Ian Welsh writes:

The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies.

The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is not nearly limited to:

• Shutting down Wikileaks servers, starting with the Amazon server
• Stopping domain name server propagation
• Paypal refusing to send payments
• VISA and Mastercard refusing to process payments
• The Swiss Bank PostFinance shutting down Assange’s account
• Senator Lieberman pressuring firms over Wikileaks
• The odd behavior of prosecutors in the Assange rape accusations/case

Wikileaks and Assange have now been made in to cause celebres. If corporations and governments can destroy someone’s access to the modern economy as they have Wikileaks, without even pretending due process of the law (Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, Amazon, etc… were not ordered by any court to cut Wikileaks) then we simply do not live in a free society of law, let alone a society of justice.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports:

WikiLeaks’ payment processor said Thursday that it was preparing to sue credit card companies Visa and MasterCard over their refusal to process donations to the secret-spilling website.

Andreas Fink, the CEO of Iceland’s DataCell ehf, told The Associated Press that he would seek damages from the American financial companies over their decision to block WikiLeaks funds.

“It’s difficult to believe that such a large company as Visa can make a political decision,” Fink said in a telephone interview from Switzerland. In an earlier statement, his company had defended the WikiLeaks, saying that “it is simply ridiculous to think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal.”