Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Wikileaks: freedom of the press and the internet
How many in the conventional news media would have failed to publish the information given to WikiLeaks? My guess is that most of the established media would have jumped at the opportunity to embarrass the Obama government.
Surely this is what freedom of the press is all about.
The WikiLeaks disclosure, on a scale that, to my knowledge, is historically unprecedented, is totally different — more like the work of irresponsible amateurs using dynamite to expand a tunnel that also contains, say, a city’s electrical lines. The leaks will probably not cause war or even a serious crisis, but they will badly damage America’s diplomatic machinery, processes and reputation.
None of this means that diplomatic correspondence and negotiations should remain secret forever. But except in special instances, confidential communications ought to be released only after passions have settled and scholars can examine the records in fuller context.
To blame Wikileaks for the problems that may or not be caused by the leaking of such information is to shoot the messenger. The information is out there any intelligence agency worth its salt has probably had access to it long before Wikileaks.
That the information is available to unauthorised people is a catastrophic failure of US security. Wikileaks has done the world a favour, by showing how easy it is to move intelligence data in digital form.
Since when has the Press had an obligation not to embarrass the ruling regime?
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US embassy cables
The entire world knows and understands that the documents are from 270 US embassies in every corner of the world, US embassies are US territory.
"wherever an American is, that's America"
Trouble is, they never seem to be able to distinguish between what's their "territory" and what belongs to other people.
American Express here we come
While the powers that be have formed a lynch mob, there is a huge groundswell of ordinary people backing him. If you read the posts by ordinary people (such as under various stories in the Australian), I count over 90% supporting him. Several call for him to be named Australian of the Year.
We complain about there being insufficient competition in the banking sector. Have we considered that there are only two major credit card companies - Visa and Mastercard, and their charges are virtually identical? They both cancelled services to Assange. They are now the target of hackers, making them unreliable and unsafe. Furthermore, all major credit card companies are US owned - now that is a major strategic resource threat!
International lynch mob!
The same political leaders that tell the world that they are the great defenders of democracy have been shown for what the really are.
Fascists ready to bend the law and use their power to crush anyone that gets in their way.
Rudd got it right
The leaks came from the US, why blame Assange. Dillard is a moron and always has been.
Leaks
Marilyn , The leaks came from the US, I suppose you can back that statement up?
Now today Bob Brown has stated that it is more than likely his name is in a cable somewhere, just delusions of grandeur. Everybody already know about his sexual preferences and his push for same sex marriage. Nothing more to go on a file really, that just about covers Browns expertise.
Can't control that pesky internet!
Both China and the US dislike the fact that they cannot control the pesky Internet.
Powerful political leaders like to believe that they can control the media.
We should be grateful that all voices cannot be silenced.
Hillary's response to China
The documents reveal a close relationship between Google and the US authorities in China. In January, a few days after Google made the hacking public – without specifying who it believed was responsible – Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, made a speech in Washington entitled "remarks on internet freedom".
Clinton weighed in heavily on the side of Google, warning that "countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century".
She called on the Chinese government to "conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions" without revealing that it was her own officials who believed the attack was co-ordinated from inside the Chinese politburo.
Have to love Dillard and co.
Our high court recently found that they had been locking up innocent human beings in breach of natural justice and the law so they could pander to rednecks and fools.
Now they claim Assange has broken some law.
What pathetic losers, anything to suck up to the US.
Death of Memory
A concise summary that echoes my views almost entirely.
And why the ruling (global, not just the USA) elites so upset?
Because their incessant arrogance, greed and cynicism; their barbaric contempt for broad humanity and sense of their empoweredness at the expense of their fellow humans.
Quoting from the quote,
"...confidential communications should only be released only after passions have settled...".
No.
It's a perverse blanket nostrum that denies mass access to material before decisons are made, in secret, the detailsof which would demonstrate the poor nature of the given deal done.
Easily understood, when you return to our own system, where public inputs are increasingly thwarted on infrastructure/ real estate etc deals thru increasingly deliberate regimes of secrecy; until whatever deal involved has become irreversible thru process and acquiescence of politicians and bureaucrats freed of the norms of accountability and transperancy.
But worse in third world countries, whose elites, ofen insatlled by outside forces, happily sell an down trodden, illiterate population for a few crumbs off the table of the TNC's and trade officials hammering thru commodies/ordinance deals that can only damage further people living in virtual economic monocultures.
The"catastrophic failure" has been in avoiding the rollback of commercial in confidence, secret processes and suffocating of dissent thru the shunning of accountability that is required for democracy to function and use value to operate effectively in the lives of millions of desperately poor people.
As John asks, why should people have to put up with this sleight of hand and indeed,
"Since when has the press had an obligation not to embarrass the ruling regime?"
I could mention here the nasty current stoush between "Australian" editor Mitchell and one his better journalists, Asa Wahlquist.
Most people who would frequent a site like this would already know what the Wahlquist matter concerns- the deliberate suppression of relevant, often scientific information on enviro, by an editor intent on reducing his public to Stepford supineness; of conditioning his public to acceptanceof its own isolation and dumbing down and acquiesence to the poor nature of "development" currently occurring if not totally ignorant already of what will be imposed.
So as to avoid creating"embarrassment" for a motley collection of crooks who are more interested in polite looting than reasoned development to a purpose or point that benefits most rather than the few, as occurred with Tasmania and Gunns.