{"id":8688,"date":"2011-11-14T08:54:48","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T13:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=8688"},"modified":"2011-11-14T08:54:48","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T13:54:48","slug":"commentary-how-money-handlers-muzzled-wikileaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/11\/14\/commentary-how-money-handlers-muzzled-wikileaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary: How money-handlers muzzled WikiLeaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The McClatchy<\/em> Commentary: How money-handlers muzzled WikiLeaks<\/strong><\/a> starts off with the following:<\/p>\n

A comment posted to London\u2019s Guardian newspaper said it best: \u201cCensorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.\u201d The writer, somebody called \u201cedensasp,\u201d was referring to news that WikiLeaks \u2014 the online whistleblower that has been embarrassing governments and corporations worldwide by disclosing their secrets \u2014 was suspending operations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union, Amazon and Bank of America cut off processing contributions to WikiLeaks.\u00a0 Contrary to what the commentary may seem to\u00a0 imply, I doubt very much that these companies took it upon themselves to take a concerted effort to close down WikiLeaks.\u00a0 I would suspect that there was the hand of the U.S. government coordinating if not coercing these companies to take this action.<\/p>\n

To me, this effort is very reminiscent\u00a0 of the action the government took to shut down the anti-war news organizations just prior to World War I.\u00a0 In that case they removed the second class mail privileges for the newspapers and magazines to distribute their product at an affordable rate.\u00a0 Of course, what few remained\u00a0 that were able to keep publishing found that their editors were put in jail for violating the newly minted and unconstitutional\u00a0 anti-sedition laws.\u00a0 No doubt, if Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, had found a way to continue, he would have ended up in jail.\u00a0 Sweden was in the process of doing just that for allegations of sexual misdeeds.\u00a0 Sweden may yet succeed.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Be afraid.\u00a0 Be very afraid.\u00a0 And take to the streets in protest much like the Occupy Everywhere movement is doing.\u00a0 If we don’t protect what our Bill of Rights “guarantees” us, you can be sure no one else will.\u00a0 There is no guarantor of these rights but we the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The McClatchy Commentary: How money-handlers muzzled WikiLeaks starts off with the following: A comment posted to London\u2019s Guardian newspaper said it best: \u201cCensorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.\u201d The writer, somebody called \u201cedensasp,\u201d was referring to news that WikiLeaks \u2014 the online whistleblower that has been embarrassing governments and corporations worldwide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8689,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8688\/revisions\/8689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}