2010-12-13: Julian Assange: Readers' Choice for TIME's Person of the Year 2010
Submitted by admin on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 16:52TIME magazine has just closed the Person of the Year readers' poll. Megan Friedman summarized the results: "Readers voted a total of 1,249,425 times, and the favorite was clear. Julian Assange raked in 382,020 votes, giving him an easy first place. He was 148,383 votes over the silver medalist, Recep Tayyip Ergodan, Prime Minister of Turkey."
TIME editors' official choice for Person of the Year will be announced on Wednesday morning on the Today show.
WL Central would like to thank all of you who chose to make a statement by voting for Julian Assange.
2010-12-13: Visa, Mastercard, PostFinance under investigation
Submitted by admin on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 15:27Róbert Marshall, the chairman of the committee, said that "People wanted to know on what legal grounds the ban was taken, but no one could answer it. They said this decision was taken by foreign sources." The committee has asked for more information from the companies, to prove that there were legal grounds for such a ban. Marshall added that it was the committee's opinion that Visa and Mastercard's operating licenses be "seriously reviewed," reports The Reykjavik Grapevine.
Datacell, the company handling credit card donations for WikiLeaks, has already declared that it would file legal action against Visa and Mastercard.
PostFinance, the banking arm of the Swiss Post, found itself under investigation as well for potentially breaching secrecy laws by publicly disclosing that it has closed Julian Assange's bank account, reports AFP. "We are investigating if, in relation to the Postfinance press statement, there has been punishable action," Hermann Wenger, examining magistrate of the Bern-Mittelland region, told Sonntags Zeitung.
As previously reported, the Wau Holland Foundation also initiated legal action against PayPal, resulting in PayPal agreeing to release the blocked funds. In an interview with Der Spiegel today, Hendrick Fulda, a board member of the foundation, said that "Every new publication by WikiLeaks has unleashed a wave of support, and donations were never as strong as now. More than €80,000 was contributed in one week via PayPal alone. We will have to see what impact the removal of PayPal has on our incoming funds."
2010-12-13: Danish media group Politiken hosts Cablegate documents
Submitted by admin on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 12:56Prominent Danish newspaper Politiken has joined Owni and Libération as one of the major media organizations to officially mirror WikiLeaks. Politiken is mirroring the curently released Cablegate documents here.
In an interesting twist, the Danish Computer World site reports that Politiken's WikiLeaks mirror is currently hosted on Amazon's cloud infrastructure. Per Palmkvist Knudsen, CIO at the JP / Politiken Hus media group, said that there was no political statement behind it, Amazon being selected only on the basis on its service. "Amazon was fast and easy. But I can see that it would be a great story, if we were expelled from Amazon's services again, although that's not our intention," he added "with a wry smile," reports Computer World.
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