Monday

Opt Out and Save Democracy

I came across this Huffington Post blog today, and want to repost it in its entirety.  

There's a reason US prisons have grown exponentially; because we allowed corporations to take them over. (More prisoners= more money.) The same thing has happened to education (and war - private corps being paid exponentially to fight wars means war is profit). Plenty of evidence links "common core" with the corporate idea of turning education into a "for profit" venture. Somehow, teacher's unions have been stripped - if a teacher is evaluated poorly twice, they're out. (see NY State, Cuomo's budget included this detail) 

The people doing the evaluations of teachers are NOT teachers themselves (as cited previously.) The same goes for children. The people evaluating their tests are NOT teachers (1% reportedly are, as not many will accept $13 an hour for all the work involved.) So if your class "does poorly" you either buy new software (as cited previously) or the teacher is shot dead at the front of the class. (Hyperbole, but you get the idea - two bad scores and the teacher is FIRED). The idea of "testing repeatedly" comes from Asia - and because the US has "fallen behind test scores in science and math." 

But if we're only breeding robots to fulfill corporate slots in the machine, why don't we just call it that? "Breeding Corporate Slots" or "Corporate Shills" is a more apt description of what's really going on; Bill Gates (Pearson), Michael Milken (K-12) are not "fixing" education, unless you're using the term the way a corporation fixes rates or the way the mafia fixes races. I haven't a clue how to change this, other than making people aware of it - 

I saw that Robert Reich has finally weighed in against them, but he's dancing on the permafrost of the iceberg. A megaphone would help. "They're creepy and they're kooky, Mysterious and spooky, They're altogether ooky, Common Core standards-key."

No need to repost my blog - please go to the original post HERE and share and repost and send to your Governor, representative, President.  Your kids will thank you.

Opt Out and Save Democracy


Posted: Updated: 
12:59 pm EDT





"Opt-out" may be the most important political movement of this generation. It may seem, at first glance, a small ripple in the education reform debate -- an understandable reaction to the frustration over increased testing and test-prep in America's schools. I suggest that it is much more important than meets the eye.




That "first glance" is important in its own right. There is no reasonable argument in support of the tedious, stressful mess that education reform has made of the nation's schools. Even within its own circular, self-fulfilling paradigm, the testing and accountability era has been a dismal failure. Test scores are essentially meaningless as a measure of real learning, but even by this empty standard, no progress is evident. For this analysis, let us just stipulate that it has not even achieved the limited objectives on which policy is predicated.
The broader issue is hidden within plain sight: This growing struggle over the future of American education may be proxy for the future of our democratic republic.
Most folks who follow education policy debates are familiar with the players and high stakes. Dozens of AstroTurf organizations are funded by the same Daddies Warbucks: Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family Foundation. The incestuous network they've created, aided and abetted by the Brothers Koch and the publishing cartel, Pearson, ETS, McGraw Hill, are engaged in a hostile takeover of the entire education enterprise in America.
The Common Core and its primary architect, David Coleman, are parts of a well-oiled, cradle-to-grave machine. It has been going on for years, beginning when George W. Bush was Governor of Texas and helped the industry-led Phonics First movement begin the insidious commercialization of education. Many others, especially Mercedes Schneider in her wonderful book, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who's Who in the Implosion of American Public Education, have exposed this process in alarming detail.
Fed up by the dreadful experiences their children are having in school, parents and teachers are beginning to resist. In New Jersey, Illinois and New York, for example, the opt-out movement is gaining strength. A national organization called United Opt Out is working tirelessly to unite the many strands of this genuine grassroots effort.
Many of these parents may not be aware of the broader importance of this nascent national movement. They are just standing up for the well-being of their children. It is this simple, yet powerful, impulse that is at the root of every critical political movement in our history. Institutionalized social injustice is, at its core, the aggregate impact of highly personal injury. And millions of American children are indeed being injured in the stark, punitive, increasingly barren wake of so-called education reform.
The stakes are high already, but this battle is going to dramatically escalate. Mark my word. Every incremental growth in the opt-out movement is going to draw increasingly severe response. This is not even about education any more. It is about money. There is no reliable estimate of the overall investment in testing, the Common Core, and the various sub-industries education reform has spawned. As frequently noted, pre-secondary education is at least a $500 billion market and the capital invested to date will not be squandered without a fight. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars are in the pot, and these folks don't like losing.
In a way that sadly parallels other dimensions of public life, the profiteers have much of government in their pockets. Believe me, Bill Gates can get Arne Duncan on the phone more quickly than I can. All over America, "opt out" movements are encountering the bludgeon of federal policy. In Vermont, for example, one courageous principal spoke out and the Vermont Secretary of Education -- a quite reasonable woman -- immediately squashed the effort, pointing out that significant federal support was at risk.Compliance is sometimes a matter of survival for poor communities.
This is a passage from my forthcoming book:
In some ways the current direction in education policy is equivalent to outsourcing in the criminal justice system. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the criminal justice equivalent of the education privatization movement that is currently underway. CCA is a $1.8 billion company that builds and operates prisons and detention facilities on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Marshals Service and state and local agencies. All of their incentives are perverse. Maximizing revenue depends on "customers" and "repeat" customers. In the decade ending in 2012 CCA spent nearly $18 million lobbying various government agencies to keep the market robust. In their own SEC filing they wrote:
The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.
There is no profit motive in rehabilitation. Rehabilitation can suppress the repeat offender market.
That analogy might seem gratuitous, but it takes only modest revision of the language of the SEC filing from CCA to imagine it coming from a charter organization:
The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by proper funding of district public schools and decriminalization of certain activities that currently land young black fathers in jail, particularly with respect to drugs and controlled substances. Any changes that resulted in substantial job creation, fair wages and rebuilding of neglected urban communities might potentially reduce demand for alternative, impersonal "no excuses" facilities to house poor children.
The difference is that this time the education-industrial complex has picked on the wrong constituency. Prisoners, unfortunately, have no real political support.
Children do.
It is this power that offers the possibility of transformational change. If enough parents are willing to join the movement, keep their children home on test days, ignore the threats, the battle lines will be clear. School officials, local school boards, state legislators and members of Congress will be faced with a real school choice: Whose side are you on? America's children and families or a shadow government of plutocrats, investment bankers and publishing companies?
Opt-out! Even if your child likes tests, keep her home. Like every other powerful movement in American history, this one requires a snowstorm of small acts of defiance. Which side of history will you be on?

Tuesday

Jaimela and her daughter Charlie get a direct message from the afterlife - live on camera.


Okay, as you know, I've been researching the afterlife through past life hypnosis, near death experiences, and other first person accounts of seeing or hearing from relatives on the Flipside.  I've filmed 25 sessions where people claim they're seeing people, holding their hand or talking to their relatives on the other side now for six years.

Rarely is there a case where a young girl gives a message from her great grandmother live on camera.

In our own home, our two year old daughter came running in from the kitchen one day to announce "Grandpa's in the kitchen!"

I stopped my instinct to leap up from the couch and run and look.  I know my father has come to visit me - but I can't see him, I can just hear him.  It's rare, but here was our 2 1/2 year old announcing that she had just "seen him" in the kitchen.

I looked at Sherry, my wife, who was holding a sleeping boy, who was about 3 or 4 months old, Our son.

I said to our daughter, trying not to betray the emotion in my head and calmly said "Oh is he?  Why has he come here?"

She said "To see the baby!" and nodded over to her little brother.

I paused a second, and asked "Does he have any message for us?"  She said "He says "I love you very much..." and then she looked around out our kid cluttered apartment and said "and to say that "you guys need a bigger home."

I laughed, because it was just the sort of thing my architect father would have said, and was specific to his point of view of our place. Cluttered, but home.

I came across this clip the other day and have contacted the mom to let her know how common this occurrence is, as well as to ignore those who post on her page to "debunk" or otherwise denigrate the experience.  I pointed out that it's like arguing about gravity - although science can't show us a graviton, or exactly what gravity is, they can't define consciousness either.

So I post this clip here for your enjoyment.  It's rare and fun to watch.  The mom has a blog sponsored by Keurig, and has already had 5 million views of this clip in just a few days. Her blog is #CAWFEETAWK

You want some proof of the afterlife?  Yeah, we got that for you too.



Saturday

Proof of Life After Death Part 3 Mysterious voice in Utah rescue


Allow me to begin by saying that I've heard or reported on a number of "mysterious voices" that came from nowhere to save lives in my books "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife."

One in particular was Harvard/Yale PhD Gary Schwartz's own experience where a "mysterious voice" told him to put on his seatbelt moments before it saved his life in a crash.  I cite the example of Chris Elliot, comedian, who heard a voice say "Wake up skylark!" just prior to watching his niece tumble off the end of a table, where he caught her.  I pointed out to Chris the origin of the term "skylark."  In my own life, I clearly heard my father speak to me after his passing, giving me a list of people he said he was presently with - the names were of friends of his who died in WWII whom I had never heard of, but my mom confirmed were his pals.

So I'm convinced, based on my research, beyond a shadow of doubt that the afterlife exists.  And beyond that, there's a between lives realm where we all return "home" and work out our next incarnation.

Be that as it may.

Some years ago I was called upon as an expert witness in a trial where the key piece of evidence was from a security camera that I was asked to examine.  I blew up the footage, slowed it down, pieced it together and showed clearly what had happened in the video - which from a taped perspective was about a quarter mile away.  But by zooming and slowing down, and highlighting the various parts of the tape, I was able to demonstrate what happened.  I was certified as an expert witness in the case.  

So I have some experience examining filmed "evidence."

So I examined closely the "mysterious voice" heard during the rescue of this baby Lily in Utah.  (I've also contributed a small amount to her recovery, I encourage everyone reading this to do so, it's on the gofundme.com website - Jennifer and Lily.)

In my opinion, what the policemen heard is not what's indicated on the tape.

I learned something from Gary Schwartz, who is a scientist first and foremost.  And he's repeated it a number of times to me.  "It's data. Put it on the table."  We can't hope that data shows us an outcome, we can only hope that data will show us to an outcome.  And in this case, I think the policemen, heroes all, may have misheard what they thought they heard.  My two cents.

Again - if it's research that shows there's an afterlife, it's worth examining.  If it showed the opposite I'd report that as well.  I think there's quite a bit of it out there if people have an open mind about it.  And that's how I approached this account as well - with an open mind.  Hope you do as well!


Friday

Proof of Life After Death Part 2


Being a film maker, sometimes I'm asked to use my equipment to enhance video or sound for a particular reason.  A few years back, I was sent footage from a crime scene and asked to examine it with my forensic tools - which I zoomed in, slowed down and blew up so the court could hear and see more clearly what happened.  I was officially deemed an "expert witness" in the case.

Here's the CNN clip:


So I've downloaded this film, and I am in the process of examining it.  I'm sending it to a forensic audio unit which can examine audio on a variety of levels and settings to see if they can locate the source of this voice on the audio track.


It happens around the 1:50 mark, after the officer calls for "Meadows" - there's a sound, and he responds to it.

But you can clearly hear "something."  To my trained ears it does not sound like it's coming from inside the car.  I say that because I've listened to a lot of audio tracks, trying to synch lips to lost sound track or trying to match sound to lips, and it's important to "recreate" what it sounds like outside.


However, the police officer responds to the voice that he hears, as if the voice is coming from the car.  The only way to triangulate this audio would be to get the audio from another policeman's uniform and examine it as well.


But did the policeman hear a voice?  Yes.  Can the voice be heard on this audio?  Well it's not clear that it is a voice - but there is some kind of sound that can be heard the comes just prior to the policeman saying "We're coming!"


There's a show on National Geographic channel called "Brain Games" where they took an audio file and scrambled it so it was unintelligible.  And they surveyed a group of people who could not understand a word from it.  And then, they played the tape unadulterated, so you could hear what had originally been said.  Then they played the "scrambled" tape again, and the audience, and everyone in the survey could clearly understand the sentence, even though only moments earlier it had been entirely unintelligible.


In fact, you can't "unhear" the audio after your brain has unscrambled it.  It's as if the dots have been connected in your brain, and they can't be disconnected upon further review.  So I'm going to examine this audio with my equipment, with the equipment from a forensic expert (I wish CNN would do the same) and report back what I can discern.  And let's see if we can't verify that this voice is coming from the "Flipside."


Won't that be fun?




Thursday

"I Used to Be Somebody Else"


Boy Remembers Previous Lifetime

I met and discussed this and other cases with Jim Tucker who examined this case in his book "Return to Life." Dr Tucker (from UVA) is a scientist and a skeptic in the true sense of the word. He is thorough and leaves no stone unturned. So he's the lead guy in this case, which falls in line with the research Ive been filming the past 6 years. The question is, why did he choose his previous life, why did he choose this one, and what do the two have in common? Eventually we'll be discussing the arc of many lifetimes to understand someone's path and journey.

FROM TODAY.COM

'Return To Life': How some children have memories of reincarnation

It’s not unusual for little boys to have vivid imaginations, but Ryan’s stories were truly legendary. His mother Cyndi said it all began with horrible nightmares when he was 4 years old. Then when he was 5 years old, he confided in her one evening before bed.

“He said mom, I have something I need to tell you,” she told TODAY. “I used to be somebody else.” The preschooler would then talk about “going home” to Hollywood, and would cry for his mother to take him there. His mother said he would tell stories about meeting stars like Rita Hayworth, traveling overseas on lavish vacations, dancing on Broadway, and working for an agency where people would change their names.

She said her son even recalled that the street he lived on had the word “rock” in it.


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



Jake Whitman / TODAY
Dr. Jim Tucker with boy and his mom
TODAY / Jake Whitman
“His stories were so detailed and they were so extensive, that it just wasn’t like a child could have made it up,” she said. Cyndi said she was raised Baptist and had never really thought about reincarnation. So she decided to keep her son’s “memories” a secret— even from her own husband.

Privately, she checked out books about Hollywood from the local library, hoping something inside would help her son make sense of his strange memories and help her son cope with his sometimes troubling “memories.”

TODAY
Jake Whitman / TODAY
“Then we found the picture, and it changed everything,” she said.
That photo, in one of the books from the library, was a publicity shot from the 1932 movie “Night After Night,” starring Mae West in her film debut.
“She turns to the page in the book, and I say ‘that’s me, that’s who I was,’ Ryan remembers.

Cyndi said she was shocked, and only more confused, because the man Ryan pointed to was an extra in the film, with no spoken lines.
But finally she had a face to match to her son’s strange “memories,” giving her the courage to ask someone for help.

TODAY
Jake Whitman / TODAY

That someone was Dr. Jim Tucker, M.D., the Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. 

The child psychiatrist has spent more than a decade studying the cases of children, usually between the ages of 2 and 6 years old, who say they remember a past life. 

In his book, “Return To Life,” Tucker details some of the American cases he has studied over the years, including Ryan's.“These cases demand an explanation,” Tucker said, “We can’t just write them off or explain them away as just some sort of normal cultural thing.”

Tucker’s office contains the files of more than 2,500 children— cases accumulated from all over the world by his predecessor, Ian Stevenson. Stevenson, who died in 2007, began investigating the strange phenomena back in 1961, and kept detailed interviews and evidence on each case.

Tucker has painstakingly coded the handwritten files, discovering intriguing patterns. For instance, 70 percent of the children say they died violent or unexpected deaths in their previous lives, and males account for 73 percent of those deaths— mirroring the statistics of those who die of unnatural causes in the general population.

“There’d be no way to orchestrate that statistic with over 2,000 cases,” Tucker said.

Tucker said the majority of children he has investigated say they remember average lives— rarely do they claim memories of someone famous. He said Ryan’s case is one of his most unusual because of the incredible detail he was able to provide. Tucker, with help from researchers working on a documentary tried to identify the man Ryan pointed to in the book about Hollywood.
After weeks of research, a film archivist combing through original production materials for the movie “Night After Night” was able to confirm who he was. His name, Marty Martyn, a former movie extra who later became a powerful Hollywood agent and died in 1964.

“If you look at a picture of a guy with no lines in a movie, and then tell me about his life, I don’t think many of us would have come up with Marty Martyn’s life,” Tucker said, “Yet Ryan provided many details that really did fit with his life.”

TODAY
Jake Whitman

After digging through old records— almost none of them available on the internet, and tracking down Martyn’s own daughter, Tucker was able to confirm 55 details Ryan gave about his life.

It turns out Martyn wasn’t just a movie extra. Just as Ryan said, he had also danced on Broadway, traveled overseas to Paris, and worked at an agency where stage names were often created for new clients.

Tucker also discovered Ryan’s claim that he lived on the street with the word “rock” in it was nearly spot on— Martyn lived at 825 North Roxbury Dr. in Beverly Hills. Tucker was also able to confirm other obscure facts that Ryan gave— how many children Martyn had, how many times he was married, even how many sisters he had. While Martyn’s own daughter grew up thinking her father had just one sister— Tucker was able to confirm he actually had two, again, just as Ryan claimed.

Dr. Tucker’s research is not without critics. When his work was recently featured in The University Of Virginia Magazine, some readers shared their outrage in the comments section. One reader wrote he was “appalled” that this kind of work is being done at the university. Another called Tucker’s research “pseudoscience.” 

Tucker said he’s only trying to apply the rules of science to the mystery of reincarnation. Even with Ryan’s case, there was one fact the detailed obsessed scientist thought the little boy had wrong.
“He said he didn’t see why God would let you get to be 61 and then make you come back as a baby,” Tucker said.

TODAY
Jake Whitman / TODAY

That statement seemed to be incorrect because Martyn’s death certificate listed his age as 59 years old when he died. But as Tucker dug deeper, he was able to uncover census records showing Martyn was In fact born in 1903 and not 1905, meaning Ryan’s statement — not his official death certificate— was indeed correct. Now that Ryan is 10 years old, he said his memories of Marty Martyn’s life are fading, which Dr. Tucker said is typical as children get older. Ryan said while he he’s glad he had the experience, he’s also happy to put to move on, and just be a kid.


FROM NBC:


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

‘I used to be somebody else,’ Oklahoma boy talks about past life in Hollywood

MUSKOGEE, Okla. – An Oklahoma boy is causing skeptics to take a closer look at their beliefs related to life after death. Cyndi Hammons says it all started when Ryan was just 4-years-old. He would wake from horrible nightmares. When he was 5-years-old, he told her something unbelievable before going to bed.




The then-preschooler would talk about ‘going home’ to Hollywood, meeting stars like Rita Hayworth, traveling to Paris, dancing on Broadway and working for an agency where people would change their names. “His stories were so detailed and they were so extensive, that it just wasn’t like a child could have made it up,” she said. Cyndi began researching Hollywood, hoping to make sense of her son’s strange ‘memories.’


“Then we found the picture and it changed everything,” she said. “She turns to the page in the book, and I say, ‘That’s me, that’s who I was,” Ryan told TODAY. The photo was from the 1932 movie “Night After Night.” Cyndi says she was even more confused because the man Ryan pointed to was an extra in the film. She turned to Dr. Jim Tucker, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia.


After weeks of research, the family found out the man’s name was Marty Martyn, a former movie extra who later became a powerful Hollywood agent. “If you look at a picture of a guy with no lines in a movie, and then tell me about his life, I don’t think many of us would have come up with Marty Martyn’s life,” Tucker said. “Yet Ryan provided many details that really did fit with his life.”

Tucker was able to confirm 55 specific details Ryan gave about his life. In addition to talking about his work history, Ryan was spot on when it came to how many times he married, how many children and sisters he had, a fact his own daughter didn’t even know.


However, one fact Ryan did not get right was Martyn’s age. “He said he didn’t see why God would let you get to be 61 and then make you come back as a baby,” Tucker said.


Martyn’s death certificate listed his age as 59-years-old when he died. When Tucker dug deeper, he realized Martyn’s official death certificate was wrong. 

Ryan was right after all.

Friday

My Birthday Gift to You - a free viewing of FLIPSIDE

Yes, it is the day after the day - when 60 odd years ago, I woke up on this planet.

I can tell you that I've witnessed the event.

When I went agreed to "go under hypnosis" for a 4 hour "between life" session, given by Michael Newton trained Jimmy Quast (www.eastonhypnosis.com) 6 years ago, I did so with the half a mind of "proving" this research to be false.

Meaning I hadn't gone there to be put under hypnosis - I was convinced I could not be put under hypnosis, and despite having read hundreds of accounts of people under hypnosis talking about the afterlife, I had a skeptic's mind.  "Perhaps they were led by the therapist."  "Perhaps they wanted to have an outcome and got the one that they wanted."  

I was determined to not allow myself to be led anywhere.  And if the therapist asked "what do you see?" and I didn't see anything, I was prepared to say for four hours "Sorry, I don't see a thing."

But that's not what happened.  He asked "what's your first memory?" And I saw myself coming from darkness to light and seeing this bright hospital room, feeling the cold air.  Even seeing the Doctor's bright green hazel eyes, with his mask and the weird metal thing they wore back in the 50's.  Only he was holding me upside down, the old "spank them for air" move with his hands around my feet.  But I was fully aware that I was looking at him "rightside up."  I can still clearly see this Doctor's face in my mind's eye (although for the life of me, don't remember his name.)

I saw other things while under "deep hypnosis" the technique pioneered by Michael Newton ("Journey of Souls").

I saw a previous lifetime.  I verified things that happened in that lifetime that I could not have known in this lifetime.  I saw a life between lives where I spoke to and visited with people who are no longer on the planet but gave me "new information" - meaning information that could not have come from my conscious mind.

Since then I've filmed 25 cases (and three more of my own sessions) as well as examined cases of near death experience, scientists on the forefront of consciousness research and synthesized the information into my books "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife."

But none of that would have happened if Michael Newton and his hypnotherapy group, the Newton Institute, not allowed me to turn on my cameras and film them doing their work. 

It takes a brave soul to let the camera into a darkened room - on behalf of the clients allowing it to be there, and those who are doing the session. (If you want to try the process out for yourself, find a therapist that you can speak to over the phone at www.newtoninstitute.org

Picture your own story for a moment.  Would you allow a camera into a room where you were revealing perhaps your most intimate moments of your life?  I'd be hard pressed to agree to it.  And yet, there I was behind the camera.  Sometimes my jaw dropping, sometimes searching for verification while the person was talking ("they're saying they lived in such and such town in Arkansas?  Is there such a town in Arkansas? There is.. and there's this very street they're talking about...")  The books contain all the cites from various forensic research into whether or not people were being accurate about their past life memories.

But it's between life where we find the gold.  Our spiritual gold.

So - this is a long way of saying that this film has been supporting me and my kids, so if you like it and want to share it - please, buy a DVD for a friend, or get one of the books in Kindle, or listen to in Audible - or share it with someone.  

Give this gift that I've been given, to someone else. Share this page. Share the link. Go for it. If in 90 minutes you don't think a little bit differently about the planet than you did when you began to watch, you can have your money back.  

This is a private link to my film.  

By offering it as a gift to you here, I must have faith that there's a reason that you need to see this film today.  The link won't be up forever, and I'll eventually change the link on youtube.  So don't take too long to watch it.

But in the meantime, without further adieu, here is the 90 minute version of my film about my journey into the Afterlife:

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