Posts Tagged ‘WikiLeaks’
Alexa O’Brien, Amnesty International, testimony to Catalonia Parliament re Chelsea Manning
This testimony by Alexa O’Brien provides a good, compact ‘highlights’ package/history of the treatment whistle-blower Chelsea Manning received at the hands of the US Military judicial system. The video features her speaking with a translator (21 mins) while in the audio below (mp3 10 mins) the translator has been trimmed out. Worth paying attention to, […]
John Pilger on the shabby persecution of Julian Assange
I have respected John Pilger since before I trained and entered journalism in the 1980s. I respect his courage and his tenacity, his willingness to show up and tell the truth as he sees it. He’s also no fool. So, although it may not be a popular stand, in terms of some people’s interpretation of […]
“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 […]
‘I am Bradley Manning’ video
‘It’s time to stop the war on whistle-blowers.’
Jemima Khan’s must-read article about Julian Assange
In this insightful, articulate article, Jemima Khan addresses some of the issues and events surrounding Wikileaks and Julian Assange … and echoes one of my perennial themes: tribalism and how it blunts understanding. On the subject of Assange, pundits on both the left and the right have become more interested in tribalism than truth. The […]
Placing conscience above career
I’ve written before about my disappointment with the Obama administration’s persecution of whistleblowers … in direct contradiction to 2008 candidate Obama’s statements about the matter. This article A whistleblower salutes Bradley Manning by Thomas Andrews Drake writing at Politico is a worthwhile read, suggesting as he does that Bradley Manning’s actions in exposing ‘the dark […]
Lost in translation? … Assange not just ‘wanted for questioning’, but charged
From Julian Assange is charged, there is no doubt about it — Göran Rudling. On numerous occasions we have heard Julian Assange say that he is not charged with any crime. For English speaking people that means Julian Assange will be detained by three Swedish courts without a charge. I can understand why so many English […]
Assange allegations deeply fishy with dangerous undertones
I’ve always said the allegations (not actually criminal charges) against Julian Assange seemed like a jack-up and a smear campaign. What do you think?: 2) The process by which Assange was accused, cleared, and then re-accused of these incidents beggars belief. Two women went to a Stockholm police station one Friday afternoon in August 2010, […]
NY Times smears former collaborator Assange: ‘a nut job’
What a sleazy smear. But just the latest in a long line. His reputation has taken a deep plunge since he shook the world in 2010 by releasing, in cooperation with The New York Times and several other news organizations, masses of secret government documents, including battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most news organizations […]
The web: almighty humbler of power, or useful tool?
Worth a read: this brief article by Dan Zak at The Washington Post Woodward and Bernstein: Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal? discussing how a ubiquitous internet has so seized the world-view of even bright people that they think journalistic ‘sleuthing’ can be done online and that no corrupt power can but kneel […]
Assange … a right to scrutinise the state.
We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. — Julian Assange Pretty hard to argue with that. […]
Bradley Manning – out of place in the US army?
The Guardian has produced a video of their investigation into the background of accused WikiLeaks source/security leaker Bradley Manning, showing he was (apparently) regarded as mentally and socially unfit to be deployed to Iraq. It reveals that Manning’s discharge from the army prior to deployment to Baghdad was reversed because of the severe shortage of […]
Julian Assange on 60 Minutes
A decent length 60 Minutes interview with Assange. Worth watching. Still with the ‘oooh Julian Assange is soooo paranoid’ shtick. (What a disrespectful, unrealistic angle, that is.) And then there’s this ‘not one of us’ arse-covering comment (… an editorial line from CBS? You decide.) : “Some have argued that he’s [Assange] not really a […]
How the smear works: Now Assange = ‘lothario’ … as a given?
This super sleazy opening line from Marcus Baram (maybe we can blame his subeditor?) illustrates the lazy acceptance of a smear … or is he just trying to be a colourful writer? FAIL. NEW YORK — A super-secret organization led by a white-haired, cold-blooded lothario that uncovers revelations exposing the wrongdoing of the world’s most […]
