Operation Payback: WikiLeaks Supporters Open a Can of Whoop Ass

[Joanne98]

According to the AP, online activists and WikiLeaks supporters have launched DDOS attacks on the MasterCard website and managed to crash it. Also targeted were a Swiss bank, Swedish prosecutors and others involved in suppression of Wikileaks revelations. The action by online activists is a clear reprisal for Visa and MasterCard unilaterally moving to block donations from their cardholders to support WikiLeaks and the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London on trumped up sex crimes charges in Sweden.

As always happens when economic and governmental elites face challenges to their legitimacy, the Powers That Be (PTB) manage to coalesce and bring the full force of economic, political and legal pressure to bear. Others can and have covered the the news itself but I want to focus on the raw political possibility here.

In my view, one of the most powerful prima facie pieces of evidence pointing to how out of control world elites are is the necessity of WikiLeaks. Ostensibly, we in the United States are supposed to have an open society. However, the full breadth of government and economic elite furor over the WikiLeaks revelations make apparent just how much of an illusion that is. Our leaders hide massive amounts of information from us, asking us to trust them when they have repeatedly violated the social contract and betrayed our trust. From the Iraq war and lies about WMD to the financial crisis and lies about the necessity of bailing out the Global Banking Cartel to save the real economy, abusive states like the United States federal government must be challenged and transformed to preserve the rule of law and basic human rights. . . .
Economic and political elites in the West are so entrenched in the neoliberal Washington consensus that electoral solutions have failed to work. In 2006 and 2008, the American people thought they were voting for transformational change, to begin a new era with a transformational new President in Barack Obama. What we got was a transactional president and ruling Democratic Party, intent on maintaining status quo power centers in the economy in government. In the face of fundamental challenges to a broken system that has stopped working for the vast majority of Americans and looming environmental catastrophe, instead our newly empowered leaders doubled down on the failed policies and politics of the past.

What was needed in the U.S. after the darkness of the Reagan/Clinton/Bush era was a return to the rule of a law and policy making based on what was best for most Americans. If our leaders are going to fail us over and over again at transforming the system it falls to the people to force the transformation themselves. WikiLeaks is the single greatest tool the people of the world have at their disposal to force change. Exposing the malfeasance of governments, corporations and elite individuals has the potential to fundamentally alter how people view and interact with government. These changes in public consciousness are necessary, and we should all be thankful that WikiLeaks for throwing sunlight all over the corrupt institutions and ossified politicians that make decisions based not on whats best for people, but for elites.

http://my.firedoglake.com/oneouter/2010/12/08/operation-payback-wikileaks-supporters-open-a-can-of-whoop-ass/

[sabrina 1]

1. Rec'd but it was cancelled out by an unrec, just for the record.

Excellent post.

People in the U.S. have not yet grasped the importance of Wikileaks. But how could they when the media reports on them from the memos they get from the government.

What we have learned from the irrational and out-of-control way they have gone after Wikileaks, is how dangerous it would be for American journalists to try to tell the truth to the people.

Joe Lieberman today confirmed the worst fears of those who have spoken out against the persecution of Wikileaks when he called for an investigation of the NYT.

Wikileaks has the potential to change the world, by exposing corruption and lies and if the governments who have not feared exposure, who operate with no oversight, up to now, begin to fear that exposure, there will be less work for Wikileaks to do.

This was a brilliant concept.

As we heard so often from those supporting spying on the American people ~ 'If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear'.

[newtothegame]

2. Is it a can of whoop ass if the PTB 1) don't notice and 2) wouldn't care if they did notice?

:shrug: