Who is the most important human being on planet Earth? It’s an interesting question, and the answer will depend on what’s important to you, your personal values, and your worldview.

If you’re Roman Catholic, you might say it’s the Pope. If you subscribe to the narrative of the ruling class, you might say it’s whoever controls the most powerful military. If you’ve dug a little deeper into what the ruling class actually values, you might say it’s whoever controls the most money. But if you place primary importance on the actual benefit of mankind, and ask yourself who is doing the most to help humanity, right now there is one name that stands out above all the others.

Julian Assange Is a Global Hero for Exposing Criminal Power Elite. https://t.co/fkoJa9ZWOS — Glen Woodfin (@GlenWoodfin) October 22, 2016

Julian Assange is the most important human being on earth right now because he’s been doing more than anyone else to address humanity’s most urgent problem: government opacity.

Let me explain.

What are humanity’s greatest existential threats? I can think of three, and if you agree with me about even one of them, you’ll understand how I’ve come to my conclusion.

1. War

War creates failed states, collapses infrastructures, gives rise to chaos and terrorism, causes unimaginable human suffering, and depending on where that war is happening, there can be greater and greater risk of someone causing the end of everything by deploying a nuclear warhead, either accidentally, on purpose, or a mixture of the two as a result of unforeseen events arising in the chaos of war.

2. Institutional Ecocide

Institutional ecocide is arguably an even greater threat than war, with many climatologists saying we’re either approaching or already past a dangerous ecosystemic tipping point which can cause climate chaos and extreme temperatures that will collapse industrial agriculture, leading to world famine and possible total desertification, which would likely mean human extinction.

3. Widespread Systemic Oppression

On the other side of the coin, an equally horrific thought would be humans losing their own humanity, losing all freedom of thought, information, and expression to a democidal and increasingly Orwellian slave state.

#Orwell #GeorgeOrwell #1984 #BigBrother #PoliticalCorrectness #PoliticallyIncorrect #Authoritarianism #Totalitarianism #LasVegas #Vegas A photo posted by Roger Bennett ???? (@rogercbennett) on Oct 24, 2016 at 2:05am PDT

I think most of us can agree that any of the above three occurrences would demonstrate a spectacular a failure for our species and that any degree of their manifestation would be greatly undesirable.

Trust me, I’m getting to Julian in a minute.

The one unifying foundation underlying all of these threats is government. Governments go to war, governments determine environmental policy, and governments can oppress the public. Governments also have the power to prevent the aforementioned disasters from happening.

What determines whether a government is beneficent or warlike, ecocidal and oppressive? For most major countries, the countries with the most power to impact humanity in terms of war, ecocide and oppression, the means is democracy. Giving the people a voice in how their country is run takes power out of the hands of those who can benefit and profit from war, ecocide, and oppression, and gives power to those who suffer as a result of those things.

That’s where Julian comes in. The public has no voice in how its country is being run if its own government is sabotaging and subverting democracy at every turn for the benefit of oligarchs who profit from war, ecocide, and oppression. The public has no voice in how its country is being run if its own government is lying to them for the benefit of oligarchs who profit from war, ecocide and oppression. The public has no voice in how its country is being run if the media is helping distort the narrative about what its own government is doing for the benefit of oligarchs who profit from war, ecocide, and oppression.

We now know without a doubt that this is all happening in America, by far the most influential country on earth, and we know it thanks to WikiLeaks. Government transparency is the single most urgent need in the world right now because without it, the public has no power to steer clear of the most disastrous things that could possibly happen.

U.S. divided btwn top & bottom, not left & right. TOP is laughing at all of us like Hunger Games: https://t.co/5l4s1gcVTY #PodestaEmails14 — Carol Morgan (@CounselorCarol1) October 21, 2016

WikiLeaks has published more classified intelligence documents than all other world press combined. The organization stands head and shoulders above everyone else on pushing humankind’s most urgent agenda, and Julian Assange stands head and shoulders above everyone else involved with WikiLeaks.

And yet we still haven’t received any proof of his wellbeing. There’s been no press conference, no live stream, no video, not even a statement signed with his PGP key. If President Obama went missing for even an hour the whole world would be in uproar, and from the perspective of homo sapiens’ success as a species, Assange is a vastly more important man than he. It has been six days since Craig Murray blogged about having seen Julian alive and well, and more than a week since Assange’s internet was cut by the Ecuadorian embassy. The corporate media is ignoring all of this and is instead pushing forward the most aggressive and most deceitful disinformation campaign about WikiLeaks that I have ever seen about anything in my life, and using it as an excuse to sow the seeds for a war with a nuclear superpower.

There will be other battles to fight after we win the battle for government transparency. Once the public has the ability to see what its government is doing and make educated decisions about what it should do next, we’re going to have to begin the awkward, back-and-forth process of collectively picking a course of action and a favored approach ensuring our thriving. But that will not happen until we’ve wrested government transparency and voting power from the plutocrats who benefit from secrecy and oppression.

Julian is absolutely a key player in this, and we must do everything we can to ensure his safety and wellbeing. His combination of guiding wisdom and intellectual genius doesn’t come around every day.

[Featured Image by Frank Augstein/AP Images]