Douglas LaBier - America's Continuing Empathy Deficit Disorder

It's possible for an entire culture to develop shared forms of mental disturbance. As socially shared pathologies increase, they can be difficult to recognize; they become the norm. Such is the case today, and a prime example is what I call our national Empathy Deficit Disorder, or EDD.

I made the name up, so don't go looking for it in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Actually, I'm hesitant to suggest a new disorder, given that our mental health professions increasingly define normal variations of mood and temperament as new "disorders" (for which Big Pharma is ready to supply "treatments"). But this one's real. It's become pervasive throughout our increasingly polarized social and political culture of the past several years.

EDD has profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and society. Yet it's ignored as a psychological disturbance by most of my colleagues in the mental health professions, largely because it's become the norm throughout our emotional attitudes, public policies and behavior.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/douglas-labier/americas-continuing-empat_b_637718.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Andrew Bacevich - America's Rising Shadow Wars

As he campaigns for reelection, President Obama periodically reminds audiences of his success in terminating the deeply unpopular Iraq War. With fingers crossed for luck, he vows to do the same with the equally unpopular war in Afghanistan. If not exactly a peacemaker, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can (with some justification) at least claim credit for being a war-ender.

Yet when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration's success in shutting down wars conducted in plain sight tells only half the story, and the lesser half at that. More significant has been this president's enthusiasm for instigating or expanding secret wars, those conducted out of sight and by commandos.

President Franklin Roosevelt may not have invented the airplane, but during World War II he transformed strategic bombing into one of the principal emblems of the reigning American way of war. General Dwight D. Eisenhower had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. Yet, as president, Ike's strategy of Massive Retaliation made nukes the centerpiece of US national security policy.

Read More:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/special-operations-military-obama-global-war-ussocom

GLOBAL FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: Convergence of 4 Explosive Factors: Banks, Stock Exchanges, Pension Funds, Debts Sovereign debt & deadly private debt.. $30 trillion of phantom assets...

Whilst waiting for Euroland to equip itself, by the end of 2012, with a medium to long term common political, economic and social project, especially following the election of the new French president François Hollande, anticipated many months ago by LEAP/E2020, players will remain prisoners of the short-term reflexes related to the sudden Greek political tremors, the uncertainties over Euroland governance and to the risks in public debts. 

At the same time, in the United States, the disappearance of the illusion of a recovery (1) combined with the renewal of concerns over the American financial sector’s state of health (of which J P Morgan has just illustrated the fragility) and the big comeback of the country’s debt problem is leading economic and financial players to contemplate an increasingly worrying future (2). 

In the United Kingdom, the country’s return to recession is combining with the failure to control deficits and the rise of working-class anger in the face of an austerity which has however only just begun (3). 

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31166

Student Loan Debt Explodes, Climbing 275% Since 2003

New data released today by the Federal Reserve shows, while general consumer debt has decreased in the first quarter of this year, student loan debt in particular continues to aggressively increase. Overall student loan debt has skyrocketed in the past 10 years, rising by 275%.

According to the Federal Reserve, student loan debt hit $904 billion in the first quarter of 2012; however, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau puts the number at the $1 trillion mark.

"While consumers have been whittling down that debt in recent years, student loans have been on the rise. The high unemployment rate has prompted more people to go back to school for retraining, which has contributed to loan demand," reports Reuters today. "Since household debt peaked in the third quarter of 2008, student loan debt has climbed by $293 billion, while other types of debt have dropped by $1.53 trillion, the Fed report said."

Others lay some of the blame on the continually increasing costs of education, as college tuition and fees continue to reach new levels.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/31-8

Chris Mooney - Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science)

Two months have passed since my new book, The Republican Brain, was published, and so far it has gotten a lot of media attention. However, the coverage has followed a noteworthy pattern: while progressives and liberals seem intrigued about what I’m saying, the so-called “mainstream” media—the CNNs of the world—have shied away from the subject.

What’s up with this? Well, a book with conclusions closely related to mine—Norman Ornstein’s and Thomas Mann’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism—seems as though it is being handled similarly by some in the press. And perhaps there’s a reason: Centrist (aka “mainstream”) journalists might well prefer that the findings of these books not be true.

You see, if I’m wrong, then the press can happily go on doing what it has always done: Splitting the difference between the political left and the political right, and employing “on the one hand, on the other hand” treatments that presume we’re all equally biased, all equally self-interested...just in different directions.

The trouble is, I’ve presented a substantial body of scientific evidence suggesting that this simply isn’t the case. More specifically, the science I’ve presented suggests that the political right and left are quite different animals; that they perceive the world differently and handle evidence differently; and most importantly, that the polarization and the denial of science in modern American politics are fundamentally the fault of the authoritarian right. (Mann and Ornstein argue something very similar about today’s Republican Party.)

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155646/conservatives_attack_scientific_findings_about_why_they_hate_science_%28helping_to_confirm_the_science%29

Pierre Klochendler - With New Malware Virus, Israel Fans a Virtual Flame Against Iran

A new super-weapon has entered the Mideast cyber arena. First detected on Monday by a Moscow-based security company, ‘Worm.Win32.Flame’ – just call it ‘Flame’ – might be "the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed" on Iran’s secret nuclear networks.

Code from the Flame virus. "Flame can easily be described as one of the most complex threats ever discovered. Big and incredibly sophisticated, it redefines the notion of cyber-war and cyber-espionage," Alexander Gostev posted on the ‘Securelist’ blog of Kaspersky Labs, the company that uncovered the worm. Gostev is head of the firm’s Global Research and Analysis Team.

The newly-discovered multi-task device sniffs network traffic, takes screenshots when certain applications of interest are run, records audio conversations, intercepts keyboards – the web seems to be the limit.

From an initial analysis performed by Kaspersky Labs, the ‘Flame’ creators gather highly sensitive intelligence on highly sensitive operations of states, principally in the Middle East – e-mails, documents, messages, or discussions inside sensitive locations – and can "target SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) devices, ICS (industrial control systems), critical infrastructure and so on."

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31169

Alexis Baden-Mayer - G8 Gives Monsanto Power to End Hunger in Africa

At the Group of 8 (G8) meetings this past weekend, President Obama and the leaders of the rest of the world’s richest nations abandoned their governments’ previous commitments to donate $7.3 billion a year to end hunger in Africa, after disbursing only 58 percent of the total pledge of $22 billion and giving less than 6 percent in new money they pledged three years ago.

Instead, rich nations will leave the problem in the hands of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition where private corporations will invest $3 billion over 10 years — Monsanto has committed $50 million – beginning in three countries, Tanzania, Ghana and Ethiopia.

Human-rights activists have questioned the inclusion of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, noting that his authoritarian government has jailed dissidents and banned media access to hunger zones. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a letter to President Obama that the Ethiopian government “routinely downplays the extent of the crisis by denying journalists access to sensitive areas and censoring independent news coverage.”

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/31/g8-leaves-monsanto-in-charge-of-ending-hunger-in-africa/

Mark Weisbrot - Europeans' Economic Future Has Been Hijacked by Dangerous Ideologues

I have argued for some time now that the recurring crisis in the eurozone is not driven by financial markets' demands for austerity in a time of recession, as is commonly asserted. Rather, the primary cause of the crisis and its prolongation is the political agenda of the European authorities – led by the European Central Bank (ECB) and European commission. These authorities (which, if we included the IMF constitute, the "troika" that runs economic policy in the eurozone) want to force political changes, particularly in the weaker economies, that people in these countries would never vote for

This is becoming more blatantly obvious here in Spain, where the government – run by the rightwing Popular party (PP) – shares the political agenda of the European authorities, perhaps even more than the IMF does. The PP government has taken advantage of the crisis to impose labour law changes that will make it easier for employers to get out of industry-wide collective bargaining agreements. They have also taken away rights that workers' had to challenge unfair firings. The goal is to weaken labour as part of a longer-term strategy to dismantle the welfare state; these changes have nothing to do with resolving the current crisis, or even reducing the budget deficit.

The government has also mandated huge cuts in healthcare spending, at €7bn. This is comparable to cutting 25% of Medicaid spending in the US, something that would be both devastating to the poor and politically impossible. Another €3bn will be cut from education.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/30/eurozone-crisis-spain-debt

Tony Romm and Jennifer Martinez - Cyberthreats turn into megabucks for defense companies

As Congress boosts spending on cybersecurity and mulls over new data safety requirements on private industry, some companies stand to get rich.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other defense and tech companies have been lobbying Capitol Hill about the growing cyberthreats to national security and corporate America, but they also make millions of dollars each year selling a variety of cybersecurity programs, tools and solutions to government and business.

Some lawmakers say the legislative push has spawned a “cyber-industrial complex.”

“I believe these bills will encourage the development of an industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans’ private data,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), speaking on the Senate floor last week in opposition to pending cybersecurity legislation. “These bills create a cyber-industrial complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution.”

Read More:

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=19D82B51-3A23-4671-B9BB-D54EC1217354

Joe Romm - Global CO2 Emissions Hit New Record in 2011, Keeping World on Track for 'Devastating' 11°F Warming

First the bad news from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Thanks to a huge jump in Chinese emissions, “global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011.”

The worse news is that, “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close,” according to IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol. Why does that matter? As Reuters reported:

Scientists say ensuring global average temperatures this century do not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is needed to limit devastating climate effects like crop failure and melting glaciers.

Darn you truth-telling scientists, always ruining the party (see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now“).

And the worst news, as Birol told Reuters, is that:

“When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius [11°F], which would have devastating consequences for the planet.”

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155641/global_co2_emissions_hit_new_record_in_2011%2C_keeping_world_on_track_for_%27devastating%27_11%C2%B0f_warming