Why we still don’t have the JFK assassination files
politico.com
politico.com
Usually, the things that were classified are those which would make the public upset, yet they were done anyway. That is fundamentally a contradiction, undemocratic institutions in a democracy.
This is why most democracies are Representative instead of Direct -- it's impossible to give everyone all the information they need to make informed decisions while keeping sensitive information secure.
So, elect people of good character and competency to the offices that are privy to this kind of information. Educate the public on why this is important.
The US establishment descends from the earlier Angloamerican establishment format, which in turn descended from English aristocratic establishment of medieval ages. In that format, the aristocrats were intouchable by anyone other than the aristocrats higher than them, they were not responsible for anything they say, especially towards the commoners, and it was ok to flip-flop, 'change your mind', renege on your promises, lie and backstab. After all, these were your rights as the local feudal lord of your domain anyway.
The French Revolution never having arrived in Britain, this aristocracy remained unchallenged in its privileges and its late Early-Modern Era culture formed on that basis, creating its own nature. This nature influenced their diplomatic, geopolitical dealings and alliances as well. To the extent that England, later Britain, gained a notoriety as 'the Perfidious Albion' for its constantly lying, flip-flopping, backstabbing politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion
The US elite was influenced and affected by other circumstances unlike the English elite. However the ancestral format and culture remained mostly the same:
The American elite don't feel themselves responsible for anything other than their own interests, they don't see any problem with lying, 'changing their mind' and reneging on their promises, or backstabbing/betraying anyone and anything if their interests dictate so. They do it among themselves to each other, to their own voters, to their own institutions, and also in business and foreign policy. Its a cultural, unbroken paradigm.
As a result, the American government and also the American corporations act the same way due to being populated by these elites. Since the same elite owns and controls the media too, the media acts in the same way - it can lie about anything without any qualms and zero feeling of responsibility towards its readers.
This behavior is specific to the Angloamerican establishment. And it is due to the aristocracy never having been destroyed or castrated.
No, not really.
>The French Revolution never having arrived in Britain
But it did happen in the US. In fact the French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution.
>However the ancestral format and culture remained mostly the same
Interesting how you acknowledge the flaw in your argument and then simply do not address it.
>This behavior is specific to the Angloamerican establishment. And it is due to the aristocracy never having been destroyed or castrated.
You have offered no evidence for this claim, which is extraordinary considering that there never was an aristocracy in the US. Unless by "aristocracy" you simply mean that the rich hold power, in which case that has nothing to do with Britan and exists in almost all countries.
Yes, but their content is not the same.
The American revolution was to get rid of the British, the rest of it was mostly establishing a "democracy by and for the rich and the landowners" thing. "All men are created equal" but blacks are slaves, women don't vote, and poor don't vote (from direct not allowing them to all kinds of schemes like voting taxes, roundabout laws, etc, which kept until the late 19th century and more), and so on.
The French revolution was a popular revolt and far more reaching in its egalitarian and progressive aspirations...
>You have offered no evidence for this claim, which is extraordinary considering that there never was an aristocracy in the US. Unless by "aristocracy" you simply mean that the rich hold power, in which case that has nothing to do with Britan and exists in almost all countries.
Not in the way it does in the US, which is closed to the British system, if it was more covert...
https://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/...
Yes. Really - objectively so. Not only the English elite keep the aristocratic behavior patterns today, but also the Brits were able to gain the vote only at the end of 19th century, almost 50 years later than the prominent countries of Europe. Today it still has a monarchy with actual veto power...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-roy...
...while it has an upper house with hereditary aristocrats, theocratic appointees and other lifetime appointees. It has the power to send back to parliament any bill for whatsoever reason despite 'not having' veto power. So it can send a bill back as much as 60 times until it is changed how it wants. Another case of hypocrisy and elitism inherent in the system: The hereditary aristocrats cant veto, but they can refuse to pass anything they dont like indefinitely.
Even further - this privilege and mentality are things that are kept alive institutionally - the English elite literally raise their children to make them get that kind of mindset:
https://makingsense.quora.com/Why-Does-The-British-Upper-Cla...
> But it did happen in the US. In fact the French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution.
That's not correct. First, both of them were inspired and based on the principles of the Age of Enligthenment. Second, American Revolution was not a revolution per se, but a rebellion that sought either representation for the taxes or overthrow of the English control for the benefit of the local elite. At the start of the event, a republic, or even breaking away from Britain was not even entertained. Not surprisingly, the resulting format of the new society was established based on those lines - a system of 'checks and balances' that actually prevents the democratic majority from democratically deposing the incumbent elite was created to prevent any popular demand - like those pesky land redistribution ideas - from being voted on, passing and taking effect. John Adams, de facto architect of the US constitition openly declared that it was going to protect the opulent from the masses.
Even more importantly, as coldtea also noted in his reply, American rebellion never reached the point of 'Everyone is equal'. It remained as a movement led by mainly the elite that sought to overthrow the English control while also incorporating some Enlightenment ideals. Their republic was based on mostly the Dutch republic, which was largely based on the Venetian Republic. Hence, not only from the angle of aristocracy, but also from the angle of the actual chosen format, the emerging US has born as an oligarchy where the existing elite would retain its power. This still plagues the US today.
Whereas the French Revolution was the one in which the polished, clear principles of modern society were established in the form of the Declaration of Human Rights, and the civil code that followed it. The societies of the entire world bar the US and the UK are based on those principles.
> You have offered no evidence for this claim
The initial post was written for those with a measure of knowledge of history. There is no way to provide easy links to educate a random, uninterested reader on this topic who hasnt got enough knowledge on the subject, like...
> there never was an aristocracy in the US.
...this. A large part of the US was owned by English aristocrats. These were either deposed and exiled and their lands redistributed, or they sided with the rebellion and integrated with the colonial elite. Even before the revolution these two segments were already one elite that had a common culture to start with.
> Unless by "aristocracy" you simply mean that the rich hold power, in which case that has nothing to do with Britan and exists in almost all countries.
The Aristocracy is not 'rich holding power'. Its a specific socioeconomic format. And no, as said above, there was actual aristocracy as such in the colonies.
I wasn't reffering to the UK but that "the US establishment descends from the earlier Angloamerican establishment format"
>First, both of them were inspired and based on the principles of the Age of Enligthenment.
This much at least you admit
>Not surprisingly, the resulting format of the new society was established based on those lines - a system of 'checks and balances' that actually prevents the democratic majority from democratically deposing the incumbent elite was created to prevent any popular demand - like those pesky land redistribution ideas - from being voted on, passing and taking effect. John Adams, de facto architect of the US constitition openly declared that it was going to protect the opulent from the masses.
It isn't so surprising that lasting reforms start slowly. How long did the French vote on anything? The reign of terror begins almost immidiately, then power is transfered to Napoleon. The fact that you see a continued trend towards democracy in the US as proof of aristocracy is puzzling.
>The societies of the entire world bar the US and the UK are based on those principles.
Is this a joke? Or do you only consider western Europe as the rest of the world? (Even then you are wrong.)
>The initial post was written for those with a measure of knowledge of history. There is no way to provide easy links to educate a random, uninterested reader on this topic
Well I'm both educated and interested. Perhaps to you I'm random though, whatever that means.
>large part of the US was owned by English aristocrats.
But there was in the US never a title of aristocracy such as lord, or any additional rights associated with it. Having English aristocrats in the US doesn't make the US an aristocracy. So yes, unless you simply mean the rich have power then your statement is wrong and if you do mean that then your statemenr is misleading since you equate it with English aristocracy
>And no, as said above, there was actual aristocracy as such in the colonies.
How does this refute the fact that "there never was an aristocracy in the US?" The colonies are not the US. Did you know there were aristocrats in France before the revolution?
They are from the same source.
> How long did the French vote on anything? The reign of terror begins almost immidiately, then power is transfered to Napoleon.
The reign of terror is the literal security state that was enacted after entire Europe's monarchies (entire Europe, basically) ganged up on France in order to crush the revolution. The grand-sounding name given to that specific measure as 'reign' of terror by mainly the British propaganda hides the fact that that 'reign' was limited to Paris, it affected the aristocrats, their surrogates and those collaborated with them and was at most 30,000 people. Even today, if your country is in an existential war and you collaborate with external enemies against your own country, you will get the same kind of treatment - every single democratic country has the laws to effect the exact same environment if its needed in what are called 'emergency laws'.
Also the French kept voting during the process.
"Power being transferred to Napoleon" is not the argument you think it is. Napoleon was a republican, he literally dismantled entire aristocracy and replaced the entire system with bureaucrats from among the citizens. The 'empire' facade he mounted was done to make Europe accept the new France and its system, as seen in the memoirs of who helped him mount that facade - by appointing ordinary citizens as nobility and calling himself 'emperor', he sought to remove the main motive of the European aristocracies for destroying France and the new system. But all of those were in vain, of course, for the aristocracy would never accept losing its power through non-violent means.
Despite that, Napoleon and the republicans were able to delegitimize and decapitate aristocracy, create and implement the civil law which is de facto basis of our modern egalitarian law and succeed in bringing about the state that today we know as the modern state.
Not ironically, after the aristocratic world order led by Britain won at Waterloo, they undid everything and brought monarchies, even absolute monarchies back. But the seeds of the revolution were planted during the earlier revolution and Napoleon's term, and there was no turning back - Napoleon succeeded in spreading and solidifying republican philosophy, and it finally came back in another wave of revolutions in 1848.
In contrast, the aristocratic elite in the US were unaffected by any of these. After the early founding fathers who subscribed to the ideas of the Enlightenment passed away, the system that was already built to facilitate the power of the minority was totally taken over by the old school aristocratic elite. Oligarchy with a different wig.
> Is this a joke? Or do you only consider western Europe as the rest of the world? (Even then you are wrong.)
Its not a joke. Despite parts of the ideals of the French Revolution and the modern egalitarian system that we have today were implemented in different parts of the world in different time periods by different civilizations, there has never been any period in history in which any society ever implemented and solidified the idea of equality and democratic governance. The French Revolutionary ideals and the declaration of human rights have been the first time the modern ideas were established.
> Well I'm both educated and interested
When I said that the post was intended for those who were knowledgeable in the topic, I meant what i said:
> But there was in the US never a title of aristocracy such as lord
Leaving aside that you did not know that in the pre-rebellion there was aristocracy with actual dukes and counts and their variety, you believe that being an aristocrat depends on having a title. It does not. The basis of the western aristocracy is property ownership. Without the accompanying ownership of the land, titles were and are meaningless. And not surprisingly:
> unless you simply mean the rich have power then your statement is wrong
Its that your existing perspective is wrong. Believing that just because a rebellion happened and de facto aristocratic titles were abolished does not mean the aristocracy just 'went away'. All the dukes, counts and whatever person who had a title before the rebellion kept their privileges and political power after the rebellion - what difference that the rebellion made was allowing the other equally rich to have the same footing with them.
If you think that 'rich having power' is a different thing than aristocracy - like you seem to do - that's where everything goes wrong. There is no difference in between a feudal lord that owned a dukedom and someone rich who owned a large part of a US state, before or after the rebellion.
And, even today its no different - owning a large part of a sector of the economy literally makes that person or persons de facto feudal lords of that realm in the system of capitalism, with all the feudal privileges included. This is precisely why the aristocracy never objected to the industrial revolution, and it is also precisely why the ultra rich strongly object any attempt to regulate corporate power or the wealth - it takes away their feudal privileges.
The modern Angloamerican system keeps alive the aristocracy. All but the feudal titles are lost, everything else stays the same. Even the 'justice of the peace' concept of English feudalism is kept alive through the common law legal system in which the judge plays the role of the local feudal lord, who can 'interpret' the law as he or she wishes, as opposed to civil law judges just being clerks who enforce the relevant part of civil law. Just the civil law vs common law analysis would easily demonstrate that aristocracy still lives in Angloamerica, but that's another large topic.
> "there never was an aristocracy in the US?" The colonies are not the US.
They are. The changes from the colonial system to the legal entity that you know as the US were not so drastic as you think - the colonies (later states) kept their charters, privileges and all the differences that they had. Their elite remained the same. Even when the weak federal government of the early period in which the federal government acted as a common defense and internal regulation mechanism was made into the predecessor of today's federal government by much more centralized changes did not change the situation - the earlier colonial aristocrats just transitioned into being national aristocrats.
> Did you know there were aristocrats in France before the revolution?
There were aristocrats before the revolution, there were aristocrats after the revolution. The French King's own brother, Prince of Orleans, was among the French parliamentarians who voted to execute the king. The difference is that the French Revolutionary government and the system that it created allowed no mechanism for any minority to be able to dominate the majority like the US system was, or gasp how the British system still is.
Hence the difference in between the Angloamerican world and the entire rest of the world that was expressed in the first post: Whereas the UK directly preserved its aristocratic systems and the power of the aristocrats and the US just dressed it in a different suit, the entire rest of the world follows the French Revolutionary paradigm of equality. And that lack of equality in the Angloamerican countries is the reason why the elite of those countries have the power that they have and think and act like how they do - aristocratic privileges.
I suspect they know exactly what they're rooting for, just disingenuous about it.
As for the anti-Revolutionary English establishment propaganda that you so unwittingly repeated - I have no problem rooting for the French Revolution with all its faceds included - 'the terror' being no exception. See my other reply:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33899841
Even as that 'terror' was happening in France and executing the aristocrats and their surrogates found to have conspired with enemies to repress their own people for their benefit, the 'democratic' Britain was executing ~1000 commoners per year through the local feudal lords acting as 'justice of the peace' and executing people at their whim. Beyond that, here is how 'humane' that establishment itself was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
That's terror. That's repression. Amazingly the 300-year-long propaganda of the aristocrats that were so threatened in England by the revolution turns it around and makes it upside down.
It surely is more hypocritic about its deceit than other governments, being the "leader of the free world", arbiter of democracy, and such...
Absolutely it does. The annual budget for the CIA alone is $100 billion dollars, and we have more than 20 civilian 3-letter agencies including the NSA, DIA, ect, ect before even considering the "intel" branches of the military. The combined annual budget of our intelligence agencies exceeds the entire budget of many countries.
I hear this sentiment in tech cicles and it is a shame how much being a grown up and understanding in this world secrets are required is no longer a thing.
The whole point of electing people is that you trust them to make decisions without you directly having to be involve or know all the information. It's almost like people live in a bubble where organized crime, wars and social collapse don't exist
This kind of internalized paternalistic thinking (that the masses are these brutish savages that must be protected from themselves by some higher authority, who must always be trusted) is exactly what these systems rely on to stay in place. It is simple to go look at what has been declassified already, nothing that was done was for "the good of the people", it was all sketchy military and political actions to further entrench existing power.
You hire someone to do a job and you want to micromanage them basically. Whose declassified work upset you? Did you elect the oversight committee in congress that allowed it to happen or the president that ordered it?
Mk-ultra? Contra? What's the problem? That's exactly the kind of stuff those people would do and they were elected with knowledge of their personality. You, the voter are responsible for voting for experienced people with good character that will govern well instead of the popular TV friendly face random corporates can buy for cheap. It is the voters fault.
conspiracy noun 1 : the act of conspiring together 2 a : an agreement among conspirators b : a group of conspirators
The "HiDdEn FrOm ThE pUbLiC" documents amount to fractions of a percent of the total that have already been released.
There are no bombshells, just (predominately) memos containing names of people who are still alive.
There is no "aha! they are hiding the truth in this small tranche of memoranda". Hell, most of the lawsuits and freedom of information requests are to un-redact names, a small stripe of black ink obscuring two words on an entire otherwise unreacted page: a person's name.
Researchers want to interview the people before they die.
The government's default position is that nobody will be named prior to their death.
The only conspiracy here is that people wanting to market their yet-unpublished books as "containing the unreacted JFK assassination files" are pretending all of this is an exercise in truth-telling and not a cynical attempt at one-upping competing authors.
unless johnsondiditwegottacoveritup is written in REALLY TEENY TINY letters under the redactions, ain't shit there, man.
Has it occurred to you that the small fraction of documents they refuse to release 70 years after the assassination haven't been released because they are the most incriminating?
unless johnsondiditwegottacoveritup is written in REALLY TEENY TINY letters under the redactions, ain't shit there, man.
I distinctly remember him promising to release these before he was elected. I'm shocked to hear that he did exactly the opposite of what he promised.