Category: Media

Support Assange

The Russian government is encouraging NGO’s to nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile this letter of support has appeared in the Guardian signed by several of our friends.

We protest at the attacks on WikiLeaks and, in particular, on Julian Assange (Report, 9 December) The leaks have assisted democracy in revealing the real views of our governments over a range of issues which have been kept secret and are now irreversibly in the public domain. All we knew about the mass killing, torture and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan has been confirmed. The world’s leaders can no longer hide the truth by simply lying to the public. The lies have been exposed. The actions of major corporations such as Amazon, the Swiss banks and the credit card companies in hindering WikiLeaks are shameful, bowing to US government pressure. The US government and its allies, and their friends in the media, have built up a campaign against Assange which now sees him in prison facing extradition on dubious charges, with the presumed eventual aim of ensuring his extradition to the US. We demand his immediate release, the dropping of all charges, and an end to the censorship of WikiLeaks.

John Pilger, Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition, Salma Yaqoob, Craig Murray, Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas, Caryl Churchill, AL Kennedy, Celia Mitchell, Ben Griffin (former soldier), Terry Jones, Sami Ramadani, Roger Lloyd Pack, David Gentleman, Miriam Margolyes, Andy de la Tour, Katharine Hamnett, Iain Banks

Wikileaks and 21st Century Statecraft

Have 250,000 leaks sunk the State Department’s ‘Internet Freedom’ policy?

by Roy Revie

As the fallout of Cablegate continues to consume column inches, gigabytes, and cabinet meetings across the world, the realisation that this is about more than one man, one organization, and one massive leak seems to be slowly sinking in. While some argue that stories and comment focusing on the process of the leak and the fallout for the organisation only distract from the stories contained within the cables themselves, it is clear that this element is as vital (in the short term at least) as the contents of the cables.  We find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented public debate on Internet freedom and the role of the state online.  In this debate much has been written about the motives and background of Wikileaks (some bad, some excellent) while other parties involved have avoided the same scrutiny.  Of particular interest in the current discussion is the role of the State Department which under Hillary Clinton’s leadership has played an important and contradictory role in the debate on Internet freedom.

Back in more innocent times, in January of this year, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the Newseum (a 250,000-square foot monument to media complacency) in which she introduced the concept of “21st Century Statecraft” – a term referring to the recent State Department push for the use of social and new media for diplomatic and geopolitical ends.  In this speech she affirmed the US’s commitment to the “principles of internet freedom”, a new Human Right for the 21st Century.  Clinton waxed lyrical about the ethical, financial, political and practical reasons why freedom of access and use of the internet should be considered an absolute right – noting that America “stand[s] for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas”.  The State Department, it seemed, was committed to a comprehensive and open approach to online freedom and engagement, a new stance for a government which had hitherto tended towards a more iterative approach to interaction with the modern world.

Continue reading “Wikileaks and 21st Century Statecraft”

The Truth Will Always Win

by Julian Assange

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

Continue reading “The Truth Will Always Win”

BBC charity committed to promoting UK Government propaganda in Afghanistan

by Tom Mills

In August the right-wing pressure group the Tax Payers’ Alliance revealed that the charitable wing of the BBC World Service, the BBC World Service Trust, had received £205,000 under the Foreign Office’s counter-terrorism programme.  The money was provided to fund the Trust’s Afghan Woman’s Hour programme, which is broadcast every week in Dari and Pashto.  Naturally the Tax Payers’ Alliance took this as evidence of wasteful government expenditure.  What it overlooked though is the more worrying fact that a charity closely affiliated to the BBC was knowingly participating in a government propaganda project.

The BBC World Service Trust was set up in 1997 to train journalists and other media workers in the developing world and the former Soviet Union.  It launched Afghan Woman’s Hour in January 2005 with the stated intention of empowering Afghan women and promoting their participation in Afghan society.  The project was headed by Rachel Ellison, the BBC’s then International Project Director, who received an MBE for her work.  Ellison now runs a Corporate Coaching and Media Consultancy with clients including HSBC, the Foreign Office and the investment bank Goldman Sachs which funds business training programmes for Afghan women.

Continue reading “BBC charity committed to promoting UK Government propaganda in Afghanistan”

Some Unvarnished Truths About the US and Israel

by M. Shahid Alam

Was there ever a time when a leading organ of the US media could speak the unvarnished truth about the links between the United States and Israel?

Consider this quote from Time magazine of January 1952, embedded in an article that explained its choice of Mohammed Mossadegh as its Person of the Year for 1951. It had no compliments for Mossadegh, the man who was spearheading his country’s bid to take back its oil resources from the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. No surprise there.

Surprising, however, is Time’s candor on Israel. It minces no words. US support for the creation of Israel had alienated the Middle East: it had been a costly error, motivated not by national interest but petty considerations of presidential politics. Truman had supported the creation of Israel in order to court American Jewish votes. This was the plain truth: a US President had placed his electoral chances ahead of a vital national interest. Apparently, in those days, Time could write the plain truth without worrying about the tide of flak from the American Jewish community.

Continue reading “Some Unvarnished Truths About the US and Israel”

New York Times Beats Drums for War

Ray McGovern: NYT ignores intelligence there is no evidence of Iran nuclear weapons program program. He also has some interesting observations about Alan Dershowtiz’s fantasies.

Former British diplomat blasts New York Times’ subservience

Carne Ross blasts Bill Keller of New York Times. (see Glenn Greenwald’s must read post on Wikileaks and what it says about the political culture and press).

Miral

It will not come to a threatre near you soon; it might if you insist.

Our friend Adam Horowitz thinks it has the potential to become this generation’s Exodus.

Helen Thomas on Her Resignation and Middle East

Brave and outspoken: the great Helen Thomas.

Thomas: Israel should get out of Occupied Territories; White House Correspondents Association were out of line.

Valley of the Wolves: Palestine

Israel-Turkey relations may survive the Flotilla flap, but lets see if they can survive this. Kurtlar Vadisi is the immensely popular Turkish series which was first turned into a Rambo-style big budget film attacking the US occupation of Iraq (at a time when relations between the US and Turkey were otherwise cordial). In the forthcoming film, the same Turkish team infiltrates Israel (or Palestine, as the film’s hero insists on calling it) to exact revenge for the flotilla murder. Here’s the trailer: