civil rights 2.0: the war on 99% liberties by 1% authoritarianism

theconversation |  Undeniably, African Americans are disproportionately affected by police violence – but it also affects people of all races. Within months of Michael Brown’s death at the hands of the Ferguson police, there were two less publicised cases of excessive police violence against white suspects in the surrounding area: Joseph Jennings, who was shot 16 times outside a Kansas hardware store, and 17-year-old Bryce Masters, who ended up in a coma after a police officer tasered him when he refused to roll down his window after being stopped.

Obama echoed this need to both recognise the racial dynamic driving much of this violence while also the importance of treating it as a national not just “black” or “minority” crisis. He maintained: “The problem is not just a Ferguson problem. It’s an American problem.”

In order to address the problem, we have to confront its deeper causes, ones that certainly involve but are by no means limited to the country’s ongoing structural racism. Rising inequality and poverty, especially in the wake of the financial crisis, have done much to contribute to police brutality. These economic factors have been exacerbated by the growing domination of US politics by elites.

Framing police violence as principally a “black problem” reinforces the underlying notion that African-Americans are somehow separate from other Americans and that authoritarian crackdowns on them are reactive, not active. This plays into an established tactic of strategically highlighting racial divisions within the country to distract attention from other issues such as class polarisation and oligarchy.

Ultimately, this is a way to freeze out solidarity across race, geography and even class, leaving Americans with an identity politics of distrust and conflict.

This strategy is part of the culture of fear that has driven much of the US government’s policy for decades. From the War on Drugs to the War on Terror, chronic and growing issues of unemployment, economic insecurity and declining social welfare are channelled into anger and action against existential “enemies” – most of whom are non-white, or in some way portrayed as less than “American”.

These policy “wars” have been mounted in the service of a growing authoritarianism in contemporary America. The militarisation of the police force, for instance, reflects the government’s need to neutralise urban areas marked by often extreme poverty and violence. Instead of an attack on the economic and social causes of ghettoisation and urban blight, we’ve seen a move away from “community policing” toward what has been called: “The United Police States of America”.

To overcome this strategy, then, it must be tackled as more than just a programme of racism. What must be emphasised is the authoritarianism and deeper shared disenfranchisement that motivates the state violence we see today – a tendency that certainly includes structural racism, but which is by no means limited to it.

In the words Obama used when responding to the Eric Garner case, it must be framed as an “American problem”.

conceptual beginnings of nanomachines

Motherboard | The shape of DNA is a double helix, right? That’s what we are taught. Well, now the answer is “not always.” Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered how to program DNA so that it’s shaped like a bowl, or a spiral, or a ring, or a tile, or all sorts of different things.

It’s the latest in a string of discoveries about the underlying structure of life and the building blocks that make it up. We’ve learned that life might not even need DNA to exist, and a potential means to create life of that DNA-less nature was recently demonstrated when scientists created enzymes in a lab without the stuff. Then, you’ve got scientists who have been able to create new nucleotides (the “letters” in DNA) that do not exist in nature and insert them into a living organism. And now, this: DNA can look like just about anything.

yeah.., changing the language trumps para-military force and legal impunity every time...,

thenation |  So… now what? Not much, so long as the reverence paid to police officers lends itself to deference. They are not regarded as citizens also beholden to the law. They are an armed force charged with maintenance of a status quo steeped in white supremacy and anti-blackness. Key to the reign is the suspension of a belief in the rule of law. Whatever tools they require for to carry out their actual purpose, the public and the courts are eagerly ready to provide.

So… now what? Body cameras seem like a good idea when we think the issue is there isn’t enough evidence with which to hold police accountable. They’re a good idea if we think the issue is accountability. Other things get tossed around, like diversifying police forces (the NYPD is among the most diverse in the country). That sounds like a good idea if we think the problem is sensitivity or cultural miscommunication. We are thinking wrong.

We keep applying the language and framework of accountability, diversity and sensitivity to an issue of oppression. We are attempting to fly an airplane with the keys to a motorcycle. Our tools are woefully inadequate, and until we are ready to admit to ourselves that the police are an inherently oppressive force, and then use the language of anti-oppression and anti-racism in our analysis and solutions, it will not end today, as Eric Garner had hoped. The dead bodies of black folks will continue to line our streets and sidewalks, and they will be treated no better than the roadkill with whom they occupy those spaces.

Last night, at an event addressing racial profiling on the campus of Vassar College, a student told their administration that putting body cameras on security guards was like “Band-Aids to a bullet hole.” I was in attendance and was struck by just how literal that phrasing was. We are being choked and shot with impunity, and yet all that is being offered to us in response is a means to relive the experience over and over again. But we already do.

cleveland overseers been WILDING!!!

HuffPo |  In recent years, Cleveland police officers have punched a 13-year-old boy who was in handcuffs for shoplifting and shot at an unarmed kidnapping victim who was wearing only his underwear, according to disturbing allegations released Thursday by the Justice Department. The agency's investigation found that officers in Cleveland routinely use unjustifiable force against not only criminals and suspects, but also innocent victims of crimes.

The so-called “pattern or practice” report from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was released Thursday afternoon as DOJ and the city announced plans to develop a court-enforceable agreement that would impose an independent monitor on the Cleveland Division of Police.

"Accountability and legitimacy are essential for communities to trust their police departments, and for there to be genuine collaboration between police and the citizens they serve,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a press conference on Thursday. 

Holder announced the measure during his trip to Cleveland, where police officers fatally shot an unarmed black child last month. In Cleveland, Holder has attended a series of meetings about rebuilding community trust between law enforcement and the public, even as protests erupted nationwide over the non-indictment of police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. Following his visit to Cleveland, Holder intends to visit Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as Memphis, Tennessee, and Oakland, California, for additional roundtable meetings.

In his remarks Thursday, Holder said that he and President Barack Obama believe there is more to be done on the issue of use of lethal force by police departments.

The Justice Department began investigating the use of force in Cleveland's police division in March 2013. A few months prior, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson had requested that the agency look into the issue. Jackson's request came after a high-profile police chase in November 2012 that resulted in Cleveland police dispatching at least 62 vehicles, firing 137 bullets and killing two unarmed black suspects, who each sustained more than 20 gunshot wounds.

ny police benevolent association president comply or die...,

nbcnews |  The head of the New York police union said Thursday that a grand jury made the right call when it declined to indict an officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, an unarmed man, in July. 

"We feel badly that there was a loss of life," said Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. "But unfortunately Mr. Garner made a choice that day to resist arrest."

He praised the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, as a good man, a mature policeman and an Eagle Scout who "went out and did a difficult job, a job where there's no script, and sometimes with that there's tragedy that comes." 

"It's also a tragedy for this police officer who has to live with that death," Lynch said. 

He also praised New York police for their handling of protests on Wednesday night, when thousands who objected to the decision took to the streets. Lynch lashed out at Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said on Wednesday that the grand jury's decision not to bring charges was "one that many in our city did not want." 

He suggested that the mayor was teaching children to fear police officers, and he said the lesson instead should be to comply with police officers, even if they feel an arrest is unjust. 

"You cannot resist arrest," Lynch said. "Because resisting arrest leads to confrontation. Confrontation leads to tragedy."

open-thread thursday...,

don't hold your breath for that federal civil rights investigation of excessive use of force...,

Bodycams won't change a damn thing.

Eric Garner was targeted by police because his actions were understood as a kind of threat to local business. The violence carried out by these officers was to protect the local economy, not to serve the people in the community. And the grand jury decision is further proof that state violence is just another mechanism to maintain the economic status quo.

For decades—centuries even—we’ve been discussing the intimate relationship between racism and capitalism in America, the ways that our economic system creates and maintains an underclass. Critics dismiss such an idea as some kind of conspiracy theory and continue touting the same tired American Dream narrative that has sustained us since the days of Horatio Alger. 

Do you understand that such an assessment of our moment is not a conspiracy at all?

Do you have to look any further than the NYPD SOP execution of Eric Garner?

Those at the top know what kind of tumult this way comes, and desperately fear peasants with torches and pitchforks. The systematic inflammation of racial conflict and battles between the white working class (including racist police officers) and the poor (including minorities) is livestock management designed to deflect attention and growing understanding of their modus operandi. Their corporations and transnational capital manipulations are ruining the Earth, fomenting unheard of economic inequality. The use of corrupted government and the distorted rule of law to commit massive, systemic frauds on taxpayers has already been clearly demonstrated all across europe.

Perhaps you have a different explanation? Maybe it's just racism?

Eric Garner, father of six, choked to death on the street apparently for selling untaxed cigarettes. 

Wall Street banks? No arrests. Bailed out by taxpayers and deemed too big to fail by government "regulators", their corporate media handmaidens, and those who've forgotten the Occupy protests. 

speaking of crushing entire, twisted little fantasy worlds....,

theatlantic |  James Watson, the famed molecular biologist and co-discoverer of DNA, is putting his Nobel Prize up for auction. This sad final chapter to his career traces back to racist remarks he made in 2007, which led to his fall from scientific grace.

Watson is best known for his work deciphering the DNA double helix alongside Francis Crick in 1953. The discovery revolutionized biochemistry and earned the pair and their colleague, molecular biologist Maurice Wilkins, the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But in 2007 Watson made an incendiary remark regarding the intelligence of black people that lost him the admiration of the scientific community.

That year, The Sunday Times quoted Watson as saying that he felt “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” He added that although some think that all humans are born equally intelligent, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Watson’s remarks ignited an uproar. He had to retire from his position as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Sold-out gatherings in his honor were cancelled. Academic centers uninvited him for lectures. His peers condemned him: “He has failed us in the worst possible way. It is a sad and revolting way to end a remarkable career,” said Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists. His competitors debunked him: “Skin color as a surrogate for race is a social concept not a scientific one,” Craig Venter, the scientist who raced Watson to sequencing the human genome, said to the BBC in 2007. “There is no basis in scientific fact or in the human genetic code for the notion that skin color will be predictive of intelligence.”

most legendary wild west outlaws were confederate guerrillas and bushwhackers...,

wikipedia |  Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, gang leader, bank robber, train robber, and murderer from the state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. Already a celebrity when he was alive, he became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death. Some recent scholars place him in the context of regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the American Civil War rather than a manifestation of frontier lawlessness or alleged economic justice.^[1]

Jesse and his brother Frank James were Confederate guerrillas, or Bushwhackers, during the Civil War. They were accused of participating in atrocities committed against Union soldiers, including the Centralia Massacre. After the war, as members of various gangs of outlaws, they robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains. Despite popular portrayals of James as an embodiment of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, there is no evidence that he and his gang shared their loot from the robberies they committed.^[2]

The James brothers were most active with their gang from about 1866 until 1876, when their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota resulted in the capture or deaths of several gang members. They continued in crime for several years, recruiting new members, but were under increasing pressure from law enforcement. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was killed by a member of his own gang, Robert Ford, who hoped to collect a reward on James' head.

like stick em up there's dirty history involved with overseers labor unions...,

jacobinmag |   Their profession is heavily unionized. Culturally, they have more in common with bus drivers than business executives. Many come from working-class backgrounds.

Yet on the beat, police come in contact with — to question, to arrest, to brutalize — the most disadvantaged. This presents a problem for radicals. If the Left stands for anything, it’s worker emancipation and labor militancy. But police and others in the state’s coercive apparatus, workers themselves in many respects, are the keepers of class society. Their jobs exist to maintain social control and protect the status quo.

The introduction of unions to this portion of the state raises additional concerns. Can “coercive unions” ever advocate for the broader working class, rather than members’ narrow self-interests? Or are police unions irredeemably reactionary?

It’s easy to focus on the individual over the institution. Not a few police officers are drawn to the profession out of a desire to “serve the public.” Many genuinely want to serve, and take great pride in their chosen occupation. Police don’t have to enjoy breaking up protests; they don’t have to be racists or hate homeless people. But once they decide to do their jobs, institutional exigencies overwhelm personal volition. When there’s mass resistance to poverty and inequality, it’s the cops who are summoned to calm the panic-stricken hearts of the elite. They bash some heads, or infiltrate and disrupt some activist groups, and all is right in the world again.

Such is the inherent defect of law-enforcement unionism: It’s peopled by those with a material interest in maintaining and enlarging the state’s most indefensible practices.

It’s hard to imagine how it could be any different. Chicago teachers, exemplifying the kind of social-movement unionism that defends the working class broadly, organized the community before their strike by trumpeting a vision of equitable education. The Left cheered. How could anything similar be achieved by prison guards? A police strike would appear to signal an incipient authoritarianism, cops untamed by democratic dictates. How could empowering police — increasingly militarized and shot through with a culture of preening brutality — yield anything but stepped-up repression? How could the traditional socialist goal of worker self-management result in anything but a dystopia of metastasizing prisons, imperious cops, and Minuteman-esque border-patrol guards? The best we can hope for from police, it seems, is passivity.

As Kristian Williams documents in Our Enemies in Blue, professionalized policing arose in the United States amid urbanization in the 1820s and 1830s. Controlling “dangerous” classes (principally of the industrial working variety), more than ameliorating any pronounced spike in crime, was the reason for its formation. The institution had its roots in slave patrols, which were established to control the behavior of slaves — the “dangerous” classes of that day.

how police unions and arbitrators keep abusive overseers on the streets

theatlantic |  When Frank Serpico, the most famous police whistleblower of his generation, reflected on years of law-enforcement corruption in the New York Police Department, he assigned substantial blame to a commissioner who failed to hold rank-and-file cops accountable. That's the classic template for police abuse: misbehaving cops are spared punishment by colleagues and bosses who cover for them.

There are, of course, police officers who are fired for egregious misbehavior by commanding officers who decide that a given abuse makes them unfit for a badge and gun. Yet all over the U.S., police unions help many of those cops to get their jobs back, often via secretive appeals geared to protect labor rights rather than public safety. Cops deemed unqualified by their own bosses are put back on the streets. Their colleagues get the message that police all but impervious to termination.

That isn't to say that every officer who is fired deserves it, or that every reinstated cop represents a miscarriage of justice. In theory, due process before a neutral arbiter could even protect blue whistleblowers from wrongful termination. But in practice, too many cops who needlessly kill people, use excessive force, or otherwise abuse their authority are getting reprieves from termination.

la quenelle americain?

WaPo |  "'Hands up; don't shoot' is a rallying cry of people all across America who are fed up with police violence," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said from the floor of the House on Monday night. And to punctuate the point, he mimicked the gesture that goes with the cry. He put his hands up.

ok yankee, stick em up! (damn it's hard to find cowboy movie stick-up clips)

mcmillandictionary |  [transitive] very informal to steal money or goods from a person or place using a gun

an attempt to stick up a local bank

[spoken] Thesaurus entry for this meaning of stick up

stick 'em up spoken if someone with a gun tells you to stick 'em up, they are ordering you to raise your arms above your head, usually because they are going to steal money or goods from you

thai's give the three-finger salute to their gun-wielding stick-up kids in uniform...,

NYTimes |  A Thai theater chain has withdrawn the latest “Hunger Games” movie after several student protesters were detained for using a gesture taken from the films, a three-finger salute of resistance to authoritarian government.

The salute, which in the movies is a daring act of silent rebellion, began to appear here in the weeks after the May 22 coup. The authorities warned that anyone raising it in public could be subject to arrest.

The military government in Thailand has clamped down on all forms of protest, censored the country’s news media, limited the right to public assembly and arrested critics and opponents. Hundreds of academics, journalists and activists have been detained for up to a month, according to Human Rights Watch.

The arrests came on Wednesday, before the premiere in Thailand of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.” Five students in T-shirts bearing the slogan “We don’t want the coup” flashed the sign during a speech by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the coup and later became head of the military government.

The students were quickly detained by the police, who handed them over to military authorities.

Army officials later confirmed that the students were held for several hours for “attitude adjustment” and then released. They were told to report back the next day with their parents and still could be charged with violating martial law.

where oh where is dieudonné?

wikipedia |  Various public figures such as Tony Parker, Nicolas Anelka and National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen were pictured making the gesture.^[13] A new trend has emerged, consisting of performing quenelles beside unwitting public figures identified as members of the establishment (such as Bernard-Henri Lévy, Pierre Bergé or Manuel Valls^[20]) or in front of the media's cameras. TV host Yann Barthès publicly apologized for quenelles made by someone in the audience during his show and revealed the identity of the author. Shortly afterwards, a picture of Yann Barthès himself performing a quenelle surfaced on social networks. Barthès argued that he didn't know what he was doing when the picture was taken.^[21] Several people have been fired for having published photos of them performing quenelles^[22][23] and some people have been assaulted for the same reason.^[24] Two teenagers were arrested for having performed a quenelle at school.^[25]

While Dieudonné said in August 2013 that "the quenelle had taken on a life of its own and had become something he could no longer claim as his exclusively," his wife Noémie Montagne registered the quenelle as a trademark with the French National Industrial Property Institute.^[13][26]

By professional athletes

When French footballer Nicolas Anelka of West Bromwich Albion F.C. performed the quenelle to celebrate scoring a goal on 28 December 2013, the gesture, which was already considered "something of a viral trend" in France,^[27] became an international news story and one of the most searched terms on Google.^[28] Anelka described the gesture as anti-establishment rather than religious in nature, and said he did a quenelle as a "special dedication" to his friend Dieudonné.^[27][29] However, French minister for sport Valérie Fourneyron called his actions "shocking" and "disgusting", adding: "There's no place for anti-Semitism on the football field."^[27] A subsequent statement released by West Bromwich said Anelka agreed not to perform the quenelle again,^[30] but nevertheless on 27 February 2014, Anelka was banned for five matches and fined £80,000 for this action.^[31] In response to the incident, club sponsor Zoopla announced that it would not continue its sponsorship deal with West Bromwich after the 2013–14 season.^[29] Dieudonné, who intended to visit and support Anelka in England, was banned from entry to the United Kingdom in February 2014.^[32] Anelka was subsequently sacked by West Brom on 15 March 2014.

In November 2013, a photograph of French footballer Mamadou Sakho performing the quenelle with Dieudonné was discovered. Sakho said he had been tricked into making a quenelle without knowing its meaning, and that the photo had been taken six months earlier.^[33]

Following the Anelka incident, a photograph surfaced of Tony Parker, a French professional basketball player who currently plays for the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association (NBA), performing the quenelle alongside Dieudonné. Parker apologized, saying he didn't know at the time that "it could be in any way offensive or harmful."^[34]

corrupt overseer rooda a thug union leader and legislator opposed to video evidence of overseer misconduct...,

slate |  After several members of the St. Louis Rams NFL team made a "hands up" gesture of solidarity with Ferguson protesters before the team's home game yesterday, a group called the St. Louis Police Officers Association issued a statement criticizing the players. The group's statement quoted its business manager, Jeff Roorda:

The SLPOA is calling for the players involved to be disciplined and for the Rams and the NFL to deliver a very public apology. Roorda said he planned to speak to the NFL and the Rams to voice his organization's displeasure tomorrow. He also plans to reach out to other police organizations in St. Louis and around the country to enlist their input on what the appropriate response from law enforcement should be. Roorda warned, "I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I've got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment [sic] rights too, and we plan to exercise ours. I'd remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser's [sic] products. It's cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association is a union that represents city officers in collective bargaining and lobbies legislators; it appears to have been around for at least 46 years. Roorda himself has been in the news before: In 2001 he was fired from his police job in Arnold, a Missouri city about 20 miles from St. Louis, after making what an investigation determined to be a false accusation of abusive behavior against his police chief during a dispute over paid leave. The department's justification for his termination made reference to a previous incident in which Roorda had lied on a police report. From a Missouri Court of Appeals ruling upholding his firing:

google |  Jeffrey Roorda is a Democratic member of the Missouri House of Representatives and a corrupt police officer. He has been serving in the house since 2013. Wikipedia

gladiators worth far more than overseers on this chessboard...,

usatoday |  The NFL will not adhere to a request from the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association to discipline St. Louis Rams players who did the “hands up, don’t shoot” pose used by protesters in Ferguson, Mo. during pre-game introductions on Sunday.

“We respect and understand the concerns of all individuals who have expressed views on this tragic situation,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports.

The police officer’s association issued a letter late Sunday condemning the players’ actions as “tasteless, offensive and inflammatory” given a grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of black teenager Michael Brown.

Five Rams players raised their hands as they walked out of the tunnel onto the field at the Edwards Jones Dome before Sunday’s game against the Oakland Raiders.

Wide receiver Stedman Bailey said he and his teammates decided to make the gesture shortly before the game, and intended it to be something positive.

“Violence should stop. There’s a lot of violence going on here in St. Louis. We definitely hear about it all, and we just want it to stop,” Bailey told reporters after the game.

Tight end Jared Cook said he and his teammates wanted to show solidarity with protesters, because they had not been able to physically join them since the grand jury’s announcement was made last week. Cook said his family members went to Ferguson last week and reported back to him what they saw.

“It’s dangerous out there. None of us want to get caught up in that. We wanted to come out and show our respect to the protesters that have been doing a heck of a job,” Cook said.

bird bomb

NBC | KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan police said they are investigating how a wild bird came to bear an antenna, electronic devices and explosives. Police came across the strange sight around 8 a.m. in the northern Faryab province, a volatile region ravaged by Taliban violence. When police spotted the white bird — which isn't native to the area and appeared larger than an eagle — walking along a highway, they noticed it had an antenna and decided to shoot it, provincial police chief Maj. Gen. Abdul Nabi Ilham told NBC News on Saturday. The bird then exploded, he said, and "suspicious metal stuff" scattered around.

wanderers

Erik Wernquist | Best viewed full-screen.

WANDERERS is a short science fiction film by Erik Wernquist (that´s me) - a digital artist and animator from Stockholm, Sweden.

The film is a vision of our humanity's future expansion into the Solar System. Although admittedly speculative, the visuals in the film are all based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. All the locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available. For those interested in learning more of the places featured in the film, I recommend turning to the gallery section.

The title WANDERERS refer partly to the original meaning of the word "planet". In ancient greek, the planets visible in the sky were collectively called "aster planetes" which means "wandering star". It also refers to ourselves; for hundreds of thousands of years - the wanderers of the Earth. In time I hope we take that leap off the ground and permanently become wanderers of the sky. Wanderers among the wanderers.
There is no apparent story - other than what you might imagine for yourself - and the idea is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.

how english describes color vs. how chinese describes color...,

Here's a fascinating visualization created by Muyueh Lee that shows the differences between how the English language and Chinese language each describe colors.

triangulating the long arc of the inevitable endgame...,

oxfordjournals |  Western cultures encourage self-construals independent of social contexts whereas East Asian cultures foster interdependent self-construals that rely on how others perceive the self. How are culturally specific self-construals mediated by the human brain? Using functional MRI, we monitored neural responses from adults in East Asian (Chinese) and Western (Danish) cultural contexts during judgments of social, mental, and physical attributes of themselves and public figures to assess cultural influences on self-referential processing of personal attributes in different dimensions. We found that judgments of self vs. a public figure elicited greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in Danish than in Chinese participants regardless of attribute dimensions for judgments. However, self-judgments of social attributes induced greater activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) in Chinese than in Danish participants. Moreover, the group difference in TPJ activity was mediated by a measure of a cultural value (i.e., interdependence of self-construal). Our findings suggest that individuals in different sociocultural contexts may learn and/or adopt distinct strategies for self-reflection by changing the weight of the mPFC and TPJ in the social brain network.

evolution of collaborative ability creates conditions for subsequent evolution

royalsocietypublishing |  Humans are unique both in their cognitive abilities and in the extent of cooperation in large groups of unrelated individuals. How our species evolved high intelligence in spite of various costs of having a large brain is perplexing. Equally puzzling is how our ancestors managed to overcome the collective action problem and evolve strong innate preferences for cooperative behaviour. Here, I theoretically study the evolution of social-cognitive competencies as driven by selection emerging from the need to produce public goods in games against nature or in direct competition with other groups. I use collaborative ability in collective actions as a proxy for social-cognitive competencies. My results suggest that collaborative ability is more likely to evolve first by between-group conflicts and then later be utilized and improved in games against nature. If collaborative abilities remain low, the species is predicted to become genetically dimorphic with a small proportion of individuals contributing to public goods and the rest free-riding. Evolution of collaborative ability creates conditions for the subsequent evolution of collaborative communication and cultural learning.

negroes off your knees - on the current trajectory it's NOT going to get any better...,

physorg |  Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner's Dilemma, they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game over the long term.

But now they've come out with a somewhat less rosy view of evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature.

"It's a somewhat depressing evolutionary outcome, but it makes intuitive sense," said Plotkin, a professor in Penn's Department of Biology in the School of Arts & Sciences, who coauthored the study with Stewart, a postdoctoral researcher in his lab. "We had a nice picture of how evolution can promote cooperation even amongst self-interested agents and indeed it sometimes can, but, when we allow mutations that change the nature of the game, there is a runaway evolutionary process, and suddenly defection becomes the more robust outcome."

Their study, which will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines the outcomes of the Prisoner's Dilemma, a scenario used in the field ofgame theory to understand how individuals decide whether to cooperate or not. In the dilemma, if both players cooperate, they both receive a payoff. If one cooperates and the other does not, the cooperating player receives the smallest possible payoff, and the defecting player the largest. If both players do not cooperate, they both receive a payoff, but it is less than what they would gain if both had cooperated. In other words, it pays to cooperate, but it can pay even more to be selfish.

negroes off your knees - america has no operational collective emotional function of "guilt" or "shame"...,

lab.usb.ve/klaus |  Shame has biological roots, possibly enhancing trust, favoring social cohesion. We studied bioeconomic aspects of shame and guilt using three approaches: 1—Anthropo-linguistic studies ofGuilt and Shame among the Yanomami, a culturally isolated traditional tribal society; 2—Estimates of the importance different languages assign to the concepts Shame, Guilt, Pain, Embarrassment, Fear and Trust, counting the number of synonyms listed by Google Translate; 3—Quantitative correlations between this linguistic data with socioeconomic indexes. Results showed that Yanomami is unique in having overlapping synonyms for Shame, Fear and Embarrassment. No language had overlapping synonyms for Shame andGuilt. Societies previously described as “GuiltSocieties” have more synonyms for Guilt than for Shame. A large majority of languages, including those from societies previously described as “Shame Societies”, have more words for Shame than for Guilt. The number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame strongly correlated with estimates of corruption, ease of doing business and governance, but not with levels of interpersonal trust. We propose that cultural evolution of shame has continued the work of biological evolution, but its adaptive advantageto society is still unclear. Results suggest that recent cultural evolution must be responsible for the relationship between the levels of corruption of a society and the number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame in its language. This opens a novel window for the study of complex interactions between biological and cultural evolution of cognition and emotions, which might help broaden our insight into bioeconomics.

from Black Power to "black lives matter"....,

a man who respects himself assiduously prepares to meet violence with ultra-violence - everything else is conversation....,

theatlantic |  Black people know what cannot be said. What clearly cannot be said is that the events of Ferguson do not begin with Michael Brown lying dead in the street, but with policies set forth by government at every level. What clearly cannot be said is that the people of Ferguson are regularly plundered, as their grandparents were plundered, and generally regarded as a slush-fund for the government that has pledged to protect them. What clearly cannot be said is the idea of superhuman black men who "bulk up" to run through bullets is not an invention of Darren Wilson, but a staple of American racism.

What clearly cannot be said is that American society's affection for nonviolence is notional. What cannot be said is that American society's admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. increases with distance, that the movement he led was bugged, smeared, harassed, and attacked by the same country that now celebrates him. King had the courage to condemn not merely the violence of blacks, nor the violence of the Klan, but the violence of the American state itself.

What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence—like nonviolence—sometimes works. "Property damage and looting impede social progress," Jonathan Chait wrote Tuesday. He delivered this sentence with unearned authority. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. They describe everything from enslavement to Jim Crow laws to lynching to red-lining.

the great marijuana hoax

theatlantic |  How much there is to be revealed about marijuana in this decade in America for the general public! The actual experience of the smoked herb has been clouded by a fog of dirty language perpetrated by a crowd of fakers who have not had the experience and yet insist on downgrading it. The paradoxical key to this bizarre impasse of awareness is precisely that the marijuana consciousness is one that, ever so gently, shifts the center of attention fromhabitual shallow, purely verbal guidelines and repetitive secondhand ideological interpretations of experience tomore direct, slower, absorbing, occasionally microscopically minute engagement with sensing phenomena.

A few people don't like the experience and report back to the language world that it's a drag. But the vast majority all over the world who have smoked the several breaths necessary to feel the effect, adjust to the strangely familiar sensation of Time slow-down, and explore this new space thru natural curiosity, report that it's a useful area of mind-consciousness to be familiar with. Marijuana is a metaphysical herb less habituating than tobacco, whose smoke is no more disruptive than Insight.

This essay, conceived by a mature middle-aged gentleman, the holder at present of a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing, a traveler on many continents with experience of customs and modes of different cultures, is dedicated to those who have not smoked marijuana, who don't know exactly what it is but have been influenced by sloppy, or secondhand, or unscientific, or (as in the case of drug-control bureaucracies) definitely self-interested language used to describe the marijuana high pejoratively. I offer the pleasant suggestion that a negative approach to the whole issue (as presently obtains in what are aptly called square circles in the USA) is not necessarily the best, and that it is time to shift to a more positive attitude toward this specific experience.1 If one is not inclined to have the experience oneself, this is a free country and no one is obliged to have an experience merely because friends, family, or business acquaintances have had it and report themselves pleased. On the other hand, an equal respect and courtesy are required for the sensibilities of one's familiars for whom the experience has not been closed off by the door of Choice.

The black cloud of negative propaganda on marijuana emanates from one particular Source: the US Treas. Dept. Narcotics Bureau.2 If the tendency (a return to common sense) to leave the opiate problem with qualified M.D.'s prevails, the main function of this large Bureau will shift to the persecution of marijuana. Otherwise, the Bureau will have no function except as a minor tax office, for which it was originally purposed, under aegis of Secty. of Treasury. Following Parkinson's Law that a bureaucracy will attempt to find work for itself, or following a simpler line of thought, that the agents of this Bureau have a business interest in perpetuating the idea of a marijuana "menace" lest they lose their employment, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a great deal of the violence, hysteria & energy of the anti-marijuana language propaganda emanating from this source has as its motive a rather obnoxious self interest, all the more objectionable for its tone of moralistic evangelism. This hypocrisy is recognizable to anybody who has firsthand experience of the so-called narcotic; which, as the reader may have noticed, I have termed an herb, which it is -- a leaf or blossom -- in order to switch from negative terminology and inaccurate language.

A marvelous project for a sociologist, and one which I am sure will be in preparation before my generation grows old, will be a close examination of the actual history and tactics of the Narcotics Bureau and its former chief Power, Harry J. Anslinger, in planting the seed of the marijuana "menace" in the public mind and carefully nurturing its growth over the last few decades until the unsuspecting public was forced to accept an outright lie.3

I MUST begin by explaining something that I have already said in public for many years: that I occasionally use marijuana in preference to alcohol, and have for several decades. I say occasionally and mean it quite literally; I have spent about as many hours high as I have spent in movie theaters -- sometimes three hours a week, sometimes twelve or twenty or more, as at a film festival -- with about the same degree of alteration of my normal awareness.

mistakes are anomalies, this isht here is the standard operating procedure...,

aljazeera |  Here is something else that is not really in dispute: all of these responding officers were too close. Much too close.

In defense of the cops in each of these shootings, you will hear pundits and police and even some of the offending officers tell you they had little time to react. They will say that it was a split-second decision on whether to shoot; that they had to react quickly or risk being hurt or killed themselves.

But the reason the cops felt this pressure, the reason they feared for their safety, be it from a toy gun, an unseen knife, or a fist full of cigarillos, is because they were too close to properly assess the situation or react in a more measured and considered manner.

This shouldn’t come as a revelation to those officers or outside observers. It has been documented in a number of reports over a number of years that police tactics when it comes to deescalating confrontations with scared, angry, threatening or mentally ill citizens — or not even “suspects,” just subjects — are desperately lacking. By those studies, the officers in the three incidents recounted here did pretty much everything wrong.

Add to that the documented bias in the way society perceives African American men (as dangerous, erratic, aggressive, super-human), and you have what has now been demonstrated to be a lethal mix.

But because these events are so documented and demonstrated, they should also be correctable. Surely, “start x kind of interaction y feet away” is not that hard to teach, especially when the benefits convey just as much to the officer as they do to any potential victim.

nothing enigmatic about what's been laid bare in misery...,

WaPo |  As a matter of maintaining calm and assuaging public concern about a criminal justice system that seems inevitably tilted in the direction of law enforcement and against young black men, an indictment and trial would, no doubt, have been the preferable outcome. A public trial would have offered more airing of the evidence, providing additional closure for society and confidence in the outcome of the case. 

At least in theory, anyway. Previous cases — recall the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin — and the facts in this one suggest an eventual jury verdict finding Wilson not guilty of any charges, a result that would have further inflamed those who see the system as irredeemably biased. 

Yet the decision before the grand jury involved a single incident, discrete facts about the encounter, and a criminal justice system properly focused not on the broader societal implications of the episode but on the two individuals involved, the shooter and the victim. 

County prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s news conference Monday night, with his complaints about “the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about,” was inappropriate, verging on embarrassing. 

But the prosecutor’s unusual move to release transcripts of grand jury testimony served as an important and welcome relief valve, adding evidence to a situation understandably overwhelmed by emotion.

why I stay telling you cats this is school...,

zerohedge |  While the events down in Ferguson play out, back in Chicagoland, HeyJackass reports that the same old bullshit continues day in and day out with nary a peep. In the 107 days since officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18 year old Michael Brown – 12:03pm, Saturday, August 9th – the following stupidity has taken place in Chicago:

• 155 homicides (74% black males)
• 725 shot & wounded
• Six (6) 18 year olds killed: Kawantis Montgomery, Kamaal Burton, Tony McIntos, Alexandra Burgos, Rayvon Little, Johnathan Cartwright
• 59 18 year olds shot & wounded
• 29 teenagers (13-19) killed
• 244 teenagers (13-19) shot and wounded
• 10 shot (5 killed) by the CPD

Brutal, yet incredibly asinine and absurd to say the least. Fist tap and A+ Big Don.

dr.sen. rand paul channeling dr.king schultz...,

Time |  We are witnessing a tragedy in Ferguson. This city in Missouri has become a focal point for so much. The President and the late Michael Brown’s family have called for peace. I join their calls for peaceful protest, but also reiterate their call to action — “channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change.”

In the search for culpability for the tragedy in Ferguson, I mostly blame politicians. Michael Brown’s death and the suffocation of Eric Garner in New York for selling untaxed cigarettes indicate something is wrong with criminal justice in America. The War on Drugs has created a culture of violence and put police in a nearly impossible situation.

In Ferguson, the precipitating crime was not drugs, but theft. But the War on Drugs has created a tension in some communities that too often results in tragedy. One need only witness the baby in Georgia, who had a concussive grenade explode in her face during a late-night, no-knock drug raid (in which no drugs were found) to understand the feelings of many minorities — the feeling that they are being unfairly targeted.

Three out of four people in jail for drugs are people of color. In the African American community, folks rightly ask why are our sons disproportionately incarcerated, killed, and maimed?

African Americans perceive as true that their kids are more likely to be killed. ProPublica examined 33 years of FBI data on police shootings, accounted for the racial make-up of the country, and determined that: “Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater.”

Can some of the disparity be blamed on a higher rate of crime in the black community? Yes, but there is a gnawing feeling that simply being black in a high-crime area increases your risk for a deadly altercation with police.

Does bad behavior account for some of the interactions with law enforcement? Yes, but surely there must be ways that we can work to prevent the violence from escalating.