There is a global outcry against the arrest and detainment of Julian Assange, the Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, in a London-based prison on the charges of sexual assault.
This can only be described as an attempt to silence Assange, as his attorney Bjorn Hurtig, who is representing Assange in Sweden says that both women have hidden agendas and he has information which can prove Assange's innocence if only he is allowed to reveal it.
He states that,
"If I could tell the British courts, I suspect it would make extradition a moot point. But at the moment I'm bound by the rules of the Swedish legal system, which say that the information can only be used as evidence in this country. For me to do otherwise would lead to me being disbarred."
A week after the release of
CableGate, a large amount of classified information, the tide of government disapproval and wrath has turned on Assange. In his article 'Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths' in
The Australian, Assange says,
"I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated."
It is shocking how supposedly democratic countries like the United States and France seem to be just as oppressive of the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of Press as China and its counterparts when they themselves are targeted. Australia has also decided to join the ranks of these nations, if only by mere inaction and sycophantic reaction to allegations against WikiLeaks.
Assange has countered all the accusations against him by pointing out that the information he has disclosed has not harmed anyone and no sensitive intelligence methods has been disclosed. The only people it has hit are people with something to hide from the public, which apparently includes the Pope.
Several military organizations and other intelligence operations have confirmed that WikiLeaks has not released information which might endanger troops' lives nor put national security in jeopardy.
This, however, did not diminish pressure against major Internet hosting and financial service providers like Amazon, Paypal and MasterCard which promptly booted WikiLeaks off their servers or blocked its accounts. Even the Library of Congress has blocked WikiLeaks on insubstantial counts.
The good thing is that people are not keeping silent over this rampant disregard of their rights. Several big shots as well as bloggers from all over the world are protesting and making a difference.
'Hacktivists'(Operation:Payback) attacked MasterCard, Visa and Paypal with DDOS(Distributed Denial of Service) and brought them down. A similar attack on Amazon was not successful.
Several voices including Reporters Without Borders, Republican Congressman Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez are openly supporting WikiLeaks.
"In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble," Ron Paul wrote on Twitter.
Reporters Without Borders says it can only condemn this determination to hound Assange and reiterates its conviction that WikiLeaks has a right under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to publish these documents and is even playing a useful role by making them available to journalists and the greater public.
We should understand ... that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. — Noam Chomsky
And yet, has any government so far changed its stance on the matter based on the voice of the people?
Has Julian Assange been promised a fair trial?
Is the Internet the unbiased medium we think it is?
These are the questions on our minds as we witness one of the most scandalous attempts to cover up damaging information from the public by so-called democratic nations.
