just cleared from e-mail tray
From: H
Sent: Sat, December 4, 2010 12:41:48 PM
Subject: Re: Observations - Week of November 22
As Assange said wisely in an interview today:
The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.
While he has a sort of flowery, roundabout way of putting it, this is so true.
And i like this metaphor - our free speech is free like birds or badgers are free - the moment it actually threatens those in power, it is no longer as free as we thought.
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 9:57 PM, B wrote:
Make it go away... (please):
Library of Congress Is Latest Government Institution to Block Wikileaks
gawker.com
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 1:11 PM, I wrote:
The Ambassador asked if the corruption and infighting are worse now than before in Kazakhstan. Idenov paused, thought, and then replied, “No, not really. It’s business as usual.
They’re confused by the corrupt excesses of capitalism. “If Goldman Sachs executives can make $50 million a year and then run America’s economy in Washington, what’s so different about what we do?’ they ask.”
ritholtz.com |
