Becuase Everything Else Sucks

Wikileaks is free to leak again

By J. Milton
Published Saturday, March 1st, 2008, 3:01 pm
Filed under: US Politics

Someone recently asked me why I was so passionate about the Wikileaks case. The case began with internal leaks from a Swiss Bank with allegations of money laundering and tax evasion. But such is Swiss corporate banking, right? Well, yes. Except that at some point a US Judge (in San Francisco of all places) stepped in and granted an injunction for the bank in question to wipe the leakers (Wikileaks) from the face of the web. In doing so, he abridged a little piece of the Constitution called the 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. Only today has that judge reversed himself, citing first amendment “concerns”.

Decisions like this strike fear, outrage, and an immediate call to action within me because I firmly believe freedom of speech is one of the only weapons left to balance a neocon government run amok. The internet age has broadened the scope of that weapon, even as old media has become more narrow. To me, an assault upon internet freedom of expression represents the death knell of the first, best, last, and only vehicle of true democracy. People *must* be able to freely tell their story in a public forum. Otherwise, all we as Americans get to hear are the commercials and reality TV pumped into our brains 24 hours a day. Not to be overly dramatic. :-)

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One Response to “Wikileaks is free to leak again”

  1. I am amazed that anyone would take umbrage with your passionate and 100% correct defense of our First Amendment freedoms. I can only surmise that all too many Americans have sat transfixed in front of their ridiculously expensive latest generation TV screens watching the WWF, UFC, American Idol, The Biggest Loser and of course the Fox Noise Network to get their daily serving of propaganda and so on and so on. They’ve been doing so for so long that what is left of their minds has been rendered useful only to respond with Pavlovian predictability to the basest and most useless TV offerings in history by rushing out to buy the goods and services hawked on the endless commercials between which the corporations squeeze in a few moments of actual programming.

    The internet is so essential to the preservation of our freedoms that I am amazed that the Congress and the FCC are not under actual siege by Americans demanding that the undiluted freedom of exchange of public discourse over the internet be preserved or else. The “or else” part includes some pretty ugly and extreme actions should these government SERVANTS fail to protect the internet against any and all assaults on it by the fascists in corporate America and our national government. Yes, I said fascists because that’s precisely what they are.

    Keep on keeping on in your efforts to prevent attempts to muzzle or otherwise silence net sites like Wikileaks among many others. This is one of the fights that we cannot afford to lose.

    Michael Robbins
    03/3/08 at 1:59 am

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