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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."
World Press Freedom Day "moved" (deleted and reposted) the original posting on Facebook and with it deleted all of the comments on it claiming: "We have temporarily stopped wall posts simply because the traffic we've received far exceeded what are able to see and respond to right now! We simply had the structure wrong and weren't ready for a wall with that much traffic, and once we have the logistics worked out, we look forward to continuing a robust discussion around press freedom ahead of World Press Freedom Day 2011!"
The logistics being a situation where they moderate (read: delete) posts,
regulating speech != free speech, disappointing behavior for an organization who celebrates (and very existence relies on) free speech
Let them have it here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/WPFD2011?v=app_2373072738
or join "World Press Freedom Day, what a joke" here: http://www.connect.connect.facebook.com/WPFD2011#!/pages/World-Press-Freedom-Day-2011-What-a-Joke/164635873577540?v=wall
or "Protest World Press Freedom Day-3 May" here: http://www.connect.connect.facebook.com/WPFD2011#!/pages/Protest-World-Press-Freedom-Day-3-May/128796330513944?v=wall
Exactly when did Julian Assange or anyone from WikiLeaks "... tak[e] classified documents from your government offices and reproduc[e] them online"?
They published documents they were given by someone else (the actual leaker, who is suspected to be Manning) - much like every news organisation has done with the cables as they've been released. Except the news organisations have been picking and choosing for greatest dramatic effect/"reader interest" i.e. publishing the cables that are most likely to have a destablising effect on world politics.
One factual correction:
The Canadian who called for the execution of Assange is named Tom Flanagan. He was a top aide to Canada's prime minister Steven Harper many years ago, long before Harper became the prime minister. Currently he works as a political science professor at the University of Calgary. He often gives interviews to news agencies about his opinion, because he usually speaks his mind very freely without needing to think about who he upsets, because he hasn't had any political masters for quite some time. It's like calling a retired former aide to Obama while he was governor a "high ranking USA bureaucrat". No sane politician or bureaucrat in Canada would ever make such statements and still keep their job.
As a side note, the police now investigating Tom Flanagan for uttering death threats.
Needs to be revealed? Totally, where it exists. Deterrent? Hardly.
You seem to forget the invisible line of power and privilege that protects the elite from being sent to prison. GWB committed known felonies during his presidency. The CEO of Massey Energy negligently murdered a number of his employees. Madoff might have gotten caught, but neither his wife nor sons were convicted, and meanwhile Goldman Sachs is doing some incredibly unethical stuff that may or may not have helped to wreck our economy, and that whole institution gets off scott free for the price of some kabuki theatre in DC. Oh, but hey censure Charlie Rangel if it makes you feel better.
We have a good deal of press freedom here in the States, but unfortunately the mainstream media reports on the wrong news, everything now has to be yellow journalism (the wars of left vs. right, Fox vs. MSNBC, etc.) and people in our society are way too uneducated to be mad at the real injustices in the world, like the power our plutocratic overlords now wield. I doubt 10% of our nation knows what the Citizens United verdict was, but you know they're damn mad at the world about the fact that they have to pay taxes for art, because let's rag on a few billion and completely sidestep the trillions that is going to pay for blowing up brown people in the middle east.
Besides, IANAL, but some Internet-distributed leaked classified document probably doesn't hold up in any legal courtroom, so how is anyone going to be punished, exactly? No.
Deterrents don't exist in this country, because in order to deter someone from doing something illegal, you have to actually convict them. And you can't do that in our society anymore.
Worse still - back when the IRA were active, a lot of their funding and support came from within the US, and the US government didn't really clamp down on it for political reasons. Even now, the US has refused to ratify their latest extradition treaty with the UK for fear it'll allow terrorists to be extradited.
For those of you in the US who got the expurgated version, the IRA were and are a thoroughly nasty bunch. Truck bombs in shopping malls and hotels, murdering civilians for being the wrong kind of Christian, demanding protection money from businesses "to fund Northern Irish independence" and kneecapping anyone who didn't pay up, that kind of thing. We're only just starting to find the corpses of people kidnapped from their homes on suspicion of snitching or other offences and never heard from again - and these were people who were on the same side as the IRA!
You may have heard that they gave warnings in advance of their bombs, but that wasn't from the kindness of their hearts. They actually did it to claim credit - if they didn't call in before the bomb detonated with enough information to identify it, some other group could claim responsibility.
(They also taught al-Qaeda and similar groups a lot of their skills. Apparently, many of the roadside IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan are based on IRA designs that they used against British troops during the Troubles.)