How telling is it that the whole world leaps to hungry attention whenever an outlaw computer geek offers us a tiny glimpse at the truth?
How outrageous is it that we all line up like a bunch of famished orphans from a Charles Dickens novel just to get some small taste of the facts behind what our own government is really doing to us?
How pathetic is it that we all descend upon each leak drop like a flock of starving seagulls on a handful of Doritos, desperate for even one tiny crumb of truth?
I mean, we are supposed to be getting this stuff from the press, after all. We’re clear on that, right? That’s the whole entire reason freedom of the press enjoys such iron-clad protection within the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. You can’t have a functional democracy without an informed populace. The whole entire premise is that if people don’t understand what’s happening, they can’t make informed voting decisions.
And yet what do we get when we read an article from the most widely trusted, respected, and circulated news publications of our age? A publication like, say, the New York Times? The bastion of western reporting? What do we get from them?
The Observer reports that emails released by WikiLeaks reveal a brazen spin campaign to subvert Bernie Sanders and promote Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries by none other than the great New York Times. Not just by one Times writer, but by many, like their regular contributor and CNBC correspondent John Harwood, who was found routinely conversing with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in a way the Observer article says makes him look like “more of a Clinton surrogate than a journalist.” Regular hit pieces were published on Sanders by multiple writers, and there’s evidence that the Clinton campaign fed the Times news articles to “break.”
“Times contributor and CNBC correspondent John Harwood regularly conversed with Podesta through email, offering congratulations and praise that made him appear as more of a Clinton surrogate than a journalist.”
Our media is broken. When the crown jewel of the fourth estate the New York Times is sucking up like a mawkish sycophant to power, then the system of checks and balances that the media is meant to deal out is broken.
This pervades all echelons of corporate media, from David Seaman getting fired by Huffington Post for talking about Clinton’s health, to the DNC chair emailing the NBC News political director to silence the co-host of Morning Joe, to an MSNBC intelligence analyst going on a frantic 37-post Twitter rant claiming with exactly zero evidence that WikiLeaks had altered its documents and is working with Russia. From the bottom to the top, nobody’s telling the truth. Even as they keep slowly sowing the seeds for an all-out war with Russia, the top story of the day is still what a creepy tax-evading pervert Donald Trump is.
Hence WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange is a planetary hero. Calling him an international hero is an understatement, since circulating nuggets of truth could help rescue us from institutional ecocide and the very real possibility of a world war with a nuclear superpower. As Assange himself so brilliantly stated, if wars can be started with lies, peace can be started with truth. It is no exaggeration to say that the odds of survival for every species on earth are increased by what he’s doing.
Imagine what would happen if the media suddenly turned on Hillary Clinton and started pointing at all the evil and dangerous things she has done and continues to do. Just picture how that would go. Imagine if the American public suddenly had it slammed in their faces that Hillary Clinton is pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria that will lead to the shooting down of Russian military planes, and breaking down all the possible consequences of that happening for people. Her campaign would be dead in the water. The press is an incredibly powerful force in America, but because of legalized media consolidation (thanks to Hillary’s husband, by the way) and rampant corporatism, that immense power is currently being used to facilitate evil instead of good.
Corporate media created WikiLeaks by creating a truth vacuum that needed to be filled. If the press was doing its job instead of kowtowing to the agendas of western plutocrats, Assange would be off happily making an honest living as a web developer or something and playing with his kids this weekend.
But he’s not. Whatever his motives, Julian Assange decided to dedicate his life and talents to the task of rescuing our planet in a way that nobody else was willing or able to do. He’s been holed up in a tiny embassy for years with nothing but internet access and his honor, sowing seeds of truth that he may never even live to reap the fruits of, to our benefit and his detriment. And now he and his organization are being attacked as liars and enemies, despite their 10-year record of perfectly vetted sources.
I personally refuse to let one of the most important things happening in the world today go without recognition and appreciation, and I refuse to sit idly by while the voice of the oligarchs, once known as the press, uses its power to slander and discredit a man who has been placed in the absurd position of having to fight world governments so that their own nations can have access to truth.
If you’re like me, you can help. WikiLeaks has asked for help fighting the media smear campaign against their organization, and to use the hashtags #defendWL and #IamtheWLTaskForce to help spread the word. Help fight disinformation and spread the truth about Assange and WikiLeaks, because if we don’t do it, nobody else will.
[Featured Image by Sang Tan/AP Images]