Unless you’ve had your head in a hole for the last year, you’ve probably heard about Wikileaks and their battle to free important information. One of the major setbacks to their cause, however, has been the inability to receive donations to keep their servers, and site up and running due to blocks from companies like Amazon, and Paypal:
For six months now, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of the non-profit organization’s donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade.
In a bid to generate some help with their on-going effort, the chaps and chapettes at Wikileaks HQ have put together this excellent Mastercard parody for your eyes to appreciate.
[vimeo width=”560″ height=”349″]http://vimeo.com/25412550[/vimeo]The fact is, the blockade is not just against WikiLeaks. It is against the associative rights and economic rights of every VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Bank of America account holder, who have been prevented from supporting the organization of their choice. We call on regulators around the world to investigate and de-license these banking institutions. They are not politically neutral and are not obeying the rule of law. When VISA and MasterCard will happily provide services to the Klu Klux Klan, but not to WikiLeaks, it is time to act.
Read more at Wikileaks.org here.
