Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr
Ideas At The House on Sep 16, 2013
US Journalist and activist Alexa O’Brien and Australian commentator Robert Manne are joined by video conference with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Guardian Journalist Glenn Greenwald and Chelsea Manning’s Lawyer David Coombs on stage at the Sydney Opera House (moderated by Bernard Keane of Crikey).
Powerful governments are waging a war on whistleblowers and those involved in publishing their material. Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, Manning has been convicted of espionage and is awaiting sentencing, and Julian Assange has been granted asylum by Ecuador but cannot step outside its London Embassy. It’s clear that the actions of whistleblowers and their publishers – ‘traitors’ as they are known to some – have come at a significant personal cost, and while the human drama of these stories is engrossing, the focus should be on the very real issues they’ve raised: surveillance, press freedom, privacy, secrecy, and accountability.
The roles of governments and corporations in the future of the internet, and their use and abuse of data, have been put under the global spotlight. In the wake of Manning, Snowden and Wikileaks, we finally have the scope to properly debate the need for government transparency and the trade-off between privacy and security.
Watch our expert panel discuss the implications of the war on whistleblowers for the main actors, and the consequences if that war is lost for the rest of us.
see
The Open Internet Goes to Court + Save the Internet Action Alert
Juice Rap News 20: Australian Election: A Game of Polls, Featuring Julian Assange
Government Should Not Define What a Reporter Is—or Isn’t by Walter Brasch
Vijay Prashad: Bradley Manning, the Nuremberg Charter and Refusing to Collaborate with War Crimes
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The main purpose of government is to ensure the status quo remains the same, to support military and police activity and make sure the taxpayer pays for this propaganda, and to support politicians economic personal wealth and whilst advocating slogans and ideas of freedom, support the oppression and mystification of the masses.
Thank you very much for sharing this most essential discussion. Very to-the-point and powerful. Worthy of intermittent reposting.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Jerry, I agree. A very important discussion.
MSM outlets like the WSJ and the NYT weren’t “asleep at the switch”, as Coombs suggests (at approx 1:07:00). They know goddamn good and well they’re playing a game. They know, so long as they can sell the shit they publish to people as “news”, they will continue to have a revenue stream. They will be able to continue selling advertising. They will remain in the good graces of their cultivated government sources. And this entire charade of having an “informed public” will continue.