During the current Wikileaks storm, some necessary background. Here’s Julian Assange speaking earlier this year at the Berkeley School of Journalism on why he does what he does:
Showing all posts tagged censorship
PayPal takes the gutless option
First Amazon, now PayPal: PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks‘ account in the latest action against the whistleblower website, which has been posting leaked US embassy cables online. The decision by the online payment site – which WikiLeaks had used to raise funds for web hosting and other costs – has been announced with a posting on…
Why Wikileaks matters part 9753
There is SO much about Wikileaks at the moment that it’s truly hard to keep up. The following is a select selection of some of the more revealing revelations, related stories and controversies. Laurie Oakes in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph: Julia Gillard couldn’t help herself. She had to join the chorus of American hard-liners calling for…
Wikileaks here to stay so take that
Looks like our censoring friends are going to have troubles bringing down Wikileaks: SHANE MCLEOD: Wikileaks says its founder Julian Assange is going to stay in hiding because he may be at risk of being assassinated. A spokeswoman for the website says the Australian citizen will maintain a low profile amidst calls by some for…
Where’s the media guts over Wikileaks?
My following article appears on ABC Unleashed today: The rolling revelations of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables will continue for months but equally interesting is the reaction of the global media. Many in the British media establishment, not given advance look at the documents, fumed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and repeated government spin that…
Amazon crushes free speech and we’re watching
This is a disgrace and shows the utterly spinelessness of some in corporate America. We will not forget: The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in an apparent reaction to heavy political pressure. The main website and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic…
No wonder Israel and China loves authoritarian Sri Lanka so much
This is the first interview that Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam of the local Sunday Times newspaper has given since his release in May 2010. It is about the state of the media in Sri Lanka. Tissainayagam received the Peter Mackler Award for journalistic courage and integrity in October 2009.
Rupert is sending “Satan worship” into Iran
Tehran fears cultural imperialism but they just end up looking like paranoid and bigoted fools: In little more than a year, the Persian-language satellite television channel beamed into Iran by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and a prominent Afghan family has rapidly become one of the most popular stations in the country. A little too popular,…
Chinese are far more resourceful online than most in the West
The Columbia Journalism Review explains that China isn’t simply an authoritarian state where freedoms are suppressed: The resourceful ways that Chinese netizens have responded to the social injustices that surround them and to the limitations of their country’s carefully censored press, and indeed the sheer pace of change in this world, highlight one of the…
Hope, Votes and Bullets; documenting Iranian resistance
A wonderful new book has recently been released, Hope, Votes and Bullets (here’s an internet preview of the striking pages). It documents, through wonderful imagery, graphics and text, the millions of Iranians who took to the streets in 2009 during a period of intense political upheaval. The internet was integral to spreading the word. There…