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The organization Courage to Resist has had a PayPal account since 2006 to allow supporters to make donations. They claim to have had few issues with PayPal over the years–until recently. Soon after encouraging people to use the online payment service to make donations to help fund the “Stand with Bradley Manning” petition effort, that account was frozen by PayPal. From Courage to Resist:
The online payment provider PayPal has frozen the account of Courage to Resist, which in collaboration with the Bradley Manning Support Network is currently raising funds in support of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. PayPal was one way people–especially international residents–were able to contribute to the grassroots effort supporting the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower. “We’ve been in discussions with PayPal for weeks, and by their own admission there’s no legal obligation for them to close down our account,” noted Loraine Reitman of the Bradley Manning Support Network (Support Network). “This was an internal policy decision by PayPal.”
“We exchanged numerous emails and phone calls with the legal department and the office of executive escalations of PayPal,” explained Jeff Paterson. “They said they would not unrestrict our account unless we authorized PayPal to withdraw funds from our organization’s checking account by default. Our accounting does not allow for this type of direct access by a third party, nor do I trust PayPal as a business entity with this responsibility given their punitive actions against WikiLeaks—an entity not charged with any crime by any government on Earth.”
The Support Network repeatedly requested and was refused formal documentation from PayPal describing their policies in this matter.
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About FDL Action
Interview with Kevin Zeese, another Manning supporter, here. http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/02/23/kevin-zeese-5/
Fuck you, Paypal. I don’t use you and never will.
Makes one wonder
who owns and controls Pay Pal?
did Russia and China take over the USA?
PayPal, Mastercard, Amazon.com. Any others want to join the list of services I won’t use again?
OT but tangential, Kevin filed a bar complaint in DC regarding the lawyers at Hunton & Williams (The Chamber of Commerce propaganda against Wikileaks, Greenwald, etc.) [PDF]
Impressive. Quite the activist.
How special. The banksters and their pals continue to demonstrate their true priorities and openly express their contempt for pretty much everyone other than themselves. Today’s WikiLeak says: “Libya placed billions of dollars at U.S. banks-WikiLeaks” (Reuters, Feb 24, 2011, 11:37am GMT).
Looks like Paypal wants to be the good little zombie robot.
Money did.
Right on!
Don’t mean to go all conspiracy theorist here, but Scott Thompson, President of PayPal, seems to be one of “them”. The MOTUs. Formerly of Barclays Global Investors.
See my 11 :) Your question was also my first thought, so I looked it up.
used to send my FDL donations in a card directly to Jane until i learned to pay pal.
snail mail is now my friend again.
There are places where you can only donate using Pay Pal. It’s going to make it difficult for those who don’t want to use it. I don’t use it.
Pay Pal pretty much has a monopoly. You can’t buy or sell on e-bay without it. They make you agree to give them the right to freeze your checking account, I think for 6 months, for any reason.
We need to start a boycott right now.
i use paypal alot.guess that will have to change
I think Google Checkout has been a good alternative to PayPal. So far they haven’t been as Big Brother-ish.
why can t some ingenious lefty start…oh pay-friend,pay BFF.Pay personaly,paypartner…etc.,etc. and so forth
I don’t understand what’s it to Paypal that wikileaks gets money or that Courage to Resist is involved in demanding basic human rights for Manning, beyond ideology of course. Sounds like those anti choice pharmacists who refuse to fill legitimately prescribed drugs for women. Is there something in it for them? Are they being bullied or is it just a personal preference to be good little robots?
I refuse to use PayPal as they’re owned by eBay that operates in the shadow of the unscrupulous eMeg.
OT– What’s going on with that proposed Federal gov’t shutdown?
BONER floated a “compromise” that turns out to be nothing more than a two week version of the pos the House already passed. Reid isn’t that stupid, (or spineless yet), to fall for it.
collective punishment instead of collective bargaining…USA better at the latter
One thing is for sure, Obama has no idea what collective bargaining is. Look how many times he went behind closed doors to forward someone else’s interests instead of the people that voted for him.
I believe I will start calling him Barak Benito Mussolini Obama. Oh yeah, along with our congress members.
PayPal allows you a certain amount of usage, in dollar amount, after which they require you to give them direct access to your bank account. (Note that they don’t tell you this up front, nor do they allow you to know what the usage limit is.)
That’s why I killed my PayPal account. I’d be willing to give them access to a small account that was set up for the purpose, but not to the main one, because I think it’s asking for fraud or theft to be committed. By Paypal.
Probably being bullied, but it doesn’t take much, as they already are bullies to their customers.
AMEN! The best way to deal with these “wingers” is the good, old fashioned BOYCOTT!!!
I’m with you!!!
Has there been any updates on Manning? Did Gates answer the letter, or Kerry look into it? Has the convening of the Courts of Martial happened as it was scheduled for February?
Most places it’s okay; they’ll just make sure that the money gets transferred.
It’s when they start dancing to the tune of the MOTUs and deciding who you can pay with it, rather than being just a go-between, that I draw the line.
With the pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions either for contraceptives and/or the “morning after” pill, I think they’re “good little robots” beholden to some “christiany” fantasy.
With the freezing of charge card accounts & paypal, etc, I think they’re MOTU joining in with their elitist band of brothers and sisters to do whatever it takes to stamp out democracy & freedom of speech, etc, and grind the serfs under their bootheels at all costs.
I avoid using PayPal at all costs, so boycotting them isn’t hard for me. Good to bring out the news.
Note how they strive to keep an US citizen being tortured by our govt/ military. For shame (except these uber-rich sociopaths have no shame, much less any sense of compassion).
Thanks for the update. :-)
Who gets into heaven?
OK, that was easy. I just closed my PayPal account. They ask you why you want to close, and I said it was because they froze the Courage to Resist account.
Actually I’d have to hear more about it for me to believe this was a Manning-specific shutdown rather than based on monetary volume of the account. It could be that CTR has those defaults because of the monetary volume rather than because the funding is for Manning in particular:
https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/How-to-use-PayPal/No-option-to-change-default-funding-source/m-p/12891
Does “neuron star” best describe the banksters these days?
I finally saw one of the “Cthulu fish” car emblems the other day. { LOL }
Xipwire of Philly has been contacted and asked to begin accepting donations to Courage to Resist. Xipwire currently accepts donations to Wikileaks.
eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion.
For snail mail users
Just for the sake of some clarity, Ebay owns Paypal. Their policy when you sign up for it, is that there must be a linked bank account. The way Paypal works, is that you may hold funds in Paypal, and receive and send moneys from there, but in the event that you attempt to pay from the Paypal account, and there are insufficient funds to complete the transaction, they’ll use your linked account to complete the funding. I have done business with them hundreds of times over the years, through Ebay and not, ending and receiving money, and have yet to actually have an issue.
I’m not necessarily defending their actions, as I fully support the work of Manning and Wikileaks. I’m just saying that this is SOP in my extensive experience with them.
Absobloodylutely.
Mother Jones has a bunch of charts showing just how badley the 90% are being screwed by the Rich:
It’s the Inequality, Stupid
Once people come to rely on a digital payment system to buy goods and services that are increasingly only available digitally, it generates enormous data flows and considerable reliance. That’s power that can be abused to analyze and to influence crowd behavior as well as to make profit.
Profit comes directly by charging for a service, as in paying a bank interest on a loan or paying a cable company for programs. It comes indirectly through aggregation of individual and group data, only purportedly anonymized. Cable companies, for example, make billions of dollars commercializing individual viewing habits, what you watched or recorded down the micro-second. That revenue is undisclosed to customers, and it comes on top of their revenue from actually charging for delivering programming to you.
What is the FDL snail mail address BTW?
That isn’t what they told me when I started. They didn’t require a linked account then; they required after you’d done business through them and they figured they had you hooked.
It’s
Firedoglake
5185 MacArthur Blvd NW, Suite 642
Washington, DC 20016
Thanks. I wonder if you can see the river from there.
Yep. “Go ahead, take the puppy home for the weekend. If you’re kids don’t like her, [take it from them and] bring her back on Monday.” Works every time.
Somebody is putting the heat on paypal. No doubt in the DOJ.
Exactly. I don’t let them get close to my cash. You can, of course, get around this by having two accounts, one that you use only for pay pal, and load it when you need it.
I can only relate my experience. I’ve had a Paypal account for something on the order of 7 years, and this always seems to be have been the case. I’ve been known to forget things though. But for at least 5 of those years, I know the link has been there. I’ve been on Ebay for ten years, and started with sending checks, and don’t remember precisely when I began using Paypal, but it was before the acquisition by Ebay.
Gosh. The entire global Fascist machine has mobilized against one American private.
Fuck you Pay Pal. I am going to spend a lot of time bad mouthing you to everyone I know. Most the people I know are not political so I will just tell them you steal money from your customers.
What’s the political history of Paypal and its board of directors? Any link to Meg Whitman?
How does the government figger it has the authority or legal justification to do this?
Well, my my my.
Pups always have the answers to my questions. eMeg.
Petition signed.
From a protest sign I’m having made:
This PayPal/Manning incident is an example of why private ownership of capital is incompatible with democracy.