Stumbling around tonight

I took a few moments to Stumble around tonight (at Stumbleupon.com). I found a most unusual bedroom. And then this delightful worksheet on Fibonacci numbers. I learned a lot about stress over at Psychology Today. It's "worse than you think."

The experience of stress in the past magnifies your reactivity to stress in the future. So take a nice deep breath and find a stress-stopping routine this instant. . . . We may respond to stress as we do an allergy. That is, we can become sensitized, or acutely sensitive, to stress. Once that happens, even the merest intimation of stress can trigger a cascade of chemical reactions in brain and body that assault us from within. Stress is the psychological equivalent of ragweed. Once the body becomes sensitized to pollen or ragweed, it takes only the slightest bloom in spring or fall to set off the biochemical alarm that results in runny noses, watery eyes, and the general misery of hay fever. But while only some of us are genetically programed to be plagued with hay fever, all of us have the capacity to become sensitized to stress.
How does one best relief stress? Here are several tried and true ways. But then off I was, learning how to close a bag without a bag clip. And I learned in disarming detail how the TSA is keeping us "safe." And then I stumbled onto an article told me how to disappear. And here is a really cool photo of Albert Einstein Marilyn Monroe. Speaking of illusions, it is claimed that this cube illusion will work on you only once, and I believe that. But the last thing I stumbled onto tonight was the most spectacular. These are 24 scanning microscope photos from a book called Microcosmos by Brandon Brill. These photos are stunning. Thank you, Brandon Brill. Thank you, Stumbleupon, for a delightful 30-minute journey.

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Wikileaks and Official Secrets

“Turn yourself in, Julian Assange.” (Headline in Slate, Dec. 6, 2010) Wikileaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to British authorities December 7th, 2010. “Turn yourselves in, Federal Employees.” (Headline in next week’s news?) The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo to agency heads December 3rd, which may result in an order forbidding Federal employees from downloading or viewing Wikileaks documents. How a government responds to the illegal release of its classified documents is predictable. How an individual struggles over whether to release classified documents is anything but predictable. Christopher Hitchens wrote the following about his own experiences in relation to Britain’s Official Secrets Act.

A democratically elected British Parliament had enacted an Official Secrets Act, which I could be held to have broken. Would I bravely submit to prosecution for my principles? (I was later threatened with imprisonment for another breach of this repressive law, and it was one of the reasons I decided to emigrate to a country that had a First Amendment.)

The 1980s BBC sitcom Yes Minister laid bare the inner workings of the British government through the twin prisms of English humor and focused insight. “Jobs for the Boys,” an episode that mentioned the Official Secrets Act, began by revealing Sir Humphrey Appleby’s need to cover-up a scandal surrounding some of his past financial misdealing. Sir Humphrey was the supremely self-serving, Permanent Secretary to the Department of Administrative Affairs (DAA). [More . . . ]

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The War in Afghanistan as a Placebo for trying to cure terrorism

What is a “placebo”? According to Wikipedia, it is “a sham or simulated medical intervention that can produce a perceived or actual improvement, called a placebo effect.” What is a “sham”? According to Wiktionary, it is “an imitation that purports to be genuine. The time-share deal was a sham.” What is “terrorism”? It is a nightmare inflicted on skittish citizens by politicians seeking to maintain power and money. and see here. In nightmares, the anxiety and heart palpitations are real, and thus the citizens seek a cure. What is the “war” in Afghanistan? It is a placebo. It is a sham or simulated cure for a disease caused by politicians. Why would I make this conclusion? 1. In the case of placebos, patients show an extraordinary lack of curiosity regarding the mechanism by which the cure supposedly works. In the case of homeopathic drugs, there is no mechanism. For true believers, this lack of a causal mechanism is not a problem. In the case of Afghanistan, there is no connection between the bombing and shooting of poor people and any national interest other than supporting the military-industrial complex. It’s a make-work program for people who like to express power in the form of violence. Believers claim that we are there for “freedom” or to “protect our interests,” yet these are meaningless terms that cover up our lack of real concern. Even if we are spending two billion dollars per month to bomb and shoot poor people and even if the military itself estimates that there are only 100 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Here's a warning: Don’t even try to find a worthy causal chain in Afghanistan because it would break the spell. Don’t try to tell patients that they are only taking placebos. That would ruin the cure and the nightmare would still be there. "Once the trial was over and the patients who had been given placebos were told as much, they quickly deteriorated." In fact, they will hate you if you try to make them open their eyes.

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Judges: No problem taking valuable gifts from litigants

Why should members of Congress get to receive lots of tainted largess, whereas judges are left behind? At least three federal judges don't see a problem with judges accepting expensive services from an organization financed by large corporations, corporations that often appear before the judges as litigants: "An organization called the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) routinely hosts free junkets for federal judges where they can ride horses, bunk with industry attorneys, and learn how to decide environmental cases in ways that benefit FREE’s corporate funders. Those funders include corporations such as Texaco, Exxon, General Electric, Koch, Monsanto, and Shell. FREE’s board of trustees includes three sitting U.S. Court of Appeals Judges: Edith Clement of the Fifth Circuit and Alice Batchelder and Danny Boggs, both of the Sixth Circuit. Yet, despite the obvious ethical problems raised by Clement, Batchelder and Boggs’ service on the board of an organization that both provides free trips to judges and is funded by frequent litigants before those judges’ courts, these three judges continue to serve." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/bpa-found-on-receipts-and_n_794067.html

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Obama justice and the lies about Wikileaks

Glenn Greenwald has been working around the clock to shed meaningful light on the media claims, many of them lies, regarding Wikileaks. Here's Greenwald's comment on the biggest and most common lie one hears these days:

Anyone listening to most media accounts would believe that WikiLeaks has indiscriminately published all 250,000 of the diplomatic cables it possesses, and Gitlin -- in the course of denouncing Julian Assange -- bolsters this falsehood: "Wikileaks’s huge data dump, including the names of agents and recent diplomatic cables, is indiscriminate" and Assange is "fighting for a world of total transparency." The reality is the exact opposite -- literally -- of what Gitlin told TNR readers. WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297 diplomatic cables it has. Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them

Greenwald also exposes a corrupt frame being pushed by the media - that Wikileaks is perpetrating a massive injustice. This has it upside-down, according to Greenwald:
To recap "Obama justice": if you create an illegal worldwide torture regime, illegally spy on Americans without warrants, abduct people with no legal authority, or invade and destroy another country based on false claims, then you are fully protected. But if you expose any of the evils secretly perpetrated as part of those lawless actions -- by publishing the truth about what was done -- then you are an Evil Criminal who deserves the harshest possible prosecution.
You'll find a hot list of media lies exposed by Glenn Greenwald here. And you'll find much more at this same link. See also, the video interview of Greenwald by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. What are the government attacks on Wikileaks really about? Greenwald argues that these attacks on WikiLeaks constitute "a literal war over who controls the Internet and the purposes to which it can be used." Western governments have made it clear that citizens cannot freely band together to launch honest and blistering criticism against their government. Without even being accused of any crime, western governments, led by the United States, have used extra-judicial means to take Wikipedia off the Internet. And see here. You can sense the government end game in your bones: The Internet will be for sports and entertainment, not for free-wheeling citizen journalism. In short, the U.S. government will use its massive power to make sure that the Internet becomes just like most newspapers and radio and television stations. Don't you dare tell citizens that we are pumping out an unrelenting stream of lies! Don't you dare tell them that we are killing twice twice as many civilians as we are admitting! Don't tell them that we are spilling blood and treasure to prop up corrupt leaders. Go back to your sports events, soap operas and so-called reality shows! Greenwald also points out the hypocrisy of the mainstream media:

Journalists cheering for the prosecution of Assange are laying the foundation for the criminalization of their own profession, or at least of the few who actually do investigative journalism. There is simply no coherent way to argue that what WikiLeaks did with these cables is criminal, but what the NYT, the Guardian and other papers did is not.

In conclusion, Greenwald mentions that the U.S. Department of State is purportedly preparing to celebrates "World Press Freedom Day.

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