Funding attack is McCarthyism at work, says WikiLeaks

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange says the website will stay strong and keep publishing diplomatic cables despite another funding blow.

    

The Australian began his third day under "mansion arrest" at a friend's house while he fights extradition to Sweden.
Mr Assange, 39, yesterday denounced Bank of America, the largest US bank, for becoming the latest institution to halt financial transactions for WikiLeaks after MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others.
The bank said its decision was "based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments".
Mr Assange likened the move to the anti-communist pursuits of former US senator Joseph McCarthy from the late 1940s to the 1950s.
"It's a new type of business McCarthyism in the US to deprive this organisation of the funds that it needs to survive, to deprive me personally of the funds that my lawyers need to protect me against extradition to the US or to Sweden," he said.

He is staying at Ellingham Hall, the mansion in eastern England of journalist friend Vaughan Smith, as part of the conditions of bail, which he was granted by London's High Court on Thursday night.
British newspapers yesterday published lurid new details of the allegations of sexual assault against two women, over which Swedish prosecutors want to question him. He denies the charges.
The Mail on Sunday reported that the two women with whom he had sex in Sweden had gone to police after he refused to take an HIV test.

Source:AFP