Court Orders Valitor (Visa Iceland) to Lift WikiLeaks Blockade!
Remember WikiLeaks? Remember the banking blockade they’ve been under since late 2010? Well, it would appear that they have finally managed to find a judge with enough of a backbone to neither bow down to the pressure nor accept the bribes of the powers that be, as Valitor, formerly known as Visa Iceland, has been ordered on April 24 to resume processing on-line donations to WikiLeaks within two weeks. Of course, if the interests behind the blockade are powerful enough, I imagine this may yet be overturned and the fine of $6830 per day paid until it happens, but it’s definitely a good start and a signal to all the companies that take part in the blockade that the tide is turning. At the same time, there’s the obvious possibility that this was simply allowed to happen just because so much time passed and the matter was almost forgotten, so legally maintaining the blockade was probably starting to be more trouble than it was worth, seeing as the support WikiLeaks still enjoys is only a tiny fraction of what it used to be and any donations they may receive are also likely to be rather insignificant, but that doesn’t make it any less of an opportunity.
It’s obvious that the whole thing is no longer a story for the media, and likely not for the vast majority of the people who were once interested in it either, myself included, as I only happened to find out about this from the Access newsletter. I somehow highly doubt I’m in the minority when I say that, in part due to the attitude and views noticed in many of their posts, in part due to their apparent inability to accomplish anything else, whether for themselves or for Bradley Manning, and in part due to the conflict between my growing dislike of Julian Assange and the fact that they don’t seem to have somebody else to pick up the banner and therefore supporting him is still necessary for the cause of whistleblowing in general and of WikiLeaks and Manning in particular, I had simply pulled away from the entire mess quite some time ago. However, it may well be time for all of us who have done so to look into the matter again, because there may be an important opportunity here and it should not be wasted.
