Randi’s $1M challenge to homeopathy

In 2009, James Randi declared that homeopathy qualified for his million dollar challenge. He said then

Homeopathy DOES NOT WORK. It's quackery, pure and simple. It's a farce, a fake, and flummery. Prove it works, and win the million dollars.
On Saturday, February 5th, he released a statement challenging the homeopathic manufacturers to submit to a double blind test and to the retail outlets to label the products for what they are - NOT MEDICINE! Erich posted a piece “Overdosing on homeopathic drugs” last May which has enough links for someone to see for themselves how absurd this concept is. By their philosophy, we should all be sick from some harmful strain of e. coli because at some point all water has been touched by such, and it will, of course retain that memory. Or does it only retain the memory of the “good” stuff? Go get ‘em, Mr. Randi!

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9/11 as an excuse to say stupid things.

I work in a big office building located in downtown St. Louis, the "Bank of America Plaza." Early this week, I was interviewed for a newspaper article, and I needed an updated photo of myself. A coworker offered to snap that photo using a small digital camera. We want down the elevator to the first floor public lobby of the building, at street level, where we found a large neutral colored wall that we could use as a backdrop for my photo. I stood in front of the wall and my coworker stood about 10 feet away from me. As she took a photo of me a security guard suddenly approached. Me: "In the lobby? In a public lobby?" Guard: "You may not take any pictures here. It’s because of 9/11 and homeland security." Me: "I understand that your employers have instructed you to say these sorts of things, but what you have just told me is about the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. My coworker is simply trying to take a picture of me in front of a wall." Guard: "Sir you cannot continue doing this. You will need to take pictures elsewhere." We left. Apparently, taking pictures of me threatens the United States. Or maybe the threat was taking a picture of the wall behind me. Certainly, the guard made it clear that the building owners prohibit any sort of photos in the lobby. We walked across the street and threatened the United States by taking my photo inside the lobby of a office building across the street, where friendly security guards don’t appreciate the risk of what we were doing. Instead, they naively laughed at our stories about security guards in my own office building.

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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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Life-in-outer-space version of fundamentalism

I was recently reminded that the widespread belief in supernatural beings constitutes only one version of a much bigger problem.  The problem is this: people have been turning off their skepticism in droves and allowing their fantasies to substitute for disciplined factual inquiry.   When they turn off their skepticism, they start fantasizing about a wide variety of things, none of which are supported by evidence.  They start believing in the wisdom and the benevolence of the "free market," for example.  They believe in both ethereal beings floating around the Earth and in little green men from outer space.  This reminder that non-rigorous thinking takes many forms occurred while I listened to a prominent AM radio station while I was driving home.  The host of the show, George Noory, features all kinds of un-self-critical guests:

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Senator Bernie Sanders discusses the immense magnitude of the backdoor bailout

Senator Bernie Sanders has presented some jaw-dropping facts about the financial bailout at Huffpo. He frames his article by mentioning that back in 2009, when he asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to identify the institutions that received a backdoor bailout from the Fed, he refused. Sanders refused to accept that answer. Instead, he worked hard to force an amendment into the "Wall Street Reform" bill, and we now know some of the startling things Bernanke refused to admit:

After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America . . .

We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country. Among those are Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup, which received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns, which received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch, which received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.

We also learned that the Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.

Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities.

Sanders has written a blistering piece in which he argues that the biggest banks padded their own executive's pockets, refused to lend to small businesses, used near-zero interest loans they obtained from the Fed to buy Treasury securities and that they continued to gouge consumers through high credit card fees. He suggests that those banks that received this corporate welfare could also have used this money to work out mortgage loans. He is aghast at the conflicts of interest. I am so relieved to know that we have at least one politician who is willing to shoot straight with the American people.

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