What The Fucks Going On Blog

Teacher Sued for “endorsement of irreligion”

Teacher Sued For Bashing Christianity -- Will Others Be Censored?

A teacher in California was found to have violated a student’s First Amendment rights by disparaging religion in the classroom. The ruling could silence outspoken teachers. 

Corbett exhibited hostility toward religion and “endorsement of irreligion” in the legal complaint, Farnan’s lawyers introduced tapes that Chad had recorded of his AP European history classes.

March 27, 2010  |  

Most weekdays, some 2,700 students crowd the sidewalks and hallways of Capistrano Valley High School, which is a quick drive from Orange County, California’s finest beaches. Capo, as the school is informally known, boasts a champion surf team as well as a prestigious academic reputation, among other distinctions.

The world’s most powerful megachurch, Saddleback, is about eight miles south of Capo; nearby are the skyline-dominating Crystal Cathedral and the nation’s largest Christian broadcast network. Non-Christian faiths, too, have set up shop in the OC, home to growing numbers of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian worshipers. In fact, for all the associations of Orange County with implants and Botox and for all the TV shows that depict a shamelessly decadent lifestyle, such as “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” this is foremost a highly religious place.

All of which has come to play out in the classroom of history teacher James Corbett, the defendant in a federal lawsuit that, depending on its outcome in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, could threaten traditional notions of academic freedom.

In late 2007, Corbett was sued for making disparaging comments about religion in the classroom and, in so doing, violating a student’s First Amendment rights. It may come as a surprise to many, but the First Amendment not only prohibits the state from endorsing a religion; it also has been interpreted to mean the state may not express hostility toward religion.

At 63, Corbett has taught government and Advanced Placement history and art history at Capo for the last 20 years. He previously taught at Lincoln, Stephens and Catawba colleges and Beirut University College in Lebanon. He has a PhD in rhetoric and journalism from Ohio State University but decided he’d prefer teaching high-performing high school students to the tenure-track professor life. Corbett is a self-described polymath who reads constantly: recent books include The Dumbest Generation and Guns, Germs and Steel, along with “anything by Howard Zinn and Barbara Tuchman.” 

Corby, as some of his students affectionately refer to him, is admired by many for his rigorous Advanced Placement classes that selective colleges demand of their applicants. But there’s no doubt Corbett offended some with his provocatively left-leaning, George W. Bush-bashing politics. Still, the lawsuit against him came as a complete shock.

It was mid-December 2007 and the day began unremarkably for Corbett until then Principal Tom Ressler called him to the office in the middle of class. A few minutes earlier, a Christian legal organization in Murietta, Calif., called the Advocates for Faith and Freedom had dropped the suit on his desk. Attorneys Jennifer Monk and Robert Tyler and the student named in the suit, Chad Farnan of Mission Viejo, then held a press conference on the school steps.

To back up their claim that Corbett exhibited hostility toward religion and “endorsement of irreligion” in the legal complaint, Farnan’s lawyers introduced tapes that Chad had recorded of his AP European history classes.

Then 15, Chad had enrolled in Corbett’s class because he was advised by a school counselor to take AP classes in order to be a strong candidate for UCLA and USC. Corbett remembers Chad as a kid who never spoke in class, except when it came to recording.

“He asked in class, ‘Can I record lectures?’” I said, ‘No, you have to learn how to take notes,” Corbett says. He also remembers telling Chad there’s no way he’d have time to listen to the hour-and-20-minute recordings from every class on a regular basis. Chad said in court documents that he put the recorder on the desk or on his backpack in plain view; Corbett says he never knew he was being taped and that a student later told him the recorder was hidden in Chad’s backpack.

 
After the suit was filed, Chad went on to appear on Fox News, which played the recordings, proving both embarrassing, and in Corbett’s opinion, highly unfair due to being taken out of context. Corbett’s tapes included comments like, “When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t always see the truth” or “Everywhere in the world. From conservative Christians in this country to, um, Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan. It’s the same. It’s stunning how vitally interested they are in controlling women.”

Amy DePaul is a writer and college instructor who

MUST SEE TV: Jon Stewart Does Glenn Beck ***** 5 stars BRILLIANT !

http://www.americablog.com/2010/03/jon-stewart-on-why-glenn-beck-is-really.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americablog+%28AMERICAblog%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

NATO Tries to Silence a Truth-Teller in Afghanistan After Killing Pregnant Women

SEE VIDEO HERE: http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=1844

Q: Why would U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan go out of their way to smear a journalist?

A: Because he told the truth about a night raid that killed Afghan civilians, including pregnant women.

Last week, I spoke with Afghanistan-based journalist Jerome Starkey about his reporting on special forces raids that killed civilians and NATOs surprising–and disappointing–response. This video contains disturbing images, and an even more disturbing story of violence, and an attempt to silence a truth-teller. It shows why its absolutely essential that we keep pushing back against the Pentagon’s message machine.

Over the past few months, Starkey exposed two incidents where NATO initially claimed to have engaged and killed insurgents, when they’d in fact killed civilians, including school children and pregnant women. In both cases, when confronted with eye-witness accounts obtained by Starkey that clearly rebutted NATO’s initial claims, NATO resisted publicly recanting.

In the first case, NATO officials told him they no longer believed that the raid would have been justified if they’d known what they now know, but no official would consent to direct attribution for this admission.

In the second case, NATO’s initially made sensational claims that they’d discovered during the raid the bodies of pregnant women that had been bound, gagged and executed. Starkey’s reporting forcefully rebutted this claim. Instead of simply retracting their story, NATO went so far as to attempt to damage Starkey’s credibility by telling other Kabul-based journalists that they had proof he’d misquoted ISAF spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith. When Starkey demanded a copy of the recording, NATO initially ignored him and eventually admitted that no recording existed. NATO only admitted their story was false in a retraction buried several paragraphs deep in a press release that led with an attack on Starkey’s credibility.

Under Gen. Stanley McChrystal, NATO’s made a big show of apologizing early and often when civilians are killed in broad daylight. But Starkey’s reporting and ISAF’s reaction to it shows that their natural inclination to escape accountability remains strong and operative when they think they can get away with violent mistakes under the cover of darkness.

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Call to Action: Showdown on Wall Street, April 29!

Call to Action: Showdown on Wall Street, April 29!

http://showdowninamerica.org/showdown-wall-street

3/26/10 

National People’s Action issues a Call to Action for everyday people--small business owners and union members, homeowners and tenants, faith leaders, the employed and the unemployed--to join together in recognition of our shared fate and our commitment to democracy.

On April 29th, thousands will converge on Wall Street to reclaim America with one simple message: Americans deserve an economy that works for all of us, not just Wall Street!

Wall Street and big banks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo crashed our economy leaving millions without housing, work, and critical services.

Join us as we take the fight for financial reform into the belly of the beast!

Stay tuned for more event details, or email us for more information.

The Showdown on Wall Street is co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO and  
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Tea Party Founder, Short Memory, Bad Spelling

In an article noting reported racial epithets shouted at Democratic officials during a recent Washington, D.C., tea party protest, The Washington Times quoted Dale Robertson, founder of teaparty.org, as saying that Democrats are "trying to label the tea party, but I've never seen any racial slurs." However, Robertson himself was reportedly kicked out of a 2009 tea party event at which he carried a sign reading:

 

 

        Congress = Slaveowner,

        Taxpayer = Niggar.

    

 

 

"Don't retreat. Instead RELOAD!" Palin shoots off her mouth, inciting violence

 
Slaughter pointed to Sarah Palin specifically for "fanning the flames with coded rhetoric" against Democrats. After the health care bill passed, Palin wrote on her Twitter account, "Commonsense Conservatives and Lovers of America:

"Don't retreat. Instead RELOAD!"

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) angrily tweeted back to Palin Wednesday, "Reload?

Is your choice of words inciteful or ignorant?"

Fear Mongers--Limbaugh, Beck, et al--Inciting Wingnuts to Violence

  

"Rash Lamebore" (above) is why...

Republicans believe Obama:

is a socialist (67 percent)

wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (61 percent)

is Muslim (57 percent)

wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government (51 percent)

has done many things that are unconstitutional (51 percent)

was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible for the presidency (45 percent)

is a racist (42 percent)

is doing many things Adolf Hitler did (38 percent)

THEIR SOURCE:

Limbaugh: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." On his radio show, Limbaugh asserted that "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." Limbaugh has also repeatedly "compared Obama's health care policies to the Nazis' " [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/6/09]

 

Beck: "This is what Hitler did with the SS." Discussing Obama's call for a "civilian national security force" -- which was a reference to expanding the foreign service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps -- Beck said: "I'm finding this -- this is the hardest part to connect to. Because this is -- I mean, look, you know, David [Bellavia, former Army staff sergeant], what you just said is, you said, 'I'm not comparing' -- but you are. I mean, this is what Hitler did with the SS. He had his own people. He had the brownshirts and then the SS. This is what Saddam Hussein -- so -- but you are comparing that. And I -- I mean, I think America would have a really hard time getting their arms around that." [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 8/27/09]

Beck: "I read [Mein Kampf]" and "the Germans ... were an awful lot like we are now." After asking, "Did the Germans know?" Beck stated that "the scariest book I ever bought was Mein Kampf." He continued, "I went and I bought it and I read it, 'cause I wanted to answer that question. The answer was -- yes, they knew. I think the Germans, however, were an awful lot like we are now; we're kind of living in a denial like -- no, that can't really be happening. No, that really -- you don't want to believe some things but you have to. You have to actually think about them." [Glenn Beck, 6/10/09]

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama is a socialist

Limbaugh: "The facts are facts. The president is a socialist." On the March 24 broadcast of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh addressed the Harris poll, which he noted was flawed, saying: "'Antichrist' and 'Muslim' -- I don't know where they're getting that, because that's not a part of the program. I haven't really made that one of our topics here. ... Now, as far as this Hitler business, one of the first things that the National Socialist Party did was try to nationalize health care." He concluded, "I mean, the facts are facts. The president is a socialist. The number ought to be much higher than 67 percent." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/24/10]

Limbaugh: "We are fighting a fascist, social -- whatever you call it -- takeover and remaking of the United States." In September 2009, Limbaugh said: "The Republican Party's got problems -- do not misunderstand me -- but nothing posed by the Republican Party is a threatening as what Obama is doing," adding that "[w]e are fighting a fascist, social -- whatever you call it -- takeover and remaking of the United States." He then suggested that Obama wants "to tear up the Constitution and rewrite it," "take over the mortgage business," "put the federal government in charge of every dollar the American people have access to." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 9/17/09]

Morris: Obama is "going to adopt the entire socialist program by essentially circumventing the Constitution." On March 19, talking about President Obama's policies, Fox News contributor Dick Morris, who has repeatedly referred to Obama as a "socialist," stated: "I think he'll pass amnesty for illegal immigrants with it [reconciliation]; he'll pass cap and trade; he'll pass financial regulation; he'll pass the public option -- between the House doing the 'deem to have passed' and the Senate doing reconciliation, he's got his own little Constitution going here." He later added that Obama "is going to adopt the entire socialist program by essentially circumventing the Constitution." [Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor; 3/19/10]

Beck: Obama "is so clearly" a socialist. Talking about an interview Obama had with The New York Times, during which Obama was asked, "Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?" Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Beck "started" the trend of questioning whether Obama is a socialist because Beck was "calling him socialist on your show." Beck replied that Obama "is so clearly" a socialist, adding that "he has surrounded himself with Marxists his whole life" and that "this is who he is." [Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, 3/9/09]

Hannity: Obama admin is pushing "the single biggest power grab and move towards socialism in the history of the country." On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity stated: "In the last two days, we know this administration has pushed the idea of the single biggest power grab and move towards socialism in the history of the country." The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Hayes and former Fox Business executive Alexis Glick both agreed, with Hayes saying, "That's right" and Glick replying, "Yeah." [Fox News' Hannity, 3/24/09]

Dobbs: "[S]ocialism has arrived in the first three months of this year." Citing an "amazing stat," which he said demonstrated that "when we talk about socialism, we're not just a-woofing, as the saying goes," Lou Dobbs said on his radio show, "For the first time in the history of the United States, the federal government has supplanted sales, property, and income taxes at the state level as the biggest source of money for state and local governments." He later added: "[S]o socialism has arrived in the first three months of this year, folks, and it is -- well, it is what it is, and it's not going to change, I'm afraid, for a little while." [United Stations Radio Networks' The Lou Dobbs Show, 5/5/09]

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama wants to take away Americans' right to own guns

Beck: Obama "will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun." On his radio show, Beck stated that Obama "will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he'll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax your gun or take your gun away one way or another." Since Obama's election, several conservative media figures have similarly warned that Obama would seize their guns or have suggested that a government effort to ban guns is likely. [The Glenn Beck Program, 4/7/09]

Liddy advised listeners: "[N]o matter what law they pass, do not -- repeat, not -- ever register any of your firearms." Talking to a caller about assault weapons, Liddy repeatedly advised people not to register their firearms, saying that "the main thing is, you know, get them into private hands as quickly as possible. ... The first thing you do is, no matter what law they pass, do not -- repeat, not -- ever register any of your firearms. Because that's where they get the list of where to go first to confiscate. So, you don't ever register a firearm, anywhere." [The G. Gordon Liddy Show, 11/13/08]

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama is a Muslim

Savage: Obama is "an unknown stealth candidate" who "in fact, was a Muslim." Michael Savage falsely asserted that Obama was a Muslim and attended a madrassa, saying: "Look who we inherited in this country, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Hussein Obama, in one generation. A war hero to -- a war hero who commanded the Allied operations against Nazi Germany was running for the presidency then. Now we have an unknown stealth candidate who went to a madrassas in Indonesia and, in fact, was a Muslim." [Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation, 4/3/08]

KSFO's Rodgers: Obama "admits in one of his own books" that he would "stand with the Muslims" against "the Western world." Recalling a false allegation in a chain email, Lee Rodgers falsely claimed Obama "admits in one of his own books" that "in case of a confrontation between the Western world and the Islamic world, he will stand with the Muslims." In fact, what Obama wrote in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, according to FactCheck.org, "is that he would stand with American immigrants from Pakistan or Arab countries should they be faced with something like the forced detention of Japanese-American families in World War II." [KSFO's The Lee Rodgers Show, 10/22/08]

Conservative radio hosts seize on Obama comment to revive false rumors about his faith. During the 2008 campaign, numerous conservative talk-radio hosts selectively highlighted Obama's assertion, which he immediately clarified, that "John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith" to revive rumors that he is a Muslim, not a Christian. For example, Chris Baker claimed that Obama's comment was "obviously a Freudian slip" and stated, "He confessed. It's over." Savage described Obama as a "Muslim stealth candidate" and stated: "I have nothing against moderate Muslims. ... The question is, why is he covering up his Muslim faith?"

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government

Hannity promises to "expose" Obama's "campaign" to "forfeit our national sovereignty" in new book. According to a description of Hannity's book, Conservative Victory, posted on Hannity.com, "Hannity surveys all the major Obama players -- from the president's affiliation with radical theology to his advisers' history of Marxist activism, repression of the media, support for leftist dictators, and worse," and "exposes their resulting campaign to dismantle the American free-market system and forfeit our national sovereignty" to "show how conservatives can unite behind this country's most cherished principles and act now to get America back on the right track."

Morris: "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the UN's going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case." In March 2009, Morris called Obama an "internationalist," who "really regards the United States as George Bush once said and John Bolton recently quoted to me, as one of those countries between Albania and Zanzibar in the UN and not particularly fighting for American interests, but looking for global coordination." Morris went on to say that the "impetus for Obama's policies essentially are European social democrats that want international policies so that they can implement their socialism without driving out capital, and this G-20 meeting might be the time that they really begin to do it." He concluded: "Those crazies in Montana who say, "We're going to kill ATF agents because the UN's going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case." [Your World with Neil Cavuto, 3/31/09]

Morris: "The Declaration of Independence has been repealed." In an April 2009 column headlined, "The Declaration of Independence has been repealed," discussing Obama's signing of a new G-20 communiqué establishing a new Financial Stability Board, Morris claimed, "On April 2, 2009, the work of July 4, 1776 was nullified at the meeting of the G-20 in London." On the April 3 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Morris asserted that "it effectively ceded massive areas of American sovereignty to Europe and to the global economic mavens" and that "this literally is a massive surrender of sovereignty to an essentially European body." Other conservative media figures have also asserted or suggested that U.S. sovereignty may give way to a one-world government.

Monica Crowley: Communiqué is "first step to abrogating American sovereignty." In April 2009, radio host Monica Crowley claimed the G-20 communiqué Obama had signed is the "the first step to abrogating American sovereignty here, because ... it is going to allow European bureaucrats to step in, not just on the hedge fund regulation and the other explicit things that they agreed to, but buried deep down in this communiqué was the ability for European bureaucrats sitting in Brussels to decide what kind of executive compensation American executives should" receive.

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama has done many things that are unconstitutional

Beck asks if it "may have been the plan from the beginning" to pass "unconstitutional reform." On his Fox News show, Beck claimed that health care "doesn't sound like it would work constitutionally," (a claim he has made repeatedly) but that it "may have been the plan from the beginning" to get the "institutional infrastructure" set up to create a public option. [Glenn Beck, 12/17/09]

Morris: Obama has put the regulation of the American financial sector under international control." In a video promotion for his book, Catastrophe, Morris stated that "through the G20 summit process and then the elaboration and expansion of regulation of financial institutions" Obama "has put the regulation of the American financial sector under international control" and that as a result, the "Declaration of Independence has been repealed." Morris added that the "loss of sovereignty" lies "at the core of Barack Obama's agenda."

Beck declares the American Community Survey unconstitutional. On his Fox News show, Beck asserted that the supplement to the Census called the American Community Survey "is unconstitutional," adding "I don't need to tell you all of this." [Glenn Beck, 5/22/09]

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama was not born in the United States

Michael Savage: Obama's certificate of live birth is a "forgery." In October 2008, Savage declared that Obama's birth certificate "does not exist, they can't find it in the Hawaii government. It's never been produced. The one that was produced is a forgery." He later claimed that that "Mr. [Jerome] Corsi went over to Kenya to investigate his relatives in Kenya, and he was arrested by the Muslim leader of Kenya because Mr. Corsi uncovered the true birthplace, I believe, of Hussein Obama." [Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation, 10/8/08]

Jerome Corsi: The argument that Obama was born in Kenya has "some credibility to it." During a September 2008 broadcast of The G. Gordon Liddy Show, Jerome Corsi claimed that the argument that "Obama's father and mother went back to Kenya before Obama was born, and evidently the pregnancy was so advanced that Ann Dunham was not allowed to return to the United States, and Obama was born in Kenya" seemed "to have some credibility to it, because the Obama campaign refuses to release the original birth certificate." [The G. Gordon Liddy Show, 9/17/08]

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama is a racist

Beck: Obama is a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people." Discussing Obama's response to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Beck asserted that Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." After being reminded that Obama has numerous white staffers, Beck contradicted himself, stating, "I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem." He concluded: "This guy is, I believe, a racist." [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 7/28/09]

Limbaugh: Obama is "the greatest example of a reverse racist." Talking about the nomination process of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Limbaugh said: "Here you have a racist. You might want to soften that and say, a reverse racist. And the libs of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power -- Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and, now, he's appointed one." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/26/09]

Limbaugh: "I do believe" Obama is an "angry black guy." Talking about reactions to his comment that Obama is "one angry guy," Limbaugh said: "They're finally hearing me -- he's an angry black guy. I do believe that about the president. I do believe he's angry. I think his wife is angry. All liberals are enraged all the time anyway. They're always mad." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/27/09]

American Thinker: "Obama's racism against whites is upfront, in-your-face racism." In a November 2009 post on the American Thinker blog, contributor Kevin Jackson wrote that "Obama is the best kind of racist to whites, but the worst kind of racist to blacks," adding that "Obama's racism against whites is upfront, in-your-face racism." Jackson concluded: "Is Obama a racist? Of course he is! ... [H]e is both the best and worst kind of racist." [American Thinker, 11/23/09]

Cunningham: "Barack Hussein Obama -- that's the racist, obviously." Discussing Rev. Jeremiah Wright with a caller on his radio show, Bill Cunningham replied to the caller's question, "Who's the real racist here?" by saying, "Well, it's Barack Hussein Obama -- that's the racist, obviously. He used race to get elected, and now he's using charges of racism against those who oppose him, very obviously." [Premiere Radio Networks' Live on Sunday Night, It's Bill Cunningham, 8/24/09]

LIAR'S ACADEMY: GLENN... "YOU IGNORANT SLUT !

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           GLENN...                          "YOU IGNORANT SLUT !"
by EARL NASH

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"The reason I bring up Hitler a lot of the times is because many of the things that he did had their roots here in America. The biggest example: Eugenics, which led to the extermination camps, was actually a progressive idea…. You see, the progressives always thought they were superior and it was the stupid people that were slowing us down."

 
Thus: 

Progressives promoted eugenics.

Nazis practiced eugenics.

Democrats like progressives.

Democrats are Nazis.

Case closed!

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/03/glenn-beck-eugenics-and-history.html#ixzz0jFS8dfV6

BOOK: Left in the Dark, how the human race was smarter long ago

'Ah, but we were so much wiser then,

we're dumber than that now.'

 

A Neurobiological Theory of ‘The Fall’

The foreword of the book ‘Left in The Dark‘, edited for Ayahuasca.com

The progress of science, and indeed, of human knowledge, requires a dynamic tension between the mere accumulation of observations and “dusty facts” and a synthetic process in which the accumulated results of scientific observation and inquiry are woven together into frameworks that, in the ideal case, create revolutionary paradigms that enhance human understanding of apparently discrete and unrelated aspects of nature.

The history of science and intellectual inquiry teach us that, as is so often the case with truly novel syntheses, established scientific and intellectual institutions are too ossified, and too invested in the conventionally accepted worldview, to allow the introduction of a new paradigm without putting up considerable resistance. One is reminded of the famous observation of philosopher Arthur Schopanhauer: All truth, he said, passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident. We should be wary of rejecting out of hand the premises of a hypothesis that may one day seem self-evident.

Evolutionary biologists have long been puzzled by what is perhaps the chief mystery of human origins: the explosive and rapid expansion of the human brain in size and complexity over a vanishingly small span of evolutionary time. There is also the mystery of hemispheric lateralization and the apparent de-integration of the right- and left-hemispheric functions that we humans suffer. In the book ‘Left In the Dark’, a culmination of over fifteen years of independent research into human evolution, the authors postulate that it was not always so; the universal myth of a pre-historic Golden Age, they maintain, is a racial memory that reflects our primate evolution in an arboreal, rainforest environment in which humans possessed mental and psychic abilities that have since become lost or atrophied in the profane ages that followed.

Changes in the dietary patterns that were forced on the population by this migration put an end to the rapid evolution of the human brain and triggered its devolution, ultimately resulting in the damaged human neural architecture that we suffer from today

That rainforest environment favored a frugivorous diet rich in flavonoids, MAO inhibitors, and neurotransmitter precursors, and relatively low in steroid containing or inducing elements. This dietary regime both mimicked and fostered a state, reinforced by positive feedback loops, in which pineal functions, including neocortical expansion and hemispheric integration, were potentiated; moreover, these neurochemical feedback loops were amplified in succeeding generations via the regulation of gene expression in the developing foetus, independent of conventional evolutionary mechanisms of mutation and natural selection.

Climate changes or other environmental catastrophes forced several lineages of hominids as well as archaic/early humans out of their forest-dwelling ancestral home into much harsher savannah or grassland environments. As a consequence dietary regimens shifted toward roots, tubers, grass seed and a greater proportion of animal protein, triggering a reversal of the positive feedback loops that had sustained pineal potentiation and hemispheric integration in the paradisiacal, forest-dwelling Golden Age. Pineal dominance was disrupted by steroid-mediated, testosterone-driven functions primarily due to the reduced consumption of flavonoids and other steroid-inhibitory dietary factors.

Changes in the dietary patterns that were forced on the population by this migration put an end to the rapid evolution of the human brain and triggered its devolution, ultimately resulting in the damaged human neural architecture that we suffer from today, and the myriad mental and physical deficits that are the legacy of our biological ‘fall from grace’.

What is alluded to here is only the barest outline of an elegant hypothesis that plausibly elucidates many baffling aspects of human evolution, brain science, and physiology into a coherent explanatory framework. Ecologists have realized for several decades that the complex interrelations of plants and insects are largely mediated through plant chemistry, and that the interactive dynamics we can observe in these processes is a reflection of millions of years of plant-insect co-evolution. Evolutionary biologists have long suspected that similar co-evolutionary processes, mediated by interactions with plant secondary products, have influenced the evolution of vertebrates, including primates. The hypotheses presented in this book are incomplete, and are even now being refined and developed; however, even in their present form they present a credible foundation on which to build a better understanding of who we are, and how our puzzling human species got to be the way it is.

© 2007 Dennis J. McKenna, Ph.D.

Send in the Drones: Saves soldiers , but civilians still die

Trivializing War By Cesar Chelala

March 25, 2010 "Information Clearing House"

-- Captain Ferguson (not his real name) gets up early in the morning, and has breakfast with his wife and children. At the office, Captain Ferguson sits in front of the computer on and off for almost eight hours every day. At the end of the day he heads back home. Captain Ferguson’s wife is glad to see him back to discuss the events of her day. He does the same, with one omission. By most measures, it has been a beautiful day. 

  

Beautiful, that is, if you don’t consider Captain Ferguson’s omission. While sitting in front of his computer, he was directing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, carrying powerful bombs to land in distant countries. He presumes, but he is not totally sure, that he has hit the right target. After the bombs exploded four suspected terrorists were killed. Four fewer criminals the U.S. will have to deal with. 

 

A later investigation will later reveal that they were not terrorists but rather they were parents and children on a birthday party. As a result of the attack, four adults and eight children were killed, and several more seriously injured.

Captain Ferguson, of course, was unaware of the consequences of his actions. He only thinks that he has a somewhat tedious but rewarding job, since he is an important piece in the fight against terror. Only later he will know the truth, when the outcry of the victims’ relatives cannot be silenced any longer. The predictable apologies will not bring back the dead to life, nor heal those injured.

Let’s compare this made–up scenario with reality.

During the first year of the Obama administration, there were 51 drone attacks, compared to 45 drone attacks during President Bush’s two terms in office, according to The Year of the Drone, a report by the Washington-based New America Foundation. The report also states that the civilian fatality rate has been 32 percent in drone attacks since 2004.

“Drones are currently killing people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It should be noted that the United States is not at war with any of those countries, which should mean in a sane world that the killing is illegal under both international law and the US Constitution,” states Philip Girald, a former CIA officer and fellow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance.

Girald’s observation is confirmed by Mary Ellen O’Connell, a Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School. In a research paper entitled “Unlawful Killing with Combat Drones” Professor O’Connell says, “The CIA’s intention in using drones is to target and kill individual leaders of al-Qaeda or Taliban militant groups. Drones have rarely, if ever, killed just the intended target. By October 2009, the ratio has been about 20 leaders killed for 750-1000 unintended victims. Drones are having a counter-productive impact in Pakistan’s attempt to repress militancy and violence. The use of the drone is, therefore, violating the war-fighting principles of distinction, necessity, proportionality, humanity.”

In the meantime, the U.S. military plans to more than triple its inventory of high-altitude drones capable of 24-hour patrols by 2020. General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, which includes both Afghanistan and Iraq, declared in a speech last January, “We can’t get enough drones.”

War, we should sadly acknowledge, is not a Nintendo game. And innocent people’s lives are not expendable. If we don’t admit the tragic dimension of war we will be cursed by its consequences.

Cesar Chelala, a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award, is a contributing editor to The Globalist.