{"id":35309,"date":"2018-06-21T05:52:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T10:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35309"},"modified":"2018-06-21T05:52:03","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T10:52:03","slug":"assange-and-truth-the-deeper-harder-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35309","title":{"rendered":"Assange and Truth: the Deeper (Harder) Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assange and Truth: the Deeper (Harder) Issue<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo by thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize (2005), he described \u201ca vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed\u201d. He asked why \u201csystematic brutality, widespread atrocities, ruthless suppression of independent thought\u201d were well-known when they occurred in the Soviet Union. But the same events in the US, despite copious evidence, \u201cnever happened\u201d.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be a rhetorical question. The answer to Pinter\u2019s question is known in countless cultures. It is not obscure. But it is not discussed much in the North.<\/p>\n

John Pilger notes an \u201ceerie silence\u201d about Julian Assange. More than any investigative journalist of our time, Assange has exposed \u201cthe imperialism of liberal democracies: the commitment to endless warfare and the division and degradation of \u2018unworthy\u2019 lives: from Grenfell Tower to Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet he\u2019s been imprisoned for six years with no charges against him. There is no outcry.<\/p>\n

The silence is eerie, but not surprising. Assange allows us to see with our own eyes the actions of US military in Iraq. We hear them laugh about the \u201cdead bastards\u201d on the ground, who were carrying cameras, not guns.<\/p>\n

There are truths, which Wikileaks reveals, but there is also truth about<\/em>truths. One truth is that empirical evidence, seen and believed, does not shake deep-seated expectations. When beliefs are well-established, presupposed in daily life, indeed, part of identity, evidence is explained away.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s how we reason.\u00a0 If I release an object that doesn\u2019t fall, you don\u2019t give up belief in gravity. If I show you a thousand times, you don\u2019t waiver. You expect<\/em>gravity. It is a presupposition of life and thought. If you questioned that belief, you\u2019d have to rethink your relationship to the world. It\u2019s a reason not to question it.<\/p>\n

You see with your own eyes. You dismiss what you see. Or, you explain it away, rationally.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assange and Truth: the Deeper (Harder) Issue Photo by thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0 When Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize (2005), he described \u201ca vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed\u201d. He asked why \u201csystematic brutality, widespread atrocities, ruthless suppression of independent thought\u201d were well-known when they occurred in the Soviet Union. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,1897,20590,3520,442,7743,2001,742,13113,1250,827,844,880],"class_list":["post-35309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-evidence","tag-harold-pinter","tag-imperialism","tag-iraq","tag-john-pilger","tag-julian-assange","tag-soviet-union","tag-susan-babbitt","tag-truth","tag-united-states","tag-us-military","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35310,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35309\/revisions\/35310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}