Hypocrisy, hype and highly speculative, but .....?

According to the BBC, "Wikileaks has so far released more than 1,100 of 251,000 secret US cables." This, of course, means that the revelatons from Wikileaks will have a similar life expectancy to that perennial Orwellian "war on terror", which we find ourselves in. Is Julian Assange Osama Bin Laden's alter ego? The one elusive the other in prison for not wearing a condom while having consensual sex. No doubt, we should at least look who is looking to gain from  the "war on terror" and who is accumulating the brownie points from the Wikileaks revelations. Anything else is pure speculation!

However, what we do have is today news that a senior US official in Lagos, describes China as "aggressive and pernicious". Is this news? Despite the West having plundered Africa during centuries of colonisation and having continued that plundering through the World Bank and the IMF, is it not to be expected that a "US official" might find China "aggressive and pernicious"? After all, there is China dealing with the unsavoury Omar al Bashir and the equally obnoxious Robert Mugabe. Yes, two not too nice people to be sure, but wait, stop, think? .... and when we do so ......?

When the Wikileak cables reveal the US Assistant Secretary for African affairs, Johnnie Carson, as saying that "China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons,", are we to be given the impression that the United States is actually in Africa for altruistic reasons. Does anyone actually believe that America is in Africa to "push democracy and capitalism"?  ..... alright, alright, "capitalism" yes! Or to be more accurate that disaster capitalism of the Chicago school variety that has left millions dead and dying all throughout the third world. That capitalism that allows ten million people to die in Central and East Africa, while American, British, German and French companies plunder the region. However, the United States is in Africa promoting democracy? Of course, any cursory glance at Washington's friends, in Africa and elsewhere, is enough to reveal this contention for the blatant lie that it is. China might not be in Africa for purely altruistic reasons, but the hypocrisy of a West that has been and is still nothing but bad news for that continent is nauseating.

Nevertheless, this is about as much a revelation as the disclosures that we are getting from Wikileaks is, and that has to be the point; do we really need to read the mainstream media report the stance taken by the US government as if it is worthwhile news? All the more so as we are only at 1,100 plus of some 251,000 "no-longer" secret US cables that are going to be released .... if Osama Bin Laden didn't exist, they would have had to invent him ..... and if we thought he would be a hard act to follow; well, it is over to you Julian Assange. If nothing else, a bottom up reading of the "news" reporting on the documents being released, would at least suggest that it is not all bad "news" for Uncle Sam.