Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Sunday, June 9, 2013
On Freedom
Recent developments compel me to re-publish the following post at this time. It is even more important now than it was when posted in 2011.
There are two generations in the United States today who have never known true freedom. The best example of proof for this statement is the ambivalent response to the release of documents by Wikileaks. Some people welcome it as exactly right. Some consider it a traitorous act. Most are made uneasy by it with shifting feelings of "it's good" or "maybe not so good."
I don't understand why people are willing to say that they don't need to know everything our government does or plans to do. Is it the label of SECRET that frightens them? Or is it the burden of knowing?
In 1955, there was a re-issue of a book titled Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie. When this book first appeared in December 1942 it was controversial. Partly this was due to Mr Wylie speaking his mind in the midst of a world war. It was also due to his original and iconclastic thought and plain expression thereof.
Mr Wylie wrote a number of footnotes for the re-issue of 1955. The following is one of those footnotes. It appears in the last chapter of the book.
"We can have one categorical premise only: the democratic premise - leaving no room for any other - demanding the right to all information as the route to all understanding and judgment, and transcending in private, national and international existence all special pleading..
It is the steady loss of this right which, since 1945, has caused me to assert in every possible medium that liberty is perishing in U.S.A. Common man did not see, after Hiroshima, that to make any part of abstract science a secret was to deny to all mankind access to basic truth. Uncommon man, a very few physicists excepted, did not see that formidable point, either. And neither group perceived that a little start at making mere knowledge secret would inevitably spread, so that much knowledge would soon be hidden, much policy would in consequence be shaped in secret, and the people would no longer be "properly informed" wherefore able to make "appropriate decdisions" - indeed, any decisions.
In 1945, and every since, I have published the view that a failure of the Soviets to enter into an open, free, inspected world community of scientific knowledge, including what is called "military secrets" must be regarded by the American people as an intolerable affront to American freedom and therefore an obligatory cause for ultimatum. I have continuingly pointed out that the only alternative - a secret America - a land where even the elected representatives no longer can be "cleared" to learn all the facts, truths and data relevant to good government - leads to what in effect amounts to dictatorship, since it is not free and open government.
I have said that such a condition - recognized or not - would breed increasing fear in a people thitherto accustomed to knowing (by their constitutional rights) all the facts. I have said that their automatic terror -conscious or not- would lead the people of this country into a state of hysteria - a state of inappropriate response, a state in which some would become apathetic to every peril, othes would seek to vent their unidentified terror by punishing "whipping boys," and still others would try to escape by attitudes of "eat, drink and be merry," or by plunging into religious paroxysms- "trusting" God to accomplish duties they would not themselves even face, or embracing fugue and fantasy-imagining that "it can't happen here" or that little men from outer space would save us from the bombs.
As early as 1946, I named the years to come - these years- "The Terror" (always providing we kept failing to see that a secret Russia, by compelling secrecy on U.S.A., abrogated our basic freedom to know). The hysterias I predicted are manifest in our national life today. So far, we have failed to see that awful meaning of our lost liberty; we have failed to take the formidable, self-evident steps against Russia; we have failed even to realize that we are now a kind of permissive "dictatorship" wherein the man in the street no longer controls his government because he no longer knows what "secrets" effect its policies, its plans, its expenditures, and so on.
It is not surprising, then, that we exhibit the classical forms of hysteria on a wide scale -or that we do not appreciate these symptoms for what they are: such self-blindness is one symptom of the familiar disease.
There is no such thing as a free and uninformed people; there is not even such a thing as a free press in a land of government by restriction and classification. Without all knowledge, liberty expires; so all of us who think we are still free are bitterly deluded."
There are two generations in the United States today who have never known true freedom. The best example of proof for this statement is the ambivalent response to the release of documents by Wikileaks. Some people welcome it as exactly right. Some consider it a traitorous act. Most are made uneasy by it with shifting feelings of "it's good" or "maybe not so good."
I don't understand why people are willing to say that they don't need to know everything our government does or plans to do. Is it the label of SECRET that frightens them? Or is it the burden of knowing?
In 1955, there was a re-issue of a book titled Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie. When this book first appeared in December 1942 it was controversial. Partly this was due to Mr Wylie speaking his mind in the midst of a world war. It was also due to his original and iconclastic thought and plain expression thereof.
Mr Wylie wrote a number of footnotes for the re-issue of 1955. The following is one of those footnotes. It appears in the last chapter of the book.
"We can have one categorical premise only: the democratic premise - leaving no room for any other - demanding the right to all information as the route to all understanding and judgment, and transcending in private, national and international existence all special pleading..
It is the steady loss of this right which, since 1945, has caused me to assert in every possible medium that liberty is perishing in U.S.A. Common man did not see, after Hiroshima, that to make any part of abstract science a secret was to deny to all mankind access to basic truth. Uncommon man, a very few physicists excepted, did not see that formidable point, either. And neither group perceived that a little start at making mere knowledge secret would inevitably spread, so that much knowledge would soon be hidden, much policy would in consequence be shaped in secret, and the people would no longer be "properly informed" wherefore able to make "appropriate decdisions" - indeed, any decisions.
In 1945, and every since, I have published the view that a failure of the Soviets to enter into an open, free, inspected world community of scientific knowledge, including what is called "military secrets" must be regarded by the American people as an intolerable affront to American freedom and therefore an obligatory cause for ultimatum. I have continuingly pointed out that the only alternative - a secret America - a land where even the elected representatives no longer can be "cleared" to learn all the facts, truths and data relevant to good government - leads to what in effect amounts to dictatorship, since it is not free and open government.
I have said that such a condition - recognized or not - would breed increasing fear in a people thitherto accustomed to knowing (by their constitutional rights) all the facts. I have said that their automatic terror -conscious or not- would lead the people of this country into a state of hysteria - a state of inappropriate response, a state in which some would become apathetic to every peril, othes would seek to vent their unidentified terror by punishing "whipping boys," and still others would try to escape by attitudes of "eat, drink and be merry," or by plunging into religious paroxysms- "trusting" God to accomplish duties they would not themselves even face, or embracing fugue and fantasy-imagining that "it can't happen here" or that little men from outer space would save us from the bombs.
As early as 1946, I named the years to come - these years- "The Terror" (always providing we kept failing to see that a secret Russia, by compelling secrecy on U.S.A., abrogated our basic freedom to know). The hysterias I predicted are manifest in our national life today. So far, we have failed to see that awful meaning of our lost liberty; we have failed to take the formidable, self-evident steps against Russia; we have failed even to realize that we are now a kind of permissive "dictatorship" wherein the man in the street no longer controls his government because he no longer knows what "secrets" effect its policies, its plans, its expenditures, and so on.
It is not surprising, then, that we exhibit the classical forms of hysteria on a wide scale -or that we do not appreciate these symptoms for what they are: such self-blindness is one symptom of the familiar disease.
There is no such thing as a free and uninformed people; there is not even such a thing as a free press in a land of government by restriction and classification. Without all knowledge, liberty expires; so all of us who think we are still free are bitterly deluded."
Friday, June 7, 2013
Who are we anyway?
Spare me all the bluster, please, about the 'harvesting' of phone calls from Verizon. Do you believe it is only Verizon?
There is no reason to be shocked if you are someone who reads a daily newspaper and an occasional book.
Nuggets of news about US Government intrusion into our lives appear almost monthly.
Just last month, you should have read this from a former FBI agent.
In 2010, Dana Priest and William Arkin provided a comprehensive survey of the total national security complex. The survey consisted of five daily reports in the Washington Post.
Here are some nuggets of news from that report:
"The top secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington DC, hold top secret clearances.
In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost 3 Pentagons or 92 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space."
Since early in the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has repeatedly complained about the interception of phone calls and emails by NSA and other Government agencies.
Everything required for a police state exists in these United States, is in place and ready to use. It is a system that has been constructed over the years by both parties and by many different politicians good and bad. The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and a number of Presidential Signing Statements are the foundation for this new more dangerous America.
Unless one wants to be considered as unknowing and out-of-touch, how could any American not know or, at least, suspect that our Government was collecting our phone calls and emails?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
There is no reason to be shocked if you are someone who reads a daily newspaper and an occasional book.
Nuggets of news about US Government intrusion into our lives appear almost monthly.
Just last month, you should have read this from a former FBI agent.
In 2010, Dana Priest and William Arkin provided a comprehensive survey of the total national security complex. The survey consisted of five daily reports in the Washington Post.
Here are some nuggets of news from that report:
"The top secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington DC, hold top secret clearances.
In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost 3 Pentagons or 92 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space."
Since early in the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has repeatedly complained about the interception of phone calls and emails by NSA and other Government agencies.
Everything required for a police state exists in these United States, is in place and ready to use. It is a system that has been constructed over the years by both parties and by many different politicians good and bad. The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and a number of Presidential Signing Statements are the foundation for this new more dangerous America.
Unless one wants to be considered as unknowing and out-of-touch, how could any American not know or, at least, suspect that our Government was collecting our phone calls and emails?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Our world in stupor lies...
Thus wrote the poet Auden, and the words are as true 74 years later as they were when written.
An example: five decades ago, when I was in my twenties, enterprising hard-working young Americans could work their way through college, paying their tuition costs from their efforts.
That is no longer true. Now Americans are required to obtain 'student loans' and incur debt running to thousands of dollars.
No one asks why or how come? No one protests.
What went wrong? No one seems to care.
'Our world in stupor lies...'
It has been remarked by one of the most astute minds in America (Chris Hedges) that if France told its young people that from now on they would have to borrow $50,000 to pay for college, the government would be gone in a week.
______________________________________________________________________________________
An example: five decades ago, when I was in my twenties, enterprising hard-working young Americans could work their way through college, paying their tuition costs from their efforts.
That is no longer true. Now Americans are required to obtain 'student loans' and incur debt running to thousands of dollars.
No one asks why or how come? No one protests.
What went wrong? No one seems to care.
'Our world in stupor lies...'
It has been remarked by one of the most astute minds in America (Chris Hedges) that if France told its young people that from now on they would have to borrow $50,000 to pay for college, the government would be gone in a week.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
The Revolutionary (poem by Vernon Watkins)
The Revolutionary
I was that youth. Now, from myself estranged,
After the revolution I was seeking,
I stop stone dead, to hear another speaking:
'Change nothing; you yourself must first be changed.'
I travelled seas and learnt to read a chart,
Knew how to navigate through dispossession,
The hardest straits, yet wrote in my confessions:
'All triumph was resisted by the heart.'
Much evil and much good remain, and yet
The heart has no immaculate remedy.
Life, to be won, is won less easily;
The stars remind us:'Your own eyes are set.'
Say of this patience that impatience gained;
'When others left their station, he remained.'
_________________________________________________________________________
I was that youth. Now, from myself estranged,
After the revolution I was seeking,
I stop stone dead, to hear another speaking:
'Change nothing; you yourself must first be changed.'
I travelled seas and learnt to read a chart,
Knew how to navigate through dispossession,
The hardest straits, yet wrote in my confessions:
'All triumph was resisted by the heart.'
Much evil and much good remain, and yet
The heart has no immaculate remedy.
Life, to be won, is won less easily;
The stars remind us:'Your own eyes are set.'
Say of this patience that impatience gained;
'When others left their station, he remained.'
_________________________________________________________________________
Friday, May 10, 2013
What science can't prove, it sometimes denies.
Lately there has been much back and forth jawing on the internet between the faithful and the skeptical. Not much changes because people tend to be more steadfast when finished speaking than before they spoke.
Whenever science presents a new finding or a successful advance in knowledge, the atheistic members inject a tone of smugness about their 'rational' position on this issue.
Try as they might, they will never explain nor accept the observation recorded in the essay below.
In The Bird and the Machine, Loren Eiseley opens with his reading the newspaper at the breakfast table. The paper has a story on the advances in machines and robotic engineering. The most dramatic changes are in the smartness of machines and their enhanced brain capacity. The joyous extrapolations the journalist draws from these scientific events leave Eiseley questioning the conclusions.
Eiseley recalls an experience from his time as a young archaeologist, one of a party of scientists exploring the wilderness of the upper mid-western United States in order to, as Eiseley puts it, 'capture the past.' He describes coming "into the valley through the trailing mists of a spring night. It was a place that looked as though it might never have known the foot of man, but our scouts had been ahead of us and we knew all about the abandoned cabin of stone that lay far up on one hillside."
He writes that they "had, in addition, instructions to lay hands on the present. The word had come through to get them alive - birds, reptiles, anything. A zoo somewhere needed restocking It was one of those reciprocal matters in which science involves itself. Maybe," Eiseley writes, "our museum needed a stray ostrich egg and this was the payoff. Anyhow, my job was to help capture some birds and that was why I was there before the trucks.
"The cabin had not been occupied for years. We intended to clean it out and live in it, but there were holes in the roof and the birds had come in and were roosting in the rafters...I got the door open softly and I had the spotlight all ready to turn on and blind whatever birds there were so they couldn't see to get out through the holes in the roof. I had a short piece of ladder to put against the far wall where there was a shelf on which I expected to make the biggest haul. I had all the information I needed, just like any skilled assassin. I pushed the door open, the hinges squeaking only a little. A bird or two stirred-I could hear them-but nothing flew and there was a faint starlight through the holes in the roof...
"Everything worked perfectly except for one detail - I didn't know what kind of birds were there. I never thought about it at all, and it wouldn't have mattered if I had. My orders were to get something interesting. I snapped on the flash and sure enough there was a great beating and feathers flying, but instead of my having them, they, or rather he, had me. He had my hand, that is, and for a small hawk not much bigger than my fist he was doing all right. I heard him give one short metallic cry when the light went on and my hand descended on the bird beside him; after that he was busy with his claws and his beak was sunk in my thumb. In the struggle I knocked the lamp over on the shelf, and his mate got her sight back and whisked neatly through the hole in the roof and off among the stars outside...He chewed my thumb up...and lacerated my hand with his claws but in the end I got him, having two hands to work with. He was a sparrow hawk and a fine young male in the prime of life."
Eiseley puts the bird in a box too small to allow him to injure himself, performs some repairs on his hand and retires for the night.
The next morning, Eiseley writes, "I was up early and brought the box in which the little hawk was imprisoned out onto the grass where I was building a cage. A wind as cool as a mountain spring ran over the grass and stirred my hair. It was a fine day to be alive. I looked up and all around and at the hole in the cabin roof out of which the other little hawk had fled. There was no sign of her anywhere.
"Probably in the next county by now," I thought cynically, but before beginning work I decided I'd have a look at my last night's capture.
"Secretively, I looked again all around the camp and up and down and opened the box. I got him right out in my hand with his wings folded properly and I was careful not to startle him. He lay limp in my grasp and I could feel his heart pound under the feathers but he only looked beyond me and up.
I saw him look that last look away beyond me into a sky so full of light that I could not follow his gaze...I suppose I must have had an idea then of what I was going to do, but I never let it come up into consciousness. I just reached over and laid the hawk on the grass.
"He lay there for a long minute without hope, unmoving, his eyes still fixed on that blue vault above him. It must have been that he was already so far away in heart that he never felt the release from my hand. He never even stood. He just lay with his breast against the grass.
"In the next second after that long minute he was gone. Like a flicker of light, he had vanished with my eyes full on him but without actually seeing even a premonitory wing beat. He was gone straight into that towering emptiness of light and crystal that my eyes could scarcely bear to penetrate. The light was too intense. Then from far up somewhere a cry came ringing down.
"I was young then and had seen little of the world, but when I heard that cry my heart turned over. It was not the cry of the hawk I had captured, for by shifting my position against the sun, I was now seeing farther up. Straight out of the sun's eye, where she must have been soaring restlessly above us for untold hours, hurtled his mate. And from far up, ringing from peak to peak of the summits over us, came a cry of such unutterable and ecstatic joy that it sounds down across the years and tingles among the cups on my quiet breakfast table.
"I saw them both now. He was rising fast to meet her. They met in a great soaring gyre that turned to a whirling circle, and a dance of wings. Once more, just once, their two voices, joined in a harsh wild medley of question and response, struck and echoed against the pinnacles of the valley. Then they were gone forever somewhere into the upper regions beyond the eyes of men."
I have read that essay many, many times and it still gives me a lump in the throat.
The quote below below is confirmation from The Outermost House:
“We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.”
― Henry Beston
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Whenever science presents a new finding or a successful advance in knowledge, the atheistic members inject a tone of smugness about their 'rational' position on this issue.
Try as they might, they will never explain nor accept the observation recorded in the essay below.
In The Bird and the Machine, Loren Eiseley opens with his reading the newspaper at the breakfast table. The paper has a story on the advances in machines and robotic engineering. The most dramatic changes are in the smartness of machines and their enhanced brain capacity. The joyous extrapolations the journalist draws from these scientific events leave Eiseley questioning the conclusions.
Eiseley recalls an experience from his time as a young archaeologist, one of a party of scientists exploring the wilderness of the upper mid-western United States in order to, as Eiseley puts it, 'capture the past.' He describes coming "into the valley through the trailing mists of a spring night. It was a place that looked as though it might never have known the foot of man, but our scouts had been ahead of us and we knew all about the abandoned cabin of stone that lay far up on one hillside."
He writes that they "had, in addition, instructions to lay hands on the present. The word had come through to get them alive - birds, reptiles, anything. A zoo somewhere needed restocking It was one of those reciprocal matters in which science involves itself. Maybe," Eiseley writes, "our museum needed a stray ostrich egg and this was the payoff. Anyhow, my job was to help capture some birds and that was why I was there before the trucks.
"The cabin had not been occupied for years. We intended to clean it out and live in it, but there were holes in the roof and the birds had come in and were roosting in the rafters...I got the door open softly and I had the spotlight all ready to turn on and blind whatever birds there were so they couldn't see to get out through the holes in the roof. I had a short piece of ladder to put against the far wall where there was a shelf on which I expected to make the biggest haul. I had all the information I needed, just like any skilled assassin. I pushed the door open, the hinges squeaking only a little. A bird or two stirred-I could hear them-but nothing flew and there was a faint starlight through the holes in the roof...
"Everything worked perfectly except for one detail - I didn't know what kind of birds were there. I never thought about it at all, and it wouldn't have mattered if I had. My orders were to get something interesting. I snapped on the flash and sure enough there was a great beating and feathers flying, but instead of my having them, they, or rather he, had me. He had my hand, that is, and for a small hawk not much bigger than my fist he was doing all right. I heard him give one short metallic cry when the light went on and my hand descended on the bird beside him; after that he was busy with his claws and his beak was sunk in my thumb. In the struggle I knocked the lamp over on the shelf, and his mate got her sight back and whisked neatly through the hole in the roof and off among the stars outside...He chewed my thumb up...and lacerated my hand with his claws but in the end I got him, having two hands to work with. He was a sparrow hawk and a fine young male in the prime of life."
Eiseley puts the bird in a box too small to allow him to injure himself, performs some repairs on his hand and retires for the night.
The next morning, Eiseley writes, "I was up early and brought the box in which the little hawk was imprisoned out onto the grass where I was building a cage. A wind as cool as a mountain spring ran over the grass and stirred my hair. It was a fine day to be alive. I looked up and all around and at the hole in the cabin roof out of which the other little hawk had fled. There was no sign of her anywhere.
"Probably in the next county by now," I thought cynically, but before beginning work I decided I'd have a look at my last night's capture.
"Secretively, I looked again all around the camp and up and down and opened the box. I got him right out in my hand with his wings folded properly and I was careful not to startle him. He lay limp in my grasp and I could feel his heart pound under the feathers but he only looked beyond me and up.
I saw him look that last look away beyond me into a sky so full of light that I could not follow his gaze...I suppose I must have had an idea then of what I was going to do, but I never let it come up into consciousness. I just reached over and laid the hawk on the grass.
"He lay there for a long minute without hope, unmoving, his eyes still fixed on that blue vault above him. It must have been that he was already so far away in heart that he never felt the release from my hand. He never even stood. He just lay with his breast against the grass.
"In the next second after that long minute he was gone. Like a flicker of light, he had vanished with my eyes full on him but without actually seeing even a premonitory wing beat. He was gone straight into that towering emptiness of light and crystal that my eyes could scarcely bear to penetrate. The light was too intense. Then from far up somewhere a cry came ringing down.
"I was young then and had seen little of the world, but when I heard that cry my heart turned over. It was not the cry of the hawk I had captured, for by shifting my position against the sun, I was now seeing farther up. Straight out of the sun's eye, where she must have been soaring restlessly above us for untold hours, hurtled his mate. And from far up, ringing from peak to peak of the summits over us, came a cry of such unutterable and ecstatic joy that it sounds down across the years and tingles among the cups on my quiet breakfast table.
"I saw them both now. He was rising fast to meet her. They met in a great soaring gyre that turned to a whirling circle, and a dance of wings. Once more, just once, their two voices, joined in a harsh wild medley of question and response, struck and echoed against the pinnacles of the valley. Then they were gone forever somewhere into the upper regions beyond the eyes of men."
I have read that essay many, many times and it still gives me a lump in the throat.
The quote below below is confirmation from The Outermost House:
“We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.”
― Henry Beston
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
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