arvix | "Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state.
Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes
contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers
can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology,
thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own
brain power. Language itself is a form of cognitive technology that allows
cognizers to offload some of their cognitive functions onto the brains of other
cognizers. Language also extends cognizers' individual and joint performance
powers, distributing the load through interactive and collaborative cognition.
Reading, writing, print, telecommunications and computing further extend
cognizers' capacities. And now the web, with its network of cognizers, digital
databases and software agents, all accessible anytime, anywhere, has become our
'Cognitive Commons,' in which distributed cognizers and cognitive technology
can interoperate globally with a speed, scope and degree of interactivity
inconceivable through local individual cognition alone. And as with language,
the cognitive tool par excellence, such technological changes are not merely
instrumental and quantitative: they can have profound effects on how we think
and encode information, on how we communicate with one another, on our mental
states, and on our very nature. Cognition Distributed
NYTimes | This
week, during a panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University,
President Obama lambasted the media, and in particular Fox News, for
creating false, destructive narratives about the poor that paint them
broadly as indolent and pathological.
“Over
the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make
folks mad at folks at the top, or to be mad at folks at the bottom. And
I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t
want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction.”
He continued:
“And,
look, it’s still being propagated. I mean, I have to say that if you
watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu — they will
find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them.
[Laughter.] They’re like, I don’t want to work, I just want a free Obama
phone — [laughter] — or whatever. And that becomes an entire narrative —
right? — that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview
of a waitress — which is much more typical — who’s raising a couple of
kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills.”
MSNBC’s
Joe Scarborough took umbrage. After saying that “the arrogance of it
all is staggering,” and that he was “a little embarrassed” for the
president, Scarborough demanded of his befuddled panel: “What about the
specific clip about Fox News calling poor people leeches, sponges and
lazy? Have you ever heard that on Fox News?” One panelist responded,
“No, I have not.” Then Scarborough opened the question to them all: “Has
anybody ever heard that on Fox News?”
Well, yes.
In 2004, Bill O’Reilly, arguably the face of Fox News, said:
“You gotta look people in the eye and tell ‘em they’re irresponsible
and lazy. And who’s gonna wanna do that? Because that’s what poverty is,
ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get
educated and work hard. Period. Period.”
In 2012, O’Reilly listed what he called the “true causes of poverty” including “poor education, addiction, irresponsible behavior and laziness.”
In 2014, during the week that marked the 50th anniversary of L.B.J.’s “War on Poverty,” O’Reilly again said
that “true poverty” (as opposed to make-believe poverty?) “is being
driven by personal behavior,” which included, according to him,
“addictive behavior, laziness, apathy.”
Even
though the president didn’t say that Fox News specifically used the
words “sponge,” “leeches” and “lazy,” O’Reilly has indeed, repeatedly,
called poor people lazy, and the subtext of his remarks is that many
poor people are pathologically and undeservedly dependent on the
government dole.
accuweather | With the state of California mired in its fourth year of drought and a
mandatory 25 percent reduction in water usage in place, reports of
water theft have become common.
In April, The Associated Press
reported that huge amounts of water went missing from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a state investigation was launched. The
delta is a vital body of water, serving 23 million Californians as well
as millions of farm acres, according to the Association for California Water Agencies.
The AP reported
in February that a number of homeowners in Modesto, California, were
fined $1,500 for allegedly taking water from a canal. In another
instance, thieves in the town of North San Juan stole hundreds of
gallons of water from a fire department tank.
jayhanson |THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMON REVISITED, by Beryl Crowe
(1969); reprinted in MANAGING THE COMMONS, by Garrett Hardin and John Baden
W.H. Freeman, 1977; ISBN 0-7167-0476-5
"There has developed in the contemporary natural
sciences a recognition that there is a subset of problems, such as population,
atomic war, and environmental corruption, for which there are no technical
solutions.
"There is also an increasing recognition among
contemporary social scientists that there is a subset of problems, such as
population, atomic war, environmental corruption, and the recovery of a livable
urban environment, for which there are no current political solutions. The
thesis of this article is that the common area shared by these two subsets
contains most of the critical problems that threaten the very existence of
contemporary man." [p. 53]
ASSUMPTIONS
NECESSARY TO AVOID THE TRAGEDY
"In passing the technically insoluble problems over to
the political and social realm for solution, Hardin made three critical
assumptions:
a. that there exists, or can be developed, a
'criterion of judgment and system of weighting . . .' that will 'render the
incommensurables . . . commensurable . . . ' in real life;
b. that, possessing this criterion of judgment,
'coercion can be mutually agreed upon,' and that the application of coercion to
effect a solution to problems will be effective in modern society; and
c. that the administrative system, supported by the
criterion of judgment and access to coercion, can and will protect the commons
from further desecration." [p. 55]
ERODING MYTH OF
THE COMMON VALUE SYSTEM
"In America there existed, until very recently, a set
of conditions which perhaps made the solution to Hardin's subset possible; we
lived with the myth that we were 'one people, indivisible. . . .' This myth
postulated that we were the great 'melting pot' of the world wherein the
diverse cultural ores of Europe were poured into the crucible of the frontier
experience to produce a new alloy -- an American civilization. This new
civilization was presumably united by a common value system that was
democratic, equalitarian, and existing under universally enforceable rules
contained in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
"In the United States today, however, there is emerging
a new set of behavior patterns which suggest that the myth is either dead or
dying. Instead of believing and behaving in accordance with the myth, large
sectors of the population are developing life-styles and value hierarchies that
give contemporary Americans an appearance more closely analogous to the
particularistic, primitive forms of 'tribal' organizations in geographic
proximity than to that shining new alloy, the American civilization." [p.
56]
"Looking at a more recent analysis of the sickness of
the core city, Wallace F. Smith has argued that the productive model of the
city is no longer viable for the purposes of economic analysis. Instead, he
develops a model of the city as a site for leisure consumption, and then seems
to suggest that the nature of this model is such is such that the city cannot
regain its health because the leisure demands are value-based and, hence do not
admit to compromise and accommodation; consequently there is no way of deciding
among these value- oriented demands that are being made on the core city.
"In looking for the cause of the erosion of the myth of
a common value system, it seems to me that so long as our perceptions and
knowledge of other groups were formed largely through the written media of
communication, the American myth that we were a giant melting pot of
equalitarians could be sustained. In such a perceptual field it is tenable, if
not obvious, that men are motivated by interests. Interests can always be
compromised and accommodated without undermining our very being by sacrificing
values. Under the impact of electronic media, however, this psychological
distance has broken down and now we discover that these people with whom we
could formerly compromise on interests are not, after all, really motivated by
interests but by values. Their behavior in our very living room betrays a set
of values, moreover, that are incompatible with our own, and consequently the
compromises that we make are not those of contract but of culture. While the
former are acceptable, any form of compromise on the latter is not a form of
rational behavior but is rather a clear case of either apostasy or heresy. Thus
we have arrived not at an age of accommodation but one of confrontation. In
such an age 'incommensurables' remain 'incommensurable' in real life." [p.
59]
EROSION OF THE
MYTH OF THE MONOPOLY OF COERCIVE FORCE
"In the past, those who no longer subscribed to the
values of the dominant culture were held in check by the myth that the state
possessed a monopoly on coercive force. This myth has undergone continual
erosion since the end of World War II owing to the success of the strategy of guerrilla
warfare, as first revealed to the French in Indochina, and later conclusively
demonstrated in Algeria. Suffering as we do from what Senator Fulbright has
called 'the arrogance of power,' we have been extremely slow to learn the
lesson in Vietnam, although we now realize that war is political and cannot be
won by military means. It is apparent that the myth of the monopoly of coercive
force as it was first qualified in the civil rights conflict in the South, then
in our urban ghettos, next on the streets of Chicago, and now on our college
campuses has lost its hold over the minds of Americans. The technology of
guerrilla warfare has made it evident that, while the state can win battles, it
cannot win wars of values. Coercive force which is centered in the modern state
cannot be sustained in the face of the active resistance of some 10 percent of
the population unless the state is willing to embark on a deliberate policy of
genocide directed against the value dissident groups. The factor that sustained
the myth of coercive force in the past was the acceptance of a common value
system. Whether the latter exists is questionable in the modern
nation-state." [pp. 59-60]
EROSION OF THE
MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS
"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon
that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to
develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so
widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring
about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and
rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the
commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as
the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence
among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest
in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly
organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into
the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes
to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In
the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by
drawing the agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [pp.
60-61].
zerohedge | But according to NBC News,
which has reportedly been conducting their own investigation for the
last several years, Hersh’s claims aren’t that inaccurate after all.
Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year
before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from
Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the
world was hiding – and these two sources plus a third say that the
Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.
The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by
Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and
has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking couriers to his walled
complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall
narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May
2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was
constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the
asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of
the Pakistani intelligence agency’s operation to hide bin Laden,
according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the
bin Laden mission. The official story focused on a long hunt for bin
Laden’s presumed courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. …
The NBC News sources who confirm that a Pakistani intelligence
official became a “walk in” asset include the special operations officer
and a CIA officer who had served in Pakistan. These two sources and a
third source, a very senior former U.S. intelligence official, also say
that elements of the ISI were aware of bin Laden’s presence in
Abbottabad. The former official was emphatic about the ISI’s awareness, saying twice, “They knew.”
The one thing that President Obama could hail as a success during his
tenure as President has now been exposed as an outright lie.
Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before
the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from
Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the
world was hiding.
If true, that would be major news. But NBC now says it’s not actually true. Here’s what now appears atop NBC’s story on the walk-in:
Editor's Note: This story has been
updated since it was first published. The original version of this story
said that a Pakistani asset told the U.S. where bin Laden was hiding.
Sources say that while the asset provided information vital to the hunt
for bin Laden, he was not the source of his whereabouts.
While NBC’s story doesn’t use the word correction or retraction,
that’s what this appears to be. The walk-in “did not provide the
location of the al Qaeda leader’s Abottabad, Pakistan compound,” the
story now says.
democracynow | Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong. Hersh claims at the time of the U.S. raid, bin Laden had been held as a prisoner by Pakistani intelligence since 2006. Top Pakistani military leaders knew about the operation and provided key assistance. Contrary to U.S. claims that it located bin Laden by tracking his courier, a former Pakistani intelligence officer identified bin Laden’s whereabouts in return for the bulk of a $25 million U.S. bounty. Questions are also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea, as the U.S. claimed. Hersh says instead the Navy SEALs threw parts of bin Laden’s body into the Hindu Kush mountains from their helicopter. The White House claims the piece is "riddled with inaccuracies." Hersh joins us to lay out his findings and respond to criticism from government officials and media colleagues.
AMYGOODMAN: Four years ago this month, President Obama announced U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.
PRES. BARACKOBAMA: At my direction, the United States has launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body.
AARON MATÉ: But now a new investigation says the official story is a lie. In an explosive report the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh alleges a vast deception on everything from how bin Laden was found to how he was killed. According to Hersh, Pakistan detained bin Laden in 2006 and kept him prisoner with the backing of Saudi Arabia. In 2010 a Pakistani intelligence officer disclosed bin Laden’s location to the CIA. Hersh says the U.S. and Pakistan then struck a deal; the U.S. would raid bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad but make it look as if Pakistan was unaware. In fact, Hersh says top Pakistani military leaders provided key help.
AMYGOODMAN: The report also challenges the initial U.S. account of how bin Laden was killed. Hersh says there was never a firefight inside the compound and that bin Laden himself was not armed. Questions are also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea as the U.S. claimed. Hersh says, instead the Navy SEALs threw parts of bin Laden’s body into the Hindu Kush mountains from their helicopter. The White House has rejected Hersh’s account of the bin Laden raid. Press Secretary Josh Earnest spoke to reporters on Monday.
thenation | Fisher was too quick by half. For the rabbit hole indeed goes deep.
Just after he posted his piece, NBC news—not just “mainstream” but
solidly in the Obama White House camp—confirmed
one key claim in Hersh’s report: “Two intelligence sources tell NBC
News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a
‘walk in’ asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most
wanted man in the world was hiding—and these two sources plus a third
say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all
along.” Other sources likewise confirmed at least the broad outlines of
Hersh’s counter-narrative, and as they did, the pushback against Hersh
went, as Adam Johnson at FAIR put, from “this is a lie” to “what’s the
big deal, we knew this all along” (everybody should follow Johnson’s twitter feed).
Fisher’s not alone in accusing Hersh of frivolity (I had hopes for Fisher, who after the New Republic implosion wrote a thoughtful reflection on that magazine’s racism. But he’s since done one of the stupider pieces I’ve read on Ecuador’s Rafael Correa; Vox seems to be trying to fill the vacuum left by The New Republic when it comes to writing silly things
about Latin America). To accuse Hersh of falling under the thrall of
“conspiracy theory” is to repudiate the whole enterprise of
investigative journalism that Hersh helped pioneer. What has he written
that wasn’t a conspiracy? But Fisher, and others, believe Hersh went too
far when in a 2011 speech he made mention of the Knights of Malta and
Opus Dei, tagging him as a Dan Brown fantasist. Here’s Fisher, in his
debunking of Hersh’s recent essay: “The moment when a lot of journalists
started to question whether Hersh had veered from investigative
reporting into something else came in January 2011. That month, he spoke
at Georgetown University’s branch campus in Qatar, where he gave a bizarre and rambling address
alleging that top military and special forces leaders ‘are all members
of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.… many of them are
members of Opus Dei.’”
But here’s Steve Coll, a reporter who remains within the acceptable margins, writing in Ghost Wars
about Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey: “He was a Catholic Knight
of Malta educated by Jesuits. Statues of the Virgin Mary filled his
mansion.… He attended Mass daily and urged Christian faith upon anyone
who asked his advice…. He believed fervently that by spreading the
Catholic church’s reach and power he could contain communism’s advance,
or reverse it.” Oliver North, Casey’s Iran/Contra co-conspirator,
worshiped at a “’charismatic’ Episcopalian church in Virginia called Church of the Apostles, which is organized into cell groups.”
Not too long ago, Ben Bradlee Jr. (son of no less an establishment figure than the editor of The Washington Post), could draw
the connections between the shadowy national security state and
right-wing Christianity: Iran/Contra was about many things, among them a
right-wing Christian reaction against the growing influence of
left-wing Liberation Theology in Latin America. Likewise, the US’s
post-9/11 militarism was about many things, among them the
reorganization of those right-wing Christians against what they
identified as a greater existential threat than Liberation Theology:
political Islam. Fisher should know this, as it was reported here, here, and here, among many other places.
Eager to debunk Hersh, it’s Fisher who has fallen down the rabbit hole of imperial amnesia.
newrepublic | Ten years ago, Sy Hersh was a widely celebrated journalist, considered
one of the best at digging up the dark secrets behind the official
stories of our various wars. Now, with his alternate history of the killing of Osama bin Laden, Hersh has “gone off the rails” and is “lost in a wilderness of mirrors.” What happened? It could be that the longtime New Yorker
reporter has lost it. But possibly, maybe, a teeny tiny factor might be
that there’s a Democrat in the White House—a combination of liberal
reluctance to criticize President Barack Obama with conservative
reluctance to criticize the military.
The response to Hersh’s 10,000-word London Review of Books report is dominated by skepticism, if not outright mockery. CNN’s Peter Bergen debunks Hersh’s “Allegations of massive cover-up.” Vox’s Max Fisher scoffs at
“a story that accuses hundreds of people across three governments of
staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years.” Daily Telegraph Pakistan correspondent Rob Crilly calls it a “conspiracy theory” that will fool “the soft minded.”
You
might expect conservatives to run with the dark comedy of the Obama
White House scrambling to make up lies to take advantage of the death of
America's No. 1 foe in an election year—only to watch those lies spiral
out of control and create more foreign policy problems. But Rush
Limbaugh led his show on Monday by talking about the usual stuff,
Michelle Obama playing the "race card" or whatever. The conservative
blog Hot Air said,
“The first issue in any story written by Seymour Hersh is … Seymour
Hersh. He has a habit of running with single-source stories that don’t
pan out in the long run, and this tale has a number of red flags.” PJ
Media’s Michael Walsh shrugs,
“In the wilderness of mirrors that is the intelligence community and
the Obama White House, believe almost nothing. Easier on your sanity
that way.” Free Republic posters mostly
made fun of the idea of a Muslim burial at sea; one lamented, "he
meanders but the story gets down to the usual liberal bleeding-heart
'waterboarding-doesn’t-work' nonsense at the end." Even conspiracy
theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars could only offer recycled outrage from years earlier.
This
reaction would make sense if Hersh’s story actually described an epic
hoax—like that bin Laden actually died years earlier, say, or that he’s a
secret prisoner in Guantanamo, or that he’s partying right now in
a CIA-funded discotheque in Tehran. But Hersh’s narrative doesn’t
change all that much from the current Obama administration official
story. The main takeaway is that Pakistan knew bin Laden was living in
Abbottabad and that he was essentially a prisoner of Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Hersh reports there was a plan for a
bigger lie—the government would claim bin Laden was killed by a drone
in the Hindu Kush mountains—which was never told because the helicopter
crash at the Abbottabad compound would have raised too many
questions. What Hersh claims were outright lies are the most
Hollywood-esque flourishes of the official story: that the U.S. found
bin Laden by tracking his courier, and that bin Laden’s body was buried
at sea. These would be big lies (and a serious scandal) for any
president of the United States. But in Hersh’s telling, there is a
cover-up but not much of a crime. Ultimately, that’s Hersh’s point:
“High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy."
Kahneman | Another scholar and friend whom I greatly admire, Cass Sunstein,
disagrees sharply with Slovic’s stance on the different views of
experts and citizens, and defends the role of experts as a bulwark
against “populist” excesses. Sunstein is one of the foremost legal
scholars in the United States, and shares with other leaders of his
profession the attribute of intellectual fearlessness. He knows he can
master any body of knowledge quickly and thoroughly, and he has
mastered many, including both the psychology of judgment and choice and
issues of regulation and risk policy. His view is that the existing
system of regulation in the United States displays a very poor setting
of priorities, which reflects reaction to public pressures more than
careful objective analysis. He starts from the position that risk
regulation and government intervention to reduce risks should be guided
by rational weighting of costs and benefits, and that the natural units
for this analysis are the number of lives saved (or perhaps the number
of life-years saved, which gives more weight to saving the young) and
the dollar cost to the economy. Poor regulation is wasteful of lives
and money, both of which can be measured objectively. Sunstein has not
been persuaded by Slovic’s argument that risk and its measurement is
subjective. Many aspects of risk assessment are debatable, but he has
faith in the objectivity that may be achieved by science, expertise,
and careful deliberation.
Sunstein came to believe that biased reactions to risks are an
important source of erratic and misplaced priorities in public policy.
Lawmakers and regulators may be overly responsive to the irrational
concerns of citizens, both because of political sensitivity and because
they are prone to the same cognitive biases as other citizens.
Sunstein and a collaborator, the jurist Timur Kuran, invented a name
for the mechanism through which biases flow into policy: the
availability cascade. They comment that in the social context, “all
heuristics are equal, but availability is more equal than the others.”
They have in mind an expanded notion of the heuristic, in which
availability provides a heuristic for judgments other than frequency.
In particular, the importance of an idea is often judged by the fluency
(and emotional charge) with which that idea comes to mind.
An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may
start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to
public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a
media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the
public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction
becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media,
which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is
sometimes sped along deliberately by “availability entrepreneurs,”
individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of
worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media
compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try
to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention,
most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is
suspected of association with a “heinous cover-up.” The issue becomes
politically important because it is on everyone’s mind, and the
response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public
sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other
risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public
good, all have faded into the background.
dailymail | The procedure may help the many men who cannot develop sperm themselves.
Isabelle Cuoc, the firm’s CEO, said: ‘Kallistem is addressing a major
issue whose impacts are felt worldwide: the treatment of male
infertility.
‘Our team is the first in the world to have developed the technology
required to obtain fully formed spermatozoa [sperm] in vitro with
sufficient yield for IVF.
‘This is a major scientific outcome that enhances both our credibility and our development potential.
‘We are targeting a global market worth several billion euros in which there are currently no players.’
Spermatogenesis, the process through which the basic reproduction cells develop into sperm, is an extremely complex one.
It usually takes 72 days to take place in the human body, with a
constant supply of basic cells being transformed into mature sperm.
But some men suffer from nonobstructive azoospermia - or abnormal sperm production - rendering them infertile.
Scientists have been trying for 15 years to develop a procedure to
extract immature spermatogonia from infertile men, transform it into
mature men, and use IVF to produce a child.
They have previously shown they can artificially replicate the
procedure in mice, but this is the first time is has been successfully
shown to work using human cells.
The next stage is to demonstrate that the procedure is safe in pre-clinical trials, which will take place next year.
If the pre-clinical trials are a success, Kallistem claim they will be
a position in 2017 to assist the birth of a baby in clinical trials.
They will remove a sample of immature spermatogonia from a man’s
testicles in a simple biopsy, transform the genetic material into
mature sperm, and then use it in traditional IVF procedures.
Quadrant | Despite warnings by moral conservatives, advances in genetics and
reproductive technology have created the conditions for a
consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Like it or not, science has is
about to pose a slather of moral, ethical and societal dilemmas
A legal, social and biological revolution is taking place
worldwide without much serious thinking of the consequences. Consider
this: in Britain the House of Commons recently approved the use of
“three-parent IVF” to remove defective mitochondrial DNA from babies.[1]
Each year in Britain about 100 children are born with mutated
mitochondrial DNA, resulting in about ten cases of fatal disease to the
liver, nerves or heart. A new in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
technique developed at the University of Newcastle allows doctors to
replace a mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with that of a healthy
donor, presumably using pre-implantation sequencing and microscopic
operation on the zygote. Mitochondrial DNA does not affect appearance,
personality or intelligence, and it reduces kinship—genetic
similarity—by only about 1 per cent. Still, the resulting child, though
its nuclear DNA would come from its main parents, would have three
parents.
Critics warned that this would set society off down a slippery slope
to eugenics and “designer babies”. A government official, the “British
Fertility Regulator”, replied to this warning with the observation that
most people support the therapy. This was intended to assuage the
concerns expressed. In fact it would seem to confirm them, since
widespread support for a product or service indicates a readiness to
adopt it. Sure enough, though there had been little public discussion in
advance of the Commons debate, the new techniques were nonetheless
approved by a large parliamentary majority. Australian scientists have
since called for the British policy to be emulated.[2]
Despite half a century of warnings by moral conservatives, advances
in genetics and reproductive technology have created the conditions for a
consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Here is the Oxford dictionary
definition of “Eugenics”: “the science of improving a population by
controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable
characteristics”. It has a bad historical reputation because
authoritarian governments have denied civil liberties in the name of
eugenics. But as we shall see, both the definition and the reputation of
eugenics have been overtaken by advances in science, medicine and
marketing. Eugenics has since reappeared in many countries in the form
of voluntary genetics counselling—a medical service provided to help
parents avoid genetic disorders in their children[3]; and IVF has become a sizeable industry that offers parents the genetic screening of embryos and other eugenic choices.
Genetic improvement is becoming a market phenomenon—a situation
discernible as long ago as the 1980s when Daniel Kevles, the leading
historian of eugenics in the USA, quoted a biotechnology expert thus:
“‘Human improvement’ is a fact of life, not because of the state … but
because of consumer demand.”[4]
aljazeera | The city of Detroit was set to send out notices Monday to about
25,000 households with overdue water bills, giving them 10 days to seek
assistance from the city or lose water service.
The notices, in the form of fliers hanging from doorknobs, mark the latest chapter in the months-long saga of the Motor City’s bankruptcy. Making
sure Detroit’s poorest residents pay for their water has been a
priority for city officials, but threats of shutoffs have outraged
activists and attracted the attention of United Nations human rights advocates.
About 73,000 residential households were at least two months late on their water payments as of March 3, according to The Detroit Free Press.
"The bottom line is whether you are in that category or not, you need
to come in and get on a payment plan," Gary Brown, the city’s chief
operating officer, told The Detroit News.
"Then you will be assured that your water will not be cut off. If you
ignore billing, if you ignore the door knocker and don't come in and
get on a payment plan, then we don't know how to help you,” he said.
The notices apply to people who are at least 60 days late on their bills, The Detroit News reported.
RT | Some 92 percent of married women in Egypt underwent female genital
mutilation, the country’s health minister said, citing a recent study.
He added that the majority of girls face this ordeal when they are only
nine to 12 years old.
The results of the Egypt
Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) were announced by Health
Minister Adel Adawy at a Sunday conference dedicated to the
study, Egyptian media reported. The poll was carried out last
year and involved women aged 15 to 49.
According to the minister, only 31 percent of the operations are
carried out by doctors, with most being performed by traditional
midwives and “health barbers.”
The rate of female circumcision in rural places is extremely high
– almost 95 percent while in urban areas it reaches 39.2 percent,
the minister said.
The study claimed that more than half of married women in the
country are in favor of genital mutilation. Only 30 percent of
women say it should be banned, the study said.
Egypt’s top Islamic authority has condemned the practice as
“un-Islamic” and “barbaric.” Female
circumcision was banned in 2008. The offenders may be sentenced
to prison (from three months to two years) or fined between 1,000
and 5,000 Egyptian pounds.
In January, an Egyptian doctor, Raslan Fadl, was sentenced to two
years in jail for performing a female genital mutilation
procedure which killed a young girl. Thirteen-year-old Sohair
al-Bata’a died in June 2013 following the surgery.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a traditional practice to
partially or completely remove the outer sexual organs, is mainly
practiced in Africa and in a few countries in the Middle East
(Yemen, Kurdish communities, Saudi Arabia) and Asia.
Up to 140 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected
to FGM, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.
The Stranger | For most of their lives, Eric Rachner and Phil Mocek had no strong feelings about police. Mocek, who grew up in Kansas, said he regarded police officers as honorable civil servants, like firefighters. Both chose careers as programmers: Rachner, 39, is an independent cyber-security expert, while Mocek, 40, works on administrative software used by dentists.
But through their shrewd use of Washington's Public Records Act, the two Seattle residents are now the closest thing the city has to a civilian police-oversight board. In the last year and a half, they have acquired hundreds of reports, videos, and 911 calls related to the Seattle Police Department's internal investigations of officer misconduct between 2010 and 2013. And though they have only combed through a small portion of the data, they say they have found several instances of officers appearing to lie, use racist language, and use excessive force—with no consequences. In fact, they believe that the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) has systematically "run interference" for cops. In the aforementioned cases of alleged officer misconduct, all of the involved officers were exonerated and still remain on the force.
"We're trying to do OPA's job for them because OPA was so explicitly not interested in doing their own job," said Rachner.
Among some of Rachner and Mocek's findings: a total of 1,028 SPD employees (including civilian employees) were investigated between 2010 and 2013. (The current number of total SPD staff is 1,820.) Of the 11 most-investigated employees—one was investigated 18 times during the three-year period—every single one of them is still on the force, according to SPD.
In 569 allegations of excessive or inappropriate use of force (arising from 363 incidents), only seven were sustained—meaning 99 percent of cases were dismissed. Exoneration rates were only slightly smaller when looking at all the cases between 2010 and 2013—of the total 4,407 allegations, 284 were sustained.
globalresearch | "Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research.
This could be anyone of the
countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle
Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission.
This is precisely the point: The
Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to
create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people,
nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need
for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US
GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and
services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke
and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from
the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious
‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals
enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their
people.
That’s the name of the game – in Yemen,
in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya….
you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS
/ ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the
mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just
tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all
its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are
prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the
lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.
President Hollande has just signed a multi-billion euro contract with Qatar for the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets. He is now heading to Riyadh for talks with the Saudi King Salman, and to sell more Rafale planes
– it’s good business and helps killing off the fabricated enemies; and
also to attend a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit on 5 May. Topics
of discussions at the meeting are the ‘crises’ of the region including
in Yemen, planted by the west on behalf of Washington (and its Zionist
masters) and blamed on the ‘rebels’ who are seeking merely a more just
government.
The west has invented a vocabulary so
sick, it’s like a virus ingrained in our brains – or what’s left of it –
that we don’t even know anymore what the words really mean. We repeat
them and believe them. After all, the MSM drills them into our
intestines day-in and day-out. People who fight for their freedom, for
survival against oppressive regimes, are ‘terrorists’, ‘rebels’. – The
refugees from Africa, from the Washington inflicted conflict-stricken
countries, the refugees of whom more than 4,000 have already perished
this year trying to cross the Mediterranean for a ‘better life’ – they
have been conveniently renamed ‘immigrants’. Often the term ‘illegal’ is
added. Thus, the west’s conscience is whitewashed from guilt.
Immigrants are beggars. Illegal immigrants belong jailed. They have
nothing to do with unrest and chaos planted by the west in the
‘immigrants’ home countries. – Shame on you, Brussels!
commondreams | "It's time to talk about what's next. It is time for Americans to think boldly about ...
what it will take to move our country to a very different place, one
where outcomes that are truly sustainable, equitable, and democratic are
commonplace."
Those are the words of academic and author Gar Alperovitz, founder of the Democracy Collaborative, who—alongside veteran environmentalist Gus Speth—this week launched a new initiative called the "Next System Project"
which seeks to address the interrelated threats of financial
inequality, planetary climate disruption, and money-saturated
democracies by advocating for deep, heretofore radical transformations
of the current systems that govern the world's economies, energy
systems, and political institutions.
As part of the launch, the Next System Project produced this video
which features prominent progressive figures such as actor and activist
Danny Glover, economist Juliet Schor, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben,
labor rights activist Sarita Gupta, and others:
According to the project's website, the effort is a response to a
tangible and widespread "hunger for a new way forward" capable of
addressing various social problems by injecting "the central idea of
system change" into the public discourse. The goal of the
project—described as an ambitious multi-year initiative—would be to
formulate, refine, and publicize "comprehensive alternative
political-economic system models" that would, in practice, prove that
achieving "superior social, economic and ecological outcomes" is not
just desirable, but possible.
"By defining issues systemically," the project organizers explain,
"we believe we can begin to move the political conversation beyond
current limits with the aim of catalyzing a substantive debate about the
need for a radically different system and how we might go about its
construction. Despite the scale of the difficulties, a cautious and
paradoxical optimism is warranted. There are real alternatives. Arising
from the unforgiving logic of dead ends, the steadily building array of
promising new proposals and alternative institutions and experiments,
together with an explosion of ideas and new activism, offer a powerful
basis for hope."
The mission statement of the project—articulated in a short document titled It's Time to Face the Depth of the Systemic Crisis We Confront
(pdf)—has been endorsed by an impressive list of more than 350
contemporary journalists, activists, academics, and thought leaders from
various disciplines who all agree the current political and economic
system is serving the interests of "corporate profits, the growth of
GDP, and the projection of national power" while ignoring the needs and
wellbeing of people, communities, ecosystems and the planet as a whole.
WaPo | Using synthetic biology techniques, researchers have created everything from new flavors and fragrances to new types of biofuels and materials.
While the innovation potential of combining biology and engineering is
unquestionable, now comes the hard part of proving that it is possible
to design and build engineered biological systems on a cost-effective
industrial scale, thereby creating true “bio-factories.” For that scenario to become a reality, here are three developments in the synthetic biology space to keep an eye on in 2015:
1. New efforts to catalogue synthetic biology innovations
On April 29, the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. launched a new initiative of its Synthetic Biology Project (which dates back to 2008): a first-of-its-kind inventory to track the dizzying array of new synthetic biology products
that are emerging in fields such as agriculture, chemicals and
materials. The task is so large that the Wilson Center is crowdsourcing
the project, letting registered users track the functions and properties
of these products.
As a result of this synthetic biology inventory,
a user can choose to drill down on synthetic biology innovations within
a specific industry. Say, for example, you’re interested in how
synthetic biology innovations from the nation’s innovators are showing
up in food products that you purchase at the supermarket. In the
category field, you’d select “foods,” in the country field, you’d select
“U.S.” and in the “market status” field, you’d select “on the market
(or close to market).” As a result, you’d find entries such as Zemea USP,
a product from DuPont and Tate & Lyle Bio Products, which works via
microorganism-facilitated fermentation to create new flavor profiles
for food.
Having access to this type of information could be a
real boon for attempts to govern and regulate these products. In order
to come up with a coherent regulatory scheme, after all, policymakers
need to know what’s out there, who’s using it, and what types of
functions and properties these products have. And the average citizen,
too, is probably more than just a little interested in what types of
engineered organisms are out there.
“As
the U.S. government, the United Nations and other bodies start to
grapple with the governance and regulation of synthetic biology, it is
imperative to track the market and understand the sectors primed for
growth,” says Todd Kuiken,
a senior program associate with the Synthetic Biology Project. “As more
products and platforms move onto the market, there will be increased
demand for risk research to underpin regulatory decisions.”
2. New initiatives to embrace industry-wide standards
NPR | Here's something that might sound strange: There are companies now that print and sell DNA.
This trend — which uses the term "print" in the sense of making a bunch of copies speedily — is making particular stretches of DNA
much cheaper and easier to obtain than ever before. That excites many
scientists who are keen to use these tailored strings of genetic
instructions to do all sorts of things, ranging from finding new medical
treatments to genetically engineering better crops.
"So much good can be done," says Austen Heinz, CEO of Cambrian Genomics in San Francisco, one of the companies selling these stretches of DNA.
But
some of the ways Heinz and others talk about the possible uses of the
technology also worries some people who are keeping tabs on the trend.
"I have significant concerns," says Marcy Darnovsky, who directs the Center for Genetics and Society, a genetics watchdog group.
A
number of companies have been taking advantage of several recent
advances in technology to produce DNA quickly and cheaply. Heinz says
his company has made the process even cheaper.
"Everyone else
that makes DNA, makes DNA incorrectly and then tries to fix it," Heinz
says. "We don't fix it. We just see what's good, what's bad and then we
use the correct pieces."
NYTimes | Many
of these experiments on in-group bias have been conducted around the
world, and almost every ethnic group shows a bias favoring its own. One
exception: African-Americans.
Researchers
find that in contrast to other groups, African-Americans do not have an
unconscious bias toward their own. From young children to adults, they
are essentially neutral and favor neither whites nor blacks.
Banaji
and other scholars suggest that this is because even young
African-American children somehow absorb the social construct that white
skin is prestigious and that black skin isn’t. In one respect, that is
unspeakably sad; in another, it’s a model of unconscious race
neutrality. Yet even if we humans have evolved to have a penchant for
racial preferences from a very young age, this is not destiny. We can
resist the legacy that evolution has bequeathed us.
“We
wouldn’t have survived if our ancestors hadn’t developed bodies that
store sugar and fat,” Banaji says. “What made them survive is what kills
us.” Yet we fight the battle of the bulge and sometimes win — and,
likewise, we can resist a predisposition for bias against other groups.
One strategy that works is seeing images of heroic African-Americans; afterward, whites and Asians show less bias,
a study found. Likewise, hearing a story in which a black person
rescues someone from a white assailant reduces anti-black bias in
subsequent testing. It’s not clear how long this effect lasts.
Deep
friendships, especially romantic relationships with someone of another
race, also seem to mute bias — and that, too, has implications for
bringing young people together to forge powerful friendships.
“If
you actually have friendships across race lines, you probably have
fewer biases,” Banaji says. “These are learned, so they can be
unlearned.”
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