Amazon, Paypal, Visa

I sent email messages to the above three, asking what was going on with regards to Wikileaks. I told Amazon I was closing my account with them (and I was one of their first customers, way back when).

No answer. Dead silence on all fronts. I keep getting promotional emails as if nothing's changed.
But, things have changed. I am listing alternatives for Amazon, Paypal and Visa. I've already told Amazon to close my account and remove all my information from their servers and if they don't accede to this, I'll take legal steps. The other two, I'll be closing down soon as well.

There are other credit cards out there that won't try to stifle me. There are other places where I can order books, music, movies. There are other online payment options.

I am the only one who decides whom or what cause I give my money to.

Oh, oh the irony!

Announced, today: U.S. to Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011

...in the light of this.
Laughable, really, if it were not so serious.

Governments are infringing on MY right to support Assange, should I so wish, by pressuring private enterprises, countries etc:

Sunday 28 November

• TECH: DDoS attack hits WikiLeaks as first set of US diplomatic cables is published.

Wednesday 1 December

• TECH: Tableau Software, which offers free software for data visualisation, removes the public views of graphics built using information about the diplomatic cables. It is the first company to distance itself from Wikileaks, and admits that the reason was pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent senator with ties to the Democratic party.

• POLITICS: Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security, calls for Wikileaks to be taken offline. "I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

• TECH Amazon removes Wikileaks's content from its EC2 cloud service, but later insists it did so because the content could cause harm to people and did not belong to Wikileaks – and that it was not due to political pressure or the hacker attacks against the site.

Friday 3 December

• TECH: Wikileaks.org ceases to work for web users after everyDNS.com, which had provided a free routing service translating the human-readable address into a machine-readable form, ends support.

Wikileaks shifts to a backup domain registered in Switzerland but actually hosted in Sweden, at Wikileaks.ch, though the cables are hosted in part by OVH, an internet provider in the north of France.

EveryDNS claims that the DDOS attacks against Wikileaks were disrupting its service provided to thousands of other customers. The company says it is "following established policies so as not to put any one EveryDNS.net user's interests ahead of any others. Lastly, regardless of what people say about the actions of EveryDNS.net, we know this much is true - we believe in our New Hampshire state motto, Live Free or Die."

• POLITICS: French industry minister Eric Besson writes to internet companies warning them there will be "consequences" for any companies or organisations helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country.

Saturday 4 December

• MONEY: PayPal, owned by US auction site eBay, permanently restricts account used by WikiLeaks due to a "violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy". A spokesman said the account was suspended because "[it] cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."
You can still donate at Commerzbank Kassel in Germany or Landsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at the University of Melbourne or at http://wikileaks.ch/support.html

• TECH: Switch, the Swiss registrar for Wikileaks.ch declines pressure from US and French authorities to remove the site or block access to it.

Sunday 3 December

• TECH: The Pirate Party in Sweden says that it has taken over the hosting of the Cablegate directory of Wikileaks after the server in France at OVH, which had been hosting the contents of the US diplomatic cables released so far, goes offline.

Monday 6 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Mastercard withdraws ability to make donations to Wikileaks. "MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," the credit card outfit says.

• TECH: Wikileaks' servers in Sweden attacked by distributed denial of service attack.

• MONEY: Postfinance, the Swiss postal system, strips WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of a key fundraising tool, accusing him of lying and immediately shutting down one of his bank accounts. The bank says that Assange had "provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process."
Assange had told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident, a requirement of opening such an account. Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty told The Associated Press the account was closed Monday afternoon and there would be "no criminal consequences" for misleading authorities. "That's his money, he will get his money back," Josty said. "We just close the account and that's it."

Tuesday 7 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Visa withdraws ability to make donations or payments to Wikileaks. "Visa Europe has taken action to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules," said a spokesman.

source

This is the core of this entire damn business:

What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.
source

... and now PayPal as well!

This is their statement:

PayPal statement regarding WikiLeaks
December 3, 2010 PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action
link

I've been increasingly using PayPal over the past years for my internet transactions.
I can use IDeal, but I don't like it much. Or pay directly via credit card... and I probably will.

I use PayPal to pay small vendors who have no other alternative. I am going to let them know to change their options or lose me as a customer. I also use PayPal to do simple money transfers to people. I will simply have to find another way.

It will take a bit more work than Amazon to untangle myself but do it, I shall.
(It was an enlightening moment, to realise how many of my eggs are in one basket)

Internetverkeer inhoudelijk scannen????

Hello big brother!!!


Ik denk dat ik maar iedere mail ga ondertekenen met "kinderporno" in de voettekst.
Als ze het willen, kunnen ze het krijgen ook!

Amazon kicked off Wikileaks?

Bad move Amazon, bad move.
You were asked to remove them by (a) government official(s), and like sheep you did.

Bad, bad move. Bah.

After suffering aggressive cyber attacks last weekend, Assange removed his "cablegate" site from servers in Sweden and purchased a new home for it on Amazon's web hosting service. On Tuesday, Amazon talked on the phone with the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.

Shortly thereafter, Amazon booted WikiLeaks. The senator responded with a statement: "I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on WikiLeaks' previous publication of classified material. The company's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material."

source

Update 2010 12-04: I sent a mail to Amazon (UK and USA) requesting to close my account with them. I've done a lot of business at these sites over the years but they are not the only book/CD/DVD sellers out there. Like many others, I will purchase what I want elsewhere in future.

Ik ben het helemaal eens met Cohen

Ik heb dit vaker gezegd:

Bevrijdingsdag moet voortaan elk jaar officieel een feestdag zijn. Nu is dat slechts eens in de vijf jaar het geval.

Daarvoor pleit PvdA-lijsttrekker Job Cohen tegenover NU.nl. Hij wil hiermee aangeven hoe belangrijk vrijheid en vrijheid van meningsuiting zijn.

"Het wonderlijke is dat, naar mate je in een vrijere wereld leeft, het besef afneemt hoe belangrijk dat eigenlijk is", aldus de PvdA'er.

bron

Het is belangrijk om WW2 niet te vergeten. Om ieder jaar stil te staan bij wat er gebeurd is, wat bijna gebeurd is en.... meest belangrijk, hoe en waarom. Vooral met de gebeurtenissen van de afgelopen tijd (Griekenland, de zuidelijke landen die zo veel achterlopen op de noordelijke landen, de tweespalk dat aan't ontwikkelen is, de economische situatie en vooruitzichten, enz.). Er is toen gezegd: nooit weer. Binnen één generatie dreigen we dit te vergeten.

I wonder if Trafigura can be prosecuted

...for murder?
Or, the individuals working for Trafigura who are responsible for this - I really do wonder.

If not, they damn well should be, in my very humble opinion.

I hope some justice will prevail even if the victims have been suddenly compensated when it became evident the truth was coming out (liberally tossing out threats and legal actions to muzzle the news organisations who were publishing the proof):

Trafigura said the deal – for an undisclosed amount – was likely to be acceptable to most if not all of the claimants. It was based on an acceptance that the company had no liability for the most serious deaths and injuries alleged in the dumping scandal. Trafigura says it is the world's third-biggest private oil trader, and declared a $440m profit last year. Its 200 traders are reported to receive annual bonuses of up to $1m each.
source

Even in these cynical times, this behaviour is totally beyond anything a civil society should tolerate.
I hope there are criminal prosecutions of the individuals concerned!

I agree with Johann Hari:

"All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for
you as a human being to engage in that charade."

It's a shame he is pilloried for saying this.

European freedom of speech

Yesterday, the Netherlands made headlines with the Amsterdam court verdict that Geert Wilders, a rightwing Dutch MP, has to face trial for hate speech.

This is the truth - we do not have real freedom of speech in Europe, in many countries there are hate speech laws. Considering our recent collective past however, that is not so surprising. I consider this a useful tool that should be very sparingly and judiciously used. In this instance, it would have been better to engage in spirited public debate instead of prosecution in a court of law. In my opinion, this does not warrant prosecution.

Today my attention was caught by a blog cataloguing a far more grievous freedom of speech issues, in one of our new EU countries, Latvia, in November 2008 (I expect it's ongoing still).

I find it shocking. Shocking that this is one of the EU and NATO member countries (since 2004), one who also has a voice in how the rest of Europe is governed.
(In my opinion, in a mad dash to expand, far too many countries were granted admission far too quickly. This only serves to strengthen my opinion. )

This is also a freedom of speech issue but while the first -which I hesitantly approve of- is intended to prevent hate crimes, the second seems to be designed mainly for repression.

I could go through the EU countries one at a time and find similar issues.
The right of free speech is still a far too rare jewel in Europe, no matter what treaties we sign. Looking at the actions of the EU towards Ireland, France and the Netherlands of late (the latter two with enthusiastic co-operation of their leaders) regarding the European Constitution Treaty, I would say we are moving back towards more repressive times, and not enlightenment, prosperity and freedom.