The banks, payment and credit card companies support extremist organisations by authorising transfers and donations to them. You can use VISA and MasterCard to donate to the Ku Klux Klan and the English Defence League. You can donate to Aryan Nations, a white supremacist organisation, despite being designated a "terrorist threat" by the FBI.
VISA and MasterCard do not mind if you decide to use your cards to buy pornography on the internet or a rifle identical to the one used by the right-wing extremist Andreas Breivik to murder 69 people in Norway. To justify such associations the banks erect a facade of political neutrality. But there is one conspicuous exception where the finance companies show their true face.
The extrajudicial banking blockade imposed upon WikiLeaks by VISA, MasterCard, Bank of America, Western Union and PayPal is unique and has been in place for almost a year.
This is an attempt against the very survival of the organisation as WikiLeaks depends entirely upon donations for its operations. Already this blockade has stripped away 95 per cent of its revenues. This is an historic act of censorship. Never before has an organisation dedicated to the fght for justice and basic rights; transparency, freedom of information, freedom of the internet and freedom of expression been hit with such a vicious attack.
There is more at stake here than simply the survival of WikiLeaks. When financial institutions decide to make it very difficult or almost impossible for you to make a donation they are infringing upon your basic human rights. They are stopping you from expressing your support for a cause.
The banking blockade of WikiLeaks might be a first but it will not be the last if it goes unchallenged.
Will the banks decide to block donations to Amnesty International, Greenpeace or Reporters Without Borders? Will they decide to stop processing transaction to media organisations that sell content on the internet? Or even more serious; will the threat of such a blockade stop any organisation, relying on donations, from being critical of the financial powers?
With some notable exception, there has been an absence of mass critical reporting on this blockade in the mainstream media. VISA, MasterCard, Bank of America, Western Union and Paypal get away with declining to comment or by making vague references to illegality by WikiLeaks.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/op...344715970.html
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