12/18/10

Wikileaks and Bank of America

The Bank of America has decided that it will follow in the footsteps of PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, and halt all its transactions that it believes are intended for WikiLeaks, including donations in support of the organization. 'This decision, is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.'

Please don your tin-foil hat for the following analyses from Slashdot.
  1. Wikileaks is supposedly in possession of the hard drive of a Bank of America executive.
  2. Wikileaks may become subject to criminal charges on terrorism. The bank may be avoiding future heavy fines for supporting 'terrorists'.
  3. Wikileaks/Assange are hindered in gathering funds for lawyers. 
But, true, it certainly looks like The Bank of America acts as an extension of the US government, being collaborative, or even pressured.

To me, Wikileaks is journalism, not terrorism. Is the US giving up on principal democratic rights under the flag of ultra-nationalistic, or even outright fascist, tendencies? By extension, can we expect a more aggressive nationalistic US in the future, with possible China-like monitoring of the Internet as to avoid thought-crimes by its citizens? The overall effect on me, as a European, is roughly: 'If the US feels like, let them dig their own nationalistic grave.'

(Note that fascism has little to do with Jews and such, that is national-socialism, but has everything to do with suppression and organizing a society in a military manner.)