Posts Tagged ‘courage’
Monica Lewinsky – a long echo of trauma leading to such wisdom
I heard a 45 minute interview with Monica Lewinsky talking to TED’s Chris Anderson on BBC Radio 4 over the weekend, and have listened to it another two times out walking. I recommend it. Highly. Man, I am so impressed with how this woman has integrated her life experiences and come to an understanding of […]
Alicia Machado’s courage. Bravo
The Republican candidate and his campaign are, once again launching attacks, insults and are attempting to revive slanders and false accusations about my life, in order to humiliate, intimidate, and unbalance me. These attacks are cheap lies with bad intentions. This, of course, is not the first time the candidate insists on discrediting someone or […]
A good discussion about interviewing politicians
I heard this on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Media Show’ this morning, and thought, “That’s worth sharing” — and not just because it features my sole remaining favourite right wing vixen Louise Mensch. (Best line: ‘blood on the carpet’.) Sparked by a recent changing of the guard at BBC’s Newsnight programme, the discussion traverses various […]
Sarah Harrison of Wikileaks
This is an eye-opening discussion re security/surveillance and the problematic tensions and self-censoring of media organizations over redactions. Sarah Harrison (in conversation with Alexa O’Brien) on Wikileaks’ evolving ‘archive’ and ‘history’ mission versus carefully filtered redacted documents — “media organizations working with governments is corrupting”. See what she says about US State Department trying to […]
Edward Snowden TED Talk March 2014
via Robot … well worth watching: Pay attention to what he says about the risks of speaking out versus the risks of ‘exposure’ of the material (PRISM etc). Yet, without the courage to face those, where would we be? Remember, Daring — if there was no risk it wouldn’t take guts. “I did not do […]
A beautiful, inspiring speech, and person: Ellen Page.
I would be so proud if I had any even vicarious association with this brave young woman who has overcome her struggle. Alas, I’m just another unconnected viewer who appreciates her courage and the way she delivered this message. – P
Burglars or Whistle-blowers? Exposing the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO … precursors to Snowden.
A fascinating piece of history — eight ‘new left’ activists acting in 1971 to protect the citizenry’s right to dissent … by exposing the FBI’s actions to infiltrate protest groups, spy on all sorts of people opposed to the Vietnam war, and, along the way, to ‘enhance paranoia’. Nice work. Well worth watching at NYTimes.com. […]
Be prepared to bleed
I spotted this line in an Esquire interview with Glenn Greenwald … If you’re gonna challenge people in power, you have to be ready to be attacked in effective ways. That’s the nature of power. If they couldn’t do that to you, they wouldn’t be powerful. Yeah, but I mean, of course it’s not easy. […]
After the storm. You may have to go further than you thought.
After my 5 km this morning I rocked up to the beach looking forward to a swim … Oops. Probably the effect of the overloaded storm water system in the recent heavy rain. Either that or — as one of my fellow swimmers suggested this morning — so much dog shit on the beach it […]
The challenge of dealing with a whistle-blower
I referred in this post: Please read this NY Times column — ‘The Banality of Systematic Evil’ to the discomfort that ‘management’ can experience — and the poor decisions they can make as a result — when someone in their organisation highlights wrongdoing. Remember?: “… an accountant was dismissed because he insisted on reporting “irregular payments, […]
“In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers … It is afraid of an informed, angry public …”
via the WikiLeaks website: Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others […]
A strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty
One of my regular pleasures is a BBC podcast called Witness. I recommend it. Details here. This morning I listened to the episode ‘JFK in Ireland’. And, as often happens, a passage of his words jumped out at me: When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with […]
‘I am Bradley Manning’ video
‘It’s time to stop the war on whistle-blowers.’
‘Sometimes the inner evil is so great that I have to shout loudly’
From 12 Questions: Bruce Sheppard by Sarah Stuart in the NZ Herald today: 6. Who taught you cynicism? Better question would be what, and that is simple – time and experience. Not much is what it seems, and the world has been spun to hopelessly complex levels for what appear to be very limited useful […]
Sometimes you have to just KEEP GOING until you get good
From Ira Glass. Another angle on the ‘resistance‘ we talk about here from time to time … Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo. Wonderful. – P via Andrew Sullivan
