First, a big thanks to the Personal Democracy Forum for its timely FLASH conference on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. I was privileged to be there in the audience.
WikiLeaks is new -- now. It combines the anonymity and distributed support of p2p networking with a message pointed directly at government and media both, exposing their private parts. It also has a visible front figure, Julian Assange. What may be less known is that back in 1670, a new voice, Benedict de Spinoza, with similar pretensions to seriousness and relevance as Mr. Assange, arrived on the scene. In 1670, Spinoza published a book, the Theological-Political Treatise, which advocated toleration of all points of view and free speech, and which claimed the best society lets every person reach their own goals. The book even argued the purpose of a state is to protect freedom. That's the good news.
The book also said that God is governed by the laws of nature, that most priests are cons, frauds and predators, that the Bible should be read in its historical context, and that no miracles contradict nature. The treatise was in Latin, and was immediately banned. The Vatican unbanned it in 1966.
When Spinoza died in 1677, he left two manuscripts in a secret desk drawer. His friends liberated them the next day. The day after that, police searched the apartment. We know all this about Spinoza, of course, because his works were published anonymously, republished often, and commented on endlessly over the next two centuries. Spinoza's banned works were sold right next to the Marquis de Sade's, over the same under-the-table networks as pornography and copyrighted music. They were in every private library in Europe. Their number overwhelms the number of books by any other author at the time, except for Anonymous and the Bible.
Two recent books by Jonathan Israel, a historian now at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, cover how all the controversy and spewing as opinion about Spinoza evolved. Israel calls Spinoza the father of the Radical Enlightenment. Reading these histories, the repetitiveness and squabbles are so boring. Conservatives and liberals repeat the same points. One writer's gutter is another writer's bowling alley. One soon realizes, almost no one read Spinoza anymore. He was banned, so it was illegal to use his own words to defend him. He was NSFR. It is worth reading him, though, to learn what the fuss was about.
Up to the French Revolution and beyond, anyone "convicted" of being Spinozist could end up in prison or dead. The great liberal John Locke argued endlessly that atheists should have no rights, they were enemy combatants. Spinoza was Public Enemy No. 1. Moderate liberals like Locke had one great argument in favor of their kind of tolerance: if not us, Spinoza. Friends of Spinoza, meanwhile, argued with evidence, he was never an atheist. His personal life was clean as a whistle. Charges laid against him were lies.
Imagine Bill Keller at the NY Times working to persuade the US government that certain Times reporters should be permitted to view all diplomatic cables with "secret" designations. Bill Keller would be a moderate liberal in the ancient regime century after Spinoza and before the French Revolution.
If you want a sneak peak at the future and the role of dumps such as WikiLeaks in it, look at the history of the diffusion and reaction to Spinoza's work. You won't go too far wrong.
Correction: Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study was originally referred to here as the Institute for Advanced Research.
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“EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”
"Julian Assange is not a criminal under the laws of the United States. I was the first one prosecuted for the charges that would be brought against him. I was the first person ever prosecuted for a leak in this country--although there had been a lot of leaks before me. That's because the First Amendment kept us from having an Official Secrets Act. . . . The founding of this country was based on the principle that the government should not have a say as to what we hear, what we think, and what we read...
If Bradley Manning did what he's accused of, then he's a hero if mine and I think he did a great service to this country. We're not in the mess we're in, in the world, because of too many leaks. . . . I say there should be some secrets. But I also say we invaded Iraq illegally because of a lack of a Bradley Manning at that time."
http://www.ellsberg.net/
Democracy is inconsistent with empire-building because the aims of empire are to subdue third-world people and more effectively exploit them.
Leaks are stopped by Nixon's Plumbers unit which would break into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to get information to discredit his anti-war activities. What they were doing in the Watergate is still not quite known.
As it turns out, Iran/Contra was not stopped but rather institutionalized as the dark shadow side of empire-building. We have had a shdow government since that time so the same thing can happen.
If the president does it, it is legal, despite what they said back in Nixon's time. Back then, there were many Nixon detractors on the right, for various reasons wanted Nixon to go. Some didn't trust Kissinger, for one thing; others disagreed with the war or the trading with China deal, etc.
Whistleblowers should have immunity from prosecution, even a percentage of all waste, fraud and abuse they uncover. But you can't run an empire without telling a whole lot of lies. So which is it?
Second, we in America also have a hero of complete religious freedom who was contemporaneous with (even slightly earlier than) Spinoza. He was Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony. I believe Rhode Island was the first government in the history of the world that offered complete religious liberty to its inhabitants.
They read the hyperbolized headlines about the cables, but not the cables themselves.
They will show you lists of alleged crimes, but they are usually about other countries and not the US. One of the great ones that usually makes the list is the Iranian plot to assassinate former Iraqi airforce pilots in revenge for Iran/Iraq war. Go figure?!? Its on the list of US crimes lol. Most are like that.
The only really damning one is the evil Hillary Clinton ordering her minions at State to build dossiers on foreign vips that include contact info, phone numbers, emails, etc. Its really horrible and I never would have expected that a nation state would keep track of foreign dignitaries by collecting information about them. Its pretty outrageous.
I rank it up there with Russian intelligence operation to kill their former operative with pollonium. You are busted Hillary!
But seriously, I'd like to see an objectively vetted list of any real crimes the US gov't committed. I'd expect their must be some. Diplomacy is a fine line to tread.
So many questions arise:
How did these leaks occur? Were systems hacked or did people do the leaking? How do we prevent this from happening to us?
Governments and corporations need to consider information security training or perhaps IT Security certification for those in the weeds.
Having read the Treatise, I have to admit that I didn't find a passage where Spinoza says that "God is governed by the laws of nature" or that "most priests are cons, frauds and predators".
He does say that God IS nature, and nothing else, but that's different (Spinoza's God is the only 'substance' there is, which means that NOTHING determines or governs God, while he determines everything that exists). And he says that theologists can be preaching love but at the same time spreading hate towards every other kind of theology than what they personally believe in. But that's not the same thing as saying that "most priests are cons" ... ;-)
The purpose of the book is to show that freedom of thinking and expression is the best way to guarantee a strong state, and that philosophy and theology don't have anything in common, which means that the one cannot replace the other, each one of them has its own utility and 'research field' (philosophers studying nature, and theologists giving different interpretations of the Bible, according to their own imagination and the imagination of the people who follow them, something that allows people who can't study philosophy to nevertheless have a good and moral life).
The book do has been banned though. But would Spinoza have approved Wikileaks? I don't think so. Freedom of expression and freedom of philosophy means that everybody can publicly propose and defend the opinion he believes in, NOT that everybody has the right to have access to classified information that keeps track of the work of diplomats, who most of the time have to work behind the scenes to be effective.
Spinoza even states that when someone doesn't respect the law (as Wikileaks clearly did), he should be punished. If not, it weakens the state, and a strong state is necessary to guarantee stability and security for its citizens.
As with every philosopher, you have to read really slowly and carefully, if you don't want to merely recognize your own ideas in what he's writing. Many people don't do that, and as a consequence, the greatest philosophers have been blamed for being everything one hates AND the contrary (Spinoza has been called an atheist by some, but German rationalists blamed him for being "drunken with God").
(to be continued)
Imho, you can't compare the fact that a great, innovative work of one of the greatest philosophers has been banned with the fact that someone decides to internationally reveal a lot of state secrets and as a consequence is sought by the DoJ...
Assange wasn't expressing his own personal opinion or thoughts. If you want to defend his acts, you have to defend the idea that everything that diplomats do should be known by everybody. But that would simply be the end of diplomacy. And diplomacy is one of the strongest 'weapons' we have to prevent wars and international conflicts, so why would we want to destroy diplomacy ... ?
Bottom line: there is evidence of illegal activity in these leaked diplomatic cables. A whole lot of it, and less than a tenth of a percent have thus far been published. Leaking evidence of criminal activity is not only not criminal, it is protected by US law.
living section's most basic point is meditation is the way to reconnect to natural law
living without meditation means too much stress acumalates and corrupts [ the inviolable ] laws of nature which results in sickness, mental and physical
Religion without meditation is hopeless in terms of fullfillment of the seeking and is simply perpetual hope that tommorrow will be better and we know what Enstein said about that { doin gthe same thing and expecting a different result ditto politicians }
the contemporary discussion which arrianna launched between religion and science does make the same point as spinoza: the foundation of all and everything is one indivisible ; just that ; one indivisible
the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi [physics degree ] says the Einstein's unified field is the same thing as ATMA etc at a press conefernce he asked " who made God god made god who made god god made god...."
1. I fail to see the parallel between comparing the reaction of authoritarian institutions of power---in a cultural milieu where there were no individual rights---to ideas that threatened the very basis of their (arbitrary) power....
....to democratically elected institutions with clear limits and where individual rights are guarenteed.
2. I also fail to see any parallel between an exercise of power whose sole purpose is to protect the source of one's power....and one that whose purpose is to defend the ability of a duly-elected government to conduct two of its most basic responsibilities. The conduct of international diplomacy and war....in the interests of its constituents.
There is one parallel, however, that you failed to mention. The reaction of the Church and Secular authority to Spinoza was an exercise of power without princple or accountability. The dumping of diplomatically privilieged material onto Wikileaks was an exercise in individual rights....without any sense of community responsibility.
I would say that this is the vision of the future...but then it has also been an over-arching theme in the American culture now for the last 40-50 years. Where individual license is rationalized as individual liberty.
The notion that one should be free to do whatever one likes...without regard to the consequences of ones actions upon the community in which one is an inextricable part....is a childishly immature understanding of the nature of freedom, and its exercise.
For example, Bush recently revealed that he ordered the water board torture of KSM. In 2009, the Spanish government wanted to investigate Bush for water board torture of Spanish citizens in Gitmo. According to Wikileaks, Obama consented to the GOP's demand to pressure Spain to not investigate Bush.
That Wikileaks shows that Obama is duplicitous is clearly a benefit to the community.
So the issue is not whether or not the government decieves. The issue is whether the deception works towards the public interest....or not. Does it advance the cause of winning the war....or simply (as in the case of waterboarding) merely cover up the deliberate perpetration of war crimes.
Guarunteed how? The 4th ammendment no longer exists, as you can find out at any airport. The 1st ammendment no longer exists, as demonstrated by this very subject we're discussing. Habeus Corpus no longer applies and the admin has just signed a paper declaring that they can assassinate US citizens at any time. The right to due process no longer exists. They no longer require warrants to listen to our telephone calls.
"The conduct of international diplomacy and war....in the interests of its constituents."
Maybe you live in a different country? How is an illegal war full of systemic corruption and cronyism in our interests? Is it in our interests when Clinton orders people to spy on top UN officials, in blatant disregard of international treaties? It's in our interests for the government to throw its support behind illegal coups in Latin American governments? How about systematically torturing people, withholding them from lawyers and then covering it up?
Is it in our interests when the government secretly expands this meaningless war into more countries and then colludes with their governments to hide the fact?
Is it in your interest to be snuffed out at the whim of a spook, without trial or even charges?
2) The 1st Amendment was never limitless. It never protected leaking classified information, obscenity, or incitement.
3) Habeas corpus as applied to non-US nationals had little precedent, and Hamdi actually granted them (quasi) habeas rights.
4) All countries spy on one another regardless of treaties.
5) Diplomacy is like poker - it relies on bluffing, secrecy, and tact. In a perfect world, where everyone around the world was aiming for the same goals, pure transparency would be desirable, but this is not a perfect world
The 4th Amendment is not a guarentee against being searched. It is a guarentee against being UNREASONABLY searched, outside of the bound of the law.
2. Every nation engages in "black ops". That is just the reality of the world in which we live. How do you think the intelligence necessary to stop terrorist plots, and track down these people to their bases of operation is obtained? By asking NICELY???
3. Thank Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for the war profiteering. That was a predictable outcome of "outsourcing" much of what have been traditional non-combat military functions. ...and that---sadly---is old news.
4. If the expansion of the war, keeps agents of Al-Qaeda from attacking us here in the United States and killing US citizens...then YES, it is in our interests.
5. In my interests as an individual? No. Is it in my interests as an American Citizen...potentially.
You keep seeming to forget that we are at WAR. Giving material assistance to our enemies in time of war is an act of TREASON...and is punishable by death. Including being summarily shot if it occurs in a war zone.
I'll take my chances with openness over secrecy every time.
If we aren't willing to tolerate sunlight shining on the US State Department, what makes us think anyone else will tolerate sunshine reaching any where else?