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This is your government on war.

An unnatural, synthesized invention, war courses through Congress, city halls and the Oval Office. Paranoia, fear, consumption, degradation, enslavement, betrayal and suffering – these are the family values of a nation on war.

Our government’s addiction consumes the domestic budget, leaving little for health, education or infrastructure. It invades privacy and creates enemies through paranoia and fear, painting its opposition as savage, barbaric, shady, and justifying oppression, enslavement, torture and murder. It desecrates the natural world, poisoning the veins of the Earth and its abundance, waging chemical warfare and extracting the resources to do so.

We need an intervention, an American Awakening, to end the inevitable suffering of the American people – indeed, the global village – at the whims of mega users. Want to protect the Fourth Amendment? Want to protect them all? Call for a 28th Amendment – an amendment to abolish the slavery of addiction, an amendment to abolish war.

Section 1. The American people, in accordance with the promotion of international justice, peace, human rights and dignity, hereby renounce the use of organized, armed force to resolve intra- and inter-state conflict; neither war nor war-making processes shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall neither make nor approve war, nor approve of the use of military force, as a means for resolving intra- and inter-state conflict.

Section 3. The United States shall neither make nor keep locations of detention for prisoners of war, and all prisoners, upon recognition, shall be released to their respective home nations or non-military, judicial courts.

(from http://www.peacevoice.info/tag/barack-obama/, by Erin Niemela. Published also in: Truth Out http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/16983-how-not-to-wage-war, Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/11-8, New Clear Vision http://www.newclearvision.com/2013/06/18/addicted-to-war/ et al. Date: June 11,12,13,14,18,2013)


Democratic Socialist Statement on the Islamic State and the Crisis in Iraq and Syria, Posted by Maria Svart on 10.16.14

"Once again the United States government is ignoring history and trying to solve an intricate political crisis, the rise of the so-called Islamic State (I.S.), by aerial bombardment. The bombing by the U.S. and its “allies” must stop, as must the threat of further military escalation. Bombing is a blunt, indiscriminate tactic that kills innocent civilians and often drives innocent bystanders to support the very foes we bomb...

"The origins of the I.S. lay, in part, in previous misguided U.S. policies. I.S. has garnered widespread support in the Sunni regions of Iraq because of the sectarian nature of the U.S.-backed, Shiite government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This government, and its alleged more “moderate” successor, have excluded Sunnis from real political voice and from any leadership role in the armed forces..." (See the entire statement at the website above).


Thom Hartmann Shame on the Wealthy

The Poor Are More Ethical Than the 1% Thom Hartmann... "The rich love to demonize the poor, but it turns out that the wealthy are the ones who need a little shaming. Paul Buchheit over at Alternet compiled various reports, studies, and analyses, and found clear evidence that the poor are way more ethical than the one percent [extremely wealthy]. In fact, after reviewing all the data, Paul found clear correlations between wealth and unethical behavior, between wealth and a lack of empathy, and between wealth and being unproductive. In other words, the rich work less, care less, and cheat more often than the working poor." For more on the poor, see my page Poor and Poverty


Higher Education Should be Free

"In essence, all of these [successful] countries themselves financed the necessary investments in physical capital and, even more, in human capital [education], which the latest research holds to be the key to long-term growth' (Picketty, p. 70). If this is true, then why are we forcing the students to pay for higher education? For more, see Value of Higher Education.


Eliminate War

"Once people believed in human sacrifice -- not any more. Once people believed in slavery -- not any more. Once people believed that women should not vote -- not any more. In your lifetime I hope your children can say: Once people believed in [killing, violence, and] war as the answer -- not any more" (Frances Crowe, peace activist. From the San Antonio Friends newsletter, June, 2014). For more, see War, War As Manipulation, Peace, and National Campaign for a Peace Tax.


SOCIALIST ACTION

The Democratic and Republican parties are both representatives of the ruling rich – the tiny circle of the ultra-wealthy who control our society by virtue of possessing the wealth we have created over the course of generations. These capitalists and their representatives are constitutionally incapable of offering a solution to the crises created by their system. They can only take more flesh off our hides, imprison and deport more of us, invade yet more countries, and intensify the destruction of our communities and our planet.

Their system is driven by the hunger for profits and organized by the chaos of markets. That which does not produce profits is of no consequence to them. When profit cannot be obtained, wealth will not be put to any use. When they run out of the means to extract profits their whole contraption seizes up or bursts. Socialist Action opposes the right of this tiny minority to rule society. We advocate the democratic rule of the majority organized on the basis of human need instead of profit. We are campaigning in support of a mass united movement of working people to fight for our common needs.

We call for placing the biggest banks and corporations under public ownership through democratic workers committees. This will allow working people to organize the economy in the interests of human need. We can eliminate military spending and massive waste in other sectors like marketing, bureaucracy, redundancy, and speculation. We can create full employment and shorten our work hours while increasing pay. We can reorganize the economy to rapidly slow the climate crisis by reducing world carbon emissions by 90% in a matter of years. Working people at the helm can do all this and much more. For more, see Quotes on Politics.


Get Out Of The Military

Peace-Out "You can get out of the military as a conscientious objector, even if you enlisted... Here's how" The site is now offline. I wonder why?

For more, see Military Draft, Conscientious Objector information, Consientious Objection Fact Sheet, Quaker Site on Conscientious Objectors


War on Terror?

"...war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms" (Howard Zinn. "Why War Fails." The Progressive, Nov. 2006: 14-15). For more, see The War on Terrorism, Terrorism Links and Quotes, and Pacifism


No Free Market in US

"We do not have free market capitalism in America; we have crony capitalism" (David Kupfer. "[Interview with] Robert F. Kennedy Jr." The Progressive, Nov. 2006: 33-36). For more, see Capitalism, Disaster Capitalism


Capitalism is a disease of society

""Capitalism is a social cancer," he argued. "It is the disease of society"...

"His magnum opus was the Ecology of Freedom (1982). "The domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human," he wrote. "The long-term solution to the ecological crises is a fundamental shift in how we organise society, a new politics based on face-to-face democracy, neighborhood assemblies and 'the dissolution of hierarchy'"....more


Lack of Patriotism

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Hermann Goering in Nuremberg where he was found guilty and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. [more]


Mad As Hell About
Paying For the War?

Just raise your deductions so that you are having nothing taken out of your paycheck. It will deny the government money for the year and you earn the interest. Or, see one of these websites:

Peace Tax Fund
Peace Tax Return


The Property Party

"I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party--the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democratic and the other is Republican" (David Barsamian. "Gore Vidal." The Progressive, August 2006: 36). [more]


US Profligate

"If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us" (Ben Blanchard, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061024/ts_nm/environment_wwf_planet_dc&printer=1, 10/25/06). [more]


Bush

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." (H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)). [more]


"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" (George Orwell). [More]


The European Dream

"The European Dream emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights, and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power" [more]


The Patriot Act

"William Safire.. defined the first Patriot Act as a presidential effort to seize dictatorial control" (Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories, 39). [more]


The Funeral Industry

Morticians are "merchants of a rather grubby order (13)... they have... perpetrate[d] a huge, macabre, and expensive practical joke on the American public (The American Way of Death Revisited, 14) [more]


9/11

"If U.S. intelligence agencies did not see the attack coming it was because they were told not to look.. the Bush administration blocked key investigations into allegations that top Saudi Arabian royals and some members of the bin Laden family, not just Osama, funded and supported Al-Quaeda and other terrorist organizations" (The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, 92). For more, see September 11 and Democracy and Money.


Christopher Columbus

"Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass" (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong 60). [more].


The Politics of Fear

"Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer recently extolled a BBC film by Adam Curtis titled The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear. The three-hour documentary argues that the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians"--mainly [U.S.] Administration neocons seeking to consolidate their power. The documentary does not deny that there are radical Islamic terrorist groups; but Curtis told Katrina vanden Heuvel that "the terrify-sleeper cells across the world is largely a fantasy"... He said America "has become trapped by that fear." The film was well received in England, but US networks have turned it down" ("The Documentary They Won't Show." The Nation, Feb. 21, 2005: 8). [ more on terrorism].


9/11: Result of Our Actions

"...Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado... making the simple point... that "if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned"

"That piece was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens... Churchill wrote recently, "it is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center... converted the Trade Center itself into a 'legitimate' target"...

"...infamous bombing of the Amariya civilian shelter in Baghdad in January 1991, with 400 deaths, almost all women and children, all subsequently identified and named by the Iraqis. To this day the US government says it was an OK target.

"Churchill concludes, "If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these 'standards' when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them... According to Pentagon logic, [they] were simply part of the collateral damage...

"Why should Churchill apologize for anything? Is it a crime to say that chickens can come home to roost and that the way to protect American lives from terrorism is to respect international law?" (Alexander Cockburn. "Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs of the Right." The Nation, Feb. 21, 2005: 9). For more, see Sept. 11 Quotes


SUVs and Hummers

"For the truly self-centered person who cares nothing about hurting other people in crashes, obscuring other drivers' views of the road, making smog worse and contributing to global warming... such drivers need to be aware that they are not improving their own safety, and must endure the aggravation of driving a vehicle that is harder to drive and harder to park than a car" (Keith Bradsher. High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, p. 449). [more]


The REAL Agenda of ProLife

"...both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer...

"The Christian right doesn't like the sound of this vaccine at all. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex"...

"What is it with these right wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time... Ah, Christian compassion! Christian sadism, more likely...

"As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear. That's why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be LESS available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep woemn in their place. If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they'd be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don't tell rape victims about the existence of EC" (Katha Pollitt. "Virginity or death!" The Nation, May 30, 2005: 9).

For more, see Christian Right and Freedom From Religion Foundation.


The REAL Purpose of Torture

"The fear is even thicker among Muslims in the United States where the Patriot Act gives police the power to seize the records of any mosque, school, library or community group on mere suspicion of terrorist links. When this intense surveillance is paired with the ever-present threat of torture, the message is clear: You are being watched, your neighbor may be a spy, the government can find out anything about you. If you misstep, you could disappear onto a plane bound for Syria, or into "the deep dark hole that is Guantanamo Bay"...

"This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantanamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will...

"Yet despite this body of knowledge, torture continues to be debated in the United States as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information, not an instrument of state terror. But there's a problem: No one claims that torture is an effective interrogation tool--least of all the people who practice it. Torture "doesn't work. There are better ways to deal with captives," CIA director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 16. And a recently declassified memo written by an FBI official in Guantanamo states that extreme coercion produced "nothing more than what FBI got using simple investigative techniques." The Army's own interrogation field manual states that forece "can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."

"And yet the abuses keep on coming..." (Naomi Klein. "Torture's dirty secret: It works." The Nation, May 30, 2005: 10). For more, see U.S Torture.


"I am for a revolution that brings under strict civilian control the military, the security and surveillance apparatus including the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security and police and drastically reduces their budgets and power. I am for a revolution that abandons imperial expansion, especially in the Middle East, and makes it impossible to profit from war. I am for a revolution that nationalizes banks, the arms industry, energy companies and utilities, breaks up monopolies, destroys the fossil fuel industry, funds the arts and public broadcasting, provides full employment and free education including university education, forgives all student debt, blocks bank repossessions and foreclosures of homes, guarantees universal and free health care and provides a living wage to those unable to work, especially single parents, the disabled and the elderly" [Chris Hedges, 2/15/16, Truthdig].


About this site

Welcome to my site. I am Colby Glass, PhDc, MLIS, MAc, Professor Emeritus and a retired librarian and instructor of Library Science and Philosophy at Palo Alto College in San Antonio, TX. This site incorporates my primary interests: philology (nineteenth century and classical), permaculture, comparative linguistics, the Classics, Latin and Greek, critical thinking, free thinking, philosophy, information literacy, progressive information, mycelium, veganism (both newly discovered enthusiasms) and animal rescue. Feel free to browse through the information and courses.

Why liberal? Russell Jacoby facetiously wrote the following in The Nation (April 4, 2005: 11-16): "Conservatives complain relentlessy that they do not get a fair shake in the university, and they want parity--that is, more conservatives on faculties. Conservatives are lonely on American campuses as well as beleaguered and misunderstood. News that tenured poets vote Democratic or that Kerry received far more money from professors than Bush pains them. They want America's faculties to reflect America's political composition. Of course, they do not address such imbalances in the police force, Pentagon, FBI, CIA and other government outfits where the stakes seem far higher and where, presumably, followers of Michael Moore are in short supply. If life were a big game of Monopoly, one might sugggest a trade to these conservatives: You give us one Pentagon, one Department of State, Justice and Education, plus throw in the Supreme Court, and we will give you every damned English department you want."

The above quote reflects certain facts: well-educated people tend to be liberal. In addition, caring people tend to be liberal. If you are mean-spirited, selfish, greedy and into violence, you will probably get a job as a policeman, a businessman, or soldier and be very conservative. I think these facts argue for the basic goodness and rightness of liberalism. If you are still in doubt, read some of the topics in my Progressive Index above.


Professor Colby Glass Curriculum Vitae

Retired, Spring 2009.

Awarded Professor Emeritus status by the ACC Board shortly thereafter at least in part for the following accomplishments:

Hired in fall of 1989. Promoted to full time tenure track in Spring, 1990. Promoted to full professor 1995. (18 years).

Won the NISOD award in 1994 for team teaching with Ellen Shull in English.

Won a $4 million dollar NEH Challenge Grant in 1994. Was not funded due to federal budget cut backs.

For the first ten years also taught Philosophy as an adjunct (in addition to full time in the library) at PAC.

Developed and maintained the PAC LRC website since 1998 (10 years).

Part of the first group of faculty at PAC to receive Internet Certification to teach online in 1999.

Has taught information literacy since 1992 until now. (23 years)

Was a Summer Fellow at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in 1993.

Served as secretary of the Faculty Senate in 1995-6.

Helped develop the Information Research Certificate program in 2000. It later became an Achieving the Dream initiative.

Recipient of the Department of Education Success Grant for Spring, 2002.

In 2003 began developing the Library Technology Assistant program, an Occ/Tech program, which is now a successful online certificate and academic degree program. (The academic program was discontinued in Summer, 2015)

Recipient of the GROW Award for the highest percentage increase of graduates in Palo Alto College for the Library Technology Assistant program in 2007-8.

Served 12 years as chair of the teaching faculty in the LRC: 1997-2008.

Retirement hobby is ancient comparative linguistics, especially studying the classics in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

 

Higher Education Institutions Attended and degree(s) earned:

North Texas State University. BA in English, Philosophy and Latin.
Trinity University. ABD for MA in Philosophy.
Universtiy of Texas at Austin. MLIS in Library Science.
University of Texas at Austin. ABD for PhD in Higher Education, focus on student success and HE history.

 

"Ne discere cessa."
Never stop learning.

~~~


Amy, the best dog ever,
Aug., 1997 to Jan. 25, 2013

Created on ... February 23, 2000

co@dadbyrn.comColby Glass, MLIS, Professor Emeritus