Geo(science)politics

thebulletin.org: "In the May 2003 issue of the AAG journal Professional Geographer, he detailed his successes and frustrations in the bin Laden search--with one caveat: 'Some information sources used in this study, some details of the method, and some conclusions have been omitted' for the safety of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.

This proviso raised some hackles. 'We're in the business of fairness, openness, and transparency,' says John O'Loughlin, a geography professor at the University of Colorado and editor of the non-AAG affiliated journal Political Geography. 'Anything that violates that doesn't belong in an academic journal.'"
This debate is interesting, until you realize that every single branch of science has something that isn't being disclosed for national security reasons. I've thought of some examples below:

• Anything in nuclear physics.
  
• Anything in Aerospace stuff.
  
• A lot of math stuff having to do with Cryptography. There are problems keeping this info under wraps because of its easily distributable nature.
  
• Medical information about nukes, biowarfare stuff.
  
• Space shit.
  
• Cutting edge computer stuff: algorithms for missile guidance, supercomputer design, whatever they use to simulate nuclear explosions, etc.
  

Point being that there is a vast amount of information out there that we don't want our enemies(yes, Osama even wants to kill professors) to have. We do, however, want to move up as far as we can to the boundaries between that information and public information. Thus you should publish the stuff that is close, but not over the boundaries because it can be cutting edge. I realize this might not set in well with the David Harvey crowd, but reaquainting geographers with the importance of national boundaries should not be necessary. Quit crying.