wed 08 dec 2010 18:28:21 — witte de withstraat
assange
recently julian assange's 'wikileaks' web site made public a lot of secret communications from US embassies around the world. before publication, US govt and pro-US mouthpieces were saying he would be endangering lives by publishing; after publication they said it wasn't so devastating. but every hosting company that mirrors wikileaks is being privately pressured to stop, including companies like amazon. and every means for people to contribute money to support wikileaks or to support assange's legal defense has been privately interfered with.
meanwhile sweden, via interpol, put assange on their most wanted list, not because he was charged with any crime, but because they wanted to question him about accusations of sex crimes made against him by two swedish women. as of yesterday assange had negotiated to turn himself in to police in london. there will be an effort to extradite him to sweden, just for questioning. but once he's in custody no one knows if maybe the swedish will conveniently turn him over to the americans.
in america a lot of people are crying for his head. public and elected figures are saying he should have been assassinated years ago.
so while the man has still not been charged with any crime, a massive 'unofficial' effort is underway to silence him and anyone like him who wants to use the internet to disclose state secrets.