Shame on Amazon [and Paypal]

Shame on Amazon if it bowed to political pressure when kicking Wikileaks off its server farm.

I think I will move some of my online spending to Play.com.

p.s.  I see those scumbags at Paypal have cut off payments to Wikileaks. It will not do any good. There are still lots of ways to support Wikileaks. See this page on their new Swiss web site.

Meanwhile, here is a sensible take on the entire affair. A comment which, I suspect, would make it difficult to prosecute any of the Wikileaks people in an American court.

Here's Defense Secretary Robert Gates's view of the affair -

Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: “How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel." …

Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets.

Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.