- HOW BIG A ROLE DOES MEDIA PLAY IN ENCOURAGING COPYCAT MASS SHOOTINGS? Police officers and media outlets are belatedly but “increasingly choosing to downplay the identities of perpetrators to avoid potentially inspiring others to carry out similar atrocities… since publishing their names & photos often essentially reward them with fame and attention… by describing shooters in a way that makes them seem larger than life… and which they accurately recognize that the more victims killed, the more attention they get.” [TIME – 9/16/19]
- AS OUR SOCIETY BECOMES MORE DEPENDENT ON AUTOMATION AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT), security risks continue to increase. Latest attacks, by UC-Santa Cruz researchers, involve popular consumer products technology, with capacity including: “(1) Access of audio that a child shares with a toy (CogniToys Dino), like age & address, with imposition the hacker’s voice & interaction; (2) Impersonation of an intimate partner to remotely control a Vibrator (OhMiBod); (3) Taking control of a Drone, either to crash it, cause damage to infrastructure, injure bystanders, or spy through the Drone’s camera.” [SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG – 9/6/19]
- “REGARDLESS OF THE CHANGES THAT HAVE BEFALLEN HUMANS in the past or may hit us in the future, the institutions controlling our present are very much organized along the lines of ‘this is the way it’s always been, how we’ve always done it, and how we’ll continue to do it’… The environmental & cultural conditions for survival in the modern developed world are far different from what they were just fifty years ago. Yet most of our institutions are still based on models developed in the 18th, 19th & early 20th centuries. The result is paradoxical: just as we most need innovators, entrepreneurs, inventors and creators, our social & educational systems are becoming rigidified and less tolerant of difference and variation… lacking the ability or willingness to innovate, change and protect our children from the mind control of consumerism and television.” [THE EDISON GENE – Thom Hartmann]
- “WHEN EVERYTHING IS A ‘HUMAN RIGHT,’ NOTHING IS.” Activists in America and globally “have cheapened its meaning, produced unnecessary clashes, and diminished the core rights that were meant to uphold human dignity… The result is that institutions are losing their authority as Rights claims from various well-meaning special interest groups has risen steeply, seeking to harness the moral authority of the idea to their causes… But Activists have failed to take into account how expansive new programs might aggravate suspicion in today’s multipolar world… The original Universal Declaration drafted Human Rights in such a way as to leave little room for flexibility in implementation – protections for religion & conscience; against genocide, slavery, torture, cruelty or degrading treatment; forcible transfer of population; discrimination based on race/color/sex/ language/social origin. But the framers were clear that universality does not mean homogeneity in implementation… and the global pushback against Western-funded organizations, who use the Human Rights label to promote ideas that are not widely shared,” should not be surprising. [FOREIGN POLICY – 9/6/19]