The dangers of government secrecy

Glenn Greenwald compares the danger of government secrecy with the dangers of excessive disclosure of government secrets:

The harms from excessive governmental secrecy vastly outweigh the harms from excessive disclosures; they’re not even in the same universe That’s why WikiLeaks is such a vital and important movement. It’s also why I have zero respect for those who so vehemently denounced WikiLeaks’ supposed disclosure recklessness without devoting even a fraction of the same rage to the obsessive, anti-democratic, dangerous government secrecy regime being not only maintained, but vigorously increased, even a full decade after the 9/11 attacks. Such critics have little interest in issues of transparency v. secrecy; their manifest agenda (like the often-overlapping American “terrorism expert” industry: more on them in the next couple days) is to serve the state, demonize its adversaries, and protect its interests. That’s what indiscriminate secrecy achieves, and it’s why such people are so rarely bothered by it.

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The phrase that means “God faked the age of the Earth”

I've run into more than a few fundamentalist Christians who have insisted that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. "Then please explain the results of radiometric dating," I typically ask, adding that even carbon dating can accurately date materials up to 60,000 years old, far older than 6,000 years. Most modern savvy Young-Earthers won't fight me on the general usefulness or accuracy of carbon dating. Instead, they will insist that A) God has created an Earth that only looks like it is billions of years old, and B) I need to have faith. That is how they would explain everything older than 6,000 years old, including the Old Tjikko tree in Sweden, which certainly appears to be 9,550 years old. God must have transplanted it from another universe when he made this universe. The Young-Earthers thus offer an provocative argument. I don't believe it, but there's would be no way for me to disprove it.

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Member of Congress moves protester to solitary confinement

Remember Tim DeChristopher? The latest news is that a vindictive member of Congress had him moved into solitary confinement.

Tim DeChristopher (climate activist currently serving a 2-year prison sentence for outbidding oil and gas companies at an illegitimate BLM auction in 2008) was summarily removed from the minimum security camp where he has been held since September 2011, and moved into the FCI Herlong’s Special Housing Unit (SHU). Tim was informed by Lieutenant Weirich that he was being moved to the SHU because an unidentified congressman had called from Washington DC, complaining of an email that Tim had sent to a friend. Tim was inquiring about the reported business practices of one of his legal fund contributors, threatening to return the money if their values no longer aligned with his own.

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