The United States, due to an “overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs,” fell below El Salvador and Romania in a world press freedom ranking released Wednesday.
The US fell 13 positions to 46th place in this year’s World Press Freedom Index, produced since 2002 by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. The organization said the main reason the US dropped so far in the rankings was because of its dogged efforts to “track down whistleblowers and the sources of leaks.”
“The trial of and conviction of Private Bradley Manning and the pursuit of NSA analyst Edward Snowden were warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest,” the report reads.
“The whistleblower is the enemy,” it adds.
Somebody should point out that the current directors were appointed by the Bush/Cheney administration?
Why?? Somebody still holding onto the left\right paradigm??
Personally, I don’t care if it is a left boot or a right boot stamped on my face forever.
Good for you.
There seems to be a growing minority here who understands that those who hire R/Ds, are the most directly culpable for the destruction of the USA.
They don’t hire themselves.
And the one with pen and the phone can’t change them?
Same clique – PROGRESSIVES , GWB from Right, Obama from Left. Keynesian economy, power of the Government, gimmies to the population as a bribe, social engineering by the power of the executive branch, control, control, control… Spying is a consequence. If Government is big and powerful – it will eat up your rights with pen and the phone. Because there is a President who thinks he can “do anything he wants”. And each Progressive President will think the same. Time to kick Progressives from both sides to the curb. No more Boehner, no more Reid, soon no more Obama.
Yea, let shrink everything government but expand the money pit we call the NSA, CIA, DoD, corporate welfare and congressional staff!
Telling the courts a FoxNews reporter is a terrorist doesn’t help.
Bill” O’Reilly a terrorist, I can believe that!
He (Bill O’Reilly) is more like an intelligent pompous prima donna.
Sure, he means well. And he does seem to have all the right answers (no pun intended). But it’s also a well known fact that he’s a bit of an elitist and something of a racist too. And it’s this huge character flaw that doesn’t exactly HELP anyone.
You could say, he’s exhibit ONE of what’s wrong with the Republican’s.
Interesting comment on O’Reilly.
As he gets older, I sense he’s running out of patience and time to express what he believes cuts through the same old rhetorical bullshit (spin).
Old people are viewed as cranks. Young people have little sense of history and are suckers for any half-baked “fresh” idea.
Sadly though, most “folks” (young and old) are under-informed and will follow whoever gives them the most free stuff.
Guess my age.
7? ….you asked!
+11
And no, that’s not any sort of guess about your age.
What the world no longer buying the American illusion of being special and world leadership?
Oh the horror of foreigners seeing us for what we are!
There’s reporters in the US? News to me.
True, most are just stenographers for the Democratic Party.
“The trial of and conviction of Private Bradley Manning”
Who was not a whistleblower. He was a pissed off little miscreant who was only in the Army long enough because the Army was critically short of people in his MOS.
There was no rhyme or reason to what he pulled and sent to wikileaks, just whatever he could snag from classified networks.
Compare that then, to Snowden. He saw an extensive breach of the peoples’ privacy and rights and that the official whistleblower protections were useless, and collected and released pertinent information on that and that alone.
No he released much more than that. Wasn’t just NSA reading people’s e-mail that he exposed. Revealing a UK internet monitoring station in the Middle East. Communications of Medvedev and Putin that were intercepted. CIA stations in Latin America. Types of spying being done in China. Al Qaeda whose e-mail NSA is reading. Spying on Al-Jazeera intranet. What is known about Al Qaeda efforts to hack drones.
He released America playing video games killing innocent reporters, children while mocking “come on fire”….”look at those dead bastards”…!
Of course no one was held accountable but Manning for daring to expose blatant American wrongs, bringing light in hopes of bringing justice (justice which America is not capable of anymore)!
Hey Timmy–how can you have a failed TIPS without a refusal to stop and a chase?
Conspiracy theory for Flt 93 huh? Thats not consistent with the collection of mighty fine tangents you have sent this forum down, but it is consistent with creating another conspiracy over AGW.
People and Things. Often disturbingly consistent.
Well, bobbo; I meant to say the PIT maneuver. Just for future reference, don’t try that if you are in an 1984 Dodge Diplomat and are trying to take out a 5700 lb (with spare tire in the trunk) 1969 Thunderbird with a guy behind the wheel that sees vector elastic collisions in his head before he took weak to a landmark right-to-travel fight… ^^ that sentence needs work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIT_maneuver
“”but where comes a Flt 93 conspiracy?
You caught me, bobbo; There was no flight debis in that landscape scar. I need to update my openly-documented global government pronouncement to say “we don’t know what happened to flt 93 execpt that the phone call was fake and there was no plane found — hardly something that would suggest *conspiracy*. I’m pretty sure most people are using that term wrongly just as when someone that is totally non-gay asks you if you would like a *bump* of coccain.
Eric Holder also committed perjury in the James Rosen case.