More reactions to Wikileaks

Yeah, here I am again. Yes, the topic is still Wikileaks.
Well, I just read a great article on this over at Counterpunch. Here is the link to the article. I think it is very worth your time to read this one. Mr. Johnson gives a good view of the latest leaks and illiteracy. A very good article and a fresh point of view.www.counterpunch.org/johnson12092010.html

OK, another article that I recommend to you folks. I agree that the leaks and literacy go together. If you cannot read, the leaks don't mean anything much to you. If you are unable to read, you would never be here in fact. While you might play video games, you surely would not ever check many web sites. Without being literate, you would be severely handicapped. In fact, you would be on par with the likes of Beck and failin' Palin in my opinion. Those tow may be able to read, well, not much serious reading, but I would bet they are both able to get through things like the readers I had back in my grade school days. You older folks know what I mean. They went like this "See Dick. See Dick run. Run Dick, run". Yep, sort of a Forrest Gump type of deal. Hey, it worked, well, it got me reading any way.
By keeping so many documents classified, we are kept from having that information. In effect, the classifying of so much information, makes us some what illiterate. That is a very good reason to support Wikileaks, as if we needed another. Yes, governments DO have a very legitimate need to keep some things secret. However, the US government has gone way over board, my opinion. We classify far more than you might think. Read the article I linked to above. The number of classified documents on a yearly basis will surprise you. And that is just what the US government has done in a given year. Here is a clue. The number of classified documents exceed the total number of published documents by the US, UK, China, Russia, and Germany!  No kidding, read the article. Told you it was a surprise. A huge amount gets classified, and most for no "real" reason other than because they CAN do so.
George Carlin is supposed top have said that if you have an illiterate and greedy population, you will have illiterate and greedy politicians/leaders. No kidding. 
Outfits like Wikileaks do us all a great service. As far as I have seen, there are no persons named who are in any danger from the leaks. They did not expose the true names of any spies, to the best of my knowledge so far. From what I have seen of the newest leaked documents, all that they released are basically gossip and other basically trivial things. That "we" disrespect our counter parts in other countries should be no new news to them nor us. Americans ARE, as a group, very arrogant. The book The Ugly American is more or less true. It was when it was published, and I would bet that it is even more true today. "We" have become ever more arrogant than ever. "We" claim to be the ONLY" indispensable country". And that was back in the days when Billy Bob Bubba was president and his Secretary of State, yep, old Mad-ass Al (not so)bright was saying things like the 500,000 dead Iraqi children due to US imposed sanctions was "worth it"! Imagine, had that been a foreign person saying such, how America would have reacted to such a statement. No doubt "we" would have put on our very best "excuse me" face and demanded that person apologize and then be fired and/or jailed for such an indecent comment on a national news program. Oh, but it was an American Secretary of State and "we" are oh so nice and all that bullshit. Yeah, sure "we" are.
Don't  get me wrong, as individuals, Americans can be and are some of the nicest, most caring, and giving people you could ever meet. As a country, or government, well, that is a very different story.  Just look at New Orleans after hurricane Katrina came through the Gulf area. Yeah, and that was a city and area in our own country! And now, how can anybody seriously believe that "we" don't bad mouth the diplomats of other countries? Please, give me a break. Or, maybe I could interest you in a bridge in New York perhaps?
Wikileaks is a needed group. No, maybe not the very people who are running it, but an organization and people like them ARE needed. We need those who are able to pull back the curtain and let us all see that the "wizard" is just some small man behind the big curtain. Yes, there will always be some things that governments DO need to keep secret. What we do need is better access to information. Not every communication/document from the government needs to be classified as "top secret" or even secret. Of course the government will continue to withhold as mush as they can. Knowledge IS power and they want it all for themselves. What Wikileaks did, and this really pisses off the powerful, is to have given knowledge to us common folks. And that gives us power. Those who have it never, ever want to share any of their power. We need Wikileaks and more folks like them, now and into the future.
semper fi