Words from the SoapBox

Copyright © 2012 Bob and Penny Lord’s Site

During the course of a year we hear comments about American Exceptionalism. Now usually this is referenced to a general consensus that the United States of America should play an uncommon role in World affairs. Some say America has the role of worldwide policeman. Of course not everyone agrees that we should be extraordinary, however, the premise is that America is an exceptional country.

But today I want to talk about what makes America truly unique.

First, we are the only country founded under God. Our founding fathers were Christians for the most part and held deep beliefs that Government derives its right to rule from God alone. That is a truly special foundation not found in any other nation.

Second, the motto of our country is “In God We Trust.” We used to see it everywhere and it is still on our money. There is a move to remove this motto wherever it is found but we must fight against that for sure.

Third, and most important, God made this country special. We have the best farm land in the world. California feeds the world from the San Joaquin and Central Valleys. I lived there for 4 years and saw millions of acres of grapes, fruits and vegetables. The Central plains are the breadbasket of the world. Arkansas is the number one rice producer in this continent. When I was at the University of Arkansas studying Chemical Engineering I learned that America has more oil under the ground than the rest of the world combined. Three of our states Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have a 200 year supply. The list goes on and on. We have all the natural resources we will ever need, oil, natural gas, coal, minerals and cropland. Arkansas even has a diamond mine and silver mine. Gold is panned in lots of our rivers. Folks, God did that for this country for us to lead the world. We do not need the rest of the world to survive; the rest of the world needs us!

And the best place to live is right here in Conway County, where we respect freedom of religion and our other rights. Where else do the Christian leaders come together and pray for a common cause like we did in 1999 and 2000 for economic relief and God gave us natural gas and other job creators?

Where else does a Baptist minister quote Saint Teresa of Avila in his column in the local paper and a Catholic Brother quotes a Baptist minister in his column?

God made America exceptional and Arkansas most special. Thank God for America.

Brother Joseph Freyaldenhoven is a retired chemical engineer that began with internet marketing back in 1996. He has extensive internet marketing experience. His claim to fame is the ability to simplify the complex. He is an avid cyberevangelist. His website is http://www.bobandpennylord.com

By Justin Krane

Our deficit — still major, still huge. Over one trillion.

To deal with our deficit, Obama is making the case for the Buffett rule to go into effect. It states that any taxpayer making over a million bucks should pay a minimum tax of 30%. Buffet made his case for this in a NY Times op-ed piece where he points out that most millionaires and billionaires like himself have effective tax rates lower than 30%.

Many millionaires receive their income from dividends that are taxed at 15%, capital gains that are taxed at 15% and municipal bonds which are exempt from federal tax. Put into perspective, many low and middle class taxpayers have effective tax rates that are higher than the millionaires.

I say we think of our deficit as a business where there are two ways to cut debt: cut spending and raise revenues. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to cut costs like letting go an employee or discontinuing a product line. And business owners are always looking for ways to grow revenues.

As a country, we need to reduce our deficit by following that example — simultaneously raise taxes and cut spending. As an entrepreneur, I can vouch for the fact that consistently increasing profits is not easy. It takes focus and discipline but that’s what we need to do as a country to get us out of this mess.

I do think that higher wage earners should pay more taxes than they are currently paying but it shouldn’t be by such a wide margin. Why? Think of it this way. Before self-made millionaires became wealthy, they were average Joes or Janes. These average Joes and Janes made a conscious decision to create a better financial future for themselves. Should they be penalized for the risks they took in their businesses and lives to achieve some wealth? They stuck their necks out, thought differently, went for it and made it. Regardless of how we got here, we’re here with this crazy, insane deficit. But it’s our deficit. Everyone needs to own this problem, from million dollar to low income wage earners. Our kids and grandkids cannot inherit this deficit and financial future. They must be given an equal opportunity like we had.

Reports show that we didn’t even have a deficit in 1996. Our country was in the black and stayed that way until 2002. Then in 2003, our deficit skyrocketed to record levels — higher than our country has ever seen. And it has stayed that way. What happens if our kids and grandkids tax rates go up to 60%. That would be a real stinker.

What if our deficit doubles in size? Our currency will be worth nothing (many of you think that’s already the case,) and we won’t be the great country we once were. It’s time that we treat our deficit as a business so our financial future will be better than it is today. Congress, that means you too. Enough with the class warfare. Treat our deficit as a business. For us and our kids.

Justin Krane is a certified financial planner who has helped countless entrepreneurs create a bigger vision for their businesses by showing them how to identify and meet goals for increasing revenue. Go now to http://kranefinancialsolutions.com to get your free financial planning toolkit and you’ll also receive a free audio CD on increasing your business revenue.

Summary: Public schools said goodbye to teaching knowledge, hello to social engineering. Kids grow up ignorant and empty, feeling like foreigners in their own country.
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The Education Establishment has managed to separate the country’s children from the country. A secret quarantine is in effect; children have been consigned to live in detached bubbles. To a degree rarely seen in history, children are exiles in their own country.

Physically, kids look the same. They are babies in cribs; play in the backyard; have pimples, and become restless teenagers. Little by little, they become adults. You could alter the hairstyle, do a little photo retouching, and all the children would look like the children at the time of the Revolution. Nothing has changed. In appearances, that is.

Inwardly, everything is changed. American children wander forlornly in an alien landscape they know little about and understand less. They have no history, no geography, no math, no science. They’ve been taught to dislike their country. Instead of knowledge, they’ve learned detachment and sarcasm, indifference and boredom. They’ve been systematically deprived of the skills and perspectives that would allow them to enjoy culture or navigate intellectual pursuits.

They are inside the society but curiously outside. Separated from it in the way that a neighborhood’s birds and rabbits exist separately from the humans in the neighborhood. They see each other and warily pass; maybe some minor interaction takes place. But birds and rabbits grasp little about what humans are doing or why. Similarly, children stare uncomprehendingly at those strange creatures, adults, living in some parallel life.

The goal for the country’s children seems to be the attainment of a pleasant emptiness. White marks on a white wall. It’s long been common to say that children’s minds are a blank slate, a tabula rasa. But what American public education has achieved is unprecedented: the tabula remains rasa.

How do we describe this state? An intellectual lobotomy? Cognitive neutering? Certainly not all children are stunted in this way. Perhaps 10% or 20% a receive a good education. I’m talking about great majority of average kids. Soon they’ll be raising kids themselves. They’ll vote. They’ll build a country. Or unbuild it.

How in the world did the Education Establishment create this brave new child? In fact, there are four steps, which can be quickly described:

First, every school has to discard as much information as possible, using whatever pretext is handy. Some facts are not relevant; some are not multicultural; some are politically incorrect; some facts are too difficult for a particular group. It doesn’t matter how you do it. The goal is that everything be thinned until finally you turn chunky beef soup into watery gruel. All the facts taught anywhere in the entire school should not fill up a small book. Now you’re talking.

Second, insist for a hundred reasons that kids not be expected to remember or retain any of this thin fare. Rote memorization is laughed at. Drill and kill is scorned. Teaching to a test is attacked. So, there is little in the school to start with, and little of that ends up in a child’s head.

Third, create easy, preferably subjective tests so that almost everyone gets an A or a B. These good grades suggest that children are mastering a great deal of knowledge. Parents are charmed by all the success. Nowadays educators are coming up with even more devious forms of testing, such as scrapbooks, peer review, and authentic assessment. The drift is away from expecting children to actually know anything specifically. Feelings and opinions are quite enough. Explaining how you approach the problem is praised. Correct answers are frowned upon.

Four, everything in the school and in the classroom must be enveloped in a smog of important-sounding, newfangled methods: constructivism, self- esteem, cooperative learning, critical thinking, national standards, 21st-century skills, and dozens more. Gobbledegook is made flesh. Apparent activity is all-important. In many respects the school is theater, show biz, mime. Teachers pretend to teach; students pretend to learn. At the end of the process, the children know nothing.

Everything that occurs in school is like a dream you had last night or the night before. Surely some interesting things happened. But you can’t say exactly what. It’s all very hazy now. Then even the memory of having a dream is gone. Rasa.

More evilly, what might actually be possible, and even easily achieved, is lost on the wind. In a world where everyone walks with a limp, running is no longer imaginable.

And so children, as never before in history, are turned into eunuchs of the mind. To the degree the Education Establishment can pull it off, children remain knowledge virgins. They are not unhappy. It’s all they’ve ever known, these strangers in a strange land.

(Bruce Deitrick Price writes about education, culture, and language on Improve-Education.org. “47: Teach One Fact Each Day” complements the above article.)

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, an outspoken education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Another focus is education reform; see “38: Saving Public Schools.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.”

Let’s not beat around the bush here: unethical marketing practices hit’s a raw nerve on many, many people who go online everyday. The “super highway” has become filled with bandits waiting around the curve to brandish you with everything from how to turn flour into gold to where to purchase a piece of Big Foot’s toenail. Unfortunately, unethical online business ideas and practices may be something that cannot be avoided.

With new apps coming out everyday, text messaging, mobile websites, video recordings, video cameras and tons of other communication opportunities, our lives are continuously bombarded with marketing propaganda like never before. Security and privacy matters, including e-business legislation concerns, will eventually have to be, well, legislated.

It is becoming more complex to decipher who can be trusted online, along with which websites are not carrying some type of virus or malware, SEO manipulation, online marketing fraud, and various email business scams that lure unsuspecting people. When something is unethical it is not only about the selling aspects but the intent as well.

Let’s take a look at some of the vilest and hated unethical online marketing schemes today.

- The Internet Is Becoming One Big Advertising Machine…Much Like TV

First of all when it comes to unethical online marketing it is not just small businesses it is larger businesses too. For example, you click on the headline to watch a video related to an article, only to be rudely forced to watch advertising before you can watch the video? It makes people’s blood boil. It is unethical because it is based purely on greed. As if there is not enough advertising throughout the Internet, now we are “forced” to watch advertising about the newest washing detergent against our will.

-Spam

We have all received emails promoting everything from prescription drugs to fake lottery announcements. Now we have to literally unsubscribe to emails that we didn’t subscribe to in the first place, at least not knowingly. Sending spam emails is perhaps one of the most unethical business practices on the Internet today. These annoying emails are not only obtrusive but some of them may carry bugs and viruses as well. More knowledgeable email users have by now learned the “tricks of the trade,” and have separate email addresses for certain actions they perform on the Internet like filling out forms for certain websites, and the majority of email boxes have programs to filter out these types of emails. However, from time to time a few always manages to slip through.

-Hiding Pricing/Long Wordy Advertisement

Doesn’t it get on your nerves when you go to a website advertising a product or online business ideas like “How to Make Your Brain Think Faster,” and the whole page is blasting the benefits of the procedure? It reminds you of the infomercials that come screaming out of your TV screen. However, they are not really giving you any “real” information until you scroll down to the bottom of the page and presto; there is the order information and price. However, savvy customers just scroll down to the bottom of the page in the beginning, without reading any text, to check the price. But the marketing is a turn-off period and who would bother to scroll to the bottom of the page anyways?

-Deceptive Offers/Sign-up Programs

This practice irks people like no other. For example, you sign up for a survey that promises to pay you $5.00 for each survey you take. During the process you are barraged with pages of offers to signup to various programs, online magazines, or to purchase something useless. To top it off, there is no way to avoid these pages if you want to complete the offer. And to pour salt into the wound, some have stipulations where you cannot accept their offer unless you accept other offers as well.

I am sure there are many more unscrupulous, infuriating, and downright illegal tactics that online businesses utilize to lure people into their lairs. To our chagrin, it is only going to get worse as Internet takes more precedence in our everyday lives. Unfortunately it will come to the same nuisance as TV. Cable was supposed to be our savoir from commercials and endless interruptions. The Internet started off as the information highway, but it seems it is turning into a dusty back road full of bumps and potholes

First of all it is necessary to understand that what global warming controversy is, and then you will able to find the solution and options to deal with that. It is a debate which discussed the issues of increasing air temperature from the last century, and the predictions and consequences that we have to face in return. The other issue that comes into main scene from the last few years is that are these changes are normal and within the climatic variations or unprecedented.

Global warming exists even in the mid of 18th century as well but at that time it was not controversial. All the scientists who are dealing in this field have accepted this as a normal routine. But the real thing on which the global warming controversy focuses is the factors that cause the global warming. These factors increase magnificently after the 2nd world war. The debate is still going on upon the other factors that can cause this warming and what are the useful and harmful effects of this global warming. After some debate it is commonly recognized that there are more harmful effects of this global warming then its useful and beneficial points. So there are some actions and options that have been put forward by the experts to control that global warming and slower down its side effects. The main issues that these experts have discussed regarding global warming controversy is that they are largely harmful to the overall environment, and the activities performed by the human beings are the biggest reason for this global warming. And the last point of discussion is to curtail these activities to control the and lessen the effects of these coming issues. So these are the points which are the basis of the controversy and mainly on the economic and political grounds not on the scientific grounds.

So we talk about the global warming then we must have to take the steps to reduce it by adopting the measures recommended by the experts of the field because they are the people who know well that how to deal with this issue and if we do not follow their instruction and enters into any global warming controversy then we must have to be ready to face the consequences. The future generations then have all the right to blame us because then at their time they have to face the really big issues and challenges to deal with this global warming.

I suspect the national terror alert should be upped a few colors. The country’s economy, productivity, and scientific dominance are under attack. All because education commissars and math professors are down to their old tricks.

The federal government (i.e., the Education Establishment) is proposing new Core Standards and National Standards that are veritable avalanches of inscrutable verbosity. Seems to me it’s all more of the same-old, same-old once called Standards Math, the voodoo behind Reform Math, now stunning young minds across the country.

As the Wall Street Journal notes: “Fewer than four of 10 fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics, according to a highly regarded federal test given in early 2009, adding to recent evidence that the U.S. drive to become more economically competitive by overhauling public education may be falling short.”

Let’s try that again: MORE THAN 6 OUT OF 10 AMERICAN KIDS haven’t got a clue where math is concerned. The US is dumber each year. And why? I’d say because all these so-called Standards are just hooey. They use 1000 words where 50 are needed. thereby guaranteeing that parents, teachers, and kids have no idea what’s going on. That was the pattern started in New Math circa 1965; and it continues now.

Which has to remind us of Orwell: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”

Which brings us to the Core Standards for FIRST GRADE, as found on http://corestandards.org. Here we have the Cuttlefish Express:

“In Grade 1, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) developing understanding of addition, subtraction, and strategies for addition and subtraction within 20; (2) developing understanding of whole number relationships and place value, including grouping in tens and ones; (3) developing understanding of linear measurement and measuring lengths as iterating length units; and (4) reasoning about attributes of, and composing and decomposing geometric shapes.

1. Students develop strategies for adding and subtracting whole numbers based on their prior work with small numbers. They use a variety of models, including discrete objects and length-based models (e.g., cubes connected to form lengths), to model add-to, take-from, put-together, take-apart, and compare situations to develop meaning for the operations of addition and subtraction, and to develop strategies to solve arithmetic problems with these operations. Students understand connections between counting and addition and subtraction (e.g., adding two is the same as counting on two). They use properties of addition to add whole numbers and to create and use increasingly sophisticated strategies based on these properties (e.g., “making tens”) to solve addition and subtraction problems within 20. By comparing a variety of solution strategies, children build their understanding of the relationship between addition and subtraction.

2. Students develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to add within 100 and subtract multiples of 10. They compare whole numbers (at least to 100) to develop understanding of and solve problems involving their relative sizes. They think of whole numbers between 10 and 100 in terms of tens and ones (especially recognizing the numbers 11 to 19 as composed of a ten and some ones). Through activities that build number sense, they understand the order of the counting numbers and their relative magnitudes.

3. Students develop an understanding of the meaning and processes of measurement, including underlying concepts such as iterating (the mental activity of building up the length of an object with equal-sized units) and the transitivity principle for indirect measurement.

4. Students compose and decompose plane or solid figures (e.g., put two triangles together to make a quadrilateral) and build understanding of part-whole relationships as well as the properties of the original and composite shapes. As they combine shapes, they recognize them from different perspectives and orientations, describe their geometric attributes, and determine how they are alike and different, to develop the background for measurement and for initial understandings of properties such as congruence and symmetry.”

And that is merely the INTRODUCTION. There are also sections titled OPERATIONS & ALGEBRAIC THINKING; NUMBER & OPERATIONS IN BASE TEN; MEASUREMENT & DATA; and GEOMETRY. Are these people certifiable? I’d say Happy Horsesh*t has never been so happy. Go to http://corestandards.org and see for yourself. You can find famous people braying approval of these monstrosities. One former governor actually says: now parents can tell how well their children are doing. I think not.

For a piece called “43: American Basic Curriculum,” I worked on the idea that we should have minimal standards, all simply and briefly written, so parents could monitor what their children were learning. Here’s what I came up with for first grade: “Math: count to 25; do easy problems, e.g., 1+2 = 3.” For second grade: count to 50; add and subtract 2-digit numbers.” With my Standards, you know precisely whether a kid is at grade level or not.

Brevity is not just the soul of wit. It’s also, if you trust Orwell, a good index of sincerity. I submit that there is an intellectual (and ideological) connection between the 60% of kids who cannot grasp math and the preposterous prose of these Standards now being pushed on all the states.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Why have these people so little talent? My suggestion is that we oppose Core Standards until these so-called educators reach a much higher standard of lucidity. And of sincerity.

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“43: American Basic Curriculum” can be found on http://Improve-Education.org.

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of http://www.Improve-Education.org, an education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.

Recently, a retired general wrote an article in the local paper that started this way: “Is our troubled educational system posing a threat to our national security? The Defense Department estimates that a shocking 75 percent of young Americans are not able to join the military–and one of the leading reasons is poor education.” His solution was that everyone should support the new Core Standards proposed by the Education Establishment.

But isn’t it obvious that these are the same people responsible, in the first place, for rendering the majority of young Americans educationally unfit for military service? Why would we trust them?

Four years ago, another general published an article in the same paper, where he lamented the poor quality of the young people coming into the military. To be blunt, these recruits were largely ignorant and nearly illiterate; the military could hardly use them. The general optimistically explained his solution: the Army would establish a remedial Academy to compensate for the poor job done by the public schools.

I wasn’t optimistic. I was sure that, to set up his Academy, the general would consult with so-called experts from Harvard and Teachers College (that is, high members of the Education Establishment, the very same people who created the mess in the first place). Even if they had the ability to help the general, would they? After all, any improvement among these recruits would put the public schools in even worse light.

Now consider this news story: “Army Basic-Skills Program Said Failing…
Washington–A five-year-old remedial-education program for Army recruits has largely failed to help soldiers improve their basic skills in reading and mathematics, and it has inadequately linked basic-skills objectives to job performance in the Army, according to a report by the General Accounting Office.”

This report appeared in Education Week more than — are you ready? — 25 years ago! (This was roughly the same time when the Nation at Risk report famously concluded that our public schools are so bad they seem to have been designed by a “hostile foreign power.”)

Doesn’t everyone see the pattern? No improvement ever occurs.

The Education Establishment has created mediocre public schools; and we are supposed to accept that. My analysis is that these elite educators got sidetracked by ideological (read: collectivist) considerations.

What these people care about is social engineering. They don’t know how to run good schools because it’s not something they value. If you ask them for help in setting up remedial programs, they won’t do a good job. If you ask them for help in writing new Standards, they won’t do a good job. When did they ever do a good job? All of their innovations, all of their much-touted theories and methods, turn out to be counterproductive. (For education, that is. For social engineering, they work just fine.)

I beg you to reflect for five minutes on Whole Word. It’s the dominant way to teach reading in our country for the last 75 years. It’s a hoax that has created 50 million functional illiterates. Therein resides much unpleasant truth.

This column is an appeal to the military and business communities– please, let’s get practical. All those starry-eyed ideologues up in their ivory towers are not going to help the problem. They will probably make it worse. You need common-sense, practical educators, people who believe in knowledge and making sure kids get a lot of it. I’m one of those people myself. Here is my advice: find 10 good private schools and hire the headmasters. Do whatever a majority think you should do.

Finally, does anyone doubt what I’m saying? Simply go to http://corestandards.org, and read the latest mush from our so-called experts. The people writing this stuff are not sincerely interested in education, not in a practical way, not as the military or business communities understand that term.

My own Standard for second grade is this: “Count to 100. Add and subtract two-digit numbers.” That’s it. Make sure all kids reach that level and we’ll be fine.

Now, by way of contrast, consider this small portion of the Common Core math standards for second grade as prepared by our Education Establishment: “….Students use their understanding of addition to develop fluency with addition and subtraction within 100. They solve problems within 1000 by applying their understanding of models for addition and subtraction, and they develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to compute sums and differences of whole numbers in base-ten notation, using their understanding of place value and the properties of operations. They select and accurately apply methods that are appropriate for the context and the numbers involved to mentally calculate sums and differences for numbers with only tens or only hundreds…”

This is blather. It will spark a million meaningless arguments. Babel will win. Kids will lose. If you want to ensure that 75% of American teenagers continue to be unfit for military service, trust the people who wrote this malarkey.

URGENT: Military personnel are urged to forward this communication to their Members of Congress and Officers in Charge.

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of http://www.Improve-Education.org, an education and intellectual site.
One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.”
Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.”

As the peak oil crisis looms with severe economic implications that the oil reserves of the world is about to be depleted, there is now a revival of an older theory that petrol as we know it exists elsewhere and remains untapped.

We are looking at two schools of thought here. One holds that oil is a non-renewal fuel produced millions of years ago when organic planktons of the oceans fossilized and were buried to rot and decompose into hydrocarbons and thus, you now have fossil fuels. This is the biogenic theory in the origin of oil and is the current theory adopted as the basis for oil exploration.

The other theory holds that oil is a renewable fuel produced inorganically from carbon deposits within the magmatic layers under the earth’s crusty surface. Hence, it’s called the abiotic theory which espouses the inorganic origins of oil that is not fossil-based, and that a nearly inexhaustible supply exists, more than originally thought.

This theory has been embraced by most Russian and Ukrainian geologists and scientists in the former USSR in the 50s to the 70s and formed the guiding perspective for exploring and putting into production about 80 oil and natural gas fields in the Caspian region and about 90 petroleum fields in the Siberian region majority of which had been deep-excavated into the earth’s crystalline basement rock formations.

The revival of the old abandoned abiotic theory has been prompted by the postulated peak oil crisis that has dire implications to the world’s economy as the oil reserves of the world is increasingly getting depleted with so few oil fields being discovered. Hence, we now see a flurry of technological developments for hybrid cars and sources of renewable energy sources like wind power, hydroelectric generation and nuclear power to achieve progressively less dependency on a dwindling cache of fossil fuels.

Many pundits reviving the abiotic theory look to the observed depletion of oil sources as largely the result of a mistaken theory that oil has organic roots and is non-renewable. Prospecting and exploring of oil sources has been guided exclusively by the biotic fossil fuel theory. They claim that if we followed the abandoned and discredited Russian model for oil exploration and shift to the abiotic theory, new locations and source of fuel can be tapped so that the peak oil would not be a problem.

The abiotic theory has been revived and the challenge for explorers and big oil companies is now to prove it. Unfortunately, prospecting and excavating are entirely expensive and timely process that just might prove more productive in looking for cleaner alternative energy sources.

Discovering a nearly inexhaustible oil reserve is sure to bring down oil prices to the delight of consumers. But that could come with more unbridled consumption at the expense of saving the planet from the greenhouse effect caused by burning this kind of energy source.

There is a website that describes the Abiotic Oil Theory and numerous other topics of interest such as conspiracies, secret technology, ufos, secret weapons research, bible end times predictions and many other such subjects, this website is called: The Great Deception and it may be found at this url: http://www.great-deception.com

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.

Author Bio: Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software business since the early 1980′s on the VIC 20, C64, AMIGA, and WINDOWS Computer Systems. He has won magazine awards for the ‘Game of the Month’, and more, in several European computer magazines. Get a Credit Card or Fast Cash Loan http://www.rb59.com/creditcards

For those who may only believe it is a day out of school or another occasion to shop, let’s be clear about Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011. It is a day to celebrate the life of a man who put his principles above all else, including his own life.

When you hear the “I Have a Dream” speech at a school program or celebration event, listen to the words themselves and you will understand the real purpose behind Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission.

He spoke of the challenges ahead and the goals to achieve in the areas of family unity, civil rights, religious tolerance, human dignity and social justice. Many of those challenges still exist and those goals have not yet been reached, so Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011 is still relevant.

It was a long, hard fought battle to earn the day as a celebration. Many were involved and the event, after the holiday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, was commemorated by Stevie Wonder whose rhythmic song, “Happy Birthday” became the anthem for the holiday and reinforced the reason to remember the man who “celebrated peace around the world.”

I had the occasion to speak to Yolanda King, Dr. King’s oldest daughter, before her untimely death and she brought home another aspect surrounding the recognitions for him. She reminded me that he was a father, her father and each year she would be reminded of the loss of her father, but also about his impact on the lives of people around the world.

She was proud of his accomplishments in his short life and held onto her own private memories of the man she knew as Daddy. As we are bombarded with the often one-sided, negative views of African American fathers, we can look to Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011 as a time to reflect on the many African American fathers who are positive role models for their families and productive citizens in the community.

In addition to his impact on the image of family, he dreamed of a day when there would be no hatred based on color, religious affiliation or geography and that people from different ethnic and religious groups could all come together in peace and harmony.

His stirring speeches all reflect a “call to action” in the redesign of the human condition and for those who have been oppressed to know that they are worthy human beings.

He knew that the best way to overcome oppression is through peaceful resistance and to help your enemy to better understand you and to seek common ground.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011 is still relevant as there are many dividing lines in society today that could be erased with better communication and less prejudice. In his “How Long, Not Long” speech given on the steps of the State Capital in Montgomery, Ala. on March 25, 1965, he emphasized this point.

“The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative non-violence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going…Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the White man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the White man, not of the Black man. That will be the day of man as man. ”

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011 is still relevant as we strive to achieve a society that is colorblind, compassionate and open-minded. We must find more non-violent ways to resolve conflicts similar to those preached and practiced by Dr. King, who was influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

According to Philo Gabriel, who wrote “The Influence of Mahatma Gandhi on Martin Luther King and The Civil Rights Movement,” Dr. King, who based most of his non-violence philosophy from teachings in the Bible, was also “greatly influenced by certain non-Christian ideas. Perhaps most important of these was the philosophy of non-violence practiced by Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, the spiritual leader of India’s independence movement in the first half of the 20th century.”

Dr. King had a global mindset early on and many of his writings and speeches have become the foundation for study worldwide and have served as the framework for non-violent interactions.

His winning the Nobel Peace Prize was no accident and although his life was cut short in April 1968, his legacy and quest for peace lives on.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011 is not just a national holiday, but a global awareness day to reflect, remember and re-charge efforts to use non-violence and open communication to break the chains of all “isms” in society and the other forms of mental and physical bondage so that we day we all can be “free at last.”

Author Bio: Meta J. Mereday is a writer for ; Regal Black Mens Magazine The publication focuses on ; African American Community News Politics Sports Health The magazine features a ; Local Online Classifieds & Job Classified Black Business Directory Visit to read about ; Martin, Luther King, Jr. Day 2011

I have been following the UFO and Extraterrestrial phenomena since the 1970′s, I have read numerous books by many of the top authors in the field including those by: Vallee, Strieber, Hopkins, Imbrogno, and literally tons of other authors. The phenomena seems to be growing more and more every year, and there are reports of UFO’s and actual encounters with non-earth beings from all around the globe, not to mention reports of crop circles.

The UFO sightings may be increasing or they may not be, one thing that has increased at a dramatic pace is the technology that allows people to capture and report the sightings, such as cell phones, digital cameras, and a host of other devices. Maybe what really has increased is the technology to report the sightings, instead of the sightings themselves, but this like most areas of the UFO phenomena, will continue to be up for debate.

Besides the reported pace of UFO sightings increasing, there is another branch of this same field that seems to be growing at a rapid pace also, and that is that we are on the verge of a major News release by the USA President or some other government agency stating that UFO’s and Extraterrestrial’s are visiting the Earth, in other words, we are on the verge of UFO Disclosure.

I have been reading about UFO disclosure since the late 1970′s, as far back as I started reading and researching the UFO phenomena it’s self. What is the major reason for UFO disclosure according to most of the people that report it’s coming? Hollywood and the Movies. If you research back over the years, you will read reports in books, and magazines and other publications where some major author or so called expert in the field of UFO’s states, UFO Disclosure is about to be released.

If you do a little bit of careful research you will discover that just before the UFO disclosure fever revs up, there has been a major motion picture released with UFO’s or Extraterrestrial’s as the subject, such examples are: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and ET The Extraterrestrial (1982), i.e., right up to the current releases such as Independence Day (1996), The Fourth Kind (2009), Skyline (2010), and now there are at least two UFO – Extraterrestrial movies to be released in 2011.

So as more and more such movies are released, more and more the fever over UFO Disclosure will rise, as folks will say the government is behind the directors in Hollywood, paying them fees, or offering some other incentive to create and release movies on the UFO-ET subject, to get the people of the world ready or prepare our minds to accept such a release of information from the President or some other Government agency.

This is nothing but foolishness, if you research the movies over time, starting from ‘SKYLINE (2010), and going way back to the original ‘War of the Worlds (1953), you will discover that the majority of any UFO-ET movie is not a pleasant subject, the aliens are far superior, they come to attack, colonize, or destroy mankind, there are tons of huge effects, with major explosions, and scenes of terror, excitement, and action.

The only reason Hollywood, Producers, Directors or sources for funding for such projects releases more and more of these films, is because they have a huge audience, and bring in a LOT of money. When you find a subject such as UFO’s and Extraterrestrial’s Invading the earth, to be such a huge money making source, you are going to see more and more of these films being made, the only true disclosure is, ‘Hey! These films make a lot of money!

And if you truly believe that there is disclosure coming by the President of the USA or some agency of the Government, stop and think about it! For years and years, every since as far back as the major UFO sighting and reported abduction of Betty and Barney Hill (1961), there have been thousands of reports of not only UFO sightings but abductions by aliens, mostly the species known as the ‘Greys’.

Reputable people from not only the USA but around the world have reported UFO sightings and abductions, these people range from police officers, doctors, lawyers, airline pilots and tons of other highly regarded people, with great credentials behind them.

Every since the so called Alien flying saucer crash at Roswell in 1947, the Government of the USA as stated time after time, that there are NO ALIEN UFO’s, NO Extraterrestrial beings visiting the Earth, so what does this say about all of the eye witnesses to such UFO’s, even the airline pilots and others with such big credentials, it says that they are either mistaken for what they have seen, or they are lying, or worse.

The same thing is said about those that have reported abductions, they are either being fed the information by the Hypnotherapist that regress them, or they have lied about the whole incident, or their mental state makes them believe it has happened, even though it’s just a fantasy, the Government says, there has been and is no proof of any alien abductions, in fact folks have been ridiculed, and made to look completely insane for over 60 years by the USA Government, so do you truly believe this same Government or the President, is going to come forward and say, ‘Reports about UFO’s and Extraterrestrial’s have been real!’, of course not. There would be such a state of chaos around the world, that it would be worse if the aliens are real, and launched a world wide attack against us, disclosure cannot happen, and will not happen, by the USA Government or the President of the United States.

If UFO’s are real, and Extraterrestrial’s are visiting us, and abducting humans and animals such as cows and horses, the only way disclosure can occur is by the Aliens themselves, as a worldwide landing or such mass unveiling occurs, as the sighting of hundreds of giant spaceships and one time, over major cities of the world.

There is a website that describes UFO’s and Extraterrestrial’s and numerous other topics of interest such as conspiracies, secret technology, ufos, secret weapons research, bible end times predictions and many other such subjects, this website is called: The Great Deception and it may be found at this url: http://www.great-deception.com

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.

Author Bio: Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software business since the early 1980′s on the VIC 20, C64, AMIGA, and WINDOWS Computer Systems. He has won magazine awards for the ‘Game of the Month’, and more, in several European computer magazines. The Great Deception http://www.great-deception.com