It’s election season in the U.S., and the campaigning between the Democrats and Republicans is fiercer than ever. Now, here at GeekDad, we prefer to steer clear of partisan politics, so this posting is not going to tap-dance into that minefield; instead, we’re going to take a look at the more interesting subject of the psychology of conservative and liberal viewpoints. And regardless of which way you lean politically, I’m pretty sure that once we’re finished, you’ll concede that both the left and the right have perfectly reasonable world views, and that the human mind is an intriguingly subtle organ.
The main focus of this posting is Jonathan Haidt’s TED Talk, The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives, so settle back and prepare for a little profound insight into human nature:
If you watch the video, you’ll see that Haidt’s thesis is that we humans all have five foundations of morality — five sources of intuitions and emotions that drive everything we do:
Harm/Care
Fairness/Reciprocity
In-Group/Loyalty
Authority/Respect
Purity/Sanctity
Both conservatives and liberals all agree on the first two points; but the real trouble comes on the final three. As Haidt said in regard to those points, “We can say that liberals have a kind of a two-channel, or two-foundation morality. Conservatives have more of a five-foundation, or five-channel morality.”
Now, that math may make it sound as if liberals are less moral than conservatives, but Haidt is careful to point out that it’s not as simple as that:
Liberals reject three of these foundations. They say “No, let’s celebrate diversity, not common in-group membership.” They say, “Let’s question authority.” And they say, “Keep your laws off my body.”
Liberals have very noble motives for doing this. Traditional authority, traditional morality can be quite repressive, and restrictive to those at the bottom, to women, to people that don’t fit in. So liberals speak for the weak and oppressed. They want change and justice, even at the risk of chaos.
Conservatives, on the other hand, speak for institutions and traditions. They want order, even at some cost to those at the bottom.
So once you see this — once you see that liberals and conservatives both have something to contribute, that they form a balance on change versus stability — then I think the way is open to step outside the moral matrix.
That last part is the most important part of everything Haidt has to say in his talk, by the way. Recognizing the basis for human morality is academically interesting, but the important thing is to put this insight into use in some way. And Haidt has an answer for that, too:
A lot of the problems we have to solve are problems that require us to change other people. And if you want to change other people, a much better way to do it is to first understand who we are — understand our moral psychology, understand that we all think we’re right — and then step out, even if it’s just for a moment, step out of the moral matrix, just try to see it as a struggle playing out, in which everybody does think they’re right, and everybody, at least, has some reasons — even if you disagree with them — everybody has some reasons for what they’re doing. Step out. And if you do that, that’s the essential move to cultivate moral humility, to get yourself out of this self-righteousness, which is the normal human condition.
So, what does all of this have to do with being a GeekDad? Well, given that it is election season, the Geeklings are likely to have questions about the entire process and why there is so much animosity between the two political extremes. As a good parent, your job is to help your kids understand the world better, so that means you’re going to have to explain the underlying motivations of those extremes. And now that you understand the five foundations of morality, you can explain it to your kids, too. If you do a good job of it, and emphasize that both points of view are valid and valuable, then you’ll have made the world just a little bit better. Good luck….
GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 24, 2012 (AFP) - Guatemala's Mayan people accused the government and tour groups on Wednesday of perpetuating the myth that their calendar foresees the imminent end of the world for monetary gain.
"We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles," charged Felipe Gomez, leader of the Maya alliance Oxlaljuj Ajpop.
Several films and documentaries have promoted the idea that the ancient Mayan calendar predicts that doomsday is less than two months away, on December 21, 2012.
The Culture Ministry is hosting a massive event in Guatemala City -- which as many as 90,000 people are expected to attend -- just in case the world actually does end, while tour groups are promoting doomsday-themed getaways.
Maya leader Gomez urged the Tourism Institute to rethink the doomsday celebration, which he criticized as a "show" that was disrespectful to Mayan culture.
Experts say that for the Maya, all that ends in 2012 is one of their calendar cycles, not the world.
Gomez's group issued a statement saying that the new Maya time cycle simply "means there will be big changes on the personal, family and community level, so that there is harmony and balance between mankind and nature."
Oxlajuj Ajpop is holding events it considers sacred in five cities to mark the event and Gomez said the Culture Ministry would be wise to throw its support behind their real celebrations.
More than half of Guatemala's population of nearly 15 million are from indigenous groups of Mayan descent.
The Mayan calendar has 18 months of 20 days each plus a sacred month, "Wayeb," of five days. "B'aktun" is the larget unit in the time cycle system, and is about 400 years. The broader era spans 13 B'aktun, or about 5,200 years.
The Mayan culture enjoyed a golden age between 250 AD and 900 AD.
Government to argue speedy trial doesn’t apply to Bradley, veterans to rally in support
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. October 24, 2012.
As Army Private First Class Bradley Manning nears 900 days in jail without trial, his lawyer moves to dismiss all charges for lack of a speedy trial. Beginning Tuesday, October 30, the government’s witnesses will try to explain away the prosecution’s extensive delays. Meanwhile, over 14,000 supporters of Bradley Manning have now donated to his defense fund—over the last three weeks alone raising $50,000 during a matching grant challenge by the Brightwater Fund. On Thursday, November 1, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War will lead a rally and speak-out for Bradley at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Bradley’s constitutional rights deprived
When Bradley Manning returns to Ft. Meade on Tuesday, October 30, he’ll have spent nearly 900 days in jail awaiting court-martial trial. That’s almost two and a half years wondering whether he’ll be spending the rest of his life in jail, and whether he’ll get to see the “debates, discussions, and reforms” that chat logs suggest he sought. That’s two and a half years too long.
Bradley’s lawyer, David Coombs, will argue his most recent motion to dismiss charges with prejudice for lack of a speedy trial, which denounces and seeks accountability for the government’s inaction, unjustifiable delays, and sheer disregard for PFC Manning’s constitutional rights (1). RCM 707 affords 120 days from arrest to arraignment, but Bradley was arraigned nearly two years after his arrest in May 2010. UCMJ Article 10 compels the prosecution to act diligently and expediently, yet the government was inactive or needlessly slow for months prior to Bradley’s first pretrial hearing.
Judge Denise Lind and the parties have agreed to bifurcate this speedy trial motion: from October 30 to November 2, the government will bring its witnesses to testify. But the defense won’t be able to argue its portion of the motion until the December 10-14 hearing, which comes after the Article 13 motion to dismiss based on Bradley’s conditions at Quantico, which Coombs will litigate November 27-December 2. By that time, Bradley will have surpassed 900 days in jail without trial.
Government witnesses
Next week, the government will call three witnesses to the stand, to attempt to account for the several pre- and post-arraignment delays that have protracted Bradley’s proceedings. The defense had also requested two of these witnesses, Col. Carl Coffman and Master Sgt. Monica Carlile.
Carl Coffman is the Special Court Martial Convening Authority for Bradley’s pretrial proceedings, so he signed off on almost all of the government’s delays, marking them as excludable from the speedy trial clock. In January, Coffman denied the defense’s request to depose nine essential witnesses, including Defense Sec. Robert Gates and State Secretary Hillary Clinton, citing the “difficulty, expense, and/or effect on military operations outweighed the significance of the expected testimony.” Coombs derided this decision as “yet another example of the government improperly impeding the defense’s access to essential witnesses” (2).
Coffman is expected to explain why he signed off on the government’s delays, and why they were excluded from the speedy trial clock.
Monica Carlile was a paralegal at the Office of the Staff Justice Advocate in the Military District of Washington (apparently before she was promoted to Master Sergeant), when she signed one of the government’s delays for Coffman. Carlile is expected to explain why she signed off on that delay, why it was excluded from the speedy trial clock, and her authority to sign in Coffman’s place.
Third is Bert Haggett, whom the prosecution deems a classification expert and whom the Army cites as an Information Security Point of Contact. Kevin Gosztola writes that the government will call Haggett to testify to “how long it takes to clear documents requested by defense for discovery evidence. He apparently worked on a classification review of the unclassified portion of the Army CID investigation into Manning.”
With these witnesses, the government will try to show that it had no choice but to wait nearly two years to arraign PFC Manning, and that the mere scope of information and lengthy classification review process takes a long time. But Coombs’ motion preempts those arguments multiple times, noting that the government has vastly more resources than the defense to wade through these myriad documents, and that the prosecution both didn’t need to wait for the reviews to go to trial and didn’t sufficiently pressure the Original Classification Authorities to conduct the reviews more quickly.
Support grows despite government delays
Suspending the pretrial process is only to the government’s advantage. The defense is paid by grassroots donations from around the world, and two and a half years of delays have pushed legal expenses to nearly $250,000.
But Bradley’s supporters have countered this effort in inspiring ways. The Brightwater Fund recently announced that it would match donations to the defense fund dollar for dollar up to $50,000, and we’ve surpassed that goal already, now up to $55,000 and counting (3). That number will continue to rise this week, as rock-and-roll legend Graham Nash will perform in Santa Monica, CA, and ticket proceeds from that event will go to the Bradley Manning Support Network (4).
Veterans are responding as well. At an anti-NATO rally this summer, several Iraq Veterans Against the War publicly disowned their military medals, some in honor of PFC Bradley Manning. Those and more veterans are holding a rally and speak-out for Bradley on Thursday, November 1, just outside of Ft. Meade while he’s in court (5).
When Bradley Manning’s court-martial trial finally gets underway on February 4, 2013 – if it isn’t delayed yet again – he’ll have been imprisoned for nearly 1,000 days. This trial is anything but speedy, and the government has thus far enjoyed total immunity for violating Bradley’s basic rights. It’s long been time for that to change.
(NaturalNews) Have you ever wondered what's really in vaccines? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's vaccine additives page, all the following ingredients are routinely used as vaccine additives:
• Aluminum - A light metal that causes dementia and Alzheimer's disease. You should never inject yourself with aluminum.
• Antibiotics - Chemicals that promote superbugs, which are deadly antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.
• Formaldehyde - A "pickling" chemical used to preserve cadavers. It's highly toxic to the nervous system, causing blindness, brain damage and seizures. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services openly admits that formaldehyde causes cancer. You can see this yourself on the National Toxicology Program website, featuring its 12th Report on Carcinogens.
There, the formaldehyde Fact Sheet completely neglects to mention formaldehyde in vaccines. This is the "dirty little secret" of government and the vaccine industry. It does state, however, that "...formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia, and rare cancers including sinonasal and nasopharyngeal cancer."
• Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) - A neurotoxic chemical called an "excitotoxin." It causes brain neurons to be overexcited to the point of death. MSG is toxic even when consumed in foods, where it causes migraine headaches and endocrine system damage. You should NEVER inject MSG into your body. But that's what health workers do when they inject you with vaccines.
• Thimerosal - A methyl mercury compound that causes severe, permanent nervous system damage. Mercury is highly toxic to the brain. You should never touch, swallow or inject mercury at any dose. There is no safe dose of mercury! Doctors and vaccine pushers LIE to you and say there is no mercury in vaccines. Even the CDC readily admits vaccine still contain mercury (thimerosal).
In addition, National Toxicology Programs admits in its own documents that:
• Vaccinations "...may produce small but measurable increases in blood levels of mercury."
• "Thimerosal was found to cross the blood-brain and placenta barriers."
• The "...hazards of thimerosal include neurotoxicity and nephrotoxicity." (This means brain and kidney toxicity.)
• "...similar toxicological profiles between ethylmercury and methylmercury raise the possibility that neurotoxicity may also occur at low doses of thimerosal."
• "... there are no existing guidelines for safe exposure to ethylmercury, the metabolite of thimerosal."
• "...the assessment determined that the use of thimerosal as a preservative in vaccines might result in the intake of mercury during the first six months of life that exceeded recommended guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)..."
• ..."In the U.S., thimerosal is still present as preservative in some vaccines given to young children, as well as certain biological products recommended during pregnancy. Thimerosal remains a preservative in some vaccines administered to adolescents and adults. In addition, thimerosal continues to be used internationally as a vaccine preservative."
The report then goes on to say that the FDA studies thimerosal and somehow found it to be perfectly safe. It also states that vaccine manufactures are "working" to remove thimerosal from vaccines, but in reality it's still being manufactured right into the vaccines.
By the way, this report also reveals that the FDA requires preservatives like thimerosal only in so-called "multi-dose" vaccines -- vials that contain more than one dose of the vaccine. Drug companies could, if they wanted to, produce "clean" single-dose vaccines without any mercury / thimerosal. But they choose not to because it's more profitable to product mercury-containing multi-dose vaccines. As the report admits, "Preservatives are not required for products formulated in singledose vials. Multidose vials are preferred by some physicians and health clinics because they are often less expensive per vaccine dose and require less storage space."
So the reason why your child is being injected with vaccine boils down to health care offices making more money and saving shelf space!
"Mercury in vaccines is a conspiracy theory!
I've been told by numerous "skeptics" and doctors that there's no such thing as mercury in vaccines, and that any such suggestion is nothing more than a "wild conspiracy theory." That just goes to show you how ignorant all the skeptics, doctors and health professionals really are: They have NO CLUE what's in the vaccines they're dishing out to people!
All they have to do is visit this CDC vaccine additives web page, which openly admits to these chemicals being used in vaccines right now. It's not a conspiracy theory, it turns out. It's the status quo of modern-day vaccine manufacturing!
And just in case the CDC removes that page, here's a screen shot, taken October 22, 2012, showing exactly what was on the CDC vaccine additives page:
Feel that headache after a vaccine? That's the feeling of chemicals eating your brain
Ummm, how about the mercury, the formaldehyde, the aluminum and the MSG!
Even if you believe in the theory of vaccines as a helpful way to train the immune system to recognize pathogens, why would anyone -- especially a doctor -- think it's okay to inject human beings with mercury, MSG, formaldehyde and aluminum?
The argument of the vaccine pushers is that each vaccine only contains a tiny dose of these highly toxic substances, and therefore it's okay to be injected with them. But this argument makes a fatal error: U.S. children are now receiving over twenty vaccines by the time they're six years old! What's the cumulative effect of all these vaccines, plus the mercury from dental fillings and dietary sources? What's the effect of injected mercury on an immune-suppressed child living in a state of chronic nutritional deficiency?
Scientists don't know that answer because such studies have never been conducted. So they pretend that nothing bad will happen and keep pushing more and more vaccines on infants, children and even expectant mothers. They're playing Russian roulette with our children, in other words, where every injection could cause a seizure, coma, autism or death.
Why doesn't the vaccine industry offer "clean" vaccines free from all toxic additives?
If vaccines are supposed to be good for you, why do they contain so many additives that are BAD for you? You wouldn't want to eat mercury in your tuna fish. You wouldn't want MSG in your sandwich, and you certainly wouldn't want formaldehyde in your soda. So why would you allow yourself to be injected with these deadly substances?
And just as importantly, why wouldn't the vaccine industry offer CLEAN vaccines? Without any brain-damaging additives?
Think about it: When you buy health food, you want that health food to have NO mercury, NO MSG, NO aluminum and certainly no formaldehyde. No sane person would knowingly eat those neurotoxic poisons. And yet, astonishingly, those same people literally line up to be INJECTED with those exact same brain-damaging poisons, with the justification that, somehow, "This injection is good for me!"
No, I'm not making this up. The mainstream media literally claims that mercury is GOOD for babies. Vitamins might kill you, they say, but mercury is good for you!
But hold on a second: I thought the theory behind vaccines was that weakened viruses would give the immune system a rehearsal so that it would build up antibodies to the real thing. Where does mercury, MSG or formaldehyde fit anywhere in that theory? Does your body benefit in any way from exposure to formaldehyde? Of course not. The very idea is ludicrous.
So are there such things are clean vaccines? I challenge you to try to find one. They simply don't exist for the population at large. Nearly all vaccines for the masses are deliberately formulated with neurotoxic chemicals that have absolutely nothing to do with the science of vaccinations, but everything to do with autism, Alzheimer's disease, early-onset dementia, immune suppression, and the mass dumbing down of brain function.
Vaccines are designed with chemical additives to poison the population, not to protect the population
That's the real purpose of vaccines: Not to "protect children" with any sort of immunity, but to inject the masses with a toxic cocktail of chemicals that cause brain damage and infertility: Mercury, MSG, formaldehyde and aluminum. The whole point of this is to dumb the population down so that nobody has the presence of mind to wake up and start thinking for themselves.
This is precisely why the smartest, most "awake" people still remaining in society today are the very same ones who say NO to vaccines. Only their brains are still intact and operating with some level of awareness.
The system wants you to stay dumbed down, of course. It makes you easier to control. Watch George Carlin brilliantly explain the concept of "Obedient Workers" (explicit):
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About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survivaland tactical self-defense. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams created TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
Wednesday, October 24, 2012