his former workplace in Ford City in Chicago was in one of the hotel's rooms, authorities said.

Before police could locate the man, he had turned the weapon on himself in an attempted suicide, police said. According to hotel manager Rick Harmon, the man survived the attempt and was transported to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn for treatment and a psychiatric evaluation.

Police officers prepare to enter the Oak Lawn Hilton this afternoon. (Chicago Tribune/Warren Skalski)

Before arriving at the hotel, the man reportedly created a disturbance at his former employer in Ford City by brandishing the weapon and then leaving behind a suicide note, authorities said.

There was no barricade situation at the hotel, and no hotel guests had to be evacuated, authorities said.

"At no time during this unfortunate incident was anybody at the hotel at risk," Harmon said.

Both the Chicago Police Department and the Oak Lawn Police worked together to keep the situation under control and contained. They did not even draw their weapons at any time during the situation."

-- Wendy E. Normandy

Joy To The World

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-biz-1220-on-the-job-20101220,0,3428487.column

Regardless of the time of year, Americans are stressed, and often it's job-related, experts said. Three of four Americans surveyed this year said they experienced an unhealthy amount of stress, according to the American Psychological Association's 2010 Stress in America survey released in November. The association didn't provide comparison figures for earlier years but said stress has been a continual problem for the last several years.

Dismally Hard At Times

And what is CBT?

It is a form of talking therapy that encourages depressed patients to exchange their self-destructive thoughts for healthier ways of believing and acting.

It is the modern equivalent of telling people (gently) to shape up, smarten up and take responsibility for their own lives.

Except that you could not possibly convey that time-honored message with such stark clarity these days. Apparently, we are all too fragile to hear such sage advice: the shock might send us rushing to the medicine cabinet.

That is a terrible shame. All the antidepressant drugs and therapy-speak in the world cannot take away the simple, honest fact that life for all of us can be dismally hard at times.

For most of us, though, the healthiest option is to face our problems vigorously, rather than disappear down a black hole of antidepressant dependency.

That is an especially important message to spread during this economic downturn. Times are getting harder.

But instead of grasping for tablets, we would be far better off being encouraged to rely on our own resources — positivity and self-reliance.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1338340/Will-wake-deadly-risks-happy-pills.html#ixzz18C2lS3vm

Anti-American Feel Good

America, Y Ur Peeps B So Dumb?

If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as: How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked?

Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website, joebageant.com.

Lab Rats

Duh. Didn't See It Comin':

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8184149/Email-has-turned-us-into-lab-rats.html

Increasing levels of information overload from computer and smart phone screens cause a “bottleneck” in the brain and prevent any deep thought, according to Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.

His comments add to the weight of evidence that our addiction to technology and the snippets of information it provides is damaging our ability to apply our power of thought in a meaningful way.

Waiting For Flying Saucers

Live Bait and Ammo #160: Waiting for Flying Saucers ?

UAW President Bob King and his corporate partners at GM, Ford, and Chrysler-Fiat will blame the competition they’ve rigged on workers and relentlessly degrade them into believing they are worth less and less as profits rise. That’s not a guess, it’s the drill.

History lessons must be revised before the profiteers of war and labor are able to con workers with the same old lies. We have to be literally vigilant. The most common words in the con man’s lingo are “free” and “lucky”. As in, you are lucky to have a job but you are free to quit if you don’t like it. Unless, of course, you’re enlisted. In which case, you defend freedom while the lucky sit home and collect dividends. The only reason we have enough volunteers in Afghanistan today is because there isn’t enough opportunity in the land of the free. It’s an old story.

When the Confederacy failed to acquire enough volunteers, they instituted conscription with exemptions for important people. Slave owners decided slave owners were too important to fight in the war to defend slavery. The Confederacy granted one exemption for every twenty slaves owned. Thus, a plantation master with one hundred slaves could have an exemption for himself, his three sons, and a nephew. It was, as workers said back then, “A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Men who refused conscription were hung. Their property was confiscated and friends and neighbors were warned not to help the draft dodgers’ women and children. 

Today, working people in the south commonly sport the rebel flag. They’ve been conned into believing that the Civil War was about some principle other than the privileges of slave owners. Through a revision of history, they’ve come to believe that defending slavery was a war for freedom. In fact, the only thing free was labor. Slavery, which provided free labor for the rich, depressed wages for all workers regardless of color. White southern workers not only got screwed, they fought for the honor of getting screwed, and some of them are still defending that honor.

Sometimes the truth is too painful to admit. When facts defy our cherished beliefs, something has to give. We can reject the beliefs we were taught, or we can reject the facts and alter evidence to sustain beliefs that bolster a more glorious version of events.

On December 21, 1954 Marian Keech and a small cult of followers gathered on a hill expecting that the world was going to end and that they, the true believers, would be rescued by flying saucers. When the world didn’t end and flying saucers didn’t appear, Marian and her followers claimed that their faith had saved the world from destruction. Faith can dominate experience because beliefs are not bound by hard facts or natural law. The supremacy of belief over reality is self perpetuating.

We have our own true believers in the UAW. They still believe Bob King and his enforcers have our best interests at heart when they claim that concessions save jobs and workers have to be more competitive. UAW members who believe this Concession Caucus boilerplate are like the workers who fought to defend slavery while the slave owners drank sweet tea on the verandah and cheered them on. One has to wonder where they’ve been for the past thirty years. 

How many more times will American workers be conned into “A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight?” 

A goldfish lacks foresight because a goldfish doesn’t have any memory. Every time he swims around the bowl, the view is brand new. The struggle against oppression is a struggle against denial and the tendency to forget painful memories. America invaded Iraq because America forgot the Gulf of Tonkin.

- Gregg Shotwell

Sit

Sort Schema Madness:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sc-health-1124-holliday-meditation-20101124,0,4540402.story

Your mind is a muscle you can train; meditation is the tool used to focus it or quiet it down. Every day thousands of thoughts zip through our heads, something Gerlach likens to a jar of dirty water: Keep shaking up the jar — or your head — and it will remain clouded. But "if we set the jar down, letting the dirt particles settle to the bottom, it leaves clarity at the top," she said.

Meditation will not stop your thoughts. It will not empty your mind. Instead, proponents say, it teaches you how to replace the mental chatter in your head with stillness. This ability helps us live more consciously in the present moment.

Work Kills

Do Nothing Buy Nothing:

http://www.ivillage.com/276343/4-a-276343?obref=obnetwork

Compared with men who worked less than 40 hours per week, unfit men who worked 41 to 45 hours a week were 59 percent more likely to die of heart disease, although they were not more likely to die of other causes.

194 Years of Scabs

http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray11192010.html

In truth, European trade unionists are astounded and confused by the free-for-all mentality of the U.S. This bizarre arrangement where a worker’s established role in society can be traded away promiscuously—can be placed on the market and sold to another party like a cheap commodity—blows their minds. 

Clearly, they don’t understand America. They don’t understand our mindset, our deep-seated entrepreneurial impulses, our categorical reverence for the free market, our belief that anything that can, in principle, be bought or sold is, therefore, automatically, for sale. It’s this mentality that created pay toilets at the airport. 

From their perspective, calling a scab a “replacement worker” is as absurd as calling a traitor an “alternative patriot.” No flag-waving American would stand for that kind of verbal legerdemain when it came to defending one’s country; and no one should stand for it when it comes to labor disputes. But we do.

Monday News Wire

Believe the G? It's Worse!:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331636/1-5-Americans-mentally-ill-joblessness-takes-toll.html

More than 45 million Americans, or 20 per cent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year, it was revealed this week.

U.S. government research showed that of those 45 million, 11  million had a serious illness.

WBI Forum

Stress Cracks:

http://workplacebullying.org/wbiforum/

This page hosts open discussions about the problem of workplace bullying and solutions for resolving it. Take some time to share your story. Read about the experiences of others. Share ideas and information with people who know exactly what it feels like to be a target. Remember, it takes a great deal of courage to tell one's story. Please be encouraging and supportive of one another.

Another Needless Waste

How Mean We Are:

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/15/3184811/cyberbully-suicide-turned.html

Bullying is as ingrained in the fabric of our culture as baseball and apple pie. Telling kids to stop picking on others isn't very effective when they see the adults doing it. For example, many workplaces aren't much different from high school campuses with the harassment, rumor mongering, sabotage, and shunning that goes on. Boorish behavior is encouraged and rewarded in business and government, hence your high school bullies go on to become bully bosses. Until society as a whole takes a zero tolerance approach to bullying, it's futile to tell the kids not to do it.

The Good Professor

http://www.counterpunch.org/

November 11, 2010

On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month ...

Laying Down Arms

By PETER LINEBAUGH

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the Great Powers of the World signed the armistice laying down arms after four years of the bloodiest war in history. That was 1918.

Now, we call it Veteran's Day.

What caused the armistice was the refusal of soldiers to fight. They refused 'to go over the top' anymore. In Russia, France, England, Italy they refused to participate in the slaughter which had begun in 1914.

What we learn from Armistice Day is that the soldier is the front line of the peace movement.

Sailors and soldiers mutinied against the war, turning their arms not on so-called "enemies," namely brother soldiers from across the world: instead, they turned their arms upon the officers who otherwise sent them to the butchery of the trenches or ordered them to a freezing death in battles at sea.

In late October 1918 at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, the home ports of theGerman fleet, the sailors refused the orders of their officers. Soldiers were brought in to force the sailors to obey. Instead the soldiers embraced their cause, "Frieden und Brot” or Peace and Bread.

One such sailor was a former stoker named Karl Artelt who had shoveled coal into the fires which kept the steam engines of the battleships burning. On a voyage to the Far East he witnessed the Chinese revolution of Sun Yat-sen. Later, perhaps as the engines of the German naval squadron were transformed from coal to oil, he became a skilled metal worker in the engine room. In other words his experiences below decks put him at the central themes of his historical epoch - imperialism and the oil machine - and he used these experiences to overthrow the war mongers. Such men put an end to World War One.

Together soldiers and sailors formed direct democratic councils. On 9th November 1918 a socialist republic was declared in Berlin. Hindenburg and Ludendorf, the German generals, had to agree to an armistice.

So: Honor the soldier who takes direct action for peace. Honor the soldier who thinks. Honor the soldier who brings Empire to its end.

Remember the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month!

Bring the troops home!

Peter Linebaugh teaches history at the University of Toledo. The London Hanged and (with Marcus Rediker) The Many-Headed Hydra: the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. His essay on the history of May Day is included in Serpents in the Garden. His latest book is the Magna Carta Manifesto. He can be reached at: plineba@yahoo.com

War Criminals,One And All

Dedicated to his India visit.

Don’t believe the hopes of the ecstatic world,

When you sit on the mighty American throne;

Try to change your country into a sacred place,

Make it shine with piety, as once it shone.

I know you inherit the legacy of a devil,

Whose hands are full of ravages and blood;

Who exulted over the wails and shrieks,

Who ruined the peace like a miserable flood.

Have an intent gaze at Michelle –your wife,

When, of Iraq and Afghan folk, you think;

Tell her 'someone will rape you in front of me',

Imagine her agony, and look at her horrific blink.

Cast an affectionate glance at Malia and Sasha,

Your lovely daughters of 11 and 7 years old;

Tell them ' I will be shot before your eyes',

Then face the truth as a person- brave and bold.

Bring to your mind the images of countless houses,

Which your deadly bombs have reduced to rubble;

The mounting heaps of the dead whose life has gone,

Like a slight breeze breaks a water’s tiny bubble.

Dr. Mustafa Kamal Sherwani, LL.D. Chairman, All India Muslim Forum

Lucknow ,U.P.India

Love Is Kind, Fear, Unkind

World Wide Pain:

http://www.workplacemobbing.com/mobbing.html

Workplace mobbing is a 'virus' or a 'cancer' that spreads through malicious gossip, rumour, hearsay,and unfounded accusations. It is done with deliberate intent to have those targeted 'eliminated' or 'forced out' of their employment. Accusations of unsubstantiated 'bullying' can even be made against the target as the perpetrators realise the benefits of claiming 'victim' status. 

Those targeted are often:Change agents

High achievers (sometimes with public recognition)

Enthusiastic (eg those who volunteer) 

Whistleblowers

Known for their commitment to human rights

Home Run Around*

I awoke this morning with a txt proclaiming the End of the World (as we know it) from a stalwart Green Party activist in SW Chicago. His guy for State Rep, Ochsenfeld, a very decent man got 15%. Locally Greenies clocked in at anywhere from 7 - 15%. The top of the ballot for Governor, Rich Whitney - a very credible presentation to be a candidate in the land of Mutt and Jeff politics - got 3.4%. The showing by Rich Whitey (as the ballots prepared by the Chicago Election Commission printed last week) denies him funding ( correction: 11072010, ews... creates position for GP to gather exorbitant number of petition signatures ) for the next election. The misspelling of his last name blamed on bureaucratic error. I can't get enough of Chicago politics.

You want politics? I'm currently at lunch, enjoying a Hoppy afternoon, watching the San Francisco population elevate to near god-head baseball playing country boys and Latin American especials with the orchestrated pomp and circumstance of Circuses rather than Bread. Always money for fireworks shows or funerals of state proportions for fallen police officers of street death or terrorist fly overs by infernal killing machines. Winning a World (regardless of Japan, Cuba, etc) Series every lifetime deserves mention. It doesn't deserve too much of our time or tax dollars.

The fascist backdrop of the state buildings, the security presence, and Jon Miller introducing Herr Govenator ("come with me if you want to live" a patron comments), spooked me but the crowd roars. He says the Giants "are a machine". Trans Humanism is complete in California....

... all very corporate, owner/slave type speeches from the Brass, I believe "our boys" may have been used. The players sit on the stage as if in a corral and look with the nervous attitude of an alpaca - they know where they are, do you?... thoroughbred horses, some with brains. Does anyone remember Andy Messersmith? or Curt Flood? Ted Lindsay?, hockey fans?...

One ironic observation watching this corporate media feed is the crowd is overwhelmingly white. Very un-diverse, even the camera can find a black face at the Republican National Convention, but not here in the Land of Political Correctness. 

Except for the players, of course...

The manager delivered a very humble speech, as a good leader should do. He said the team felt "the presence" of the fans as they charged their way to (a quarter million dollar extra payday) a championship, but his sincerity was felt. This team has a lot of personality. I watched every pitch. I suppose I'm as distracted in life as the next mook in this great land of ours.

"Let's all say Juan Uribe!" Uooooo..., or did they say "Doo Do"?

So, this morning was spent reliving the crushing defeat of any social legislation, now just rapturously adoring athletes. As selected players came to address the crowd some spoke better than national candidates, some have never spoken before a crowd since high school speech class, some said thanks for the coaches and teachers in their life. Even one or two said, "thank God" (at the same time recognizing the training/medical staff). Rally Thong delivery crushed the Rally Monkey hex, perhaps Cub Fans should roast Sam Sianis (or his goat).

If it was so easy...

As Paris burns, ... reporting from the front lines... holding the barricades

- friend of Leon Berger 11032010

******

http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/11/cubs-accidentally-damage-harry-caray-statue.html

The statue existed without incident for 11 years at the corner of Addison and Sheffield, except for a couple pranks in which someone hung a dead goat carcass on the statue. That occurred once in 2007, and again before the home opener in 2009.

Blue Monday News

Be Brave, Take The Tour... Viva Le Dickens:

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

*******

Amen, Brother:

LONDON: Alcohol is a more dangerous drug than both crack and heroin when the combined harms to the user and to others are assessed, British scientists said on Monday.

Presenting a new scale of drug harm that rates the damage to users themselves and to wider society, the scientists rated alcohol the most harmful overall and almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco. 

Read more: Alcohol more harmful than heroin, crack cocaine: Study - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Alcohol-more-harmful-than-heroin-crack-cocaine-Study/articleshow/6852482.cms#ixzz142ilbvos

************

Get 'Em Early:

http://preventdisease.com/news/10/102910_adhd_misdiagnosed.shtml

He found that the youngest children were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and to be prescribed behavior-modifying stimulants such as Ritalin than their older classmates. He told the press that the "smoking gun" was that the diagnoses depended on the children's age relative to classmates and the teacher's perceptions of whether they had symptoms.

"If a child is behaving poorly, if he's inattentive, if he can't sit still, it may simply be because he's 5 and the other kids are 6."

"There's a big difference between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old, and teachers and medical practitioners need to take that into account when evaluating whether children have ADHD," he urged.

EWS Friday Newswire

It's Gettin' Closer All The Time:

http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8AGMUZ?OpenDocument

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold.

*********

Why Do We Put Up With It?:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8092328/Terrorism-Act-No-terror-arrests-made-after-100000-stop-and-searches.html

Out of more than 100,000 people stopped and searched by police using controversial anti-terror powers not one single arrest was made for terrorism-related offences, new figures show.

The Days of the Dead

Horror as the background music, or Muzak, of life:

http://www.counterpunch.org/jw10262010.html

A few months after that night drinking beers at Fort Hood, I was again in Killeen, Texas. A taxi driver bringing me in from the bus station told me he had planned to be career military, but things changed when he did his time in Iraq. Now his wife was a few months from getting out of the army herself, he said, and then they would leave this bleached, desiccated town, this awful swathe of beige and neon and yellow ribbons in the middle of nowhere, and do something else. Other than that, he didn’t want to talk about Iraq. We rode through the nighttime streets in a thick silence. Outside the motel he turned toward me as he made change. It was a cheap place with brash lighting that cut slantwise through the taxi window and gave one side of his brown, angular face an intense clarity. He looked at me. “I killed a family,” he said. “At a checkpoint. I killed them all.” That was it. I took the change, and he drove off. 

JoAnn Wypijewski is on the road in a ’63 Valiant, sending stories to CounterPunch as she goes. She can be reached at jwyp@earthlink.com

Chains Invisible

Why Would Anyone Be Afraid Of Work?:

http://chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/10/more-stressed-workers-calling-in-sick-creatively.html

Almost three in 10 workers have played hooky from their jobs by calling in sick at least once this year, according to CareerBuilder’s annual survey of workplace absenteeism. More than a quarter of employers attribute the bogus sick days to the job stress and burnout that’s continued in a weak economy.

Of the employers who checked up on an employee, 70 percent asked the employee to come back to work with a doctor’s note, half called the “sick” employee at home, and 18 percent had someone else make the phone call.

And, in a scene reminiscent of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 15 percent of bosses said they drove by the employee’s house or apartment.

Heart Transplant*

Worth A Look:

http://davemarsh.us/

Author/attorney/child-and-anti-abuse advocate Andrew Vachss’ latest, the graphic novel (and a half) HEART TRANSPLANT, hit the stores this week. Read it!

I can’t do better in pushing you to do that, than to repeat the quote I gave the publisher:

“Heart Transplant is a necessity in a country that sometimes seems to be run by bullies at every level, from kindergarten to Capitol Hill. It fits the bill perfectly, with a simple and simply terrific story, wise and scholarly commentary that lets nobody off the hook, and the incandescent Rorschach of Frank Caruso’s illustrations. IF YOU’RE WONDERING NOT JUST WHY BULLYING HAPPENS BUT WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT, READ HEART TRANSPLANT. It ranks alongside Andrew Vachss’ Another Chance to Get It Right as a signpost on the road to a more human society.”

I keep a stash of Another Chance in my house, in case of emergencies–like people who don’t know what to do about their own histories of enduring abuse. Reading it changed an important part of my life. Heart Attack is just as important, and maybe even of more widespread importance. A big part of that is the part written by Zak Mucha, a Chicago social worker.

Celebrate Another EWS

Obviously, All His Fault: 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-us-flight-attendant-arrest,0,6621986.story

Slater's departure made him a folk hero to put-upon workers everywhere who have fantasized about quitting in a blaze of glory. He was a topic on TV shows, on the Internet and on the front pages of newspapers, with many cheering him for standing up to the often-inhospitable world of airline travel, and others accusing him of childish and dangerously reckless behavior.

His 15 minutes of fame are not quite over: In a homage to Slater, several businesses are selling a new costume for Halloween: the disgruntled flight attendant.

What Happened?

Some Assembly Required 

by Gregg Shotwell, 1996

“All possible brain work should be removed from the shop floor,” said Frederick Taylor in 1903. As industrialized workers race headlong into the 21st century we seem to be gazing into a rearview mirror where our future recedes before our eyes. We’re on a fast track backward.

Look around. Take your eyes off your repetitive task, your keyboard, your instrument panel, your personal row of buttons. Set your screw driver down and look around.

Have you noticed the high-tech, high-skill jobs disappearing from your plant? Have you observed the actual manufacturing capability of your facility reduced? Piece by piece?

More and more factories have basically become screw driver plants. That is, assembly plants with very little in-house manufacturing and jobs with “no experience required”. We are not only losing jobs, we are losing skills, knowledge, expertise, and ultimately our bargaining power. The less you know, the less value you hold.

While corporations promote countless new programs touting teamwork, progress, and people friendly slogans, the old fashion Taylor System of Scientific Management continues to dominate corporate strategy and accelerate the brain drain.

A key feature of the Taylor system was the dummy down approach. Make every job as stupid as possible. Simplify and standardize procedures into mindless tasks that require minimum (but highly repetitive) motion. Reduce workers’ power by depleting skill, craft, knowledge, and expertise. Minimize individuality. Erase personal pride in the job. Liquidate all sense of ownership. Make workers generic, interchangeable, and replaceable as component parts. Merge classifications. Blur the lines of demarcation.

The current application of Taylorism further depreciates worker value, advances the de-skilling of America, and disassembles solidarity by applying the reduction principle to whole factories. Each manufacturing facility is broken down to its simplest function. Piece by piece, work is removed from the bargaining unit and out sourced to ever smaller and more specialized nonunion suppliers. Even component plants are increasingly dependent on outside suppliers. The strip down process emasculates workers. After ten years in an auto plant you have no marketable skills.

The shakedown process is lubed with sweet talk and enticements. The familiar come-on inviting us to be “partners in the business” is worth less than a pimp’s promise. Wake up. The first indication you’re about to be date raped is an appeal for cooperation.

Once the union/management team is cozily ensconced in the back seat, company con men present the villainous competitive bid, “If we want to save jobs, we have to be competitive. How can we get the cost down?” Boogie. “Now we don’t have room for all the equipment this new product requires. How can we create more space?” Cha-cha. 

The union isn’t busted, it’s disrobed. One piece at a time. Slowly. It’s almost painless.

Have you noticed all the new products require more equipment, less jobs, and lots of out sourcing? (Oh yeah, teamwork too!) The union is gradually reduced by attrition. As the manufacturing process is fragmented, scattered, and decentralized, union shops become smaller and more isolated. Pattern bargaining is shattered. Breaking with tradition the national contract is ratified before local agreements are signed. The solidarity with other plants is broken. Then the isolated victims are whipsawed into cowering shadows of their old confrontational selves.

Skilled trades have not escaped the erosion of skills. The new system contracts out work that requires more knowledge, planning, and experience, such as major construction, complex repairs, and the set up of new machinery. Service reps and engineers set up the new high-tech machines. Skilled trades are left in the dark and reduced to performing simple standard maintenance procedures that require minimal knowledge, ingenuity, troubleshooting savvy, or skill. 

Unions have gradually become smaller and weaker. The UAW has literally been cut in half. How is the leadership responding? With mergers. A strategy gleaned from the CEO’s they play golf with while we are at work. The merger of Auto, Steel, and Machinist unions is a massive cover up for a failure to organize. It won’t stop the out sourcing or the de-skilling of America. It won’t increase union membership. It won’t leverage our bargaining power. It will only conceal the losses a little longer.

Union leaders are busy cutting deals that protect the privileged few at the expense of new hires. The two tier wage system is now an accepted practice. The corporations will build on it. Pattern bargaining is a thing of the past. When Chrysler workers get $7000 bonuses and GM workers get $300, parity is trashed. The UAW has agreed to accept new parts plants at prevailing wage. Welcome Delphi, the whipsawing has just begun. 

We need to take a tip from the CAW. Create a culture of struggle, not cooperation. Stop union shops from competing to see who can bend over the farthest. Make solidarity an action, not a slogan. Promote democracy within the union and demand accountability from the leadership. Be proactive. Take a stand for job ownership. Stop talking about the Flint sit down in ‘37 and take over a plant. Don’t roll over. Fight back. 

Stay Solid, Gregg Shotwell, 1996

Treat The Cause

Wonder of Wonders:

http://www.alternet.org/health/148444/are_we_giving_our_soldiers_drugs_that_may_make_them_kill_themselves/

More troops are dying by their own hand than in combat, according to an Army report titled "Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention." Not only that, but 36 percent of the suicides were troops who were never deployed.

The unprecedented suicide rates are accompanied by an unprecedented rise in psychoactive drug rate among active duty-aged troops, 18 to 34, which is up 85 percent since 2003, according to the military health plan Tricare. Since 2001, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft have been dispensed, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil and 12,047 for Cymbalta says Tricare 2009 data, which includes family prescriptions. All of the drugs carry a suicide warning label.

Choose Your Weapon

Maintain Mind At All Costs:

http://www.naturalnews.com/029996_chemotherapy_brain_function.html

Although the effects can be temporary, gray matter destruction due to chemotherapy is often permanent. Some people become so impaired following chemotherapy that they are never able to return to work, that is if they survive the treatment at all.

According to The McGill Cancer Center in Canada, 91 percent of oncologists surveyed indicated that "all chemotherapy programs are unacceptable to them and their family members." Instead of helping to treat cancer, chemotherapy destroys the only thing that even has a chance at preventing it: the immune system.

You Like?

Therapies All Kinds:

http://people.stu.ca/~nicholson/Ian_Nicholson/Research_files/Baring%20the%20Soul.pdf

Nude therapy was based on the idea of the naked body as a metaphor of the "psychological soul." Uninhibited exhibition of the nude body revealed that which was most fundamental, truthful, and real. In the marathon, Bindrim interrogated this metaphor with a singular determination. Bodies were exposed and scrutinized with a science-like rigor. Particular attention was paid to revealing the most private areas of the body and mind-all with a view to freeing the self from its socially imposed constraints. "This," Bindrim asserted gesturing to a participant's genitalia and anus, "is where it's at. This is where we are so damned negatively conditioned" [...] Determined to squelch the "exaggerated sense of guilt" in the body, Bindrim devised an exercise called "crotch eyeballing" in which participants were instructed to look at each others genitals and disclose the sexual experiences they felt most guilty about while lying naked in a circle with their legs in the air [...] In this position, Bindrim insisted "you soon realize that the head end and the tail end are indispensable parts of the same person, and that one end is about as good as the other.:"

That Guy's Nuts! Grab 'em

Nutrition News:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/os-walnuts-stress,0,3656318.story

The researchers found that including walnuts and walnut oil in the diet lowered both resting blood pressure and blood pressure responses to stress in the laboratory. To "stress" the participants, researchers had them give a speech or submerge a foot in cold water. "This is the first study to show that walnuts and walnut oil reduce blood pressure during stress," said Sheila G. West, associate professor of biobehavioral health. "This is important because we can't avoid all of the stressors in our daily lives. This study shows that a dietary change could help our bodies better respond to stress."

Relieved Of Fear

First they came for the ______, but I wasn't one of them.... :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/01/home-office-threat-level-fear

To see what is happening we probably need to return to the old journalistic maxim, follow the money. There is now an extensive police and industrial lobby in Britain dependent for its resources on maintaining a high level of public fear. The lobby thrives on its own failures. The incidents in America on 9/11 (2001) and in London on 7/7 (2005) saw the greatest ever peacetime growth in spending on security. Unlike most forms of public spending, this one could by its nature demand cash with menaces and with no account of value for money...

Hardly a month goes by without someone in authority reminding us to expect another attack imminently. I have lost count of statements from MI5, the police and other experts that an attack is a matter of "not if, but when". The attacks never occur, or are brilliantly thwarted, like the one reportedly prevented this week, apparently by dropping bombs from drones on Pakistani villages. What is noticeable is that the tempo of such threats increases immediately before Christmas and when the security lobby is involved in a fight over money, as now...

I do not believe that this apparent failure to deliver value for money is real, or that some catastrophic explosion is imminent. I think this is just another lobby seeking money. As it plays with its words, the rest of us may shrug and go about our business. But I sometimes wonder who is the real terrorist.

DeTox 2 ReTox

What Goes In Must Come Out:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315655/Could-magnet-head-turn-right-left-handed.html

The study highlighted how our sense of right and wrong isn't just based on upbringing, religion or philosophy - but by the biology of our brains.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315655/Could-magnet-head-turn-right-left-handed.html#ixzz10rHGiRwX

Mentally Ill Have Their Uses

Join IVAW's campaign now by making a Pledge of Support.

http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/mentally-injured-troops-used-to-murder-children-and-women-daily

The US continues its illegal and immoral wars, murdering innocent children, women and innocent men daily, by redeploying soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injuries and Military Sexual Trauma. Veterans view this as cruel, inhumane, and dangerous and know that without repeated use of traumatized soldiers on the battlefield, the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations could not continue. By winning troops Right to Heal, Iraq Veterans Against the War believes Americans can end the war and war crimes committed daily in their names.

On October 7, the 9th anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, Iraq Veterans Against the War will announce its strategic campaign, Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops.

Brain Study

Handling How You Are:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sc-health-0915-anxiety-20100915,0,3836612.story

"If you ask most neuroscientists what area of the brain would be critical in anxious temperament and emotion, most would say the amygdala," said Jonathan Oler, an associate scientist at the Health Emotions Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-lead author of the study.

The amygdala is known to have a correlation with anxiety and stress responses. The hippocampus was previously thought to be mostly involved with memory.

"But the data are the data, and the hippocampus and the amygdala predicted anxiety in the monkey equally," Oler said. "What was different between them was the heritability component."

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Who Do You Love, Bo Diddley?:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100813090457.htm

People high in trust were more accurate at detecting the liars -- the more people showed trust in others, the more able they were to distinguish a lie from the truth. The more faith in their fellow humans they had, the more they wanted to hire the honest interviewees and to avoid the lying ones. Contrary to the stereotype, people who were low in trust were more willing to hire liars and they were also less likely to be aware that they were liars.

Crap Food Rant*

I've written often on this blog about the declining mental health within the American workforce. The alienation, the workweek grind, overbearing bosses and rude co-workers all are part of the sickness permeating the working class consciousness resulting in depression, over-sensitivity and workplace shootings.

Another factor in bringing down a person's self worth is nutrition, or lack thereof, in the American diet. How much high caloric, addictive crap food one ingests may be the most incriminating factor in mental meltdowns. One hears often of "the childhood obesity epidemic" as one only hears about bullying in the grade school situation, but by far, both of these conditions are larger and more dangerous among adults. 

This time of year many state and county fairs are in session. When you go, or among any large cross section of the population assembled, be honest and objective. Look. See what a bunch of blubber butts Americans have become. At the county fair I attended, the Tilt-A-Whirl broke down. It couldn't handle the weight. This was in an area, Northern Illinois, with the world's best soil and the heart of the breadbasket of the world. These farmers didn't even eat their own crop. 

It's very easy to sound mean to those people that should be 10 feet tall on the body weight/height chart. I would rather not be this way, but these fat people didn't get that way overnight. Much of it is economic, the poor simply can't afford fresh vegetables and fruits. I also know they were born with a brain and as there pants sizes got larger they kept eating Big Macs and supersizing the fries. Let's not forget to mention the 32 oz Coke that leads each and every lumbering step. I'm not talking about carrying a few extra pounds, I'm talking FAT.

At the California State Fair, an entrepreneur had 100 battery operated three-wheel carts to rent by the hour. They were snatched up immediately because some people couldn't walk the 50 yards that separated the deep-fried Twinkies and Corn Dog wagons. It became an absurd situation of Obese People bumper cars, or the little horn would remind you to move over so Tubby could get by. If there is a stock tip here, invest in any type of mobility device for the overweight, disabled, elderly fellow Americans that can't live a life without it.

Recently, at a popular tourist stop, I watched a bus load of older people unload to view the exhibits. I was appalled at how immobile they all were. Actually, quite helpless and it was very sad. There were older folks, but most couldn't have been too much over 60 years of age. They were in pitiful shape. They looked over medicated, lost, out of touch with their surroundings and themselves. Like they couldn't save themselves if they had to. It's all disturbing to me.

These are comments are of particular events. I know they sound mean-spirited, but I want the reader to wake up to what they are shoving down their gullets. Please understand the connection between mental and physical health. Crap food will lead to dead people walking (or just trying to). 

Next, the spiritual wasteland that is American popular culture.....

first published Sept 16, 2010

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Seems Most Are Already There

https://escapedwageslave.blogspot.com/2021/01/seems-most-are-already-there.html

No Asshole Rule*

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't 

Robert I. Sutton, PhD

http://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surviving/dp/0446698202/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284470623&sr=1-1

They Keep On Coming

 

Work Kills:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/102604654.html?cmpid=15585797

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-us-food-plant-shooting,0,78633.story

Thursday's shootings came weeks after a driver who had been accused of stealing from a Manchester, Conn., beer distributorship shot and killed eight people and then himself.