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The extreme irrationality and insanity of Common Core

Jon Rappoport
No More Fake News
Fri, 03 Apr 2015 19:11 UTC
common core
"In a tightly controlled setting, subjecting a young child to cognitive dissonance amounts to mind control." (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

For the sake of my argument here, I'm putting aside the fact that public education belongs under the purview of the states and not the federal government.

This article is about how the federal government decided Common Core would succeed.

I'm not going to recite brain-numbing examples of teaching basic math to very young children, under the Common Core system. Suffice it to say, I can add 9 and 6 and come up with the right answer. And I know why 9 and 6 equals 15. I don't need Boolean algebra or set theory or a base-10 system to understand why addition works.

Comment: Read the following articles for a more 'intimate investigation into the prison of modern schooling'

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Clock

Big ideas needed: Three reasons why the U.S. is broken, bloated and bleeding

Pierce Nahigyan
Truth-out.org
Sat, 04 Apr 2015 18:46 UTC
Image
© Photocase.com
I've heard both EPA Chief Gina McCarthy and "The Newsroom's" Will McAvoy say that the United States used to be a lot tougher than it is now. "We have not shied away from difficult decisions," McCarthy told the American Meteorological Society in January. "We didn't scare so easy," said McAvoy in 2012.

Those sound like fine virtues, but I'm 28 years old, and I can't recall a time I ever felt like the United States wasn't scared of something. I already know the super patriots will castigate me based on the title of this piece alone.

That is because, gentle readers, the United States' biggest fear these days seems to be one idea.

Now, don't get ahead of me just yet. I know the United States has always been afraid of some ideas. The founding fathers had to eliminate an antislavery passage in the original Declaration of Independence because the idea of truly universal human rights was too seditious for history's most seditious (free) men. Their descendants, the pioneers, nearly obliterated the continent's native peoples because the idea of sharing it was simply untenable for them. Reconsidering our failed drug policy will require a heckuva lot more courage than our current policymakers can muster, because the idea that 50 percent of federal convicts are in prison and not rehab makes for mighty uncomfortable conversation.

So what one idea am I talking about? Well, the big idea. The big idea of what exactly we want the United States to be. The big idea involves talking about the United States, and discussing the United States, and admitting that the United States fell behind the rest of the developed world on pretty much any index we belong to a long time ago. According to one global report, we're 25th in math and science. According to another, we're 14th in reading. According to Legatum, we're 31st in safety and security, 21st in personal freedom.
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Books

Stanford University: Tuition is now free for students from families earning less than $125K a year

Libby Nelson
Source
Sat, 04 Apr 2015 16:55 UTC
stanford student
© stanfordesp.org
  1. Stanford University will provide free tuition to parents of students who earn less than $125,000 per year — and if they make less than $65,000, they won't have to contribute to room and board costs either.
  2. Students are still expected to pay $5,000 toward college costs from summer earnings and working part-time while enrolled in college.
  3. The announcement is an expansion of Stanford's old financial aid policy, which previously applied to students from families making less than $100,000 per year.
  4. Most universities can't afford to offer such generous financial aid to their students. But they could draw a lesson from the plan's simplicity.

Comment: If American colleges wanted to they could implement free tuition. Germany has done it and university education in Sweden, Norway and Denmark has been free for years. Alas, the US seems content in burdening its young people with crushing student loan debt. Is it likely that other American universities will follow Stanford's lead?

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Airplane

Sott Exclusive: What's up in the air? A recent spate of aircraft accidents and mishaps

Julian Friese
Sott.net
Sat, 04 Apr 2015 19:00 UTC
Image

Two were injured in this plane crash in Oconee County, South Carolina on March 31, 2015.
It seems that many aircraft of all sizes and types have been increasingly meeting with accidents and mishaps worldwide recently. The following list has been gleaned from the web since March 18 and consists of 54 such reports. One can't help wonder if this number and rate of incidents is really a normal state of affairs? As well as out-and-out crashes involving fatalities, there are numerous accounts of mechanical faults while others document the smell of something burning in cockpits and passenger areas, with at least one being described as being 'electrical' in nature.

Below is a somewhat dry compilation of the headlines surrounding these events arranged in chronological sequence with links to pursue for the interested reader. Many of the more intriguing accounts have been highlighted though.

Just to repeat, it's difficult not to ponder if all these accidents of late really reflects a normal situation. And if it does not, then just what the hell is going on?
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Water

New pipelines from tapped wells start supplying fresh water to Crimea


Sputnik
Sat, 04 Apr 2015 15:47 UTC
Image
© Sputnik/ Vasiliy Batanov
Russian geologists have tapped a fresh water supply in Crimea which will allow for the delivery of water throughout the peninsula via new pipelines; the Russian Defense Ministry has sought to provide Crimea with more water since Ukraine's new authorities blocked access a year ago.

Units of the Russian Defense Ministry have started supply water to Crimea using new pipelines; the goal is to fill the main waterway of the Crimean Peninsula, the North Crimean Canal, and to create a network of pipelines to supply water to the largest cities in Crimea's eastern areas, news reports said.

At least forty kilometers of pipes have already been laid, with water being supplied to the North Crimean Canal, which was blocked by the Ukrainian authorities a year ago.

Comment: So this is what a 'Russian invasion' in Crimea looks like.

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Phoenix

'Smoke and sparks' force emergency evacuation of Japanese train in undersea tunnel


Japan Times
Sat, 04 Apr 2015 09:12 UTC
Train makes emergency stop in undersea Seikan Tunnel

Train makes emergency stop in undersea Seikan Tunnel
A train carrying around 120 passengers made an emergency stop Friday in a tunnel linking Hokkaido and Aomori Prefecture after smoke was detected, forcing the evacuation of all aboard, the rail operator and local fire fighters said.

Hokkaido Railway Co. said the six-car express train was forced to stop in the Seikan Tunnel around 1 km from the nearest station at 5:15 p.m. after a conductor saw sparks and smoke coming from beneath the train.

Two women were taken to hospital, one aged 78 and the other in her 50s.

Passengers aboard the train bound for the city of Aomori from Hokkaido walked to Tappi Kaitei Station, some 140 meters below sea level, before being evacuated by railcar.

On the cause of the incident, JR Hokkaido said it appears three cables delivering power to motors overcharged and cable coating was scorched.

JR Hokkaido Vice President Fumihisa Nishino offered an apology at a news conference held early Saturday morning, saying, "We have caused discomfort to all the passengers. We are very sorry."

Comment: As well as other recent 'underground' fires, such as in central London and hundreds of manhole explosions in New York; there have been other incidents of "burning electrical or smoke" and smoke filled cockpits 'up in the air' too. What is going on? Could it be part of the 'grounding' of our Solar System?

See: SOTT Exclusive: Solar System 'grounding':Transformer explosions and electrical anomalies

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Attention

Train derails on elevated tracks in Cincinnati, Ohio

Patrick Brennan and Patrick Reddy
Cincinnati.com
Fri, 03 Apr 2015 23:29 UTC
train derails ohio
© The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy
Workers look over train derailed on elevated tracks in Ohio.
Crews tending to a Queensgate train derailment have made progress during Friday cleanup efforts and said they expected to have all cars re-railed and the line reopened by evening, according to CSX.

Emergency crews responded to the derailment near Third and Gest streets in Queensgate Thursday evening. Six freight cars derailed and two were left hanging off the side of the elevated tracks that run parallel to Third Street.

The train was comprised of four engines and 104 total cars. Of the six cars that derailed, five were empty and one contained plastic pellets, according to CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle.

None of the shipping containers were holding hazardous materials, although a Cincinnati hazmat team was present at the scene Thursday as a precaution.

The cause of the derailment is still being investigated, Doolittle said, and no injuries resulted from the derailment.
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Bullseye

India becomes first country to approve the use of drones for crowd suppression

Nicholas West
Activist Post
Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00 UTC
Drones_Paris
© AP
The evolution of "non-lethal" weapons has been disturbing enough (and actually lethal in many cases), but speculation that this developing arsenal would be attached to drones has generally been met with accusations of fear-mongering.

However, the recent announcement that India (a constitutional republic) has now green-lighted drones for controlling "unruly crowds" in its northern capital Lucknow should get any skeptic's attention. Incidentally, even among highly populated India, the Uttar Pradesh region is a populous area of 204 million people, putting it into the range of most of the United States.

The transfer of weapons of war such as drones from foreign to domestic use should be seen as the ultimate canary in the coal mine for any supposedly democratic country.

Comment: We have been saying for quite some time that the tools and techniques honed in the global war of terror would one day be used to control local populations. The elites are well aware that the economy is due for a collapse, and that the global weather patterns have become so bizarre that food shortages could result. They will continue to do everything necessary to maintain control, only so as to insure that they remain in charge.

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Handcuffs

Kids don't belong in adult jails

Michael Bochenek
Baltimore Sun
Wed, 01 Apr 2015 21:08 UTC
Image
When I first visited the Baltimore City Detention Center in 1999, I found an archaic, decaying facility that held people in grim cells with no direct natural light. The detention center held many children who were charged as adults, and they suffered some of the worst abuses — including extended periods of confinement in cells punctuated by brutal acts of violence, often encouraged by guards.

Fifteen years later, some of the most egregious practices have ended, but the city jail still routinely violates the rights of detained children, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded in a letter made public March 26.

In particular, the Justice Department found that detention center staff use "seclusion"— solitary confinement — so routinely and for such long periods that some children end up spending months in isolation. One youth spent 143 days in solitary confinement between July 2013 and August 2014. In other cases, children were in seclusion about half the time they were in the city jail.

Such policies do lasting harm to detained children and ultimately make conditions even harder to manage at the jail.

Comment: "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Bizarro Earth

Welcome to crazy town

Phillip J. Watt
Collective Evolution
Sun, 22 Mar 2015 20:50 UTC
Image
Everywhere we look it's like we're living in crazy town.

For starters, most of the governments of the world advocate for backwards laws which seem so surreal it's hard to believe it's true. Natural and effective medicines are suppressed, our privacy increasingly invaded and corporate-benefiting and community-destroying regulations are being put in place.

The politicians are turning a blind eye to the capitalist circus - the inaccurately labelled 'free market' - which funnels the wealth and resources to those who already have it. The same goes for the military-industrial machine, the massive war-on-drugs policy failure and the damage to our planet. Where is the orchestrated salvation for a poverty stricken, unhealthy, mentally imprisoned and highly unequal global society?

Comment: "They Live", the Weird Movie With a Powerful Message

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