Is it just me, or does it really seem like Democracy is a dead ideal? We like to think that states like Australia, the USA and the UK are truly democratic states, but here we have a whistle blower scenario taking place, where someone has decided to hold the US government to account, and the potential future president of the USA basically wants him to be locked away, or even treated like an enemy combatant and shot down.
His actions may be "treasonous" (and I use inverted comma's because he is not American), but maybe the American people, and the rest of the world, need to wake up and realise that they have no real power. The ideal of democracy is dead. No one in power is there to represent their people, they are there to control the world and make sure that the people they want on top stay there.
Our institutions are so corrupted, outdated and broken but people aren't using the little power they have to do something about it. Thank God that we have people like Bradley Manning and Julian Assange who are willing to risk their own lives in order to hold governments to account.
