[Itpolicy-np] Re: Geopolitical Weekly: Taking Stock of WikiLeaks & looking at the big picture

[Bipin Gautam]

WikiRebels - The Documentary

Playlist: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhTfOL9_HBE&feature=&p=6D8EE2E0B836F096&index=0&playnext=1>

>From the description:

"Exclusive rough-cut of first in-depth documentary on WikiLeaks and
the people behind it!

>From summer 2010 until now, Swedish Television has been following the
secretive media network WikiLeaks and its enigmatic Editor-in-Chief
Julian Assange.

Reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist have traveled to key
countries where WikiLeaks operates, interviewing top members, such as
Assange, new Spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson, as well as people like
Daniel Domscheit-Berg who now is starting his own version -
Openleaks.org!

Where is the secretive organization heading? Stronger than ever, or
broken by the US? Who is Assange: champion of freedom, spy or rapist?
What are his objectives? What are the consequences for the internet?"

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Information is the Antidote to Fear: Wikileaks, the Law, and You
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/information-antidote-fear-wikileaks-law-and-you

_________________________________________________________________________________


Also, RECOMMENDED VIEWING: THE CENTURY OF THE SELF (4 hours documentry)
(DOWNLOAD from Google video :
http://youtuser.blogspot.com/2006/11/century-of-self.html )


http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml
Monday 29 April - Thursday 2 May 2002 7pm-8pm 	

Adam Curtis' acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming
self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the
ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the
people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they
really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes
controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in
Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created,
by whom, and in whose interests?

The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling social history.
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays, who invented
public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund's devoted daughter; and
present-day PR guru and Sigmund's great grandson, Matthew Freud.

Sigmund Freud's work into the bubbling and murky world of the
subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe
the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding
the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the
precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls,
and society's belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is
man's ultimate goal.
More on the series:

Episode One: Happiness Machines
Episode Two: The Engineering of Consent
Episode Three: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Head: He Must Be Destroyed
Episode Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

_________________________________


WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

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.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We
work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to
prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news
story, then to click online to see the original document it is based
on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the
journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that
media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed
some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories
about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes
nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is
nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those
wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their
taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the
truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US
embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has
reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to
report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other
media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times,
El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same
redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that
has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US
government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even
though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens
of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special
forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin
Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me
declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An
adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national
television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called
for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed
for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering
to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of
the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US
as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass
WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing
everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at
framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have
not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is
because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and
large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the
messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including
information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the
numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks
personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would
be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only
been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister
and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their
duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean
to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US
agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with
the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll
endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what
WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During
that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person,
as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with
Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few
months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US
congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been
compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated
there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being
harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a
single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of
Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt
by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic
cables reveal some startling facts:

► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and
information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA,
fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and
ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably
Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.

► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped
by any means available.

► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is
kept from parliament.

► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed
detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the
Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific
neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept
detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme
Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose
deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today
reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the
truth.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/wikileaks/dont-shoot-messenger-for-revealing-uncomfortable-truths/story-fn775xjq-1225967241332>