The man stopping Vladimir Putin from taking over the Internet

Politico reports: Daniel Sepulveda just might be the closest thing the United States has to an “Ambassador to the Internet.” And the 42-year-old is in the middle of a tricky battle.

Some countries, including behemoths China and Russia, as well as smaller countries with few resources, are starting to argue that the loose way the Internet is run leans too heavily in the U.S.’s favor. Their solution: Shift regulation of the Internet to the world stage, perhaps to the United Nations, where they might have more control.

That runs counter to the official position of the Obama administration. And that’s where Sepulveda comes in and what keeps the deputy assistant secretary of state and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy airborne much of the time, flying to Dubai, Costa Rica, Cuba or South Korea as the administration’s pitch man.

The Internet’s evolution should be decided “organically, by participants in the network,” Sepulveda argues, “as opposed to by governments or intermediaries.”

He’s willing to acknowledge that the current, somewhat ad hoc system of regulation — where geeks, not governments, get to vote — needs reforming. But it mostly works, as it allows for what Sepulveda calls “as little friction as possible” as information and ideas move around the world. Binding the future of the Internet to the U.N. threatens to upset a way of doing things that has produced, in the Internet, a global force unlike the world has ever seen.

The complicated part, though, is that Sepulveda and his colleagues have to sell that government-hands-off-the-Internet policy while also being high-ranking appointees of a government which has been accused of using the Internet to allegedly spy on its own citizens, as well as on world leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and Brazil’s Dilma Rouseff. [Continue reading…]

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TSA, an ‘abominable failure’

Politico reports: In only 13 years of operation, the TSA has racked up a lengthy rap sheet.

With accusations of employees stealing from passengers, snoozing behind X-ray scanners, illegally gambling at airports, spending money on lavish parties and showing basic disregard for humanity by racially profiling and physically abusing passengers, time and time again scandals have reminded the American public that the agency is more than just an airport annoyance.

But on Monday, news that the Transportation Security Administration failed to detect 67 of 70 mock weapons in a secret test shook the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees it, and led to renewed calls for the TSA to clean up its act.

On Monday night, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson unceremoniously demoted acting head Melvin Carraway and urged the Senate to act quickly to confirm U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Pete Neffenger, whom President Barack Obama nominated in April.

The White House also weighed in, with press secretary Josh Earnest saying on Tuesday that Obama “does continue to have confidence that the officers of the TSA … continue to protect the American aviation system,” despite the findings from the DHS inspector general. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. phone companies escape new data storage mandate in surveillance bill

Reuters: The U.S. government will rely on phone companies to keep data on customers once the USA Freedom Act is signed into law, but the bill avoids companies’ main concern: it does not force them to change how they collect and store data.

The bill, passed by the Senate late on Tuesday and expected to be signed into law by President Barack Obama, stops the government’s practice of routinely scooping up telephone metadata — dialed numbers and call lengths but not the content — from companies in bulk.

Instead, the National Security Agency and others in the U.S. intelligence community would have to request more targeted data from companies with a court order.

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Why climate action needs the arts

Andrew Simms writes: “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality,” wrote Bertolt Brecht, ”but a hammer with which to shape it.” His view was clearly shared by the judges of Anglian Ruskin University’s recent sustainable art prize. The winning piece was a large tombstone themed on climate change, blackened by oil and carrying the words “Lest we forget those who denied.”

The fact that there were also the names of six prominent climate sceptics on the tombstone led the Telegraph newspaper to denounce it as “tasteless” and “obnoxious”, and for one of those named, Christopher Monckton, to claim the artwork constituted a death threat.

From Goya, who darkly interpreted the horrors of Europe at war, to the romantics who conjured the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution, art has always explored and assimilated the experience of upheaval. More than that, from Milton’s pamphleteering, to the British artists and writers who fought in the Spanish civil war against Franco’s fascism, art has put itself at the service of explicitly political campaigns throughout history.

It is only odd, perhaps, that it has taken climate change so long to become a significant and controversial theme for the arts. The relative absence from daily political and cultural life of something as fundamental as a threat to a climate stable for humanity, has been weird. There will always be those who argue that didactic art is bad art. But equally, art that doesn’t notice, or remains unaffected by, epochal shifts in the world it inhabits, is variously asleep, suffocatingly self-absorbed or simply not looking.

If anything, the willingness to accept high-profile sponsorship from fossil fuel companies suggests that the art establishment has been worse than indifferent, and actively obstructive to the challenge of tackling climate upheaval. The social licence to operate, and normalisation that such cultural relationships gift to oil companies, can dissipate the urgency for action and sponsorship can seek to directly influence the climate debate.

That is all now changing. [Continue reading…]

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Extremist activity: don’t even think about it in the UK pre-crime state

By Maria W. Norris, London School of Economics and Political Science

The UK government has announced plans to bring in a new extremism bill in yet another attempt to strengthen its counter-terrorism powers. If enacted, the bill will join dozens of other pieces of legislation aimed in the same direction.

This latest addition to the already swollen terrorism statute book takes the UK further down a dangerous path, giving the government power to punish citizens even before they commit a crime.

It is hard to imagine that just 15 years ago, the UK did not have a single permanent piece of terrorism legislation. The threat of the IRA was handled with temporary provisions that were renewed each year, rather than with permanent measures.

The government powers that have accumulated since then have a direct effect on the presumption of innocence – a fundamental legal principle. Most terrorism powers now essentially distribute punishment before someone has even been charged – let alone convicted of a terrorism offence.

The new extremism bill seems to be made up primarily of such administrative measures. It includes banning orders and employment checks aimed at enabling companies to look into whether a potential employee is considered an extremist. The UK does not currently have a working definition of extremism so there is no consensus on what activities, attitudes and beliefs could lead to someone to be labelled an extremist.

Significantly, the new bill includes the creation of extremism disruption orders. These would give the police powers to apply to the high court to limit the “harmful activities” of an extremist individual. Those activities might include the risk of public disorder, harassment, alarm, distress or creating “a threat to the functioning of democracy”.

This is particularly concerning due to its vagueness. What exactly is a threat to the functioning of democracy? Not voting, or encouraging people not to vote, as comedian Russell Brand did in the run up to the 2015 election undermine the democratic process – is that enough for Brand to be subject to such measures?

These powers, dubbed extremism ASBOs by some, were first proposed last March, but were vetoed by the Liberal Democrats. The idea is to “stop extremists promoting views and behaviour that undermine British values” but by criminalising belief and behaviour without the need for a trial, these powers mark another step towards making the UK a pre-crime society.

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FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over U.S. cities

The Associated Press reports: The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes’ surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. The FBI said it uses front companies to protect the safety of the pilots and aircraft. It also shields the identity of the aircraft so that suspects on the ground don’t know they’re being watched by the FBI.

In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

Aerial surveillance represents a changing frontier for law enforcement, providing what the government maintains is an important tool in criminal, terrorism or intelligence probes. But the program raises questions about whether there should be updated policies protecting civil liberties as new technologies pose intrusive opportunities for government spying. [Continue reading…]

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Detainee alleges CIA sexual abuse, torture beyond Senate findings

Reuters reports: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used a wider array of sexual abuse and other forms of torture than was disclosed in a Senate report last year, according to a Guantanamo Bay detainee turned government cooperating witness.

Majid Khan said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, twice videotaped him naked and repeatedly touched his “private parts” – none of which was described in the Senate report. Interrogators, some of whom smelled of alcohol, also threatened to beat him with a hammer, baseball bats, sticks and leather belts, Khan said.

Khan’s is the first publicly released account from a high-value al Qaeda detainee who experienced the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of President George W. Bush’s administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.

Khan’s account is contained in 27 pages of interview notes his lawyers compiled over the past seven years. The U.S. government cleared the notes for release last month through a formal review process. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: The former deputy CIA director made a series of factual misstatements while defending the agency’s harsh treatment of detainees in his recent book, Senate intelligence committee staffers assert in a 54-page document filed with citations from CIA records.

The detailed critique of the memoir by Michael Morell shows the extent to which critics and backers continue to try to shape public perceptions of the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program, even months after the release of a Senate report that sought to render a final judgment on it.

How the public interprets the CIA’s use of torture is not merely a matter of history: At least one Republican presidential candidate, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, recently promised to bring back harsh interrogation techniques if elected. [Continue reading…]

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Major European oil companies call for carbon price

Big Oil — also known as the supermajors — refers, in order of size, to Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, Total, and ConocoPhillips. Three American companies and three European companies.

It was only the latter three — Shell, BP, and Total — that added their names to a letter, saying: “We want to be a part of the solution and deliver energy to society sustainably for many decades to come.”

Climate Central reports: In a stunning reversal of years of obstructionism to creating a global framework to deal with climate change, CEOs from global oil and gas behemoths Shell, BP, Total, Statoil, Eni and the BG Group have signaled that they’re ready for a price on carbon.

The CEOs of the companies, with nearly $1.4 trillion in annual revenue, sent a letter on Friday, which was released publicly on Monday, to Christiana Figueres, the United Nation’s climate chief, as well as Laurent Fabius, France’s Foreign Affairs and International Development Minister who will also lead the Paris climate talks later this year.

In it, they ask for national and regional governments to set a price on carbon and for those regional carbon markets to be linked.

“We need governments across the world to provide us with clear, stable, long-term, ambitious policy frameworks,” the letter states.

The timing of the letter is no coincidence. Representatives from 190 countries are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week to continue hammering out details for an international climate agreement that is expected to take shape by the end of the year. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s long walk to freedom

Kristyan Benedict writes: Freedom from fear doesn’t come easy. That’s especially the case in Syria. For over four years Syrians who’ve wanted to build a new country based on equality, dignity and human rights have been blockaded, disappeared, tortured, exiled, bombed and betrayed.

On top of wide-scale human rights abuses by Assad’s forces, by ISIS and by numerous armed groups, these Syrians have largely been ignored by the mainstream media and in many cases, have been ridiculed as being wildly out of touch with the ‘realities’ on the ground.

It’s little surprise that many of those not engaged with Syria, think what’s going on is essentially Assad’s ‘secular’ forces pitted against the genocidal religious-extremist thugs of ISIS. In reality, these two masters of torture actually feed off each other and perpetuate the Syrian war.

Thankfully, war doesn’t last forever, and it won’t last forever in Syria either. And what comes next? is one of those questions which is asked by those who genuinely want to see a human rights based transition in Syria.

Asking ‘what comes next?’ is key to creating a vision and a plan to steer Syrians out of this darkness and towards a reality where they are genuinely free from fear.

With that focus on long-term transition and protecting the rights of all Syrians in mind, it was Amnesty International UK’s pleasure to recently host Rafif Jouejati and her organisation, FREE-Syria (the Foundation to Restore Equality and Education in Syria), to talk about a potentially ground-breaking initiative which could help shape a future Syria — a Syria which has a government that doesn’t terrorise its own people.

The Freedom Charter, modeled on the South African Freedom Charter, is a much-needed reminder that there are still many Syrians who believe in freedom, justice, dignity and democracy. It reminds us that there are still many Syrians who reject authoritarianism, whether it is of the Ba’ath party variety, the ISIS type or that promulgated by some armed opposition groups. [Continue reading…]

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The case for an unprincipled foreign policy

Musa al-Gharbi writes: With pomp and polish and platitudes, the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. It began in December, as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a run for the White House. Bush is more moderate than much of the Republican base on many issues — perhaps too moderate to win his party’s nomination, according to Nate Silver’s statistical analysis. On foreign policy issues, however, Bush tows a hawkish line, pushing for a more aggressive U.S. posture against Syria, Russia, Iran, China, and Cuba in order to better promote and defend American ideals and interests throughout the globe.

On the whole, the Republican hopefuls are “racing to the right” on foreign policy, arguing for a more muscular approach to international affairs. A narrative is taking hold that many of the problems facing the world today are the result of the Obama administration’s “failed leadership.” More specifically, they were not brought about by America’s ill-conceived actions, but instead, because of U.S. inaction: a failure to intervene as often or aggressively as “needed” around the world, which (to many conservatives’ minds) projected American weakness and undermined U.S. credibility. The solution? Clear principled American leadership. This line of reasoning permeates the recently-announced campaigns of noted surgeon Ben Carson, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and increasingly reflects the political strategy of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul as well.

The presumed Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, is perhaps more aggressive still: unwavering in her advocacy of Israel, comparing Putin to Hitler over Ukraine, pushing for a more confrontational approach to China, championing intervention in Libya and Syria (just as she previously did for Iraq), supporting the troop surge in Afghanistan as well as the likely ill-fated campaign against ISIL, defending the counterproductive drone program, and arguing for increased sanctions and the threat of force against Iran (although she now tentatively supports the nuclear negotiation effort).

During her pre-announcement book tour, Clinton lambasted the Obama administration’s foreign policy, particularly the administration’s aspirational credo: “Don’t do stupid stuff.” Her complaint was not that the Obama administration has failed to live up to such a modest goal, but instead, that “don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organizing principle, and America instead needs doctrines to guide its foreign policy.

On its face, that criticism is absurd. Clearly, “avoid doing harm” is, in fact, a maxim designed to guide action (just ask any medical professional). It’s a principle guiding what not to do, rather than what to do, but for that very reason, it is the basis of (and more important than) any offensive strategy: it constrains what sorts of affirmative policies are desirable or even permissible. But notwithstanding this apparent lack of understanding about what “organizing principle” means, there is a more profound error that Secretary Clinton holds in common with the Republican frontrunners: the assumption that grand strategies are necessary or useful in guiding foreign policy. They aren’t. [Continue reading…]

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While nobody was looking, ISIS launched a new, deadly offensive

The Washington Post reports: Syrian rebels appealed for U.S. airstrikes to counter a new offensive by the Islamic State in the northern province of Aleppo that could reshape the battlefield in Syria.

The surprise assault, launched over the weekend, opened a new front in the multi-pronged war being waged by the extremist group across Iraq and Syria, and it underscored the Islamic State’s capacity to catch its enemies off guard.

The push — which came on the heels of the miltants’ capture of the Syrian city of Palmyra and the western Iraqi city of Ramadi late last month — took them within reach of the strategically vital town of Azaz on the Turkish border.

The offensive reinforces the impression that the Islamic State is regaining momentum despite more than eight months of U.S. led-airstrikes. [Continue reading…]

Shiraz Maher writes: It is almost impossible to see how the Islamic State can be undermined. So far, the West has shown itself to have little meaningful strategy and the coalition bombing campaign has been weak and ineffective.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of counternarratives and disruptive measures, thousands of young people from across the world continue to make the journey to Syria in support of jihadist causes. Of all the options currently being explored by Western governments, none are attractive. Jihadists will not abide diplomatic initiatives and there is no public or political support for a full military campaign.

The intractability of the Islamic State is borne of much more than just the Syrian uprising. At its core is the unraveling of the Sunni poor across the Levant, while Sunni elites are holding on to the power structures that have worked for them thus far. They are the greatest losers of the last decade and are unsure of their place in an increasingly Balkanized and atomized Middle East. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS radio thanks its listeners for tuning in

The Associated Press reports: After a selection of tunes, the presenter with an American accent offers “a glimpse at our main headlines.” IS militants have just seized three Iraqi cities. A bomb blows up a factory, killing everyone inside. Militants destroy four enemy Hummers and an armored vehicle.

The newscast’s tone sounds much like National Public Radio in the United States. But this is Al-Bayan, the Islamic State radio targeting European recruits — touting recent triumphs in the campaign to carve out a Caliphate.

All news is good news for Al-Bayan’s “soldiers of the Caliphate.” In this narrative, the enemy always flees in disgrace or is killed. The broadcasts end with a swell of music and a gentle English message: “We thank our listeners for tuning in.”

The tension between the smooth, Western-style production and the extremist content shows how far the hardcore Islamic propaganda machine has come since 2012, when an aging Frenchman posed in front of a black-and-white jihadi flag and threatened France in the name of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. The footage was grainy, with minimal production values, and released on a relatively obscure regional website. By contrast, Al-Bayan reaches thousands of listeners every day via links shared on social networks, helping to swell the ranks of Westerners — projected this year to reach a total of up to 10,000 — fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. [Continue reading…]

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Want to understand the jihadis? Read their poetry

Robyn Creswell and Bernard Haykel write: On October 11, 2014, according to Islamic State-affiliated Twitter accounts a woman going by the name Ahlam al-Nasr was married in the courthouse of Raqqa, Syria, to Abu Usama al-Gharib, a Vienna-born jihadi close to the movement’s leadership. ISIS social media rarely make marriage announcements, but al-Nasr and al-Gharib are a jihadi power couple. Al-Gharib is a veteran propagandist, initially for Al Qaeda and now for ISIS. His bride is a burgeoning literary celebrity, better known as “the Poetess of the Islamic State.” Her first book of verse, “The Blaze of Truth,” was published online last summer and quickly circulated among militant networks. Sung recitations of her work, performed a cappella, in accordance with ISIS’s prohibition on instrumental music, are easy to find on YouTube. “The Blaze of Truth” consists of a hundred and seven poems in Arabic — elegies to mujahideen, laments for prisoners, victory odes, and short poems that were originally tweets. Almost all the poems are written in monorhyme — one rhyme for what is sometimes many dozens of lines of verse — and classical Arabic metres.

Little is known about Ahlam al-Nasr, but it seems that she comes from Damascus and is now in her early twenties. Her mother, a former law professor, has written that al-Nasr “was born with a dictionary in her mouth.” She began writing poems in her teens, often in support of Palestine. When, in the spring of 2011, protests in Syria broke out against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, al-Nasr took the side of the demonstrators. Several poems suggest that she witnessed the regime’s crackdown at first hand and may have been radicalized by what she saw:

Their bullets shattered our brains like an
earthquake,
even strong bones cracked then broke.
They drilled our throats and scattered
our limbs—
it was like an anatomy lesson!
They hosed the streets as blood still
ran
like streams crashing down from the
clouds.

Al-Nasr fled to one of the Gulf states but returned to Syria last year, arriving in Raqqa, the de-facto capital of ISIS, in early fall. She soon became a kind of court poet, and an official propagandist for the Islamic State. She has written poems in praise of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled Caliph of ISIS, and, in February, she wrote a thirty-page essay defending the leadership’s decision to burn the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh alive. In a written account of her emigration, al-Nasr describes the caliphate as an Islamist paradise, a state whose rulers are uncorrupted and whose subjects behave according to pious norms. [Continue reading…]

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One year on, people of ISIS-held Mosul still ‘cut off from the World’

Joanna Paraszczuk reports: The longer the operation to liberate Mosul is delayed, the more psychological advantages IS gains over the city’s populace, says Shakir al-Bayati, chief editor of the Nineveh Reporters Network, a group of journalists originally from Mosul.

Since IS overran the city on June 10, 2014, Mosul’s residents have been cut off from the rest of Iraq and subjected to the militant group’s “huge propaganda machine,” Bayati tells RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq.

IS backs up all its rulings with extensive quotations from the Koran and the Hadith (collections of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). As a result, some people in Mosul have begun to ask whether IS could be correct after all in its religious interpretations.

“They [IS] are winning over the streets,” Bayati says. “Some say that they have begun to wonder: Is IS the true outlook? Were we wrong before?”

Hisham al-Hashimi, an adviser to the Iraqi government who is widely considered to be Iraq’s leading expert on IS, tells Radio Free Iraq that their “enforced coexistence with IS” could result in Mosul residents being attracted to the group’s extremist interpretations of Islam.

“Especially if they feel abandoned by the international community and their own government,” Hashimi adds. “Those living under IS rule are at best neutral, and at worst supporters of IS.” [Continue reading…]

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Israel’s charade of democracy

Hagai El-Ad writes: Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is nearing the half-century mark, and Israel’s new right-wing government offers little hope of ending it. Nevertheless, the new government promises something else of value: clarity. And with that clarity, the opportunity to challenge the prolonged lie of the occupation’s “temporary” status. For if the occupation has become permanent in all but its name, what about the voting rights of Palestinians?

Two months ago, on election day in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel’s Arab citizens were flocking to the polls “in droves”— a clear effort to cast the voting of one-fifth of Israel’s citizens as a danger to be counteracted. That undermined basic democratic principles, but it paled in contrast to the status of the Palestinian population living next door in territories under direct or indirect Israeli rule. They have no say at all in choosing the government of the occupying power that is in ultimate command of their fate.

If you look at all the land Israel controls between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, that area contains some 8.3 million Israelis and Palestinians of voting age. Roughly 30 percent — about 2.5 million — are Palestinians living outside Israel under varying degrees of Israeli control — in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They have some ability to elect Palestinian bodies with limited functions. But they are powerless to choose Israeli officials, who make the weightiest decisions affecting them. [Continue reading…]

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The dysevolution of humanity

Jeff Wheelwright writes: I sat in my padded desk chair, hunched over, alternately entering notes on my computer and reading a book called The Story of the Human Body. It was the sort of book guaranteed to make me increasingly, uncomfortably aware of my own body. I squirmed to relieve an ache in my lower back. When I glanced out the window, the garden looked fuzzy. Where were my glasses? My toes felt hot and itchy: My athlete’s foot was flaring up again.

I returned to the book. “This chapter focuses on just three behaviors … that you are probably doing right now: wearing shoes, reading, and sitting.” OK, I was. What could be more normal?

According to the author, a human evolutionary biologist at Harvard named Daniel Lieberman, shoes, books and padded chairs are not normal at all. My body had good reason to complain because it wasn’t designed for these accessories. Too much sitting caused back pain. Too much focusing on books and computer screens at a young age fostered myopia. Enclosed, cushioned shoes could lead to foot problems, including bunions, fungus between the toes and plantar fasciitis, an inflammation of the tissue below weakened arches.

Those are small potatoes compared with obesity, Type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease and many cancers also on the rise in the developed and developing parts of the world. These serious disorders share several characteristics: They’re chronic, noninfectious, aggravated by aging and strongly influenced by affluence and culture. Modern medicine has come up with treatments for them, but not solutions; the deaths and disabilities continue to climb.
lieberman

An evolutionary perspective is critical to understanding the body’s pitfalls in a time of plenty, Lieberman suggests. [Continue reading…]

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