I received a comment from Lloyd who said (para-phrasing) he would like to hear my comments about an article I had read. Great minds think alike Lloyd, because I was thinking along the same lines of plucking a topic out of the headlines and putting my unique take on it. 🙂
Having said that, my two choices today were that WikiLeaks has been cut off from their paypal account or Sarah Palin has a show about going camping with Kate Gosselin. Granted, I really do want to speak my mind about these two women, but tonight I am focusing on the WikiLeaks topic (the article can be found here Personally I think Amazon.com and Paypal are right in their decision to sever ties with the WikiLeaks organization. (For some reason the links button is not working, so the article can be found here http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/04/wikileaks.pay.pal/index.html?hpt=T2)
When I was in college I took a journalism class taught by a very bright woman, Susan Plese. Now Mrs. Plese wrote a column for the local paper and was a steadfast journalist who truly believed in Freedom of the Press; the public has a right to know; yada, yada, yada. I disagree with her.
There are some things the public should not know, let’s face it in today’s global world, when one person “knows” something, everybody knows it. I think the Government has the right to keep certain information close to the vest and while I think there may be a need for a website like WikiLeaks to exist, I don’t believe they should necessarily be releasing that information to the general public. One could argue that if the information they recieved were of vital importance or could bring justice to someone who was perpetuating a crime; then certainly that would be different than simply divulging all kinds of information about diplomatic ties and policies that could certainly do more harm than good.
So I applaud Amazon.com and Paypal for severing their ties with WikiLeaks. The article insinuates that these two organizations were encouraged or pressured to severe their ties with WikiLeaks and perhaps that is true, but maybe just maybe Amazon and Paypal feel that WikiLeaks is in the wrong and they are taking a stand and saying, what you are doing is wrong and we will not help you do it!
Interesting…I think I would have to agree. If wiki leaks would have done it due to some extreme measure to “save the nation” or something along those lines then I may feel different but in this case the things they leaked are just further damaging our reputation and we don’t need that right now.
Exactly! If they were exposing some huge corruption or plot that was detrimental to us, then hell ya. Otherwise, zip it.