Who are the CIA? This will tell you everything you need to know. Here’s where things really started to go wrong: 1947, the National Security Act, which created the National Security Council and the CIA, giving the CIA sweeping, ultra-secretive, unconstitutional powers, and near limitless budget through the legalized, covert
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Writings of J. Todd Ring: A few thoughts on empathy in human beings, and other living creatures
Empathy is natural in human beings, as Jeremy Rifkin has pointed out – and with strong backing by recent scientific findings. Some human beings have more and some less; and some are sociopaths – roughly 1% (and usually, the ones who gravitate to positions of wealth and power, unsurprisingly) –
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Capitalism: Swing Your Sledgehammer
It’s all about vision and hope, in an effort to envision how economics and markets can exist after the toxicity of capitalism is gone, gone gone. Are you up for it? Last night, John Holloway, author of Crack Capitalism, was the SFU Institute for the Humanities‘ guest lecturer, skyped in
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: New studies show babies have basically decent impulses and are strongly driven by moral imperatives
More research shows once again that compassion, empathy and mutual aid, and an instinct toward cooperation, are innate in human beings, confirming what the great Russian biologist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin had already amply demonstrated over a hundred years ago, in his monumental work, Mutual Aid. My but our
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: New studies show generosity and cooperation are both natural and intelligent
A new study shows a mathematical proof that generosity leads to evolutionary success. Biologists offer a mathematically based explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature [Credit: Web] “Ever since Darwin,” Plotkin said, “biologists have been puzzled about why there is so much apparent cooperation, and even flat-out generosity
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Love, sympathy and mutual aid are natural – we have to be taught to be greedy little narcissists
During a California wildfire rescue workers ran out of crates to place rescued animals, forcing them to put a fawn and a bobcat kitten in an office together. When they got back they found that fawn and the bobcat cuddling and the pair became inseparable. Yes, compassion,
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