They stopped hosting it because most of their sales are in North America. Their customer base is rightly incensed about Wikileaks lack of concern for the health and safety of our men and women in uniform...
Really? Amazon had hosted the war diary[3] pages over a month ago, with little fanfare.[1]
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.”
When we went to real congressional oversight of intelligence in the mid-’70s, there was a broad view that no other foreign intelligence service would ever share information with us again if we were going to share it all with the Congress. Those fears all proved unfounded.
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.[4]
Timeline:
Oct 22 - Amazon is noticed hosting wikileaks' war logs on U.S. EC2 servers[1]
Nov 30 - Staff of the Senate Homeland Security Committee become aware of news reports stating that Cablegate is hosted on U.S. Amazon EC2 servers.[2]
Dec 1 - Lieberman issues a statement that he's pleased that Amazon has cut off wikileaks.[2]
So, is the claim that Amazon cut off wikileaks this week, acting of its own free will? Doubtful. It appears it was nudged, pushed, perhaps even threatened.
And let's not forget the Lieberman- and King-endorsed newspeak definition of terrorism...
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/130879-sen-lieberman-doubts-wikileaks-is-a-terrorist-organizationMore with Lieberman talking about about lives and safety:
http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/politics/lieberman-wikileaks[1]
http://boxbinary.com/2010/10/why-wikileaks-warlogs-site-servers-hosted-in-the-us-amazon-ec2-not-sweden/ (Amazon U.S. EC2 hosting warlogs)
[2]
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/how_lieberman_got_amazon_to_drop_wikileaks.php[3]
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/10/no_intel_compromise.html[4]
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary-gates-on-wi/