Julian Assange is now a global icon. But will future secrets go unrecorded?
Press deadline is upon us on in the office, meaning I’ve been awash in news, emails, press releases and items that may or may not make it into Prospect‘s next issue. The news has been overwhelmingly, fascinatingly full of the twin WikiLeaks and Assange sagas; the rest trivial by comparison; and yet I’ve been sensing an odd connection between the great political debate of the moment and my own daily wade through digital puff.
While bloggers and writers revel in the unprecedented freedoms of expression the web allows, for almost anybody working for any kind of institution, a crushing constriction applies. Anything that they mail, write, or say in front of witnesses might just end up echoing around the world—to be interrogated, or quoted out of context, or mocked, or praised, or misunderstood, or quite possibly
jim evans
But the internet is helping us to navigate round the blandishments and get a bit closer to the truth.
For years now I have felt disempowered and disenfranchised by a fraudulent democracy that pretended to offer me a choice of political manifestos at election times …..when intuition suggested strongly that I live in virtual one party state that answers to global moneylenders,currency speculators,Washington and the global media, like the BBC.
The news that Haigh and Brown applied to the Americans for their jobs …..and that Washington wanted the UN bugged for incriminating evidence …leaves me feeling vindicated in my suspicions…after years of being told I was paranoid and a conspiracy theorist!
Isn`t it time for a truth and reconciliation process to begin between the beleagured British public and the British political class and their media manipulators?