Some guys from Wikileaks have given
a talk which I think is relatively interesting as it gives an insight into how the media works, tho it's over an hour long. Also, Wikileaks itself is quite interesting, and worth checking-out.
Wikileaks (site currently more-or-less down) is a website that acts as a 'clearing house' and secure drop-off point for leaks, ranging from internal business documents to suppressed newspaper articles to documents protected by the Official Secrets Act, and they're currently trying to create an 'information safe-haven' in order to forcibly bring transparency to the governments and power-groups of the world. They also ultimately want some kind of open-source/wiki approach to fact-checking, verification, etc., presumably to deal with the massive over-head of analyzing all of the data.
Some interesting bits from the talk:
They mention a company (Trafigura) 'allegedly'
dumping toxic waste off of the ivory coast: a fact which made the front-page of the Guardian, thus earning them a Secret Gagging Order; the BBC, the Times, the London Independent, also had to remove stories about the incident.
If you're wondering why you haven't heard about any of this... well, it's because it's been censored, so it hasn't been on the news: a Secret Gag Order is essentially 'meta-censorship', where you're not only forbidden from reporting on a certain topic, but you're also forbidden from reporting the fact that you've been gagged... the UK apparently has 2-300 of these currently in effect. We can't tell if they're justified or not, as we don't know what they're about (this is why meta-censorship is bad), but New York recently passed legislation basically saying that a UK libel order cannot be upheld in New York, and similar USA-wide legislature is partway through being passed; that's how bad the UK is on 'thou-cannot-say' laws (the worst liberal democracy, as the Wikileaks guys call us)...
Anyway, at the height of the censorship, an MP had to actually stand up in the House of Commons and read out the URL of the Wikileaks page with the censored stories on it -- colons and slashes and all -- to get the word out about it, which I thought was kinda cool.
What else... they mentioned their 911 pager messages: released in 'delayed real-time', they are 'an objective snapshot of communication of the time, including NYPD, doctors, secret service, etc.'. Or an attention-grabbing stunt, depending on how cynical you want to be. Still, it's interesting that there was, for some reason, a wide-spread intercepting and logging of pagers (including that of civvies).
They also host leaks from the
European Union Institute for Security Studies; according to the Wikileaks guys, the EUISS is a think-tank on security, well-listened to by the EU, who suggest, basically, that 20% of the world are 'globalizers' (1st world countries, trans-national corportations, etc), whilst the other 80% are 'localizers', i.e. 'poor'; and that said 80% are unhappy (probably at being so poor), and are 'limiting the 20%'s wealth', which -- according to the EUISS -- neccesitates an EU military, so that they can extract global resources (e.g., rainforests) from their owners who otherwize might not let the 20% use them; an approach which is apparently tantamount to declaring war on the poor. The report where they suggest all this is available on Wikileaks.
Another leak is a high-level US special-ops hand-book: amongst others pieces of advice, the International Monetary Fund is described as 'a financial weapon' to be used to exert America's will on foreign countries. It's just as interesting that this hasn't been reported despite being leaked and there for the reading -- this (potentially juicy and newspaper-selling) leak was not picked up on by the press, presumably because the report is 200-odd pages long, written for above-averagly intelligent people, and full of military acronyms: hence journalists didn't bother reading and reporting on it.
The Icelandic loan book was also leaked, showing who was withdrawing all their money from the Icelandic Bank before it went bust.
Iceland is so small that everyone was effected by the banking crisis. The leaking of the book allowed them to look at which insiders took all their money and ran before the country went bust; i.e., who knew that the ship was sinking; who 'sold them into debt-slavery'.
5 minutes before Iceland's equivalent of the BBC went on-air to report this, they got an injunction: so, as they went on-air, they simply posted up a picture of Wikileaks, hint-hint nudge-nudge.
And this is why Wikileaks is trying to persuade Iceland to become an Offshore Publication Centre.
For those not familiar with the dodgier side of economics, an Offshore Finance Centre is a small island without any large source of income that agrees to pass a
very convenient set of laws -- no money-transfer logging, no money-seizure, no public records, low(ish) tax, etc. -- in order to allow them to be a nice hidey-hole for rich people who don't want to follow laws, or pay too much tax.
An Offshore Publication Centre would essentially be the same, but for information: Sweden's source-protection laws, Belgium's journalist-protection laws, the US's 1st amendment (protection of free speach), etc. In return, Iceland could pick up some well-needed cash from the hosting/server fees.
Iceland, btw, has recently undergone some political upheaval, with riots on the streets and the government resigning and an early election putting a new party in power, all over the financial crisis. (Iceland had the worlds highest Human Development index, and now... well, now it does not. Iceland feels shafted by the bad guys, and bullied by the IMF and the UK (we're using their desired entry into the EU as a hostage to try to get them to pay us four times their GDP, which they apparently owe us, and using anti-terror laws to seize the Icelandic Bank's assets (hardly diplomatic...)), so the country has been somewhat 'radicalized' by the perception that they are the first 1st-world country to be a victim to globalization, with a bill nearly passing (tho the Wikileaks guys didn't say where... EU?) allowing for the military seizure of Icelandic assets in leu of payment (as usually happens to 3rd world countries)...
They also mention that it's not uncommon for Journalists to have quid-pro-quo deals with secret services/intelligence agencies: I'll report this for you, if you tell me such-and-such insider information...
An interesting watch, all-in-all.
