................................SUPPLEMENTARY

.......................................................... from links on 'How Learning Works'

First: Andrew Curran's work is without doubt of huge significance, though few people (in appropriate authority) are likely to proceed accordingly - or perhaps they will, as they have in the past; ie, in the opposing direction to that advised. By which I mean: the very last thing that those in authority want is a mass of people who are free-thinking and happy and have enough relevant synapses in their brians to enable them to see what's really going on, what their elite overseers are actually up to, and to thereby escape the apalling limitations they impose. So if you think Curran's recommendations should be put into practise, don't hold your breath! After all, as he acknowledges himself, he has only proved what has been known the world over for aeons.

Second: The practise of THREAT, VIOLENCE and TERROR (which have formerly been regarded by ordinary people as a necessary part of a child's 'education' - the elite and intellectuals have always known otherwise) are prerequisite to the acts of genocide and plunder which the elite have unfailingly engaged in over the aeons, most recently the invasion of Iraq.

At the start of that invasion, I was of the naive opinion that instead of using shock-&-awe mass bombing and murder followed by a continued onslaught of violence and massacre over several years that has so far killed more than a million Iraqis at an intital cost of half-a-trillion dollars... instead of that, I wondered: why in hell didn't the yanks just flood Iraq with gifts? It would have been immensely cheaper and would have won the approval of most of the population. Who, after all, is going to support an invader who massacres one's fellow kin?

But although I was right (according to Curran's conclusions), I was naive - because it was never the yanks' intention to win anyone's approval (except 'rule-the-world' Israel). It was - and is - their principal aim to permanently occupy, to control the region on behalf of their brutal Zionist friends, and plunder the many trillions of dollars worth of oil into the bargain. The cost, the horror, the loss of credibility... were never considered - those are irrelevant when compared with the true rationale and agenda behind the invasion. And the arguments are not so different for Afghanistan.

And have you wondered why the Torys in the last UK general election didn't just declare their opposition to the invasion? They would have swept straight into office - with a big majority too, I expect. Why also, you might wonder, doesn't Labour immediately withdraw troops from Iraq AND Afghanistan and thereby regain support?

Answer: they are all under the thumb of the elite, the power elite, the REAL rulers: the City, the big corporate and media outfits and their bosses - as well as the traditional elite who own most of the land and other assets. And, of course, the military. Where would the military be if one was to flood one's enemy with gifts and thereby win a 'war'? They'd be finished - so there's no chance of that because the military are an integral part of the elite. They don't cost anything - the £100bn a year (or whatever it is) that's spent on the military is (by extortion) coughed up by the UK's poor (what the rich get charged is more than compensated for in their perpetual dividends). So cost is irrelevant - and is a mere fraction of the colossal profits raked in by the corporate machine, all produced by the poor, the slaves, the great exploited hoodwinked masses. Was it £7bn made by two oil outfits alone in the first quarter of 2008? Imagine what you can do with £7bn - well, you can take part I suppose in a genocidal invasion... for the first three years, at any rate!