Who should not run a government? Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians (among others)

The Ancient Greeks believed that democracy would be impossible on too large a scale. For a small city-state, democracy can work. 

Knowing the people involved is crucial for democracy. 

If we know that someone tortured animals as a child, and has been in legal trouble several times since age 15, then we know that person should not be in a position of political responsibility. 

But how can democracy work in a huge empire with millions of people? We need to know if a politician has "Dark Triad" characteristics: psychopathy, narcissism, or Machiavellianism.





James Fallon (himself a psychopath) has scanned the brains of dozens of people believed to be psychopaths using a PET scanner, a machine that uses a small amount of radioactive substance to measure brain activity.

'If Environment Were a Bank,' Says Bernie Sanders, 'It Would Have Been Saved Already'

Published on

Friday, August 30, 2019

Common Dreams

Sanders has introduced a $16.3 trillion Green New Deal plan to avert climate catastrophe and create 20 million jobs in the process

Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/30/if-environment-were-bank-says-bernie-sanders-it-would-have-been-saved-already

The U.S. government took decisive action and spent trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street banks in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, but it has refused to do the same to rescue the planet from climate catastrophe—a fact Sen. Bernie Sanders highlighted in a pithy tweet on Friday.

"If the environment were a bank," wrote the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, "it would have been saved already."

Estimates of the size of the Wall Street bailout vary widely. When Federal Reserve loans are included in the bailout figures, some estimates put the total number as high as $29 trillion.

Sanders' Green New Deal plan, which the senator released last week, would aim to invest $16.3 trillion in a decade-long effort to transition the U.S. economy to 100 percent renewable energy and create 20 million well-paying union jobs.

According to the Sanders campaign, the proposal would "pay for itself over 15 years" by hiking taxes on the rich and large corporations, slashing military spending, and boosting economic activity with massive public investment.

On top of the human costs of climate inaction, the economic toll would be "unacceptable," the Sanders campaign notes in its Green New Deal platform.

"Economists estimate that if we do not take action, we will lose $34.5 trillion in economic activity by the end of the century," the platform states. "And the benefits are enormous: by taking bold and decisive action, we will save $2.9 trillion over 10 years, $21 trillion over 30 years, and $70.4 trillion over 80 years."

Activists Follow the Money Fueling Amazon Fires

Published on Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Inequality.org

Protesters around the world are singling out the bad actors profiting off deforestation.

Negin Owliaei, Kelsey Hawkins-Johnson

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/10/activists-follow-money-fueling-amazon-fires

While the world watches in horror as fires rage on in the Amazon, activists are shining a light on the big businesses destroying what’s popularly known as the “lungs of the Earth.” On September 5, people around the globe stood in solidarity with the rainforest’s indigenous communities by partaking in the Global Day of Action for the Amazon, staging protests and singling out the bad actors profiting off deforestation. 

In Washington, D.C. protesters chanted “Put out the flames, we name your names—politicians, corporate vultures, you’re the ones we blame,” as they marched from the White House to the Brazilian Consulate. Activists around the world have been protesting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has steadily rolled back indigenous land rights and environmental protections from his very first hours in office. A coalition — which includes Amazon Watch and Friends of the Earth, among others—is also putting pressure on the multinational corporations turning a profit off the destruction of the Amazon. 

Amazon Watch, a California-based organization that works in concert with indigenous and environmental groups, issued a report earlier this year documenting the dozens of companies that stand to make money as Bolsonaro strips regulations in Brazil. The report, titled Complicity in Destruction, highlights the main drivers of deforestation—from soy and beef commodity traders like Cargill and JBS, to their financiers in North America and Europe, like BlackRock, Santander, and JP Morgan Chase. And research from Mighty Earth has documented the retailers most associated with those traders, like Costco, Walmart, and Ahold Delhaize—which owns Stop & Shop, Giant, and Food Lion. 

Protesters in D.C. took aim at the U.S.-based companies highlighted in the campaign to defund deforestation. “There are many, many large corporations in the United States — including Cargill, ADM and BlackRock — who all have a hand in the destruction of the Amazon and we encourage all Americans to use their economic power to put pressure on these companies to do the right thing,” Todd Larsen, the Executive Co-Director for Consumer & Corporate Engagement at Green America told Inequality.org. Green America is encouraging Americans to use their investments to put economic pressure on the companies profiting off deforestation.

“The only reason these companies are able to keep burning down the forest year after year is because their customers keep paying them to do so,”  Bárbara Amaral of Brazilians for Democracy and Social Justice told the crowd in D.C. “It’s time for supermarket giants like Costco, Walmart, Ahold, to immediately suspend contacts with Cargill and JBS, and for the public to show up at the front doors of Cargill headquarters and yell that it’s time to protect the Amazon.” 

Protecting the environment must include structural changes to the economy that keep companies from making a quick buck off climate disaster, protesters said. “I came out today because I am in support of changing the climate debate into a debate that is critical about the current economic system that exists in the world that is perpetuating climate change,” Gabby Rosazza, a campaigner with the International Labor Rights Forum told Inequality.org. “In particular, I’m tired of hearing about how individual actions can address climate change such as buying metal straws versus plastic straws. I’m more interested in learning about who is profiting from climate change.”

One of the companies profiting the most? BlackRock — the largest asset manager in the world. A report released last month by Amazon Watch and Friends of the Earth found BlackRock to be among the top three shareholders in 25 of the largest publicly-traded deforestation-risk companies. And the asset manager’s deforestation presence grew by more than $500 million between 2014 and 2018. Activists in London, Stockholm, San Francisco, Boston and Hong Kong targeted BlackRock during Thursday’s Global Day of Action, holding protests and die-ins outside the asset manager’s offices. 

The recent report and protests are the latest addition to a pressure campaign mounting on BlackRock for continuously profiting off climate destruction, from the Amazon to the Alberta tar sands to Arctic oil reserves. Indigenous and environmental activists held protests at BlackRock’s annual general meeting earlier this year. Luiz Eloy Terena, legal counsel for the National Indigenous Organization of Brazil (also known as APIB) and a member of Brazil’s indigenous Terena community, expressed her criticism to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink directly during the meeting and demanded an audit of BlackRock investees operating on Brazilian indigenous territories.

"Brazilian indigenous peoples and lands are under immense threat from the beef and soy industries working hand in glove with the Bolsonaro regime to undermine protections that keep our forests standing and our climate stable," Terena said in a statement released after her conversation with Fink. 

“When BlackRock funnels investments to these bad actors in Brazil, it is complicit in the destruction of tropical forests and violation of human rights. BlackRock must use its significant influence over these companies to signal that it will not tolerate policies that violate indigenous rights and damage the climate.”

Plan to Release Radioactive Fukushima Wastewater Into Pacific Ocean Panned by Critics

Published on Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Common Dreams

"Another reason to not build nuclear power plants."

Julia Conley, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/10/plan-release-radioactive-fukushima-wastewater-pacific-ocean-panned-critics

The far-reaching dangers of nuclear power were on full display Tuesday as Japan's environmental minister recommended releasing more than one million tons of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi plant into the Pacific Ocean nearly a decade after a tsunami caused a meltdown at the coastal facility.

"There are no other options" other than dumping the water into the ocean and diluting it, Yoshiaki Harada said at a news conference in Tokyo.

Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga disputed Harada's claim, saying the government has not settled on a method of disposing of the wastewater. Other options include vaporizing the water and storing it on land.

But critics on social media said the suggestion of pouring contaminated water into the Pacific is more than enough evidence that the risks associated with nuclear power are too great to continue running plants like Fukushima.

The wastewater has been stored in tanks at Fukushima since the 2011 tsunami, when a meltdown at the plant forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

For years since the disaster, the plant has pumped tens of thousands of tons of water to help cool its damaged reactor cores and keep them from melting. After the water is used and contaminated with radionuclides and radioactive isotopes, it is stored in the tanks, but the plant expects to run out of room in 2022. 

The Atomic Energy Society of Japan said recently that it could take 17 years for water to meet safety standards after it is diluted.

Greenpeace, which has long called on the Japanese government to invest in technology to remove radioactivity from the water, said the environmental minister's proposal is unacceptable.

"The government must commit to the only environmentally acceptable option for managing this water crisis which is long-term storage and processing to remove radioactivity, including tritium," Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist the group's German office, told France 24.

The government of neighboring South Korea expressed grave concerns over the potential plan to dump the water into the Pacific, saying it planned to work closely with Japan to come up with an alternative.

"The South Korean government is well aware of the impact of the treatment of the contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on the health and safety of the people of both countries, and to the entire nation," the government said.

"Exactly What I've Hoped For": 100+ Education Leaders Voice Support for Sanders K-12 Plan

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Common Dreams

"No president or presidential candidate has offered a proposal so bold and sweeping."

Jessica Corbett, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/10/exactly-what-ive-hoped-100-education-leaders-voice-support-sanders-k-12-plan

More than 100 national education leaders are publicly backing 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders' plan to reform the American school system, his campaign announced Tuesday.

Unveiled in May, the Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education calls for "a transformative investment in our children, our teachers, and our schools, and a fundamental re-thinking of the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system."

"No president or presidential candidate has offered a proposal so bold and sweeping, which directly addresses the fiscal starving of American public education at the same time that the federal government got into the business of regulating, mandating, and controlling the nation's schools and classrooms," declared Diane Ravitch, former U.S. assistant secretary of education and research professor at New York University.

Sanders aims to address "the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for students in our K-12 schools," according to his campaign.

"Bernie's strong and ethical education platform is exactly what I've hoped for," Jonathan Kozol, a National Book Award recipient and activist for public schools and racial equality, said Tuesday. "His courageous and unqualified support for racial integration of our public schools sets him apart from the timid and equivocating centrists who have put unprincipled consensus ahead of social justice in the primary campaigns."

The White House hopeful's public education proposal has 10 key goals:

-Combating Racial Discrimination and School Segregation

-End the Unaccountable Profit-Motive of Charter Schools

-Equitable Funding for Public Schools

-Strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

-Give Teachers a Much-Deserved Raise and Empower them to Teach

-Expand After-School/Summer Education Programs

-Universal School Meals

-Community Schools

-School Infrastructure

-Make Schools a Safe and Inclusive Place for All

Part of Sanders' education plan includes banning new for-profit charter schools. As Common Dreams reported earlier this year, he was the first candidate in the Democratic primary race to take that position.

"Ninety percent of parents in this country send their kids to public schools, and they want those public schools to be a top priority," Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and another backer of Sanders' plan, said Tuesday. "That's why Sen. Sanders' plan to invest in public schools and provide real accountability over private alternatives is vitally important."

Weingarten, Ravitch, and Kozol were joined by dozens of other education leaders, union organizers, school reform groups, and college professors who endorsed Sanders' platform—as students and educators across the country kick off a new school year.

Other supporters of the plan included Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT; Abdul El-Sayed, former executive director of the Detroit Health Department; Adolph Reed Jr., professor emeritus of political science the University of Pennsylvania; Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University.

What It Will Take to Actually Fight Climate Change

Published on

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Ryan Cooper 

The Week

The technology is very largely there. All that is missing is the energy, commitment, and INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION [this last is the difficult part].

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/11/what-it-will-take-actually-fight-climate-change

Ponder the onrushing disaster of climate change, and the towering task of getting greenhouse gas emissions down in time to avoid existential calamity, and one can be led very easily to an enervating political despair. The battle is basically lost, or so says the famed novelist Jonathan Franzen in a New Yorker essay this week. While we should try to reduce emissions, he writes, "All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable."

Just like his similar effort from four years ago, Franzen's argument is sloppy, muddled, and premised on elementary factual errors. But it makes a good reason to consider some historical occasions in which human societies have faced and overcome similarly-long odds in the past—like the French Revolution, when ordinary people, pulsing with furious revolutionary energy, flung themselves at seemingly-invulnerable adversaries and won.

First, let's examine Franzen's case. He says that "consensus among scientists and policy-makers is that we'll pass this point of no return if the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees Celsius" which we will almost certainly blow past, and hence the game is basically up. He then reasons that climate policy should not now be too aggressive, because there is often an inherent trade-off between green developments and environmental preservation. "Our resources aren't infinite. Even if we invest much of them in a longest-shot gamble, reducing carbon emissions in the hope that it will save us, it's unwise to invest all of them," he writes, saying some should be saved for humanitarian aid and that renewable mega-projects that threaten ecosystems should not be built.

There is just one problem: Neither premise is true. The science on tipping points is very unsettled, but as the University of Exeter's Timothy Lenton (perhaps the top climate researcher on this particular point) explains in a Climatic Change paper, there are lots of potential tipping points, some are a lot more sinister than others, they will be reached at different temperatures, and, while we can't rule out tripping some at under 2 degrees, the likeliest early tripwire is between 2-4 degrees. Now, that is not at all comforting, but it means there is no certain climate doomsday point—every tenth of a degree of warming means worse direct impacts and a greater likelihood of extreme disaster.

Second, it is simply false to say there is a trade-off between climate policy and environmental preservation, because unchecked climate change will obliterate the biosphere. One should avoid wrecking key ecosystems, but if the energy payoff is sufficiently high, it still might be worth doing, because if climate change is not stopped the ecosystem will be wrecked anyway. High levels of warming will do orders of magnitude more damage to Franzen's beloved bird population than all the windmills in the world. Climate writer David Roberts carefully explained this to Franzen back in 2015, but apparently it didn't sink in. Under the onrushing disaster of climate change, and the towering task of getting greenhouse gas emissions down in time to avoid existential calamity, and one can be led very easily to an enervating political despair. The battle is basically lost, or so says the famed novelist Jonathan Franzen in a New Yorker essay this week. While we should try to reduce emissions, he writes, "All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable."

Read full article here.

The Catastrophic Tenure of John Bolton

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

The Lobe Log

Trump created the storm, but Bolton aimed it expertly. An aerial view of the White House post-Bolton would reveal a devastated landscape.

Joseph Cirincione

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/11/catastrophic-tenure-john-bolton

John Bolton’s tenure was a complete disaster. The national security architecture after Bolton looks like the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian.

Seventeen months ago, before Bolton became Donald Trump’s third national security advisor, the United States still had a deal that had stopped Iran’s nuclear program in its tracks. More, it had rolled it back to a fraction of its original size and boxed it into the most intrusive inspection regime ever negotiated. It was a deal for the ages. All of Trump’s military, intelligence and security advisors and our closest allies urged Trump to stay in the accord. Bolton destroyed it in two months, pushing Trump to violate it and impose draconian sanctions on Iran

“Withdrawing from the Iran Nuclear Deal should be a top Donald Trump administration priority,” Bolton tweeted in July 2017, months before his appointment. “The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” he shouted at an MEK rally in July 2017, promising them that they would all celebrate in Tehran “before 2019.”

Today, Iran is slowly pealing away from the deal, too, taking baby steps towards restarting capabilities that someday could allow it to make the material for a bomb, should it decide to do so. No new deal. No better deal. No regime change. No celebration in Tehran. “Trump has spent years making a mess of Iran policy for no reason other than right wing politics and incompetence,” tweeted former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as news of Bolton’s sacking spread.

Before Bolton, the United States had kept Russia from building a particularly dangerous class of missiles for over 30 years. Bolton blew apart the landmark Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement that President Ronald Reagan had painstakingly negotiated with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The treaty had broken the back of the nuclear arms race. For the first time, the two nuclear superpowers agreed to destroy, not just limit, nuclear weapons. It paved the way for other sweeping nuclear reductions treaties and big unilateral cuts—most done under Republican presidents.

Bolton hated these agreements. In 1999, he ridiculed the liberal “fascination with arms-control agreements” and blustered about “the Church of Arms Control,” insisting that America could rule the world through force of arms, not pieces of paper. In a classic Bolton move, he used the real fact of Russian violations of the INF treaty, not to insist on their compliance with the pact, but to destroy it entirely. “Violations give America the opportunity to discard obsolete, Cold War-era limits on its own arsenal and to upgrade its military capabilities to match its global responsibilities,” Bolton wrote in 2014.

The U.S. abrogation of the treaty was a gift to Vladimir Putin. It did not reverse the Russian violations; it permitted them. Today, there are no limits whatsoever on what missiles of this range Putin can deploy.

Bolton was also on course to destroy the last remaining nuclear reduction treaty, the New START agreement that limits US and Russian long-range nuclear weapons. Again using the phony right-wing tactic of blasting agreement because they do not cover all possible threats, Bolton trashed the accord as “flawed from the beginning” because it only limited long-range weapons (hence the name, “strategic arms reduction treaty”) and not short-range weapons as well.

Before Bolton, there were also fragile negotiations with the Afghanistan Taliban. Bolton “waged a last-minute campaign to stop the president from signing a peace agreement at Camp David,” reports The New York Times.

Before Bolton, there was the real possibility of a deal with North Korea that would have traded sanctions relief for serious nuclear dismantlement. Bolton killed it at the Hanoi summit by convincing Trump that Democrats would criticize him if he did not bring home Kim Jung-un’s complete surrender of all his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. “John Bolton appears to have locked the U.S. administration into a policy death spiral,” I wrote at the time. The spiral has now dragged Bolton to his political death.

Finally, and very seriously, before Bolton there was a functioning national security interagency process where leaders and experts from all agencies and departments could vet policies and build consensus. The National Security Council had been the principal forum for consideration of key policies for 72 years. Bolton destroyed it in 17 months.

“There was no process under John Bolton,” Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told Rachel Maddow the night of Bolton’s firing. Bolton halted meetings, restricted access to Trump and packed the staff with loyal Boltonites. “The national security adviser’s principal responsibility has traditionally been to oversee a disciplined policymaking process that includes the State Department, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, and to tee up big decisions for the president,” editorialized The Washington Post the same night, “Mr. Bolton didn’t do that.”

Bolton could not have wreaked this destruction if he had not been chosen, empowered and tolerated by Donald Trump, who must bear ultimate responsibility for Bolton’s legacy — what the Post summarized as “chaos, dysfunction and no meaningful accomplishments.” It was Trump who allowed Bolton to come within ten minutes of getting the war with Iran Bolton had sought for two decades, before halting the strikes. Trump created the storm, but Bolton aimed it expertly. An aerial view of the White House post-Bolton would reveal a devastated landscape.

“Any jackass can knock down a barn,” former House Speaker Sam Rayburn said, “It takes a carpenter to build one.” Bolton was the biggest jackass in the administration. There are no carpenters in sight.