The reaction to Wikileaks can accurately be described as hysterical, in the sense of uncontrolled emotional outbursts. Prominent North Americans including Sarah Palin have issued death threats against Julian Assange. In Canada, the Prime Minister's former campaign manager issued such a death threat, and a lawyer has issued a legal challenge against the threatener. It would seem that in the USA there is no law against issuing a death threat, or if there is such a law, nobody cares about it. We shall see.
What is notable is that there has been swift and effective action taken against Wikileaks' financial assets. I was among the last to make a Paypal donation, before Paypal closed the Wikileaks account. They have frozen about 60,000 Euros of Wikileaks assets according to the BBC.
The Swiss have also frozen Julian Assange's personal accounts, on the technicality that he was not domiciled in Switzerland. I wonder what proportion of accounts in Swiss banks would have to be closed if that principle were generally applied.
The US is attacking Assnge with more efficiency than they attack terrorists, organised crime, arms dealers and the like.
I took an interest in the freezing of terrorists' bank accounts back in November 2004. Basically, I had been writing to the FCO asking about this. Naturally, they said it was all covered, then it turned out that they had not touched the assets of a very prominent terrorist. More here.
Interestingly, Bush had avoided touching that terrorist, despite twice having a chance of topping him.
His name was Abu Musab Al-Zaqarwi.
So they regard Assange as worse than a terrorist, at least in terms of the
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