Well they caught him - a young white kid looking younger and more innocent to life than all the others and he kills 9 people - Something is very wrong - I know we get more news and it is usually salacious like backfence gossiping but this teenage rampage of mass murder, killing innocents has been going on for nearly 20 years - no intelligent explanation other than the suggestion it is a copycat crime - there has to be something more to it or we could say that about all crime - how do so many young white boys act out - is it an act of rage - are they going through some kind of psychotic break down - if so what is it - this is ridiculous.
As to some of the other absent news I think world and political news must fit the narrative of how the wealthy, who are benefiting from influencing how we, the masses lean find they are now having to deal with folks in the world who they do not understand and who are playing them.
I have been learning so much from the papers written by the students who are friends of my grands and are involved in some kind of International Studies - two of my grands spent a semester in Norway - one studying International Marketing in Buskerud and Vestfold University College - then another grand in China since February studying International Peace and War and China's relationships in Africa at a University in Beijing - an aside he goes on to hike in Tibet for two weeks then to an internship in Singapore - one of his friends spent the last semester in Morocco with her Middle Eastern studies and is now in Australia flying jets with the Air Force as a student pilot - another back from studying this last year in Brazil who attends Brown and two more back from a year studying in Scotland - all of them studying International Relations.
Anyhow I learned from them that we have a policy we never hear about - called The Washington Consensus "which contains 10 concrete principles: (1) Fiscal Discipline; (2) Restructuring Public/Social Expenditure Priorities; (3) Tax Reform; (4) Liberalizing Interest Rates; (5) Competitive Exchange Rates; (6) Trade Liberalization; (7) Liberalization of Inward Foreign Direct Investment; (
Privatization; (9) Deregulation; and, (10) Property Rights. Lastly, Washington advocated applying these principles all at once, in other words by “Shock Therapy.” These principles, combined with enforcement by the IMF and World Bank in the form of Structural Adjustment (later called Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers), effectively made up an iron-locked structure for economic development and reform. To gain access to loans and aid from the critical international financial institutions, developing nations had little choice but to enroll in Structural Adjustment Policies, which secured their position on the new Bretton Woods track for development."
So where ever there is a catastrophe in the world we go in and use our resources to make change - much as we did after the flooding in New Orleans that closed down never to open again many of the public schools in favor of charter schools and not rebuilding low income housing etc. etc.
And so of course the news is about what catastrophe is happening - it is the signal for big money to align themselves with the Washington Consensus and make more bucks - Not easy stuff for most of us to digest with our morning coffee just as the entire banking debacle is not easy to understand with hours of concentration - even most Congressmen are frozen because they do not understand it - and so it is easier to treat the tug of war between ideas in Congress as if we watching a football game and to let the real news go by since like the wealthy in California do not think they should abide by water usage rules they do think they are above the masses and we just do not need to know since we cannot afford to do anything about what is going on.
To be engaged today and have any input takes so much study and understanding because those shaping world events are professionals and we just cannot stop our lives to match them in understanding alternatives - they are operating I dare say beyond the capacity of most journalists to understand except some small piece of it that a journalist can not only track down what is news worthy but, they too must study to understand what is happening much less, explain years of study in one column that will also grab our attention.
What I know is I am so thankful that greater and greater numbers of high school graduates are going on to college - they sure are making it difficult for them and then you have to ask - why - why the outrageous expense - is that their protection so that there will be few of us who really understand what the professionals are doing by having fewer collage graduates with the capacity to dope out what they are doing - or is it a system that even they cannot alter - or is it really simply greed which makes for an easy to understand news heading?
Ok my rant for the day - but like all of you - the news only presents confusion with all the horrors and yet, not paying attention is the way we have little to no affect on our understanding the hows and whys of those we hire or elect to represent us thinking they will protect us.
