Social media functions as a public meeting place that, beyond its tendency to sometimes enclose us in bubbles, allows us to sound out opinions on current events. Recently, for instance, we have been able to witness the demand that a certain part of the left close ranks with the government of Evo Morales regarding the political crisis following the presidential election in Bolivia.

Here, to close ranks means that any analysis of the situation that entails a certain level of complexity is rejected out of hand. If anyone dares to criticize the Morales government’s policies or echo the popular discontent contained in the protests against him, they can only be serving Yankee imperialism.

As several nations in South America are going through their worst economic-political-institutional crises, Uruguay —which has survived the neoliberal wave in the region— is going to face elections on October 27 that might change a  system that has been benefiting most of its population.

Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.

Silenced and cut off from the outside world, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the last six years with no access to sunlight, fresh air, or proper medical treatment. Furthermore, last March President Lenin Moreno’s Ecuadorian government cut his access to the internet, phone calls and even visitors and journalists. For a man who has already been confined to the embassy for so long, these restrictions are particularly harsh.

I began working as one of WikiLeaks’ media partners in 2009, before Assange and WikiLeaks published such bombshells as the “Collateral Murder” video. Over the last nine years, I have partnered with WikiLeaks on behalf of my newspaper, the Italian daily La Repubblica to work on the Podesta emails and many of its other secret files, except for those that WikiLeaks released without media partners: the DNC emails, the Saudi Cables, Turkey’s ruling party emails, the Hacking Team documents, the Collateral Murder video and the Brennan emails.