Friday, March 19, 2010

Secrecy - the first refuge of incompetents

Here are a few words to the HarperCons while they attempt to cover up the "who knew what and when" of Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers and handed over to Afghan authorities, even after the government had been warned by the Red Cross and their own diplomats in Afghanistan that they would be almost certainly subjected to torture.

They have repeatedly denied knowing anything, then attempted to hide behind the Canadian military or the previous government.

This from Scott Horton, constitutional law expert who writes a blog titled No Comment for Harper's (no connection to Stephen Harper, not at all).

Scott Horton, March 19th, Harper's, No Comment

The Pentagon loses a Skirmish with WikiLeaks

On the subject of secrecy:

In 1960, a congressional committee, recognizing the need to rein in the extravagant claims of secrecy that were thriving in the Department of Defense and intelligence community, observed that

Secrecy—the first refuge of incompetents—must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society, for a fully informed public is the basis of self-government. Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than the people.

I don't suppose the Harper regime is listening, though. They never do.

7 comments:

  1. JFK, speaks of secrecy and dissent.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxnpujfanUM&feature=PlayList&p=0305086AC8091206&index=0

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  2. Good clip, RZ.

    It's been fifty years and still no one is listening. Didn't Kennedy say that the CIA should be broken up into a million pieces and the pieces scattered to the winds? (I'm sure he put it much better than I have.)

    Where did people like Harper come from, I wonder?

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  3. They come from this percentile.

    http://www.sott.net/articles/show/191213-Word-gets-around-Twilight-and-the-trick-of-the-psychopaths

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  4. Robert Hare, a psychologist from British Columbia, seems to have spent his career studying and documenting psychopaths.

    Without Conscience

    His book by that name is enough to make your blood run cold and another called Snakes in Suits talks about psychopaths in the workplace.

    He has a rule of thirds - one-third of people don't recognize the signs of these people at all, one-third are willing to give them time to see how things work out, and the remaining third have an immediate and visceral reaction to them as being very dangerous.

    Their main characteristics seem to be the ability to lie continuously, to find and exploit the vulnerabilities of the people they come in contact with and the wake of destroyed lives and wrecked institutions and businesses they leave behind them.

    I bet we can all think of a few people like that without trying too hard.

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  5. check this

    http://www.sott.net/articles/show/191213-Word-gets-around-Twilight-and-the-trick-of-the-psychopaths

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  6. OOOOPS sorry wrong link.
    here it is.

    http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/

    This guy posts a lot. He has great threads about psychos and other great topics.

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  7. I've bookmarked it. It looks good.

    ReplyDelete