The discussion centered around the Wikileaks revelations has raised many issues and gone in a lot of different directions but if you can connect the dots, you can see that they’re all inter-related. One discussion thread lead to local governments v.s big governments, schools, illegal immigrants, China and the implied superiority of the American Way Of Life. The following is an excerpt of my contribution.
BTW – local governments, school boards, planning commissions, etc.; democratic in theory, highly susceptible to corruption in practice. Why don’t schools have money? tax cuts and a shrinking economy. Why has the economy shrunk? Hmm. Maybe it has something to do with the huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 2%. And where’d most of the good paying jobs in manufacturing go anyway? Hey, look! I found them. They’re all in China. How’d that happen? Was it because those Chinese are so industrious and thrifty that they were able to build up their industrial capacity and beat us at our own game? No – it was because there was a huge transfer of technology and capital from the West to China. Those smart capitalists took all that money they stole-I mean earned, thanks to generous tax breaks and deregulation courtesy of their friends in very high places and invested in China. Why China, you ask? Why not say Russia? There are, no doubt, more natural resources there. Well, Russia is just a crazy, fractious, corrupt, incompetent country and – let’s face it – they’re lazy. Plus, there were too many different crime groups to pay off. China is the polar opposite: stable, orderly, rigid and they are hardworking. The capitalists knew exactly who they had to pay off (the Party) but the most important thing China has going for it is a virtually inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. We certainly don’t have that here in the USA. What we do have is a paradigm that values property rights over human rights and a way of life (if you can call it that) that is environmentally unsustainable. We also have a ruling class that will go to any lengths to maintain it’s power.
Case in point: The ruling elite frequently leaks information when it serves them. Karl Rove & Co. leaked sensitive information outing CIA covert operative Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband, Joe Wilson, daring to tell the truth about the non-existence of WMD’s in Iraq thereby directly resulting in the deaths of innocent people. I know Libby took the fall for that but no one spent a day in prison for that crime.
REPLY:
Who ever leaked the information about Valarie Planme should be sitting in jail.
REPLY (me):Should be but they won’t and I don’t imagine that whoever it is is too worried about that possibility. That’s why it’s so important to expose not only the lies and deceptions but the mind-set behind these actions. They believe that they are above the law (the evidence thus far indicates this is so) and when they are cornered, they offer up some low-level loyal soldier like LIbby. I don’t care if the motives and ethics of Assange are suspect, this information needs to become public so citizens can be informed about what their gov’t is doing in their name even if it risks lives. That’s the price of freedom.
