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Normally, I would totally agree with you. During my studies, I continually voiced my disagreement <br>with the prominence testing was given. I also agree with you about genetically transmitted psychopathy.<br>No matter what we think, believe, or know -- drug testing will continue to be used (against the vulnerable). <br>I think it is a stroke of genius to use testing against the powerful by those with power over them, their<br>clients. The difficulties will be to get the 'perfect' test and enough investors to force it down their throats.<br>Aren't they the ones who are also against the use of medical 'herbs'?<br>Anne<br><br><br><div>> To: hq2600@gmail.com; discuss@paa-tx.org<br>> From: rebelljb@aol.com<br>> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:57:55 -0500<br>> Subject: Re: [PAA-Discuss] [hq2600] From Cynthia McKinney: They're not just at corporate helms!<br>> <br>> I would not say that being psychopathic is transmitted by genetics so <br>> much as it is growing up in the environment in which one is raised by <br>> psychopaths. I think that mandatory drug testing violates civil <br>> liberties, even though there is more of a trend in the present age to <br>> permit it. I think that psychological testing could also be a violation <br>> of privacy and would probably not be very effective. I think it is <br>> better to look at peoples' actions, rather than their scores on <br>> subjective tests.<br>> <br>> However, I do agree there is more of a problem of people without <br>> conscience in corporate leadership. The turnover of corporate work <br>> forces may make it more difficult for psychopaths to be detected. In <br>> the past, it was more common for workers to work for the same companies <br>> for practically all of their adult lives. Nowadays, corporations often <br>> layoff, downsize, and restructure their workforces.<br>> <br>> <br>> -----Original Message-----<br>> From: HQ <hq2600@gmail.com><br>> To: updates <updates@lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com><br>> Sent: Wed, Nov 30, 2011 12:40 pm<br>> Subject: [PAA-Discuss] [hq2600] From Cynthia McKinney: They're not just <br>> at corporate helms!<br>> <br>> <br>> Hello!<br>> <br>> While doing the reading for my schoolwork, my professor chanced upon <br>> this article and sent it to the class. I'm sharing it with you because <br>> I think this is very important. And it's clear from the state of <br>> things, the problem resides not just in corporate suites, but also on <br>> journalists' beats and among the antiwar chique. We have a pervasive <br>> problem that has succeeded in rotting most of our institutions and <br>> organizations and even the individuals who lead them. The article is <br>> about a scholar who is trying to help us understand where we have gone <br>> wrong. The scholar's application is to corporations. I extend it to <br>> other activities that shape how we view the world and what our possible <br>> responses to those views are.<br>> <br>> The sad fact is that even among people who are supposed to be our <br>> heroes, our leaders, something has gone terribly wrong that excuses can <br>> be made for a particular political party that are somehow supposed to <br>> shield them from a more critical view--when the issues are life and <br>> death, the vitality of our country, the protection of Mother Earth, the <br>> preservation of our humanity.<br>> <br>> Watch this very short video: <br>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z-iPypa4EM&feature=share<br>> <br>> Of course, I'm extremely saddened by the video of the torture of the <br>> Imam who survived NATO's bombing in Libya as he accompanied a group of <br>> Imams on their way to make peace with their disgruntled brothers and <br>> sisters in the eastern part of the country. Firmly in the grips of <br>> NATO's Libyan allies, this Imam who tried to bring peace to his country <br>> now faces torture. I appeared on his television show; the DIGNITY <br>> Delegation interviewed him as he recounted his harrowing experience to <br>> survive the bombing. I still have in my possession copies of the <br>> identity cards of the young students of the Koran who were killed by <br>> NATO's precise humanitarian bombing.<br>> <br>> Lurking inside the scripts of even progressive media outlets are <br>> characterizations of a brutal war of aggression as a "civil war." I <br>> should be accustomed to this by now--it's the way most of the conflicts <br>> in Africa are characterized--a kind of "disinformation shorthand," that <br>> keeps the hidden hand hidden. In reality, the chaos created is a <br>> purposeful chaos that facilitates the theft of African resources--or <br>> preserves unfettered access to a geo-strategically important piece of <br>> real estate. And those who erase the fingerprints of the hidden hand <br>> that creates the chaos, are in actuality, the perpetrators' <br>> handmaidens. So, we get journalists who tweet civilian targets in to <br>> NATO for bombing so that other journalists can call it a civil war. <br>> What we are witnessing is historical revisionism even before the <br>> present becomes history. I saw this very same phenomenon occur around <br>> what has become known to the world as the Rwandan Genocide. When it <br>> comes to Africa (or Africans--including in the Diaspora) it seems <br>> extremely easy for "The Left" to get it wrong. And, the stealing and <br>> the killing go on.<br>> <br>> Here is the video of Imam Khaled describing his survival of the NATO <br>> bombing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RFQfgguzoU&feature=youtu.be<br>> <br>> Here is video of Imam Khaled being tortured: <br>> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=246145872116631 and here: <br>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfi87CdMciE&feature=email&skipcontrinter=1<br>> <br>> Here is video from the only surviving member of the El Hamedi family <br>> entirely wiped out by NATO "smart" bombing at his children's birthday <br>> party:<br>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgR2Zbv4N9s&feature=youtube_gdata_player<br>> <br>> And now, 700 Libyans under the leadership of Libyan Al Qaeda NATO ally, <br>> Belhadj, have reportedly traveled with their NATO/Qatari weapons to <br>> start the "humanitarian intervention" in Syria.<br>> <br>> View this before US/NATO/Israel humanitarian intervention and after on <br>> Libya, especially those antiwar activists, civil rights icons, and <br>> pedigreed progressives who supported the bombing based on lies: <br>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll13UtCPGFU&feature=email<br>> <br>> Remember what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us about "friends:" <br>> "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the <br>> silence of our friends."<br>> <br>> On this one, names need to be called so no one will be tricked again by <br>> such duplicity, because these wars are not going to end. Warmongers in <br>> peace activists' clothing. Dan Glazebrook does that regarding Noam <br>> Chomsky here: <br>> http://globalciviliansforpeace.com/2011/11/25/noam-chomsky-and-the-manufacture-of-consent-dan-glazebrook/<br>> <br>> And finally, here is the article about the professor's work that pretty <br>> sadly describes our current leadership situation. Read it and weep: <br>> http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/11/21/Corporate-Psychopaths/<br>> <br>> Time to Test Corporate Leaders to Weed out Psychopaths<br>> Shark-like, they rise fast but risk killing the world economy, <br>> concludes a business professor.<br>> <br>> By Mitchell Anderson, 21 Nov 2011, TheTyee.ca<br>> <br>> One per cent of humans: Not murderously insane, just devoid of empathy <br>> and ultimately destructive.<br>> <br>> Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to <br>> learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent <br>> criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a <br>> genetically-inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from <br>> feeling normal human empathy.<br>> <br>> Scientific research is revealing that 21st century financial <br>> institutions with a high rate of turnover and expanding global power <br>> have become highly attractive to psychopathic individuals to enrich <br>> themselves at the expense of others, and the companies they work for.<br>> <br>> A peer-reviewed theoretical paper from 2011 titled "The Corporate <br>> Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis" details how <br>> highly-placed psychopaths in the banking sector may have nearly brought <br>> down the world economy through their own inherent inability to care <br>> about the consequences of their actions.<br>> <br>> The author of this paper, Clive Boddy, previously of Nottingham Trent <br>> University, believes this theory would go a long way to explain how <br>> senior managers acted in ways that were disastrous for the institutions <br>> they worked for, the investors they represented and the global economy <br>> at large.<br>> <br>> If true, this also means the astronomically expensive public bailouts <br>> will not solve the problem since many of the morally impaired <br>> individuals who caused this mess likely remain in positions of power. <br>> Worse, they may be the same people advising governments on how to <br>> resolve this crisis.<br>> <br>> To tackle this problem, we must instead examine this rare and curious <br>> condition, and why recent corporate history may have elevated precisely <br>> the wrong type of people to positions of great power and public trust.<br>> <br>> Unfeeling, but not insane<br>> <br>> Psychopathy should not be confused with insanity. It is best described <br>> by Robert Hare, global expert and psychologist, as "emotional deafness" <br>> -- a biochemical inability to experience normal feelings of empathy for <br>> others.<br>> <br>> This shark-like fixation on self-interest means that psychopaths often <br>> feel a clear detachment from other people, viewing them more as sheep <br>> to be preyed upon than fellow humans to relate to. For instance, <br>> psychopaths in prison often use group therapy sessions not as a healing <br>> process, but as an opportunity to learn how to simulate normal human <br>> emotions.<br>> <br>> Studies on twins have revealed that psychopathy shows a strong genetic <br>> signature and there remains no effective treatment. Recent research has <br>> linked the condition to physical abnormalities in the amygdala region <br>> of the brain.<br>> <br>> Only a small subset of psychopaths become the violent criminals so <br>> often fictionalized in film. Most simply seek to blend in and conceal <br>> their difference in order to more effectively manipulate others. This <br>> frightening condition has existed throughout human history, though <br>> likely in a marginal and socially parasitic way.<br>> <br>> While psychopaths are often portrayed by Hollywood as brilliantly <br>> clever, a hypothetical race of Hannibal Lecters would likely perish <br>> since they lack the ability to trust each other. Put another way, the <br>> human race -- a relatively weak, slow, hairless tropical primate -- has <br>> succeeded so spectacularly in every ecosystem on the planet not because <br>> we are so bad, but because we are so good.<br>> <br>> Most dangerous one per cent<br>> <br>> The human ability to build social capital means that people can <br>> co-operate and trust each other. We can reliably predict the behaviour <br>> of others even if we have never met them. Social capital is the glue <br>> that holds together our communities, complex societies, large <br>> institutions and the economy. The one and only superpower possessed by <br>> psychopaths is their ruthless ability to spend the social capital <br>> created by others.<br>> <br>> Scientists believe about one per cent of the general population is <br>> psychopathic, meaning there are more than three million moral monsters <br>> amongst normal United States citizens. There is emerging evidence that <br>> this frequency increases within the upper management of modern <br>> corporations. This is not surprising since personal ruthlessness and <br>> fixation on personal power have become seen as strong assets to large <br>> publicly traded corporations (which some authors believe have also <br>> become psychopathic).<br>> <br>> However, appearance and performance are two different things. While <br>> psychopaths are often outwardly charming and excellent self-promoters, <br>> they are also typically terrible managers, bullying co-workers and <br>> creating chaos to conceal their behaviour.<br>> <br>> When employed in senior levels, their pathology also means they are <br>> biochemically incapable of something they are legally required to do: <br>> act in good faith on behalf of other people. The banking and corporate <br>> sector is built on the ancient principle of fiduciary duty -- a legal <br>> obligation to act in the best interest of those whose money or property <br>> you are entrusted with. Asking a psychopath to do that is like <br>> recruiting a pyromaniac to be a firefighter.<br>> <br>> The folly of mixing psychopathy and senior corporate management has <br>> been borne out by recent history. At the end of the last decade, <br>> numerous banking institutions representing hundreds of years of <br>> corporate financial stability ceased to exist within a few short months <br>> due to the reckless acts of a few individuals -- none of whom have ever <br>> been charged with a crime.<br>> <br>> And therein lies the rub. As ruthless as psychopaths are, their <br>> pathology dictates that they will ultimately act to the detriment of <br>> the organizations and investors they are paid so well to represent.<br>> <br>> Fertile for pyschopaths: New corporate culture<br>> <br>> If this theory is correct, how did this become such a crisis in recent <br>> decades? Boddy suggests that corporations have changed from relatively <br>> stable institutions where psychopaths would have a difficult time <br>> concealing themselves, to highly fluid organizations where it is much <br>> easier for them to disappear within the chaos in their wake.<br>> <br>> "(The) whole corporate and employment environment changed from one that <br>> would hold the Corporate Psychopath in check to one where they could <br>> flourish and advance relatively unopposed," Boddy writes. "As evidence <br>> of this, senior level remuneration and reward started to increase more <br>> and more rapidly and beyond all proportion to shop floor incomes and a <br>> culture of greed unfettered by conscience developed. Corporate <br>> Psychopaths are ideally situated to prey on such an environment and <br>> corporate fraud, financial misrepresentation, greed and misbehaviour <br>> went through the roof, bringing down huge companies and culminating in <br>> the Global Financial Crisis that we are now in."<br>> <br>> Boddy is not hopeful that the current round of expensive public <br>> bailouts will solve the problem. If psychopaths have in fact installed <br>> themselves in the upper reaches of the world's financial institutions, <br>> their genetic deficiency dictates that their greed knows no bounds. <br>> They will continue to act in antisocial, remorseless ways, amplified by <br>> their enormous corporate influence until the institutions they <br>> represent and perhaps the entire global economy collapses. Obviously, <br>> more academic research in this area is urgently needed.<br>> <br>> Boddy concludes his recent paper with this grim prediction:<br>> <br>> "Writing in 2005, this author... predicted that the rise of Corporate <br>> Psychopaths was a recipe for corporate and societal disaster. This <br>> disaster has now happened and is still happening. Across the western <br>> world, the symptoms of the financial crisis are now being treated. <br>> However, this treatment of the symptoms will have little effect because <br>> the root cause is not being addressed. The very same Corporate <br>> Psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed <br>> and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the <br>> crisis. That this involves paying themselves vast bonuses in the midst <br>> of financial hardship for many millions of others is symptomatic of the <br>> problem. Further, if (this theory is correct) then we are now far from <br>> the end of the crisis. Indeed, it is only the end of the beginning. <br>> Perhaps more than ever before, the world needs corporate leaders with a <br>> conscience.... Measures exist to identify Corporate Psychopaths. <br>> Perhaps it is time to use them."<br>> <br>> Time has come for testing<br>> <br>> Boddy's last statement contains a kernel of hope. If our world has <br>> become chaotic due to institutionalized psychopathy, imagine how much <br>> better it could be if such dangerously impaired individuals were <br>> excluded from positions of power and influence.<br>> <br>> Precedence exists for dealing with such situations. Randomized <br>> workplace drug testing became the norm in the 1980s. At the time, civil <br>> libertarians strongly objected on the basis that it violated personal <br>> privacy protections. However, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1989 <br>> that such testing was constitutional and now about 25 per cent of <br>> Fortune 500 companies routinely require their employees to submit to <br>> such tests.<br>> <br>> Perhaps investors at major financial institutions should require that <br>> senior level managers submit to established tests to ensure they are <br>> not psychopathic. This is not an issue of civil liberties since the <br>> precedent has already been well established regarding drug impairment <br>> in the workplace. Likewise, it is not a regulatory issue since private <br>> shareholders have every right to demand that executives demonstrate <br>> they are not biochemically impaired and therefore unable to carry out <br>> their fiduciary duties on behalf of investors. If corporate boards are <br>> hiring psychopaths as executive management, they are not carrying out <br>> their due diligence and could be held legally liable for their <br>> oversight.<br>> <br>> Companies should also consider providing employees with specific <br>> whistleblower provisions to expose potential psychopaths in the <br>> workplace. A 2010 study by Boddy showed that corporate psychopaths <br>> caused more than one quarter of all workplace bullying, though they <br>> accounted for only one per cent of the workforce.<br>> <br>> Besides being traumatic and humiliating to other workers, this bullying <br>> is also very expensive. Boddy calculated that bullying by corporate <br>> psychopaths cost companies in the U.K. more than £3.5 billion per year <br>> in lost productivity and attrition. Extrapolating these results to the <br>> United States, these deviant individuals are responsible for more than <br>> $35 billion in direct annual losses to U.S. businesses.<br>> <br>> Politicians, too?<br>> <br>> And what about elected officials? There is no higher standard of trust <br>> in our society than standing for public office. Campaigning politicians <br>> are expected to submit to almost absurd levels of scrutiny about their <br>> private lives, character and personal relationships. Should not <br>> candidates begin providing voters proof that they are medically capable <br>> of acting in the interests of the public that may elect them?<br>> <br>> The Occupy Wall Street protesters demanding an end to the reign of the <br>> "one per cent" may have unwittingly stumbled on the crux of the issue. <br>> Science tells us that 99 per cent of humans have normal emotional <br>> function. One per cent are psychopaths. We ignore that truth at our <br>> peril.<br>> <br>> [Tags: Politics, Health.]<br>> <br>> Mitchell Anderson is a frequent contributor to The Tyee. Read his <br>> previous articles here.<br>> <br>> --<br>> http://dignity.ning.com/<br>> http://www.enduswars.org<br>> http://www.livestream.com/dignity<br>> http://www.twitter.com/dignityaction<br>> http://www.myspace.com/dignityaction<br>> http://www.myspace.com/runcynthiarun<br>> http://www.twitter.com/cynthiamckinney<br>> http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinney<br>> http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun<br>> <br>> Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.<br>> <br>> "The biggest weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the minds of the <br>> oppressed." Steve Biko<br>> <br>> <br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Updates mailing list<br>> Updates@lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com<br>> http://lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/listinfo.cgi/updates-allthingscynthiamckinney.com<br>> <br>> ---------------<br>> Progressive Action Alliance http://progressiveactionalliance.org/<br>> Discuss mailing list Discuss@paa-tx.org<br>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, access the archives, or change your options <br>> on this<br>> list, go to:<br>> http://mail.paa-tx.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_paa-tx.org<br>> <br>> To reply only to the person posting this note, use "Reply".<br>> To reply so that everyone on this list receives your note, use "Reply <br>> All".<br>> Check the "To:" field in your message, before sending, to ensure it <br>> goes to the<br>> correct address.<br>> <br>> <br>> ---------------<br>> Progressive Action Alliance http://progressiveactionalliance.org/<br>> Discuss mailing list Discuss@paa-tx.org<br>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, access the archives, or change your options on this list, go to:<br>> http://mail.paa-tx.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_paa-tx.org<br>> <br>> To reply only to the person posting this note, use "Reply".<br>> To reply so that everyone on this list receives your note, use "Reply All".<br>> Check the "To:" field in your message, before sending, to ensure it goes to the correct address.<br></div> </div></body>
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