Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Dear Mr. President,

If you’ve seen any of my letters or emails this month, which I doubt you have, many have been concerned with WikiLeaks and your administration’s attempts to silence them and put them out of business. As I wrote in one of my letters, I read all the articles the New York Times published about the “secret” diplomatic cables and I didn’t really see why everyone got so twisted up over them. I mean, I can understand why Sarah Palin called Mr. Assange an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands,” Mike Huckabee said he should be executed, and Senator Lieberman wanted him tried for treason (in spite of the fact that he’s not an American citizen) - these are all right-wing nut cases, but even your Secretaries of State and Defense were happy when he got arrested by the Brits on that Swedish rape charge and tossed in the clink. I been thinking about that, Mr. President, about why these people are so incensed about Americans seeing the truth and then it hit me: Of course! knowledge is power, secrets are knowledge, a way to control and keep authority. Like the Catholic Church forbidding anyone but priests to read the Bible in the early days. It took me a while to get it, but there it is, Mr. President, and I sure hope you’re not part of that conspiracy to silence. As I’ve said a number of times before, I think Julian Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning are heroes. They have this unique idea that corruption and hypocrisy and double-dealing should be exposed, that free people, to remain free, need information about what their representatives are doing, about what their government and their armies are doing. I see in the paper this morning a picture of you with your daughters in Hawaii ordering a shave ice and for the first time in a long time, you don’t have that scissor-mouthed mask on; you’re actually smiling and looking happy. That’s a face I can trust, Mr. President, and I hope it stays on for awhile, permanently. So now I’ll end today’s letter with my usual plea to release Pfc. Bradley Manning from solitary confinement, call off the dogs on Julian Assange and quit trying to shut down WikiLeaks. By the way, I see there’s another web site about to start up similar to WikiLeaks called Open Leaks. Three cheers for democracy!

Aloha, Mr. President