19 April 2008

Merkel blames the victim

Speechless. Stunned. We've heard some incredible statements in the last few years, since the coup d'etat of 911, but this one is unbelievable even by the standards of GW. Listen to Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, explain why there is a food shortage:

Bad policy, not biofuel, drive food prices - Merkel

BERLIN (Reuters) - Bad agricultural policies and changing eating habits in developing nations are primarily to blame for rising food prices, not biofuel production as some critics claim, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday...

But Merkel, whose country is Europe's largest biofuel producer, said the rise in food prices was not mainly due to biofuels but to "inadequate agricultural policies in developing countries" as well as "insufficient forecasts of changes in nutritional habits" in emerging markets.

"If you travel to India these days, then a main part of the debate is about the 'second meal'," Merkel said.

"People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people. That's a large part of the European Union," she said.

"And if they suddenly consume twice as much food as before and if 100 million Chinese start drinking milk too, then of course our milk quotas become skewed, and much else too," she said referring to EU limits on dairy production....

Merkel is blaming the food crisis on the poorest people, the ones who are the victims. They are eating two meals a day instead of one. And, gosh, if those Chinese start drinking milk, then we'll really be in trouble!

I'm sorry, but how can this be reported on a major news service and not provoke an outcry from anyone with a conscience! Could there be any clearer expression of disdain and contempt? Any more gut-wrenching glimpse into the psyche of the deviant?

What about the headline: "Bad policy, not biofuel, drive food prices - Merkel". Bad policy? It is bad policy when people start eating two meals a day? How many meals does Merkel eat?

And all of this is going on in public, in front of our noses!

When we say that these people are not like you and me, we aren't kidding. Could you ever think something like that?

Via SOTT


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14 April 2008

Human mind product of chaotic evolutionary path, NYU psychology professor concludes in new book

The question of mind is probably as old as we are. Today, the analogy of choice is with computers:
The fundamental difference between computers and the human mind is in the basic organization of memory, Marcus observes. While computers organize everything they store according to physical or logical locations, the human brain stores millions of memories, but has no idea where they are located - information is retrieved not by knowing where it is, but by using cues or clues that hint at what we are looking for.
One hundred years ago, the ubiquitous technology was the stream engine. What did Freud use as his model for the workings of our psyche? The steam engine. We think of our minds as computers because it is the ubiquitous technology of our day. They are everywhere, in everything, and we have internalized the concepts. We have direct experience with the ideas of input and output, with buffers and RAM and storage. We are comfortable with them. But let's not get so comfortable that we forget they are nothing more than an analogy. Via SOTT.

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Genetics key to teen violence

More evidence on the genetic component to what we think of as "evil". :
Whether a criminal teenager turns into a violent adult or grows out of crime, may be related to how low his ears are set or the types of food he was given as a child. International research shows antisocial behaviour in young adults can be written into their genetic code, and made worse by bad parenting. Indicators that an antisocial child may turn into a life-long violent criminal can be picked up in kindergarten, according to research summarised in this week's New Scientist magazine... Learning to fear punishment or recognise someone else's fear or sadness is difficult for psychopaths, he said. "If they want something and punching someone in the face is the way to extract it, they might be more likely to engage in that kind of behaviour," he said. Mr Blair says there are few signs that these psychopathic traits are caused by external factors like poor parenting or abuse, but they could be triggered by social forces like poverty.
Via SOTT

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