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posted by
Fnord666
on Wednesday January 03 2018, @06:24PM
from the a-rolling-stone-gathers-no-ellsberg dept.
from the a-rolling-stone-gathers-no-ellsberg dept.
The Rolling Stone has run a web version of its 1973 interview with Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg is the former US military analyst who blew the whistle on the Nixon administration's misdeeds regarding the Vietnam War. Specfically he photocopied an extensive, secret study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and nearly a score of other newspapers. These documents he released became known as the Pentagon Papers eventually published as excerpts and commentaries by The New York Times. Both The New York Times and The Rolling Stone have since drifted from that kind of coverage and the article provides an interesting contrast to how those publications are now.
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WWW Reprint of 1973 Rolling Stone Interview with Daniel Ellsberg
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To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
-- B. Duggan
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 03 2018, @07:44PM (6 children)
I know cynicism is not entirely uncalled for, but I still don't think that's entirely accurate. Washington was a man, not a saint, and I would not rate him as the best US President.
"Affairs of state include secrets and lies... if your state isn't keeping secrets and telling lies, it's not pursuing your interests to the best of its ability on the world stage"
If your state is an aggressive would-be Empire, that aspires to spread misery around the world, to both friend and foe, then yeah.
If your state is a Republic which goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, then that's not true at all. In fact it's the opposite of true. A free and open society is fundamentally incompatible with a culture of secrecy and lies.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 03 2018, @08:13PM
The only reason I let Washington off the hook is because he was the first President, but if you want to throw in the lies of the Continental Congress as Washington's predecessors, then the same applies to him.
Sounds good, but the reality is: Republics which go abroad in search of monsters to destroy get caught and called out on their secrets and lies more easily and more often than "free and open" societies. I can imagine (Lennon style) a free and open society, I just can't find one on this planet... some are indeed better than others at aspiring to those goals, but even the tiny island nations have their skeletons that best remain in the closet or preferably buried deeply - for the better interests of their people.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @11:16PM (1 child)
That's patently absurd.
Do you honestly not see the benefit of keeping the location of nuclear submarines secret? How about the minimum size object a missile-detection-radar can detect? What about the encryption keys used for transmitting diplomatic cables to your overseas ambassadors?
If you can literally think of nothing that even a paragon-of-virtue-society should keep secret, I'm thankful that you are not the one in charge; your society would quickly be destroyed by a more nefarious and predatory one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:00AM
Not at all.
"Do you honestly not see the benefit of keeping the location of nuclear submarines secret?"
I said a culture of secrecy and lies.
You don't have to have a culture of secrecy and lies to keep operational security - the notion that you do is quite simply a lie, one that's been consciously fed to us by those who profit from us believing it.
But while we're talking about nuclear submarines - consider that those are kept for deterrence (and they'd better be, as the only other possibility is mass, premeditated murder.) A weapon which is secret provides no deterrence, it's necessary to leak some info about them for them to serve their role. They're best deployed close to home, in friendly waters where they cannot just be attacked at will, if only the 'bad guys' knew where to strike. Should you broadcast their current location? Probably not. But if the secrecy of that information is so critical that it just cannot be compromised, then you've made a big mistake back up the chain and you need to fix that rather than try to use secrecy as a band-aid. Even the most draconian and authoritarian state can't keep such things perfectly secret at all times.
"How about the minimum size object a missile-detection-radar can detect? What about the encryption keys used for transmitting diplomatic cables to your overseas ambassadors?"
None of these things should be hidden away behind permanent secrecy, nor can they be. Even the encryption keys are going to be useful for a limited period of time, and there is no legitimate republican purpose served by keeping them secret for a minute beyond that time. Again, assuming we want to keep the homeland safe, as we so often claim.
What a culture of secrecy and lying does is not to magically make it possible to keep these things secret. It only enables the powerful to thumb their nose at the law.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:02AM (2 children)
What difference does it make whether my State is a Republic? I live in a Constitutional Monarchy and consider every thing you said should apply to my State.
At that the countries in the world that seem to be striving for Empire status are mostly Republics. (China, Russia and the USA)
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:16AM (1 child)
It might well apply to a constitutional monarchy, being less familiar with them I did not mention them and do not take a position on it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:03AM
Of course China is a republic, and has been since they got rid of the Emperor. What they are not is a Constitutional Representative Democracy.
As for Constitutional Monarchies, they're not much different then Constitutional Republics. Generally the Constitution is the highest law in the land and limits the powers of the government, the Constitution may contain a bill of rights, the courts may have the power to strike down laws due to not being Constitutional and the Constitution is not trivial to change. Generally they are Parliamentary systems where the government is formed by the legislature which is responsible to the people through elections.
There are also monarchies such as the UK where instead of a written Constitution, they have a bunch of traditions forming an unwritten constitution. The problem there is it is too easy for the government to remove rights.