Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists is one of those people who tries to be a ‘responsible’ transparency advocate which requires him to criticize WikiLeaks. Democracy Now!, a wonderful news source, has Glenn Greenwald debate him. Well worth watching, right up to the end where host Amy Goodman reads memos from the government warning employees not to even read the cables released by WikiLeaks, even on their home computers!
Scahill is both a good reporter and, unlike most US mainstream correspondents, is unembedded with US troops, so his view is not distorted and thus what he says is always worth paying attention to.
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I came across this video of how Libet’s experiments, that started the serious empirical testing of free will, were done.
The latest WikiLeaks release, like the previous ones, have resulted in people taking two contradictory positions. On the one hand there are those who seek to minimize the importance of the release by focusing on the titillating bits of gossip conveyed by diplomatic cable and suggesting, in an oh-so-weary insider tone, that this is the normal business of governments. Such people say that the leaks reveal nothing of value. Glenn Greenwald points out that this is not true (He gives links to all the claims he makes):
In this latest WikiLeaks release — probably the least informative of them all, at least so far — we learned a great deal as well. Juan Cole today details the 10 most important revelations about the Middle East. Scott Horton examines the revelation that the State Department pressured and bullied Germany out of criminally investigating the CIA’s kidnapping of one of their citizens who turned out to be completely innocent. The head of the Bank of England got caught interfering in British politics to induce harsher austerity measures in violation of his duty to remain apolitical and removed from the political process, a scandal resulting in calls for his resignation. British officials, while pretending to conduct a sweeping investigation into the Iraq War, were privately pledging to protect Bush officials from embarrassing disclosures. Hillary Clinton’s State Department ordered U.N. diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data in order to spy on top U.N. officials and others, likely in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961 (see Articles 27 and 30; and, believe me, I know: it’s just “law,” nothing any Serious person believes should constrain our great leaders).
Then we have the other extreme, those who are actually calling for the murder of Julian Assange because of the supposedly serious damage he has done to the US, an odd charge if the release contains nothing of value. I find it chilling that we have reached the stage when it is considered perfectly acceptable for so called ‘respectable’ people to publicly call for the extra-judicial killing of those who have not been found guilty of any crime whatsoever. This kind of speech (“Kill Julian Assange! Hang Bradley Manning! Nuke North Korea! Bomb Iran!”) used to be the preserve of the recognizably lunatic fringe of society, the ravings of drunks and racists and bigots or the just plan stupid. But not anymore. People say these things on TV and in the newspapers and are treated as if they are serious commentators.
Greenwald also takes on those who try to straddle the issue, wanting to preserve their vaguely independent bona fides while still seeking to be seen as ‘respectable’ by the political and media establishment. These people pick on missteps by WikiLeaks to tut-tut about how they should have done it better.
One could respond that it’s good that we know these specific things, but not other things WikiLeaks has released. That’s all well and good; as I’ve said several times, there are reasonable concerns about some specific disclosures here. But in the real world, this ideal, perfectly calibrated subversion of the secrecy regime doesn’t exist. WikiLeaks is it. We have occasional investigative probes of isolated government secrets coming from establishment media outlets (the illegal NSA program, the CIA black sites, the Pentagon propaganda program), along with transparency groups such as the ACLU, CCR, EPIC and EFF valiantly battling through protracted litigation to uncover secrets. But nothing comes close to the blows WikiLeaks has struck in undermining that regime.
The real-world alternative to the current iteration of WikiLeaks is not The Perfect Wikileaks that makes perfect judgments about what should and should not be disclosed, but rather, the ongoing, essentially unchallenged hegemony of the permanent National Security State, for which secrecy is the first article of faith and prime weapon. (My emphasis)
Greenwald highlights the steady perversion of democracy that has happened right before our eyes.
Because we’re supposed to have an open government – a democracy – everything the Government does is presumptively public, and can be legitimately concealed only with compelling justifications. That’s not just some lofty, abstract theory; it’s central to having anything resembling “consent of the governed.”
But we have completely abandoned that principle; we’ve reversed it. Now, everything the Government does is presumptively secret; only the most ceremonial and empty gestures are made public. That abuse of secrecy powers is vast, deliberate, pervasive, dangerous and destructive. That’s the abuse that WikiLeaks is devoted to destroying, and which its harshest critics – whether intended or not – are helping to preserve.
In this interview with NPR, Der Spiegel reporter Gregor Peter Schmitz, who has been one of those studying the recent WikiLeaks documents for months, says that upcoming reports will reveal a lot of important things and they are not just gossip meant to embarrass the US, as many have been quick to claim. He says, “If you read the whole coverage that is coming out over the next weeks or so, you will realize that this is about important global developments; it’s giving you an insight into, well, basically how the world is perceived and run from an American’s perspective, and I think that is something that the public has a right to know, yeah.”
As time goes by and independent analysts (i.e., people not concerned about being in the good graces of the government) have more opportunities to study the cables, other revelations will surely follow and I will highlight them as they emerge.
The legendary investigative journalist I. F. Stone said, “Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” WikiLeaks is striking a blow for openness and transparency, the very essence of democracy.
The critics of WikiLeaks seem to have forgotten what they are entitled to by being members of a democracy, and do not see that WikiLeaks is returning to them something precious that they have mindlessly given away. All those who value those things should support it.
As we see the widespread handwringing among supporters of Obama as to why he seems to be such a lousy negotiator that he keeps overlooking obvious winning strategies for his policies and thus keeps getting rolled by the Republicans, I will repeat what I have said many, many times before, this time in boldface:
When it comes to any policy that the Democrats say they espouse but which hurts the interests of the oligarchy, the Democrats do not want a strategy that will win, they seek one that will lose.
By that measure, they are very, very good negotiators.
(For previous posts in this series, see here.)
According to the writer Isaac Beshevis Singer, “We must believe in free will, we have no choice.” It is a funny line because of its paradoxical nature and yet also profound because of its multiple layers of meaning. On the one hand, it could be interpreted as saying that belief in free will is likely hardwired in our brains and we are thus compelled to believe in it, whether it is true or not. On the other, it implies that the idea of free will is so important to our sense of self as autonomous agents and to the way that our society is organized that even if we realize it is a fiction, it is a fiction that we must adopt because to abandon it might lead to cognitive confusion and social disarray. This series of posts has tried to show that this fear is unwarranted and in this, the last post, I want to address the issue of what it all means for our sense of self.
[Read more…]
As one who sang in a choir for the annual Christmas carol service during my college days, I think that the best thing about Christmas is the music. (I am talking about the carols only, not the cheesy Christmas ‘songs’, almost all of which I detest with a passion.) I do not agree with the theology implicit in the carols, but the music is great and the general sentiments of peace and goodwill are worthy.
Some people in a shopping mall food court get an unexpected treat, courtesy of a flash mob.
My book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has now been released in paperback.
(For previous posts in this series, see here.)
Let’s consider two scenarios. In one case, John carefully plans and executes a murder. In the other case, Susan kills an assailant who attacks her. With a belief in free will, we assume that John freely made a willful and conscious decision to commit that act and is thus more culpable than Susan who reacted on the spur of the moment out of the instinct for self-preservation and thus did not use her free will. We thus feel justified in punishing John more harshly than Susan.
If there is no free will, that means that both John’s and Susan’s actions were the result of unconscious neural activity, the only difference being that John’s neural activity had sufficient lead time to create conscious thoughts. Shouldn’t the planned murder be treated in the same way as the self-defense? Doesn’t that imply that they should be punished the same? Is this fair? [Read more…]
