Update 4: The very positive New Yorker piece on Wikileaks that I cited is by one Raffi Khatchadourian who happens to be an alum of the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of International School, a hotbed of neoconservative policies, which hosts, among others, Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Eliot Cohen. Of course, I studied there for a while too, so that doesn’t say anything definitive by itself.

But Khatchadourian also wrote strongly in support of the Iraq war…

Update 3 (June 27) A blog called Civilities discusses the Bank Julius Baer case, in which whistle-blower Rudolf Elmer uploaded financial information to Wikileaks that included tax information that’s private under Swiss law, as well as personal information. Civilities draws a somewhat negative conclusion about the “full-transparency” model Wikileaks promotes and the writer Jon Garfunkel makes the point that Wikileaks works better as a source for original documents than as journalism, because it lacks accountable editing. It simply uses the signature Wikileaks, which conceals the identity of the editor.

However, Garfunkel, who is also a Wikipedia editor, seems to think Wikipedia is a perfectly transparent and objective information source. That makes you wonder if he has the experience to make a credible judgment on this issue. Anyone who thinks Wikipedia is always balanced or objective clearly isn’t too familiar with Wikipedia or has a motive to misrepresent it. In his case, the first explanation seems the right one. Continue reading →

“At the time of Christ the sun was in about seven degrees of Aries. Five hundred years were required to bring the precession to the thirtieth degree of Pisces. During that time the new church lived through a stage of offensive and defensive violence well justifying the words of Christ: “I came not to bring peace but a sword.” Fourteen hundred years more have elapsed under the negative influence of Pisces, which has fostered the power of the church and bound the people by creed and dogma. Continue reading →

Contact: jbrenttuttle@gmail.com

www.spillfighters.com

Harassing 10 year old’s and their pets – that’s your tax-dollars at work, nobly  defending the country from such dangerous threats to life and limb as a 2-inch turtle. AP reports, June 25, 2010.

“A caged, 2-inch turtle traveling with a 10-year-old girl caused a crew to turn around a taxiing plane, take the girl and her sisters off the flight and tell them they couldn’t bring their pet along. Continue reading →

From the Glenn Beck show:

“i’m going to talk to you now about the energy reform — reform that no one wants. In fact, reform that even Spain’s media is warning the Americans about, saying, “Obama is about to push America over the green cliff.” Continue reading →

“Parenthetically, I am getting tired of the offhanded smearing of religion that has long been endemic to the libertarian movement. Religion is generally dismissed as imbecilic at best, inherently evil at worst. The greatest and most creative minds in the history of mankind have been deeply and profoundly religious, most of them Christian.”

—  Murray Rothbard

Note: Rothbard is of course writing from a Eurocentric perspective I don’t endorse. After all, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus contributed hugely to the sciences too. And agnostics and skeptics.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on a new law that can send international aid workers to jail for helping groups designated by the State Dept. as “terrorist”:

“The US Supreme Court has put international humanitarian workers on notice that any assistance to a US-designated terrorist group could land them in an American prison. Continue reading →

From Wikipedia, a note on Discordianism:

“Here follows some psycho-metaphysics.If you are not hot for philosophy, best just to skip it.

The Aneristic Principle is that of apparent order; the Eristic Principle is that of apparent disorder. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of pure chaos, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making. Continue reading →