Seeing Beyond ‘Evil’
Kate Kelland reports on Reuters via MNN:
Simon Baron Cohen has been battling with evil all his life. As a scientist seeking to understand random acts of violence, from street brawls to psychopathic killings to genocide, he has puzzled for decades over what prompts such acts of human cruelty. And he’s decided that evil is not good enough.
“I’m not satisfied with the term ‘evil’,” says the Cambridge University psychology and psychiatry professor, one of the world’s top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology.
“We’ve inherited this word … and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don’t think it’s anything more than another word for doing something bad. And as a scientist that doesn’t seem to me to be much of an explanation. So I’ve been looking for an alternative — we need a new theory of human cruelty.”
Baron Cohen, who…
The Genocide Behind Your Smart Phone (Video)
Alan Mascarenhas writes on Newsweek:
It takes a lot to snap people out of apathy about Africa’s problems. But in the wake of Live Aid and Save Darfur, a new cause stands on the cusp of going mainstream. It’s the push to make major electronics companies (manufacturers of cell phones, laptops, portable music players, and cameras) disclose whether they use “conflict minerals” — the rare metals that finance civil wars and militia atrocities, most notably in Congo.
The issue of ethical sourcing has long galvanized human-rights groups. In Liberia, Angola, and Sierra Leone, the notorious trade in “blood diamonds” helped fund rebel insurgencies. In Guinea, bauxite sustains a repressive military junta. And fair-labor groups have spent decades documenting the foreign sweatshops that sometimes supply American clothing stores. Yet Congo raises especially disturbing issues for famous tech brand names that fancy themselves responsible corporate citizens.
A key mover behind the Congo campaign is the anti-genocide Enough Project: witness its clever spoof of the famous Apple commercial.
H1N1 Is a Plot to Kill Baby Boomers, Argues Conspiracy Theorist
Nice find. Annalee Newitz writes on io9.com:
A new day, a new H1N1 conspiracy theory! But this one is special. Ken Welch says on his blog, before treating us to an extremely detailed analysis:
We’ve recently learned the secret behind the Swine Flu Vaccine that is being pushed so strongly on the public. While the vaccine may make you sick, its real purpose is to greatly increase the fast-kill mechanism of the pandemic still to come. Worse yet, the vaccine is being used to target specific groups of people who are simply not welcome in our brave new world.
In the USA these include Blacks, American Indians, and Baby Boomers.
Read the whole thing from Ken Welch.
