Corporate Ethics

Amazon, PayPal, Visa and Mastercard have all withdrawn services to Wikileaks on moral grounds (so Visa is deciding for me how I spend my money - time for a new card). Maybe that's true, in which case the detail below is even more disturbing because it reveals the basis of their morality, or maybe it's a big fat lie and they're doing what corporations always do when leaned on by powerful governments. Or perhaps Mastercard and Visa are merely paying the US Government in return for its lobbying of Russia - as revealed, inevitably, by Wikileaks.

Charles Arthur, the Guardian's technology editor, points out that while MasterCard and Visa have cut WikiLeaks off you can still use those cards to donate to overtly racist organisations such as the Knights Party, which is supported by the Ku Klux Klan.

The Ku Klux Klan website directs users to a site called Christian Concepts. It takes Visa and MasterCard donations for users willing to state that they are "white and not of racially mixed descent. I am not married to a non-white. I do not date non-whites nor do I have non-white dependents. I believe in the ideals of western Christian civilisation and profess my belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God."