Way back in my undergraduate years I read a book by Dr. Edward S. Herman called The Real Terror Network. The book really opened my eyes to the true nature and purpose of war. It was written in 1982 but 30 years hasn’t changed a single thing, except the victims involved. I gotta say, if you want to understand what war is really about, and you want to disabuse yourself of the delusions and illusions of international state-craft, you should read this book.

Here at sociology.org / Athabasca University, we’ve always been pioneers. Decades ahead of the curve, we smashed the brick and mortar boundaries of traditional post-secondary ed, and pioneered distance education. We ( and when I say we I mean me), also started the very first online journal of Sociology way back when the Internet was nothing more than an online dust bowl and now we, and by we I mean a handful of interested scholars, are pioneering online pedagogy, in the interests of the student and not profit (as some of the initiatives in the U.S. seem to be doing). Our goal here isn’t to use technology as an excuse to corrupt education for personal enrichment, or to gut post-secondary education in the interests of conservative economic policy, but to use technology to enhance the educational experience, and bring it to a wider audience. If you like what we’re doing, jump on board.

Are you an angry student? Are you pissed off? Does your education lead you to look at the world and say WTF? Well welcome to our nightmare, the world as it is, and not how it is presented by the corporate media. But what are you going to do with that anger? Riot in the streets? Burn some police cars? Throw some bottles? All I can say to that is, grow up and get some analysis, get some hutzpah, and join a cause. You don’t like the way the world is working? Get together with some others and make some change.

We like to see the world in black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, usually with our side being on the side of right and the other side being on the side of wrong. Therefore, it is refreshing to see an individual embrace more of a “new energy” perspective on things where a supporter on the side of “right” says ‘hey, wait a minute, we need to look inside for a moment.” That is just what this sociologist does as he examines not only what’s great, but what is not so great, in America’s Grand Old Party (GOP). Now if we could just get the left to do the same.

War. Hmm. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. Ya, right. Actually, war is good for something. It is good for our western, resource hungry, consumer system. War allows us to control the resources in other countries, and allows to take those resources as we see fit. We were friends to the Afghan people when the Soviets controlled the oil (and we didn’t like that), and now we’re enemies because we want the oil just as bad as the Soviets, with predictable consequences of growing hatred, violence, and social disintegration.

You never stop to think that sending your kids to school can be a problem, but it can be. From the residential schools of First Nations infamy to the violence of straps and the horror of school yard bullying, schools are not always safe places. The truth is, children can experience physical, emotional, and even sexual abuse at the hands of students, teachers, priests. ministers, reverends, etc.. The research demonstrates that abuse of all forms undermines self esteem, lowers social productivity, causes depression, and contributes to long term social problems. Isn’t it time we recognized the horror and stopped hurting our children?

This article was originally published in The Learning Revolution (IC#27), but was published before that in Annals of Earth (1990), and was a commencement address before that. It’s been around a long time and though the author says some really important things, it doesn’t seem to have sunk in. So, here it is again in the hopes that twenty years later ears will be open and eyes will be primed to see.

Epistemology = How do we know the world that we know? Ontology = What is the nature of the world that we know? In this short article Dr. Tim argues not only that the world is a materialist presence that exists independent of our observation (his ontological statement), but that this materialist presence can be known basically through a process of empirical trial and error. The empirical trial and error is necessary because the human is fallible, given to delusion, and open to manipulation and contrivance. That much is true, we are too easy to fool it seems. But is that in our nature, or is it a function of our flawed socialization process? That’s the rub. Personally, I think socialization but then hey, this a Sociology journal and I’m a sociologist, so maybe I’m biased (or maybe, it is the Truth).

V is for victory and that’s what this was. Thousands of websites, millions of people, billions of voices all around the world spoke out loud and clear against a piece of American legislation that would wipe out the Internet as we know it. Good for the rich Hollywood producers, bad for all the millions of democratic content generators that have sprung up all around the world. After a decade of declining progressive politics, the will of the people is getting a much needed jolt to the fibrillating fibers. And the moment has come none too soon if you ask me.

Science is as science does, but science isn’t infallible. In fact, as global information democracy trundles on we can start to see just how fallible the scientist really is. Neither our methods, nor our ontology, nor our epistemology provide us with a privileged preview of the truth. The capital “T” truth is, we are subject to political, economic, sexual, even class based bias just like everybody else. The only difference between us and the priests discredited by the scientific revolution? We admit our bias…. Sometimes….