Wikileaks main goal has been finding the truth of topics wanted to be hidden to the public, and in this case their power was used to protect Tunisia. The procedure used to spread the truth may not be the most appropriate. It is the truth, and it will always be better to hear the crude reality than some beautiful lie. “The ends justify the means” –Niccolo Machiavelli.
In some societies such as Tunisia, wikileaks has been so helpful that their fight has gone from virtual to physical. This is Wikileaks utopia, where a population gets together and embraces the fight against their government in order to defend their rights as a country. In Tunisia people did go out to protest and stand for their freedom of speech right, and all this began in the web.
Tunisians had enough in their plate already, this was just the drop that spilled the glass. In the past weeks prior freedom of speech strikes, Tunisia was in a very bad shape. First of all food prices were going up at the same time as the unemployment rate. Past two characteristics are red flags for any government. On top of all this, corruption scandals were making the people even angrier. Officially, Tunisia’s case is the first time that wikileaks makes a population take actions in their own hands.
These protests are also about the country's utter lack of freedom of expression including when it comes to WikiLeaks. The only way that a society would achieve the status of real democracy is having freedom of
Gladwell sends a very strong message about how social media cannot cause a major revolution in society; likewise, Baron is sending across the same message. Revolutions continue even after the internet is shut down. As crowds gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Baron describes how they “continued to grow during the five days that the Mubarak government shut down the internet” (330). The crowds increased in size without the help of social media. Somehow, word got out and people came to support the cause. Also, Baron brings into realization that Americans are too involved in the world of social media. Americans fail to realize all of the news that they are missing because they “can’t seem to survive without the constant stimulus of digital multitasking” (Baron 330). American citizens are too busy tweeting about what they ate for breakfast to worry about the hungry that is going on overseas. They depend on social networking to tell them the news rather that picking up a newspaper and reading about what is going on in their country or maybe even overseas in a different country.
Almost a year ago, Egypt broke into civil unrest when protesters flooded Tahrir Square, demanding the end of Hosnia Mubarak’s regime. Although Mubarak stepped down within two weeks, Egypt is worse off today than it was last January. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), which played a vital role in the January revolution, has now become a violent and oppressive force. On the twenty-ninth of December 2011, the SCAF raided seventeen Egyptian, German, and US run NGOs in search of proof of illegal foreign funding.1 In a statement (A/HRC/18/NGO/77) submitted by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), and the Center for Egyptian Women’s
It is through protest that the government is able to recognize what the people believe. Without this there would be no changes, no reconsideration, and no progress.
The ever growing number of subversive groups use these type of incidents to influence public opinion to further their objectives. It is working for them.
Micah White is an active member of the occupy wall street movements and gives motivational speeches on the matter. The structure of blocking streets, posting outside of buildings and the violence that occurs during some of these protest are not helping the cause. America is such a big country that these protest do not make difference because they happen with such a minuscule amount of people compared to the whole US population. In other countries for example Egypt the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak was an influential movement which succeeded in making change in their government. Occupy Mubarak was an occupy movement which was able to work because the country is much smaller. Egypt has a smaller country than the whole united states so millions of people protesting there would make a large impact. This protest also lacked a strong structure and the violence that occurred from pro-Mubarak supporters cause a divide between the citizens. In White's book The End of Protest: A New Playbook For Revolution he quoted Edward Snowden who said “Occupy Wall Street had such limits because the local authorities were able to enforce, basically in our imaginations, an image of what proper civil disobedience is, one that is simply ineffective”(Preface, 2). The local authorities set
Imagine yourself as a school age child eagerly waiting to go to school. When the day finally comes, your mind becomes a sponge as you absorb all of the lessons your teacher has provided you. At the age of ten, there is an announcement that you are no longer allowed to go to school. The terrorist group, the Taliban, has banned all females from going to school. You are infuriated. To do something about it, you decide to write on an anonymous blog ranting your fury and outrage towards this freedom that has been removed from you. Despite the consequences for speaking out and for disobeying what has been decreed, you continue to further your education. For the next five years, you go to school but always on alert. One day, as you are walking along the sidewalk with your friends to catch the bus, you notice
“This is what democracy looks like” is one of the most impactful phrases to speak at a protest. A free society looks like the ability to disobey, to criticize the government, and to petition. Without the ability to peacefully resist, there is no true democratic representation. This is one of the most politically charged times in history, with several protests a month and real success. Peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society because it’s what helps make a society free in the first place.
In America, protest has been used throughout history as a vehicle to change. Protests bring attention to issues that would or could be overlooked or ignored. A current protest receiving national attention in our media is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest. The Occupy Wall Street protest, along with other Occupy branch protests are essentially ineffective protests. When compared to successful protests in the past, they are not having as much success gaining public support. There are many reasons this could be the case. There is no clearly defined goal or a specified outcome resulting from the protests. They are managing their funds inefficiently and in many cities they are creating more problems than they are solving.
INTRO The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace by Alexander Klimburg is a novel that is written around the importance as well as the relevance of the internet in today’s society regarding state safety. The claim Klimburg makes throughout the novel is that no invention at all has changed the way we live, as much as it has been changed by the creation of the Internet. Many would consider the Internet to be the greatest invention to happen to mankind, considering how easily accessible it is and how much information it holds. However, Klimburg’s novel explores the idea of cyberspace in regard to politics.
Over the course of history, protests have changed the world. Protests are meant to allow people to express their beliefs, ideas, and to let them get their points across on a certain topic they may have a conflict with. They involve groups of people, which can start off as a small group, but then it can grow because they allow people to speak freely on a subject and so more people want to be heard. A protest can be on anything, some examples include protests on age, gender, race, religion, animal rights, or LGBT rights. People do deserve the right to freely protest in their countries, because they are trying to make a change in their lifestyles and stand up for what they believe in, but there are limits to how they can reform their lives and the lives of others. Protests should not involve violence or dangerous acts that can harm citizens or protesters themselves. Citizens should protest peacefully if they can manage to show respect and maturity.
Founded by Julian Assange, in 2006, WikiLeaks is a non-profit, online, journalistic organization that reveals confidential documents and governmental secrets and leaks. Wiki Leaks is struggling against secrecy, and against a world that is trying to shut it down. It has released documents about US military operationsin Iraq and Afghanistan, unreported civilian causalitiesembarrassing Obama’s administration’s diplomatic actions, and many other documents. Although Wiki Leaks may be considered a threat to our social security system, it remains immensely valuable to the society and shouldn’t be banned since it is credible and it promotes democracy.
A revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both violent and non-violent), riots, and civil wars in the Arab World that began on 18 December 2010, later gained the heading “The Arab spring”. The Arab spring began by a twenty six year old boy named Mohammed Bouazizi was getting ready to sell fruits and vegetables in a rural town of Sidi Bouzid Tunisia. Bouazizi was the primary supporter for his widowed mother and six of his siblings. The entire incident originated when the police officer asked bouazizi to hand over his wooden cart, he refused the police women allegedly slapped him after being publicly humiliated bouazizi marched in front of a government building and set himself on fire. The Jasmine revolution in Tunisia, the shock wave swept across the country which threatened the stability of this oil-rich region with repercussion felt internationally. After the world witnessed what happened in Tunisia, it caused a spilled over into most of the Arab countries. Such as Egypt, Libya Syria and Yemen. Aim of this paper is to show that the current situation corollary of decades of failed policies, exacerbated by an unsolicited foreign intervention. The extensive consequences, I will argue, require cautious attention and careful management from international communities as well as the Arab human rights committee. This paper seeks to explore the profound causes that prompted the so called “Arab awakening” and the covert hidden agenda behind the sudden pro democratic
Claimed by its founder to be a non-profit organization/website, Wikileaks was firstly launched in 2006. Some call it an open government group that enables public witnessing (Nayar, 2011; Rosewall & Warren, 2010), while others see it as a representation of a new type of “sovereignty in the global political and economy sphere” (Bodó, 2011, p. 3). The website uses the term “wiki” which was followed after Wikipedia due to its anonymous contributors and
The Arab Spring and its aftermath have become one of the most influential events of the twenty-first century. The series of revolutions reshaped several governments within the Middle East by outing long reigning dictators that the people had become progressively frustrated with. The Arab Spring both aligns with and contradicts several previous waves of revolution and is truly a twenty-first century conflict because of the role that modern technology played. Through studying the Arab Spring, political scientists have been given a glimpse into what future revolutions might look like, especially in regards to the expanding role of social media.
The debate about information freedom has become fiercely contested with the advent of WikiLeaks. Wikileaks is a non-profit organization which collects original resources and publishes on the website. It provides a secure platform for whistleblowers. Some people consider Julian Assange (leader of WikiLeaks) as a hero who has provided a platform to uncover the truth. This essay discusses the pros and cons for the issue.