If someone could take the time to explain why Wikileaks is an important focus for activism, I would be appreciative. I know the tagline is 'freedom of information!' but I will be honest: the only things I've heard about the whole fiasco make it seem like the world (namely the US) is basically bawwwing over being embarassed and wanting to punish a figurehead for their shame. The only thing even remotely resembling censorship that I've heard about is where government and military employees aren't able to access it -- thing is, that makes sense to me, because if you sign on to work for the government and you have any kind of security clearance, you have to be trusted to handle sensitive information appropriately. The invasion of privacy (like on Twitter) registers slightly higher on my 'wtf?' scale, but it still doesn't seem to be the Orwellian thing that is being portrayed. WITH ALL OF THAT SAID, I freely admit that I have not been following the stories and happenings with it as closely as I should have been. I know there are a lot of people here who obviously feel strongly about it, so if someone could explain why it's more important than the impression I've gotten of it, I would be grateful.
Holy crap. That is the most thoroughly plucked parrot I have ever seen. Looks ready for the pot, doesn't it!
There are governments blocking WikiLeaks, just not the US Government... yet. Alot of people are concerned about the degree of kneejerk reaction to wikileaks by the government, and left wondering what the government is really hiding. If the government is really trying to hide their actions from the people, which it's slowly becoming obvious they are, then we have a right to know what our government is doing in our name. We have a right to hold the government accountable when it tries to act in an unethical manor in our name on the world stage. With the major news sources choosing to entertain instead of report news, we weren't getting that opertunity, which if you've read the opening to this site you'd have an idea. The reason people are using the buzzwords like cencorship because of the fears over what the government is going to do in reaction to wikileaks. The government is at a crossroads right now, and it can choose to take steps towards transparency or towards the orwellian society everyone's afraid of.
Thanks, spider, that was helpful. Explains a bit. I have read the opening to the site, I do agree about the usual media not doing their jobs, but it still wasn't clear as to why everyone was flipping out over Wikileaks.
At least Israel, China, Tunisia, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam and Zimbabwe have all censored wikileaks. Australia had wikileaks listed on a blacklist of websites that they wanted to censor under the pretense of filtering child pornography. The blacklist had been published on wikileaks:in 2009: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/19/1237054961100.html Germany had temporarily shut down the wikileaks.de domain and raided the home of the wikileaks.de domain owner. https://webcache.googleusercontent....p_lists/ &cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a There has also been harassment of wikileaks staff other than Julian Assange. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/02/jacob-appelbaum-wikileaks_n_667665.html
It's more that people are trying to get out ahead of possible censorship and punitive crackdowns. Sort of taking to the streets ahead of time to tell the State that "the People" are watching this and see it as an important issue. Sort of a "don't do it mang" statement.
I think wikileaks is important for multiple reasons, there have been several hands tipped simply by watching how people are reacting to it. Lately though it seems the political strategy has been to whip the masses up into a frenzy and then direct that stampeed towards what ever goal they have set. I think that's why we're seeing the political language get more and more extreme over time. I think that's partly why we're seeing the kind of language we're seeing from politicians because if they can get the us population to agree that action is required to resolve the "wikileaks problem" then they will have less trouble taking action.
