WIP

And a broken watch can give you the correct time twice a day! So, the broken watch is more on the ball than Michelle Bachmann. I think we can certainly use this as an example of correlation not proving causation....after all, it's not like Michelle Bachmann ever read any oil industry reports or has a thimble-full of knowledge of the oil business in her brain!

Like all empires of the past, the U.S. is either going to reach a point where it realizes that it cannot continue paying for the costs of increasing military expenses and associated costs of running an empire, or it won't....and it will collapse like a house of cards! It's not like there is a choice to maintain the status quo forever.

Let's be honest about this - "regime change" is not, and never has been about promoting western-style democracy abroad! Otherwise, shouldn't they have started with Saudi Arabia? The game is, and always has been about Neocolonialism. In the past, empires and despots were at least honest about their plans and intentions....nothing subtle about it! We're going to enslave you and your people, and plunder your land for wealth, because this god-forsaken place is too hot, and is too rife with malaria for any of us to want to settle here permanently! Otherwise we would have just ethnically cleansed you right out of this place and moved our people in....because God is on our side....we're the shining beacon of light on the hill, blah blah blah etc. etc. etc. But, after WWII, the collapse of an indebted British Empire was superceded by a new American Empire, that worked in the background of useful tinpot dictators who served to rubberstamp whatever foreign interests desired: open the mines, set up plantations, exploit whatever you like....which was mostly raw materials in previous times, but now includes controlling all aspects of third world life...including privatizing health and social services....I won't go into detail, but if you poke around for the causes of the West African Ebola Epidemic spiraling out of control, your going to find the fingerprints of the IMF and World Bank! What sets Afghanistan apart from other subjects of regime change, like Iraq and Libya, is Afghanistan has no value except for its strategic location. After prolonged drying out of the climate in this region (likely a product of global warming) there is nothing that will grow in most of Afghanistan except for opium poppies! And Afghanistan, being an agrarian society, after 13 years of U.S. occupation, the country is exactly where it was before the Taleban takeover: a corrupt national government that controls little more than the capital city, wealthy and corrupt local warlords running the drug business and an even greater dependency on foreign money to maintain the Afghan Army...for what it's worth! So, what was the point? Damned if I know!

I'm a little surprised - I actually agree with what I see as the consensus of opinion here: -get the flu shot if you are part of a high risk group (elderly or have a suppressed immune system) - or have young children; otherwise, use your own discretion on the issue. So, if you rarely have serious colds and flu's, don't bother with it, unless you work with a high risk group - like the elderly. My mother is 96 - going on 97, and living in a nursing home for the past three years. Her residence was at a low level quarantine when I last visited Saturday, so gloves and masks were available at the main entrance, and visitors reminded that if they have a cough, scratchy throat, sneeze...or any other possible cold or flu symptom, to put on the mask and the gloves! So far, there hasn't been any change over the last few days, but if it gets more serious, then the gloves and masks become mandatory for ALL visitors. This all seems to be common sense, and if I was working in a hospital or nursing home, I would expect to have to take a flu shot regardless of its efficacy or any possible side effects. My main beef with mass immunization is that, even if there are no side effects, mass immunization against new flu strains weakens our immune response to a pathogen that is harmless to most of us! At one time, they used to just advocate the flu vaccine for at risk groups, not everyone. If this was something like the Ebola virus....okay, I would go along with a mass immunization campaign against some new strain of Ebola that was spreading out of control. Otherwise..........................

Did this make any sense while you were writing it?

Thanks.

The same could be said of the acceptance of abolishing slavery a couple of centuries ago. The progressives who began the abolishionist movements in England did not have tradition behind them when they were preaching reforms. In the U.S., entire churches like the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians etc. split over the slavery issue and have remained divided ever since. Why is slavery today considered unchristian by most, when it was sanctioned up until the 1800's in America? The most likely answer was that the change was needed because of the changing attitudes that were seeded by recognizing and expanding the rights of the individual. Even the framers of the Constitution, who were trying to figure out how to put together a secular, democratic state when it was made up of abolitionist and slave-holding states could not resolve that question and put it off for future generations to deal with....which they did with the bloody Civil War of the 1860's! Today, even young evangelicals are pulling away from their churches and demanding changes on social issues such as gay rights, because they are growing up in a world where previously secretive, shamed and closeted homosexuals no longer have to hide in the shadows or flee to gay ghettos in major cities. Today, in many areas, they can live openly and let everyone know they are homosexuals. The younger evangelicals may also have some awareness of the new science which has shed much light on how our sexual orientations are determined. The takeaway from the reports I have read is that while there is quite a bit of fluidity in female sexual orientation (many more women than men identify as bisexual, or switch orientation during their lives) it does not happen with gay men....no different than heterosexual men suddenly deciding that they are gay! That, btw is why we are always suspicious of the fervent evangelists who are the most obsessed with 'the sin of homosexuality.' How many times have they turned out to be gays themselves who spent a life brainwashed to hate themselves and their feelings and seeking relief by railing against homosexuality. Most of us who are straight have never considered this issue priority#1 regardless of how we felt about the issue. So, if younger evangelicals are being turned off by the churches that preach that their gay friends are sinners going to hell, and they feel have unrealistic sexual morality standards to begin with, not to mention see these churches as too political - too close to Republican politics in the U.S., where the majority of young evangelicals consider climate change a real and serious issue...after all, they will spend more of their lives dealing with it than we will....then it looks like it is time for the zeitgeist of church thinking to edge forward also! Just as with slavery, it will divide churches, leaving some on both sides of a bitter dispute; but eventually the rejectionist holdouts die of old age, just as the pro-slavery segrationists died out until they had no more influence. Why Young Evangelicals Are Leaving The Church - CNN And the most recent episode of PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly had an interesting report on the problems that Focus on the Family and evangelical churches in their home base of Colorado Springs Colorado are facing in trying to deal with younger evangelicals who are drifting away or demanding change, and the leaders who are trying to respond to the challenge while maintaining what they see as biblical principles. I listen to the audio podcast upload of the show; the PBS video is posted here. This feature begins about 3 minutes in to the broadcast. Regarding the wider issue of what we consider secularism, I have done much reading in recent weeks, but haven't felt the time to post challenges to how secularism is presented by both the religious opponents of secularism, and the non-religious and atheist supporters of secularism. What I am finding of late, reading through the history of where the notion of secularism began in western culture is that it is a product of the Enlightenment, and if it has an absolute beginning, it would be with the dualistic philosophy of Rene Descartes 300 years ago, when he, like virtually all of his contemporaries were Christians, but seen the prevailing thinking of the time which believed in animist life forces pervading nature, as being a hindrance to progress. Descartes wanted a clear line drawn between what is divine and what is natural; so in dealing with the human mind, he created a philosophy to try to explain mental function now known as Cartesian Dualism - here, the brain (what little was understood during his time) as well as the body are inert matter, no different than the rocks and the soil around us. But, what made us alive was the infusion of soul, or mind - interfacing with the pineal gland under the brain according to his theory so that the soul could direct the body. What has been missed regarding the separation of divine and matter by Descartes and later philosophers like Immanuel Kant, who thought out a complete separation of science from religion....putting them in the separate magisterias where religion would run the spiritual life, while science and government would function in a secular realm where religion is kept out. Over the years, the scientific establishment found less and less of merit regarding religion and even philosophy - as many of the harshest critics of religion today, like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have as much contempt for philosophy as they do for theology. They want a world where science answers all questions and is even the source of spiritual contemplation. So, it's worth taking a step back and look at the history of modern secularism and consider that it didn't begin with dogmatic atheists trying to destroy religion! Instead, secularism which wants an unenchanted world that we can freely exploit, was the product of earlier religious thinkers who wanted religion out of the way of development - which at that time was exploiting the land, mining and building factories. The change in thinking about nature was every bit as much a catalyst for the Industrial Era as any inventions that the Enlightenment created. So, after Christianity created this Frankenstein monster of a secular world devoid of any spiritual appreciation of nature and life itself, I would like to know how religion finds its place again. One place it won't be found is in the modern fundamentalist theologies that follow right along with the secular libertarian dismantling and destruction of nature for useable products.

I knew there would be many here (on a predominantly right wing board) who sympathize with the billionaire, rather than the wage earners, that's why I posted the entire letter. The reason why that eye opening, candid response by a major capitalist caught my eye and seemed relevant to local job losses in the GTA is that the threat of withdrawing capital and closing factories and other businesses applies here as much as it does in France, Latin America, Africa or Asia. Before you joined here, I posted a thread about that horrible sweatshop fire in Bangladesh, because soon after the tragedy, it was already apparent that the fire, the loss of life (this was actually only the worst of similar fires and workplace accidents that caused death of workers before and after that fire) were products of globalization every bit as much as the job losses in my area, Europe and the poorest countries like Bangladesh, which are accepting whatever terms the capitalists wishing to set up shop throw at them. In the case of the Dacca fire at that sweatshop set up to supply cheap clothing to Walmart and other major retailers, employment conditions if anything, were worse than anything Dickens wrote about in his novels of capitalist excess and abuse 150 years ago in London! Workers were paid an average of 35c an hour with no paid overtime, no benefits, the factory - needless to say - had no real safety standards that were enforced, workplace injuries were common...as was sexual harassment and sex abuse of the mostly female workforce. All the local government officials cared about was reaping the benefits of having that factory there, and yet, in spite of this rock bottom pay and work standards environment, Walmart executives visiting Bangladesh and sending emails, were threatening to pull their purchase agreements and turn to new sweatshops being set up in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. That's why more than a few analysts determined that the pressure applied by Walmart to keep lowering prices (which is typical for their operations wherever their suppliers are located) was the main catalyst that led to the disaster. The take away for me is that if your job is at risk even when you are working for 35c an hour with no health and safety conditions, then there is no bottom to the floor created by globalization, which has allowed the owners of capital to pick up and move whenever they want to threaten or leverage their workers for more concessions. So anyone who is not a wage earner, and is living off of capital may consider this system to be proper, and those who are swimming in the wake of the major capitalists, like the army of flunkies - lawyers, accountants, engineers and other professionals who they need to actually run their operations - may also prefer to benefit off the misery of those under them in the economic pecking order since it provides them higher status than the majority, but everybody else....who is a wage earner, rather than an investor or a business owner is an absolute fool if they identify their interests with the owners, rather than fellow workers. I have these sorts of arguments all the time at work, because among those of us who are part of the dying breed of unionized, well compensated workers, we have a staggering number of clueless idiots who think they have more power than what they actually have these days! Unionized workers who receive middle class incomes are now the wealthy minority of the working class, and there are lots of people further down the pay scale in non-union jobs who despise us because we earn twice or three times what they do. And since the unions in the private sector are a dying force thanks to globalization, the time came to attack public sector unions....since government jobs aren't subject to the movements of capital directly. That's why - in case anyone hasn't noticed yet - that right wing media from the Sun to the Post to the Globe and all of the assorted and U.S.-funded right wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute, have started a strategy to take down public sector workers today....just as they did in the U.S. starting about 10 or 15 years ago. First, there would be years of non-stop onslaughts about greedy teachers, municipal and state employees (they usually have enough sense to avoid criticizing fire and police though) in the media, which was mostly ignored by both the public and remaining private sector unions, and then what do you know? Once the public impression of teachers and government workers was poisoned sufficiently, then it's time for the pigs like Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and that bald headed creep in Florida...whatever his name is, to pull the switch and enact modeled legislation disbanding their unions. So, the final point is that those of us who are wage slaves are all in this together...whether we work in manufacturing or for the government or are working for barely minimum wage in a Tim Hortons! Globalization has put the hammer in the hands of the owners, who as you can see from that candid letter to a French Government official above, feel entitled to take almost all of the surplus income that their workers earn for them. All someone like him feels is there obligation is to leave enough behind through wages - to maintain their workers for another day of work....no different than legal slavery for that matter! And that's where all of the worshipers of capital are taking us today. Because those who are the most privileged, feel they are superior to us and entitled to all of the privileges they can leverage for themselves. Sounds like time for everyone else to educate themselves and organize against the owners, because all we have are sheer numbers - being in the majority. If we take our eye off the ball and follow the misdirections that the billionaires and their propagandists throw in front of us, we will keep sliding down hill, because we live in a new era of diminishing returns on capital, and the only way the capitalists can extract what they feel they are entitled to is to keep taking more and more from us! That is all.

Then don't pontificate on any moral issues whatsoever, if you're not going to recognize the rights of future generations. It's bad enough that our children are mostly growing up in an era of diminishing expectations, but add to that the declines will continue until nothing is left because immediate pleasure was considered more important than long term needs.

It's worth mentioning that the reason why no one is guaranteed a decent job today has a lot to do with the dictatorial power that has been placed in the hands of factory and business owners through globalization policies, that allow them to just close up shop and move to the cheapest third or fourth world countries to make cheaper products that are allowed to be sold here. And here's a story I just heard about recently that illustrates how the executive sees the workers and what they feel they are entitled to. This is from a letter sent to a French Government official by the CEO of Titan International, regarding requests he received to keep a Goodyear factory in France open: In January, Mr. Montebourg tried to entice Titan back to the negotiating table, saying he hoped unions would put “some water in their wine, that managers put some wine in their water, and that Titan would drink the wine and the water of both” and reach an accord. But late last month, as union workers protested en masse at the Amiens site, with a large police presence, Goodyear told workers it would close the plant and cut its French work force by 39 percent. In his letter, dated Feb. 8, Mr. Taylor explained his reasons for refusing to come back to the negotiating table. “Goodyear tried for over four years to save part of the Amiens jobs that are some of the highest-paid, but the French unions and the French government did nothing but talk,” Mr. Taylor wrote. “Sir, your letter says you want Titan to start a discussion,” he added. “How stupid do you think we are? Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tires. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government.” He said his company would seek to produce cheaper tires in India or China, where he said Titan would pay the workers less than one euro an hour, and then sell the tires back to the French. He predicted that Michelin, the French tiremaker, would not be able to compete with lower prices and would have to halt production in France within five years. “You can keep your so-called workers,” he wrote. “Titan is not interested in the Amiens factory.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/business/american-executive-lashes-out-at-french-unions-touching-off-uproar.html

And I would say that if Chris Hedges was dishonest, he could still be making a good living out of it....like his colleagues at the N.Y. Times who went along with being cheerleaders for the Iraq War. For example: Judith Miller lied about her Iraq sources and influenced public support in favour of the Iraq Invasion, and was rewarded for being wrong and supporting Bush Administration policy. And like so many other useful idiots, she was rewarded, while those who refused to jump on the bandwagon were cut by the major newspapers and networks for getting it right! I'm reading the excerpt that quote is taken from on google books. Haidt presents it as coming from an email from an angry conservative, and starts to emote about doing a poor job understanding how conservatives view fairness: focusing on proportionality rather than equality. And he claims that their views appear uncharitable, but are derived from principles like the Protestant Work Ethic and Karma, but that quote, which is proceeded by one claiming that his hard earned money is being funneled off to support welfare mothers and crack babies, and another example mentioned all just happen to be women who are the focus of conservative vitriol....single mothers....if I could read more of their emails, I'm sure we would get to the part where these "non-producers" just happen to be black also. I've heard Haidt doing the rounds on public radio show interviews, so I'm a little familiar with his line of thought, and yes, I would conclude the same things that Hedges concludes here: that Johnathan Haidt's notion of moral pluralism is a sign that he has no moral compass himself. He seems to have some liberal views, but he doesn't condemn the tea party-type rhetoric that we find here. Instead he seems to agree or at least sympathize to a large degree with these self-centered assholes writing to him, so I wouldn't say that Hedges has lied about anything as you are trying to paint the picture here. If Haidt can't distinguish these views from his own, then I'm going to assume that he shares them also! A brief list of Haidt's ideology shows him as all over the map, so maybe that's why he's pushing this idea of moral pluralism. He believes government should restrain corporate excesses (liberal), regulation is necessary for public safety (liberal), markets are "miraculous" (libertarian conservative), and "you can't help the bees by destroying the hive" (social conservative). As far as Johnathan Haidt's theories go, there are a few things that I agree with, but his presentation on liberalism and conservatism is bullshit. Conservatism is an authoritarian political philosophy; it was created in the wake of the French Revolution as a way to maintain social harmony in unequal societies like England, which had rigid class systems. Conservatives are still authoritarian personalities in this age also. A far better analysis of liberal and conservative mindsets is found in The Authoritarians by Robert Altemeyer written in 2006, and available free of charge at that University of Manitoba website. As the book title suggests, Altemeyer's main focus is on the authoritarian personality - the followers who make up the mass of supporters that enable an authoritarian despot. But, the book also includes analysis of the differences between conservative and liberal personality types...the fact that external events play a determining factor with some people in the middle....who will tend to become more liberal and open-minded during peaceful times when they don't fear any threats, but will shift towards conservatism when they perceive a threat. If the threat is significant enough - like an event such as 9-11, then a lot of moderate to liberal people will shift to the right. But, unlike the natural, ideological conservatives, they will move back towards more liberal positions once a perceived danger has past. This finding and the correlation between being conservative and being raised in strict homes where corporal punishment was used/ while being liberal correlated with growing up in more permissive homes without the use of corporal punishment, led Altemeyer to conclude that being conservative or liberal was a matter of nurture, rather than nature, as Johnathan Haidt believes these worldviews largely emanate from innate characteristics. I mentioned Pinker's frequent use of the bogus distinction between "equity" feminism and "gender" feminism, and I could care less whether he invented it, or just liked it so much that he keeps using it when he's talking about women and gender issues. Pinker regards examples where violence is increasing as being anomalies that run counter to the general trend towards less violence. I heard him do a talk about the post-WWII era he called "The Long Peace," mainly because there was no world war since then and no nuclear annihilation as many expected. Sure as hell gave me the impression that he viewed this peace as improving and continuing on into the future! btw his talk about a "long peace" is another example of his ethnocentrism; since it's been a long peace for us here in North America, or in Europe, but it hasn't been peaceful in much of Africa and Asia, where the U.S. fought proxy wars with the Soviet Union and now fights wars of commercial opportunism today. I never said I bought his books! I said I read articles by him and heard him in many interviews and a few lectures. Sounds like you jumped from the side of cold hard reality to the side of comfortable humanistic delusion. Can't completely say I blame you, and I'll give one quick example, if you're going to denigrate Paul Ehrlich as being a doom-monger for trying to wake everyone up 40 years ago to some of the dangerous trends that were already being established. Earlier today, I was listening to one of my science podcasts, and they were discussing a recent published study of the Permian-Triassic Extintion, otherwise known as the Great Dying Event, because at least 90% of sea creatures and 95% of land animals went extinct during that time about 250 million years ago. It seems more accurate analysis of rock strata at the time reveals that a huge spike in CO2 levels lasted about 200,000 years, and during that time global average temperatures increased about 10 degrees C. Now the kicker is that only about half, or 5 degrees warming was caused by the active volcanism of that time, which occurred in Siberia, in what is called the Siberian Traps. The other 5 degrees came as the result of a positive feedback effect that released sequestered carbon into the atmosphere - most of it likely coming from methane clathrates in Arctic and Antarctic waters that were released when the waters began to warm above a threshold temperature. Worth considering that today we are being told that the IPCC goal of stopping the heating of the planet at 2 degrees C is considered a lost cause today, and serious estimates are now that there will be between 4 and 6 degrees warming at the end of this century. To me, that sounds like we have already set a planetary extinction in motion that will take out the human race and most life as well. And aside from these people you call doomsayers, no one else is saying anything or doing anything to stop it. And that makes me a doomsayer also.

Except that up till now, the Catholic Church hierarchy has been above the law in almost every country where they have power. When the Scouts, public schools and football and hockey teams are found to be covering for sex offenders (I think you're making it up about Girl Guides, unless you can show me of an example where they've had sex scandals) heads roll.....unless they take the easy way out and die before the justice system has a chance to indict them, as in the case of Joe Paterno.

A report on the local economy here in Hamilton tells the story that's hidden in those blurbs that appear on the nightly news: "No full time work, no benefits, and no job security." is why so many people are struggling to make ends meet even if they are working today, and gaps in income keep growing. The study shows that Hamilton is in the same predicament as most of Canada....and the rest of the world for that matter -- the benefits that have come along in the last 20 years are mostly being kicked up to the top and the middle class continues to shrink. The effects are especially bad for younger people who have come in to the job market in the new era of part time and contract work that is phasing out more and more full time employment. Here's a look at some of the report's findings: Only 60 per cent of GTA and Hamilton workers today have stable, secure jobs. Barely half of those working today are in permanent, full-time positions that provide benefits and a degree of employment security. At least 20 per cent of those working are in precarious forms of employment. Another 20 per cent are in employment relationships that share at least some of the characteristics of precarious employment. Precarious employment has increased by nearly 50 per cent in the last 20 years. For more on the side effects of precarious employment: http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/2013/02/23/hamilton-precarious-employment-report.html

Is better than manifest destiny and we're superior to savages!

My last post applies to your line of thinking btw. How long do you think we can keep this bullshit running? Our system is running on fumes right now. Some of the latest economics reports on resource development are showing a clear trend indicating diminishing returns from resource exploitation. As actuary - Gail Tverberg, Richard Heinberg, and many other serious analysts who've studied the mining and resource industries have tried to point out over the last 10 years - resource extraction works by the principle of picking the low-hanging fruit first. Well guess what! In most non-renewable resources, the low-hanging fruit is gone, and what's left requires more energy, more water and more capital investment to extract. this is the law of diminishing returns that have been ignored since the advent of the Enlightenment recategorized nature as inert and mere products available for us to freely exploit. During the last 150 years of the Industrial Era we have almost used up what is feasibly recoverable. So the only question that remains is will civilization collapse in the near future, or will it just keep grinding down until it disintegrates? Because I don't see the path to lead most people back to the pre-industrial view of having respect for nature and that's where issues as disparate as 'what to do about the natives' and 'how did our environment turn into such a clusterf**k' bump in to each other. Like I said before, if our ancestors who went about exploring, conquering, and christianizing new lands had taken the attitude that 'maybe people who've lived here for thousands of years might know a thing or two we can use' instead of 'God gave us this land, our ways are superior to everything else' history might have turned out a little different, and we may not have Iphones today, but we might also not have to ponder whether the human race will be extinct in a couple of centuries either! For further reading: Our Investment Sinkhole Problem

One thing the haters can't buy a clue on is that the main goal of residential schooling was to destroy family life and culture of indigenous societies whose children were forced into the residential schooling system. As with many things, once it's broken, it's very hard to fix afterwards! Right now, as we observe a warming and overcrowded world, and sit staring into an abyss of our own making because of our over-exploitation of nature inspired by the sheer hubris of enlightenment ideology, it would be nice to hear the alternative perspective of more people who still considered nature to be sacred and had a duty to refrain from unbridled exploitation of the environment........but we didn't listen to those old, antiquated ways and tried to reprogram their children to forget the old ways and tried to force them to adapt to consumer capitalism or in most cases, be left sitting on the margins of our society without enough unspoiled land and water to live by tradition even if they do try to recover past knowledge.

Can't help noticing that your responses to all incidents of injustice suffered by non-whites are stupid, racist and/or just plain irrelevant!

Started reading, but I'm going to have to go over this later when I have more time to think about it.

You are the ignorant, narrow minded one who does not read anything outside of his comfort zone! How do you think I discovered the critiques of Hedges and others in the first place? I used to be marching right along with the modern secular atheist dogma based on a myth that the human race broke historic cycles that kept us mired in ignorance when the period of the Enlightenment allowed for a separation of nature and the complete exploitation of nature could begin. The enlightenment thinkers see this as the great new beginning that leads to continual, unending progress....which is where Pinker comes in, because his entire moral theory that we began as savages, and have advanced ourselves towards peace and enlightenment through secularism and liberal capitalism, is premised on the belief that this way of life will continue on into the future....which is why you will never hear him in any of his lectures and book promotion interviews deal with the reality we are facing in the last five years, when exploitation of nature is beginning to show signs of reaching hard limits. Pinker probably just hopes like Tom Friedman and others, that someone will come up with techno-fixes to spin out of the rut and keep right on going! I was following everything Pinker wrote and said before, which is why I never felt the need to buy any of his public audience-level books! Why the hell bother, when he does so many lectures and interviews, that everything is out there anyway? So, since you've read all of his books - tell me, does he mention anywhere in the book about his early youth experiences during the Montreal Riots? During a police strike, the City of Montreal turned into complete anarchy; and in a number of interviews I listened to him do, he mentions the Montreal Riots as pivotal in re-assessing his attitudes about people. He started siding with a 'man the savage' view, and his critics who have noted that his book is based on spotty and likely cherrypicked research to present the view that paleo hunter/gatherers were constantly killing each other is based on a flimsy foundation. And when it gets to "look how peaceful and unwarlike we are today" this is music to the ears of so much of the modern power structure that runs business and government today, that's why I see Pinker as more of a propagandist than an actual scientist!

That's why I was reluctant to post on this thread. I didn't even realize I was posting on a thread related to Columbine and school shootings....or how some evangelical gun enthusiasts are trying to spin their way out of any responsibility for carnage. The present discussion should be on a new thread.

This is the point where empathy is called for! Because I don't know what it feels like to live life as a woman, as a racial or ethnic minority, or as a gay or lesbian etc.. These are experiences that I can only gain some deeper appreciation for by listening to how those who live their lives as women, minorities or gays describe it. And, it's not the same for every woman, minority or gay. It depends on so many physical and cultural circumstances that are different for each individual. When it comes to issues of public safety, safe workplace etc., I've noticed that women who are small in stature are more guarded and quick to regard a situation as unsafe, compared to a woman who is bigger, stronger...especially a few I know who have a good deal of martial arts training. And social class is part of the equation also; since women who do not have cars and have to ride public transit at night, consider the modern west to still be an unsafe place. I was a little surprised and disappointed while I was posting frequently on a forum that deals mostly with religion and life issues, that the upper middle class women (who were more likely to identify themselves as post-feminist, considering gender issues solved today) did not feel obstacles blocking their personal success and felt safe where they lived, had little or no appreciation for the experiences of women who had to live in more threatening circumstances. So, women aren't always supportive of other women, and can be just as prejudicial as men can against those whom they don't identify with.

You presented rape and rape accusation as equal in the OP, which was followed by comments saying accusation of rape was worse and others saying it was equal. Later in post#8 you say you would personally rather be raped than accused of rape, but "maybe a woman would have a different opinion"....how generous! And you restated that opinion in response to me which leads me to conclude that you feel the accusation is worse than the act of rape, and that's where I conclude that you consider rape something trivial and have never spoken to or listened to a rape victim. Later in post#18 you're saying you could have phrased the OP better.....which leaves what? The impression and attitude is still left out there of an equivalency between rape and those falsely accused of rape. And, I didn't feel like carrying this further, which is why I didn't bother responding to your last post to me leading with your chin, where you discounted the sheer volume of rape incidents...especially those that go unreported vs. the few cases of false rape accusation. But, since this is a thread that may never die and live on like some zombie devouring all common sense, I added a long post with a lot of links to articles I had read in the last week...in case someone here actually would notice them. So, I just want to go back to the one regarding the fallout of allowing an atmosphere that trivializes rape....in this case it was the extreme example of bad manners - telling rape jokes, and the validation any rapists feel when they're around guys who they believe think like they do: Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down- 6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act. 6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked. A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists? Rapists do. They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again. Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape. If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves. Now; this thread isn't about rape jokes, but presenting this argument of equivalency of false rape accusation and rape could easily be seen as giving aid and comfort to rapists.....for the obvious reason that any serial rapist is likely going to be accused at some point in his life. If the 1 in 20 stat is roughly accurate, that would mean that there are many readers....maybe a few active members....possibly even one or two on this thread who have committed rape during their lifetime, but pass it off as: 'she was a c*** tease and led me on' and 'I could tell she really wanted it anyway' or similar justifications that many rapists will use so that they don't have wear the label "rapist" around their necks.

Dawkins's gene-centered view doesn't do a good job of explaining how kin altruism develops. A lot of the holes they poke in the concept of group selection seem to focus on the gaps in understanding of how colony insect societies function. How thousands and even millions of creatures with tiny brains are able to organize and coordinate together with complex strategies without any sort of leadership or apparent hierarchies.

Christina Hoff Summers is a hack in the first place. No one would have heard of her if she wasn't promoted by the right wing think tank - American Enterprise Institute....same with Pinker for that matter. The fact that Pinker quotes from her still....as I recently heard in an interview of him on the Point Of Inquiry podcast shows that he is still skating along that fine line of being anti-feminist...and likely for much the same reasons as Hoff-Summers, since they are both right wing idealogues who start getting the shakes whenever the concept of group identity and group rights is considered! That is the core reason why Hoff-Summers came up with this nonsense in the first place and why Pinker likes it so much: because they can pretend to stand apart from old patriarchal standards and be supporters of the feminist movement, while denying any sort of redress that threatens their concept of individual rights. It's no different than those libertarians who claim to be against racism, but are also opposed to steps to repair past wrongs like affirmative action programs. The only difference is that the libertarian humanist is doing it with the ideological baggage of promoting individual rights....where everyone lives in a darwinian survival of the fittest social environment presumably!