The wiki-leaks scandal and daily plight of founder Jullian Assange has cumulated into a sobering look at how world governments, diplomatic relations and big business sport sore toes as a result of the troves of blistering confidential information this organization has been responsible for releasing. It's something akin to the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Running Man". Around the world, millions of internet users connect to search engines, pushing wiki-leaks to #13 most searched on yahoo. This is despite the fact that the U.S. military has banned all servicemen from accessing wiki-leaks websites and any discussion on social networks. Interestingly enough, any of the approximatively 100,000 pages of classified information published by wiki-leaks is accessible by most servicemen with standard clearance. Most notably is the fact that all of the information available is no more classified than the New York Times usually - and does - publish.
To understand exactly what is going on behind the scenes is as simple as understanding the forces that are oppressing him. This is not just a simple case of some rogue informant collecting and dumping documents that are a threat to national security or threaten world peace.
World Peace, as we know it, is very much in control at the moment, despite what you've heard or where you've heard it. Government relations are always loud, boisterous, accusatory, and perpetually unresolved. But thankfully the nations of the earth will not burst into flame from nuclear holocaust, mostly because the world economy is doing just hunky-dory. In fact, it's doing so well that World Bankers have generated historic, unprecedented profit margins.
In a rare interview with Forbes magazine, Jullian Assange says:
"Early next year... a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.
This, in effect, is firing a shot over the bow of the most powerful institution in the world. The financial crisis of 2009 was never in any great danger of collapsing. It was rather more of a shedding of toxic assets that burdened the Institution. It created a monster with American-tooled package loans, then forced world governments to bail out their respective central banks, who were doing nothing more then washing their hands after hanging out all the clean money.
With this kind of clout, it is no surprise to anyone when the very next day a smear campaign was launched against Mr. Assange, calling for his arrest in Sweden. It appears that having unprotected sex with a Swedish citizen will get you an arrest warrant with Interpol. The foreseeable impact on future tourism in still unknown, but for Mr. Assange, who is known to currently reside in Sweden, it almost seems as if his holiday is over, as colleagues and fans across the web suggest he step forward and face this farce square on. Others claim that by hiding, public opinion may not always side with him. Still others, such as this writer, deeply believe that being autonomous is a critical key to maintaining as publisher this drive he has as 'crusader of information'.
Thursday, a DDOS attack on Wikileaks server forced EveryDNS.net to drop service, and shortly after, Amazon.com servers dropped them under pressure from the U.S. Government. Saturday, PayPal announced it was closing it's account to Wikileaks and Jullian Assange. Today, Sweden announced that the Swiss will no longer handle his incoming snail mail.
If Mr. Assange has anything to fear he's not showing it. Wiki-leaks has released a file that it dubbed "it's insurance policy". The file is encrypted with a code that is so strong it is deemed impossible to break. It is said to be planning to release key that unlocks the files if anything happens to the site or or it's founder, Jullian Assange.
For every person who thinks that secrets should be kept, there are three who believe in transparency.
The powers that be would rather you not know about their dirty laundry. This is the future battlefield for freedom of information. The war for transparency begins now.
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