In the face of world-wide governmental condemnation (except from the Zionist-occupied White House and US Congress), the PMAJO slavishly backs any brutal murder committed by the Israeli secret police anywhere in the world and at anytime. The recent assassination of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Mabhouh, in Dubai is a case in point. The PMAJO has defended all of Mossad's criminal actions leading up to the murder, including extensive identity theft and the stealing or falsification of passports and official documents from several European countries, presumably allied to the Zionist state. Among the Mossad agents who entered Dubai to kill Mabhouh, twelve agents used stolen or forged British passports, three Australian, three French, one German and six Irish. These agents assumed the identity of European citizens in order to commit murder in a sovereign nation.
Once again the PMAJO demonstrate that its first loyalty is to the Israeli secret police, even when they violate the sovereignty of major US allies. No doubt the PMAJO would readily support the Israeli Mossad, even if it were shown to have used U.S. documents to assassinate Mabhouh. In fact, two of the 26 Israeli assassins, carrying fake Irish and fake British passports, are known to have entered the United States after the killing and may still be here.
The position adopted by the Daily Alert and the PMAJO in defense of Israel's international terrorist act followed several lines of attack, which will be discussed below. These include: (1) blaming the victim, (2) claiming that extra-judicial, extra territorial murders are legal, (3) minimizing the murder of 'one' individual, (4) deflecting attention from the Zionists by blaming 'other Arab's, (5) favorably comparing Mossad assassinations to US killings in Afghanistan, (6) trivializing and relativizing world condemnation, (7) citing “self-defense”, (8) praising the high tech 'operational details' of the assassination and (9) discrediting the Dubai police investigators rather than the Israeli perpetrators.
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Recommended daily allowance of insanity, under-reported news and uncensored opinion dismantling the propaganda matrix.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Educating through entertainment: The Sabido Methodology
When Sabido developed his methodology in the 1970's, he was pioneering in a new pro-social communication model, using telenovelas to promote literacy, family planning and other social development goals. The first novella using the Sabido Method to promote family planning, was Acompaname (”Accompany Me”). Acompaname showed in dramatic terms over the course of the nine-month series the personal benefits of planning one's family, by focusing on the issue of family harmony. The results of Acompaname, as reported by the Mexican government's national population council (CONAPO), were:
Sabido developed five additional social content telenovelas, which were all broadcast on Televisa: Vamos Juntos (”We Go Together”), Caminemos (”Let's Walk”), Nosotros las Mujeres (”We the Women”), Por Amor (”For Love”), and Los Hijos de Nadie (”Nobody's Children”).
During the decade 1977 to 1986, when these Mexican soap operas were on the air, the country experienced a 34% decline in its population growth rate. As a result, in May 1986, the United Nations Population Prize was presented to Mexico as the foremost population success story in the world.
Thomas Donnelly, then with USAID in Mexico, wrote,
“Throughout Mexico, wherever one travels, when people are asked where they heard about family planning, or what made them decide to practice family planning, the response is universally attributed to one of the soap operas that Televisa has done. …The Televisa family planning soap operas have made the single most powerful contribution to the Mexican population success story.”
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- Phone calls to the CONAPO requesting family planning information increased from zero to an average of 500 a month. Many people calling mentioned that they were encouraged to do so by the telenovela.
- More than 2,000 women registered as voluntary workers in the national program of family planning. This was an idea suggested in the telenovela.
- Contraceptive sales increased 23% in one year, compared to a seven percent increase the preceding year.
- More than 560,000 women enrolled in family planning clinics, an increase of 33% (compared to a 1% decrease the previous year).
Sabido developed five additional social content telenovelas, which were all broadcast on Televisa: Vamos Juntos (”We Go Together”), Caminemos (”Let's Walk”), Nosotros las Mujeres (”We the Women”), Por Amor (”For Love”), and Los Hijos de Nadie (”Nobody's Children”).
During the decade 1977 to 1986, when these Mexican soap operas were on the air, the country experienced a 34% decline in its population growth rate. As a result, in May 1986, the United Nations Population Prize was presented to Mexico as the foremost population success story in the world.
Thomas Donnelly, then with USAID in Mexico, wrote,
“Throughout Mexico, wherever one travels, when people are asked where they heard about family planning, or what made them decide to practice family planning, the response is universally attributed to one of the soap operas that Televisa has done. …The Televisa family planning soap operas have made the single most powerful contribution to the Mexican population success story.”
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USA 2012: After the Middle Class Revolution
From the book review:
...The revolution that occurred during this period involved a much more systematic use of direct democracy and eventually gave rise to a triumph for the US middle class. We learn that the revolutionary change was facilitated by a number of populist constitutional changes, the improvement of electronic infrastructure, and a middle class-oriented economic program. In his final paper, David appreciates the merits of his parents and their generation and speculates about what might have happened if they had failed to face the growing social and economic problems of the American political system but not reinventing a participatory democracy.
The novel makes up about 25% of the book while the remaining part is dedicated to a more data-grounded analysis of the major problems of modern American society. It is grim reading and it is probably even grimmer stuff for a reader (like this reviewer) with firm roots in the social-democratic welfare systems of Scandinavia.
According to Dolbeare and Hubbell, the US government today is often a willing captive of the major corporations and banks and the nation's wealthiest people (no wonder they quote Kevin Phillips quite often). How else could it be that approximately 16% of the pretax adjusted family income today is earned by the richest 1% of US families, up from 8% in 1977. If the trend continues, their share will rise to 27% in 2020. At that time 20% of families will receive more than two-thirds of the national income, while the lowest 80% of all families will receive less than 33%!
The authors also present convincing data demonstrating that the US leads the industrialized world in a lot of negative categories like AIDS, murder, rape, percentage of households with handguns, municipal waste in tons per capita, teenage pregnancy etc. . . In 1994 more than 23,000 Americans were assassinated while in Denmark the comparable figure was 55. Adjusted for population size this means that homicide is 12 times more common in the US. The other side of the coin is that Danes pay a high price for safety: 53% of national income is handed over to the tax authorities!
The authors do not share the optimistic philosophy of life of prominent US futurists like the Tofflers or John Naisbitt. In their view, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of one free market works no miracles in America.
While the nation in general enjoys increasing wealth, the gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots becomes greater. As a consequence, the social ties holding a society together deteriorate even further because there are so few shared values binding citizens together. Billionaires in Beverly Hills and beggars in South central L. A. face completely different problems and live in totally disparate worlds. The only thing unifying them is a geographical proximity. Often they do not even share the same language.
Dolbeare and Hubbel pepper this book with many interesting statements about severe malady that effects the American political economy. Here are a few excerpts: "We wear blinders to avoid seeing the dominance of wealthy elites. . . We refuse to take serious critiques of our basic systems, and we marginalize those who assert them." "We want so much to believe in our system that we accept systematic lying in preference to truth"(p.14). "Ironically, the lower income levels - the very people who stand to gain from governmental services - are the ones who have been discouraged from voting and have withdrawn from the active electorate" (p. 46). "We are moving from at outmoded and unworkable representative system to a transparently manipulative system in which the people have even less control" (p. 78)...
...The revolution that occurred during this period involved a much more systematic use of direct democracy and eventually gave rise to a triumph for the US middle class. We learn that the revolutionary change was facilitated by a number of populist constitutional changes, the improvement of electronic infrastructure, and a middle class-oriented economic program. In his final paper, David appreciates the merits of his parents and their generation and speculates about what might have happened if they had failed to face the growing social and economic problems of the American political system but not reinventing a participatory democracy.
The novel makes up about 25% of the book while the remaining part is dedicated to a more data-grounded analysis of the major problems of modern American society. It is grim reading and it is probably even grimmer stuff for a reader (like this reviewer) with firm roots in the social-democratic welfare systems of Scandinavia.
According to Dolbeare and Hubbell, the US government today is often a willing captive of the major corporations and banks and the nation's wealthiest people (no wonder they quote Kevin Phillips quite often). How else could it be that approximately 16% of the pretax adjusted family income today is earned by the richest 1% of US families, up from 8% in 1977. If the trend continues, their share will rise to 27% in 2020. At that time 20% of families will receive more than two-thirds of the national income, while the lowest 80% of all families will receive less than 33%!
The authors also present convincing data demonstrating that the US leads the industrialized world in a lot of negative categories like AIDS, murder, rape, percentage of households with handguns, municipal waste in tons per capita, teenage pregnancy etc. . . In 1994 more than 23,000 Americans were assassinated while in Denmark the comparable figure was 55. Adjusted for population size this means that homicide is 12 times more common in the US. The other side of the coin is that Danes pay a high price for safety: 53% of national income is handed over to the tax authorities!
The authors do not share the optimistic philosophy of life of prominent US futurists like the Tofflers or John Naisbitt. In their view, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of one free market works no miracles in America.
While the nation in general enjoys increasing wealth, the gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots becomes greater. As a consequence, the social ties holding a society together deteriorate even further because there are so few shared values binding citizens together. Billionaires in Beverly Hills and beggars in South central L. A. face completely different problems and live in totally disparate worlds. The only thing unifying them is a geographical proximity. Often they do not even share the same language.
Dolbeare and Hubbel pepper this book with many interesting statements about severe malady that effects the American political economy. Here are a few excerpts: "We wear blinders to avoid seeing the dominance of wealthy elites. . . We refuse to take serious critiques of our basic systems, and we marginalize those who assert them." "We want so much to believe in our system that we accept systematic lying in preference to truth"(p.14). "Ironically, the lower income levels - the very people who stand to gain from governmental services - are the ones who have been discouraged from voting and have withdrawn from the active electorate" (p. 46). "We are moving from at outmoded and unworkable representative system to a transparently manipulative system in which the people have even less control" (p. 78)...