APNewsBreak: Visa again blocks funds for WikiLeaks

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: AP

LONDON (AP) — Visa said Friday it has closed a donation channel to WikiLeaks after a payment processor briefly accepted money transfers to the anti-secrecy site.

Visa and MasterCard were two of several financial and Internet service companies that severed ties to WikiLeaks following its disclosure of thousands of confidential U.S. documents. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims the 7-month-long blockade has cost his online group millions.

But on Thursday both companies appeared to abruptly change course when WikiLeaks' payment processor, DataCell ehf, announced that donations to the site were again being processed.

That appears to have been an accident, at least as far as Visa Europe Ltd. was concerned. In an email to The Associated Press, the company said that one of its financial partners had "briefly accepted payments on a merchant site linked to WikiLeaks."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-visa-again-blocks-funds-wikileaks-102506045.html

[msongs]

1. visa is only interested in gouging customers, not politics lol nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Oh really? I don't think so

Leading Visa shareholders include Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) - the largest issuer of Visa cards and the founder of Visa's predecessor almost a half century ago. Other major Visa shareholders include Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) - with the San Francisco bank's President John Stumpf working as Visa USA's chairman - JPMorgan Chase & Co., (NYSE: JPM) U.S. Bancorp, (NYS ...

Yeah ..... the banksters are not political........ right.....

[truth2power]

5. I think msongs forgot the scarcasm tag. n/t

[defendandprotect]

9. Unfortunately all corporations are interested in slave labor -- i.e., politics --

And they are all organized up, down, sideways and every other way to work

for it --

One of the most amusing of those who try to hide the truth of their

agenda is Hallmark Cards -- which sells cards mainly to women -- but

also via the Business Round Table fights equality for women -- and all

feminist issues!

[tcaudilllg]

3. Visa must be destroyed.

We need a new credit regime. Let me know if you know of viable competitors, who ignore the ratings given by the three credit scoring companies.

[joeglow3]

7. Why would a credit issuing company ignore credit scores?

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. the Ku Klux Klan's takes both MasterCard and Visa --

As Charles Arthur points out, the Ku Klux Klan's website points you to a site that takes both MasterCard and Visa -- suggesting the pure arbitrariness of both credit card companies' decision here. It's a bad idea when firms start making decisions for political reasons. There are all sorts of companies out there that take credit cards to support objectionable (to many) activities. Is it really the credit card companies' job to pick and choose who they find objectionable to work with -- and if so, what basis does it use for saying "KKK is okay, but Wikileaks is not"?

This reinforces the point we recently made about the role of corporate intermediaries in being able to aid governments in censorship, even in the absence of a trial or conviction. Either way, this is a really sad statement about both Visa and MasterCard and their willingness to cave to government pressure.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101207/09264812164/visa-mastercard-kkk-is-a-ok-wikileaks-is-wicked.shtml

[stockholmer]

6. the Klan does not speak a viable truth to the power of the systemic controllers, W-Leaks does

[bobthedrummer]

8. EUROZONE CRISIS!!!

:smoke: