smells like a garbage can

When you add it all up, there was really nothing earth-shattering in the latest Wikileaks batch. It's all stuff anybody who's got eyes pretty much knew or easily could have figured out.

What's cool about it is that the slick, media-created outer wrapping of the empire gets ripped away, and we see the sleazy operators and our often equally sleazy allies operating sleazily. It's like the scene in "Wizard of Oz" where the dog knocks the screen over and we see the little guy working the levers of the b.s. machine.

Understandably, there are some dorks people who get very upset when somebody like Julian Assange or Daniel Ellsberg comes along and pulls the empire's covers. On CNN I hear they're so upset they never talk about what's in the leaked documents, but only about catching Assange and stuff related to that. They're apoplectic over the audacity of someone so rude as to pull the lid off the garbage can, forcing all of us to see and smell what's inside.

They're really, really, really scared of Assange, and desperate to shut him up. This is the first time in a long time I've seen the guardians of empire and their apologists showing real fear, rather than the fake kind that informs all their blather about terrorism. For that reason, Julian Assange is a hero to me.