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US To Host World Press Freedom Day
rekrowyalp writes "From the press release: 'The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day event in 2011. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals' right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.' Oh the irony."
"Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them" - 1984
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If you use some starch, the ironing will be crisp!
but I don't think they're aware of that.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Sure, this is hilarious. But somehow I doubt they meant it to be so funny.
Concern over some governments' determination to restrict the free flow of information. That's rich.
To be fair, governments need secrets. Not everything should be public. Now I know that you may say that if a government doesn't want an action to be made public then they shouldn't do it. But sometimes, there is a legitimate need for secrecy. For example, when a diplomat sends a wire back to Washington saying that he does not believe the diplomat from N. Korea is being entirely truthful concerning the welfare of the N. Korean citizens, that information should not be made public. It could irreparably harm negotiations that could prove beneficial to the peoples of both countries. The path that a convoy full of medical supplies and food for refuges against a warlords wishes would be another example. This is a bit different than a diplomat calling the leader of Esbonia a stinky-fart fat-head.
Some things are legitimately kept secret for a reason. Others, not so much. Wikileaks doesn't concern itself with the difference.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
He's already in custody; he turned himself in in the UK.
I guess that's what happens when you get INTERPOL set upon you for the crime of having consensual sex with groupies without a condom. Groupies who remained supportive after their sexual trysts until they found out that he was sleeping around. Because that's the sort of stuff INTERPOL is there for, right? Certainly politics didn't play a role in THAT warrant...
You don't exist. Go away.
I'd be happy if the local media here in California would ask a follow up question once in a while.
All I want is this:
STATE POLITICIAN: This bill will fix global warming, solve hunger and make tasty donuts fall from the skies like kisses from kittens!
REPORTER: How, exactly?
STATE POLITICIAN: Thanks and good nigh- eh, what?
REPORTER: How does the bill do that? What sequence of events did you and the other legislators envision after the bill is enacted?
STATE POLITICIAN: (deer in headlights gaze) Uh, well, blah blah blah bullcrap blah symbolism blah feelgood blah TheChildren blah, er, 9/11.
REPORTER: Isn't that a pile of bullshit?
STATE POLITICIAN: Hey, what happened to impartiality?
REPORTER: It wasn't working out very well.
What I want is Spider Jerusalem going after some of these scumbags. Wikileaks is all well and good, but I want these people confronted in their speeches by someone other than media insiders who just sit their dumbly nodding their heads at any crap a politician says. Fuck, every reporter is just a softball Larry King type these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Jerusalem
And compared to stoning beheading is pretty painless. Your point being?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Will Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland do? Just for starters?
Revealing the corruption in publicly owned businesses and in the government and seeing which politicians are bought and paid for by whom is responsible journalism. Want to keep people out of danger? Stop using war as a means to line your own pockets. It pleases me to no end that Wikileaks is delivering on the government transparency campaign promise Obama made and failed to keep.
Maybe future leaders will re-think their actions when they not only realize that future generations will consider them to be scumbags and tyrants, but there can be a very real and immediate danger to their own lives in the here and now.
Corruption is widespread and it needs to be revealed - names and all. It will serve as excellent deterrent in the future.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
There are times a government needs to keep secrets, however the US government has gone way overboard. Obama has done nothing to change that despite promises of a more open government, so I for one welcome the new openness that has come from wikileaks and will support efforts for it to continue. It has been a welcome breath of fresh air to see how OUR (the people's) government operates and to see the lies it has been shoveling back in the homeland.
I think it's much better to be too open than too secretive.... but then again, I believe it's better to keep our freedoms and be attacked by terrorists than become a police state and be "safe". I must be the crazy one.
Long live wikileaks.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Your mistaking being for transparency when it comes to alliances pact and treaties, with transparency when it comes to everything a diplomat says to his boss. I don't think the US has ever been in favor of having diplomats and their diplomatic cases being searched and read by anyone and everyone so that everything they write has to be made for public consumption so as to not damage foreign relationships instead of quick and honest truth.
If the US oligarchy were really interested in democracy, US news companies wouldn't have betrayed US citizens during GW Bush's presidency and would have instead shown the courage of Wikileaks.
Another generation of US journalists had more courage:
http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/public-accuracy-press-release
In any case, the US's covert war against Wikileaks is its only alternative:
http://www.rferl.org/content/wikileaks_assange_secrecy_access_laws/2242761.html
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Sad to disappoint you, but DailyShow epically FAILED (as in shown ugly "patriot" face) when it comes to WikiLeaks.
839*929
Someone should nominate Assange to UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2011
Imagine if he would have to get parol from a US prison to attend?
I don't have one
Compare and contrast:
Obama does nothing and gets a Nobel Peace Prize
Assange champions truth and gets an arrest warrant.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but WikiLeaks isn't "the press" is it?
It qualifies by any reasonable definition of press I've ever heard.
I don't know any government that has told the media that they can publish whatever government secrets they want.
If Fox News or CNN or the New York Times got a hold of a bunch of newsworthy diplomatic cables between Pakistan and Iran do you really think they'd keep them under wraps because the Pakistan and/or Iran government consider them secret? Of course not.
How is wikileaks any different, being a foreign organization releasing information about the states?
And at the end of the day, even Fox/CNN/NYT are reporting on the wikileaks leaks. How do you feel about that?
I'm attempting to say it's not fair to pretend that WikiLeaks does the same thing a given journalist does. Maybe they overlap at times, sure.
Please expand on this.
So arrest the people who took the documents. We have a law in this country specifically protecting the right to publish documents even if they were obtained illegally. Remember the Pentagon Papers? If it was legal to publish those, it is legal for Assange to publish the documents he received.
Uh, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here. You do realize that Assange did not take any documents from government offices, right?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Easy. You don't. What part of "Congress shall pass no law... abridging... freedom of the press" is unclear? Besides, professional, responsible journalists went through this material and redacted anything they thought would put people at risk. This isn't about putting people at risk. It's about politicians and corporations getting embarrassed by having their dirty laundry aired for all to see. It falls very squarely on the legally acceptable side of the line. If you think you can show some piece of information that puts people at risk after dozens of journalists said that it doesn't, go for it. Otherwise, please stop believing everything that government mouthpieces tell you. They were lying before when they covered this stuff up. Why should we expect anything different from them now?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No, it's not silly at all. The natural endgame of any system of government is absolute tyranny. The only things standing between this country and tyranny are the constitution and the citizens' willingness to rebel. If the government had its way, it would keep everything it does secret. That's why freedom-loving members of government had to force through sunshine laws, FOIA, E-FOIA, and so on. Without such laws, the public would be kept in the dark on nearly everything. That's just the way government works. In particular, the military, were it possible to do so, would allow no information disclosure whatsoever. The same goes for law enforcement, which is why we have public records laws that mandate journalist access to police blotters. Indeed, it is the very nature of any group in a position of power to conceal information to the maximum degree possible. Some might even call it basic human nature.
Such total secrecy, however, is contrary to the proper functioning of a free society, and as such, a government mandate to keep everything secret must be looked upon with suspicion and disdain. Anything less is a complete abrogation of the public's right to know what the government is doing, a complete abrogation of the right to a free press, and thus a complete abrogation of basic democratic principles. Such obscenity has no place in a free society.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Blah blah blah. Yeah, you have an "inalienable" right to free speech, as long as you perform it in a designated "free speech zone", an atrocity no other western democracy have stomached so far. I guess the rest of us should take note.
There is simply no way we can legally arrest him.
FTFY. Unfortunately the US has a bit of a slapdash reputation when it comes to interpreting international laws. Or their own Constitution, for that matter.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Completely agreed.
See, this is where I and probably others, have some issues with what Wikileaks is doing. Unlike many in the anti-US crowd, I've seen what a totalitarian government can do. A REAL totalitarian government, not the mostly-democratic but just-corrupt-enough-to-upset-the-idealists government the US has. Are you upset someone who publicly humiliated the U.S. government to the entire world is being jailed on trumped-up charges? How about being executed and your entire family sent to a labor camp because you talked to a neighbor wondering if your country's style of government could be improved.
Unfortunately, a good portion of the world still lives under such such governments. When you do something whose main purpose seems to be to embarrass the U.S. rather than actually expose corruption, what happens? The U.S. loses influence in the world. But who do you think gains influence? Sure some of the less-corrupt democracies do, except their openness means they're vulnerable to the same blind-eye type releases of secrets Wikileaks is conducting. No, the real winners here are totalitarian states which keep a tight lid on their secrets. They gain the most from a system which predominantly exposes the secrets of open societies. You seem to think exposing slight-to-moderate levels of corruption means it'll automatically be replaced by less corruption. It doesn't - it can be replaced by even worse corruption.
We're still fighting a war here. Not the war on terrorism, not a war against corruption. A war to free the remaining peoples of the world who live under totalitarianism (real totalitarianism). On that front, the U.S., the EU, Wikileaks, and people like you and me are on the same side. Yes rooting out corruption is good. And as your opening sentence says, journalism revealing such corruption is necessary. It allows the open society to excise the corruption, resulting in a stronger society. That's what makes an open society work better than a closed (totalitarian) society.
But to accomplish that requires a proper and controlled release of information pertaining to true corruption. The Wikileaks-style widescale release of everything an open government is keeping secret doesn't do that. In fact it does the opposite, by diminishing US influence and allowing the influence of totalitarian states to fill the void created. Yes a lot of things the US does is bad. But try to keep some perspective. Sometimes you have to make deals with a party you don't entirely agree with in order to combat a greater evil. Roosevelt and Churchill did that during WWII, allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Did that mean they supported Stalin and his system of government? No. But they kept things in perspective and did what needed to be done to insure the greater threat was wiped out first. Then they set about opposing Stalin.
Going through the leaked documents, finding instances of corruption or wrong-doing, and releasing them would be responsible journalism. Making a cursory review to filter out ones which might put lives at risk, then saying you don't have the resources to deal with the rest in more detail and releasing them en masse to the world is irresponsible journalism. If you don't have the resources to conduct such a review, give the docs to a news organization which does.