Wishful thinking. Bushco was just a shot over the bow of our sinking ship. An utterly savage signal of what we can come to expect from what will be the do-or-die corporate/elite war for global control. They have only just put their big fat toes in the toxic waters. We'd best make friends with our 'inner warrior' and get very clear about how we are going to save ourselves, our planet and establish a true global 'commonwealth'. It will not happen without the deep and fearless commitment of the people.
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The Bush Era Draws To A Close
2006 will be remembered as the year in which our government imprisoned journalists, embraced kidnap and torture as a "no-brainer," and moved toward implementing an infrastructure for total surveillance of American citizens. Hopefully, it also will be remembered as the year we started to bring these practices to a halt.
In this column, I look back on three civil liberties crises that reached a critical point in 2006. In my next column, my first for 2007, I'll take a more proactive view of what the new year could mean for civil liberty.
Legal attacks on journalists
This year the U.S. State Department launched the Global Internet Freedom Task Force to challenge other governments that repress online journalism. Perhaps it should start at home.
This year, reporters from the The New York Times and Time magazine faced imprisonment for refusing to say who leaked information about the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. Today, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters are facing jail time for refusing to reveal who gave them grand jury transcripts detailing the steroids charges against Barry Bonds and other professional athletes.
This is a disturbing erosion of press freedom. Historically, courts have punished people who illegally leak information, but have generally kept their hands off the journalists who spoke with those people and published the information. The source privilege is a bedrock of a free press, which is to say, a press that doesn't have to follow the official line...cont'd
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,72330-0.html
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