You're ignoring the thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions?) of "innocent" businesses that are having problems because of this. Sure try and hurt Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, but hurting innocent people?

Isn't that exactly what the US government have done? "It's for the greater good". The people involved in these attacks are just as bad.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not actually a huge fan of WikiLeaks or of Anon, but...

Try to keep things in perspective. We're facing a substantial progression towards a hybridization of the scenarios outlined in 1984 and Brave New World, and you're worried about the disruption of commerce?

Are your priorities really that warped?

There's always collateral damage, whether it's merchants or your civil rights.

I should've guessed that there would be hand-wringing about commerce on here, but I never knew it would be so ridiculous considering what's being hashed out here.

I'm sorry, but do you honestly think this is anymore than a bunch of angry teenagers who will be bored in a week? Look back on every other instance of "Anon" "protesting" and work out what has changed. Please do show what they've actually done beyond cause minor temporary disruption, it just so happens that this time the minor disruption has real world repercussions and is hurting businesses. The people who are responsible for this are those in US government, I think it's pathetic companies like Visa, Paypal and Mastercard are being attacked when they've done nothing wrong, it's the US government at fault but they're "untouchable" to these angsty teenagers so they do the thing they always do and attack the weakest targets.

Give it a week and nobody will remember any of this, besides the businesses that lost money.

I wouldn't be so sure that they're just going to lose interest in a week. Look at scientology, that's still going on.

Which if it's enough businesses loose money might be a lot of people.

I'm completely opposed to these actions, but I've got to say that causing financial losses is a fairly effective protest.

>Give it a week and nobody will remember any of this

That's the tragedy not

>besides the businesses that lost money.

Nobody cares about citizenship or rights anymore. Just money.

I oppose ALF and ELF both.

>If you dominate a market, a serious ethical duty devolves upon you to do right by your customers, but Paypal, Visa, and MC, on which donation-supported non-profit orgs like Wikileaks almost entirely depend, have utterly failed to fulfill that duty; in fact they didn't even try.

The majority of Paypal Visa and Mastercard customers rely to some extent on a stable international environment. Suggesting that these companies need to change their moral stance to accommodate anarchists is silly. Wikileaks actions suggest they want to take down the establishment that in a large part enables such companies to operate.

Indeed the fact that these companies have now been attacked by the associates of those they chose not to support means that they made the right decision. Why would they want to bolster groups that will turn and attack them?

If Paypal, for example, hadn't accepted Wikileaks as a customer in the first place then they wouldn't be having to deal with the current situation and could serve the majority of their customers better.

Taking a capitalist view basically Wikileaks supports believe that the rest of us should be screwed over so they can make their point. It's not civilised it's brutish anarchism.

You seem to be implying Wikileaks ordered the DDoSing. Anon is a completely separate "organization" and completely unaffiliated with Wikileaks. They supported Wikileaks' views, and so decided to DDoS MC/Visa/Paypal, but Wikileaks had no part in ordering the attack from my understanding. This is an important distinction to make.

  > Wikileaks actions suggest they want to take down the establishment that
  > in a large part enables such companies to operate.

How so? If my government is doing illegal things, or just things that I don't agree with behind closed doors, should I just accept that there's nothing that I can do to change that? Should these things be ignored because to bring these things to light would 'de-stabilize the international environment' and cause hardships to businesses?

I'm also curious as to how the release of these cables is going to 'take down the establishment.' Do you fear that the US government will crumble, sending America into a period of anarchy all due to WikiLeaks? If not, then do you think that any reasonably intelligent person would believe that that would happen? Do you classify Wikileaks as 'not reasonably intelligent?' If not, then why?

  > Indeed the fact that these companies have now been attacked by the associates of
  > those they chose not to support means that they made the right decision.

For starters, Anonymous could be best described as a 'Stand Alone Complex' as has been pointed out here and on Reddit a couple of times. It's a loosely coupled group of people that is ever changing as people join/depart from it based on whether they 'believe in the cause' or 'get bored' or whatever. Censorship on the web by 'the establishment' really gets Anonymous riled up (see Scientology trying to get the Tom Cruise video pulled from the web). To say that Anonymous is an 'associate' of Wikileaks is about as close to the truth as saying that Osama Bin Laden is an 'associate' of the American public just because they share the believe that the US Army should not be in Iraq.

That point aside, these companies chose to drop support for Wikileaks because they associated 'dropping Wikileaks' with 'zero risk' and 'keeping Wikileaks' with 'high risk.' That risk-assessment is no longer valid due to these attacks. Whether 'dropping Wikileaks' is still lower risk than keeping them is debatable, but it is no longer 'zero risk.' There are companies that only understand financial incentives. If you want them to pay attention to you, you need to affect their bottom line. What I gather from you post is that when a company becomes a pillar of commerce like these credit card processors have, then we can no longer morally affect their bottom line due to the effects that will have on other businesses. The problem with these belief is that you are effectively stating that these companies are 'untouchable' and a stone's throw away from 'too big to fail.'

  > Why would they want to bolster groups that will turn and attack them?

Not that DDoS is necessarily the way to go, but I doubt that there would be any other way to get credit card companies to even give you the time of day once they have deemed that you are 'useless' to them. Do you have an alternate method of making the credit card companies stand up and listen to you once they've decided that you are to be ignored?

  > Taking a capitalist view basically Wikileaks supports believe that the rest
  > of us should be screwed over so they can make their point. It's not civilised
  > it's brutish anarchism.

No offense, but human civilization/society is a huge object that has a large amount of momentum and doesn't turn on a dime. This is why most large changes come with a lot of violence and disruption.

Using your logic, Rosa Parks was a brutish anarchist because she believed that 'white people' should be 'screwed over' and prevented from having a seat at the front of the bus in order for her to make her point. The best course of action would be to disrupt no one. Maybe if Rosa Parks had just lodged a written complaint with the local board of commerce, white racists would have non-violently accepted that black people are their equals?

I think you've watched 'Fight Club' too many times.

I've seen it, perhaps if I saw it again I'd have clue what you're on about?

"Project Mayhem"