Clearing out the Browser Tabs - A Recap of News Over the Holiday Break

Happy New Year! While our finals turned into a brief holiday hiatus, strangely, the news did not stop! Therefore, for my first post of the new year, I bring you a hodgepodge of stuff that has accumulated over the last couple weeks in my browser tabs.

From cell phones to torture to Angry Birds! I might actually start doing this occasionally as things happen in my areas of interest, but perhaps do not merit entire posts themselves.

Assange Understands That the Future of News Is in Transparency

Julian Assange has an Op-Ed out today in the Australian pointing out the absurdities of all that's going on. Here's a taste:

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

...

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

There's one paragraph, though, that demonstrates that Assange understands the future of news far, far better than most current establishment journalists: