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WikiLeaks Continues To Fund Itself Via Flattr
novenator writes "Since the corporations MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa have been trying to shut down the cash flow to the Wikileaks project, those who wish to donate have been having trouble finding a way to help out. The social media/micropayment site Flattr (run from Sweden) continues to leave the channels open."
As opposed to posting a link to another board that has am IMAGE of the url; (madness!!)
here ya go:
https://flattr.com/profile/wikileaks
Really editors, was that so hard? My new-years resolution? Find a site that is as good as Slashdot used to be.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Let's deny you all credit cards, bank accounts, airline flights, all major store purchases, all corporate relations, because, well, just because the government said so, no arguments given, and see if you still call that a right any company has, and not a restriction of your freedoms, based on discrimination of some sort. Nobody has yet even accuse wikileaks of breaking any law. The data they publish was not acquired by them, and could have been published anywhere, in zillions of methods, including leaflets on street light poles, involving no computer or network of any kind.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Can we report on more ways to help Wikileaks please?
What I'd like to see is an open, international credit card system that's not at the mercy of two semi-monopolists. It's practically impossible to do reliable payments online without the approval of MasterCard and Visa, and clearly they don't always approve. That's a problem, and it needs to be fixed. We've become too dependent on these two companies, and it turns out they're not the neutral infrastructure that we expected them to be.
We need neutral payment infrastructure. Preferably one where the recipient doesn't need a separate contract with every single credit card company, but only with a single bank. And then everybody with a credit card can automatically pay money to that bank. You can have multiple banks, multiple credit cards, etc, all on the same universal, open system. And if a single bank decides not to do business with you, then you can simply switch to another. If your credit card provider decides not to let you send money to someone, you can just get a different credit card that's on the same system. It's the only good way of handling this, I think.
Now only to get some international banks and credit cards on board with this idea.
Understand that Wikileaks hasn't leaked anything. They just published what was already leaked and which is what the New York Times and others have published in part so I wonder why MasterCard et al aren't doing the same thing to all the other media outlets that publish leaked info.
Maybe they all got a call from Lieberman's office or something.
I think the more interesting point here, is that governments can strong-arm credit card companies to cut the funding for a Website that they don't like.
What happens if an influential large software company decides that it doesn't like an open source software site?
This is indeed news for nerds, and stuff that matters.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Big news for nerds in Spain today has got Spanish "internautas"riled: The US pressured all major political parties to change Spanish laws regarding P2P downloads.
Specifically: these two cables (248887 and 213345) are revealing the backroom pressure to ignore the wishes of the Spanish people and slip the laws in without any debate. Even going as far as to tell elected representatives not to meet with the internet community to debate the issue.
This, right on the heels of a votation without public debate going on right now in congress to force through new laws giving the Spanish Gov the right to shutdown websites at will without so much as a court order...
Oh , and ssshhh! We won't mention Assanges mind bogglingly hypocritical whinge about his case details being leaked...
Oh look, another idiot that can't understand the difference between a government's inherent right to privacy & an individual's inherent right to privacy.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Based on http://wikileaks.nl/support.html it is still possible to transfer money directly to two bank accounts (to fund Wikileaks itself, there is also information there if you want to fund Assange's defense):
Bank Transfer - Option 1: via Sunshine Press Productions ehf:
Skulagötu 19, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland
Landsbanki Islands Account number 0111-26-611010
BANK/SWIFT:NBIIISRE
ACCOUNT/IBAN:IS97 0111 2661 1010 6110 1002 80
Bank Transfer - Option 2: via the not-for-profit Wau Holland Stiftung Foundation:
This support is tax deductible in Germany
Bank Account: 2772812-04
IBAN: DE46 5204 0021 0277 2812 04
BIC Code: COBADEFF520
Bank: Commerzbank Kassel
German BLZ: 52040021
Subject: WIKILEAKS / WHS Projekt 04
The page also states that some European banks can transfer directly to Datacell, the collection agent for Wikileaks:
Using:
See URLs http://www.datacell.com/news.php and https://payments.datacell.com/ for more info about that last option
i seem to remember the US keeps track of swift "for terrorism" reasons
who is to say i won't get flagged if i use swift to help wikileaks?...
if the goal is oppression by fear, then it's working.
Naive as I sometimes am I used to believe that major credit card companies like Visa or Mastercard are obliged to process transactions, unless there is no well-defined court ruling against it, and cannot just refuse to deliver their services whenever they feel like it or are under political pressure. Personally, I don't give a damn about the cables and don't understand why the US government makes such a fuzz about them -- most of what they contain is known by everyone, and besides, personal assessments by diplomats are not facts anyway.
But it is astonishing and came as quite a surprise to me that essential economic services like money transfers and payment processing sites are apparently allowed to be operated by private companies in an arbitrary and unreliable way and can easily be influenced by governments to their will without legal consequences. I'd say there is an urgent need for neutrality rules in the form of laws and binding international treaties.