Opinion
Capital's war against WikiLeaks
Can the leak phenonomen sustain the continued assault by the corporate sector to prevail in the first ever cyber-war?
Mark LeVine Last Modified: 29 Dec 2010 13:47 GMT
In the words of Thomas Friedman,"the hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas..."[EPA]
When your Swiss banker throws you overboard, you know you've made some very powerful enemies.
Long famed for hiding money for everyone from Nazis and drug lords to spies and dictators, the Swiss government's banking arm has decided that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are just too hot even for it to handle.
And so the PostFinance, which runs the country's banks, declared in early December that it had "ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange" after accusing Mr. Assange of - gasp! - providing false information about his place of residence.
This move followed similar moves by credit card companies MasterCard and Visa, as well as PayPal and Amazon.com, to no longer process WikiLeaks payments and, in Amazon.com's case, to cease hosting its data.
As I write this, Bank of America has joined the crescendo of corporations taking aim at WikiLeaks, refusing to process payments for it any longer because of "our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."
And soon after, none other than Apple joined the chorus, pulling the plug on a WikiLeaks app only days after it went on sale on its iTunes website. Every sector of the corporate economy, it seems, is out to get WikiLeaks.
LINK:
[1] http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/2010122971637433801.html
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