-
It’s easy being pro-life…
-
“In Iran, they used this picture to protest, against the government…”
-
~ WikiLeaks response exposes U.S. hypocrisy | OregonLive.comThis past Jan. 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. She said then:
“In many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.
“During his visit to China, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the Internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the Internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, to generate new ideas, and to encourage creativity. The United States’ belief in that truth is what brings me here today.”
-
~ BBC News - A world after WikileaksBady uses a close reading of an essay by Assange on State and Terrorist Conspiracies to argue that Assange sees modern governance as a conspiracy by those with power that goes against the interests and desires of the governed, and that Wikileaks exists in order to undermine the ability of governments to communicate secretly and diminish the power of authoritarian states.
In a statement dictated to his mother from his jail cell Assange said “we now know that Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others are instruments of US foreign policy”, referring to the way in which these large companies had decided not to provide service to Wikileaks.
-
WikiLeaks certainly isn’t being afforded the same protections we give other media outlets in free countries. It has come under significant attack as PayPal, Amazon and Visa have all tried to bar WikiLeaks from their services, a move that would seem unthinkable had it been made against mainstream newspapers. (Can you imagine the outcry if a credit card company decided to cut off The Washington Post because it didn’t like what was on the front page?)
~ WikiLeaks Taps Power Of the Press — The Media Equation - NYTimes.com -
En ce qui concerne les développements à long terme de cette affaire, je pense que beaucoup dépend de si oui ou non la saga WikiLeaks continuera à être un débat sur la liberté d’expression, la transparence gouvernementale ou encore les dénonciateurs, ou bien si cela se transformera en dialogue quasi-paranoïaque sur les atteintes à la sécurité nationale. Les Anonymous jouent avec le feu car ils risquent de faire pencher la balance vers la seconde interprétation –et tous les leviers politiques qui vont avec.
~ Anonymous, quel impact pour Wikileaks? | Slate -
In the period from January 2010 to June 2010, the United States government asked Google about user info on 4287 occasions, and asked it to remove content on 128 occasions. Other countries that have put in a lot of such requests (over 1000) during this time frame are Brazil, France, India and the United Kingdom. (via Google Fights Censorship with Transparency Report)
