The Revolutionary Act Of Telling The Truth
By John PIlger - Real dissent has become exotic; yet those who dissent have never been more important. The book I am launching tonight, 'The WikiLeaks Files', is an antidote to a fascism that never speaks its name. It's a revolutionary book, just as WikiLeaks itself is revolutionary - exactly as Orwell meant in the quote I used at the beginning. For it says that we need not accept these the daily lies. We need not remain silent. Or as Bob Marley once sang: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery."
In the introduction, Julian Assange explains that it is never enough to publish the secret messages of great power: that making sense of them is crucial, as well as placing them in the context of today and historical memory. Never has such truth-telling been so urgently needed. With honourable exceptions, those in the media paid ostensibly to keep the record straight are now absorbed into a system of propaganda that is no longer journalism, but anti-journalism. This is true of the liberal and respectable as it is of Murdoch. Unless you are prepared to monitor and deconstruct every specious assertion, so-called news has become unwatchable and unreadable.
Reading The WikiLeaks Files, I remembered the words of the late Howard Zinn, who often referred to "a power that governments can't suppress". That describes WikiLeaks, and it describes true whistleblowers who share their courage.
