Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Wikileaks – a whole different story

This is a guest post by George Allwell. George writes the Watching with George blog and can be found on Twitter at @georgeallwell.

Torture. Officially sanctioned by the newly imposed/democratically elected government. Our stand-in-front-of-the-cameras-Nicky-do-that-liberal-conscience-thing-you-do-ever-so-well Deputy Prime Minister says the abuse claims were “extremely serious” and of course, the real clincher, the abuse claims, “needed to be looked at”. That’ll really help Nick. Of course Nick Clegg can always, for his own ethical well-being, claim not to have voted for this war. And he’d be right. Action plan confirmed, we all knew he’d be straight on the phone to Obama. Outrage and moral uproar follows, vociferous news reports condemning the torture. No?

No.

It’s all Wikileaks’ fault. The truth is bad. We can’t handle the truth.

Nation goes to war claiming direct threat, we must act in self-defence. This is then magically reworded to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam killed. New government elected. Private oil contracts signed. Government tortures released inmates.

Q: What will be the reaction of the US-led forces?

A: “Ah, now, let me think about this, the Iraqi's are going have to take responsibility at some point - we can’t just 'take' power back and stop them from torturing the inmates. We’ll have to let that pass, in any case, we’ve got the contracts now.”

They must’ve mentioned it, the media? Across the spectrum? This is, after all, a massive story of epic proportions and consequences if proved to be true (by the very same documents the military themselves created).

Again, no.

Fox news have declared that Wikileaks and the individuals involved in setting up and developing this online-source-protection will now be classified as the enemy. Sorry, let me quote again, “enemy combatants” is the official line. Wikileaks are a foreign company and they deserve to be punished. Pure, in-your-face, we don’t give a fuck about the truth any more, propaganda. Essentially an online server that releases documents, without censorship and attempts to protect the anonymity of the source are now our declared enemy. Not terrorists. Not guns. Not bombs. Not 45 minutes away. A website, storing and releasing documents, created by the military themselves. We're now in a virtual war against Wikilieaks. The intelligence services will place the nation on an Ultra Red ‘Shit Your Bricks’ Level Alert. I'm frozen with fear.

Credit where it’s due though. The media, and those lurking in the dark shadows of influence managed to turn around a story, create a separate narrative based on strict, tried and tested methods. They've now successfully convinced millions of people, across the globe, to be angry at the personalities involved - and forget the horrific physical torture of other human beings. At least we’ve got Nick Clegg to speak up for us.

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