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What Julian appears to me to be trying to do is to reduce the ability of large bureaucratic militarized organizations to dominate innocent individuals. Secrets

by riffer 16y ago

What Julian appears to me to be trying to do is to reduce the ability of large bureaucratic militarized organizations to dominate innocent individuals. Secrets exist for many purposes, but their primary impact on history is to permit groups of people to organize in order to persecute other less organized groups of people. Ultimately, it was the combination of industrialization and secrets that made it possible for nation states to directly the cause the death of 160 million people in the 20th century. In these situations, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is essentially nil. That's why you and I have not stopped the millions of murders in Darfur, the same as our parents did not stop them in Rwanda 17 years ago, and so on. In this context, it really is not reasonable to argue that we would all be much safer if nobody was revealing the secrets of those who have too many secrets.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Alex3917 16y ago
"War is a failure of the imagination." In an ideal world Wikileaks wouldn't be necessary, but in the world we have it helps ameliorate the damage caused by our cognitive biases. Also, someone should really make Chris Hedges' book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning into a movie.
philwelch 16y ago
Sixty to seventy years ago, the following information was kept secret by Western governments: -How to build an atom bomb -How to build effective radar systems to detect incoming bombers -The fact that German and Japanese encryption codes had been compromised -The US Navy's awareness of Japan's intention to attack Midway Island -The fact that Patton was actually removed from command, and that his travels around Italy and north Africa were a ruse to misdirect German defenses away from Normandy Need I go on? If some idealist decided to leak these secrets, a lot more innocent individuals would be dominated by certain nation states. State secrets are no different from any other power of the state--they can be used for good or for ill, and it's careful to ensure they're used for good, but it's foolish and suicidal to try and keep them from being used at all.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  Today the following information is kept secret by many governments: - Accidental civilian deaths in raids. - Details of people "detained" for questioning. - Botched up intelligence operations and lack of analysis capabilities. - How much money is being spent on "intelligence" and why. Need I go on? It is true that they can be used for good or for ill, but the problem comes in when you take away accountability from the equation. The question really should be; how can we balance the two?
  - philwelch 16y ago
    You don't disagree with me; you agree with me and disagree with the idealist, quasi-anarchist view that state secrets shouldn't exist at all. Note that all (but perhaps one) of the secrets I listed is now well documented public knowledge. I think this example should be followed.
    - todayiamme 16y ago
      I don't want to agree or disagree with anything. All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the night. You know what's the biggest problem over here? It's okay if someone from country ABC kills people living in XYZ. That's collateral damage, but as soon as a few ABC civilians get killed it's war. It's like somehow everyone in this world have agreed to play a game where they all assume that they're the heroes and the fate of the planet rests on their shoulders. Somehow they've agreed that it's okay to kill other people because they just don't agree with them. Somehow they've agreed that this is just the way things are and this is how they must be. Why? I think that it's safe to say that no one can analyze state secrets or anything in this world. It's just a long chain of causality that is propagated forward by implicit agreement.
      - Confusion 16y ago
        All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the night. Which is a naive view, because without American intervention in Afghanistan, their citizens ran the risk of being shot in the middle of the night anyway, because they rubbed some Taliban the wrong way.
philwelch 16y ago
Another side issue: "In these situations, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is essentially nil. That's why you and I have not stopped the millions of murders in Darfur, the same as our parents did not stop them in Rwanda 17 years ago, and so on." No, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is exactly why our governments did nothing to stop the murders in Darfur or Rwanda. Humanitarian intervention in a matter of no interest to one's people is the act of a benevolent despot, not a democracy--at least when there's lives on the line. (The closest the US has gotten to "humanitarian intervention" as of late was the nonsense in the Balkans where Clinton was careful to forbid any measures which would have actually endangered American lives, even at the expense of civilian lives on the other side.) Normal people fundamentally don't care about the other. Instead of a few people being upset about millions of African deaths by genocide, everyone would be absolutely livid about thousands of (for example) American deaths by combat in a godforsaken part of the world that doesn't effect us. Normal people don't have the stomach to see their people die for some stranger around the world with whom they have nothing in common. Afghanistan was revenge against people who killed Americans. Iraq was misplaced revenge for the same motive--and when it became clear to most Americans that they held no emotional or practical interest in Iraq, they turned against the war completely, with all the idealistic arguments about how the war deposed a brutal, murderous despot falling on deaf ears. How do you really think ordinary people would have reacted to Bush invading Sudan, or for that matter Clinton invading Rwanda after all the mess in Somalia? And without these damn governments helping us, how exactly are you and I going to stop millions of machete-wielding Hutus, eh?

by riffer 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Alex3917 16y ago

"War is a failure of the imagination." In an ideal world Wikileaks wouldn't be necessary, but in the world we have it helps ameliorate the damage caused by our cognitive biases. Also, someone should really make Chris Hedges' book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning into a movie.

philwelch 16y ago

Sixty to seventy years ago, the following information was kept secret by Western governments: -How to build an atom bomb -How to build effective radar systems to detect incoming bombers -The fact that German and Japanese encryption codes had been compromised -The US Navy's awareness of Japan's intention to attack Midway Island -The fact that Patton was actually removed from command, and that his travels around Italy and north Africa were a ruse to misdirect German defenses away from Normandy Need I go on? If some idealist decided to leak these secrets, a lot more innocent individuals would be dominated by certain nation states. State secrets are no different from any other power of the state--they can be used for good or for ill, and it's careful to ensure they're used for good, but it's foolish and suicidal to try and keep them from being used at all.

todayiamme 16y ago
Today the following information is kept secret by many governments: - Accidental civilian deaths in raids. - Details of people "detained" for questioning. - Botched up intelligence operations and lack of analysis capabilities. - How much money is being spent on "intelligence" and why. Need I go on? It is true that they can be used for good or for ill, but the problem comes in when you take away accountability from the equation. The question really should be; how can we balance the two?
- philwelch 16y ago
  You don't disagree with me; you agree with me and disagree with the idealist, quasi-anarchist view that state secrets shouldn't exist at all. Note that all (but perhaps one) of the secrets I listed is now well documented public knowledge. I think this example should be followed.
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    I don't want to agree or disagree with anything. All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the night. You know what's the biggest problem over here? It's okay if someone from country ABC kills people living in XYZ. That's collateral damage, but as soon as a few ABC civilians get killed it's war. It's like somehow everyone in this world have agreed to play a game where they all assume that they're the heroes and the fate of the planet rests on their shoulders. Somehow they've agreed that it's okay to kill other people because they just don't agree with them. Somehow they've agreed that this is just the way things are and this is how they must be. Why? I think that it's safe to say that no one can analyze state secrets or anything in this world. It's just a long chain of causality that is propagated forward by implicit agreement.
    - Confusion 16y ago
      All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the night. Which is a naive view, because without American intervention in Afghanistan, their citizens ran the risk of being shot in the middle of the night anyway, because they rubbed some Taliban the wrong way.

philwelch 16y ago

Another side issue: "In these situations, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is essentially nil. That's why you and I have not stopped the millions of murders in Darfur, the same as our parents did not stop them in Rwanda 17 years ago, and so on." No, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is exactly why our governments did nothing to stop the murders in Darfur or Rwanda. Humanitarian intervention in a matter of no interest to one's people is the act of a benevolent despot, not a democracy--at least when there's lives on the line. (The closest the US has gotten to "humanitarian intervention" as of late was the nonsense in the Balkans where Clinton was careful to forbid any measures which would have actually endangered American lives, even at the expense of civilian lives on the other side.) Normal people fundamentally don't care about the other. Instead of a few people being upset about millions of African deaths by genocide, everyone would be absolutely livid about thousands of (for example) American deaths by combat in a godforsaken part of the world that doesn't effect us. Normal people don't have the stomach to see their people die for some stranger around the world with whom they have nothing in common. Afghanistan was revenge against people who killed Americans. Iraq was misplaced revenge for the same motive--and when it became clear to most Americans that they held no emotional or practical interest in Iraq, they turned against the war completely, with all the idealistic arguments about how the war deposed a brutal, murderous despot falling on deaf ears. How do you really think ordinary people would have reacted to Bush invading Sudan, or for that matter Clinton invading Rwanda after all the mess in Somalia? And without these damn governments helping us, how exactly are you and I going to stop millions of machete-wielding Hutus, eh?