{"id":351395,"date":"2018-03-09T04:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T03:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/to-stop-war-do-what-katharine-gun-did-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-03-09T04:03:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T03:03:05","slug":"to-stop-war-do-what-katharine-gun-did-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/to-stop-war-do-what-katharine-gun-did-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"To Stop War, Do What Katharine Gun Did \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg\u2019s advice to stop current and future wars is simple: do what Katharine Gun did, writes Norman Solomon.<\/p>\n<p>By Norman Solomon<\/p>\n<p>Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don\u2019t want people to hear.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or an aggressive war,\u201d he said in a statement released last week, \u201cdon\u2019t wait to put that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself\u2026. Do what Katharine Gun did.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_26203\" style=\"max-width: 269px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/observer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/observer.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26203\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"194\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26203\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/observer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"194\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Front page of <em>The Observer<\/em> from March 3, 2003<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you don\u2019t know what Katharine Gun did, chalk that up to the media power of the war system.<\/p>\n<p>Ellsberg\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/therealnews.com\/t2\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=767&amp;Itemid=74&amp;jumival=21266\">video<\/a> statement went public as this month began, just before the 15th anniversary of when a British newspaper, the Observer, revealed a secret NSA memo \u2013 thanks to Katharine Gun. At the UK\u2019s intelligence agency GCHQ, about 100 people received the same email <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2003\/mar\/02\/iraq.unitednations1\">memo<\/a> from the National Security Agency on the last day of January 2003, seven weeks before the invasion of Iraq got underway. Only Katharine Gun, at great personal risk, decided to leak the document.<\/p>\n<p>If more people had taken such risks in early 2003, the Iraq War might have been prevented. If more people were willing to take such risks in 2018, the current military slaughter in several nations, mainly funded by U.S. taxpayers, might be curtailed if not stopped. Blockage of information about past whistleblowing deprives the public of inspiring role models.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the kind of reality George Orwell was referring to when he wrote: \u201cWho controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fifteen years ago, \u201cI find myself reading on my computer from the Observer the most extraordinary leak, or unauthorized disclosure, of classified information that I\u2019d ever seen,\u201d Ellsberg recalled, \u201cand that definitely included and surpassed my own disclosure of top-secret information, a history of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam years earlier.\u201d The Pentagon Papers whistleblower instantly recognized that, in the Observer article, \u201cI was looking at something&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/03\/08\/to-stop-war-do-what-katharine-gun-did\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg\u2019s advice to stop current and future wars is simple: do what Katharine Gun did, writes Norman Solomon. By Norman Solomon Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don\u2019t want people to hear. \u201cIf you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-351395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}