Last week, when Wikileaks released over 250,000 classified diplomatic documents, governments shuddered at the precedent of so many secrets being made public. These documents reveal, as described by MIT professor Noam Chomsky, a “Profound hatred for democracy on the part of [US] political leadership.”
Alongside this release, Wikileaks head honcho Julian Assange also mentioned how their next big leak will expose one or more large banks, and how they have such a backlog of leaks that they have stopped accepting new ones.
Since this release, many events have transpired to highlight the US government’s response to pressure organizations that support Wikileaks:
- Julian Assange had an arrest warrant issued by Interpol
- Amazon stopped hosting the Wikileaks website
- DNS provider EveryDNS dropped support for Wikileaks, temporarily taking Wikileaks.org offline (although it can still be accessed directly via http://213.251.145.96/ )
- Paypal seized Wikileaks account used for donations, accusing them of illegal doings.
Clearly the price to maintain open governments is high, and the brunt of this is currently being paid by Wikileaks and their fearless leader. As Ron Paul tweeted, “In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.”
As we transform our world into one where the people are in charge – not banks, corporations or governments – these efforts made by Wikileaks and others will be looked upon as pivotal moments in the fight against corruption and secrecy.
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By insisting on the prosecution of Julian Assange, politicians have only risked bumping him to cult hero status.