Glen Litsinger sent me an e-mail. The gist of it is this: “We want to boycott ALL organizations that knuckle under to federal pressure on the most pressing issues of today that are fresh in the public’s mind. This would include PayPal and American Express and any other company that is denying funding to Wikileaks, any bank that cuts them off, the airlines that allow the porno scanners, and the manufacturers of those machines as well. ”
Assange is being railroaded in Britain and Sweden. The threat coming from the U.S. government is that he will be sent here and railroaded or lynched. He’ll be severely punished. The threat is that the U.S. government will bypass due process and jail him, with or without trial. The U.S. government has already pressured Amazon and others to cut off Assange and isolate him and leave him without funds. That already is judging him guilty without a trial and denying him his rights. The leverage that the government has over Amazon, PayPal, and all banks is tremendous. They are victims too. Boycotting them diverts attention and energy away from the main target that’s causing the evil. Assange set out to shed light on the Government’s doings, not those of Amazon and PayPal. We should be doing the same. We should be wanting to FREE ASSANGE. We should be demanding that his rights be respected and that he get due process of REAL law, not the government’s phonied up laws that are designed to imprison whoever displeases them. Then we should be demanding that the government’s pressures over these and other companies be ended. We should certainly demand that banks not be made to turn over financial records to the governments and be part of its spying apparatus. If we understand that we already are faced with totalitarian controls over companies, we will not be so hasty to condemn them and wonder off into fruitless boycotts. We should not be divided and conquered by blaming the victims for buckling under. Any of us is vulnerable. Any of us might be in the same situation at any time. These companies have many employees and customers. They are not monolithic. Many of them will be sympathetic to appeals for justice for Assange. There is no point in creating bitterness against them and alienating them.
