Tag Archives: Aggression

News

Investigation implicates North Korea in torpedo attack on South Korean vessel

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From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

In the most serious attack for over 20 years, a North Korean torpedo was found to be responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan, a 300-ft South Korean warship, which sank on March 26 with the loss of 46 lives.

[…]China, the last major ally of Pyongyang, gave a cautious and lukewarm response, saying that all parties should “remain calm” and that it would conduct its own “assessment” of the findings. Without China’s support at the UN Security Council, North Korea is likely to escape punishment.

An official report, carried out by South Korean investigators together with teams from the United States, Britain, Australia and Sweden, said the evidence pointed “overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine.” It added: “There is no other plausible explanation.”

I’m sure this attack has nothing at all to do with Obama being the president. Just like it’s purely a coincidence that we’ve suffered FIVE terrorist attacks under Obama, but NONE under Bush following his military response to the 9/11 attack in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m sure that despots and tyrants fear Obama’s bowing and apologizing more than they fear Tomahawk cruise missiles and AC-130 gunships.

And what does Hillary Clinton think of China?

Excerpt:

At the start of a four-day visit whose centerpiece will be talks in Beijing about strategic and economic matters, Clinton spent a misty morning at the Expo, an emblem of China’s rise on the world stage.

Dressed in a powder blue jacket to match the Expo’s plump, cartoonish mascot, Clinton walked through the U.S. and Chinese national “pavilions” shaking hands, posing for pictures and talking up the importance of people-to-people ties.

She avoided any public discussion of the issues that will occupy her in Beijing, including North Korea’s suspected sinking of a South Korean warship, Iran’s nuclear program, and U.S. calls for China to allow its currency to appreciate.

[…]Thanks partly to her intervention, major U.S. companies stepped up to the plate to fund the pavilion, whose attractions include three films highlighting the American way of life.

[…]Clinton handed out teddy bears to children in the audience.

The films made no explicit reference to democracy, human rights, freedom of religion or other political issues where the United States has long criticized China’s record.

The U.S. exhibit ends with a gift shop where a great many products — from teddy bears and stuffed bison to silver lapel pins and pink cowboy hats — were all marked “Made in China.”

A vote for “moral equivalence” leftists is a vote against world peace. People are having their human rights violated. People are being silenced, tortured and murdered. And what are the Democrats doing? Insulting America abroad and handing out teddy bears. Weakness. Appeasement. Emboldening the forces of evil.

Commentary

MUST-READ: Jennifer Roback Morse explains why two-parent families matter

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Article here in Policy Review, a publication of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

Excerpt:

A free society needs people with consciences. The vast majority of people must obey the law voluntarily. If people don’t conform themselves to the law, someone will either have to compel them to do so or protect the public when they do not. It costs a great deal of money to catch, convict, and incarcerate lawbreakers — not to mention that the surveillance and monitoring of potential criminals tax everybody’s freedom if habitual lawbreakers comprise too large a percentage of the population.

The basic self-control and reciprocity that a free society takes for granted do not develop automatically. Conscience development takes place in childhood. Children need to develop empathy so they will care whether they hurt someone or whether they treat others fairly. They need to develop self-control so they can follow through on these impulses and do the right thing even if it might benefit them to do otherwise.

All this development takes place inside the family. Children attach to the rest of the human race through their first relationships with their parents. They learn reciprocity, trust, and empathy from these primal relationships. Disrupting those foundational relations has a major negative impact on children as well as on the people around them. In particular, children of single parents — or completely absent parents — are more likely to commit crimes.

Without two parents, working together as a team, the child has more difficulty learning the combination of empathy, reciprocity, fairness, and self-command that people ordinarily take for granted. If the child does not learn this at home, society will have to manage his behavior in some other way. He may have to be rehabilitated, incarcerated, or otherwise restrained. In this case, prisons will substitute for parents.

I am reading her book Love and Economics right now, and this argument is in the first couple of chapters, which is how I found this article.

Dr. J’s blog is here.

News

Scientists discover how fathers improve brain development of children

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Dr. Braun’s group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they “caught up” by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.

“It just shows that parents are leaving footprints on the brain of their kids,” says Dr. Braun, 54 years old.

The neuronal differences were observed in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is related to emotional responses and fear, and the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, the brain’s decision-making center.

[…]The balance between these two brain parts is critical to normal emotional and cognitive functioning, according to Dr. Braun. If the OFC isn’t active, the amygdala “goes crazy, like a horse without a rider,” she says. In the case of the fatherless pups, there were fewer dendritic spines in the OFC, while the dendrite trees in the amygdala grew more and longer branches.

A preliminary analysis of the degus’ behavior showed that fatherless animals seemed to have a lack of impulse control, Dr. Braun says. And, when they played with siblings, they engaged in more play-fighting or aggressive behavior.

In a separate study in Dr. Braun’s lab conducted by post-doctoral researcher Joerg Bock, degu pups were removed from their caregivers for one hour a day. Just this small amount of stress leads the pups to exhibit more hyperactive behaviors and less focused attention, compared to those who aren’t separated, Dr. Braun says. They also exhibit changes in their brain.

The basic wiring between the brain regions in the degus is the same as in humans, and the nerve cells are identical in their function. “So on that level we can assume that what happens in the animal’s brain when it’s raised in an impoverished environment … should be very similar to what happens in our children’s brain,” Dr. Braun says.

Read the whole thing.

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