Tuesday, December 7, 2010

WikiLeaks Rips the Blogger-Reporter Ethics Gap Wide Open

WikiLeaks Rips the Blogger-Reporter Ethics Gap Wide Open
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/wikileaks-splits-the-blog_b_791963.html


I would suggest that it's always easy to suggest sacrifices be made by someone else while we sit back in our glass houses, aiding and abetting the gathering storm that we don't even hear rumbling around in the ether.  We are too puffed up with our seeming victory over government and all those who have the terrific task of trying to keep a world going as peacefully as possible with all the troubles going on in it.  Every minute of the day there is someone somewhere who could start a world war (and it is not Iran), or some other catastrophe that would surely touch us no matter where we live. 

It is one thing to look for openness as far as possible from our leaders, and rightly so.  It is another thing to become militants and outlaws about what we deem as our right to know.    We have become so disgruntled with the media (and rightly so) that we have tried to become the media without the blood, sweat and tears involved in the true work of Journalism).  I would ask this of anybody in the world if I were communing with them: 

Who is responsible for the safety of his neighbor as far as possible?  Whose blood will be on the hands of those who carelessly and immaturely set out to endanger a world of people whose names they don't even know; neither do they know their children; people who are already in danger from every side, especially in war-torn countries?  When did we cease to be our brother's keeper?  When did some of us become such authorities in areas for which we have never been trained, that we know the true fogs of war?   But we sit safely in our places of refuge wherever they are.  We're not out there in the filthy trenches where death hounds dog every foot-step of those who protect us.    They are the ones we sacrificed; they are sacrificial lambs twice over now.

When did we become so pompous that we call the pompous ones pompous?  When did we leave off caring what will happen to someone else if we endanger them absent-mindedly?  Don't we know that VENGEANCE CAN WAIT?  Just because we don't see a backlash for what happened yesterday, that does not mean that it is not coming sometime.  It is coming.  I believe if we would stop and get quiet enough on the inside and let go of this headiness and giddiness about these leaks, we would know that this poses grave dangers for the least ones we would want to be in danger. 

This is true evidence that the whole thing was not thought through - it was thought up but it was not thought through.  Who in his or her right mind would want to implicate a whole world of human beings in a dangerous scenario just to say they did something.  That is the same as the militants we love to accuse of terrorism and other things.   In this act, I believe that the wrong thing was done for the right reason, and vice-versa.  So there you have a paradox.  I suggest that those of us who are so short-sighted we cannot see this is in for a lot of surprises.  We are so concerned with secrets and lies that we throw the baby out with the bathwater.   

We'll be looking for that baby after many days - all over the world.  All actions have consequences.  We have just not seen the consequences of this - which has happened twice.   The first disclosure just emboldened the disclosure of the second leaks.  Something must come of that.   I am sorry that V.P. got exposed.  I'm just as sorry that we have become just as exposed - without our permission or knowledge, until it happened.   I suggest this was a mistake.  No matter how you toss that coin, it will still land on the side of mistake.  And I am concerned for us all, military and civilian.  There are those in this world who will exploit these leaks and that will be revealed whenever it is finished. 

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