By Joe Johnson (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 2, 2011
Love them for their brazen exposing of truth or despise them for their lack of discretion, WikiLeaks is a pinnacle of free speech.
Last month marked the non-profit organization’s five year anniversary. But if their current financial situation persists, it may also prove to be the last. WikiLeaks’s reputation has been built on its blatant disregard for publishing government and corporate information. And while this has raised it to worldwide prominence, it has also created many powerful enemies.
Although there had been contempt flying around since its inception, it was when 251,287 unredacted US diplomatic cables were released that the issues began to get serious. No government worldwide was safe from having their secrets and names exposed. Take that with documents on big business, such as the devastating information on Bank of America that is supposedly out there, and you get the picture that those enemies might align.
And align they did. Deemed a “financial blockade,” companies that had been facilitating the donations on which WikiLeaks depends have put on the monetary stranglehold. Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and Bank of America are all part of the systematic plan to force the wiki into silence. On December 7, 2010, these financial institutions stopped processing any money directed to WikiLeaks. As a result, their revenue streams have shrivelled to a miniscule five per cent of their previous value forcing them to run off of their dwindling cash reserves.
The significance of this is now coming to bear as they will be near bankruptcy by the end of the year. Last week founder Julian Assange gave a press conference in which he stated “In order to ensure our future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend all publishing operations in order to direct all our resources into fighting the blockade and raising funds.” So WikiLeaks is now in the pre-litigation stage in both North America and Europe. But even if the courts ends up deciding that this is not in fact an illegal anti-trust action, it is at least abhorrently unethical.
Now on the political side of things, understandably governments don’t want their information freely available. Senator Joe Lieberman, in a response last year to Amazon’s decision to cease hosting the WikiLeaks website, had stated “I call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them.” And yes, obviously the case can be made that some information can put citizens at risk. Nevertheless I am of the staunch belief that WikiLeaks does far more good by keeping those in power accountable.
But if you might ask why it’s such a big deal for these financial service companies to choose who they provide business for, or believe that it’s their private company to do at will with, the bigger issue at hand here is the suppression of knowledge by the powerful, controlling, elite. These are American corporations forcing a website hosted in Sweden out of business, all in an effort to make sure that people don’t learn unflattering truths about the institutions they support. This is the same issue that is at the core of the Occupy movement; corporate and government interests alike furthered by money and greed at the expense of society.
WikiLeaks will always be a target of attack and rhetoric in an effort to detract and diminish their support. And over time this will be tried through raising questions such as: Is WikiLeaks journalism, and therefore should it be bound to journalistic standards? Or, is Assange in fact guilty of sex-crimes in Sweden? Whatever you think of Assange or WikiLeaks itself, these are merely side issues designed to chip away at the cornerstone of one of the greatest gifts of freedom we have.
To put it ever so succinctly, our society is in a world of hurt if we don’t have the ability keep the powers that be accountable.
