WIP

My point was never that we should all go out and live in the forest! That was something some hippies tried back in the 60's, although most of them failed for a variety of reasons. My point is borrowed from some scientists like: Frans de Waal, Christopher Ryan, Douglas Fry, Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett - who've come from a variety of scientific fields: archaeology, anthropology, primatology, psychology, epidemiology etc., and have independently arrived at a conclusion that the answers to how we live today should be largely determined by how we are most suited to live....and if we spent the vast amount of time developing into modern humans and then living as modern humans in small hunter-gatherer family groups that migrated throughout and then out of Africa at least twice in human history....then the ideal society is going to be as closely matching our paleo-ancestors as possible! What can we learn from early human societies based on scant and unevenly distributed archaeological evidence? And what can the more modern surviving hunter-gatherer bands tell us about basic human nature? The weight of evidence leads to a set of conclusions that: we are NOT violent by nature, regardless of what war fans and war profiteers try to say about paleo-history. We began in very close-knit cooperative and egalitarian family groups that are likely impossible to duplicate under modern conditions. Marx&Engels proposed communes for rural life, after reading the work of early anthropologist - Louis Henry Morgan, but the communes that were attempted by practical Marxist leaders like Lenin and Mao achieved less than spectacular results! No doubt because they were forcing unrelated people together to live on communes, but making the institution involuntary was a bad start to begin with! The epidemiological work of Wilkinson and Pickett, who produced exhaustive statistical analysis from around the world showing how the levels of economic inequality correlate with a whole laundry list of physical, psychological and social ills (The Spirit Level), should tell us that promoting equality and diminishing inequalities should be a high priority for any movement hoping for a better tomorrow. The other task would be to stop growth-dependent economic policies, and reduce product demand....for ecological reasons and better resource management...which will become very important concerns in the coming years, and are problems that present day consumer demand-driven industrial capitalism has no answers for, and will just exhaust everything available and self-destruct. Have you noticed that energy systems haven't followed the rules of Moore's Law (exponential improvements...I forget the details) because the improvements in computer processing were achieved without any needs for increased energy. The problem with techno-believers is that they still think Moore's Law applies to all technologies....and if that were true, I'd be stepping out and getting in my flying car this afternoon. In agriculture - we have twice the productive land capacity on average compared to about 50 years ago; but these improvements have come at a high price: irreversible topsoil erosion, depletion of available irrigation sources, overuse of oil-based fertilizers that have upset the nitrogen cycle, turning rivers and seashores into dead zones.....the so called green revolution hybrids that were given all the credit for improving food yields, helped somewhat; but the main green revolution seed developer - Norman Borlaug, warned world leaders half a century ago that the revolution should only be considered a temporary stopgap to alleviate famines and food shortages in poorer countries/ not a permanent fix! And that was when the world had half as many people as today. So, obviously nobody heeded his warnings to plan ahead and bring populations and food demands under control. It will be much harder to prevent famines and a whole variety of unexpected catastrophes in the future because of this failure to look ahead more than a few years. That phenomena described as 'status leveling' has been pretty universal in hunter-gatherer societies, so if you put such high credence on evolutionary forces, you have to find an alternative explanation for why such a cultural adaptation would become so widespread. I think the explanation that group cohesion was supremely important, is the most obvious answer. In later societies that could store food and have surpluses, perhaps a lot more variation could develop in social organization. We do see that in the early city-states, where some like Sumer, are patriarchal and highly hierarchical, while the Indus Vally cities present signs of promoting uniformity...the near identical mud-brick houses in early Mohenjo-Daro being an obvious example of how almost identical environments could create cities with very different organizational structures and apparent social values.

Agreed. And most people who are criticizing religion, never get around to identifying what aspects of religion they are attacking: beliefs and doctrines, ritual observances, prayer, church attendance and leadership etc.. Religion is a big catch-all that's been with us as long as the early city states discovered (accidentally or intentionally) that they needed some sort of shared rituals and beliefs to unite people together for common purpose. If we just get rid of religion, what do the antitheists propose we put in its place? Most haven't even thought that far ahead, because they are still too busy in their parents' basements playing World of Warcraft etc. to consider that the real world requires real solutions to problems, not just wishing away religions they don't happen to like or agree with.

Yes. And I think they've agreed that 'terrorism is whatever we say it is!'

Unfortunately, our fearless leaders are well aware about how irrational most people are when it comes to understanding and assessing possible risks. I'm reminded that in the aftermath of 9/11, two different university studies (conducted separately and unaware of each other) both concluded that twice as many people died on the roads and highways during the three months after 9/11, because of all of the people who were afraid to fly in case of another terrorist attack, and didn't realize that driving on the highway is the most dangerous thing an average person does!

Oh really? If we don't believe or trust our leaders acting in secret while claiming to be only acting in our best interests...we're anarchists. got it!

You mean you'll believe it when Faux News reports it.

Ya beat me to it! I noticed that the rest of the media...including Faux, were choosing their words carefully when criticizing Brian Williams lately. No doubt they are aware of how far in the tank to the weapons manufacturers that clown was, but Billo's tall tales also show us that BW wasn't the only fake war correspondent on TV!

Okay, so where do you stand on the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine? It's not "give the people what they want" when there are only five corporate conglomerates running 90% of media (close to 100% if trust fund-funded PBS and NPR are included), and there are no rules preventing the smearing of news and public information with entertainment and making money! This is where capitalism fails! If what you say is true, capitalist motivations turn people into greed-driven hedonistic psychopaths.....but, you probably think this is how the world is supposed to be run!

If you enter a Unitarian/Universalist church, you're stepping into one of the few places where there are a lot of people who don't have strong religious beliefs. What strikes me is that a lot....and I mean a lot of the men identify as atheist/agnostic, while a lot of the women...and the women tend to make up the majority, identify as spiritual or some sort of mystical mumble jumble. There's something about trying to apply rationality and scientific reasoning to every subject that a lot of women don't find appealing...even after they quit mainstream religion....so what's your theory? You know where else women go and return with horror stories? Gamer conventions. Gamer websites. Software developer conventions. In fact, the same probably goes for just about any community which is overwhelmingly male. There's a lot more than "elevatorgate" and the way Rebecca Watson got trashed by the online atheists...including A-hole Dawkins himself, was something to behold, and something that should have made atheist and skeptic organizations do a gut check! The big story I don't really want to toss up...because he's the subject of a lot of testimonies and possible criminal investigations was Michael Schermer though...one of the leaders of one of two main skeptic organizations. There is a problem in these groups for some reason...a few years back, when I was still actively trying to get our atheist/humanist group better established, we had our own internal sexual harassment issue when a newer member creeped out some of the few female atheists who took enough interest to show up, and wouldn't come back again....so there does seem to be a problem here, and I'm not completely sure why, except that secular and atheist groups start out mostly male, and do not make an easy transition to a male / and female culture....not a lot different than what happens in many workplaces that go from all-male to adding female employees. Sexual harassment seems to be inevitable and something that a proactive approach is needed. Since I have little interest in computer games, I only know that sexual harassment in the gaming world became a serious topic after a noted female game designer became the subject of harassment, sexual and even death threats when she chose to speak out about the problems.

Well excuse me for forgetting that St. Richard of Dawkins was not quite the warmongerer that Hitchens was, or Sam Harris for that matter...who seems to be for wars that go well, and against the ones that are going badly....just like his buddy - Bill Maher! FWIW I rejected this BS from evangelical atheism that you can mock and disparage a long-running system of beliefs...like a religion without similarly disparaging any of those people who share those beliefs. It may work in theory, but it doesn't work in real life, and anyone who belongs to any religion will not listen further....especially to long-winded boring crap from guys like Dawkins! Several years ago, I was a member of the secular humanist organization - Center For Inquiry, and quit after a change in leadership led to a dramatic chang towards trying to copy some of the sensational strategies of the new atheist writers and organizations they spawned - Blasphemy Day was the last straw for me! And I decided that organizing around non-belief in supernatural things is an exercise in futility and a good way of finding yourself among people you can't agree on anything else with.

Yes, I've head that he does do good constituency work, but like you said, that's the kind of thing an alderman or city councilor is supposed to do,,not the mayor - who's supposed to look after the big issues, and NOT delegate them to a city manager and other people in his office.

Who knows for sure! But, it does seem that the reason why the Republicans couldn't stick the Bengahzi debacle on Hillary is because they would have had to reveal too much information themselves....such as the widely held conclusion that it was a fake embassy to begin with...why would an embassy be there instead of the capital - Tripoli? The story about it being used as the staging grounds for the next regime change target - Syria, provides the most likely scenario...as Benghazi was the home of the largest and longest running opposition to Gadaffi. They wanted to get this proposed Syrian Democratic Front together and get as many of the guns used in Libya on to that next operation.......and then everything blew up....literally. But it's far more likely that a lot of people in Washington had their hands dirty, than Hillary is completely innnocent of all suspicions.

They're not terrorists if they don't have beards and carry a Quran with them!

This is why everyone who honestly values freedom should be immediately suspicious about all governments wanting laws to protect us from terrorism! In the U.S., the so called Patriot Act has been invoked against all kinds of activists, from anti-pipeline and anti-fracking to anti-factory farms to Occupy Wall Street....and likely many others I've overlooked. Once a nebulous and ill-defined term like "terrorism" is trotted out as an excuse to curb free speech and allow arbitrary incarceration and show trials, then the greatest terrorist threat is homegrown alright......right form our own governments!

Etc. etc. etc.! Whether Islamic societies "evolve" or not evolve, should be up to them without western i.e. American interference! And this would have been the case if it wasn't for the discovery of oil in the Middle East. And oil became too valuable a commodity early on to allow any major oil-producing nation or region of the world to remain truly independent. It's not likely peole over there are dumb and easily have the wool pulled over their eyes. They know how and why most reform movements in the Muslim world were short-circuited and abrupted, and the few that were somewhat successful - like the post-caliphate reforms instituted by Kemal Attaturk in Turkey, were similarly fought against by the WWI Allies, in a failed attempt to break up and maintain Turkish colonies. Attaturk was too strong a force in Turkey, and was later considered conventional enough for western leaders to leave him alone after the failure at Gallipoli. But, in the rest of the Muslim World..whether we're talking Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, even Indonesia....every reform movement was tagged as communist by the U.S. Government, whether they actually had ties with the Soviet Union or not! What's worse - it was the U.S. itself that was the primary outside instigator in getting all of these Islamist reactionary movements back in power again! And the lack of historical or any other context applied in these discussions is what really burns me! At a time when the world is dangerous enough, and sure as hell doesn't need any more wars, we have a bunch of fearful sheep being stampeded again into fearing a foreign threat! If you honestly want peace with Muslims here and abroad, and actually want to see the reform movements regain what they had lost in earlier decades, you have to grow a pair and step back and let them work things out on their own terms. The standard patronizing line of thinking here, is that Muslims are stupid and brainwashed drones, and don't know what's good for themselves...so we have to "fix" them. That should be so obviously wrong that it should not even be up for consideration in the first place!

As the picture of the distant past comes into better focus, it appears that the transition to agriculture was neither sudden/nor a great leap forward! The first evidence of grain hybridization goes as far back as 18,000 years ago. But these were no sedentary farmers...as that would have been impossible anyway during the pleistocene epoch, with its colder and rapidly shifting weather patterns. Instead, many bands of hunter-gatherers began carrying seeds of favourite foods with them. Most often rye and other grains were a favourite choice. And, just by a long process of saving the seeds from non-shattering grains they found when they returned to check for growth, they unintentionally hybridized grains that could be sown in fields and harvested in the Holocene...when populations grew dense enough in the Levant and Asia Minor to justify fixed agriculture....and more crucially, weather stabilized into usually reliable seasonable norms that varied little from year to year. Agriculture was not a first choice for any group of people...as we can see with the last groups of hunter-gatherers in the world choosing to remain in the rainforests and the deserts, rather than moving into settled areas to take up farming. Full time farming did not have the same effects everywhere in the world! In many regions, the societies remained matrilocal and much more egalitarian, while our immediate cultural touchstone - Sumeria for obvious reasons, quickly became both patriarchal and hierarchical, with much of the food-growing efforts done by slave labour. That should neither be considered desireable or inevitable! So, obviously after there were more than a few million people in the world (50 to 100 million upper limit), population densities started getting too large in many areas to live just off hunting and gathering alone. Worth noting that over here in the Americas...pre-Columbus and especially pre-the animal-borne diseases he and other Europeans brought with them, there were many horticultural societies that at times had higher population densities than in Europe during the time of Columbus! Quite astonishing considering that some of the motivating factors for Europeans to move out and try to conquer the world are believed to be declining firewood availability and frequent famines. But, according to the book - 1491...which I haven't read yet, the largest cities in the world at that time were in the Americas, even though meat had to be acquired from hunting and fishing...so, in the Americas, they only did half of the agricultural revolution, but apparently had much better land-use techniques than in Europe. Okay, here's a brief description of the phenomena called Status Leveling: In cultural anthropology, a leveling mechanism is a practice that acts to ensure social equality, usually by shaming or humbling members of a group that attempt to put themselves above other members.[1] Refering to the specific example of the !Kung living in the Kalahari desert: Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle." —Tomazo, "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism

After watching his wife during one of the few public situations they dragged her out for, I don't feel comfortable with any attacks on her because of who she married. She had the look of an abused woman, and a lot of people in the room felt uncomfortable about her appearance. #1 is spot on though.

What really burns me is that this stupid drunken idiot was presented by the Sun and other rightwing sources as someone to admire.

Could you point out even one thing that is a positive feature of Rob Ford? Even in his personal life, he sets up a cocaine buy while he is at a public park to watch his daughter play soccer! There is nothing to admire about dumb, ignorant, gluttonous and abusive bullies, who would have ended up in the gutter if it wasn't for having the good fortune to be born into wealth and privilege....which they usually think they deserve anyway!

The right wing in Europe never saw anything to gain by cozying up to Israel or adding Jews to their fold. Maybe it was the legacy of the holocaust and the lingering Euro-fascist fondness for Hitler and Mussolini, or evangelical Christian Zionism never established a following in Europe, like it did in America. In Iran, the Ayatollahs' favourite Jews are the extreme orthodox Jewish literalists who opposed the Zionist Movement from the beginning, because the Messiah was supposed to arrive and lead all the Jews back to Israel......something to do with interfering with divine providence. It's only over here, where right wing Jews consider themselves as part of the white majority, and despise all the things that Christian rightwingers hate also....so they are allied in their mutual hatreds! I mentioned before that the KKK and John Birch Society were similarly anti-Jewish in America. But the larger, mainstream American rightwing is heavily influenced by the Christian Zionists, who want an insanely beligerent and aggressive Israel....so they'll blow up sooner during Armageddon presumably! But, top Israeli officials, including Bibi himself, still court the support of these dangerous allies for their own purposes. And in the U.S., the loudest Jewish voices are the likes of the AIPAC Lobby and their media mouthpieces. They may not represent the majority of American Jews (according to even the latest polling data), but they have the most money and quick access to rightwing media...which they largely helped to get started 30 years ago anyway.

I'm out of time again, so I'll just leave the topic with this article I read by Jared Diamond in Discover Magazine 15 years ago: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human RaceDiamond draws from archaeological evidence that started coming in as far back as the 70's, which ran counter to the expectations that early farmers would live better than hunter-gatherer ancestors. In fact, the exact opposite occurred all around the world. In Europe, peasant farmers during the middle ages were still not living near as well, nor as long as those paleo-ancestors. Be careful with carelessly tossed around stats like life span and life expectancy. Usually the calculation of life expectancy eliminates the early deaths from childhood diseases, and once hunter-gatherers made it past their first five years, they lived relatively long lives, well into their 50's and 60's.

Not really! We have exhausted so much of this planet's resources that a plateau in population at 10.5 billion by mid-century is hardly any help! Truth is we would have reached zero population growth a lot sooner if it wasn't for the pernicious triumvirate of the Reagan Administration, JPII and the Vatican, and the Council of Islamic States, who may never have got together on any other issue, but they all agreed that allowing women free access to birth control was bad for them and their pet interests. The UN-sponsored efforts were largely defunded and populations grew much larger than they would have if women were allowed to stop having babies when they wanted to end baby-making. The big problem today with having over 7 billion people, is that it is already too large of a global population to sustain permanently even if we radically scale back on our environmental impacts. And what we are doing today is running a global economic regime that is dependent on more growth and inspiring more and more people to join the race to make and accumulate as much stuff as possible! So, it's not just the size of the human population that's a problem, it's also because the carbon footprints keep getting bigger and bigger with no attempts to shrink them down in size.

Absolutely! And the subject of the rise of patriarchal societies is just one aspect of the subject of anthropology. Is patriarchy a natural part of basic human nature? Or the result of adaptations to new technologies and new ways of living that allowed the more aggressive males to seize power and control women? I've already stated my case, and I still would only consider the rise of literacy to play a small part in the rise of patriarchies. It was much more crucial that the realization of a theory of paternity began and resulted in the demand for paternity certainty in some early agricultural societies. In advanced matrilocal societies, the men generally remain on the periphery of family life, and do not interfere with how the house is organized or ruled. Brothers and half-brothers of women with children, usually have a greater parental influence on the children than any likely actual father of the child....who more than likely might be living in a different house with a different woman by the time the children are growing into adulthood. Early anthropologists viewing simple to complex non-patriarchal societies, had difficult times trying to understand how family life was structured to begin with....especially how did the women decide who was/and who was not proper sexual partners for themselves and their daughters...who would remain living with them and eventually inherit the household. In brief, these are not societies that had a modern concept of nuclear family. Their lives were communal, and children were a communal obligation for all...so, who was or who was not the actual father didn't matter to begin with.

Nothing will stop ISIS and salve your faux outrage of the moment when the U.S. is secretly training them and sending weapons to ISIS camps in Syria: Image: Implausible deniability - "accidental" airdrops of weapons to ISIS militants, and now torrents of cash being routed through the allegedly unwitting US are but a few examples of how the West's "accidental" support props up the only organization in Syria capable of fighting its proxy war against Damascus for it. So many coincidences add up to concerted conspiracy. January 30, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Once again, another "coincidence" appears to be contributing to the so-called "Islamic State's" (ISIS) resilience and vast resources. A recent investigation being conducted by Pakistani security forces involving a captured ISIS fighter has revealed that he and many fighters alongside him, received funds that were routed through the US. The Express Tribune, an affiliate of the New York Times, recently reported in an article titled, "Startling revelations: IS operative confesses to getting funds via US," that: The Tribune would also reveal that the findings of the investigations were being shared with the United States. The source cited by the Tribune suggested a compelling theory as to why the US has attempted to portray itself as "at war with ISIS," stating: Indeed, the story reveals several troubling aspects regarding ISIS' operations in Syria. First, Al Salafi's ability to effortlessly enter into Syria through NATO-member Turkey, then escape back to Pakistan, again, via Turkey once again confirms that the source of ISIS' strength is not captured Syrian oil fields or ransoms paid in exchange for hostages, but rather from a torrent of fighters, arms, equipment, and cash flowing from NATO territory in Turkey. Second - the US does indeed claim to be at war with "ISIS," going as far as unilaterally bombing Syrian territory while claiming it must now train more militants not only to topple the Syrian government, but now also to fight ISIS - yet appears incapable of stopping torrents of cash flowing from its own borders into the hands of its implacable enemy. A similar conundrum presented itself amid the recent Paris killings, where France too is participating in military operations aimed at both toppling the Syrian government and allegedly fighting ISIS - yet claims to be unable to stop thousands of its own citizens from leaving its borders to join ISIS' ranks. The All-Selectively-Seeing Eyes of American Surveillance Finally, now that the US is reportedly aware that money destined for ISIS has been routed through its own borders, surely it can leverage its massive and continuously growing surveillance state to identify where the money originated from. The individuals, organization, or government that provided the funds can then suffer the same fate other "state sponsors of terrorism" have suffered at the hands of US foreign policy, including sanctions, invasion, and occupation. “The US had to dispel the impression that it is financing the group for its own interests and that is why it launched offensive against the organisation in Iraq but not in Syria,” he added.“The US has been condemning the IS activities but unfortunately has not been able to stop funding of these organisations, which is being routed through the US,” a source said. So, any chance they are doing the same damn thing in Libya? Good luck putting out the fires, when your military and secret services are starting the blazes! Same thing goes in Libya.....which I am surprised is one of the few topics right wing xenophobes NEVER criticize Obama for! Well, actually some rightwingers do...typically the isolationist 'fortress america' types, but they don't get any more attention than the "far left" media, because they are not favoured by mainstream rightwing media that wants to promote more wars and war&security spending. So while typical right wing media could only yack on and on about Benghazi, New American at least presented the larger story in context: Wednesday, 18 September 2013 Chaos Reigns After Obama Gave Libya to Jihadists; Syria May Be NextNow, it appears to analysts as though the disaster afflicting Libya — brought about in large part by the Obama administration and its allies in Europe and among Islamic autocracies — may be on the verge of being replicated in Syria. Of course, the countries and the wars are different in some respects, but the parallels between what is going on in Syria and what happened in Libya are undeniable. And those links are raising alarm bells — especially considering the sizeable Syrian Christian population and the current state of affairs in Libya, which continues to deteriorate. In Libya, as The New American documented extensively, the Obama administration decided to openly side with leaders of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups — many of which boasted publicly during the conflict that they had recently been fighting against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who served as a key U.S. government ally in its terror war until falling out of favor, was eventually brutalized and summarily executed after his regime was pounded into the ground by Obama-backed jihadist rebels and overwhelming American air power. So, after deposing the former ally - Colonel Gadaffi and allowing chaos to be unleashed in Libya, who is most to blame for ISIS coming in and setting up operations, taking advantage of the chaos? If the Obama Administration decided that deposing Gadaffi was a good idea, then they are responsible for ensuring the security of minorities....like these Coptic Christians, and the hundreds of immigrant workers from Sub-Sahel Africa who were murdered earlier on, after the fall of the Gadaffi regime! But, you didn't care about those massacres....or at least you never considered those lives important.

Is anyone here actually talking about Rob Ford still? This fat, stupid, bloated, drug-addled bastard, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, somehow was handpicked as the everyman of the conservative movement! That tells me everything I need to know about the uber-rich in Canada, and their think tanks and the goddawful media they spawn......nice to see that at least the Sunnews channel went down the toilet where it belongs! I haven't noticed much talk about that lately. Maybe they're all getting prepared for the next right wing "equal time" TV news venture.