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PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service
ItsIllak writes "The BBC are reporting that PayPal is the latest company to abandon WikiLeaks. The list now includes their DNS providers (EveryDNS) and their hosts (Amazon). PayPal's move is unlikely to result in many more people boycotting the company, as most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years for a wide variety of abusive practices."
Adds reader jg21: "As open source freedom fighter Simon Phipps writes in his ComputerWorldUK blog, behavior like this by Amazon and Tableau [and now PayPal] 'informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.'"
There were idiots believing there could be freedom with full feudalism (capitalism) being allowed in the economic side of life, and democracy and equality in the political side of life.
....
See how that works ? you are free to say anything you want, from the political side, but, you dont have the MEANS to say it from the economic side.
basically, the corporations which dominate the economic side, determine how far your freedom goes. it doesnt matter ZIT whether you are allowed full freedoms in the political side of life.
its stupid anyway - you let everyone be free and equal, but, you give the control of the means to exercise those freedoms to the most wealthy. what did you think would happen ?
this
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I have demanded that they reinstate wikileaks account, and noted that i would migrate my business from paypal to other means, and also advise my ecommerce clients to do as such too. In addition, because im in the Eu zone, i have filed my complaint under 'file a complaint in the european union'.
i have also stated that i was going to file an official complaint with the European Parliament regarding the matter, unless the account is not reinstated. As a citizen of a candidate country, i have that right. Any citizen of any member or candidate country, has that right. If you file your complaint properly with your name, address, it is processed by Eu Parl even if it is by email.
take action.
i said, i didnt want to do business with a corporation that caves into the pressure of a single senator from a single country. Let paypal show its international, if it wants to do business internationally.
Read radical news here
So, journalism is only journalism when you approve of the content? Does that extend to all press or is this just your special "lex wikileaks"? Freedom of the press, yes or no?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Actually, the US has laws against funding terrorist organizations, and is moving to try to put Wikileaks on that list. So there may be either fear on the part of the businesses, or else behind-the-scenes pressure (a "friendly warning" from the FBI for instance) to do so.
At the same time, I can't fault Paypal for their actions. I used to donate to UNICEF, but I stopped when it was revealed that a sizable portion of money from them was being used to fund "summer camps" like the Wafa Idris, Ayyat al-Akhras and Dalal Mughrabi summer camps; these are named after suicide bombing terrorists and places where nothing but hate and racism is taught to children.
http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/alternatives.html
Dated 2007. Anything newer?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Because, by releasing *everything*, as opposed to just those 1000 or so that you, or someone else finds "damning", it becomes difficult to portray wikileaks as being *selective*, or showing bias.
This is not another blow for wikileaks, this is just another blow for paypal.
I find the timing of the massive attempts to shutdown wikileaks at all costs curious (maybe it's just the conspiracy theorist in me). I have no doubt those in power were aware of the pending release of the Afganistan diaries in July. This dump contained information and videos embarrassing (to say the least) to the US, but no real attempt was made to block it's release. The next major dump (gablegate) was no doubt anticipated beforehand as well and we began seeing some moves afoot to try and block it's dissemination, but no "bring the hammer down and stop it at all costs before it gets out" effort. That seems to have changed last week. The government is now warning all military, civilian and contractors to not download and/or read the documents, or they might jeopardize their jobs (or worse). However, the documents are already out there and being reported on. It would seem a little late to try to put the genie back in the bottle, so what's going on here?
Could it be that the next announced major document dump , the so-called "banking information megadump" is the real dump that cannot be allowed to be made public? It's no secret that it's really the banks that control all governments, including the US (or so the conspiracy goes). I'm not sure how much stock to put in this conspiracy theory, but it does make a good deal of common sense that those with the money pull the levers.
I does make one wonder - I'm just sayin'
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
There's a world of difference between "secrets and wrongdoing" and "privacy and discretion." Accused rapist Assange* asked for and then published what amounts to the private correspondence of American ambassadors... something that on a long enough timetable is made public as a route matter ANYWAY.
Wow, you are human slime, doing the establishment's job for it. I believe we call such a person a "useful idiot". Assange is accused of continuing to have sex with someone after a condom broke, someone who went out the next morning, bought him breakfast, and brought it back. You're a fucking evil piece of shite to actually even bring that into the conversation.
(*: If he's innocent, he can go back and defend himself. If he's innocent, he has little reason not to and a big scary reason to do so... namely, to clear his and wikileaks' names.)
You know what makes it scary? That the mere accusation is enough to convince many people that you've committed the crime. I sincerely fucking hope it happens to you, and soon.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Geez, I still don't see why prosecutor Marianne Ny (email address: marianne.ny@aklagare.se ) didn't follow any of the standard judicial and prosecutorial procedures; maybe we should ALL contact her to see what's going on?"
"And what's up with Justice Skarhed? (email: anna.skarhed@justitiekanslern.se ) I mean, wasn't she investigating why prosecutor Maria Kjellstrand illegally released aspects of the Assange file to the Swedish tabloids?"
"And that Tableaux Software (headquartered in Seattle, along with Amazon, isn't that were Micro$oft's located???)?
If you support Tableaux's pulling their software license from WikiLeaks, then give them a shoutout for support the Corporate Fascist State."
(first email is management) cstolte@tableausoftware.com efink@tableausoftware.com jmackinlay@tableausoftware.com
"the vast majority of the material that's been released shows no evidence of any government abuses"
There's more on the "abuse" word than "plain illegal", specially with respect to politics. If there's really no government abuses, why all the airing? Can it be because at least some people found the data supportive of at least questionable practices? And if it's indeed questionable practices at least for somebody, how can't it be considered whistleblowering?