We had a course in High School called Americanism vs Communism it was part of the Social Studies curriculum. I had the assignment to read Alas Babylon and give a report on it to the class. My report was pretty condemning of the Cold War and America's stance against the Soviet Union. I got an A+ on it. 

To me WikiLeaks only substantiates suspicions that I already had but could not prove. What I find is a shame is that such a site had not been available sooner. There is so much hanky-panky that has gone on in Washington that we may never know about.

But then I am no patriot since I am not all together on anyone's side since nobody is all together on my side.

I heard this WikiLeaks thing was kinda porny. So I rushed out and bought the hardback version. 

You know, the nice, big print, full-colour, leather-bound, coffee-table version. Like the one Madonna put out.

I brought it home. Put it on the coffee-table.

Then pulled the coffee-table into the bathroom. 

I mean, who reads their porn in the living room? Eeeew.

Anyway, once I realized it wasn't all that porny, I was kinda disappointed. But then somebody told me that reading it would cause nations to go war, empires to fall and revolution to sweep the globe.

Which seemed like a good idea. Well, 3 good ideas, actually.

So I started reading faster.  

However, after 3 full days and nights, I was pouring in eye drops by the quart - but was still only on document #107.

Which left 249,893 to go.

So fuck me. At that rate, my reading wasn't likely to trigger a revolution until around the year 2525. Which started me humming that Zager and Evans song. You know.

In the year 2525,

If man is still alive,

If woman can survive,

Lalalalala.

Anyway. When I woke up, I decided I'd be better advised to read what the papers were saying, and in particular, the experts. The experts, however, were full of disagreement.

The first guy up was a very conservatively dressed diplomat, and he said that Assange was a secret Jewish homo child-molesting Australian rapist. Who would cause war and chaos to rain down upon the Earth, and who should probably be arrested by Interpol. Or maybe just get a big fucking drone sent up his ass. Whichever seemed easier.

He had a pipe, and I rather liked him.

But then another guy came on, a foreign policy expert, more on the spook and war front, but still. A nice European name and a thick accent PLUS a pipe. And he begged to differ. Which was such a nice phrase, I thought. "Begged to differ." Now THAT'S an educated phrase.

Manners.

Anyway, I decided to listen to him, close. And HIS view was that Assange was a secret Jewish homo child-molesting Australian rapist who would cause GREAT HOLY FUCKNG HELL to rain down upon the Earth, and COMMIES AND MUSLINS TO START INTERBREEDING, and goldfish to flow uphill, and teeth to become embedded in the Christ child's ass, and so Assange should be arrested for the Terrorism and be tortured by Cheney The Bloodless.

So that's where I stand.

A few years before your college experience (1957 to be exact) a poet/bookstore owner was put on trial for attempting to sell the poem Howl and Other Poems.  As Stanley Fish put it in his opinion piece Literary Criticism Comes to the Movies regarding the recent film Howl, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was put on trail for:

publishing and distributing an obscene work, that is, a work that appeals only to prurient interests, has a tendency to incite lustful thoughts and has no redeeming social or literary value.

A.O. Scott in his review of the same film relates:

During the trial scenes, when Ginsberg is absent (he didn’t attend), his role as explicator is taken up by attorneys, witnesses and even the judge. The trial turns into a seminar on literary criticism led by the befuddled prosecutor (David Strathairn) who, as he puts it, represents the “average man” trying gamely to figure out what these incantatory words and phrases might possibly signify, if anything. His method (quite reasonable) is to ask a succession of literary critics, brought in as expert witnesses, what does this line mean or why is this word relevant or why does this passage have literary value?

The answers are sometimes thematic (the poem is about “uprooted people wandering around,” says Mark Schorer, my department chair in the early 60’s), sometimes political (the poem is about despairing reactions to the post-World War II world), sometimes ideological (the poem is a protest against the depredations of capitalism), sometimes formal (the poem does not have a form, says a hostile critic; the words chosen convey the author’s intention says a more friendly one), sometimes evaluative (it’s not literature, says one witness; it stands the test of time and will be productive of other poems like it, says another). In one extended sequence there is an animated discussion of “Howl”’s relationship to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” And there is even an exchange between the defense attorney (played by Jon Hamm) and a wonderfully pompous English professor (played by Jeff Daniels) about the nature of originality and literary borrowing.

And all because Howl contained lines such as

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy.

Thankfully the judge chose to put aside the blinders and helped society (eventually) recaliberate its sense of the obscene and the inspiring.  (It is important to note that Ferlinghetti was found innocent not because the charges were ridiculous, but that the judge found Howl not obscene, thereby still maintaining the foundation that the government could censor that which was obscene.)

But these days it does seem we're seeing the best minds our of our generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…in need of a recaliberation, indeed.

I soon may be doing a bit of recalibrating myself after reading this from Mother Jones.

The memory of Spain wanting to prosecute several Bush officials (including Cheney) for allegedly permitting torture is still fresh.  It fizzled, and although I kept half an eye open for follow-up, nothing appeared on the radar.  Did I have blinders on?  Mebbe.   Or maybe I just didn't look hard enough.  Or maybe I was just waiting for a Wikileak.  Who knows?

This particular leak is disturbing in that I now have to readjust my opinion of the way the Obama administration, all the world governments actually, is handling the crimes of war and the criminals that commit them.

I did not wish to have to do that, Larry.  I did not.

Still, I prefer the truth.

My reaction to this effort to stifle contact with material that is now in the public domain was similar to yours, larryH.

It certainly seems to be un-democratic at the very least. Kinda' like something that would be cooked up as a policy decision by farm animals in a George Orwell novel, no?