Wikileaks - Mastercard / Banking Blockade commercial - (2011)

It's been six months since five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America, have stunted Wikileaks by freezing accounts and prevented donations from being made via them. This ad shows Julian Assange in house-arrest at Vaughan Smith's country manor, while spoofing the long-running "Mastercard Priceless" campaign. It's up on youtube today, but with their trackrecord for yanking parody ads that touch on trademarks (see Greenpeace VW) it might be down by tomorrow.

Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized. For six months now, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of the non-profit organization's donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade. http://wikileaks.org/support

Wikileaks