Rant US Government censors Wikipedia

Everytime I watch Bush on the TV I can't help but laugh, even though the guy is a war criminal, he is pretty funny, I just can't help to think of people taking the piss out of him on TV shows, and also the sketches he has done himself without relising.

 

Yeah, Hitler looked pretty funny too.

(I know, Godwin's law...)

 

Whats the problem ? People in the US house of representatives have a right to free speech too...

 

i was kind of talking about Bush and his puppet show.... and IMHO in this case the scenario is worse than "Turn cars over and loot shops".....

you will also consider that the people that are tortured by the USA have the right to free speech..... and people wanting to do manifestations, that are strangely outlawed unless you do some legal hoop jumping and then go manifest on a place designated for that.... and then being randomly selected and branded as a terrorist......

sorry for the ramble....

 

They are spreading propaganda.

 

wiki

it's a great place to just stumble on link about other stuff

 

Of course the government has a right to free speech, but ask yourself, should it abuse that?

 

So? That's protected under the rights of free speech, and mostly unobjectionable so long as it's a single person doing it for personel reasons.

 

then you have got to ask, does free speech still exist in the way we want it to....

i personnally don't know, sometimes i think it does then other times im not so sure...

but i do know one thing is that i really don't trust the government, here in the uk or the us, ever since the government lost all that data, my faith in them has hit an all time low.

 

It's the Government changing information to untrue information on a public website, that is not "ok".

 

Does a member of the government surfing granny porn from work mean that the government has a policy of supporting granny porn? No, it doesn't. You have to understand that there is a difference between a government as a body, and the people that make up that body. Although the people that make up that body are supposed to be acting to further the governments aims, they will sometimes try to further their own aims because people are like that. But that does not make their aims neccesarily the same ones that the government has, or vice versa.

See above, you havn't understood the difference between a government, and the humans that compose it.

 

Anyone hear about this

'Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's (CIA) computers made edits to the page of Iran's president.

It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. '

Quoted from BBC News site 18/8/06 - Check out the whole article most of the changes are probably bored office monkeys goofing off at work

But it makes you worry when people talk about stuff off Wiki's like it's nothing but the truth

 

'See above, you havn't understood the difference between a government, and the humans that compose it.'

Because there is no difference! Every action taken by a government is one of self interest, whatever they come up with is solely intended to further cement their political position at the top of the pile, when have single people ever been any different?

The selfless, saints, eco warriors etc tend not to be MP's over here

 

Yup...you really have missed my point.

 

So you're OK with the people in government being sleazy corrupt A-holes because the entire government isn't like that, just the people? The people in government should be trustworthy and working for the people, not their own image.

 

The people are the government.....

 

*sigh* You've missed it too.

Governments are made of a great many people (hundreds at least, in the west thousands if not tens of thousands of people). People are human. Humans can be flawed. In a group of thousads of tens of thousands of them, some humans, being flawed, will do things they shouldn't at work. Like edit wikipedia, or search for granny porn. It doesn't mean that the national policy of that government is to edit wikipedia, surf granny porn, and then go for lunch. It means that one person is messing around doing stuff they shouldn't be doing while at work. Clear?

 

On the other hand the orders may come from someone above them.....

 

And if it's someone important then you don't mind that they're doing these things? I'd be alright with it if it were just some intern, but it's a member of the house of representatives, they shouldn't be doing it. I suppose you're OK with government losing your data, because it was only one person - obviously not government procedure.

 

I see it more as a case of accountability. One person does it - a Sony employee sabotaging Nintendos wiki for example - then you can punish that person. If however its a government then not only does it start to appear like propoganda and the covering up information in a realm where corporations and governments should have no sway, but you can also ussually bet your bottom dollar that the buck will be passed to someone else becasue thats how governments seem to work.

With Wikipedia these things are discouraged anyway - authors aren't allowed to write vanity pages and information is supposed to be supported, useful, relevant, truthful and unbiased. When a government breaks that rule then it begs the question: what is it that they don't want the people knowing, the answer to which is possibly very frightening. Especially with buck passing and carpet sweeping.