Now I’ve seen everything! Lunch for eight winners with Julian Assange and Slovenian philosopher,Slavoj Žižek, to benefit Wikileaks auction on ebaY! Payment via Paypal!
This is almost too funny for words!
Gee whiz! Is the Wikileaks/Assange situation looking like a big money grubbing scam to anyone out there?
I notice this isn’t a ‘charity’ auction, with the official missionfish info and the ribbon etc BTW. I’m wondering whether this is an ebaY listing policy violation?
Searching ebaY for wikileaks items I discovered some peculiarities with the number of results shown Vs the number of actual listings.
This hearkens back to the massive “padded listings” scandal of 2008, when ebaY got caught padding their listing counts during a Boycott, then went further by issuing several falsehoods and censoring their forums, then lying about that too.
Look here for the playlist which documented those events:
Pertinent/supporting links are there in the video descriptions along with a lot of comments from eyewitnesses.
Amazon provides a service where people can use essentially virtual storage, which helps serve their site and deal with large-scale Web traffic. Apparently, about a week and a half, two weeks ago, Senator Joe Lieberman of the Senate Home [Homeland] Security Committee phoned–or he did or had someone phone Amazon and leaned on them, and Amazon decided to take WikiLeaks down. That led to PayPal taking WikiLeaks down.
Julian Assange through his Wikileaks website promises greater government transparency. But his document dumps have angered officials around the world.
US Senator Joseph Lieberman has pressured internet companies to withdraw their services from Wikileaks. Rather than protect internet freedom, Amazon and PayPal have willingly complied with US demands.
Assange is the subject of death threats. Some government officials say he should be assassinated. Sarah Palin said he should be hunted down like a terrorist.
Efforts to take down Wikileaks have proven futile, thanks to mirror sites.
Meanwhile, Assange has been arrested in the UK on rape charges. He has vowed to release more documents in a ‘nuclear’ option if arrested or killed.
If you used PayPal to donate to Wikileaks recently your donation is in holding. I hope this conversation I had with the PayPal tech support helps you understand where you money is.
There are widespread calls for Boycotts of PayPal, ebaY and Amazon as well.
Of course, some of these issues are somewhat small compared to the big picture: The contents of the cables; and gawd only knows what results that info leaking may produce… Not to mention the free speech issues at stake.
We are looking at history in the making. This is war. Infowar
This video which I found seems telling despite the uploaders sarcasm.
(upload date 12-06-2010)
“I believe the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world, can hold their own governments accountable, they can begin to think for themselves. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free internet — or unrestricted internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.”
He went on to add (not), “That’s why I defend Wikileaks‘ right to publish documents which my government wants to keep secret so it can avoid being held accountable for all the lies and corruption.”
Now I’ve seen everything! Lunch for eight winners with Julian Assange and Slovenian philosopher,Slavoj Žižek, to benefit Wikileaks auction on ebaY! Payment via Paypal!
Cappnonymous 