How Do I Get My Wife Off Drugs?

Archive for January 5th, 2010

Help for Parents with Addicted Children

Are you enabling your Child to continue in the Addiction Process?

Addiction to drugs and alcohol among our children covers the entire social and economic spectrum in our society. Many ascribe addiction to poor parenting, however while poor parenting can contribute to the addiction problem, good parenting does not prevent it. Some families have one addicted child while their other children, living in the same environment, do not become addicts. So whether you are certain your son or daughter is not addicted, suspect they may be addicted or know that they are addicted, you may want to read more of this article. You will find help on recognizing addiction, learning what you may be doing to enable it and what you can do to help your son or daughter and to help yourself deal with it.

Recognizing Addiction in Your Son or Daughter

Parents are often the last to recognize addiction in their children. Studies have shown that about 4% of parents of 9 to 11 year olds believe their child may have used drugs while about 25% of these children admit to doing so. There are several reasons for this. The children get very good at hiding alcohol and drug use from their parents while parents do not want to believe it to be possible. In addition, there is a judgmental attitude that drug and alcohol use is the result of poor parenting so parents deny the problem even in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. Here are some questions to help you determine if your son or daughter has the disease of addiction.

1. Do you have relatives on either or both sides of your family who are addicted? Genetics plays a large role and sometimes the disease skips a generation or two.

2. Have you found evidence of drug use in your home such as marijuana joints, empty liquor containers (either theirs or yours) or drug paraphernalia? Children will go to great lengths to hide alcohol and drug use from parents, so if they are leaving evidence this is an indication they have lost control of their use.

3. Have you seen a major change in behavior such as grooming habits, loss of interest in family activities, studying habits, withdrawing, depression, new friends, belligerence, extreme defensiveness, etc.?

4. Has your son or daughter gotten a MIP or DUI, been charged with shoplifting or theft?

5. Do they tell you that they are not affected by drinking alcohol or can drink more than their peers? This usually is perceived as good thing by an addict but actually indicates they have developed a high tolerance because of excessive use.

6. Have you seen burns on their fingers or lips, needle marks, or sores on their nose and face?

7. Has your son or daughter lost weight or developed a poor appetite?

8. Do they have money problems and refuse to explain how it is being spent?

Hopefully these questions will help you decide whether there is a problem or not. If you believe there is, you must begin by understanding what is and is not enabling behavior and how to avoid it.

Are You Enabling Your Child in the Addiction Process?

If you are like most parents, your initial response to addiction in a child is “We are going to fix this problem?” The common initial thoughts of parents faced with an addicted child will include, I’m going to punish my child, or I’ll lecture him about the problems with doing drugs or alcohol, or I’ll ground him until he is 30!! However, these attitudes probably will do little to alleviate the problem. Instead they probably increase the desire in your child to abuse substances. This approach, among many others that keep the addiction process going, is called “Enabling Behavior”. After attending Al Anon meetings for a while, it becomes easier to make the distinction between what is enabling behavior and what is helping behavior. You will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle you. The following story illustrates the point.

As fathers, when our kids…even our adult kids, get into life threatening situations, sometimes it is just not possible to say “detach with love” and walk away…at least it wasn’t for me.

My alcoholic ex-wife actually schooled our oldest son with her addiction to wine. She created her own “drinking buddy,” and, because he was 17 and in the midst of those rebellious “dad’s an idiot” times, she won real favor with him by encouraging this “adult behavior.”

By the time he was 18, his mother and I had separated, so, with me out of the house, this boy really “took over the house.”

One night after work I received a panicky call from our youngest son. His older brother had beaten him up and threatened to kill him in a drunken rage. The boy was sobbing.

I had to do something. But before I did, I called my sponsor, who also had a son about my son’s age, and had successfully gotten him into treatment. My sponsor added a compassionate but detached good sound mind to my panic. Together we worked out a plan where I called the DA’s office first, found out that the older son could be charged with a misdemeanor and arrested. Then, when I confronted the boy I had a strong arrow in my quiver.

I used what we call in the program the “broken record” technique. I just repeated over and over the same message to him in the face of his bluster. It went something like this:

“I understand, but I want you to know that I have this option, and if there is any harm done, or even another threat of harm, I will have you arrested.”

Guess what? After I drove over and picked up his brother and got him to safety I called the older brother back. He was looking through the newspaper trying to find a job so that he could leave the house. But we never had another threat of violence against his younger brother. So how did this all end?

Well, my oldest son went through his various adventures, hit a bottom, came into AA, and started his recovery. He married a talented woman who became a nurse, went back to school, received his GED, then went on to a state-operated college and graduated Summa Cum Laude. He has made me a Grandfather twice over, and at this moment serving as a phenomenal teacher.

After my divorce from his mother, his younger brother moved in with my new Al-Anon wife and me. After a difficult period with counseling for four years, and some tragedy, he graduated from a state-operated college, and then found Al-Anon. That led to a great sponsor, professional counseling, his finding his own church and his deciding that he wanted to enter the ministry. He graduated went back to school, graduated from divinity school, and now, after a long stint as an associate pastor, has his own church.

A huge thank you to Al-Anon, Darrell my Al Anon sponsor, my new life with this incredible wife, my fantastic sons, and God.

What you can do to help yourself and to help your son or daughter

Prior to making any hasty decisions after learning your child is addicted, it would be beneficial to remember that we are ill equipped to deal with numerous issues that are involved in addiction. You need to get your child help either through a 12 step support group, professional addiction counselor or both. Along with your child’s recovery, you need to seek assistance in dealing with the pain, uncertainty, fear and insanity that are normal for parents of addicted children. The first healthy thought you should engage is that you did not cause the addiction, you can’t cure the addiction and you can’t control the addiction.

Some specific things you can do:

1. Focus on creating a healthy emotional atmosphere in your home. Resist the urge to yell by focusing on saying what you mean, mean what you say but don’t say it mean.

2. Focus on you and not your child. Your and his recovery will be better. Only seek to control yourself rather than your child.

3. It is important for both parents to work together by setting boundaries that define what will and will not be allowed in your home along with the consequences of behavior that is not allowed.

4. Be patient and don’t resent the method of recovery. Recovery of the addict may or may not materialize and chances are that if recovery does occur it will not be a result of what you did rather it will be the result of another addict doing 12 step work in carrying the message of experience, strength and hope to fellow addicts.

5. Keep a sense of humor and gratitude. These help when dealing with crisis.

6. Remember that your child has a higher power. Fortunately, you are not it because you are powerless over the disease of addiction. This frees you up to focus on you and your recovery.

7. Maintain hope that things can get better. This hope will keep you sane and help you with your responsibilities.

8. Do attend a 12 step recovery program for co-dependents and do get a sponsor. You will find out that you are not alone and that there is help.

Okay, so this is not the way you thought the family history would unfold when your child was born. Resentment, shame and anger are probably consuming your thoughts when you see your child. By following the steps outlined above, however, and making a commitment to the recovery process for yourself, you will find serenity, joy and freedom whether your child’s addiction continues or not. Often, the child also gets into recovery after they see the changes in your behavior. Addiction resulting in recovery may be the impetus to get your life restarted and refocused on the things that truly matter such as service to others, compassion, acceptance and honesty.

THE FAILURE OF THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT

 

TO CURB ATROCITIES AGAINST WOMEN

 

                                                                                     –By—

                                                                            K.Akshay kumar,

                                                                            L.L.M,

                                                                            ML(FS&CM),

                                                                            NALSAR & IIRM.

“Hunger is not just malnutrition. Hunger is rape,molestation,alcoholism,dowry,female infanticide and foetacide”

 

                                                            –Mohini Giri

                                                               Former chairperson of national                           

                                                               Commission for women.

 

At a time when Andhra Pradesh ,and Hyderabad in particular, is attracting hundreds of women software professionals from all over the country, the state has earned the dubious distinction for crime against the fair sex.

 

The latest statistics of the national crime records bureau(NCRB) for 2007 reveals a telling tale of increasing crimes against women in the state, much more than any other part of the country. Of the 1,85,312 crimes against women in the entire country in 2007, 24,738 cases, or 13.3 percent, were reported from Andhra Pradesh.

 

Even more disturbing is the statistics pertaining to Hyderabad and its outskirts. A comparison of crimes against women in 35 cities across the country shows that Hyderabad stands second,next only to delhi. While 4,331 cases (17.5 percent) were registered in delhi, Hyderabad came second with 1,931 cases (7.8 percent). Vijaywada topped in the number of eve-teasing cases by accounting for 11.3 percent of the total cases in the country.

 

“ if the police is strict in dealing with the offenders, things would not have come to such a pass. One of the reasons why there are more crimes against women is that law enforcers do not deal with the offenders firmly”,says  G. Sucharitha, joint director,gender programming, centre for world solidarity.

 

Interestingly, Andhra Pradesh , which has 7.2 percent of the country’s population has reported 13.3 percent of cases of crimes against women while uttarpradesh, which has 16.6 percent of the country’s population, reported 11.3 percent or 20,993 cases.

 

According to NCRB  figures, crimes against women in general in the country have been increasing every year. In 2003, there were 1,40,601 cases, in 2004- 1,54,333 cases, in 2005- 1,55,553 cases and in 2006 there were 1,64,765 cases.

 

Another disturbing trend is that the rate of crime has increased against women. While the overall, rate of crimes against women increased marginally from 14.7 percent in 2006 to 16.3 percent in 2007 , for Andhra Pradesh in particular , it has been bad.

 

The crime rate against women increased by 30.3 in Andhra Pradesh, which is almost that of tripura at 30.7 percent which is at the top.

“women in andhra Pradesh feel unsafe because the government is also not sincere in ensuring their protection” said women’s rights activist Noorjehan siddiqui.

 

What made situation more difficult in Andhra Pradesh was the fact that the Andhra Pradesh womens commission has been without a chairperson since she was caught on camera, in September 2007, allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs.50,000 to help a women victim.

 

In 2007, Andhra Pradesh had the dubious distinction of being ranked fourth worst with respect to atrocities against dalits. According to the NCRB, 3,383 cases were reported in this state of which 46 were cases of murder and 105 were rape cases.

 

According to statistics published by some newspapers about the criminal attacks, husband and in-laws harassment and other tpes of violence those took place in five states during 2007 year. Especially Andhra Pradesh has occupied number one rank in harassment on women. I produce these published statistics.

 

 

 

According to the report published by the NCRB during the year2007 cases registered on:-

 

(1) Dowry deaths:

 

Uttar Pradesh state-2076; bihar-1172;Madhya Pradesh-742;Andhra Pradesh state-613.

 

(2) Kidnapping:

 

Uttar Pradesh – 4478; bihar – 2530; rajasthan – 2177;

Andhra Pradesh – 2097.

 

(3) Immoral behaviour:

 

Madhya Pradesh – 6772; Andhra Pradesh – 4406.

 

(4) husband and in-laws harassment:

 

Andhra Pradesh – 11,335; Bengal – 9900; Rajasthan – 8170;

 Uttar Pradesh – 7650; maharashtra – 7356.

 

(5) Sexual harassment:

 

Uttar Pradesh – 2714; Andhra Pradesh – 2411; maharashtra – 984; Tamil nadu – 852; Madhya Pradesh – 762.

 

The total number of cases on violence subjected to women during the year 2007 in five states are 79,147.

 

Apart from this regular crimes on women such as sexual harassment, husband and in-laws harassment, immoral behavior, dowry death, rape,molestation,kidnapping and abduction, new crime known as acid attacks on women are on rise these days. “The reason for the rise of acid attacks may be sexual jealousy, faction fights, dowry harassment, rejection of love or marriage proposal” as told by chairperson of state human rights commission B. Subhashan Reddy and member E. Ismail , said acid attacks had become rampant and in most cases the victims were women.

 

Taking the statistics in Andhra Pradesh with respect to brutal violence on women as per computer search and reports in news paper:

 

(1) On 29-10-1999 one by name subhani attacked a lady student by name prasanna laxmi of J.J.C college of guntur and separated her head using sharp knife in her classroom for refusal to accept his love. He was imprisoned for life.

(2) On 21-6-2004 in vijaywada one by name manohar killed srilaxmi in  her classroom for the same reason. She was doing her MCA.

(3) On 10-8-2005 in karimnagar one by name madhu killed a 7 th class student mamatha by giving poison  for her refusal.

(4) On 23-9-2005 in karimnagardistrict one by name gangadhar killed a 15 year girl for her refusal.

(5) On 21-6-2006 in the capital of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad one by name kanniah singh cut the head of rani with a talwar(knife) for her parents settled her marriage with another man.

(6) On 11-2-2007 one by name Chandrasekar killed laxmi sujatha a television news  reader in vijaywada for her refusal to marry him.

(7) On 19-2-2007 one by name T.Ramesh killed parvatamma an eighteen year old women since her parents settled her marriage with another man.

(8)On 4-7-2007 in chitoor district [china gottugallu village] one by name muni Krishna attacked rajitha an inter student with grass cutter.

(9) On 18-7-2008 in khamman city one by name M.Pasha cut the throat of S.Sumera(18) with the knife for the same reason.

(10) On 4-9-2008 one by name sandeep attacked meenakumari an engineering student with a knife.

(11) On 27-12-2007, ayesha meera(19) was raped and murdered at her hostel in ibrahimpatnam of vijaywada.

(12) In November 2007, a college lecturer in srikakulam district threw acid on BSC final year student for spurning his advances.

(13) In april 2008, in kurnool a spurned lover attacked an intermediate student with knife.

(14) In april2008, an engineering student in vijaywada slit the throat of his college mate after she rejected his love.

(15) upcoming actress bhargavi of ‘Ashta chamma’ fame was stabbed to death by her live-in partner Praveen kumar who later committed suicide in december2008.

(16) On 13- 12-2008 k. swapnika and t. praneetha  were attacked with acid by the former’s spurned lover and his friends. They were gunned down by the warangal police.

(17) On 21-4-2009, a trader and an independent candidate sprayed acid on the additional district sessions judge,causing him minor burn injuries.

(18) On 1-1-2009, in chagallu village in west godavari, a farm worker sustained grievous injuries when his wife allegedly threw acid on him.

(19) On 17-6-2009, in guntur, one s.k.nabi, threw acid on devineni lakshmanma. The bottle missed her, but the contents fell on her and two other women anjamma and balika lakshmi tripatamma resulting in minor injuries.

(20) On 20-6-2009, In guntur, basha , threw acid on padma. The accused was said to be her lover.

(21) On 20-6-2009, in guntur, one jangala venkateswara rao,38,hailing from darsi prakasham was brought to the government general hospital for acid burns. He was allegedly attacked by three of his known rival.

(22)On 28-6-2009, in guttikonda village village in guntur one M.venkataramanamma was injured in acid attack.

(23) On 1-7-2009, in bapatla , one jhansi an intermediate student consumed pesticide with her lover Icumarthy Veerendra , a photographer died while undergoing treatment in general hospital in guntur.

(24) On 2-7-2009, in guntur, a farmer attacked his wife and their two year old daughter by throwing acid on them.

(25) On 26-6-2009, in Hyderabad, one vinod(28) stabbed reshma for spurning his proposals though he made several requests and stabbed her mother who rushed to her daughter rescue.

(26) On 2-7-2009, in Hyderabad, one sudhakar student of electronics and communications branch attacked a girl student of computer science branch of TRR polytechnic college at meerpet with a sickle injuring her seriously.

(27) On 2-7-2009, in Hyderabad , one m.shravan kumar, a second year  intermediate student had his fingernails cut and pulled out by four of his classmates because he was friendly with a junior student. The incident took place at sri chaitanya junior college at bachupally campus.

(28) On 2-7-2009, in mylavaram mandal in Krishna district, two police constables were arrested following an allegation by a women that they and their friends repeatedly raped her after blackmailing her with cell phone clips.

(29) On 5-7-2009, in tirupati, one peddireddi(50) attacked prameela (45) and her son venkatesh(7) with a blade inficting deep cuts on their throats.

(30) On 8-7-2009, in nandyal(kurnool), one china alias bujji attacked a girl suchitra with a knife for spurning his love.

(31) On 9-7-2009, in karimnagar one woman home guard bukya bharati(32) was found murdered at her rented house. Police found her decomposing body with its throat slit.

(32) On 10-7-2009, in guntur, a home guard palaparthy ramesh(30) poured kerosene on a women and tried to set her ablaze in anguluru village ,puru mandal in guntur district. The victim suffered 70% burns.

(33)On 11-7-2009,in vizianagaram ,the CI who was annoyed when the complainant went to higher official, allegedly bent her up severely. The complainant was m.padmavathi of kanapaka area.

(34) One, uma Chandra kala was allegedly burnt by her husband , venugopal and in-laws as she did not give money to purchase gas cylinder.

(35) On 9-7-2009, in tirupathi , a 19 year old daily wage earner from bairagipetteda area in tirupati lodged a complaint with the police that three of her uncles had sexually exploited her for the last few months.

(36) On recently a father and son duo, both judges, were arrested in a dowry case.

(37) In Hyderabad ,one radhika agarwal ,the daughter-in-law of an influential businessman m.l.agarwal committed suicide following dowry harassment.

 

These are the few cases which are highlighted in the newspapers. There are many cases of violence against women which are not reported.

 

While the human rights activists allege police inaction, the police complain about lack of manpower and increasing crimes across the state in addition to the extremist and terrorist problems.even as the blame game continues , there seems to be no end to atrocities against women in a state where women is now the home minister.

 

As per computer search ,news from press trust of India ,mon-mar02,2009:

Acid attack: centre fails to come up with clear stand:

 

the centre on Monday failed to come up with a clear stand in supreme court on the issue of framing a new laws or making amendments in the existing ones to deal with acid attacks, which are on rise, as a specified offence.

 

When the matter came up for hearing before the bench headed by chief justice K.G.Balakrishnan, it was informed that the centre has not filed counter affidavit on the petition.

 

The court was hearing a PIL filed in 2006 by a Delhi based minor girl Laxmi whose arms,face and other body parts were disfigured in an acid attack.

 

Laxmi,through her counsel aparna bhat ,has sought framing new laws or amendment in the existing criminal laws like Indian penal code,Indian evidence act and the Criminal procedure code for dealing with the offence and has also sought compensation which has not yet been provided.

 

The court during an earlier hearing had expressed displeasure over the reluctance of the state to provide compensation to a victim of acid attack and had termed the act as “worse than murder”

 

When the matter was heard last on dec18,2008 the counsel had drawn the attention of the court to the incident of acid attack on two college girls in Andhra Pradesh to buttress the contention for a ban on free sale of acid which has emerged as a weapon of attack.

 

“A ban on free sale of acid and a law to regulate and restrict its sale should be considered”, bhat had argued.

 

The centre ,which was also asked to consider a law similar to the one in Bangladesh to regulate and restrict the sale of acid to check its use as a weapon ,had said such a step would not be a practical and it would lead to “Inspector Raj”

 

“centre has said suggessions for adding a new section 326A to IPC after existing section 326 were also made”- it had said.

 

During the hearing april 28 last year , the court had said that the centre was not “serious” on framing a new laws to deal with incidents of acid attacks which had increased manifold in the past few years.

 

In shivpuri,feb20, raj(22), accosted nidhi and her friends jyothi and puja at a roundabout in the heart of shivpuri town on Wednesday and threw sulphuric acid ,leaving her with severe burns.

 

The national women’s commission and the law commission have recommended tougher laws to curb acid attacks. A draft bill by the women’s panel has suggested a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for throwing acid and causing deformity or disability.

 

The prevention of offences (by acid)bill,2008 has also proposed that the centre should constitute a national acid attack victim’s assistance board and form monitoring authority in states to help victims get quick medical treatment and counseling.

 

Any victim incase of death, a legal heir would have to approach the board. The board would prima-facie study the application and if satisfied release an interim amount of Rs. 5lakhs to the victim from the fund within 30 days of appeal. The board can release up to another Rs. 35 lakhs to a victim for medical and legal expenses against bill product.

 

The bill, however, is stuck in a bureaucratic tangle and is not likely to see the light of day soon.

 

The law commission has suggested a minimum 10 yearjail term and a maximum of life imprisonment.

 

In december2008, a Supreme Court bench had scrapped a Bombay high court judgment that reduced mallappa sangramappa mallipatil’s sentence to a mere 35 days from the three years imprisonment ordered by the trial court.

 

The apex court took exception to the high court ruling that showed leniency to an acid attack accused.

 

In Bangalore, on april20,1999,19 years old haseena’s life changed for ever, when joseph Rodriguez decided to avenge haseena’s rejection of his offer of a job by flinging two litres of concentrated sulphuric acid on her.

 

In august 2006, the Karnataka high court sentenced her attacker to life imprisonment. He was  asked to pay Rs.2 lakhs as compensation to victim. The division bench comprising Justice S.R.Bannurmath and Justice Subhash B.Adi said,”one would shudder to look at her damaged face”. It said haseena could not walk on the streets and had , thus become prisoner in her house”. The court said it “ could not shut its eyes to the growing and obnoxious tendency of the youth to use corrosive substance such an acid, causing not only severe physical damage but also mental trauma in the victims”. In case the acid victim survives, it will only be as a grotesque disfigured person,wholives with mangled flesh and suffers a fate worse than death, the bench said.

 

It also directed the state government to expeditiously provide special help and rehabilitation for victims of acid attacks. It took note of the fact that restorative surgeries cost a fortune, and they were not affordable to ordinary people.

 

In the wake of a spurt in acid attacks on women, the Andhra Pradesh state human rights commission has recommended to the government to introduce a specific provision in the Indian penal code for tackling such offences with an iron hand and introduce a bill.

 

An SHRC order, issued ina case taken up suo motto by its chairperson B.Subhashan Reddy and member E.Ismail, said acid attacks had become rampant and in most cases the victim s were women.

 

Referring to the latest acid attacks on two married women merely because they spurned the advances of two men, the order said “there is no specific provision in Indian Penal Code dealing with acid attack. Because of the spurt in such crimes, there is a necessity to deal with the said offences with an iron hand by introducing a specific provision in the IPC which can act as deterrence”

 

Noting that such cases were being tried under sec.326 of Indian Penal Code, the order said introduction of a specific provision was imperative and that both the union and state government could legislate.

 

The commission recommended to the state government to incorporate sec.326-A in IPC by introducing a bill.

 

The only requirement is to seek presidential assent after the assembly and the legislative council passed the amended bill. It directed the principal secretary (Home) to take steps by placing the matter before authorities.

As per news paper report acid attack victims have asked the state government to bring an ordinance immediately to prevent the deadly acid attack on women.

 

Though the state government has announced that it will table a separate state act in the coming assembly sessions to prevent acid attacks on the line of the prevention of attacks(by acid)act,2008 , the acid attack victims insisted on a quick ordinance to make the offence non- bailable and also bring in measures to control acid sale.

 

Ms.Anuradha , one of the acid attack victim’s,said: “ I have been suffering for 13 years. There were 10 surgeries done on me. I still need 20 more . I fought in the supreme court against the state government which had said  the attack in a public place is not  its concern. An ordinance should be brought in.

 

The home minister,Ms.Sabita Indra Reddy ,said that Andhra Pradesh is the first state to respond to the center’s proposed acid attacks offences prevention bill. She also added that the state government would control acd sales.

 

Soon after state government announcement that it will table a separate state act to prevent acid attack on July 14, the tiruchanur police arrested a youth sudhakar(19) for threatening to throw acid on a school-girl manjula(15) if she spurned his love.

Atleast now the state government should act soon to curb the atrocities on women by enacting a separate sate act to prevent acid attack and by incorporating sec.326-A in IPC and by controlling the sale of acid in the state. The law enforcers should also perform their duties properly inorder to curb atrocities against women.

 

Inspite of constitutional guarantees to all Indian women equality{Art.14}, no discrimination by the state{Art.15(1)}. In addition , it allows special provision to be made by the state in favour of women and children {Art.15(3)}, renounce practices derogatory  to the dignity of women{Art.51(A)(e)} and some special legislation made exclusively for women like Dowry Prohibition Act and Domestic Violence Act, the Violence against women is increasing tremendously in Andhra Pradesh.

 

Time has come for the entire machinery of the government of Andhra Pradesh to act to curb the atrocities against women by taking all necessary steps to curb atrocities against women the most particularly the acid attacks which found its origin in colleges. The college authorities should strictly implement the rules mentioned in the “Andhra Pradesh prohibition of ragging in all educational institutions rules-2002” to have control over this menace.

 

No leniency should be given to the criminals who does such criminal acts because  the attitude of the criminal is just like demon     and the government either at a state or central they are the avataras to curb their acts by passing suitable legislation and imposing sentence of death whoever found guilty.

 

Preventive measures:

 

1)uniform dress code should be introduced at college levels also for alls tudents of the institution.

 

2)juniors and senior students college timings should be so fixed that they could not meet each other during college timings.

 

3)parents should take care of their children

 

4)the college authorities should warn the students if found guilty and inform it to their parents and what action could be taken for such act.

 

5)in coeducation strict discipline should be maintained. Any misbehavior  by any student should be punished as per law.

 

 

 

 

                                         ——————————-

 

I’m 25 and I drink about 12 shots of rum a day. My wife wants me to quit drinking for health reasons, but I’m having a really hard time with it. I get bored and I don’t know what to do. Nothing seems to keep me amused when I don’t drink. I’m a very tense person most of the time and alcohol helps calm my nerves. What do I do?!

I am about to leave my family I can’t do it by myself no body is helping me and I can’t take it any more.

She didn’t feel like walking 3 blocks to the car, but felt I was too drunk to drive once she was in the car.

Is this typical female logic?

Formed in 1965, The Dead was an American rock band found in the San Francisco Bay. The band had a very unique and electric style which blended elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, space rock and gospel. The Dead fashioned a psychedelic revolution upon the cultural landscape of the Sixties. They also kept the spirit of the Sixties alive in the decades that followed, building a massive, supportive network of fans known by a specific term, called the ‘Deadheads’. Their musical influences varied widely like psychedelic rock, blues, rock and roll, country-western, bluegrass, country-rock, and improvisational jazz. These various influences made the Dead the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world. Many fans referred to the band simply as ‘the Dead’.

The great rock band comprised of the following members: Tom Contanten, who played the keyboards, Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist and was often seen both by the public and the media as the leader or primary spokesperson for the Dead, but was reluctant to be perceived that way, then there was a classically trained trumpeter Phil Lesh who played bass guitar, Bob Weir was the youngest original member of the group who played rhythm guitar, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan who played the keyboards and harmonica, and did the vocals.

All of The Greatful Dead members mentioned so far have shared in vocal performance of songs. Bill Kreutzmann played drums joined by Mickey Hart who also played a wide variety of other percussion instruments. Tom “TC” Constanten was added as a second keyboardist from 1968 to 1970, and after his departure, Pigpen was joined by another keyboardist, Keith Godchaux, who played grand piano alongside Pigpen’s Hammond B-3 organ. Then in early 1972, Keith’s wife, Donna Jean Godchaux, also joined the Dead as a backing vocalist. Vince Welnick joined on keyboards and vocals after Brent Mydland had passed away. Bruce Hornsby was on piano. Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow were the band’s primary lyricists. However, many of the band members have passed away with the passage of time among which were the eleven members who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and Bruce Hornsby was their presenter.

By playing live shows at Kepler’s Books, the Greatful Dead began their career in Menlo Park, California. The founding members of the Dead were: banjo and guitar player Jerry Garcia, guitarist Bob Weir, bluesman organist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the classically trained Phil Lesh and jazzist drummer Bill Kreutzmann. The name of the band, according to Alan Trist, director of the Dead’s music publisher company Ice Nine, The Dead, was chosen from a Folklore dictionary as the term Dead appears in folktales of a variety of cultures, having the definition of, the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial. After settling on the name Dead, they began honing their concert alchemy at San Francisco’s psychedelic ballrooms. The Dead fused rock and roll energy with the psychedelic experience to fashion an endlessly elaborate interplay of sound. Highlights of the group’s recorded legacy include Anthem of the Sun (1968), their ultra-psychedelic, quasi-symphonic magnum opus; Live/Dead (1969), a concert compendium that bore out fans’ claims that the Dead were best experienced live; Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty (both from 1970), country- and folk-influenced classics that highlighted their songwriting ability and sage-like overview of the counterculture’s past, present and future; and Dead, the second and arguably the best of many multi-album live sets.

During the latter half of their career, Garcia, was periodically beset with drug problems, a state of affairs that came to a head with his arrest on drug possession charges in 1985 and his collapse into a near-fatal diabetic coma in 1986. His health improved in the wake of those crises, revitalizing the Dead through a period of heightened activity that included the 1987 hit album In the Dark and Top Forty single (“Touch of Grey”). However, drugs continued to haunt the Dead, who lost keyboardist Brent Mydland to a fatal overdose in 1990. Garcia himself died on August 9, 1995, at a treatment facility in Forest Knolls, California, where he’d gone to seek help for his heroin addiction. The loss of Garcia was immense, however, the band managed to release 25 concerts on CD from the Dead’s archives, as part of the ongoing “Dick’s Picks” series. It was named for Dick Latvala, who was the group’s tape archivist. However, the group decided to disband after Garcia’s death and the main focus of the members was to pursue various solo projects, most notably Bob Weir’s RatDog, Phil Lesh and Friends, and various projects by Mickey Hart, including music for the 1996 Olympics.

On January 4, 2007 Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart reunited along with Bruce Hornsby, Mike Gordon and Warren Haynes to play two sets at a post-inauguration fundraising party for speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi. They were billed as Your House Band and performed some Dead classics such as Truckin’ and Touch of Grey. Then in the year, 2007, the band received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which was accepted on behalf of the band by Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.

Members of the Dead still actively tour with their own bands, however, recently, the globe trotting band, the Dead, announced a 2009 spring tour schedule. The lineup of the band will be: Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Warren Haynes, and Jeff Chimenti. So all the Deadheads, get ready to rock yourselves up once again in the Dead’s upcoming event!
For More information about The Dead Tickets visit:
http://www.ticketluck.com/concert-tickets/The-Dead/index.php

House is a TV show where the main character is a brilliant, but misanthropic doctor who trusts no one, especially not his patients. Broadcast on FOX, its 6th season started in September with an amazing 2-hour episode! New to House? Feeling lost? Then this recap is for you! Keep in mind that it is not exclusive at all; only major plot points are explained so that newer viewers can understand what is going on.

Missed episodes can be viewed for free on TVShows4Download.

SPOILERS BELOW!

Season 1
Gregory House and his original team are introduced. Foreman, a former juvenile delinquent, is a neurologist; Robert Chase is an intensivist engaged because of his dad; and Allison Cameron is an immunologist who wants to see the best in each person. Lisa Cuddy – the Dean of Medicine – and James Wilson – House’s best friend – are also presented. They all work for the Princeton-Plainsboro hospital.

Billionaire Edward Vogler becomes the new chairman of the board of PPTH, thanks to his $100 million donation to Princeton-Plainsboro. He tries to fire House, but fails and quits the board.

Cameron develops a crush on House. Both go on a date, which turns out to be a disaster.

House’s ex-girlfriend, Stacy Warner, comes back to him to get help for her sick husband. He first refuses, then accepts.

Stacy is engaged as a lawyer for the hospital.

Season 2
House’s parents visit him; he tells Cuddy that he hates his father.

While treating a gay man with AIDS, Cameron accidentally receives contaminated blood onto her face. Anxious about the idea of being infected, she takes drugs and ends up having sex with Chase. Later during the season, her test results confirms that she doesn’t have AIDS.

Chase’s dad dies.

Foreman replaces House as the boss for two episodes.

House and Stacy kiss; Stacy quits the hospital.

Cuddy wants to become a mother by in vitro fertilization, without any success.

Foreman catches a life-threatening disease, but survives with only minor sequels.

A former patient of House seeks revenge and shoot him. House demands to be put on Ketamine for his leg pain.

Season 3
Ketamine has cured House! Free from Vicodin, the grumpy old man is now someone who loves to run and tries actually to improve his patients’ life. Sadly, both his leg pain and his Vicodin resurface soon enough.

After being assaulted by House, detective Michael Tritter seeks revenge. He finds out about his Vicodin addiction, sue him, try to force him into rehab, but ultimately he fails.

House admits to one of his patients that he has been abused by his father.

Chase has feelings for Cameron, but she doesn’t want a serious relationship with him, only some casual sex.

We discover that Cuddy already had sex with House.

Foreman quits the team as he fears to become like House.

Chase is fired, Cameron quits the team and they finally get together. House is now alone.

Season 4
House launches a huge Survivor-like game to pick his three new fellows. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, Chris Taub and Lawrence Kutner are the winners.

Cameron and Chase are still in Princeton-Plainsboro; he is a surgeon while she works in the ER.

Foreman is fired from New York Mercy; nobody wants him because he acts like House, so he is hired back to Princeton-Plainsboro, working again for his old boss.

Amber Volakis, one of the applicants for the job, becomes Wilson’s girlfriend.

We learn that Taub already had an affair, that Thirteen is bisexual and that Kutner’s biological parents were shot when he was six years old.

Amber dies in a bus accident, partially because of House. Thirteen discovers that she has Huntington’s disease, meaning that her normal lifespan will be no longer than 40 years.

Season 5
Wilson’s bereavement isn’t going too well. He decides to leave the hospital and to break up from his friendship with House. House puts a private detective, Lucas Douglas, on retainer to spy on Wilson.

Taub reveals to his wife that he had an affair.

House’s dad dies; we discover that he was his adoptive father. Wilson, reconciliated with House, returns to Princeton-Plainsboro.

In vain, Cuddy tries to adopt a baby. House kisses her; however, both are not ready for a serious relationship.

Foreman enrolls Thirteen in a clinical trial for Huntington’s. While it doesn’t give results, a relationship begins between them.

Cuddy finally becomes a mother by adopting a baby that she names Rachel.

Wilson confesses to a patient that he still lives in the apartment of his dead girlfriend, Amber.

Out of the blue, Kutner commits suicide.

House has hallucinations of Amber. When he realizes that he also had hallucinations of having sex with Cuddy, he admits himself into Mayfield, a psychiatric hospital.

Chase and Cameron get married.

I drink just a little bit. I am a social, light weight drinker. Not a heavy weight. Just enough to make it merrier.
What kinds of drinks???? Maragaritas, wines, beers, etc.
For right now, I drink bud light or Miller lite or Natural light in a glass with ice cubes. Thanks guys

A point of view

By Andy Cox 

 

 

A philosophy

 

Happiness is the vivid bloom

of lives lived in a rich loam.

Our humanity a humus for those to come,

but we too are the beneficiaries of

others amongst us or gone.

So, death is undone through life’s legacy,

ceaselessly so in our common soil,

our commonweal in which the passing of one

seemingly brings forth others.

- No reincarnation :

Only others informing us as we inform others -

from which we can pick precious purpose.

Dark weeds there may be amongst us

that would forswear our mutuality and leech,

as there are some who would set themselves apart

in manicured beds corrupted with sterile soil.

Neither acknowledges the give and take.

Yet it is our bonds that set us free -

knowing what binds us unbinds us.

And when one day, this becomes religion,

then may we find a capacity to rejoice

every time a bud opens

                                                                                        2002

                                                              

 

 It’s like this: For a good many years, my head has been a pot for a sort of intellectual stew, the ingredients of which have managed to retain their separate identities, even if they’ve become a little soggy over time. A splash of good wine has surely enhanced the flavour: (In vino veritas, no doubt). And many a good argument has provided the spice, adding nuance to the creation. I say creation, but, in fact, none of these ingredients is novel: One or two of these old roots have been around since antiquity. What interests me, however, is their interrelationship, the alluring possibility that they may, so to speak, enhance each other. Their integration into something bigger, a worldview if you like, is the thesis of this polemical exercise. Five of the larger entities in this stew, which I intend to slice apart, are:

Analogy as a spurious source of knowledge. The non-survivalist notion that we have no identity or existence after death. Atheism The idea and ideal of a moneyless, stateless, propertyless world in which each has free  access to the products of humanity, and contributes according to his or her  ability and inclination.

These, I would contend, contribute to a fifth ingredient, namely:

An ethic which enjoins one to better the lives of others.

But before I begin to ladle this out, there is something I feel which needs to be said: Man, I believe, is doomed to be a philosopher. No one bar those devoid of abstract thought can escape this fate. Beneath all the internalised trivia, beneath the layers of received knowledge that crowds one‘s mind, there lies a philosophical construction addressing the very nub of one’s existence, whether this is acknowledged or not, whether this construction is fashioned on the hard anvil of critical thought or represents merely a concatenation of conventional responses to the big questions of life. In other words, everyone has a worldview. In presenting my own, I am merely laying bare a philosophical construction that seems to make sense to me. To be honest, I am not unquestionably certain about it: It tilts in places and contains many a threadbare rivet. But it coheres sufficiently to satisfy my own need to understand the world around me.

 So here’s a taste of that intellectual stew: I have no idea at all why we are here on this earth, or, indeed why earth should be here in the first place. Any suggestion that our existence and that of the universe serve some purpose begs more than a few questions. What I think draws people into this sort of thinking is a deep-seated, almost reflexive, propensity for analogical thinking in which one phenomenon is explained by comparing it and drawing parallels with another. It seems to me that in our ordinary lives – when not engaged in philosophical discourse – we are sometimes implicitly informed by all manner of delusions, as well as truths, which we do not pause to consider, and which are extracted from the mud of our mundane existence, primarily, through the mechanism of analogy. Our ordinary world is the base from which we peregrinate on philosophical excursions. One might argue that this base itself occupies philosophical terrain. But the philosophical grounding of our everyday existence is necessarily implicit and ‘out of mind’: When we engage with the ordinary, we are rarely impelled towards philosophical reflection. Philosophy, in any case, competes with many other disciplines – psychology, biology, and economics, amongst others – in respect of our proclivity for abstraction. I am not suggesting that analogical thinking is without use: All I am suggesting is that if you scratch beneath many of the taken for granted notions that have taken up residence in  our minds, you may well come across analogies that don’t stand up to scrutiny. Sometimes one is not even aware that an analogy is being drawn, let alone that an analogical fallacy is committed in assuming somehow that the comparison proves something to be the case rather than merely suggests – usually in a graphic or picturesque manner -  how the phenomenon in question could be explained. Moreover, in some cases, the analogy is plainly flawed. Nothing exemplifies this better than certain arguments purporting to prove the existence of God. The Argument from Design, for example, has it that the order and beauty of the universe demonstrate that it must have been designed. Not only is the premise of this argument debatable – order and beauty are clearly not universally present and could be attributed rather to the eye of the beholder, but the conclusion is simply a non sequitur: It relies, of course, on an implicit analogy with, say, a craftsman creating a beautiful artefact – a  microcosmic event which is thought somehow to serve as a parallel for a macrocosmic event, the creation of the universe. But,

(a)  It simply does not follow that what holds good in the microcosmic situation – namely that the artefact has self-evidently been made by someone – holds good in the macrocosmic situation, where one is confronted with an infinite universe. At most, one might allow that an inference is being made. But this requires comparability between these situations, which is simply not the case: In the microcosmic situation, the craftsman is responsible for just a limited number of products in a world of innumerable objects, including other craftsmen. The putative God in the macroscopic situation is deemed to have created everything on his own.

(b)  The analogy is thus flawed for that reason, but also because in the microcosmic situation, the craftsman produces the artefact from materials to hand, for example, wood. God, however, is believed by the religious apologist to create the  universe ex nihilo, from nothing.

For these and other reasons – such as attributing certain manifestations of order instead to evolutionary forces – The Argument from Design is totally unconvincing. But it is important to observe that it is basically the unwarranted drawing of conclusions on the basis of an analogy, as well as the flawed nature of the analogy, which undermine this argument. Moreover, as is the case with all philosophical arguments, there is a meaning problem which needs to be addressed even before the logic is questioned: What exactly do we mean when we say that God created everything ex nihilo? I would venture to suggest that the whole idea is incomprehensible, and that any attempt to clarify what is meant by this is likely to rely on yet more unwarranted inferences drawn from yet more flawed analogies. Simply stringing together a number of words in a grammatically correct sentence, as in ‘God created everything’, may create the illusion of meaning, but grammatically-generated meaning is no substitute for conceptual clarity. Anyway, such is the nature of analogical thinking, which pervades our language and reasoning.  Unsurprisingly, it characterizes much discussion on the dreaded subject of death.

Death is personal: To us in the West, it is something which can consume our inner lives as surely as it consumes the husks we call our bodies. It is the raison dêtre for so much in life, a rallying point, a border post of the everyday world. It is a concept shot through with powerful emotions: fear, anger, revulsion, sadness, love. And it too is something which is conceived in terms of analogies. Already I have unwittingly resorted to analogical thinking in my references to our inner lives and outer husks: I have evoked the ghost in the machine. I might also have suggested that death is like a sleep, adding the corollary that in the ’sleep of death, dreams may come’, that a life of sorts awaits us ’when we have shuffled off this mortal coil’.  But on what basis would I have arrived at this conclusion? The rub of the matter is that this belief is founded primarily on analogy, and that below it may lie a deeply entrenched fear of losing one’s ego, a fear that is particularly conditioned by the individualistic ethos of so-called advanced societies. I would like to propose instead that we calmly consider the alternative; namely, that there is no afterlife. I would like to suggest that when we die no heaven or hell awaits us, because, to put it simply, we shall no longer be. This being the case, we can have no cause to fear death, because it carries no implications for us beyond our complete annihilation. I am aware, of course, that, to someone like me, the product of a Catholic upbringing, a faint angst haunts this construction on death.  But this hardly detracts from the argument. It is surely preferable that the head and the heart should concur, but like an old married couple, these two faculties will not always see eye to eye.

Though profoundly personal, death is a social phenomenon as well: On a small scale, there are the bereaved, of course, who not only feel the loss, but whose lives are more or less, subtly or significantly, altered. These effects may cascade far and wide. For example, a death may loosen ties, or bring people together, and this may influence the pattern of affiliations and interactions of the generations that follow. Macrocosmically too, death is something with which society as a whole has to contend. I’m not referring here to, say, the preoccupation of various organs of the state with morbidity indices and the implications these may have on governmental spending. I am referring rather to a more profound way in which society is taken up with the phenomenon of death: to the fact that death is something which is ‘culturally mediated’. Without getting into a debate about the nature of culture – it has variously been construed as comprising the symbolic and acquired aspects of society, as something distinct from nature, as something distinct from the social structure, as something akin to ideology, or as a way of life – in the present context this phrase relates to a societal resource which is drawn upon to bestow meaning on what is in a certain sense a unintelligible event, and provide the rituals with which order and ordinariness are re-established. Death, particularly when it is unexpected and dramatic, is often extraordinary in various ways, and has the potential to thoroughly trivialize the construct we know as society. We see this manifested sometimes in a phase of withdrawal and detachment in someone who is actually dying. And death, of course, takes one beyond the reach of society. Thus, society needs to assert itself – via culture – by countering the bewildering sense of life being insignificant, goals and ambitions being pointless, and norms being irrelevant, which may potentially also accompany the experience of bereavement. This is something which is proactively addressed during the socialization process, when how one is to live in general, rather than how one should cope with death in particular, is the focus of attention. As far as society is concerned, what is not needed is that individuals grow up believing that, as there is no point to life, they  may as well take whatever they want from life, and act however they please, regardless of the consequences. Society could just not operate as an aggregation of nihilistic egoists.  In other words, society abhors anomie, much as nature abhors a vacuum. If one chose to talk of society in some reified sense as having a separate existence, one might say that, if its constituent members did not to some extent subscribe to a set of shared beliefs and values, then the fabric of society might itself unravel. Returning to the subject of bereavement, one could say that if, because of the death of someone close to them, individuals were left feeling that life was of no importance or that nothing was worth pursuing, then they might not be able to adequately fulfil their social roles, and this too could have all sorts of repercussions for others; not just emotionally unsettling the latter.  When a death occurs, individuals need to feel that, in some sense, ‘life goes on’. The comfort and support provided by friends reinforces this message, and subliminally impresses on the bereaved that they continue to belong within a network of other social beings. The colloquial expression about someone’s world falling apart in the aftermath of a death often sums up the experience of bereavement. When culture is deployed to hold that world together, it is chiefly one particular component of culture that is tasked with this, and that component is known as religion

Now, I’m not suggesting that religion necessarily comes into play when someone dies. But this certainly seems to happen most of the time and in nearly all societies. Religion is, of course, the principal (though by no means exclusive) sponsor of the notion that we somehow survive death. Moreover, religion generally-speaking also declares that what happens to us after death is determined by the manner in which we conduct ourselves in life. There can be little doubt that in promoting such ideas, religion serves society well by immunising individuals against anomic tendencies in the face of death. Its priests and preachers, mullahs and rabbis have for centuries officiated over the rituals of death, and comforted the bereaved with promises of paradise. However, there is much more to the relationship between religion and society than that: For one thing, in most cases, the former generally serves to facilitate mass conformity to most societal norms through pushing an ethical agenda, the bottom line of which – at least in the Abrahamaic religions – is that if you are good you go to heaven and if you are bad you go to hell. Moreover, religion and the state are institutionally enmeshed in various ways in most countries: In theocracies, they are practically indistinguishable. In the West, religion may have retired to the back benches, yet it still manages to insinuate itself to various degrees in the political life of countries, sometimes in a moderating way. Even in avowedly atheistic states, a sort of quasi-religion fills the breach with absurdities like Kim Jong-il of North Korea assuming a god-like status. Thus religion has played a role in adding a sacred aspect to the profane business of running the state. It is also hard to deny that for many, many people, religion is a balm, a consolation, an ‘opiate’, and, as such, takes some of the pressure off the state, which might otherwise have to contend with unmanageable levels of social unrest. In fact, one of the ironies of modern history is that it has often been in the afore-mentioned atheistic states, erstwhile or existent, where consolation has perhaps been mostly keenly sought, that religion of a more conventional character has flourished fungal-like in the shadows. Why religion should be an opiate is not hard to see: When life is unrelentingly grim, as it is for the vast majority of people all over the world, and denies them significant political or social leverage to effect a change in their circumstances, then it makes sense for these people to console themselves with the thought that at least after death, there will be some redress, some righting of wrongs. Psychologically too, such a thought also addresses the lack of self-esteem which so often accompanies poverty, relative or otherwise: That it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle probably plays well to most of the religious-inclined poor of many a teeming barrio. And in fostering an otherworldly orientation, religion can have an enervating effect upon political activity, particularly in conservative societies where religion and the state work closely together.

 However, religion and its relationship with society are changing all the time: In some parts of the world, religion is in retreat; in other parts, it is resurgent. What is more, its consoling function is sometimes belied by a proclivity for politicisation, as is evidenced by liberation theology in Latin America or the activities of various Islamic movements. But other social and economic developments obviously cloud the picture too: Page though a Sunday supplement and there’s a chance you’ll come across the odd picture of destitute people in some third world country huddled beneath an advertising hoarding extolling deluxe objects of desire; an image symbolising something that’s becoming more and more apparent, which is that, today, more conspicuously than ever, material wealth is promoted despite being beyond the reach of so many. Materialism has become a sort of quasi-religion too; it’s Episcopalian priests being those louche style gurus whose parishioners are the readers of glossies and it’s more fundamentalist ministers those glaze –eyed corporate leaders intoning the mantra: ‘Greed is good’. What’s more, the gospel of the market – relentless advertising – now penetrates the sanctuary of the home more profoundly than ever, subtly mind-forming each up and coming generation via television and other mass media. Consequently, aspirations rise, and when these are thwarted, anger results. This anger may find expression in a variety of ways, from mere self-seeking criminality to various types of political action; nationalist liberation struggles, terrorism, trade union activity and protests, to name but a few. And in some cases it feeds into political action by religious groups; vide my reference to liberation theology and Islamic movements. Even so, religious dissent of this sort still retains its otherworldly point of reference. In fact, there are more than a few religious groups around wanting to impose a revanchist ‘otherworldly’ agenda on this world, whether by bloody force or the use of mass media.

But, of course, there is a major philosophical flaw with religion which affects its credibility, and that is – as has already been suggested – that it is premised on spurious analogies. One might wonder whether religion can nevertheless survive a convincing refutation of this analogical reasoning. I do not believe it can. To me, these analogies are central to any religious apology. That such reasoning should be deployed at all demonstrates the poverty of this apology. You don’t deploy analogical thinking to prove the existence of tables and chairs (I fear for the physical safety of philosophers who doubt such things); you do when seeking to prove the existence of a putative entity that cannot otherwise convincingly be shown to exist. Furthermore, what is unseen can only be apprehended through, or with reference to, what is seen. Of course, there are other categories of proof advanced by those wanting to show that God exists. But I think that the analogical argument is crucial because, in the absence of direct empirical evidence of his existence, analogy ‘informs’ the substantive picture we have of God. Whether viewed as an ancient with a beard and flowing robes, a powerful uber-warrior wielding an axe, a gigantic bird, or some nebulous power, God has been described by likening him to observable phenomena. In short, by deploying analogy. And since the analogy fails as proof, the entire deck of cards that is religion comes crashing down, along with the card setting out the religious premise of an afterlife. When this begins to dawn on people, then, of course, the contribution of religion to social order will begin to decline. There are other problems with religion too; many of them are psychological as opposed to philosophical in nature. Take, for example, the peculiar and somewhat hypocritical attitude religions exhibit towards the ‘sins of the flesh’: Although they may object that they are concerned rather with less sense-bound feelings, such as joy and despair, ultimately religions implicitly acknowledge the hedonistic principle that human beings are driven by the need to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. (This I would regard as ancillary to the most profound need driving us: the desire for happiness). The extremes of such experiences, after all, are supposedly afforded by heaven and hell respectively. Even if it is argued that these are states of mind or ‘planes of existence’ rather than physical locations, heaven and hell are seen as conditions that happen to and are imposed upon people, to which people react in ways which bear comparison with reactions to pleasurable and painful stimuli. Yet this all sits rather uncomfortably with the puritanical disapproval evinced by most religions – particularly those in the Abrahamaic tradition – of any display of a life-affirming sexuality outside strict social boundaries. Thus we find certain Muslim fundamentalists self-righteously demanding the lash, or even the bullet, for women transgressing the rigid mores of their societies. In the same breath, they will wax rhapsodic at the prospect of eternal orgiastic rutting in paradise in the company of seventy two virgins should they lose their lives whilst attempting to butcher innocents in some squalid Middle Eastern marketplace or in the anonymous streets of some Western city. (More recently, there have been unconfirmed reports from Iraq – that bastion of Western-sponsored freedom– that religious militias have taken to gluing the anuses of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and then giving them a drink causing diarrhoea, which results in a horrible death). Whilst these barbaric acts may not be in accord with the Quoran – somewhat hypocritically, religiously-minded people tend not to be too bound by their holy books – and owe more to the backward-looking societies in which it they occur, the point of view informing them is nevertheless a religious one, and mainstream Muslims would well to consider what succour they give to these deranged fanatics  (Not so long ago, for example, we witnessed the Karzai regime in Afghanistan introducing legislation effectively legitimising rape within marriage in order to appease conservatives within that benighted country). Christianity is no less hypocritical. Witness the spectacle of millionaire preachers in the American Biblebelt surrounded by their business managers and power-dressing spouses, spluttering about hellfire and damnation only to be found with their pants down being pleasured by some vacuous young congregationalist. Or have a look at all of those dreary Catholic priests with a furtive craving for altar boys, intoning their baleful sermons on the evils of masturbation. The more vehemently religion proscribes; the more sordid-seeming are the infractions that inevitably follow. However, it is not just in matters sexual that religion casts an angst-laden pall over everything. In all sorts of ways, religion, I would contend is a sort of neurosis that weighs heavily on the human soul. Verily, it is the ‘sigh of the oppressed creature’, as Marx so eloquently put it. It engenders a sense of dread, a hesitancy, about living life to the full and without reservation. One might even construe the story the Garden of Eden in which God forbade Adam and Eve from eating the fruits of the apple tree as some sort of parable admonishing people against indulgence and extolling restraint instead. No wonder that the rise of consumerism in Western societies since the war has closely tracked the fall in religious observance.    

I have argued that in claiming we somehow survive death and that how we live our lives determines what this ‘afterlife’ is to be, religion does society a service insofar as it provides ready-made answers in regard to the meaning of life and reinforces socially acceptable behaviour. However, this contribution cannot be a necessary condition for ensuring that people do not adopt deviant or anti-social lifestyles. For, in truth, many people who reject the notion of an afterlife still manage to stay on the right side of the law. Many people are also atheists, and although the two notions are not conceptually equivalent, non-survivalism and atheism would seem to go hand in hand (Interestingly, both stand opposed to positions that are profoundly informed by analogical thinking. Moreover, the respective notions against which they are opposed; namely, belief in an afterlife and in God; are likewise linked: What’s the point in believing in a God if there is no afterlife? I should add, by the way, that although religion and atheism stand opposed to one another, there is one thing that they do agree upon, which is that man is a merest speck set against an inconceivably powerful force. For atheists, this force is the cosmos, and most atheists have a capacity for profound awe when contemplating the fact that mankind could disappear in an instant were some cosmic catastrophe to befall us, such as that which hypothetically occurred billions of years ago when Earth and the planet Theia collided – thereby creating the moon and hence the conditions propitiously conducive to life. Religionists are unable to countenance the nihilistic import of such a possibility, preferring instead to place their hopes in a benevolent God and a blissful afterlife, projecting an anthropomorphic fantasy – ‘God created everything in seven days’ – onto the vast indifferent canvass of the universe). So something else must account for the fact that this sizeable constituency of non-survivalists and atheists by and large lead ordinary unremarkable lives within the law. The unremarkable truth, of course, is that like everyone, those holding these positions undergo a socialization process as they grow up, resulting in them internalizing the norms and values of the society in which they live. Any religious rationale for these norms and values is either never ‘taken on board’, or is discarded later in life – though it must be said that some ostensible non-survivalists and atheists may subconsciously entertain some notion of an afterlife, as this is so deeply embedded in popular culture and may through a process of cultural osmosis come to find a niche within the most rational of minds. Some, of course, may retain religious baggage from childhood. Notwithstanding that, one is still tempted to argue that – because their adherence to societal norms and values is not underpinned by a powerful irrationality – those who eschew the essentially religious notion of an afterlife have a subtly different relationship to society. Consider, for example, the probability that, because society has no sacred character for them, atheists and their ilk are unlikely to regard themselves as a chosen people and may be  more disposed to humanistic and inclusive attitudes vis-à-vis other social groups.  It may also be no accident that, since the dawn of capitalism, many of the more radical figures have been atheists or agnostics. It certainly surprised me to learn from Richard Dawkins excellent book, ‘The god delusion’, that many, if not most, of the founding fathers of the American Republic were atheists and/or secularists. Secularism, or the belief that religion or religious institutions should play no part in the governance of society, has often trailed along behind full-blooded atheism. It owes much to the supercession of feudalism – in which religion played a major and overt role – by capitalism. That development was accompanied by an increasing compartmentalisation of society, and secularists merely insisted that religion confine itself to the compartment labelled ‘religion’.  Secularism does not necessarily entail a rejection of religion.

This, of course, begs a question: Given that society has evolved and consequently its complex relationship with religion has evolved too, is it not possible to have a society which did not depend on religion to shore up its ideological architecture, which could sit easily with both atheistic and non-survivalist views simply because it did not rely on the wrath of god or the prospect of eternal damnation insofar as the conflicts and tensions inherent in present day society no longer existed. I believe that it is, and this brings me to the third of the ingredients found in my intellectual stew.

The idea, often facetiously dismissed as utopian, of a society founded on the principle of common ownership has an ancient pedigree: Sir Thomas More coined the word, Utopia, in his book published in 1516, tendentiously depicting (as he meant thereby to draw attention to some of the evils of his own society) life on a mythical island south of the equator where private property did not exist. But elements of utopian thought can be traced back far earlier to Plato and others, and the notion of an ideal commonwealth has found fictional expression in the work of many writers, from Bacon, Campanella, and Harrington, to Morris, Hertzka, and Wells. The idea and ideal of common ownership specifically has also informed actual events in history – witness the Diggers in 17c England, or the various experiments in building communistic communities, such as those Robert Owen. Moreover – and this is often overlooked – for most of mankind’s existence, society has managed to get by without private property, bar the odd loin cloth, trinket, or flint axe intended for personal use. Marx argued that humans lived in a state of primitive communism for aeons prior to the advent of classical ancient societies where production came to be largely carried out by chattel slave labour.

My concern, however, is with advanced communism. If ever an idea had ‘arrived’ and merited serious attention it is this, particularly now that humanity stands on the brink of an ecological abyss of unfathomable depths for which global capitalism, through acts of omission or commission, can justifiably be blamed. So, how to begin laying out this notion? Perhaps one needs to initially look at what is being proposed: In a nutshell, advanced communist society would operate on a world-wide basis in accordance with that old Marxist dictum, ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’. As such, it would bear no resemblance to extant and extinct ‘state capitalist’ states, ludicrously and cynically claiming to be ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’. It would be a democracy in the truest sense of the word, and would be established on the basis of a majority choosing to have it – most certainly not imposed by revolutionary vanguards. States and the geographical limits of their administrative operations – national borders – would no longer exist. Freedom of expression would be completely unfettered, and the only socially sanctioned limitations on behaviour being those intended to deter actions demonstrably causing harm to others. No longer straitjacketed by the need to make a profit, production would be undertaken on the basis of need and in a wholly rational manner: Manufacturing processes that might have deleterious environmental effects or pose unacceptable risks, for example, would not be considered, and every effort would be made to ensure that safe alternatives were used instead. People would contribute to the production of goods and services as and how they wished. That is to say, work would be both voluntary and co-operative – there would no longer exist competition between workers, companies and countries. And people would have free access to the fruits of human labour. In other words, neither money nor barter would play a role: If people needed something, they would simply go along to their local distribution facility and take it without having to hand over something in exchange. Sophisticated stock control measures would ensure that needs were anticipated as far as possible by flagging up potential shortfalls. The production of the items in question would then be undertaken in a wholly rational and planned way. Where an actual shortfall did exist then rational strategies such as considering alternatives, rationing, reserving, utilizing different manufacturing processes, importing from further afield, or simply making do without would be deployed. There is no need to suppose that people would in some way abuse the system: Why should they when goods and services were freely available? In any case, it is reasonable to suppose that a wholly different mindset would prevail in this new society; one that would be altogether more socially responsive, humane, tolerant and far less sullied by egotism and greed. Property being held in common, there would no longer exist the immense armies of personnel and the bloated resource-depleting structures dedicated to upholding property rights or access to resources inside and outside each state as obtains at present: I am talking here of the police and the military, the entire justice system, the prisons, the arms industry, the myriad agencies involved in administering property rights and claims, etcetera. Correspondingly, untold millions around the world would no longer be drawn to a life of crime or end up incarcerated because of this career move. The raison d’être for crime, war, terrorism, industrial strife, and internecine conflict, amongst other hideous stressors characteristic of the modern world would simply not exist. People would be able to travel and settle where they wished, but, as the current economic and political conditions driving people to uproot and seek refuge in other parts of the world would no longer obtain, mass migration (Not to mention the attendant angst and resentment in host populations) is unlikely to occur – except in the event of some catastrophic natural disaster. Education would be radically different from what it is today: Being both free and non-compulsory, it is to be expected that those seeking to further their education would do so joyously. The grim discipline-orientated schools of today, which seek to mould kids into industry and business fodder, would become a thing of the past. For once, art would genuinely be for art’s sake, not cynically foisted on a passive populace as a means of turning a quick buck. Quality, in other words, would be the watchword in all creative activity, from architecture and landscaping to music, theatre, film, and writing. Technological innovation, no longer fettered by patents or invested interests, would accelerate, albeit in a controlled, socially responsible way, and many of the more onerous tasks that need undertaking could be systematically automated. Medical research in particular (especially in areas that are currently under-researched – for example, tropical medicine – because there is less of a financial incentive to do so) would be prioritized in order to rid humanity of the misery of disease  and illness as far as possible. Moreover, it would be conducted in an open, coordinated manner, not in the fragmented fashion that it is today, with numerous research groups jealously guarding their discoveries for ‘commercial reasons’.  In this respect, and so many others, the establishment of world communism – or socialism – would utterly transform the way we live. Life would simply be incomparably more relaxed, enjoyable, fulfilling, and happy. Practically all of the so-called today’s ‘evils’ – if one might revert to pulpit language for an instance – would just disappear: war, ethnic cleansing, vandalism, robbery, prostitution, pornography, drug pushing, protection rackets, nepotism, corruption, repression, the cynical manipulation of minds for financial gain, people trafficking, slavery, mass hunger, poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, the wastage of resources, the deliberate creation of soulless and ugly human environments, to name just some. And the reason for this is simply that each and every one of these phenomena has it’s origin in or is sustained by the current social dispensation, by the manner in which society is organized today. Money, in other words, is what these evils are all about. When humanity eventually chooses to embrace communism, then truly it shall have crossed a threshold between barbarism and civilisation.

I am by no means claiming that all will be perfect under communism: It is reasonable to suppose that after resolving to embrace communism, humanity will have to live with an assortment of ‘transitional problems’ for several decades before things begin to run smoothly. And, of course, the vexed question of the relationship between the individual and society will continue to demand attention. When discussing this relationship, political theorists sometimes refer to the notion of a ‘Social Contract’. To be literal-minded about it, this is, of course, a fiction, another instance of mistaken analogical thinking in which the individual and society are deemed to have a quasi-legal relationship with each party having obligations to the other, or in which society is formed after individuals enter into contracts with each other concerning the nature of the society. Strictly-speaking, as an analogy, this depiction fails: there is no analogical court or presiding judge (unless God in heaven fits this description – but then would he sanction some of the heinous societies in existence today, one has to ask – rhetorically) to rule on supposed breaches of this contract, and it is nonsensical to construe such a contract as having been negotiated at a given point in time, following which the individual was obliged to behave within the constraints laid down. Of course, what the notion of a Social Contract is actually trying to convey is that individuals derive all sorts of benefits from belonging to a society, but to do so requires them to act within certain constraints, and contribute towards society as well. However, what society affords the individual and the extent to which the latter may comply with social norms are variable. In other words, we have to consider the nature of the society in question when looking at this relationship. Tensions at the interface between the individual and society are perhaps inevitable: One or other may be compromised in all sorts of social arrangements. At one extreme, we may find ourselves living in a laissez-faire jungle where little or no social restraint is placed on individuals in their pursuit of wealth or hedonistic lifestyles, where law and order is minimally or corruptly applied, where a ‘dog-eats-dog’ ethos presides, and where little heed is paid to the social ramifications – be they the ruthless sequestration of what had been commonly held resources, the oppression of the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable, pollution and environmental depredation, the creation of antipathetic, violent, and often politically illiterate subcultures, or garish and architecturally discordant urban environments. Such a society lacks any sense of communality. Yet much the same can be said for the dystopian extreme where society lords it over the individual, crushing any flowering of individualism, demanding conformity and total allegiance. This nightmarishly fascistic model of society rests upon an all-powerful state. Interestingly, and somewhat ironically, disparate elements of both models seem to co-exist in many contemporary societies; China being the most noteworthy example. Communism, on the other hand, whilst not likely to wholly eliminate the tension between the individual and society, is surely the only form of society able to radically reduce such tension as it would facilitate the greatest possible individual liberty within a socially harmonious framework.

People who have never entertained the idea of communism before commonly respond with incredulity as soon as they become acquainted with it. Perhaps this is understandable: It is a profoundly revolutionary idea that calls into question many deeply embedded assumptions about man and society. However, the reader may care to consider the following list of points, which, though far from being exhaustive, ought to demonstrate that communism is indeed a feasible proposition, and that the arguments in its favour are actually highly complex. When doing so, it should be borne in mind that what I mean by capitalism is the currently universal economic system in which goods and services are produced primarily in order to be sold for a profit (what is known as commodity production), whether by the state or by private companies, and in which money, wages, and property, amongst other features, are to be found. Capitalism can either assume the form of state capitalism or private/laissez faire capitalism – or, indeed, anything in between. There is no such thing as state socialism or communism.

One of the most convincing points in favour of genuine communism relates to what is tellingly termed ‘human resources’. With the arrival of communism, literally billions people around the world would be relieved of jobs which – although essential to the running of present day society – would no longer be required under communism: I have already alluded to the millions involved in upholding property rights or access to resources. But there are also vast numbers of others involved in similarly non-productive concerns, such as banking, insurance, advertising, social security departments, charities, custom services, stock exchanges, payroll departments, insolvency agencies, pension providers, tax departments, mortgage providers, to name but a few. These occupations would no longer be required in a society unencumbered by the cash nexus. Nor would people be obliged to undertake lowly-paid, unfulfilling work behind cash registers, checking meters, issuing parking fines, guarding premises, working for gambling or lottery companies, selling their bodies for sex, acting as drug mules, issuing tickets, indulging in dubious home business scams, sorting out other people’s pay, running market stalls, bartering, executing bailiff duties, and so on and so forth. And the enforced idleness of unemployment; arguably, another essential feature of capitalism; would be a thing of the past too. In short, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of people around the world – particularly in the so-called developed countries where workers are predominantly employed in the tertiary sector – would find their occupations obsolete. This doesn’t even reckon with the countless millions – particularly in the developing countries – engaged in arduous, ‘low tech’, labour intensive work, such as labouring, dismantling ships, building dams – a bucket of earth at a time. Most of such work could be rendered obsolete too through mechanisation and automation. Thus, what work was required to ensure everyone’s needs were met would be shared out amongst a vastly greater number of people. Apropos work, it is sometimes protested that people would not be motivated to contribute towards the production of goods and services in communist society. However, a little reflection ought to put paid to this particular objection: In the first place, it does not take into account the dramatic ‘sea-change’ in the social ethos, in the prevailing norms and values, that would accompany the establishment of communism; a development necessarily wrought by the democratic nature of the revolution inaugurating the new society. Divisiveness, cynicism, greed, and cruelty would necessarily give way to cohesiveness, social concern, and altruism because each set of attitudes is rooted in the modi operandi of capitalism and communism respectively. So it is inconceivable that vast majority of people, having voted en masse for a new way of life and all that that entailed, would opt to sit back and adopt an attitude of ‘Stuff you, Jack – I’m not going to contribute, I’m only going to take’. Secondly, much of the negativity informing workers’  attitude to employment in society today often derives not so much from the work per se, but from the conditions under which they find themselves employed, the hierarchical nature of the organisations they work for, and crucially, being compelled to work in the first place. Karl Marx’s theories on the alienation of workers are extremely illuminating in this regard. Thirdly, as I’ve said, given that several billion people around the world are currently engaged in occupations that would no longer exist in communist society, there would be far more people around to undertake what work was required. Correspondingly, it could be argued that only one or two days work a week would be required of people on average – taking into account too such considerations as the fact that many currently produced goods and services – for example advertising material, cash registers, weaponry, or ticket barriers – would not then be required, and the fact that a communist society would systematically seek to automate all forms of work considered too onerous or risky. This being the case, it is reasonable to suppose that people would be less disinclined to spare society some of their spare time. It is even conceivable that there might be too little socially useful work available. Fourthly, it could be argued that people, far from being motivated to avoid work, have, in fact, a natural aptitude for work, and a drive to engage in work, both of which are stifled in capitalism by inimical conditions of employment. Fifthly, it may be observed that, even in these cynical times, millions of people everywhere engage in voluntary work, capitalism notwithstanding, and that this flies in the face of the assumption that, all things being equal, people are inherently lazy and would jump at the opportunity to spend their entire existence on a sun lounger with a glass of tequila to hand. I could go on, but I’m sure the point has been made. Many paragraphs back, I argued that materialism has become a sort of quasi-religion relentlessly promoted through near-ubiquitous advertising. The constant backdrop of visual, auditory, and even olfactory prompts – a visit to your local supermarket will attest to the latter – be they subliminal or ‘in your face’, is bound to affect us all. Why else should companies spend literally billions of dollars all around the world on advertising? It is so that we buy, buy, buy, regardless of whether we actually need the commodities on offer. It is said that what the head doesn’t know, the heart doesn’t hanker after. Under capitalism, needs are often artificially created or stimulated, which is both wasteful in terms of resource usage and potentially stress-inducing insofar as people may lack the wherewithal to satisfy these needs. Nothing exemplifies this better than the fashion industry, which might dictate, say, that last season’s hipsters will simply have to go. This is a serious problem: In the UK, tons of discarded clothing are ploughed into landfill sites annually, which impacts on global warming, amongst other things. Then there is advertising targeted at kids, encouraging them to pester their parents for the latest ‘craze’ product. No wonder they grow up to be acquisitive. And talking of acquisitiveness, something else that may be observed about capitalism is that – particularly amongst the wealthy – status is often acquired through the acquisition of luxury products. But there is a huge amount of waste inherent in this charade of ‘keeping up with the Plunkett-Pembertons’: Thus we have the obscene spectacle of the archetypal tycoon with a fleet of luxury sports cars, several mansions – each of which contains enough rooms to house the local homeless, and a trophy wife with a shoe mania to rival that of Imelda Marcos., Not only are these items inevitably under-utilised; but time and resources have been expended on their production which might have more usefully been spent on satisfying more pressing needs. I would venture to suggest that in a communist society, status, insofar as it had some sort of psychosocial purpose in encouraging emulation, would be drastically different in nature: I could imagine that status would reside in the degree to which one actually contributed towards society, with those taking on the most onerous and dangerous tasks being accorded the highest status. Such attitudes would obviously serve society’s interests very well, and make for social cohesiveness. Not only does capitalism manipulate people into buying things they might otherwise not have considered buying, it sometimes also compels them to continue buying commodities time and again through the simple expedient of ensuring that those things do not actually last as long as they could. This is what is known as ‘built-in obsolescence’, and it is a feature of all sorts of products, from cars to the simple light bulb. Similarly, the general shoddiness of so many manufactured goods, for example, houses (particularly in the cynically termed ‘social housing’ market), which stems from a desire to cut costs to the bone, likewise results in a shortened period of use. The outcome in both cases is more waste and customer dissatisfaction. Waste in this context has to do with rendering a product unserviceable and therefore needing to be disposed of far sooner than otherwise would be the case. There are many other ways in which capitalism is wasteful: Take, for example, the tendency to ‘modulise’ parts. What I mean by this is that instead of selling a replacement item on its own, manufacturers will sometimes only sell the item as part of a bigger unit or a batch. Whilst this may sometimes make replacing the item easier, it is just as likely to be motivated by the manufacturer’s desire to fleece the customer out of more money. Insofar as the part is specific to a particular make of the product, the manufacturer will almost have a free rein to indulge in this practice. But this is virtually insignificant compared to the waste inherent in a system in which each of the millions of companies or corporations around the world competes with numerous others in producing particular goods and services for a particular market. Why is this wasteful? Well, just consider for a moment the sheer amount of duplication inherent in this set up: You might get dozens of companies producing a particular good or service within a specific locale, each with its own premises, workforce, management structure, and so on. Each will have a number of administrative and financial operations to execute over and above productive operations, which simply would not occur in a socialist/communist society, such as holding shareholder meetings, carrying out financial audits, running pay departments, operating security measures, and implementing marketing strategies. The latter is particularly noteworthy: Big companies, like Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola spend literally billions of dollars trying to outdo each other in the marketplace, and have vast marketing departments dedicated to this aim. On the subject of duplication, it may also be instructive to consider the outcome of a previous Conservative government’s demented attempts to make the National Health Service in the UK more ‘efficient’ a few years ago, by breaking it up into hundreds of self-governing trusts. The upshot was a vast increase in administrative staff by comparison with clinical staff, as each trust had to have it’s own finance department, its own ‘estates’ department, its own pay department, and so on – verily, the economics of the madhouse! In capitalism, it is often the case that having numerous companies compete to sell particular products is often far more then market can bear. Thus it may be that a sizeable number of these companies will be operating below capacity some of the time. Indeed, a few may find themselves going to the wall, squeezed out by the big players. The under-utilisation or non-utilisation of resources in this respect amounts to waste. So does the fact many of the smaller companies, generally burdened with  proportionately higher expenses on such things as heating and electricity and having to purchase services that might otherwise be obtained ‘in-house’, lack ‘economies of scale’. The fact, too, that competing products are sometimes shipped from great distances is yet another instance of waste, as well as being environmentally damaging. Is it really necessary to have New Zealand butter stacked alongside English butter in UK supermarkets, considering that the European Community once had to scale down it’s notorious ‘butter mountain’. This ‘butter mountain’ actually exemplifies another appalling sort of waste found in capitalism: the waste generated by overproduction. Just as the market may determine that the very factories, offices, mines and farms are no longer economically viable and have to be  taken out of commission, it may also determine that the products and services flowing from these facilities are ‘surplus to requirements’ and need to be junked. We see this in the periodic trade cycles that beset capitalism, which essentially occur because capitalism has overreached itself. There are yet other ways in which waste can be generated. For example, companies will often do all they can to enhance the cosmetic appearance and thus the ‘saleability’ of their products without necessarily improving the quality of the latter, and this can result in profligate amounts of waste. Tristram Stuart, in his recent book, ‘Waste, uncovering The Global Food Waste Scandal’, claims, for example, that 25% of the fruit and vegetables produced in the UK is wasted in the process of production simply because these don’t look the right shape, colour or size. The taste and nutritional value are beside the point. On the subject of food wastage generally – both by consumers and the food industries – it has been estimated that what the US alone wastes each year is twice as much as that required to adequately feed the 923 million malnourished people in the world today (The Independent, 9th July 2009, p9) The raft of international laws and trade agreements governing all manner of economic activity around the world also creates a huge amount of waste by any number of yardsticks. These laws and trade agreements exist simply to impose some semblance of order and restraint upon the ferocious greed of different nation states competing for scarce natural resources, trade routes, access to markets, and so on. As such, they would serve no purpose at all in a world-wide communistic society. But in today’s world, these laws and trade agreements require vast armies of bureaucrats and other officials to administer and police them; these functions themselves necessitating elaborate monitoring operations that likewise require much in the way of resources and personnel. Were such regulations to be absent, of course, it is wholly conceivable that disputes around the world could degenerate into any number of wars. Nevertheless, these laws and trade agreements can themselves lead to bizarre consequences, thus tempting some to flout them. Let me cite a couple of examples: It is estimated that because of the European Union’s common fisheries policy, something in the region of 40 to 50 per cent of the fish caught by EU trawlers is thrown back dead into the sea (The Independent, ibid). Touching on my previous point, the European Union also has fairly stringent rules regarding the cosmetic appearance of 10 sorts of fruit and vegetables which between them account for about three quarters of all fresh produce sold in the EU. As I explained earlier, the effect of such laws is to create waste since a certain amount of the produce will be deemed unfit for sale – solely on cosmetic grounds. Incidentally, it is no co-incidence that such regulations favour big Western-owned agribusiness concerns at the expense of Third World peasant farmers. The proclivity for cutting costs in capitalist production is something else that gives rise to all sorts of other problems; perhaps the most notorious of which relate to health and safety issues. Thus we find aircraft crashing for want of adequate maintenance work, or the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (sic) in the UK ruling that certain forms of treatment do not constitute ‘value for money’ and may therefore not be prescribed, notwithstanding their efficacy in many cases. Michael Moore’s docufilm, ‘Sicko’, highlights just how single-minded capitalism is when it comes to money. In this revealing study of the American health system, he shows just how inhumane the richest country on earth can be when it comes to treating its sick and injured. Those without medical insurance often find themselves in desperate situations. Like the man who loses two fingers in an accident, and is faced with a bill of $60,000 to sew one of them back on, and $12,000 for the other. Well, it’s a no-brainer – the more expensive finger ends up in a landfill site. But even those who do pay insurance and find themselves in need of medical treatment often face a medical inquisition by HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) personnel, whose sole aim, I repeat, sole aim is to try deny them treatment (which. in the case of those personnel with a medical qualification, would seem to be in flagrant violation of the Hippocratic Oath). This is borne out by the fact their remuneration is contingent upon the percentage of denials they manage to issue. The film depicted the heart-rending case of a man with renal cancer whose doctor had urged a particular course of treatment. His wife met up with representatives of his medical insurance company and begged them to provide the funding for the treatment. But they considered the treatment to be ‘experimental’ and turned it down. Within three weeks the man was dead. Apart from the fact that there may have been a racist element in their deliberations, – the man was black and his wife white – the sheer psychopathic disregard for anything bar the company’s profit margins leaves one speechless. Such blinkered thinking would be anathema to a socialist society, where genuine need, rather than financial criteria, would determine whether or not something was produced or made available. Cost-cutting can affect the quality of life in many other ways. Take, for example, the poor provision of services afforded to rural communities, from post offices to buses. What underlies this, of course, are both the greater transportation costs inherent in servicing rural communities, and the fact that urban populations present a more lucrative market to would be providers. Who can forget the cherry picking practices of bus companies during the deregulating Thatcher years ( which persist in many major urban conurbations; for example, Manchester ) when buses arrived in two or threes on the more popular ( and shorter ) urban routes whilst rural services were cut back. Needless to say, the financial reckoning behind such developments would never arise in a society dedicated to meeting needs, instead of maximising profit. A year or so ago, there was much media interest in the subject of fake, or counterfeit, products; Channel Four’s alarming series titled ‘The Fake Trade’ being a case in point. Its not so much the fake Prada handbags or Rolex watches that concerns me: although the faking of such luxury items obviously hits the ‘legitimate’ manufacturers and allegedly promotes gun crime and terrorism, consumer surveys have, in fact, shown that many, and in some countries – the USA, of all places, for example – most people are not averse to purchasing some types of fake items; an activity which has even acquired a fashionable frisson. However, what really must appal most of us is the counterfeiting of certain sorts of items; medicines being a prime example. The statistics beggar belief: It is estimated that something like one million Africans die each year through purchasing counterfeit medicines. Let us be clear what is happening here: Tablets, capsules, ampoules, and so on, convincingly packaged but deliberately containing little or nothing of therapeutic value, are sold by traders, or sometimes unwittingly by ‘respectable’ outlets, to people – the vast majority of whom are crushingly poor – who go away hoping that the diseases affecting them or their loved ones can at last be tackled. But, of course, nothing of the sort happens, and these poor souls deteriorate. In the case of antibiotics, having just some but not enough, can also be dangerous because it can induce resistance (and incidentally lead to stronger strains of bacteria). With a disease like malaria, the resulting delay in receiving effective medication can be critical. No wonder that a fifth of the one million annual deaths caused by malaria around the world can be attributed directly to the consumption of counterfeit anti-malarial medication. In the developing world, the incidence of fake medicines varies from 10% to 50% and higher in some countries. But this is not just a problem in the developing world: In Russia, it is thought that 10% of medicines are fake, and here in the UK, fake anti-statins, for example, have recently infiltrated the supply chains. Here truly, we catch a glimpse of the dark heart of capitalism; its untrammeled greed and disregard for all else. One of the contributors to the above-mentioned Channel Four programme opined that capitalism really needed to be restrained and managed or anarchy and chaos would ensue. But this is to miss the point: Capitalism, like a rabid dog with an insatiable desire to sink its teeth into someone, can certainly be leashed (or, to put it differently, we can certainly attempt to save capitalism from itself). But, even with the most rigorous restraints, it would still seek to minimize costs and maximize profits. Those other shortcomings I mentioned earlier – shoddy production, built-in obsolescence, and so on – are really all of a piece with counterfeit manufacture: One might want to think rather in terms of a ‘continuum of dysfunctionality’ here. Moreover, those companies or countries who attempt to act relatively responsibly and with due regard to the environment and their workers will find themselves disadvantaged in the barbaric world of commerce; somewhat as the British slave-owner lobby in the 19c argued that liberating slaves would give the dastardly French a commercial advantage. What is particularly ironic about the situation with counterfeit production is that the main culprit being fingered is none other than that worker’s paradise, the ‘People’s’ (sic) Republic of China. Here we find capitalism in a truly fascistic mould; there can be no obfuscating the point. That China should present itself as a ‘communist state’; an Orwellian fiction that tends to be ignored or half-heartedly questioned by capitalism’s hacks in the ‘free world’ (again, sic) for cynical reasons no doubt; amounts to butchering reason. It is estimated that something like 15–20% of products made in China are counterfeit, and China is a major provider of fake medicines – notwithstanding some lackadaisical official attempts to stem the production of these. Chinese workers are themselves victims of this iniquitous industry; both as underpaid wage slaves and with thousands dying each year from misguidedly taking these drugs. The Chinese state allows its bourgeois overlords a lot of leeway to grind their workers, notwithstanding the vicious reputation it has for dealing with miscreants, or those who go a little too far in their pursuit of profit.  

Now go to ‘A Point of View 2′

‘A criminal is not a criminal by birth but made by the world’. This holds true in the case of Charles Manson. Born on 12th November 1934 to an unwed teenage mother in Cincinnati, Charles never knew his biological father. His mother later married William Manson who gave Charles his last name. His mother was a thief who sold him off for a pitcher of beer. When all other kids his age were in school with the security of loving parents, Charles was moving from one reform school to another.

His mother put him in a foster home as her alcoholic ways and prostitution could not afford to provide for Charles. When Charles ran back to her from the home she rejected him and threw him out on the streets. This was a turning point in Charles’s life. He started to steal and at 19 years of age car thefts kept him in and out of jail for a while. He was very intelligent and sharp and psychiatrists judged that he possessed a high I.Q. Once out of jail he married 17-year-old Rosalie Jean Willis in 1955, and wished to move to California and start a new life. But it was not to be. He stole a car soon after marriage and was arrested. On giving birth to a son, Willis ran away with a truck driver.

With personal life in shambles law enforcement agencies tried to rehabilitate him. Psychiatrists said Manson showed marked degree of rejection, instability and psychic trauma. He was unpredictable and showed signs of assaultive tendencies. In spite of his age he was criminally sophisticated. In 1960 he was arrested again for soliciting prostitution and got a jail term of 10 years. Here he met Alvin Karpis the famous bank robber from whom he learned music and to play the guitar. He wanted to become a famous musician like Beatles. Had that happened, crime rate in America could have been considerably reduced. While in prison or on probation, he had stolen cars, pimped inmates, raped another inmate and forged federal checks. By the age of 33 he had spent more than half his life in prison.

Charles Manson had a ‘family’ of hippies made up of like minded people like him. He was bisexual and his women worshipped him. All these girls had sexual relations with him. He told them that “they belong to themselves and not to him”. One of the girls Susan Atkins said that she would do anything for Charles. She killed Actress Sharon Tate and said that ‘it was the most exciting sexual experience of her life’. The gruesome killings chilled and paralyzed America in 1969. The Manson Family was responsible for several murders, known collectively as the Tate-LaBianca murders. The motive behind the murders was that he was rejected by the music industry and wanted revenge. So he asked some members of his family to go to the house of record producer Terry Melcher and kill whoever was on the premises. They entered the compound of Roland Polanski, the famous Hollywood Director and his wife Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant. Before entering the house they first shot dead Steve Parent, an 18 year old who was the friend of the gardener because he had seen the intruders while getting into his car. Frykowski and Folger, who were staying in the house until Polanski’s return from London, were able to escape from the living room but succumbed in the lawn. Frykowski was stabbed fifty-one times, shot twice, and pistol-whipped over a dozen times. This was allegedly inspired by the Beatles song “Piggies”. Folger was stabbed 28 times by Krenwinkel after being tackled on the lawn.

Inside the house intruders asked if anyone had money, and, in replying that she did, Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folgers Coffee Company, was led to her bedroom to empty her purse. She was led back to the living room where the four occupants of the house were tied together. Jay Sebring, a noted hairstylist and friend of the Polańskis was visiting, and when he attempted to defend Tate, he was shot by Watson, who then kicked him several times in the face.Tate, eight months pregnant, begged for the life of her unborn child and was rebuffed by Atkins, who coldly replied, “Look bitch, I have no mercy for you” before stabbing the actress sixteen times.

The killing of wealthy super market executive and his wife, the La Bianca couple, is another cold blooded murder by Charles Manson and his ‘family’. On this occasion Manson himself went along to show his accomplices how to perform the ‘act’. He tied the couples and then instructed Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten to stab them. Watson killed Mr. La Bianca while the girls stabbed his wife even after she died. They carved out the word ‘WAR’ upon her chest and left the fork embedded in her body. With her blood on a piece of paper the words ‘rise’ and ‘death to pigs’ were written. On the wall was ‘Healter Skelter’ misspelled from the Beatles song Helter Skelter. Manson also killed high school music teacher Gary Hinman because he apparently owed him some money.

Manson is now languishing in jail in California and probably for the rest of his life. He is known to shock people especially when in media glare. He is eligible for parole in 2007.

By Carlos Cabezas López

Who was it that, on his death bed, has his wife inject him with a dose of LSD? A friend told me a while back, and the name Aldous Huxley comes to mind but I’m not sure…

Does anyone know who exactly it was?

Having a Health Savings Account makes all of your HSA qualified medical expenses tax-deductible, so read this article carefully to make sure you aren’t over paying on your taxes. Remember, there is no virtue in paying more taxes than you really owe.

Qualified Medical Expenses

The main purpose of your HSA is to enable you to pay for qualified medical expenses with tax-free dollars. Qualified medical expenses are defined under Section 213 of the IRS Code (See IRS Publication 502: Medical and Dental Expenses). Most people remember to pay for doctor visits and prescription drugs from their HSA (or save the receipts and reimburse themselves later), but there are many medical expenses that people simply pay for, without realizing that because they own an HSA the expense is tax deductible. These are the most common:

Over-the-counter medications. Remember, your medicine does not necessarily have to be prescribed to be considered a qualified medical expense. Any time you buy a bottle of aspirin, cough syrup, bandages, or zit medicine for your teenager – save the receipt, so you can reimburse yourself from your HSA.

Dental expenses. Dental fees are typically the most expensive item that people forget to pay for from their HSA. From cleanings, to crowns, to dentures, all of your medically necessary dental work is eligible to be paid from your HSA.

Eye glasses and contacts. Annual eye exams along with prescription glasses, contact lenses, and other prescription eye glass expenses can be paid from your HSA tax-free. Also, prescription sunglasses are considered to be an HSA qualified medical expense.

Physical therapy. Most individual and family health insurance plans have very limited coverage for physical therapy. So you can pay for those expenses out of out of your available HSA funds.

Medical massage therapy. Yes, you can use funds from your Health Savings Account to pay for a massage, as long as your health care practitioner recommends it as treatment for a particular health condition.

Chiropractor visits. Remember that your HSA can be used for medically necessary expenses. If you go to your chiropractor due to a particular injury or functional problem, it is a qualified expense. The chiropractor’s charges would NOT be eligible as an HSA expense if you are getting adjustments for general health maintenance.

Mental Therapy

In some circles, seeing a therapist is reason for embarrassment, whereas in other parts of the country people brag about seeing their therapists. The reality is that mental therapy should be neither a symbol of shame nor a status symbol – it is simply another mode of treatment that can help people live healthier and happier lives.

Psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy – all of these modes of treatment can be paid for from your HSA. Keep in mind that qualified expenses are those that pay for treatment or prevention of a medical condition. If you are seeing a therapist strictly in order to save your marriage or improve your business skills, these would not be qualifying expenses.

Alternative Medicine

More and more people are disillusioned with the way conventional medicine is practiced. The focus often seems to be on treating symptoms rather than reaching the root cause. Many physicians are very quick to prescribe the latest drug, when less expensive, safer, and often more effective natural remedies may work better.

However, the people who do rely on alternative medical treatments rarely receive reimbursement from their health insurance for these expenses. This is one of the reasons that HSA plans have become so popular among people who do favor natural and/or alternative medical treatments. Here is just a very small sampling of the types of treatment that would be considered a Health Savings Account qualified expense:

Acupuncture. Some think the beneficial results of acupuncture are strictly due to the placebo effect. My veterinarian wife would tell you differently. Though she mostly practices conventional veterinary medicine, she does do a good bit of acupuncture on dogs and cats, and gets some amazing results.

Homeopathy. Though controversial, approximately one out of 50 Americans currently uses homeopathy. Whether using the services of a professional, or simply buying homeopathic remedies from the natural food store, remember that these expenses can be paid for from your HSA.

Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chinese medicine has been practiced for thousands of years, and is becoming ever more popular in the United States. Of course, treatment modalities that originated in other countries, such as Ayurveda (from India), would also be considered a qualified expense.

Faith healing, shamanism, energy medicine, and other (perhaps) far out stuff. Yep, almost any type of treatment could be considered an eligible expense. Keep in mind that the procedure must be related to the treatment or prevention of a specific health condition. Services designed to raise your chi, balance your chakras, or strengthen your aura might be more than the IRS will allow.

Every Dollar Counts

Every medical expense you incurred counts, so don’t forget to save your receipts. If you don’t, it’s like paying an extra 25% each time. Even some retailers like Target are starting to mark on your receipts which items are health related. That should make it even easier to get every tax break you deserve.

was a drunk, with dry heaves and I asked her to marry me from the urine soaked floor of a barroom toilet to keep her from leaving with my best friend Bobby Joe Maxwell. Looking back, I should have just let her go. She wants to go back to that bar tonight. I’m thinking Mcdonalds might be more pleasant.

4 months ago my wife started doing meth and begged her to stop and tried to work with her and got angry and cried and asked her to get help and did every thing i could for 6 weeks. then i left her. I saw her yesterday and she has lost at least 60 lbs and her face was sunken in and she had sores all over. she looks like she is half dead. we had a short conversation and i asked her if she was happy and she said that she didn’t know any more. Im not sure what that means. I really do care for her and I know our marriage is over and will never be again. but I still love her and i am worried she will kill herself with the drugs. I just woke up and started thinking about it now I cant sleep but I have to work in 2 hrs anyway. I don’t know if this is a question or not but I just felt the need to tell someone how i am feeling because since i left her I have no one to talk to any more. she was my best friend and my lover and now she is killing herself and it tears me apart. thanks for reading and if you have any incite please drop me a line. I feel a little better now having told someone about this even if you are a complete stranger.

Some superstar athletes develop such a close association with the city or state in which they perform that you cannot mention one without the other quickly coming to mind. Do you think of Peyton Manning without the city of Indianapolis being part of the picture? Of course not. Unless, that is, you are from Tennessee and you still associate the Hall of Fame quarterback with that “other” UT school that drapes itself in bright orange. Michael Jordan may have studied and played ball at the University of North Carolina and had an awkward late stint with the Washington Wizards, but he always will be associated with Chicago. Here in Texas, we have developed or displayed plenty of amazing athletic talent on the fields and in the arenas. There is a reason that every movie and television program revolving around high school football takes place in Texas. Just think about some of the household names that have played their sport in our state—Troy Aikman, Vince Young, David Robinson, Tony Parker, Nolan Ryan, and Fred Biggio just to name a few. One athlete of whom we are especially proud is native (Austin) Texan Lance Armstrong. Everyone by now, knows his amazing accomplishments and compelling personal story.

Just after his twenty-fifth birthday in 1996, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread to his abdomen, lungs, and brain. Even after drastic surgeries and treatments to remove the diseased areas of his organs, doctors gave Armstrong less than a fifty percent chance of survival. Obviously, he did make a full recovery following this devastating diagnosis and went on to win the Tour de France for a record-breaking seven consecutive years, from 1999 to 2005. Lance Armstrong used his celebrity status to create the Live Strong Foundation , an organization which works to inspire and empower people affected by cancer. Who doesn’t own, or know someone who owns, one of those famous yellow bracelets that have become a marketing phenomenon for the cause? Armstrong’s dedication to shining a light on cancer research is closely felt here in Texas, as well as in the halls of Congress and in charitable circles around the world.

With his high profile and healthy bank account, there certainly have been times at which Lance Armstrong has needed the services of an aggressive attorney to defend his name and image. Most notably, Armstrong has faced ongoing allegations that he has used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, a claim, which he has always adamantly denied. A book titled L.A. Confidentiel: Les secrets de Lance Armstrong was published in France in 2004 and purported to include interviews with those close to Armstrong who could account for his supposed use of steroids. Even though its author, David Walsh admitted that it contained only circumstantial evidence, the allegations caused a great deal of unwanted publicity. In 2005, a former employee named Mike Anderson testified in court filings that he found suspicious drugs without an attached doctor’s prescription in Armstrong’s hotel room in Spain. The following year, Armstrong’s former teammate, Frankie Andreau, and his wife shared in court testimony that they had witnessed conversations between Lance Armstrong and his doctor back in 1996 during which he admitted to use of various drugs. The accusations that Lance Armstrong used illegal drugs to boost his performance, particularly during his recovery from cancer, continue to follow the athlete. He has vowed to continue to use legal and media channels aggressively to clear his name, guaranteeing that attorneys in Texas will be revisiting the relevant laws concerning steroid use, defamation, and other content that may prove helpful to Armstrong’s efforts.

Last week, Lance Armstrong encountered another challenge to his professional standing. During the first stage of the Vuelta of Castilla and Leon race in northern Spain, Armstrong broke his collarbone and is now back home in Austin for surgery and recovery. He had a steel plate and twelve screws inserted in an effort to stabilize the collarbone. Despite this obvious setback, Lance Armstrong still has hopes to race in the Tour de France in July. As his team manager Johan Bruyneel said, “A broken collar bone in the month of March does not at all compromise the start of the Tour de France or your performance in the Tour de France.” In Armstrong’s case, it appears that the time he will spend away from his chosen profession is not going to be extensive. For some other athletes, the time out of the limelight can prove to be more problematic. If a long-term injury or personal circumstances keep someone away from the playing field or racing circuit for an extended period and the public starts to forget about his star power, the financial and marketing commitments that have been made to the athlete might be unceremoniously dropped. Effective legal counsel can be crucial in an athlete’s desire to maintain standing in his profession and its related monetary perks.

There is strong evidence to support the idea that athletes, as well as celebrities who have followed other avenues of public notoriety, should always keep a sports and entertainment lawyer nearby. From the first professional contract that is signed to the allegations against one’s character that are inevitably made in hopes of financial gain to the unfortunate instances in which an athlete makes a decision to engage in illegal activity, there will be legal issues that need to be addressed. Lance Armstrong has discovered this truth through the unending reports of his use of performance-enhancing drugs. Undoubtedly, Armstrong’s Live Strong Foundation also employs attorneys to ensure that contributions are being used effectively and that cancer patients seeking assistance are given proper advice. He may find more cause for an attorney’s expertise if this current injury threatens his promised livelihood or negotiations over missed engagements are required. With opportunities to defend such high-profile personalities and protect their futures, the area of sports and entertainment law is a specialized one of high stakes and great reward.

i am 65 and have no coverage except medicare,she has no ins

crack cocaine is cut, while cocaine is in it’s purest form, so why is it that crack addiction is associated with violence and abuse, whereas you rarely hear, “The cokehead beat his wife”. Wouldn’t the side effects of paranoia and violence in regards to prolonged use make more sense with the un-cut, raw version of cocaine, rather than crack?

Sex is a normal part of life for every person on the Earth. It is a means of procreation, ensuring the continuation of life. It is an intimate and pleasurable experience between a husband and a wife, or two people in a committed relationship who care about each other. However for some people, sex is a dirty little word that has wreaked havoc in their lives because they have developed an obsession for sex. For this person, sex and the thought of sex dominates their normal thinking processes, leading to compulsive, risky behavior that is identified as sexual addiction. When a person has become addicted to sex, he or she will have difficulty maintaining a healthy relationship.

There are several ways in which sexual addiction manifests itself. Some people suffer from the private addiction – masturbation. A large number of people indulge in masturbation, even if they have regular sexual relations with a partner. This is not uncommon, as many children also masturbate as a way of exploring their body. However, masturbation becomes a problem when the person is unable to enjoy sex with a partner, preferring to masturbate. This is a form of non-relationship, fantasy-based sex. It also becomes an addiction when the person becomes distress by the act because it interferes with their daily life. It has become socially acceptable for people to admit to addictions with alcohol, eating, work or even illegal drugs. People who are addicted to masturbation are subject to being shunned because it is not easily recognizable when the person has crossed the line.

 Another sexual addiction that disrupts a person’s life is pornography addiction, described as one of the most difficult addictions to overcome. In fact, it has been compared to cocaine addiction because people experience similar neurochemical brain activity. The viewing of magazine photos and video pornography is being replaced with an even more accessible way to feed this addiction: the Internet. People can indulge in online still photos, download films or use webcam sex to fulfill their addiction. Porn addicts will replace important relationships and commitments with any form of pornography that is available.

There are many different behaviors associated with sexual addiction. People who are sex addicts will take risks in order to fulfill their desires. Unsafe sex, voyeurism, multiple one night stands, multiple affairs are just some of the ways sexual addiction is manifested. A person who does not admit to his or her addiction runs the risk of progressing to illegal activities in order to satisfy their sexual urges. Treatment begins when the person admits to the problem, with a focus on controlling the addictive behavior, while at the same time developing a healthy sexuality.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Melvin_Barkum