Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Secrets



I first heard the song "Two Can Keep a Secret if One of them is Dead" on "Democracy Now" linked below. I heard it in between interviews on the National Security State.  It is beautiful in its simplicity, profound and it is eerie.  Amy Goodman's interview of Scott Horton who has published a new book entitled "Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Foreign Policy" I will Kindle and add to my plethora of 1/2 read excellent books in hope that someday before I die I will sit down and read them all.  Hope springs eternal.

My mind staggers at the latest extremist violence this time in Paris.  Where will it be next? There can be no doubt there will be a next.  Will we who yearn for humane policy ever know a world at peace and compromise again?  The more pressing question is how did we get here?
Is violence a part of man's basic tribal nature or are there cultural forces man can control?  The explanations are legion and I do not have the endurance nor the expertise to explain such things in depth but I do know a little that I think accounts for much. 

Post World War II western foreign policy has angered many in the developing world; blood for oil the life blood of the west the riches from which never find their way to the struggling masses; the never-ending corruption of wealth and politics; the secrets of the national security state easily exposed in our technological age for all the world to see and for the least of these brethren to wax angry at the inhumanity of eternal war those secrets engender and the impossibility of keeping those secrets secret no matter how much technology we apply to it are some reasons for consideration.
What matters?  In the end I believe that human beings want to be heard, they want to live in dignity and they resent others to perceptively take it all leaving little for those who often work the hardest.  This story is old.  It is as old as civilized man, as old as Egypt, as old as Rome, and as old as the modern industrial state.  The difference now is injustice is shown as fast as one can click on a mouse. 
At our core I believe the powerless want a voice in the process.  What is more precious to arrive at political process than our freedom of speech? It is, as I see it, the most important freedom because through it we can make our desires heard.
Moreover, for 6 billion on our planet there are billions of different modalities of religious belief and non-belief. Which one is correct? No one, in truth, really knows but man has the right – no, the obligation – to question everything. Nothing is more important than that.
The song “Secrets …” is here or at the link below.

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