Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Social Insect Societies, Human Societies, and Religion - Redux
By CNu at December 21, 2011 2 comments
Labels: What IT DO Shawty...
pseudo-scientific mouthbreathing in the nytimes
Somehow the model published for consideration in Nature got lost in translation to become the conclusion trumpeted by human biodiversity hack Nicholas Wade in the NYTimes thus;
NYTimes | Genes Play Major Role in Primate Social Behavior, Study Finds - The Oxford survey confirms that the structure of human society, too, is likely to have a genetic basis, since humans are in the primate family, said Bernard Chapais, an expert on human social evolution at the University of Montreal.
“Evolutionary change in any particular lineage is highly constrained by the lineage’s phylogenetic history,” Dr. Chapais said, referring to the evolutionary family tree. “This reasoning applies to all species, including ours. But in humans, cultural variation hides both the social unity of humankind and its biological foundation.”
Human multifamily groups may have arisen from the gorilla-type harem structure, with many harems merging together, or from stable breeding bonds replacing sexual promiscuity in a chimpanzee-type society, Dr. Chapais said.
In his book “Primeval Kinship” (Harvard, 2008), he describes a further stage in human social evolution that occurred when individual bands allied with those with whom they exchanged daughters. The bands in such a marital exchange system formed a tribe, taking human society to a level of organization beyond that of chimpanzee society.
With chimps, territorially based bands also exchange daughters to avoid incest but continue to fight with one another to the death because the males cannot recognize their kinship with relatives in neighboring bands. Fist tap BD/Fist tap Nana.
By CNu at December 21, 2011 5 comments
Labels: big don special
the social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution
By CNu at December 21, 2011 5 comments
Labels: as above-so below
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
one-third of young U.S. adults have been arrested: study
Those arrests are for everything from underage drinking and petty theft to violent crime, researchers said. They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that's more apt to arrest young people than in the past.
"The vast majority of these kids will never be arrested again," said John Paul Wright, who studies juvenile delinquency at the University of Cincinnati's Institute of Crime Science, but wasn't involved in the new study.
"The real serious ones are embedded in the bigger population of kids who are just picking up one arrest," he told Reuters Health.
Though violent crimes might be on the rarer end of the spectrum of offenses, the study's lead author pointed to the importance of catching the early warning signs of criminal behavior in adolescents and young adults, saying that pediatricians and parents can both play a role in turning those youngsters around.
Robert Brame of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and his colleagues analyzed data from a nationally-representative youth survey conducted between 1997 and 2008.
A group of more than 7,000 adolescents age 12 to 16 in the study's first year filled out the annual surveys with questions including if and when they had ever been arrested.
At age 12, less than one percent of participants who responded had been arrested. By the time they were 23, that climbed to 30 percent with a history of arrest.
That compares to an estimated 22 percent of young adults who had been arrested in 1965, from a past study.
"It was certainly higher than we expected based on what we saw in the 1960s, but it wasn't dramatically higher," said Brame.
Arrests in adolescents are especially worrisome, he told Reuters Health, because many repeat offenders start their "criminal career" at a young age.
The researchers said it seems that the criminal justice system has taken to arresting both the young and old more than it did in the past, when fines and citations might have been given to some people who are now arrested.
"If (police) find kids that are intoxicated or they have pulled over someone intoxicated... now, nine times out of 10 they're going to make an arrest," Wright told Reuters Health.
"We do have to question if arrest is an appropriate intervention in all circumstances, or if we need to rethink some of the policies we have enacted."
He pointed out that young people who have an arrest on their record might have more trouble getting jobs in the future. It's one thing if that's because they were involved in a violent crime, he continued, but another if their offence was non-violent, like drinking underage or smoking marijuana.
"Arrest does have major social implications for people as they transition from adolescence to adulthood," Wright said.
While the report didn't ask youth why they had been arrested, Brame said that common offenses in that age group also include stealing, vandalizing and arson.
For most minor offenses, teens and young adults will get a term of probation or another minor penalty, he said. The most serious adolescent offenders and those with a prior record could be prosecuted as adults and end up getting a prison sentence.
Brame said that being poor, struggling in school and having a difficult home life have all been linked to a higher risk of arrest in that age group.
He and his colleagues wrote in Pediatrics on Monday that other warning signs of delinquent behavior include early instances of aggression and bullying, hyperactivity and delayed development.
Pediatricians might be able to recognize those warning signs more clearly than parents, and can point kids toward resources to help keep them out of trouble, such as counseling services, Brame said.
"We urge that parents who are concerned about their kids' well-being, that they get those kids in to see a pediatrician on a regular basis so the pediatrician can do the things they're trained to do."
SOURCE: bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online December 19, 2011.
By CNu at December 20, 2011 7 comments
Labels: clampdown , Livestock Management
six reasons young christians leave church
The research project was comprised of eight national studies, including interviews with teenagers, young adults, parents, youth pastors, and senior pastors. The study of young adults focused on those who were regular churchgoers Christian church during their teen years and explored their reasons for disconnection from church life after age 15.
No single reason dominated the break-up between church and young adults. Instead, a variety of reasons emerged. Overall, the research uncovered six significant themes why nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15.
Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective.
A few of the defining characteristics of today's teens and young adults are their unprecedented access to ideas and worldviews as well as their prodigious consumption of popular culture. As Christians, they express the desire for their faith in Christ to connect to the world they live in. However, much of their experience of Christianity feels stifling, fear-based and risk-averse. One-quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds said “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” (23% indicated this “completely” or “mostly” describes their experience). Other perceptions in this category include “church ignoring the problems of the real world” (22%) and “my church is too concerned that movies, music, and video games are harmful” (18%).
Reason #2 – Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
A second reason that young people depart church as young adults is that something is lacking in their experience of church. One-third said “church is boring” (31%). One-quarter of these young adults said that “faith is not relevant to my career or interests” (24%) or that “the Bible is not taught clearly or often enough” (23%). Sadly, one-fifth of these young adults who attended a church as a teenager said that “God seems missing from my experience of church” (20%).
Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.
Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
With unfettered access to digital pornography and immersed in a culture that values hyper-sexuality over wholeness, teen and twentysometing Christians are struggling with how to live meaningful lives in terms of sex and sexuality. One of the significant tensions for many young believers is how to live up to the church's expectations of chastity and sexual purity in this culture, especially as the age of first marriage is now commonly delayed to the late twenties. Research indicates that most young Christians are as sexually active as their non-Christian peers, even though they are more conservative in their attitudes about sexuality. One-sixth of young Christians (17%) said they “have made mistakes and feel judged in church because of them.” The issue of sexuality is particularly salient among 18- to 29-year-old Catholics, among whom two out of five (40%) said the church’s “teachings on sexuality and birth control are out of date.”
Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
Younger Americans have been shaped by a culture that esteems open-mindedness, tolerance and acceptance. Today’s youth and young adults also are the most eclectic generation in American history in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, technological tools and sources of authority. Most young adults want to find areas of common ground with each other, sometimes even if that means glossing over real differences. Three out of ten young Christians (29%) said “churches are afraid of the beliefs of other faiths” and an identical proportion felt they are “forced to choose between my faith and my friends.” One-fifth of young adults with a Christian background said “church is like a country club, only for insiders” (22%).
Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.
Young adults with Christian experience say the church is not a place that allows them to express doubts. They do not feel safe admitting that sometimes Christianity does not make sense. In addition, many feel that the church’s response to doubt is trivial. Some of the perceptions in this regard include not being able “to ask my most pressing life questions in church” (36%) and having “significant intellectual doubts about my faith” (23%). In a related theme of how churches struggle to help young adults who feel marginalized, about one out of every six young adults with a Christian background said their faith “does not help with depression or other emotional problems” they experience (18%).
By CNu at December 20, 2011 21 comments
Labels: change , magical thinking , paradigm
do surveillance cameras violate students' rights?
Those for monitoring students with surveillance cameras cite student safety and crime as the deciding factors, while those against installing the cameras worry about violating students' rights.
Chat with Elizabeth Schultz about why she thinks surveillance cameras are inappropriate in public schools and violate the rights of the students.
Agree? Disagree? Submit your opinion and questions on the topic now!
By CNu at December 20, 2011 6 comments
Labels: agenda , elite , establishment
Monday, December 19, 2011
as above, so below: the worldview of Lynn Margulis
Lynn Margulis, biologist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, composed a grand and powerful view of the living and the non-living. Integrating the work of obscure Russian scientists, DNA pulled from cell organelles, computer-generated daisies, and the hindguts of termites, her vision was wider in scope and more profound in depth than any other coherent scientific world view. At the time of her death on November 22nd, 2011, it is a vision that remains misunderstood and misconstrued by many scientists.
Much of this view came from her uncanny ability to first lean forward and see the smallest inhabitants of the Earth; to hover there, and then to leap back at the speed of thought to conceptualize the entire planet. Lean forward, then stand back. This inner movement, this seeing from soil to space, marked a unique scientific endeavor.
This perspective was earned only through walking through diverse areas of study -- geology, genetics, biology, chemistry, literature, embryology, paleontology. Those fields, are sometimes separated by an untraversed distance at universities: they are housed in separate buildings which may as well be different worlds. In Margulis, they found agreement and discussion with each other; they were reconnected, just as they are intrinsically connected in nature.
This journey led her to emphasize in all her scientific work two phenomena -- the fusing of distinct beings into a single being: symbiosis; and the interaction of organisms and their environments to create relational "loops" that led to regulation of many Earth systems: Gaia Theory.
Taken separately these concepts have the ability to redefine, respectively, how we understand organisms and the environment.
Taken together, they can redefine our consciousness.
By CNu at December 19, 2011 1 comments
Labels: as above-so below , symbiosis
stuporstitions off the table of rational criticism?
Video - The four horsemen of the anti-apocalypse.
On Friday, in a speech to celebrate the 400th birthday of the King James Bible, the prime minister said the New Testament had helped give our country "a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today,” adding that we should "actively stand up and defend" these Christian values.
However, speaking to Sky News, Dawkins, a renowned, scientist, author and atheist, said that Cameron is wrong to suggest the Christian Bible is going to “help us with our morals and our social wellbeing.”
“The Christian bible will help us with our literature,” said the author of The God Delusion. “It should therefore be taught in schools in literature classes, but it’s not going to help us with our morals, far from it.”
“The bible is a terrible moral compass, if you think about it. Of course, you can cherry pick the verses that you like, which means the verses that happen to coincide with our modern secular consensus, but then you need to have a rational for leaving out the ones that say stone people to death if they break the Sabbath, or if they commit adultery. It’s an appalling moral compass.”
The Oxford professor reasoned that the ideas within the new testament - of crucifixion, of redemption, of a scapegoat who is put to death for the sins of all mankind – makes it a terrible social guide. “The sooner we leave Christianity and all other religions behind, from a moral point of view the better,” he said.
In an open letter to Cameron in the December edition of the New Statesmen, Dawkins questioned the prime minister's faith and that of most politicians.
"If you are like several government ministers - of all three parties - to whom I have spoken, you are not really a religious believer yourself," he wrote. "Several ministers and ex-ministers of education whom I have met, both Conservative and Labour, don't believe in God but, to quote the philosopher Daniel Dennett, they do "believe in belief".
Speaking on Saturday, Dawkins continued on the offensive, charging Cameron with falling into a trap by calling the UK a Christian country, but concluding that it is in a "terrible moral state".
"It seems like a paradox," he quipped. "If we are in a state of moral collapse, I don’t think Christianity or Islam is going to help. What we need is a better moral sense, which we get from moral philosophy. It’s absolute nonsense to say we need faith in order to be good.”
On Friday, Professor Dawkins' fellow atheist campaigner Christopher Hitchens died aged 62, following a battle with cancer. Along with Dennett and neuroscientist Sam Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins became known as The Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse, a group of atheist thinkers and writers offering, as Hitchens put it, "a push back to religious tyranny".
By CNu at December 19, 2011 0 comments
Labels: magical thinking
Sunday, December 18, 2011
song presentation induces gene expression in the songbird forebrain
By CNu at December 18, 2011 0 comments
Labels: music?
songbird genome reveals new insights...,
Video - Learning and reproducing song has direct effects on finch genome.
Now, an international team of scientists (listed below), led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has decoded the genome of a songbird — the Australian zebra finch — to reveal intriguing clues about the genetic basis and evolution of vocal learning.
An analysis of the genome, published April 1 in the journal Nature, suggests a large part of the bird’s DNA is actively engaged by hearing and singing songs. The simple melodies last only a few seconds but are rooted in tremendous genetic complexity, the scientists report.
The new work provides insights to help scientists understand how humans learn language. It also sets the stage for future studies that could help identify the genetic and molecular origins of speech disorders, such as those related to autism, stroke, stuttering and Parkinson’s disease, the researchers say.
“Now we can look deep into the genome, not just at the genes involved in vocal learning, but at the complex ways in which they are regulated,” says senior author Richard K. Wilson, PhD, director of Washington University’s Genome Center. “There are layers and layers of complexity that we’re just beginning to see. This information provides clues to how vocal learning occurs at the most basic molecular level in birds and in people.”
Among songbirds, singing is almost exclusively a male activity: Males serenade females with love songs to attract a mate. As babies, they learn to sing by listening to their fathers. At first, a young bird “babbles,” but with practice learns to closely imitate his father’s song. Once the bird has mastered the family song, he will sing it for the rest of his life and pass it on to the next generation.
Aside from humans and songbirds, other animals known to communicate by vocal learning include bats, whales, elephants, hummingbirds and parrots. Because zebra finches learn to sing in a predictable way and many of their genes are conserved in humans, they are an important model for understanding vocal learning in humans.
By CNu at December 18, 2011 0 comments
the genome of a songbird..,
Video - Zebra Finch pair bathing
As in all songbirds, singing in the zebra finch is under the control of a discrete neural circuit that includes several dedicated centres in the forebrain termed the ‘song control nuclei’. Neurophysiological studies in these nuclei during singing have yielded some of the most illuminating examples of how vocalizations are encoded in the motor system of a vertebrate brain. In the zebra finch, these nuclei develop more fully in the male than in the female (who does not sing), and they change markedly in size and organization during the juvenile period when the male learns to sing. Analysis of the underlying cellular mechanisms of plasticity led to the unexpected discovery of neurogenesis in adult songbirds and life-long replacement of neurons. Sex steroid hormones also contribute to songbird neural plasticity, in part by influencing the survival of new neurons. Some of these effects are probably caused by oestrogen and/or testosterone synthesized within the brain itself rather than just in the gonads.
Song perception and memory also involve auditory centres that are present in both sexes, and the mere experience of hearing a song activates gene expression in these auditory centres. The gene response itself changes as a song becomes familiar over the course of a day or as the context of the experience changes. The act of singing induces gene expression in the male song control nuclei, and these patterns of gene activation also vary with the context of the experience. The function of this changing genomic activity is not yet understood, but it may support or suppress learning and help integrate information over periods of hours to days.
By CNu at December 18, 2011 0 comments
Labels: Genetic Omni Determinism GOD
neurobiology of vocal communication
By CNu at December 18, 2011 2 comments
Labels: What IT DO Shawty...
Saturday, December 17, 2011
open-source tactical evolution
The tactical evolution that evolved relies on two military tactics that are thousands of years old- the tactical superiority of light infantry over heavy infantry, and the tactical superiority of the retreat over the advance.
Heavy infantry is a group of soldiers marching in a column or a phalanx that are armed with weaponry for hand to hand, close quarters combat. Heavy infantry function as a unit, not individual soldiers. Their operational strength is dependent upon maintaining the integrity of that unit. Riot police are heavy infantry. They will always form a line and advance as a unit.
Light infantry are armed with ranged weapons for assault from a distance. Light infantry operate as individuals that are free to roam at a distance and fire upon the opposition with ranged weapons. Cops firing tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, bean bag rounds, etc. are light infantry. They remain to the rear of the phalanx of riot cops (heavy infantry) and depend upon the riot cops maintaining a secure front and flanks to provide them a secure area of operations.
Protesters function fluidly as either light or heavy infantry. Their mass, because it is lacking in organization, functions as a phalanx, having no flanks or rear. Lack of organization gives that mass the option of moving in whichever direction it feels like, at any given time. If protesters all move to the right, the entire group and supporting officers has to shift to that flank. While the protesters can retreat quickly, the police can only advance as fast as their light infantry, supporting staff can follow and maintain a secure rear (if the mass of protesters were to run to the next block over and quickly loop around to the rear of the riot cops, the organization of the cops would be reduced to chaos). If that police cannot assemble with a front to oppose protesters, they are useless. The integrity of that tactic is compromised, and unable to maintain internal organization, the cops revert to individuals engaging in acts of brutality, which eventually winds up on the evening news and they lose the battle regardless of whether they clear the park or not.
Because of the lack of organization in a crowd of protesters, light infantry cops firing tear gas, etc. has little effect because it just serves to disorganize a group that relies upon disorganization in the first place. All it really does is disorganize the riot cops, who then resort to brutality.
The lack of weaponry on the part of the protesters grants them the luxury of opposing riot cops at close quarters, or remaining at long range in a refusal to engage the heavy infantry riot police at all. They have the advantage of the retreat, they can quickly move away, or in any direction, and the heavy infantry riot cops lack the swiftness to respond.
So far, all the occupations have, in a grave tactical error, agreed to engage the riot cops when they march in to clear parks. This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses. Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at December 17, 2011 8 comments
Labels: open source culture , People Centric Leadership
three myths about the detention bill
Video - Jerrold Nadler and Keith Olbermann discuss NDAA.
For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine — and debunk — the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes (this is all above and beyond the evidence I assembled in writing about this bill yesterday):
By CNu at December 17, 2011 1 comments
Labels: clampdown , Obamamandian Imperative
Friday, December 16, 2011
the scandal of alabama poor cut off from water
But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.
And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.
Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.
She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."
Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (£97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security cheque for food and electricity.
"We need to keep the water running because we're women," she says. "We need to take baths. I try to pay the sewer bill and the water bill together and then what little I got left I try to put on my lights. I got to have lights."
By CNu at December 16, 2011 2 comments
Labels: Collapse Casualties , Collapse Crime
effective and sustainable public education for these children will revolutionize all public education
The numbers represent a 33% increase from 2007, when there were 1.2 million homeless children, according to a report the center is releasing Tuesday.
"This is an absurdly high number," says Ellen Bassuk, president of the center. "What we have new in 2010 is the effects of a man-made disaster caused by the economic recession. … We are seeing extreme budget cuts, foreclosures and a lack of affordable housing."
The report paints a bleaker picture than one by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which nonetheless reported a 28% increase in homeless families, from 131,000 in 2007 to 168,000 in 2010.
Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor of social policy, says HUD's numbers are much smaller because they count only families living on the street or in emergency shelters.
"It is a narrower standard of homelessness," he says. However, Culhane says, "the bottom line is we've shown an increase in the percentage of homeless families."
The study, a state-by-state report card, looks at four years' worth of Education Department data. It assesses how homeless children fare based on factors including the state's wages, poverty and foreclosure rates, cost of housing and its programs for homeless families.
The states where homeless children fare the best are Vermont, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Maine.
It finds the worst states for homeless children are Southern states where poverty is high, including Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, and states decimated by foreclosures and job losses, such as Arizona, California and Nevada.
By CNu at December 16, 2011 20 comments
Labels: change , micro-insurgencies , paradigm
the face of poverty in america
"Last December, my mom didn't get paid for one month, and we started having problems," said Sarai, at Oaktown First Christian Church, which hosted free classes for children of migrant workers. "My mom said for us to come here (to the church) so she doesn't have to give money to the baby sitter because we're running out of it."
For churches, it's become an all-too-familiar sight: working families that aren't able to make ends meet. As household resources get tapped out, churches are often the first to see the changing face of poverty — and it's often a young one.
"We're seeing younger families come in," said Ken Campbell, food coordinator for Lazarus House, a Christian ministry to help the needy in Lawrence, Mass. "They're coming forward because one member in the household got laid off or had their hours cut, and now they're just barely making it."
Across the United States, rising numbers of children are coping with the stressors of economic hardship:
•Child poverty rates reached 22 percent in 2010, up from 20.7 percent in 2009 and 16.2 percent in 2000, according to a September report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of children living in poverty increased from 13.1 million to 15.5 million, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
•The Casey Foundation also reported that 4 percent of American children had been affected by home foreclosures since 2007, and 11 percent had at least one unemployed parent in 2010.
By CNu at December 16, 2011 1 comments
Labels: Collapse Casualties
Thursday, December 15, 2011
in response to Occupy - obama suspends habeas corpus and posse comitatus
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has become one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government, an Associated Press investigation has found.So much of what cops have been training to confront for the last decade has been the threat of low-scale, low-intel urban terror plots that they have brandished that training on nonviolent civilians who constitute a PR threat to the banks, not an explosive one.
These operations have benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying.
The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing.
And it's not just the rank-and-file police officers either. Police forces have even brought out the terrorism experts to survey and harass Occupy Wall Street. As I reported the day of the protesters' eviction from Zuccotti Park:
In the smallest hours of the morning, with no warning or apparent provocation, hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers, some from the department's counterterrorism unit, many in riot gear, demolished thousands of dollars of private property, including a 5,000-volume library; beat and arrested a large number of peacefully protesting citizens, including credentialed journalists and democratically elected public officials; and in the process, violated not just the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution, a document they are sworn to uphold, but also a court injunction.News broke this week that City of London police distributed a letter cautioning businesses to beware of terrorism, listing Occupy LSX alongside al-Qaeda as a threat. It is outrageous to equate nonviolent, politically principled civil disobedience with violent nihilistic extremism, an injustice not least to the families of victims of actual terrorism. But the issue here goes beyond that outrage; there is actual material danger to dissidents if the occupiers-as-terrorists mythos grows too much.
As the world rises up against economic injustice, Truthout brings you the latest news and analysis, free of corporate influence. Help support this work with a tax-deductible donation today.
In passing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress, in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has just voted to, "authorize the military to go literally anywhere in the world to imprison civilians - even American citizens in the United States itself - without charge or trial." The ACLU calls it what it is: "Prison based on suspicion alone." The vote on the Udall Amendment, which would have forbidden the indefinite detention of US civilians, was defeated by a vote of 60-38 in the Senate, including all but three of the senators from the party that's constantly pretending to be anxious over an intrusively big government.
By CNu at December 15, 2011 5 comments
Labels: civil war
city of london labels Occupy Movement a terrorist organization
The document issued by City of London police, headed "Terrorism/extremism update for the City of London business community", included a detailed account of recent and upcoming Occupy London activities and was sent to "trusted partners" in the area.
The document, dated 2 December, which was passed on to Occupy London's Finsbury square encampment over the weekend by a local business owner, gave an update on foreign terrorist activities including that of Farc in Columbia, al-Qaida in Pakistan and the outcome of a trial into the Minsk bombing in Belarus.
Below that, a section headed "Domestic" was dedicated wholly to the activities of the Occupy encampments and singled out anti-capitalists as a cause for concern.
"As the worldwide Occupy movement shows no sign of abating, it is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism."
The document stated that police had "received a number of hostile reconnaissance reports concerning individuals who would fit the anti-capitalist profile", and asked businesses to be vigilant for further sign of occupation activity.
It also said that the number of protesters present at the camp remained "fairly consistent" but that demonstrations originating from the camp had "decreased and lacked the support and momentum of earlier actions".
The City of London police have as yet been unwilling to reveal how many businesses were included on the mailing but their list is thought to include large multinationals and banks.
A City of London police source admitted that the "title of the document was not helpful" and denied that it labelled or intended to label the Occupy movement as equivalent to al-Qaida.
An activist from the camp called the document "vulgar" and said Occupy London had met Church of England representatives many times in the past and were meeting the Financial Services Authority, which regulates banking activity in the UK, on Monday.
A statement from the Occupy London camp said: "The reference to 'suspected activists' seems to demonstrate a disturbing loss of perspective.
"Activism is not a crime and the desire to participate in democratic decision-making should not be a cause for concern for the police in any free society.
"An institution that confuses active citizens with criminals and equates al-Qaida with efforts to re-imagine the City is an institution in grave danger of losing its way."
By CNu at December 15, 2011 0 comments
Labels: agenda , clampdown , elite , establishment
5 thoughts on the latest obamamandian epic FAIL..,
The White House on Wednesday abandoned its threat that President Barack Obama would veto a defense bill over provisions on how to handle suspected terrorists as Congress raced to finish the legislation. Press secretary Jay Carney said last-minute changes that Obama and his national security team sought produced legislation that "does not challenge the president's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the American people."Here are five, quick thoughts about this important moment in constitutional history.1. This is textbook stuff. What happened this week to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act is straight out of political science or constitutional law class; the tyranny of the majority having just imposed itself upon a minority. The two popularly-elected branches of government this week have collaborated on a new law that likely infringes upon the core constitutional rights of U.S. citizens -- the right to due process as determined by a federal civilian court judge. And it will now be up to our independent judiciary to determine whether this effort is legal or not. What a great teaching tool this story has become -- let me know, all you teachers and professors out there, if you ever build a class or course around the topic.
2. The buck has been passed. Four years from now, maybe more maybe less, when the United States Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the new law's detainee provisions, you will hear politicians screaming their dissent. "Activist judges," some of these elected officials will cry! "Untethered judiciary!" This will occur because the Court now has to do its best to interpret the purposely ambiguous statutory language contained in the new law. Indeed, our national lawmakers have just failed to do what federal judges everywhere prayed they would; enact clearly-worded legislation. I'm not the only one frustrated by Congress' continuing failure to do its job -- so is Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote this screed on legislative ambiguity this past June.
3. Rolling the dice. Both sides in this fight are gambling that the federal courts will see things their way. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- who favor military detention for U.S. terror suspects apprehended here in the States -- are hoping that federal judges, and the justices in Washington, will rule that Congress and the White House have the authority to limit individual liberties in the fashion contemplated by the new law. The White House would take that deal, of course. But it also wouldn't mind a ruling from the High Court that simply protects the rights of the executive branch to prosecute American terror suspects in federal civilian courts. On that point, the Obama Administration has been fighting with Congress (morosely and unsuccessfully) since 2009.
4. Changed faces. Seven years later, the Supreme Court is very different from the one which issued the seminal ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in June 2004. That decision, which will be front and center as the new law makes its way through the courts, limited the Bush Administration's ability to hold terror detainees indefinitely without due process. The opinion, which came from a 5-4 vote, was written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has since been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito. As the latter heads toward his fifth year on the High Court bench it is clear in many ways that he is much more conservative than was his predecessor. This means, as everyone now knows, that the center of gravity on the Court has shifted to Justice Kennedy. For the record, he voted with Justice O'Connor in Hamdi.
5. What happens now. It is going to be years before civil libertarians know for sure whether the new law is constitutionality valid. Some person out there is going to have to get arrested or apprehended on U.S. soil, be accused of being a terror suspect, and then treated in the manner contemplated by the new law. That person is going to have to challenge the terms of detention and confinement. All of this will take years. In the meantime, one or two or three more Defense Authorization bills are going to pass through the Congress, each of them giving lawmakers a chance to back away from these provisions -- or add clarity to them. We are, after all this time, still much closer to the beginning than to the end of this dirty business.
By CNu at December 15, 2011 2 comments
Labels: clampdown , Obamamandian Imperative
The Indefinite Detention Bill DOES Apply to American Citizens on U.S. Soil
Video - Obama signs Levins indefinite military detention bill
The bill is confusing. As Wired noted on December 1st:
It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authorityA retired admiral, Judge Advocate General and Dean Emeritus of the University of New Hampshire School of Law also says that it applies to American citizens on American soil.
The ACLU notes:
Another sponsor of the bill – Senator Levin – has also repeatedly said that the bill applies to American citizens on American soil, citing the Supreme Court case of Hamdi which ruled that American citizens can be treated as enemy combatantsDon’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.
But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”
“The Supreme Court has recently ruled there is no bar to the United States holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant,” said Levin. “This is the Supreme Court speaking.“Levin again stressed recently that the bill applies to American citizens, and said that it was president Obama who requested that it do so:
By CNu at December 15, 2011 0 comments
Labels: clampdown
cointelpro-21
These operations have benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying.
The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing.
Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which has given NYPD more than $1.6 billion since 9/11, is told exactly what's going on.
Many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in transforming the NYPD's intelligence unit.
A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll, was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. The CIA trained a police detective at the Farm, the agency's spy school in Virginia, then returned him to New York, where he put his new espionage skills to work inside the United States.
And just last month, the CIA sent a senior officer to work as a clandestine operative inside police headquarters.
By CNu at December 15, 2011 2 comments
Labels: clampdown
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?
No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s signature education law, did this by setting unrealistically high — and ultimately self-defeating — expectations for all schools. President Obama’s policies have concentrated on trying to make schools more “efficient” through means like judging teachers by their students’ test scores or encouraging competition by promoting the creation of charter schools. The proverbial story of the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost comes to mind.
The Occupy movement has catalyzed rising anxiety over income inequality; we desperately need a similar reminder of the relationship between economic advantage and student performance.
The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students.
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates.
International research tells the same story. Results of the 2009 reading tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment show that, among 15-year-olds in the United States and the 13 countries whose students outperformed ours, students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts within every country. Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty?
By CNu at December 14, 2011 14 comments
Labels: big don special , truth
Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance
reasons for these findings have been the subject of much debate. For example, the greater male
variability hypothesis, originally proposed by Ellis in 1894 and reiterated in 2005 by Lawrence Summers when he was president of Harvard University, states that variability in intellectual
abilities is intrinsically greater among males. If true, it could account for the fact that all Fields
medalists have been male. If gender differences in means and variances are primarily a consequence of innate, biologically determined differences between the sexes, one would expect these differences to be similar among countries regardless of their culture and to remain fairly constant across time. Such a finding would suggest that little can be done to diminish these differences. In support of this hypothesis, Machin and Pekkarinen claimed that greater male variance in mathematics performance was a “robust phenomenon”, that is, observed among fifteen-year-olds in thirty-five out of the forty countries that participated in the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In addition, women’s nature might include a tendency to prefer the more nurturing fields, such as nursing and teaching young children, to the more quantitative ones, such as mathematics, physics, and engineering. If so, it might not make sense to encourage and direct any but the unusual female toward studying and seeking employment in these latter fields. This viewpoint has led some folks to propose that it may be a waste of time and money to expend resources directed toward trying to increase participation of women in these mathematics-intensive fields. Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at December 14, 2011 0 comments
Labels: What IT DO Shawty...
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
conscious and subconscious awareness
These questions - which have long puzzled psychologists, philosophers, and neurobiologists - were recently addressed in a study by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers and published by the journal Psychological Science.
The study was headed by Prof. Leon Deouell from the Hebrew University's Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) and Department of Psychology and Prof. Dominique Lamy from the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, and conducted by research student Liad Mudirk of Tel Aviv University with collaboration of research student Assaf Breska from the Hebrew University.
We are not consciously aware of most of the input that hits upon our sensory systems. Yet subjectively, conscious awareness dominates our mental activity. "One of the dominant theories in cognitive sciences and psychology posits that parts of the information perceived without awareness may be processed to a certain extent," says Prof. Deouell. "Yet to bind the different parts of a complex input into something meaningful and coherent requires conscious awareness.
To test this theory, the research team ran a study in which they presented participants with pictures of natural scenes including some human action, like a picture of basketball players jumping to reach a ball.
In other tests, the same scenes were presented -- except that the central object was replaced by another, unlikely object. For example, the basketball was replaced by a watermelon.
The participants viewed the pictures through a mirror stereoscope, a simple device that allowed the research team to present the pictures to only one eye. At the same time, the other eye viewed rapidly flickering patterns of colors which drew the subjects' attention, so that the participants were not aware for many seconds that anything was presented to their other eye. This allowed the researchers to measure how long it takes normal and unusual scenes to "win the competition" against the flickering pattern and break into awareness.
"We found that participants became aware of the unusual scenes earlier than to the usual scenes," commented Deouell. "The conclusion was that even before the participants were aware of the existence of the picture, the semantic relationships between parts of the scene were interpreted."
The study shows that, counter to previous theories, integration is not the prerogative of conscious awareness but is achieved even without awareness. When and why then do we need conscious awareness?
The findings of this research suggest that when the results of the integration between parts of the input are incompatible with expectations or prior knowledge, awareness is required in order to account for the conundrum. Thus, the study expands the realm of unaware processes, yet shows that conscious awareness is not a meaningful luxury - it allows us to deal with novel and unexpected situations.
By CNu at December 13, 2011 1 comments
Labels: as above-so below
learning high-performance tasks with no conscious effort may soon be possible
New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise.
Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.
Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.
"Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning," said lead author and BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe of the part of the brain analyzed in the study.
Neuroscientists have found that pictures gradually build up inside a person's brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas. The brain then fills in greater detail to make a red ball appear as a red ball, for example.
Researchers studied the early visual areas for their ability to cause improvements in visual performance and learning.
"Some previous research confirmed a correlation between improving visual performance and changes in early visual areas, while other researchers found correlations in higher visual and decision areas," said Watanabe, director of BU's Visual Science Laboratory. "However, none of these studies directly addressed the question of whether early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning." Until now. Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at December 13, 2011 1 comments
Labels: Possibilities
banishing consciousness: the mystery of anaesthesia
That is starting to change, however, with the development of new techniques for imaging the brain or recording its electrical activity during anaesthesia. "In the past five years there has been an explosion of studies, both in terms of consciousness, but also how anaesthetics might interrupt consciousness and what they teach us about it," says George Mashour, an anaesthetist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "We're at the dawn of a golden era."
Consciousness has long been one of the great mysteries of life, the universe and everything. It is something experienced by every one of us, yet we cannot even agree on how to define it. How does the small sac of jelly that is our brain take raw data about the world and transform it into the wondrous sensation of being alive? Even our increasingly sophisticated technology for peering inside the brain has, disappointingly, failed to reveal a structure that could be the seat of consciousness.
Altered consciousness doesn't only happen under a general anaesthetic of course - it occurs whenever we drop off to sleep, or if we are unlucky enough to be whacked on the head. But anaesthetics do allow neuroscientists to manipulate our consciousness safely, reversibly and with exquisite precision.
It was a Japanese surgeon who performed the first known surgery under anaesthetic, in 1804, using a mixture of potent herbs. In the west, the first operation under general anaesthetic took place at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846. A flask of sulphuric ether was held close to the patient's face until he fell unconscious.
Since then a slew of chemicals have been co-opted to serve as anaesthetics, some inhaled, like ether, and some injected. The people who gained expertise in administering these agents developed into their own medical specialty. Although long overshadowed by the surgeons who patch you up, the humble "gas man" does just as important a job, holding you in the twilight between life and death.
Consciousness may often be thought of as an all-or-nothing quality - either you're awake or you're not - but as I experienced, there are different levels of anaesthesia (see diagram). "The process of going into and out of general anaesthesia isn't like flipping a light switch," says Mashour. "It's more akin to a dimmer switch."
By CNu at December 13, 2011 1 comments
Labels: neuromancy , What IT DO Shawty...
why aren't you humans smarter already? evolutionary limits on cognition
The authors looked to evolution to understand about why humans are only as smart as we are and not any smarter. “A lot of people are interested in drugs that can enhance cognition in various ways,” says Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, who cowrote the article with Ralph Hertwig of the University of Basel. “But it seems natural to ask, why aren’t we smarter already?”
Tradeoffs are common in evolution. It might be nice to be eight feet tall, but most hearts couldn’t handle getting blood up that high. So most humans top out under six feet. Just as there are evolutionary tradeoffs for physical traits, Hills says, there are tradeoffs for intelligence. A baby’s brain size is thought to be limited by, among other things, the size of the mother’s pelvis; bigger brains could mean more deaths in childbirth, and the pelvis can’t change substantially without changing the way we stand and walk.
Drugs like Ritalin and amphetamines help people pay better attention. But they often only help people with lower baseline abilities; people who don’t have trouble paying attention in the first place can actually perform worse when they take attention-enhancing drugs. That suggests there is some kind of upper limit to how much people can or should pay attention. “This makes sense if you think about a focused task like driving,” Hills says, “where you have to pay attention, but to the right things—which may be changing all the time. If your attention is focused on a shiny billboard or changing the channel on the radio, you’re going to have problems.”
It may seem like a good thing to have a better memory, but people with excessively vivid memories have a difficult life. “Memory is a double-edged sword,” Hills says. In post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, a person can’t stop remembering some awful episode. “If something bad happens, you want to be able to forget it, to move on.”
Even increasing general intelligence can cause problems. Hills and Hertwig cite a study of Ashkenazi Jews, who have an average IQ much higher than the general European population. This is apparently because of evolutionary selection for intelligence in the last 2,000 years. But, at the same time, Ashkenazi Jews have been plagued by inherited diseases like Tay-Sachs disease that affect the nervous system. It may be that the increase in brain power has caused an increase in disease.
Given all of these tradeoffs that emerge when you make people better at thinking, Hills says, it’s unlikely that there will ever be a supermind. “If you have a specific task that requires more memory or more speed or more accuracy or whatever, then you could potentially take an enhancer that increases your capacity for that task,” he says. “But it would be wrong to think that this is going to improve your abilities all across the board.”
By CNu at December 13, 2011 0 comments
Labels: What IT DO Shawty...
how abuse changes a child's brain
They’re primed to perceive threat and anticipate pain, adaptations that may be helpful in abusive environments but produce long-term problems with stress and anxiety.
“For them to detect early cues that might signal danger is adaptive. It allows them to react, to try and avoid the danger,” said psychologist Eamon McCrory of University College London. However, “a very similar neural signature characterizes quite a few anxiety disorders.”
In a study published Dec. 5 in Current Biology, McCrory’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure blood flows in the brains of 43 children exposed to violence at home as they looked at pictures of sad or angry faces.
Previous studies have shown that abuse affects kids’ brains; as they grow up, abused children become adults with high levels of aggression, anxiety, depression and other behavioral problems. But according to McCrory, the new study is the first to use fMRI to study the form of those changes. Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at December 13, 2011 11 comments
Labels: psychopathocracy
Monday, December 12, 2011
bankers are the dictators of the west
But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard "experts" who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.
Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.
The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.
And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against "governments". What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of "experts" from America's top universities and "think tanks", who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.
By CNu at December 12, 2011 8 comments
Labels: Collapse Crime , Peak Capitalism
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