Don't Let Them Kill Activism
"Aral Balkan has not blogged in over a year," a friend has noted. Balkan used to routinely speak out against GAFAM and in favour of Software Freedom, to some extent (he moved to GNU/Linux). He was also a supporter of Wikileaks. No blog posts since June 2025.
In the case of Wikileaks, no publications in nearly 5 years (August 2021; two months later they made a short announcement) and not even a tweet since June 2026:
No tweet in over 2 months.
The co-founder of Cryptome, John Young, died last year. Cryptome was like a precursor or 'predecessor' of Wikileaks.
The Cryptome site is still online, but not active since last year:
Notice above "Reference Assange Extradition Hearing"
That page has a reference to a statement linked or attributed to John Young's support of Assange. It should be noted, in hindsight at least, that on numerous occasions before his death Young said he too should be treated like Assange and if Assange was to face the death penalty (or life in prison) in the US, then so should he; the point he was making is not hard to understand, as Assange was selectively and brutally handled by the same country where Young lived.
Are the oligarchs shutting the lid on activism and whistleblowers?
This is what Young said:
The other PDF is a "Correction on Cryptome Publication of State Department Cables".
Last year the EFF was quick to capitalise on Young's death, but today's EFF does not protect whistleblowers and it did not defend Wikileaks. That's just the EFF's opportunistic PR. We'll say a lot more about the EFF's mishandling of whistleblowers in the future.
It should be noted that the same loser who kept defaming Assange as "rapist" was trying to put my wife and I in prison as recently as last month by paying lawyers over $130,000 for a single hearing that he did not even attend (despite being in London at the time). Just minutes before the hearing began they tried to make secret offers to my wife.
The surviving co-founder of Cryptome is Deborah Natsios, who is still active. █
Image source: Aral Balkan