Posted: February 17th, 2006, 12:38 am
Wait a minute Clay check this out.
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During an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes," Richard Clarke, the top adviser on counter-terrorism to President Bush, said that immediately after the attacks of 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq. Even after he was told that Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld still insisted that bombing Iraq was a better idea: "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq," he told Clarke.
Rumsfeld's response was obviously irrational, and if the subject weren't so serious, even comical. Clarke said this would have been akin to Franklin Roosevelt wanting to attack Mexico after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But giving Rumsfeld the benefit of the doubt, he was probably still in shock from the enormity of this unprecedented terrorist attack.
But what compels seemingly intelligent men to react this irresponsibly?
The answer lies deep inside our primate brain. This instinctive behavior is known as "displaced aggression," and a considerable amount of primate violence consists of bullying those who are smaller and weaker.
Since 1978, Robert M. Sapolsky, a noted primatologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University, has studied a troop of olive baboons living in Kenya's Masai Mara Game Reserve. Sapolsky observed that when assaulted by another adult male baboon, the first reaction is to find someone nearby who is smaller and weaker and make them pay. A subadult male is sought out and chased. The subadult male then lunges at an even smaller adult female. She in turn swats an adolescent who then knocks over an infant.
This same behavior is manifest in the Bush doctrine of preventive war. Iraq was weakened by its previous wars and U.N. sanctions, and even though there never has been any evidence connecting the secular regime of Iraq with the Islamic extremist group Al Qaeda, Iraq was an obvious target for the Bush administration's displaced aggression.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June04/Williamson0614.htm
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As despairing as man's inhumanity towards man is these days, there is hope for a more peaceful future if you know where to look. It can be found near a garbage dumpster in the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya.
Last April, Robert M. Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist at Stanford University, and his colleague Lisa Share reported that a troop of pugnacious baboons have actually learned to be nice to each other! I have previously written about this troop of savanna baboons because there was an uncanny similarity of their behavior to that of the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
But much has changed since then, and I owe this particular troop of baboons an apology.
The large despotic males, in typical male baboon fashion, ruled this troop by fear, intimidation, and violence while keeping smaller and less aggressive baboons away from a prized source of food -- the local dumpster. That is until fate would have it that all the dominant adult males contracted bovine tuberculosis from discarded contaminated meat and died, leaving behind all the females, their young, and those males of the troop who had been too subordinate to challenge them.
This resulted in a much healthier, more relaxed social hierarchy that has persisted for twenty years, even though the male survivors have since died and been replaced by males from other troops (In baboon society, the females stay with the troop while the males leave to join other troops after reaching puberty). So the troop's resident baboons are somehow instructing the immigrant males in their new social behavior. Sapolsky said, "We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal, but the jerky new guys are obviously learning 'we don't do things like that around here.'"
It is an entirely new, previously undocumented code of peaceful conduct for a baboon society, and it has been learned! If only humans were that smart
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Williamson0526.htm
Paste
During an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes," Richard Clarke, the top adviser on counter-terrorism to President Bush, said that immediately after the attacks of 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq. Even after he was told that Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld still insisted that bombing Iraq was a better idea: "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq," he told Clarke.
Rumsfeld's response was obviously irrational, and if the subject weren't so serious, even comical. Clarke said this would have been akin to Franklin Roosevelt wanting to attack Mexico after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But giving Rumsfeld the benefit of the doubt, he was probably still in shock from the enormity of this unprecedented terrorist attack.
But what compels seemingly intelligent men to react this irresponsibly?
The answer lies deep inside our primate brain. This instinctive behavior is known as "displaced aggression," and a considerable amount of primate violence consists of bullying those who are smaller and weaker.
Since 1978, Robert M. Sapolsky, a noted primatologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University, has studied a troop of olive baboons living in Kenya's Masai Mara Game Reserve. Sapolsky observed that when assaulted by another adult male baboon, the first reaction is to find someone nearby who is smaller and weaker and make them pay. A subadult male is sought out and chased. The subadult male then lunges at an even smaller adult female. She in turn swats an adolescent who then knocks over an infant.
This same behavior is manifest in the Bush doctrine of preventive war. Iraq was weakened by its previous wars and U.N. sanctions, and even though there never has been any evidence connecting the secular regime of Iraq with the Islamic extremist group Al Qaeda, Iraq was an obvious target for the Bush administration's displaced aggression.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June04/Williamson0614.htm
Paste
As despairing as man's inhumanity towards man is these days, there is hope for a more peaceful future if you know where to look. It can be found near a garbage dumpster in the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya.
Last April, Robert M. Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist at Stanford University, and his colleague Lisa Share reported that a troop of pugnacious baboons have actually learned to be nice to each other! I have previously written about this troop of savanna baboons because there was an uncanny similarity of their behavior to that of the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
But much has changed since then, and I owe this particular troop of baboons an apology.
The large despotic males, in typical male baboon fashion, ruled this troop by fear, intimidation, and violence while keeping smaller and less aggressive baboons away from a prized source of food -- the local dumpster. That is until fate would have it that all the dominant adult males contracted bovine tuberculosis from discarded contaminated meat and died, leaving behind all the females, their young, and those males of the troop who had been too subordinate to challenge them.
This resulted in a much healthier, more relaxed social hierarchy that has persisted for twenty years, even though the male survivors have since died and been replaced by males from other troops (In baboon society, the females stay with the troop while the males leave to join other troops after reaching puberty). So the troop's resident baboons are somehow instructing the immigrant males in their new social behavior. Sapolsky said, "We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal, but the jerky new guys are obviously learning 'we don't do things like that around here.'"
It is an entirely new, previously undocumented code of peaceful conduct for a baboon society, and it has been learned! If only humans were that smart
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Williamson0526.htm