Even from a strictly Darwinian perspective, empathy is humanity’s ace in the hole.  It is the foundation of social organization, without which we would not have language, science, technology or the desire to pass these gifts on to future generations.  Without empathy, we would not have family and community.  We would be isolated, defenseless, naked apes, easy prey for any carnivore of even moderate size, or, in a modern day context, for any social grouping of sufficient cohesion …

Exposing the american elites' culture of torture is no longer an academic exercise for americans.  We know the connections between the CIA and numerous "death squad democracies" in the 3rd world, not to mention the bush family's ties to hitler.  The cops already use tasers in broad daylight.  It's coming home to roost.  Now is the time to act.  Please contact Sen. Mark Udall (see my earlier post).…

Calls for Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) to reveal the entire, unredacted CIA torture report have increased, with a group of former intelligence analysts issuing a memo that urges the outgoing legislator to read the report on the Senate floor.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) released the letter, asking Udall to use his constitutional protection as a still-sitting member of Congress to introduce the full 6,000-plus-page report by the Senate Intelligence Committee…

Mark Udall, the outgoing Democratic senator from Colorado, may be a lame duck, leaving office in less than a week. But his most important work in the Senate may still be before him. For the week he remains in office, he still sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He worked on that committee’s epic, 6,700-page, still-secret report, the “Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” otherwise known as the torture report.…

Contents of former FBI LA director Ted Gunderson's CDROM released about 15 years ago.  Very heavy duty stuff from an impeccable source.  This seems to be hard to find on the net.  Spread it around!

http://members.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/stuff/Gunderson/

Iraq poised to legalize marriage for girls as young as 9 Decades ago, in the years after Iraq gained independence, a tradition of child marriage persisted in its hills and plains. Upon their fathers’ orders, Iraqi girls were betrothed to strangers and rivals alike to resolve tribal disputes or incur favor. But in the mid-1970s, such acts —…

This video was apparently broadcast on CNN in 2006.  To the totally clueless, it shows the handiwork of “the islamic army in iraq” shooting US soldiers.  But think about this for a minute.  The video camera is obviously mounted on the rifle itself and would require a sophisticated, bulky and expensive sniper rifle and associated equipment to record the event, as well as the ability to to travel freely inside iraq, confident that the rifle, camera, recorder and the incriminating evidence on…

Lots of material here, saved from oblivion years ago.

http://members.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/blackmail_scandal/

Early Public Airing of Franklin Scandal in 1991 Radio Broadcast…

I found this web site around 2000 and it went offline shortly thereafter, before the full series was published.  No one seems to know what happened to them.  I have no personal knowledge of these matters but it seems to be for real.

http://members.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/counterspy/

From the irony department:

About half of the grown U.S. population believes in at least one medical conspiracy theory, according to a study recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Why some choose to believe obviously wrong…