Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch Burning the
Messenger  The Persecution of Wikileaks   The just finished
Banned Books Week serves as a vivid reminder that we must be
vigilant about freedom of expression and freedom from
censorship. Absent this vigilance, we could wake up in a society
that not only bans books, but takes the next step and burns them
as well. The German writer, Heinrich Heine, extended this with
grim historical accuracy: “Where books are burned, it ends in
burning people.”  We can extend these thoughts about books into
the general area of censorship, military and government
censorship. Presently there is a landmark case, actually more of
an affair, involving the US government and WikiLeaks, the online
organization that provides anonymity for sources to leak
information. The US feels it has leaked too much information
about the wrong country, the US.  Mr. Obama, the Constitutional
law professor, had a lot to say about whistleblower protection
when aspiring to the presidency. As