Where do Amazon, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal get off pulling the plug on WikiLeaks?
Henry Porter in a piece entitled ‘The elite howl when hit by light of truth‘ in the Guardian Weekly suggests that ‘unseen affinities of the powerful’ may be:
"…responsible for the unforgivable behaviour by Amazon, which pulled the plug on hosting WikiLeaks, and PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, which unilaterally stopped customers making donations to WikiLeaks. There was not the slightest consideration of principles about free information or the freedom of their customers to make up their own minds. What next? Will these corporate giants be blocking payment to the New York Times and the Guardian? It is hard to feel much regret over the cyber attacks on their websites because, in the end, they did not seem much better than Shell and Pfizer, the companies that appear to be running so much of Nigeria like the worst type of imperial powers."
I wonder if Amazon, Paypal, Visa or Mastercard have given their customers or publics a rationale for their behavior? Perhaps they felt it their patriotic duty to pull the plug on WikiLeaks…perhaps they agree with Sarah Palin that Julian Assange should be treated like a member of the Taliban? It would be nice to get some explanation of why they treated Wikileaks differently than The New York Times, or The Guardian; just as it will be nice to see how the U.S. government plans to prosecute WikiLeaks and not the aforementioned media companies.
Related posts:
