In my opinion, based on personal observation, the political and economic system of the United States is quickly declining and darkly dystrophic as has been the case with all "empires". The information provided by WikiLeaks, although not at all surprising, and the reaction of the government to WikiLeaks, only confirms my belief. WikiLeaks is providing a needed view into the mindset of those who govern and the system they represent.
Sometimes it seems that humanity is self-organizing for self destruction. Long live WikiLeaks! cheers(?) Paul -----Original Message----- From: Douglas Roberts <[email protected]> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Dec 6, 2010 12:48 pm Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WikiLeaks, US Gov't prohibition, Corporate Boycotts, etc. I can't help but notice that the majority of our hard core FRIAM pontificators have remained silent on this one. I wonder why: Could it be that they're not not interested? The topic is not abstract enough? Afraid that Big Brother will hear them? Weren't aware of WikiLeaks? Over on another one of my social networks I at least had one person regurgitate the Government Spin Attempt of "so many people were put in danger by having this information released", but the good news is that it was immediately pointed out that the claim that the release of this information has put people in danger has been debunked several times. The US government knew the leak occurred several months before WikiLeaks published the information. There was time to get personnel out of harm's way. It could be said that the release itself (by Bradley Manning or whoever) did potentially put people in danger, but WikiLeaks is not to blame for that. FRIAM's general majority silence on this is curious... --Doug On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Roger Critchlow <[email protected]> wrote: Well, that's the issue, isn't it? The people in the government justify secrecy by one standard and then use it for whatever they can get away with, and you can get away with a lot if no one is ever allowed to see what you've done. So they claim strenuously that exposing secrets will endanger people, yet the exposed cables show them suppressing investigation of a mistaken extraordinary rendition which put an innocent person in the hands of torturers. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/01/wikileaks-and-the-el.html Because "they" decided that it was better that the German car salesman just take a few cattle prods in the nads for the freedom team rather than admit that "they" might have made criminal mistakes by kidnapping a citizen of an ally and whisking him off to Afganistan for information extraction. I watched Brazil again a month or two ago: it all starts with a swatted fly mutating someone's name into someone else's name, and it ends with tidying up all the loose ends that might interfere with the operation of an essential government service. We've been through multiple reviews of the abuses of secrecy in this country, and the net result is that the amount of stuff which is kept from public eyes just keeps on growing. Got a check or balance on that trend? -- rec -- On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 11:04 AM, James Steiner <[email protected]> wrote: On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:54 PM, Scholand, Andrew J <[email protected]> wrote: In February 2009 the State Department asked all US missions abroad to list all installations whose loss could critically affect US national security. The list includes pipelines, communication and transport hubs. Well, considering the tendency to slap "national security" and "classified" labels on everything, I'd expect the list also includes a fair number of vending machine suppliers and escort services. Cynically, ~~James ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
