You can draw many parallels between the jailed Chinese Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and the detention of whistleblower Bradley Manning--both are in jail for exposing government wrongdoing, both are denied contact and their friends and family are routinely harassed...read more here...According to David House, a computer researcher from Boston who visits Manning twice a month, he is starting to deteriorate and many people were reluctant to talk about Manning's condition because of US government harassment, including surveillance, warrantless computer seizures, and even bribes. "This has had such an intimidating effect that many are afraid to speak out on his behalf," House said.
Some friends report being followed extensively. Another computer expert said the army offered him cash to – in his words – "infiltrate" the WIKILEAKS website. He said: "I turned them down. I don't want anything to do with this cloak and dagger stuff."
"If Manning is convicted, it will be because his individual dedication to human ethics far surpasses that of the US government."
Read full article here:
On the first day of class every semester, Portia Dyrenforth asks the students taking her psychology course whether they think couples with similar personalities are more likely to be happy together.
Inevitably, she says, they nod.
Then she asks whether they know any couples who are very different from each other but still seem quite content in their relationships.
They nod at this one, too.
Dyrenforth, working with three other psychologists, examined the data with a few questions in mind: Do personality traits influence a person's own happiness in general and in the context of a relationship? Can a spouse's personality affect the happiness of his or her partner? And does having similar personalities affect the couple's relationship satisfaction?
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WikiLeaks release of classified information has generated a lot of attention in the past few weeks. The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news. Despite what is claimed, the information that has been so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing our grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neoconservatives in charge.
There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principal supporter and financier of al Qaeda, and that this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government. This emphasizes even more the fact that no al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did. It has been charged by experts that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime, deserving prosecution for treason and execution, or even assassination.
But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government should prosecute an Australian citizen for treason for publishing U.S. secret information that he did not steal? And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn't the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others also published these documents be prosecuted?
Read full transcript here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/ron-paul-wikileaks-defense_n_795014.html
While all this is going on Senators, like Joe Lieberman, are not only pressing for the arrest of Julian Assange and Wikileaks under the Espionage Act, but they are also inditing news organizations like The Guardian and the New York Times....absolutely shameful in my opinion...
Read full story here with video:
http://truthalliance.net/Archive/News/tabid/67/ID/6662/Default.aspx
And here's another great article regarding the extradition of Julian Assange...
Julian Assange extradition attempt an uphill struggle, says specialist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/julian-assange-extradition-attempt?intcmp=239
The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.
At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many designated "secret" – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership.
These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches, which were obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website, also reveal Washington's evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.
These include a shift in relations between China and North Korea, high-level concerns over Pakistan's growing instability, and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.
Among scores of disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:
• Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, with officials warning that as the country faces economic collapse, government employees could smuggle out enough nuclear material for terrorists to build a bomb.
• Inappropriate remarks by Prince Andrew about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country.
• Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging that vice-president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking money out of Afghanistan.
• How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally.
• Allegations that Russia and its intelligence agencies are using mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations, with one cable reporting that the relationship is so close that the country has become a "virtual mafia state".
• The extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is causing intense US suspicion. Cables detail allegations of "lavish gifts", lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italiango-between.
• Devastating criticism of the UK's military operations in Afghanistan by US commanders, the Afghan president and local officials in Helmand. The dispatches reveal particular contempt for the failure to impose security around Sangin – the town which has claimed more British lives than any other in the country.
The US has particularly intimate dealings with Britain, and some of the dispatches from the London embassy in Grosvenor Square will make uncomfortable reading in Whitehall and Westminster. They range from political criticisms of David Cameron to requests for specific intelligence about individual MPs.
The cables contain specific allegations of corruption, as well as harsh criticism by US embassy staff of their host governments, from Caribbean islands to China and Russia. The material includes a reference to Putin as an "alpha-dog" and Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia", while Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.
Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis
Excerpt:Before answering that question, it is important to note that we may not be exposed to very much experience in our daily life that would contradict our stereotypes. For example, residential segregation keeps the home lives of different racial groups separate to some degree. But also, our stereotypes of other groups ("out groups") often lead to feelings of anxiety when we encounter the members of an out group. One of the oldest insights of psychology is that a main way we deal with anxiety is through avoidance: We simply avoid contact with individuals by crossing the street, turning our heads, talking to someone else, hiring someone else for a job, striking up friendships with someone else we feel more comfortable with, sitting down at the lunch table with those who seem to be more like us.
Returning to the question of why stereotypes persist in the face of contradictory experience, we find two main answers. The first is that because stereotypes may help us feel better about ourselves, we avoid challenging these stereotypes. In other words, we become defensive and protective of our worldviews and only reluctantly question our deepest assumptions. And these worldviews help protect not only our self-esteem, but also real-world privileges and benefits that accrue to us as members of an in group. For example, racist discrimination by banks that hurts African American communities by limiting mortgages to these areas also benefits White neighborhoods by making more money available to them. Discrimination which in the past has limited slots available to...
Read more: http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/brochures/racism.aspx
Tarahumara Indians Celebrating Easter in Tehuerichi, Mexico 
(Click on image to enlarge)
"This astonishing fact of no terrorism-related arrests, let alone prosecutions or convictions, in over 100,000 stop and searches, demonstrates what a massively counter-productive policy this is," said Davis.
"A policy which fuels resentment and antagonism amongst minority communities without achieving a single terrorist conviction serves only to help our enemies and increase the terrorism threat."
Read more here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/28/terrorism-police-stop-search-arrests
A city councilman's speech against Gay bullying. Very powerful stuff...
Former U.S. President George W. Bush and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II are also among the artist's drawings
A remarkable story of perseverance in the face of hell.
Asked if he will play trumpet again Hector shakes his head. "Music, music is . . ." his voice trails off. His mother finishes the sentence. "Music is not really an option any more."
Read full article here:
With its constant commotion, unnecessary meetings, and infuriating wastes of time, the modern workplace makes us all work longer, less focused hours. Jason Fried explains how we can change all of this. Excerpt from video:
Question: What is your take on the typical workplace?
Jason Fried: Yeah, my feeling is that the modern workplace is structured completely wrong. It’s really optimized for interruptions. And interruptions are the enemy of work. They are the enemy of productivity, they are the enemy of creativity, they are the enemy of everything. But that’s what the modern workplace is all about, it’s interruptions. Everyone’s calling meetings all the time, everyone’s screaming people’s names across the thing, there’s phones ringing all the time. People are walking around. It’s all about interruptions. And people go to work today, and then they end up doing most of their real work after work, or on the weekends. So...
Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”
McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”
That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.
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