Doug Henwood on Wikileaks

WikiLeaks: so much in the open

DOUG HENWOOD, Left Business Observer

Looking over this latest batch of WikiLeaks, I’m struck by how few surprises there are, and by how much of importance goes on pretty much in the open. An attentive reader of the news with a decent knowledge of history basically knows most of this stuff already.

I don’t mean this in the sense in which the bourgeois press is using it—by using the epithet “old news” to dismiss the significance of the revelations. What they want to dismiss is the truth that the U.S. (like most other nation–states, though they’re not as globally consequential) kills, cheats, and lies. It’s always useful to have documentary evidence of that truth. And it’s satisfying to get the juicy details of how Hillary Clinton signed an order to get Ban-Ki Moon’s credit card numbers.

But revelations like these are further proof that the conspiracist view of history, in which a secret cabal plans everything and everyone else is just an ignorant dupe, is wrong. Follow the news, and you’re pretty much aware of the major goings-on. Though no doubt the faithful 9/11 Truthers have a great explanation of why none of these leaks reveal how Dick Cheney wired the WTC to explode.

http://lbo-news.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks-so-much-in-the-open/