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The Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience (ECN) discipline, and its associated fields, may produce tools that advance humanity’s ability to understand and manage itself. Simultaneously, ECN may also yield brain-centric weaponry that drastically alters human warfare. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) may marshal significant resources — as it did during the 1941 to 1946 Manhattan Project — to drive ECN research, development and testing. DOD is the only entity in the United States with the capability to fully fund ECN programs. The DOD’s Defense Science Board and the United States’ Intelligence Community has recently suggested research thrusts into ECN and the merging of data-heavy sciences and social sciences. Success will ultimately depend on program directors and researchers’ acceptance of general Evolutionary Theory and, in particular, Evolutionary Psychology. Failure to do this will result in a mosh-pit of studies based on dated science and methodology. (Full article …)

This is a response to Alexander Cockburn’s latest article for CounterPunch. The full debate between Cockburn and Monbiot can be found here. (Full article …)

What a great day for peace enthusiasts! A new envoy to the Middle East has been appointed for the Quartet, and it’s no other than the former British PM, Tony Blair. Blair, the man who gave the Israelis the green light to flatten Beirut. Blair, the man who started an illegal war in Iraq. Blair, a man who, according to the Geneva Conventions, is to be held personally responsible for more than 700,000 dead in Iraq for failing to ‘protect civilian populations against certain consequences of war.’ A man who is supposed to be charged for genocide at The Hague. That’s right, a man who should end his life behind bars is now becoming a peace envoy. (Full article …)

So, what exactly went through Rev. Dennis Holtschneider’s mind on as he signed Norman G. Finkelstein’s and Mehrene Larudee’s tenure denial letters, which were dated June 8th, 2007? Perhaps Father Holtscheider thought he was, in some sense, picking the lesser of two poisons. By upholding the University Board’s decision to deny tenure to Finkelstein, he could successfully remove one of the most effective and outspoken critics of Israel from DePaul’s precincts, and in turn, curry favor with those who could put DePaul’s endowment in an enviable place. After all, what — beyond financial gain and other forms of political capital — could accrue from ejecting Finkelstein, one of DePaul’s most popular and accomplished teachers, scholars, and public intellectuals from campus under the specter of a witch-hunt? In brief, Holtscheider, assuming the decision to uphold the UBTP’s votes on the Larudee and Finkelstein cases was really his and not that of someone above and beyond him, chose to make a politically expedient decision instead of an academically sound one. (Full article …)

The president’s supporters in Congress, whose election rightist paramilitaries claim to have bought or ensured through threats, intimidation and terror, proposed a ‘presidential coup’ recently — closing Congress to avoid the opposition taking control as more Uribista delegates are jailed in Colombia’s parapolítica scandal. (Full article …)

The environmental movement is on life support. Some would say it is already dead. Even though climate change and Al Gore are fast becoming the conversation du jour around the American dinner table, it also happens to be the rallying cry for do-gooder conservationists and corporations alike. (Full article …)

We came to DePaul’s graduation to hold banners saying, “Tenure for Finkelstein and Larudee” and we came to support the twenty five or so graduating seniors that were to hand the president, Fr. Denis Holtschneider, a letter of disapproval instead of shaking his hand. Our plan was to hold the signs up for as long as we could, but to do it silently so we would not be disruptive; and this was actually my biggest fear-not getting the message across with tact. My fears quickly went away as I noticed that the graduation was only fractionally as formal as I expected. There were signs, banners, and airhorns- it seemed more like a party than a graduation and the administration accepted this because the moment was about the students, not DePaul. (Full article …)

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps–just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing. (Full article …)

Strict curfew and tight security measures have brought difficult living conditions and heightened tempers to residents of this besieged city. (Full article …)

That military generals, admirals, presidents and senators share common interests as a privileged elite in a militarised nation such as Colombia is not news, but when newspaper editors and broadcasters are part of the same club, the media can be relied on to divert attention or fail to report on the scandals that threaten this elite’s privileges. (Full article …)

Recently, it has become popular to sound the death knells for the neoconservative movement. I, myself, am not as ready to dismiss this section of the power elite as others, but, no matter what, in order to address this question it is essential to refresh our minds as to what the neocons represent and where they come from. One thing about this group of US policy makers–they don’t hide. They like to advertise themselves and are therefore quite easy to track down. (Full article …)

Yet another 4th of July approaches, a holiday on which we all commemorate America’s big, shiny image of itself by emulating what it does best: (Full article …)

Co-authored with Carl Kandutsch.

If there is one reason to watch Larry King Live — unrelated, that is, to a perverse pleasure in testing the limits of banality and tedium to life-threatening extremes — it’s the chance to play Are You Optimistic? — a drinking game based on the CNN host’s Tourette’s-like penchant for asking his squirming guests if he/she is “optimistic”. For the uninitiated viewer, this usually occurs whenever ‘The King of Talk’ has run through his entire repertoire of non-sequitur softball questions before his hour of dead airtime is up, thus opening up the playing field for a spirited round of blood alcohol poisoning that the whole family can enjoy. And unless you enjoy the thrills of competitive flatlining, watching this Gab-Fest equivalent of a frontal lobotomy (without the benefit of a bottle in front of you) is like having to endure, fully conscious, botched brain surgery performed by a Borscht belt hack on the back alley abortion circuit. And being fully sober throughout an entire episode of LKL means being unable to fully appreciate the mawkish, shlock appeal of Larry, CNN’s even dumber ‘Cable Guy’. (Full article …)

In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent’s Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality — disappeared — by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are being “scraped” from the landscape as an infestation of bloated McMansions rises from the tortured soil. These particleboard and Tyvek-choked monstrosities loom over the remaining smaller houses of the area, as oversized and ugly as mindless bullies, as banal as the dreams of petty tyrants. (Full article …)

Four more Black girls just went bad. Young, 19 to 25; from Newark or surrounding neighborhoods; “troubled” families; having babies while in their teens – you’ve heard it all before. The reason you’re reading about this bunch is that they’re lesbians – “killer lesbians,” “a wolf pack of lesbians,” say the media. They’re not martyrs or heroes; they did something stupid that got them sentenced to prison. They stood up for themselves. (Full article …)

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of “Stand in the Gap,” evangelicals hope to bring 250,000 men to Washington to re-ignite the Christian men’s movement (Full article …)

Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Isadora Tribe’s much-awaited The Restoration Years: America in the Post-Bush Era jumped to the top of the best-seller lists almost immediately. The Harvard professor and I spoke in her Cambridge home about the revelations in that volume. (Full article …)

The Puzzle

Many observers of the Israeli scene have been perplexed by the country’s apparent resilience to bad political news. The headlines of late seem uniformly dreadful. While the country is still licking its wounds from a botched, if not humiliating, war with Hezbollah, the Palestinian territories again slide into turmoil, and the experts rumour yet another conflict with Syria. The U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan is only getting deeper, and many speak of an imminent attack on Iran with untold regional consequences. Israeli politicians and public officials — from the president, through the prime minister, to the chief of staff, to the justice minister — have been embroiled in corruption and other scandals. The courageous capitalist media routinely expose government officials as incompetent crooks and the Israeli Parliament as an irrelevant institution. (Full article …)

The boycott by Israel and the international community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with Hamas’ recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. “Starving, drying up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken political movements. On the contrary … Reality has refuted the chorus of experts and commentators who preached [on] behalf of the boycott policy. This daft notion that it is possible to topple an elected government by applying pressure on a helpless population suffered a complete failure.” (Full article …)

Two San Joaquin Valley Representatives, Dennis Cardoza of Merced and Jim Costa of Fresno, were among 42 Democrats that voted to keep the world’s foremost torture school, the School of the Americas, open during a House vote on June 21. The vote was 203 yes, 214 no, 1 voting “present” and 19 not voting. (Full article …)