Sunday, September 18th, 2016
Michael Arria, Associate Editor - Alternet
Stephan: When a culture only has one social priority, profit above all, is it any wonder that the people who prosper in such a society are psychopaths? I am always amazed when people seem surprised t0 learn, as this report spells out, that "one out of every five corporate bosses is a psychopath." Imagine the social implications of that statement.
According to a new study, one out of every five corporate bosses is a psychopath. (emphasis added)
The study surveyed 261 corporate professionals and determined that their “clinically elevated levels of psychopathy” were on par with the prison population. Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist at Bond University and researcher on this study, told ABC, “Their personality usually leads them to exploit every avenue open to them, whether it’s in a criminal setting, or within organizations.”
Psychopathy is often defined as a clinical disorder, characterized by a lack of empathy and narcissistic traits. One out of every 100 people is believed to be a psychopath, but this investigation shows that the numbers for CEOs are much larger.
According to Brooks, a certain “successful psychopath” has been allowed to rise in the corporate world, despite the fact that they’re more likely to break the law or engage in unethical activity. “We hope to implement our screening tool in businesses so that there’s an adequate assessment to hopefully identify this problem—to stop people sneaking through into positions in the business that can become very costly,” said Brooks.
The study was conducted by Brooks along with colleagues Katarina Fritzon (also of Bond University) and Simon Croom of the University of […]
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Sunday, September 18th, 2016
Art Swift, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: The abject failure of corporate media to cover the substantive issues the nation faces combined with the growing tribalism has resulted in a growing sense that the media is not to be trusted. A democracy cannot prosper without a free, vibrant, and trusted media.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year.
Gallup began asking this question in 1972, and on a yearly basis since 1997. Over the history of the entire trend, Americans’ trust and confidence hit its highest point in 1976, at 72%, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. After staying in the low to mid-50s through the late 1990s and into the early years of the new century, Americans’ trust in the media has fallen slowly and steadily. It has consistently been below a majority level since 2007.
Republicans Fuel Drop in Media Trust
While it is clear Americans’ trust in the media has been eroding over time, the election campaign may be the reason that it has fallen so sharply this year. With many Republican leaders and conservative pundits saying […]
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Sunday, September 18th, 2016
Michelle Chen, - The Nation
Stephan: Here is some good news about citizen action and its effect on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). But the corporations that wanted this awful deal in my opinion will not give up. I expect to see at least one more attempt to create a trade deal which puts profit about humanity
US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Credit: Reuters / Wolfgang Rattay
What if a trade deal died and nobody noticed? The presidential campaign trail has been awash in angry backlash against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the latest in a slew of controversial free-trade deals that symbolize to American voters the evils of corporate globalization. But another trade deal collapsed silently on the other side of the globe. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was supposed to be the Atlantic world’s analog to the TPP, but after three years of frustrated negotiations, it was just pronounced dead, or at least temporarily moribund, overwhelmed by a phalanx of populist opposition across the continent. How’d that happen?
Though smaller in scope than the TPP, the TTIP paralleled the Pacific agreement in that it built on trade-agreement proposals that had stalled in previous discussions, ultimately collapsed during the round of World Trade Organization negotiations that began […]
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Saturday, September 17th, 2016
Nika Knight, Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan: Here is another truth we don't want to hear.
Golden-winged warblers are one of the North American species most at risk for complete extinction.
Credit: Caleb Putnam/flickr/cc
North America has lost more than a billion birds over the past 40 years, says the most comprehensive survey of landbird populations in Canada and the U.S. to date, and 86 species are threatened with total extinction—all thanks to human-caused habitat destruction and climate change. (emphasis added)
“Among those 86 species, 22 have already lost at least half of their population since 1970 and are projected to lose another 50 percent of their numbers within the next 40 years,” reports the Canadian Press. “For at least six species, this ‘half-life’ window is fewer than 20 years.”
“The information on urgency is quite alarming,” said co-author Judith Kennedy of Environment Canada to the Canadian Press. “We’re really getting down to the dregs of some of these populations.”
“I don’t want my grandchild […]
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Saturday, September 17th, 2016
Henry T. Greely , Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and a Professor, by Courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University, - VOX
Stephan: We are experiencing a major trend about reproduction. It is all part of the the Homo Superior Trend.
A researcher extracts the RNA from embryonic stem cells.
Credit: Mauricio Lima
For 100 million years, all our ancestors reproduced basically the same way. A male reproductive organ deposited sperm into a female reproduction organ, where it could fertilize eggs — leading to baby ancestral tetrapods, mammals, primates, and eventually humans. The past 60 years have seen this begin to change, first with clinically available artificial insemination and then with in vitro fertilization (IVF).
In the United States today, these two techniques lead to about 100,000 births each year, roughly 2.5 percent of the 4 million children born annually. Within the next few decades, that percentage will skyrocket. Developments in bioscience, galloping forward in most cases for reasons having nothing to with reproduction, will combine to make IVF cheaper and much easier.
These new techniques will allow safe and easy embryo selection – but they will also open doors to genetically edited babies, “their own” genetic babies for same-sex couples, babies with a […]
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