RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
The Globe's editorials just get dumber and dumber.
They are beginning to remind me of "new sound" of CBC Radio, uninformed and half-baked.
Assange wants a world without secrets?
First, you have no basis for that assertion, none whatever.
Second, as any informed person understands, there are secrets and then there are secrets.
No one, absolutely no one, wants a world with no secrets.
But the fact seems to have eluded the writer of this intellectual mush that for decades we have been victims of unwarranted official secrets and just plain lies.
So much so that when the Globe or anyone else presents the news, none of us, including the Globe, even knows whether it is genuine news, and if it is genuine news, whether it is predicated upon false antecedents.
How can you have an informed democracy in that kind of environment? You cannot. And America very much does not, and with a man like Harper as leader Canada creeps off slowly in that same direction.
Take any example you like from history since WWII.
The invasion of Iraq was based on lies, began other lies, and to this day most people do not understand why countless billions were spent and upwards of half a million people killed.
The same analysis applies to the foolish crusade in Afghanistan. Only yesterday we had two reports on progress there: an official one, from the president, saying things were going okay, and an intelligence leak saying things weren't going fine at all. This is absolutely typical of America’s world of imperial secrets today.
One could provide an astounding list of the cost in lives and treasure official lies and secrets have caused.
And people cast ballots for people who tell them no truth, intending to do things the voters would never support if they knew the truth. Broken campaign promises are pretty small change compared to this systematic distortion of democracy.
Ten years of Vietnam, killing about 3 million innocent people and leaving a landscape devastated? All started with a big fat lie, and an endless series of lies saw the horror through.
The genocide of Cambodia with a million or so killed? All started with a big fat lie: the American bombing and mini-invasions destabilized a decent neutral government, handing power off to the likes of Pol Pot.
I am genuinely tired of the kind of smug, self-righteousness of right-wing people like the author of this editorial. They have done nothing for the decades of my life but lead us into mass murder and destruction, time after time after time.
There is no possible effect of leaks like those of WikiLeaks that can be remotely so damaging as the real big-power world of lies, deceptions, and secrets.
We truly are approaching, and I think Americans have virtually reached, a world where your vote does not matter at all because you have no idea what it is you are voting for. The immense excitement over Obama two years ago has all been ground into the dust as he carries on killing and lying just like George Bush.
