Sep 4
Shocking how the Indian media is not just absolutely silent about
the Blackberry ban issue, but sometimes even citing it as one related to national prestige. None of our media even talks about the revelations some months back about
illegal monitoring of opposition politicians by government agencies. And how little public information has been made available as to what steps were taken to strengthen safeguards
as promised by our home minister.
But then, with half-baked projects like the national UID project, which thankfully has
recently got a more universal opposition, India has rarely been a country which respected individual privacy.
But I am digressing a lot from what I originally wanted to write in this post. It seems that the bogey of nationalism and fear in US, spurred on by 9/11, has tamed the watergate-revealing fourth estate there. So much in fact, that to display their "nationalistic" side to the fearful public, rather than defending wikileaks' larger agenda, they have actually agreed with the government to not consider wikileaks as a journalistic entity. This essentially exposes
Thankfully, quite a few voices are cropping up when one looks beyond the mainstream media. Quoting from
one of those rare non-mainstream US media article which takes a larger look at the ongoing tussle between Wikileaks and American military.
That WikiLeaks and its founder manifest a planetary consciousness rather than a national one, that they put human security above U. S. national security, that they dare to advocate for “justice for the victims of the war in Afghanistan ” seems to make many in America apoplectic.
Yet, considering the profound damage that nationalism has done to the human species as contrasted with the benefit to humanity of a more internationalist, human-centered perspective, WikiLeaks may have the better of the argument.
Still, many Americans seem to be wondering, “How dare these WikiLeaks people not side with us in this war?”
The truth is that WikiLeaks’ philosophy requires that it be committed to the interests of no nation in particular, and to human interests in general.
