In the wake of the release of a small fraction of the diplomatic cables it has attained, Wikileaks has faced a barrage of challenges. In addition to threats and denunciations, as well as incoherent accusations of treason and even calls for the extrajudicial execution of Assange, Amazon booted Wikileaks from it’s servers, PayPal “permanently restricted” its account, EveryDNS terminated its DNS services, and MasterCard and Visa stopped processing donations — all in the absence of official charges, let alone a trial or conviction for any wrongdoing.
In British custody for questioning about a (very convenient) Swedish sexual assault investigation, Julian Assange delivered the following message via his mother:
“We now know that Visa, MasterCard and PayPal are instruments of US foreign policy. It’s not something we knew before.”
At CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn points out that this episode is a “wake-up call on the enormous vulnerability of our prime means of communication to swift government-instigated, summary shutdown”:
So here we have a public “commons”—the Internet—subject to arbitrary onslaught by the state and powerful commercial interests, and not even the shadow of constitutional protections.
Effectively defy the Imperial Will, and the global corporate institutions which sustain your activities — your communications and financial transactions — will evaporate.
Here is a discussion on Al-Jazeera questioning the right of companies like MasterCard and PayPal to deny service to Wikileaks.
We need to know alternative means for each of these.
alternatives to Paypal, MC, Amazon and etc. companies that provide
the same services but that are without the
blatant anti-First Amendment corporate positions
also, does it make you wonder whether or not the U.S. government -
and in this Kennedy=Johnson=Nixon=Carter=Reagan=Bush=Clinton=Bush=Obama -
forces the hands of ALL corporations in these matters,
dictates what their policy will be as a matter of National Security or Policy
and this allows the company heads to say at Xmastime to their more
conscientious supporters, “we had no choice, our hands were tied.”
We all know some companies are more closely aligned with the US government than others,
we can all see the international companies and countries that have agreed to not disagree with
U.S. policy … UK, Australia, Chile, “old Europe”: Germany, France, Portugal, Spain.
The trade deals the USA makes – the FTA’s or Free Trade Agreements – are forcibly
delivered, often with a “you HAVE to make Coke and McDonald’s available or else …”
Chomsky remarks on this very effectively.
These products become less desirable abroad because of policy.
We have to end the wars. They are being re-scripted over and over in front of our eyes
for almost eight years now and what Mr. Assange has revealed should give us all massive pause.
halt.
our soldiers are acting like butchers as they rampantly murder civilians with excessive force all over the middle east. They are acting out video games in their minds and are given the freedom to kill innocent civilians with no remorse and no threat of punishment.
We must train our energies on the CONTENT of the wikileaks releases and reform our military.
The Pentagon lost trillions before September 11th of 2001 and the wars are a never-ending hole for our resources in a part of the world where we simply do not belong. There is no rational for the U.S. presence except capitalist and imperialist design.
U.S. Foreign Policy is taking a beating for what’s in the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs from Wikileaks for good reason and we should be telling Hillary Clinton to be going around saying “Sorry.” That was Bush/Cheney ad nauseum.
In Palestine in 2003, Bush Ambassador John Hanna told my source there that any Palestinian group labeled Human Rights was to be considered a terrorist organization or with greatest mistrust. How can you make peace with anyone when that’s the posture?
We voted against war. we want out of them. Everybody wants us out of them. We should be apologizing to Iraqis and Afghan people. We should be renouncing Bush’s Wars.
Nobel Peace Laureate Obama should be embarrassed that there have been more Drone Attacks into Pakistan under his administration than under Bush/Cheney. Obama should be saying, “Bush started it. We don’t belong here. I must get us out.” The wars were wrong from the beginning.