As I write this, Wikileaks public face Julian Assange is in police custody in London, having been denied bail and planning to fight extradition to Sweden to face Kafkaesque sexual assault charges. On this side of the Atlantic, Barack Obama and Eric Holder are honing their Woodrow Wilson/Mitchell Palmer act, threatening to reprise the actions of a President and Attorney General whose contempt for, and mischaracterization of, Constitutionally-protected, government-criticizing free speech took a backseat to no one. The biggest difference is probably the fact that the infamous Palmer raids resulted in the deportation of 556 alleged radicals (including anarchist firebrand Emma Goldman), while the Obama/Holder goal is to force Mr. Assange into this country, to face charges related to the heroic publication of U.S. diplomatic cables laying bare the arrogance and sadism of the American empire in its internationally convulsive death throes.
Despite my passion for this issue as a citizen, it is only recently that it hit home in a more intimate manner. I describe myself as a guerrilla used bookseller, with my income from that endeavor split almost evenly between selling at open-air weekend markets in the New Orleans area, and selling online through Amazon.com's Marketplace Seller Program. Basically, I have an inventory of approximately 2100 books (not one of the bigger fish in the Amazon pond, by any means), priced and described, that I sell through Amazon.com's website. I pay a monthly fee for this service, as well as a fee on each successfully-executed transaction. In return, I receive access to Amazon's worldwide customer base. Paradoxically, I am a fiercely independent bookseller operating within a large corporate entity, one that arguably poses a threat to the locally-owned mom-and-pop operations that are still out there. However, I am not selling the latest Dean Koontz or Nora Roberts escapist tome: I like to think I am providing my customers with the tools for their self-directed evolution, tools which are most likely available at their local used bookstore. Up until recently, I would argue that the compromises and idealism were in a sustainable balance.
As many of you probably know, Amazon.com is front and center in the Wikileaks controversy, owing to their recent dropping of the website from their server. Their excuses have been numerous, but it seems to boil down to asserting that Wikileaks doesn't "own or otherwise control all the rights..." to the classified materials they have released, a violation of the terms of their contract with Amazon. However, as Antiwar.com founder and columnist Justin Raimondo (one of the most insightful contributors to the ongoing dialogue) has written, if the released diplomatic cables are "owned" by anyone, the owners are "...the people whose involuntary contributions paid for them, i.e. the American taxpayers,":
"Far from stealing anything, Wikileaks, in effect, returned stolen property to its rightful owners (author's italics). To argue otherwise is to maintain a deeply statist and proto-authoritarian stance: that the state exercises sovereignty over the people, rather than vice versa," (Raimondo, Antiwar.com, December 6, 2010).
The above quote is from a Raimondo column titled "Defend Wikileaks - Boycott Amazon," a position I am afraid I have to personally support and endorse, despite the potential loss of income. I wish I felt like I had the option to end the relationship completely, but I am not fiscally prepared to do that right now. Perhaps this episode will motivate me to do more, faster, to extricate myself from the corporate machine. But I can do penance.
From this point forward, starting from the beginning of December, 2010, I pledge to tithe 10% of the income I earn from Amazon.com sales to one of the following: (1) Wikileaks itself, currently dodging and feinting the best cyber-efforts of the Matrix to bring it and keep it down, (2) the Julian Assange defense fund, if necessary; or (3) the Bradley Manning defense fund, helping out the heroic soldier who is alleged to have copied the classified documents and made them available to Wikileaks. If this situation is resolved in a timely and morally appropriate manner (which would probably require the complete dismantling of the U.S. imperial infrastructure through some sort of indigenous Velvet Revolution), the tithe will go to Antiwar.com.
Meanwhile, I will go on peddling my wares at various open-air street markets in the New Orleans area, subverting the empire, spreading the Velvet Evolution one reasonably and always negotiably-priced book at a time. Stop by anytime.
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