Even though some ideas lead to actions that create challenging situations for us, there is no reason to exclude them from beneath your Dome of Heaven. In the 1960’s many of us (I give away my vintage here) had the idea that the war in Viet Nam was very wrong, and the idea that of the Civil Rights Movement was worthy of support. Those ideas caused us to march, and protest, and to sit in, and as a result, created some challenging circumstances for people on both sides of those ideas. I am writing these blogs as a Canadian, rather than a citizen of the United States, because of one of those two ideas.
In the early 1970’s, Daniel Ellsberg had the idea that there were issues with involvement of the United States in Indochina, and particularly in Viet Nam. He worked on the detailed history of U.S. involvement in Indochina from the end of WW II through the Viet Nam War as commissioned by the then Secy. of Defence. As a consequence of his work, he became a major opponent of the war and released large parts of what are known as the Pentagon Papers, to the New York Times and the Washington Post, without authorization. His “whistle blowing” activities revealed the true nature of U.S. participation in events in that region of the world.
Julian Assange, the journalist, activist, and the editor and publisher of Wikileaks, is dedicated to discovering and revealing the doings and misdeeds of the powerful in this world. Bradley Manning released large amounts of classified information to Wikileaks, related to the prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. PFC Manning is currently sitting through his court martial in Quetico, VA, related to this “whistle blowing” incident. Assange is under threat of arrest for an unrelated incident, but the thought is that he is being pursued because of those confidential documents he published.
The latest “whistle-blower” to make the headlines is Edward Snowdon. He outed the U.S. government’s for gathering intelligence by listening in on telephone conversations and reading text messages and emails from international sources that are being received by U.S. citizens. Snowdon let the world know that Big Brother was listening.
Each of these men have the idea that something very wrong and very unethical being done by government (in this case the U.S. government) needed to be exposed to the public for scrutiny. They each risked much by releasing classified information.
The “idea” of standing up against the wrong-headed, and sometimes ill-conceived, and sometimes downright unethical actions of governments by revealing so-called “top secret” information is definitely contained beneath my Dome of Heaven. This particular idea has driven some of my own actions in the small space of my immediate world, but the rational was the same for me, as it was for them. The abuse of authority is always worthy of causing the whistle to be blown.
Related articles
- Shaping us into robots (therebel.org)
- | We Steal Secrets: Alex Gibney, Wikileaks & Julian Assange! (truthaholics.wordpress.com)
Preserve Memory and Save Your Self 