Sharing the vision of WikiLeaks to people who aren't online?

WHOA...

I spent an hour talking to a fellow business entrepreneur named Kevin, who owns one of the last remaining video tape/dvd rental shops in St. Louis.

I asked him if he knew about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. He said yeah, and I asked him what?
"He published a bunch of US military secrets right?"

Well, sort of...I added to that, bringing up US cables between ambassadors and video of human rights violations.

"But he did some kind of espionage to get them right?"

(Sigh) No, and I explained how all media is submitted to WikiLeaks via the internet, and then I asked him if watches FOX NEWS.

"Well sure, but that's because when they get their facts, they'll show you a book where they got it from and say, 'if you don't believe me, read it here,' so I usually like hearing what they have to say, trusting that they are doing good fact finding."

It turns out he get his news from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch too (which he considered the "liberal" newspaper) and occasionally listens to NPR, but they are often more "socialist" than he likes.

Anywho, I let him know more about the facts behind WikiLeaks, including Julians' history of breaking into the US DoJ computers a decade ago (which he had read about, but did not know it was Julian) and then evolving into a people driven, whistle blowing, multi-media publishing organization that specialized in "Free Press activism" (suggesting it was a decision based on all the secrets he had found out about, but was unable to do anything about...by himself anyways).

After that, Kevin had some interesting questions:

"Why am I not hearing about that in the papers or the magazines I read?"
"Why don't the news programs I watch include anything on WikiLeaks?"
"Why do I feel as if my political views (conservative) aren't spoken about or considered by the Republicans?"
"How come I don't get much information from the media I pay attention to?

That question was the overall gist of what we talked about for the last half hour. He felt as if all sorts of shit was going down around the world, and every time he searched for it, he could only find out in a library or from friends "in the know".

HE COULDN'T GET MUCH FROM THE REGULAR MAINSTREAM MEDIA...and that was obvious and frustrating to him.

I told him to get online and just go to youtube and start searching topics that interested him (especially since he's a movie guy...who's NEVER BEEN ONLINE). I mentioned he would find lots of propaganda from the right wing and the left wing, but if he kept looking, he would also find TONS of documented info that was true and valid and incredibly apropos to what's going on. I also implied he might find out why he's experiencing such an underwhelming feeling of being left in the dark.




I would ask everyone who's volunteering for WikiLeaks to remember to talk to EVERYONE about the importance of getting online and seeing for themselves what they believe. Mainstream media is too contrived now with too little information for anyone to feel satiated, especially for many of these older generations who have come to trust their usual routine of doing things.




I really enjoy asking people, "so what do you know about WikiLeaks?"
The rest is...an apocalypse.