Daniel Ellsberg Says Boycott Amazon « Antiwar.com Blog

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Open letter to Amazon.com Customer Service:

December 2, 2010

I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating today its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.

For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices.

I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. Good: the broader and more immediate the boycott, the better. I hope that these others encourage their contact lists to do likewise and to let Amazon know exactly why they’re shifting their business. I’ve asked friends today to suggest alternatives, and I’ll be exploring service from Powell’s Books, Half-Price Books, Biblio and others.

So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear–and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses–to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers, or perhaps to sites like antiwar.com that have now appropriately ended their book-purchasing association with Amazon.

Yours (no longer),
Daniel Ellsberg

via antiwar.com

Posted via email from paulhugel’s posterous

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In 1995 At Maui High Performance Computing Center The Maui Scientific Analysis & Visualization of the Environment Program was first incubated. I was the principal investigator of this independant research project which was a joint development between MHPCC, Silicon Graphics Computers (SGI) & NKO.ORG. Using SGI Cosmo Worlds software, we pioneered the development of Internet based 3D virtual reality GIS based interactive worlds. In 1996 with a network of seven high performance SGI workstations we pioneered development of live streaming MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Real Video and QuickTime Streaming Server utilizing Kassenna MediaBase software. In Maui 2002 we pioneered and tested the first wireless live streaming video using laptop computers and Maui Sky Fiber's portable 3G wireless device. In Maui we pioneered live streaming video using usb modems from AT&T , Verizon as well as live streaming from iPhone 3 over 3G wireless networks. Today The Maui S.A.V.E. Program has diversified into storm tracking including visualization and analysis of large, memory-intensive gridded data sets such as the National Hurricane Center's wind speed probabilities. I volunteer my services to numerous Disaster Services Organizations. In June 2013 I returned from Hurricane Sandy deployment as a computer operations service associate with the Disaster Services Technology Group assisting as The American Red Cross migrated from a Disaster Response Operation to Long Term Recovery Operations. Pioneering the production/editing and Internet distribution of HD video to sites like Youtube.com and Vimeo.com we are shining the light towards environmental and peace efforts of humans across the globe. Since 1992 I have held the vision of establishing Maui, Hawaii as the environmental sciences center of the world. After His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet came to Maui This vision has expanded to establishing Maui as the environmental & peace center of the world.

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