![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I will allow the possibility that corporations might be considered people as soon as I see one marched to the guillotine.
Parading its head on a pike is optional.
Parading its head on a pike is optional.
Writer's Block: The more you know
Feb. 20th, 2011 08:28 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Should websites like Wikileaks be defended for sharing confidential corporate and government information with the public, and why?
Since the Internet first became available to the general public, I've heard people who defend the government prying into one's online activities on the basis that "if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide."
These same people are the ones who argue, in turn, that Wikileaks is revealing things that should best be kept secret, that the internal workings of business and government are best left under lock and key "for our own good".
This is exactly backwards.
Yes, we should know these things. We must know these things. We are not disinterested parties. What the banks and megacorps do, they do to us, their customers, their employees. What the government does, it does in our name.
There are things that I would not have done in my name.
If those I have elected to serve the machinery of government seek to tell me that I am forbidden to know of them, I would name them tyrant, and would remind them with whose consent they govern.
Wikileaks is performing a function vital and necessary to democracy and to the governance of free human beings. The wealthy and powerful must be called to account, they must know that their actions run the risk of being brought to light.
Once upon a time, this function was called journalism, and it was practiced by such diverse outlets as the Washington Post that backed Woodward and Bernstein, and CBS News under the auspices of Walter Cronkite, who earned and deserved the title of "The Most Trusted Man in America". Investigative journalism is a thing of the past, though, smothered in favor of gossip and Official Press Releases by budget-slashing corporate masters who see no profit in baring secrets to the rank and file.
Wikileaks has picked up the fallen torch of the Fourth Estate, and shoved it square in the face of the banksters and the Shadow Cabinet. Do they "deserve" protection? By the laws of the United States of America, they have it. They are entitled to the same legal precedents that have protected journalists and their sources for most of the 20th century ... and if those protections do not extend into the One-and-Twenty, then we have abdicated any claims we might have had to freedom.
Should websites like Wikileaks be defended for sharing confidential corporate and government information with the public, and why?
Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
—Robert A. Heinlein,If This Goes On—(Emphasis mine.)
Since the Internet first became available to the general public, I've heard people who defend the government prying into one's online activities on the basis that "if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide."
These same people are the ones who argue, in turn, that Wikileaks is revealing things that should best be kept secret, that the internal workings of business and government are best left under lock and key "for our own good".
This is exactly backwards.
Yes, we should know these things. We must know these things. We are not disinterested parties. What the banks and megacorps do, they do to us, their customers, their employees. What the government does, it does in our name.
There are things that I would not have done in my name.
If those I have elected to serve the machinery of government seek to tell me that I am forbidden to know of them, I would name them tyrant, and would remind them with whose consent they govern.
Wikileaks is performing a function vital and necessary to democracy and to the governance of free human beings. The wealthy and powerful must be called to account, they must know that their actions run the risk of being brought to light.
Once upon a time, this function was called journalism, and it was practiced by such diverse outlets as the Washington Post that backed Woodward and Bernstein, and CBS News under the auspices of Walter Cronkite, who earned and deserved the title of "The Most Trusted Man in America". Investigative journalism is a thing of the past, though, smothered in favor of gossip and Official Press Releases by budget-slashing corporate masters who see no profit in baring secrets to the rank and file.
Wikileaks has picked up the fallen torch of the Fourth Estate, and shoved it square in the face of the banksters and the Shadow Cabinet. Do they "deserve" protection? By the laws of the United States of America, they have it. They are entitled to the same legal precedents that have protected journalists and their sources for most of the 20th century ... and if those protections do not extend into the One-and-Twenty, then we have abdicated any claims we might have had to freedom.
I've missed too many of these, I fear. For the fortieth anniversary of man's first landing on another celestial body, I started planning more than a week ago. Rather than lean on my usual hymn to the Apollo astronauts, I was going to post footage of Walter Cronkite, and his reaction to the landing. On Thursday, the avuncular delivery of The Most Trusted Man In America was a significant part of my post reflecting back on the launch of Apollo 11. I even uploaded a special icon for the occasion.
And then, on Friday, Mr. Cronkite passed away, making my plans both more appropriate and more poignant.
Back to you, Walter.
And then, on Friday, Mr. Cronkite passed away, making my plans both more appropriate and more poignant.
Back to you, Walter.
I've missed too many of these, I fear. For the fortieth anniversary of man's first landing on another celestial body, I started planning more than a week ago. Rather than lean on my usual hymn to the Apollo astronauts, I was going to post footage of Walter Cronkite, and his reaction to the landing. On Thursday, the avuncular delivery of The Most Trusted Man In America was a significant part of my post reflecting back on the launch of Apollo 11. I even uploaded a special icon for the occasion.
And then, on Friday, Mr. Cronkite passed away, making my plans both more appropriate and more poignant.
Back to you, Walter.
And then, on Friday, Mr. Cronkite passed away, making my plans both more appropriate and more poignant.
Back to you, Walter.
Walter Cronkite, Dead at 92
The man they called The Most Trusted Man in America -- and really, has anyone else come along worthy of the title come along since he retired? -- died today, in the middle of the the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that he covered so memorably.
He was a journalist, by God, and there are damned few of them left today, in the mainstream media or on the net.
The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed. -- Walter Cronkite, 1996
Good night, Uncle Walter.
Walter Cronkite, Dead at 92
The man they called The Most Trusted Man in America -- and really, has anyone else come along worthy of the title come along since he retired? -- died today, in the middle of the the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that he covered so memorably.
He was a journalist, by God, and there are damned few of them left today, in the mainstream media or on the net.
The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed. -- Walter Cronkite, 1996
Good night, Uncle Walter.
