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In reply to the discussion: Julian Assange bids to sue Julia Gillard for defamation over WikiLeaks comments [View all]LiberalLovinLug
(14,144 posts)So like clockwork the Anti-Freedom of Information Authoritarianists come out of their caves.
News Flash:
Anyone who is a threat to the world's .1 % and their government puppets IS GOING TO GET NOTICED and vilified on the MSM. If all he was interested in was fame and fortune, he could have chosen thousands of other things to do. What about all those others that work at Wikileaks? Or is it just the founder of the organization that gets your small minds in a tithy?
By your logic Obama is also a media whore. Anyone who steps up and takes on a job that he or she knows will make him or her celebritized by the corporate press must be in it for only that reason. What a crock.
Bradley Manning basically gave up his life to release these cables because of what he saw in them, some war crimes, and a sense of duty to share with the public. Assange was the messenger that you'all want to kill for relaying it on. Assange did not cower in fear of the establishment like you'all obviously would have. He published them. And we get at least a partial tiny crack of transparency behind the machinations of corporate/government collusion and deception.
From a Salon article:
http://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/
As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing. The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them: WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning. A consensus quickly emerged in the political and media class that they are Evil Villains who must be severely punished, while those responsible for the acts they revealed are guilty of nothing. That reaction has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagons own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence zero that any of WikiLeaks actions has caused even a single death. Meanwhile, the American establishment media even in the face of all these revelations continues to insist on the contradictory, Orwellian platitudes that (a) there is Nothing New in anything disclosed by WikiLeaks and (b) WikiLeaks has done Grave Harm to American National Security through its disclosures.
Its unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them. Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold. But whats startling is how many citizens and, especially, journalists now vehemently believe that as well. In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen and especially a journalist to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and itd be better if we didnt know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded.