Desktop Clearning Link Dump

Let's start off with evolutionary morality.

Primatologists like Frans de Waal have long argued that the roots of human morality are evident in social animals like apes and monkeys. The animals’ feelings of empathy and expectations of reciprocity are essential behaviors for mammalian group living and can be regarded as a counterpart of human morality.

Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, has built on this idea to propose that people are born with a moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution. In a new book, “Moral Minds” (HarperCollins 2006), he argues that the grammar generates instant moral judgments which, in part because of the quick decisions that must be made in life-or-death situations, are inaccessible to the conscious mind.

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Ohh, I don't think they are inaccessible to the conscious mind...but I would say they are inaccessible to most conscious minds. Some of us can't stop thinking about 'em.

And those of us like that end up talking about it a lot. Then, if we turn out to be correct...others believe us, write it down, and we get new religions. That's the simplified version, but that, most certainly, is the outline for the process.
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The 13 Enemies of the Interwebs The following countries are doing their darndest to avoid the coming Information Age (it already is here..it's coming to them...whether they like it or not)

Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egpyt, Iran, North Korea, Suadi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam

Quit making your people stupider, dumbasses.
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Speaking of non-democratic actions...

The head of the Virginia Board of Elections, Jean Jensen, tells MSNBC that “the FBI is now investigating allegations of voter intimidation and voter suppression.” State officials have documented “dozens of phone calls that were made to heavily Democratic precincts in which the people who were receiving the calls were either given incorrect information about polling sites [or] misdirected about election laws.”

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This is, undoubtedly, part of why Allen conceded in Virginia.
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Call me what you will, but this is a mark of a good leader.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Friday he would step down as Palestinian prime minister if that would persuade the West to lift debilitating economic sanctions.

His offer appeared to be another indication that the Islamic militant group and the rival Fatah Party of President Mahmoud Abbas were inching closer to a national unity government made up of independent experts — a coalition that presumably would present a more moderate face to the world.

The West and Israel have withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and tax revenues since Hamas took power in March in an effort to pressure the ruling group to moderate its violently anti-Israel ideology.

The sanctions have prevented Hamas from paying a large portion of the salaries owed to 165,000 government employees, causing widespread hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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The (closer to) full Pat Tillman story. I'm still happy he got his birthday wish.
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Later, Donnie, you unbelievable bastard.
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Oh...how nice...only 150,000 dead innocent people. It's only like 50 9/11s.

A stunning new death count emerged Thursday, as Iraq's health minister estimated at least 150,000 civilians have been killed in the war - about three times previously accepted estimates.

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This guy does make the same mistake as Bush though (no...not invading a country that wasn't a threat), he doesn't realize the Lancet study was about all Iraqis, not just non-combatants [more on that point].
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Poor Donnie. Maybe okaying torture wasn't such a good call after all.

Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Couldn't be happening to a nicer warmonger. You would think, after using torture as a reason to invade, we could have avoided doing it ourselves.

You'd think...
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Understand history, understand the present...

Because covert operations are usually kept secret, it is unlikely that any public hearing will ever be held to determine how many CIA associates were killed in Iraq. But this much is clear: the agency's reputation has been demolished. "It may be that the CIA actually made tremendous efforts to protect its people," says Baram. "But the perception among Iraqis is that having anything to do with Americans is dangerous to your health." The rout will make the CIA's future tasks in the Middle East--and perhaps the rest of the world--harder still to achieve.

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That's a bit of prophecy from Time Magazine the neocons somehow totally missed.
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And here's another reason Bush and His Buddies are failures.
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Maybe Bush can run this place after the investigations and his resignation. Keep an eye on that 'out jury' and all.
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Finally, a pretty fitting closing paragraph.

A final note. I just read somewhere that some of the families of dead American soldiers are visiting the Iraqi north to see ‘what their sons and daughters died for’. If that’s the goal of the visit, then, “Ladies and gentlemen- to your right is the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, to your left is the Dawry refinery… Each of you get this, a gift bag containing a 3 by 3 color poster of Al Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr (Long May He Live And Prosper), an Ayatollah Sistani t-shirt and a map of Iran, to scale, redrawn with the Islamic Republic of South Iraq. Also… Hey you! You- the female in the back- is that a lock of hair I see? Cover it up or stay home.”

And that is what they died for.

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