arcolife

~/writing/2013/06/23

Ways to start-over with our Political Regimes?

:: 4 min read :: digital sweat · 2011–2017

hacksOpen Sourcephilosophycurrent-eventsdefending the truthedward snowdenpoliticsthomas drake

Originally published on arcolife.blog, my WordPress blog, in 2013. Imported with its original formatting, photos and comments.

Dedicated to Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden and all those who’ve risked their lives, defending the truth & morality.

Dedicated to the memory of Aaron Swartz.

Also dedicated to the memory of Aaron Swartz.

Few months ago I watched this awe-inspiring video of Thomas Drake, the so-called ‘whistle-blower’ [ formerly a  Chief Executive on the NSA ] in some US classified case regarding post 9/11 actions taken by the government.

The way the governments work is a fact, mostly unknown. And agreed, it should be kept that way, but only as long as its ethical, humane and is not in corrupt, greedy hands. But obviously, such a thing isn’t possible! People-in-power eventually use others as the stepping-stones. Because corruption is the bitter truth of life. Mostly, those who’re at the demanding end of it, are responsible for it. And MOSTLY, they’re the Leaders.
Now if you need facts, I am not just another NSA/CIA/FBI/local police official (yeah it feels nice to quote all of these still “respected” agencies), who has access to facts, but being a common man, I can ascertain a logical path towards how I reached this conclusion. Leaders, have the power. If they feel threatened/weak/greedy, they panic (and believe me, those leaders who panic a lot, are not fit to be called leaders) OR/AND they order lower ranks that, as commonly is quoted in movies/sting-operations, “The_Work_Should_Be_Done_By_Tomorrow”. The lower ranks turn to their peers/juniors in the hierarchy and do the same, whether under pressure, or as is habitual for many. Hence, corruption spreads that way. Unless, someone from lower ranks has enough damn money to lure the upper ranks, it’s the leaders mostly.

Again, if you deny this argument, then I am (as usually the public is), left helpless. As an individual I am weak against Government’s unethical measures. But as a public, I ain’t. After all, those who’re the leaders, became one, through these public discussions, on the basis of trust ( and a little money-money thingy! eh? ). They won those very arguments on basis of rebuttals against the points put forth by their rivals. I read somewhere “civilization presupposes respect for the law”. But what happens, is due to pressure/greed, mostly the fire dies within their souls and they blend into the system, instead of changing it, as they were supposed to do.

But those who don’t, are called the “Whistle-blowers”

Anyways, my point being, transparency hardly exists. No one, mostly, no one ..is answerable to the public, if some fundamental flaws are brought to their attention. Even If some amendments are broken/purged.

‘Government’ though being just a term, includes a huge web of organizations, systems, norms, people, thought processes, law & enforcement strategies and technologies used to assist those methodologies.

The ‘democratic’ power is not to be misused. Benefits are of all kinds. If these are drawn out, from individual citizens, without them knowing about it, people get disturbed. If someone defends the truth, then, do the morals of those government officials just get diluted?
I’d say tell them to look upon their actions, to review what they’ve done and they’ll never respect themselves anymore.

Aaron Swartz was a good guy. Thomas Drake did not have to undergo that torture. These examples are increasing over the period of time.
Know why? 😐 Because governments are swiftly seeking more power and making undesirable changes in the structure of law.

From the interview of Snowden:

” ….If they wanna get you, they’ll get you in time. They’re the world’s most powerful intelligence agency!”
True! You don’t face them straight-up!

“….One wrong call (and a bad one) attended makes you suspicious. They just have to go back in time and scrutinize you.”

If we, the people, target those governments and demand answers, well I’m sure everybody knows their response to that!

Right now, it’s not just about Edward Snowden leaving everything behind to disclose the behavior and powers of government, locally and globally, It’s about him taking this path to make the general public aware about whats happening. And in my opinion, he did nothing wrong and has every right to disclose unethical governmental measures towards ways of public surveillance.

I don’t suggest starting a riot or something. I just demand from each one of you, all those to whom, I could reach out, to create such high levels of awareness about whats happening, that the governments are forced to conduct a poll or something, or at least revise their plan/course of actions, in order to restore peace and ethnicity around the world.

I shall again put forward this point (as once I did a while ago) that :

“Political leaders are public servants and should behave like one.”

Going out-of-bounds is not acceptable. No, Sir.  Play nice, or people WILL bring you down. It’s in the hands of the governments, to maintain/restore peace, or further, stir public agitation.

I had taken steps previously, on whatever grounds, with whatever skills I possess at this point of time, to help make the world a safer place. So you see, It’s NOT ACCEPTABLE that I shall keep helping the governments / public, when they’re giving us this holier-than-thou treatment. (..and in 99.999999 % of the cases, the governments are/would-be wrong, not the public ! ).

Personally, I am not against anyone or anybody.
But these whistle-blowers do inspire me, to be a misfit.

A note to those who’re doing it wrong:-

Beware, of the public. These actions of yours, only lower our trust in you. If you tend to hide these activities, you’re risking everything you have. Remember, some of us are still young and have robust ideas. And the young blood is known to boil more. But we can also be patient enough, unless you disrupt our emotions/logical reasoning/conceptual school of thoughts. Let the “Do No Disturb” tags keep hanging on our doors or people will remove yours, eventually.

PS:- Quickly, now remember the steps i took on my own part. I ain’t a bad guy. 🙂
[ yeah I was just promoting my other post. Now, Alright? ]

Peace out.

comments

2 from the original post on arcolife.blog, archived

  1. Abandon TV · 23 Jun 2013

    “Political leaders are public servants and should behave like one.”

    It might be helpful to define ‘servant’. Currently there are two basic definitions. As you can see they are totally contradictory.

    1. the true definition of ‘servant’
    Someone employed to perform tasks for their employer, on a voluntary basis according to a pre-determined mutual agreement (ie contract).

    2. the false definition of ‘servant’ used exclusively by the group called ‘government’.
    Someone who has the monopolistic legal right to initiate force against everybody else to achieve their objectives.

    If you hired some ‘servants’ (definition 1) and they acted like ‘servants’ (definition 2) by confiscating half your income by force, pushing you around and taking out massive loans in your children’s names to fund genocidal wars, you would probably NOT think of them as any kind of servant at all! …. You’d probably think of them as thugs, mafia, gangsters, extorters, fraudsters and violent thieves.

    But let’s imagine they managed to convince you that their violent, thieving actions were totally consistent with being a ‘servant’, which means you must be the one in control (even though they steal your money and push you around all day). Perhaps to put your mind at rest they agreed to let you ‘vote’ every five years for one of them to be ‘head servant’ as if that somehow made the relationship between you different.

    If you really accepted that these violent thieves REALLY WERE your servants you would then spend the rest of your life unable to fix your terrible life. Your servants would make your life a misery and only allow you enough freedoms and wealth to carry on working full time (so they had a perpetual income to steal). Meanwhile your children would grow up in debt-slavery and no doubt schooled by one of the servants who taught them to always be ‘patriotic’ towards the servants and to never question them.

    This is the power of words.. of definitions. They literally define reality.

    Society cannot be fixed by discussing politics (politics only makes things worse by solidifying a bunch of fraudulent definitions). To actually fix society (if that is our aim) all we really need to do is to clarify language. That means to sort through all the fraudulent, or just vague, definitions that we were taught during our 12+ years of government schooling).

    By clarifying language, we clarify reality…. and society’s problems (and the solutions to those problems) become mind-blowingly clear.

  2. arcolife · 23 Jun 2013

    Excellent answer and excellent suggestion. If we’re able to implement that, then in due time, I have no doubt in its success, but I only wish such levels of word power, were inculcated into every child. ( The bitter truth of life, we all know, is that the uniformity of quality is not a reality)

    I’ll reply in steps. I expect you to not to loose track of order of my sentences & reasoning.

    The society has always been progressive. The amendments and the ‘laws’ are made during that progressive course of action, ‘laws’, which are ‘widely accepted’, which maintain an order, that some wrong-doing may not hinder the progress of a nation/state/society/culture.

    Now, if I may, (from the widely accepted corpus, as in, Wikipedia), on Public Service (& thus public servants being those who offer public service to the government):
    “…..They may involve outputs that are hard to attribute to specific individual effort and/or hard to measure in terms of key characteristics such as quality. They often require high levels of training and education. They may attract people with a public service ethos who wish to give something to the wider public or community through their work….”

    So, the government ( the definition of which, according to me, I’ve already clarified in my above blog-post ) should be formed by such highly trained and educated people.

    Alright. Now, reality check. [for developed countries]: US Government is indeed one of the most powerful & influencial ‘public agencies’ in the world. The NSA, a specialized branch of that government, consists of highly trained personnels.
    Time for another reality check: Edward Snowden & all his online/offline supporters too, are highly educated. He puts forth his points very clearly, and I can’t think of a way It could be said in a better manner. (ref: the interview link at the beginning of blog post)

    Refering to your reply, and considering the democratic scenario, the ’employers’ & ’employees’ are the people and the task is also for the people. Now that I have mentioned the reality check, lets face it, a government formed of the trained & educated people, serving the educated people, is still able to push the limits and cause public disapproval & still manages to run the country?
    My point being, there are several other paramters, like physcial force, human elements of emotion, of striving to succeed no matter what.
    So even though we think we live in a progressive society, we are actually going back into the era of dictatorship / monarchy (well, indirectly!).
    There are several ways to end a dictatorship. I’ll type a few:
    1. Chaotically (being shot, committing suicide, etc.) <- in the worst possible ways
    2. Pressurized to Elect ( through discussions, G8/G20 summits, UN meetings) <- the preferred way
    3. Natural calamity / course of nature. ( No heir or death of the family)

    We have both highly and sometimes even totally uneducated leaders (many from a criminal background)
    Lets talk about highly trained, but still corrupt leaders:- These leaders have a high command over language, the words, have high convincing power. On the other hand, they’re still taking some actions which when disclosed, cause public disapproval. Now what they’re doing is: “Capture the man before he does any more harm > to the government”.
    All this point towards how one perceives the truth. And the truth has come a long way down the generations. Scientifically, our neural network has been developed to follow what we learn in our initial days, hence, your point comes in as well, better education, with not just the right words, but the truth also being taught, uniformly across the earth, shall be the best technique we have. Like I said, its progressive, it takes time. But lets not destroy progress by making changes which are publicly not accepted and also, not hiding things.

    Your online/offline views, mine, everyone else’s have to spread. They should spread. like a disease, so that people stop accepting the wrong doings and also stop taking pleasure in such activities that bring nothing but disgrace to a nation, to one’s own personality and to future of humanity.

Loads disqus.com and its cookies.

esc

↑↓ move↵ open/ or ⌘K anywhere