... courtesy Lee Lowe:
... The Conservative Case for WikiLeaks.
... How to Think About WikiLeaks.
... WikiFamous: Ten world figures who are getting their 15 minutes in the limelight.
... Parsing the impact of Anonymous.
... Amazon Explains Why It’s Okay to Sell Books About the WikiLeaks Stuff It Won’t Host.
jack Hunter makes some excellent points, most of which I agree with.
ReplyDeleteIn the flack over this, the points I've been trying to make over and over again, is that government tries to keep some things secret that shouldn't be secret. It leads to abuse of power.
In all this, I see many, many parallels to Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers. I was listening to news reports today in which government spokesmen were trying to paint WikiLeaks as traitorous, wherein the rhetoric was almost identical to that which the Nixon administration used to negatively portray their enemies, such as Ellsberg. The rhetoric was almost identical.
And that's the point: Abuse of power comes as no surprise.
I think we all agree that government tries to keep secret more than needs to be kept secret. I think we can also agree that there are things that do need to be kept secret. I don't think the government considers Assange traitorous. How could they. He is not a US citizen. But I think there trying argue that he has committed espionage. PFC Manning, I suppose, could be tried for treason.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how we define it, or what label we use, they're running a smear campaign. That at least seems obvious. At some point I expect them to try to pin terrorism on him. Sp far they've avoided the word; but let's wait and see.
ReplyDeleteAgain, my concern here is the climate of authoritarian fearmongering created by the government's rhetoric. It ends up being the same argument nixon used, and that Bush used, to defend other secrets that should not have been secret. I myself don't know where to draw the line, but I do prefer to live in a culture of open inquiry rather than a secretive one. When is it paranoia, and when is it genuine concern?