Apparently American politicians are getting upset over the Wikileaks. Mike Huckabee is the latest to sound off in a typically non-cerebral way. He’d like to execute Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder. Does Huckabee realise how nonsensical he sounds? Why did he not call for an inquiry as to why the Pentagon, or wherever these computer files were stored, did not have the right encription techniques in place. I understand that any child could have downloaded these files. Huckabee is like a lot of his ilk. Don’t check the stable over. Don’t examine the stable door. Just go looking for the horse.
What politicians need to get to grips with is that many of us “ordinary folk” don’t want the same old stuff in the 21st century that we got in the last. Basically that means cut the crap, putting it bluntly. For example, we were told that the Lockerbie bomber was only released on humanitarian grounds and it had nothing to do with oil. Now that all appears to be a lie and it was indeed all about oil and being scared witless that Gaddafi would chuck out the Brits and their contracts and that the Scottish governmment didn’t want a dead man on their hands. Are they more concerned about being found out or about being truthful? The saying is that truth will out. It seems to be doing just that here.
Now if porkies have been told about Libya are there more porkies about the Lockerbie bombing to come out? This is the trouble with lying, as Matilda found. She told such dreadful lies!
Wikileaks is really a symptom of the disease afflicting us in the world today. The Afghan war seems based on deceit as the the road to democracy is still full of potholes. Do the Afghans want western democracy? Probably not. But all these wars help the arms industry, the corruption merchants and the fevered brows of politicians. I’d be all in favour of a war in Afghanistan if I was convinced the Aghans were either going to invade Britain or bomb us. I’d also be in favour of war if they’d invaded a neighbour. But neither is true. All we’ve got is a re-education programme for Taliban types who don’t really want re-educating. What they need is something else. They need to be told that the poppy crops are going to be ploughed up. Without the drugs trade they have no power. The Islamic world would support that. But they will not take kindly to so-called western imperialism. Will we ever learn?
With the Wikileaks still leaking, politicians are getting jumpy. If they think that trumped up charges are a good way to deal with this then they will get it back in double doses. Whatever one may think of Julian Assange and his motives, it will look very bad indeed if the rape charges against him are found to be the work of “operatives in the field”. That will just make matters worse. In fact, it will be a calamity all round. Nobody will feel safe from such draconian ways which will inhibit free speech and democratic discussion.
Most people concur now that the House of Commons did wrong in having an expenses culture that they had. Nearly everyone concurs that they were wrong to try to suppress it in the devious way some of them tried to do. Now we see the possibility of the American government going after Assange. If they do it illegally or in an underhand way then many more will rise up to vent against them.
In Britain the coalition government pledged honesty and transparity as its hallmark. Is it tarnished already?
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