WikiLeaks, Toto and "The Beast"

WikiLeaks reminds me of Toto, Dorothy’s little dog, in the Wizard of Oz. When Toto pulls back the curtain in Oz’s throne room, the emperor is revealed to be both less than and more than his public image. Now that the curtain has been pulled back for us by WikiLeaks, the Empire is similarly exposed. One can only become aware of how much secrecy our government engages in for the purpose of misleading its citizens. Noam Chomsky has observed that governments employ secrecy in order to protect themselves from their own citizens. This is certainly no less the case here where the United States has not only kept secrets from its own citizens, but is currently seeking to prolong the practice of deception by silencing anyone who has the audacity to pull back the curtain.

Among the latest obstructions, WikiLeaks has been rendered unable to participate in the world system of banking and commerce. Initially it was PayPal that severed WikiLeaks’ revenue stream; shortly thereafter Visa and MasterCard followed suit. PayPal has admitted that it was pressure from the US Government that prompted it to withdraw financial services from WikiLeaks. One wonders what that threat must have looked like. And, earlier, Amazon reneged on contracts as it jettisoned WikiLeaks from its servers.

It appears from all of this that one cannot participate in the World economic system without the specific permission of the US Government. If this sounds familiar, it is. Speaking of the World power identified as “the Beast”, the writer of Revelation observed: “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.” (Revelation 14:16-17) This is a disturbing description of the actions of a powerful dictatorship that is provided in Biblical literature. The same power also hurls fire from the sky. The picture given seems to apply in a rather sinister way to the World neoliberal, globalized banking and commerce system in which the United States is the prime force.

The PayPal action against WikiLeaks prompted me to contact PayPal by phone. I reached two separate operators who told me they were stationed in the Philippines. I told each of them that I wanted to cancel my PayPal account as a protest against the PayPal’s disruption of WikiLeaks’ revenue stream. As it turned out, neither agent admitted to knowing what WikiLeaks was. Needless to say, I did not bother to explore First Amendment implications with them. My next attempt to severe my account ties to PayPal took me to their web site. I was confronted with a complicated on-line form in which I would not have been able to register the reason for my displeasure even if I had been able to fill it out correctly. This brought back another memory from literature, Kafka's “The Castle." The castle is there above us. From it flow the powers of commerce and truth. It would seem that our lives depend upon it. But there is no two-way communication. Check your hand. Check your forehead. Read the cables.