The McClatchy Commentary: How money-handlers muzzled WikiLeaks starts off with the following:

A comment posted to London’s Guardian newspaper said it best: “Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.” The writer, somebody called “edensasp,” was referring to news that WikiLeaks — the online whistleblower that has been embarrassing governments and corporations worldwide by disclosing their secrets — was suspending operations.

Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union, Amazon and Bank of America cut off processing contributions to WikiLeaks.  Contrary to what the commentary may seem to  imply, I doubt very much that these companies took it upon themselves to take a concerted effort to close down WikiLeaks.  I would suspect that there was the hand of the U.S. government coordinating if not coercing these companies to take this action.

To me, this effort is very reminiscent  of the action the government took to shut down the anti-war news organizations just prior to World War I.  In that case they removed the second class mail privileges for the newspapers and magazines to distribute their product at an affordable rate.  Of course, what few remained  that were able to keep publishing found that their editors were put in jail for violating the newly minted and unconstitutional  anti-sedition laws.  No doubt, if Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, had found a way to continue, he would have ended up in jail.  Sweden was in the process of doing just that for allegations of sexual misdeeds.  Sweden may yet succeed.

We live in very dangerous times when the so-called progressive administration of Barack Obama sees no problem with illegally silencing the voices of dissent.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.  And take to the streets in protest much like the Occupy Everywhere movement is doing.  If we don’t protect what our Bill of Rights “guarantees” us, you can be sure no one else will.  There is no guarantor of these rights but we the people.