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Friday, December 24, 2010

Glenn Greenwald Reviews Some of the Offenses Revealed to Freedom Loving Citizens in 2010 by the Work of WikiLeaks

Click for the cavalcade of crime and corruption. Here Greenwald summarizes the moral:
It's 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 what's 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 it'd be better if we didn't 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.

1 comment:

jollyspaniard said...

If history is anything to go by the backlash will fade after a few years. Assange may even be able to travel to the US at some point in the future without being thrown into room 101.

People don't like having the Emperor's lack of clothes pointed out. It makes them feel foolish and they preferred believing he was wearing some righteous threads. And the only real counterspin to this leaked material is to change the subject. A lot of the wingnuts are vehement that the content of the leaks is something that shouldn't be talked about. Right wing bloggers who have even mentioned reading the material have been chastised by their readers. At some point though I suspect curiousity will get the better of some of them.

I imagine a lot of media outlets don't like having their cozy applecart tipped over. Suddenly their managed leaks (the ubiquitous "unamed officals say") and preferential government talking head access looks more blatantly they've been distributing government spin.

Wikileaks isn't "their kind of journalism" they say but publishing Assange's online dating profile content is their kind of journalism apparently.

Soon there will be a lot more sources for these kinds of leaks and the focus will shift from scapegoating Assange to the material itself. It'll be impossible to ignore it forever.