Bill Moyers: America Can't Deal With Reality -- We Must Be Exposed to the Truth, Even If It Hurts

[Ichingcarpenter]

THIS IS VERY LONG BUT WORTHY OF THE READ
I JUST CHOOSE 4 PARAGRAPHS.


By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
Posted on February 14, 2011, Printed on February 15, 2011

....SNIP........

1
That's why, on balance, I count WikiLeaks a plus for democracy. Whatever side you take on the controversy, whether or not you think this information should be disclosed, all parties - those who want it released and those who don't - acknowledge that information matters. Partly because I grew up in the south and partly because of my experience in the Johnson White House, I'm on the side of disclosure, even when it hurts. The truth about slavery had been driven from the pulpits, newsrooms and classrooms during the antebellum days; it took a bloody civil war to drive the truth home. At the Johnson White House, we circled the wagons and grew intolerant of news that didn't conform to our hopes, expectations and strategies for Vietnam, with terrible, tragic results for Americans and Vietnamese, north and south. I say: "Never again!"

2
Thus, a relative handful of people have enormous power to keep us in the dark. And when those people are in league with their counterparts in powerful corporations, the public is hit with a double whammy. We're usually told the issue is national security, but keeping us from finding out about the danger of accidents at chemical plants is not about national security; it's about covering up an industry's indiscretions and liabilities. Locking up the secrets of meetings with energy executives is not about national security; it's about hiding confidential memos sent to the White House showing the influence of oil companies on policies of global warming We only learned about that memo from the Bush White House, by the way, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.

3
And even so, we learned some important things from WikiLeaks. For example, as Reza Alsan writes in The Atlantic, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may not be as fanatical as we think he is; the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks portray him as "a moderate reformer who'd like to cut deals with the West, but can't because hard-liners are calling the shots." One of them even slapped Ahmadinejad across the face when, at a high-level meeting. he proposed that the government allow more personal and press freedom at the height of the 2009 public protests in Iran. Such information can help us evaluate the incessant demands of neoconservative warmongers - the very people who rode the circuit with news of "weapons of mass destruction" in an effort to build support for invading Iraq - that we use military force against Iran to eliminate its nuclear capacity.



4
I will close with an urgent appeal to you about one fight we won't win unless all of us join it. I'm sure everyone here agrees that we will eventually be moving to the web, all of us and that "free, instant, worldwide connectivity" is the future. But I'm sure you know that this incredible, free, open Internet highway is at risk, that corporations are on the brink of muscling their way to the front of the line. Media companies want the power to censor Internet content they don't like, to put toll booths on the web so they can charge more for the privilege of driving in the fast lanes, to turn it into a private preserve.


http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/149925

[unferthcs]

1. freedom of press

the only ones who can ever be harmed by truth are those who
lie; and for those who lie, can trust ever be restored? what
person with a physically functional brain can believe so much
as a syllable coming from any department of our government? we
(some of us) have recently begun complaining about corporate
control of all our governmental branches: congress, white
house, supreme court. what, apparently, we haven't seen yet is
that those branches are The Corporation. governing is no
longer the business of the three-pronged tail. control of the
bottom line is now its function. managing the funds for the 1%
is the main objective and making the world safe for munition
manufacturers. freedom of any sort: press, individual, social,
etc. does not exist, will never again exist (without
extaordinary moral force), and we were to busy watching TV to
notice when it slipped out of existence along the wayside.