By Binoy Kampmark

The train of history is an unpredictable one. The less well-oiled gears may be wonky. The driver may be asleep or dosing off. How one influences that train is a matter of some conjecture. Great figures of history have attempted to control their role in it. The error often lies in assuming that history is made at the time, when it is actually made after the time. As a keen Winston Churchill quipped about the architect of appeasement Neville Chamberlain, history would treat him poorly for the simple reason that he would write it. Continue Reading…

“Mr. Manning’s treatment has been intended to send a signal to people of conscience in the U.S. government who might seek to bring wrongdoing to light.”
– Julian Assange, ABC News, Aug 21, 2013

Wikileaks chief editor Julian Assange, and leader of the WikiLeaks Party, deemed it a “tactical victory” though still revolting to western concepts of justice. The 35 year sentence of Bradley Manning immediately brings to mind a sense of disproportion, an enormous swatter taken to the hapless fly. True, it was not the Sisyphean rock he would have to push up the hill for the rest of his life. 35 seems better in terms of carceral brutality than 60. But the premise remains grotesque.

For one thing, the documents Manning disclosed, for the vast part, would not have qualified for a sentence beyond their classification date – 25 years. That was the position of the defence, which was rejected by Col. Denise Lind. In another, the material, as pointed out by Chase Madar in The Passion of Bradley Manning (2012) was qualified under the label of “top secret”. From the trove of 250 thousand documents, a mere 15-16 thousand, in Madar’s reading, were “secret”.

Today the President of the United States validated Edward Snowden’s role as a whistleblower by announcing plans to reform America’s global surveillance program. But rather than thank Edward Snowden, the President laughably attempted to criticize him while claiming that there was a plan all along, “before Edward Snowden.” The simple fact is that without Snowden’s disclosures, no one would know about the programs and no reforms could take place. As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently once stated, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Luckily for the citizens of the world, Edward Snowden is one of those “people of good conscience” who did not “remain silent”, just as Pfc Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg refused to remain silent.

On Thursday night in Melbourne Fitzroy Town Hall was a full house to hear from WikiLeaks Party Victorian Senate candidates Julian Assange, Leslie Cannold and Binoy Kampmark in the forum ‘Truth-Telling: Criminalised by our Government and Suppressed by Our Media’, jointly presented with Radio 3CR. Missed out? Watch our live stream recording at our new WikiLeaks Party Live Ustream channel.

Transcript of Julian Assange’s remarks in the ‘Can we trust the media?’ debate, Splendour in the Grass 2013

I feel for the other side, I really do.

Can we trust the media?

That’s the media that has called for me and my staff to be assassinated, droned, rendered and prosecuted? For espionage, for our publications, and our involvement in the Snowden case? Even this year ‘The Wall Street Journal’ and ‘The Washington Post’ have pushed this junk.

Noam Chomsky in ‘The Common Good’ wrote that “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…”

We live in a media-ocracy. What’s politically possible is defined by the media environment.

In Australia, Murdoch’s News Corporation owns 60% of the mainstream media, one of the worst concentrations of media ownership in the world.

I started WikiLeaks because I understood this reality; the media frame defines the political possibility. 

So, to bring about meaningful change, we have to enlarge the media frame.  With WikiLeaks we have had significant successes in achieving this in some areas, though more needs to be done.  We have to improve the access and quality of media of information to all Australians and to the world.

That’s why we’ve set up the WikiLeaks Party, and that’s why I’m running this year for election to the Australian Senate.  And that’s why my colleague, human rights lawyer Kellie Tranter, here today, is also running for the Senate for the WikiLeaks Party. Continue Reading…