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Because of barriers on funding, WikiLeaks could have to close by the end of the year, according to its founder, Julian Assange.
“If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year,” he said. “If we don’t knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue.”
WikiLeaks said in a statement Monday that it would stop publishing for the moment in order to focus on making money — explaining that the blockade imposed by financial companies including Visa, MasterCard, Western Union and PayPal left it with no choice.
The statement says that in order to ensure survival, WikiLeaks must “aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents.”
These financial companies, whether under direction of the government or not, have frozen out WikiLeaks since the publication of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables, by refusing to process payments from private individuals to the organization. So someone who wants to use their own money to donate to WikiLeaks is barred from doing so using many of the normal channels. And this is starving the organization. This successful muscling out of a private business by going after their funding represents a partnership between the federal government and private corporations. And it’s pretty classic, similar to how embargoes of foreign governments work – they go after the money.
As Glenn Greenwald explained over the weekend, WikiLeaks has at least some claim on ending the Iraq War. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cited the WikiLeaks release of information about a massacre in a raid in 2006 as a reason why he denied legal immunity for any US troops staying in the country after 2011. WikiLeaks can also take at least some credit for the Arab Spring, due to diplomatic cables showing the horrors of Arab governments and the repression of their citizens. As Greenwald writes:
And yet (or more accurately: therefore) the person accused of accomplishing all of this, Bradley Manning, has been imprisoned for more than a year without trial, and, if convicted, is almost certain to remain in prison for many more years (with the possibility, albeit unlikely, of death, and as the Obama administration continues to block an unmonitored visit by the U.N. official investigating what had been the inhumane conditions of his detention). If one believes the authenticity of the chat logs produced by Wired, Manning’s goal in leaking those cables — “hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms . . . i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public” – have been fulfilled beyond what must have been his wildest dreams. Assuming the truth of those chat logs, he was motivated precisely by seeing cables of the sort that detailed this civilian slaughter and subsequent cover-up in Iraq, and the extreme levels of theft and oppression by Arab dictators, and the desire to have the world know about it. Meanwhile, those responsible for the Iraq War, and who suppressed freedom and democracy in the Middle East by propping up those tyrants, and who committed a slew of other illegal and deeply corrupt acts, continue to prosper and wield substantial power.
History is filled with examples of those who most bravely challenged and subverted corrupted power and who sought reforms being rewarded with prison or worse, at the hands of those whose bad actions they exposed. If Bradley Manning did leak these cables, his imprisonment is a prime example of that inverted justice.
So all of these benefits will be lost, because of embarrassment to the federal government. And yet that same government is taking credit, just in the last week, for ending the Iraq war and working with revolutionaries on the Arab Spring.
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So where can we send checks? Banks are still required to honour checks written on their accounts, right?
How do we get money to them?
Has the U.S. government been formally identified as the source of pressure on the credit card companies? It would be nice if someone with deep pockets could bankroll a lawsuit.
In the meantime, is there some way for Wikileaks to establish an alternative funding channel?
How do we know if our mail will even get to them?
Loved that Greenwald pointed out how wikileaks played a role in ending the long Iraqi nightmare.
I haven’t learned anything new from wikileaks. Either it came out before, or wasn’t surprising to me when it did come out. I do like having documentary evidence though.
One never knows what particular piece of documentary evidence will make a major diff in outcomes, which is why PTB try to keep it all secret.
Here’s the “Donate” page from Wikileaks, with helpful suggestions:
http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate
Hawalas?
I sent them a check in Australia some time ago. I made the check out to Wikileaks, but I think I used some euphemism on the envelope like the Open Media Foundation. It got there and was cashed.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I appreciate that WikiLeaks needs funding, but how much? What are the costs involved? Programmers? Legal fees? Assange is not the kind of guy who in this for the money. What’s it being used for?
I assume the $ is being used for running the operation and paying the people involved in running it, but that’s just my guess.
WikiLeaks should become a bank. Then it would get unlimited (sl)easy credit from Ben Berkranke.
WikiLeaks and PFC Bradley Manning.
Anyone know his current status?
Although you did include Bradley Manning in your Glenn snippet, let’s please remember that he’s still languishing in Ft. Leavenworth. Yes, Julian Assange has a rightful role in all the above – the Arab spring, the Iraq withdrawal and numerous other global happenings – but if it wasn’t for the courageous effort of the young and idealistic Bradley Manning, much of the information that fomented these developments might still be under wraps.
That said, how can we, as a community, work together to find a way to keep Wikileaks in business? It seems to me that a work-around for Wikileaks is out there to be found and would fall right in line with the aims of the Occupy movement in side-stepping the global financial institutions – banks, credit card companies, PayPal, Western Union, etc. – that have a stranglehold on us, the 99%.
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
I’d just like to take a moment and point out the successful strategy that was used to defund WikiLeaks and the impact it had. And how we can use that strategy ourselves.
Someone in the government used the Terms and conditions and Acceptable Use Policies of the credit card companies as a way to stop the funding. The government did not have to use other laws like the Patriot Act.
This is a strategy that I used against radio station K S F O. I looked at the station advertisers’ own stated guidelines. They often had policies supporting diversity of religion, race and gender and against sexual and other harassment. They condemned the kind of violent rhetoric and threats against others in their HR guidelines. That is the exact kind of talk that is often heard on talk radio. I pointed out their own polices to them and showed them how these hosts were violating the policies. They pulled their ads. (I was sued, my blog shut down and threatened but that is another story that ended in me beating Disney in an IP case, two talk radio hosts fired and the station losing 32 advertisers and millions of dollars in revenue.)
This same technique was used against Michael Savage and most recently against Glenn Beck by Color of Change (a group I advised.)
When we see a right wing organization doing something that is outrageous like embracing bigots and homophobes, we can often look at their corporate funding and ask, “Do your funding guidelines include giving money to bigots, racists, and homophobes? Here is a list of your funding guidelines and here are the things said/done by the people you are funding. Are you following your own guidelines? Why not?”
This works best on public companies and consumer oriented companies. It doesn’t work as well on private entities or privately owned companies.
BTW, this is also why the public companies love Citizen United and funneling money via Chamber of Commerce who then can wash the money before sending it out to operatives who are nasty.
I think Wikileaks is tarnished anyway so that future whistleblowers won’t be releasing information to Wikileaks. As a result, I don’t think losing wikileaks is all that big a deal. They accidentally released a password on the internet (with the help of the Guardian) and so their credibility is 100% shot. No whistleblower will want to release info to wikileaks for fear of being outed. I was never a fan of Julian Assange and his media whorring, so I’m biased here!
They sent me some info this morning and the links worked but I didn’t make a copy yahoo and google has stopped the links.
Interesting. Glenn Greenwald was quite the champion of the Citizens United decision. Now he’s the voice claiming both the Arab Spring and the end of the Iraq War for Wikileaks. Quite a conundrum. Or would be if there were much truth to such simplistic explanations.