[Infowarrior] - Classifying Embarrassment

[Richard Forno]

In the Same Week, the U.S. and U.K. Hide Their War Crimes by Invoking “National Security”

By Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/21/key-tactic-us-uk-hide-war-crimes-invoking-national-security/

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No healthy democracy can possibly function where this warped mindset prevails: we are entitled to hide anything we do that makes us look bad because making us look bad harms “national security,” and we are the ones who make that decision without challenge. As the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer said:

To allow the government to suppress any image that might provoke someone, somewhere, to violence would be to give the government sweeping power to suppress evidence of its own agents’ misconduct. Giving the government that kind of censorial power would have implications far beyond this specific context.

But even more threatening than the menace to democracy is the propagandzied public this mentality guarantees. A government that is able to hide its own atrocities on “national security” grounds will be one whose public endlessly focuses on the crimes of others while remaining blissfully unaware of one’s own nation. That is an excellent description of much of the American and British public, and as good an explanation as any why much of their public discourse consists of little more than proclamations that Our Side is Better despite the decades of brutality, aggression and militarism their own side has perpetrated.

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It's better to burn out than fade away.