THING2THING

DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? with Gary Kennedy

CaTⓋ — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:38:02 +0000

Trade Unionist and Secretary of Newcastle Trades Hall, Gary Kennedy attended the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress in Sydney on May 15th 2012. His intention was to raise a motion from the floor of congress; that our government does more, and everything it can to protect Julian Assange.

Good point. This is one of our most honoured citizens, with 30 good years of good work ahead of him, if the following awards are anything to go on:

image: Somerset Bean

[download poster]
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The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is awarded on an annual basis to journalists “whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or ‘official drivel’”.

The judges said: “WikiLeaks has been portrayed as a phenomenon of the hi-tech age, which it is. But it’s much more. Its goal of justice through transparency is in the oldest and finest tradition of journalism.”

image: Lydia Kelemen

We just witnessed a glimmer of hope: a strong judicial backlash against the National Defence Authorisation Act for violations of the First and Fifth Amendments; and a thumbs down in court for the NYPD, for continued discrimination against minorities. The Pentagon recently ditched extremist, anti-muslim curricula from its military schools and is hopefully debriefing the graduates by now. Maybe some schizoid knot is unravelling… and we can foresee a time when Assange’s life will no longer be on the line, or simply over, if Virginia’s Grand Jury succeed in pirouetting journalism into espionage.

If that doesn’t happen, Australians will be proud of Julian Assange and he will no doubt live up to Mr Kennedy’s expectations as a Senator.

"Justice for Julian Assange..." ACTU Congress, May 15 2012

[full screen share-alike version]

Gary Kennedy interview, full transcript here.

The Bitter Reality of Afghanistan – with Malalai Joya

CaTⓋ — Sun, 13 May 2012 06:18:32 +0000

The Bitter Reality of Afghanistan – with Malalai Joya

Behold the effect of white phosphorus bombing on a young child’s skin. Afghan lawmaker Obaidullah Helali, who headed a delegation investigating this massacre from US bombing in the western province of Farah, confirmed that it took the lives of 95 children.

The talk from Malalai Joya was recently hosted in Sydney by Pip Hinman on behalf of the Stop The War Coalition and chaired by Kellie Tranter, lawyer and human rights activist. The visual material comes mainly from Malalai, with a few additions, notably from rawa.org, site of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

I had to go digging on RAWA and elsewhere when Malalai started talking about things that weren’t illustrated in her slides. While searching, I came upon another “slideshow” of 76 photos, published here by The Week on May 2, 2012. Flicking through them, I began counting the female faces. There was only one; that of Hillary Clinton.

Malalai Joya presents Afghanistan in stark contrast, from a woman’s and a child’s perspective, while digging deep into the issues of opium, corruption and bribery.

"My country hasn't been liberated: it's still under the warlords' control, and Nato occupation only reinforces their power." Malalai Joya

Behold the effects of white phosphorous bombing on a young child's skin. Farrah Province, Afghanistan, May 2009

LINKS

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
rawa.org
facebook.com/RAWA.Afghanistan
youtube.com/rawa77
twitter.com/rawa77

Social Association of Afghan Justice-Seekers (SAAJS)
saajs.org
facebook.com/social.association
youtube.com/afghanwarcrimes

Solidarity Party of Afghanistan
hambastagi.org/new
facebook.com/Afghanistan.Solidarity.Party
youtube.com/AfghanSolidarity

Stop the War Coalition, Sydney
www.stopwarcoalition.org

DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? with Larry Buttrose

CaTⓋ — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:27:56 +0000

Like a lot of Australians, I was not just disappointed but actually shocked by the attitude of Julia Gillard and her government – many of the senior members of government – to Julian Assange and the major Wikileaks release of 250,000 documents that started in 2010.

It was an emotive response to a number of factors; one of which being “those leaks”, that were published a few days before. They were the ones that named Mark Arbib as an informer, an insider who informed on the workings of our government to a foreign power. It might be an ally, but it’s still a foreign power, and you don’t do that. You don’t tell a foreign power what’s going on inside your own government…

Imagine that the other way round: if Australian Intelligence had been receiving information about the internal workings of Obama’s government, and sending it back to Canberra. This would have been… you can imagine the reaction in the US. The fact that there was virtually no reaction illustrates the servant-master relationship; post-colonial relationship; NEO-colonial relationship that we have with the United States.

We are the willing Deputy Sheriff, and nothing has illustrated that more than the reaction Julia Gillard had when she claimed, completely wrongly – and the woman’s a LAWYER, for God’s sake – that Julian Assange was in breach of the law and that he had done something illegal. Then it was put to the federal police and what did they say? “No, he hasn’t broken any law”.

The other terrible thing at that time, was that Attorney General McClelland said that he would examine the state of Assange’s passport, as though he might not be allowed back into Australia – a last refuge, one would have thought, if the forces of authority are hunting him throughout the world. But what does the Australian government do? It says we’ll examine his passport to see if he can be kept out. The last person they did something like that to was Wilfred Burchett, so presumably they see Assange, in his own way, as as dangerous as Burchett – the last thing we had as a real renegade journalist – who didn’t take the government’s orders and reported as he wished. But that was decades ago…

So is Assange the new bête noir of the Australian government? Presumably he is.

Julian Assange receives the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize

My feeling about Julian Assange is that he should be celebrated. He is someone who has gone off in pursuit of truth. That’s all. He’s like Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, which showed the dark side of the Vietnam War (it was all the dark side really) and Assange; what he’s been trying to do is to get papers which will show the unseen side of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. From a journalistic point of view, you have to remember that these wars have not been reported. They have gone UNREPORTED. Why is that? The last wars that were reported in any way objectively… the last one was Vietnam, where reporters were on the ground as free agents and could report what they saw. A number of them died in that process, but they got the news out as they saw it.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, reporters are embedded, and they spout the line of whoever embeds them with their troops. They see the war from the perspective of those who are giving them safety and comfort, and with whom they are bedded down. This is not the way that journalists should operate and it’s not the way that the public will ever learn the truth. So we have to accept that we are not getting information about those wars.

The French theoretician Jean Baudrillard spoke of the first Gulf War and said that it was an electronic confection, put on almost as a form of entertainment, and through it you could no longer contact or touch the reality of war. Iran and Afghanistan are the same, and the major powers are stage-managing their conflicts now, so that the public back home never worry about them; turn off The News and turn on The Simpsons.

The problem is someone like Julian Assange comes along and through releasing all sorts of government information, shows what the facts actually are, and the true danger is that the public may learn them. That’s why they’re so terrified of him. What is the attitude of the Australian government to a citizen, who has only brought material to light that was volunteered to his website anonymously? Take away his passport. Say that he’s done illegal acts. What does that really construe? That says he’s a criminal. He’s none of those things. He’s a journalist and a publisher, and that’s all he’s done. And for the things that he’s done, we should be awarding him the A.M., the A.O. He should be Australian of The Year. That’s the kind of person he is.

This government has betrayed a person whose only crime is to publish the truth. No one says these cables aren’t correct. They are authentic documents. And is Julian Assange accused of stealing them? No. So what is his crime, in any country? Even the Americans will find it hard to make that stick.

So from my point of view it’s one of the worst performances of this Government; the one that’s really sapped faith in the progressive side of politics, in the shell of what was The Labor Party. If they are going to suck on this level, God knows what Mark Lathem would say about them…

Andrew Partos – The Man who Rang

CaTⓋ — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:42:20 +0000

Making his television debut on ABC’s QandA, Andrew Partos leads with two questions about Julian Assange to a panel that includes Australia’s Attorney General Nicola Roxon and Jeffrey Robinson QC. If given a third chance to speak, he would have mentioned his conversation with Mastercard executive David Masters, regarding the Wikileaks blockade.

In this interview, Partos stands his ground against Masters, who denies he said that Mastercard Australia acted on instructions from Julia Gillard and the former Attorney General Robert McClelland, to block donations to Wikileaks. When this story broke just over a week ago, journalists flocked around Masters but completely ignored the other party, and the official statement was as expected. Masters did not deny that the conversation with Mr Partos took place; just what was said. In a case where it’s one man’s word against another, we feel it only fair to let both parties speak.

Partos stands his ground - Mastercard Australia said they acted on instructions from Julia Gillard and the Attorney General to block donations to Wikileaks.

Andrew is a Holocaust survivor and prolific writer of letters to the press in the name of truth, justice and free speech. In the last six years, he has had some 600 letters published but claims to have written over 3000. For that reason he calls himself both the most published – and unpublished! – citizen in Australia.

Fullscreen version:

Clark Stoeckley: WIKI TRUCKIN’ MAN

CaTⓋ — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:00:46 +0000

I took a trip to NYC and dropped in on artist Clark Stoeckley to talk about his adventures in The Wikileaks Truck. Clark relates how he was arrested on the truck’s first day out and interrogated by secret service; how he drove it to the Bradley Manning pre-trial and around the Grand Jury “hearing” of David House 100 times… Clark was arrested while using the #WikiTruck to carry blankets to the occupiers, after which the truck got momentarily “lost”. I arrived just in time for the closure of the Wikileaks Truck auction. His plan was to sell one and create a fleet… An update on Mr House’s adventures can be found here.

DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? with Gail MALONE, Peace Activist

CaTⓋ — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:55:58 +0000

I saw a photo of Christine Assange protesting outside of Julia Gillard’s office – a solitary mother with her sign… I was so impressed. Then the opportunity came to take the bus to Canberra. I knew I had to be there. I had to support her in her efforts to save her son from being extradited. It was a privilege to carry that same sign with her up to Parliament House. To me it was a noble cause. We must save Julian Assange.

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I’d followed the rise of Wikileaks and watch the enigmatic and apparently reclusive Julian Assange become a more public figure. Like most people, I was horrified by the “Collateral Murder” video, even though I wasn’t naive to the ways of war.

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I attended a rally at Sydney Town Hall to protest the incarceration of Julian Assange, quite outraged at our government’s lack of assistance to him and the obvious political interference that was involved.

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On the following New Year’s Day, I was involved in the first Global Day of Listening with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. Connections are made across the world, to enable us in the privileged West to speak to young people in war-torn Afghanistan via Skype.

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When we started speaking I told them I was Australian. I could hear the buzz of excited chatter:
“Oh Wikileaks! Julian Assange!” stood out among their native tongue. My heart rose. Wow. My eyes welled… I’d felt nothing but shame at being Australian, as far as our foreign policy was concerned regarding Afghanistan. These young people from the far reaches of Afghanistan loved Julian Assange.

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At that moment I fully comprehended the enormity and importance of Wikileaks for those who seek peace through truth. I was proud to have Julian Assange a fellow countryman and can’t understand those that aren’t.

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DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? with Gail MALONE, Peace Activist

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After this day, I wrote an article for my local rag about the Day of Listening. During the research, I learned of Task Force 373, US based assassination squad, traveling Afghanistan, killing more often than capturing people. I learned of the shocking civilian death toll that drones were inflicting on the people of Waziristan, and that their own government allowed these strikes. I learned that the US company Dyncorp was involved in pedophilia in Afghanistan. I learned these things because of Wikileaks.

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In June I attended an Act for Peace seminar on cluster munitions. I met Seraj Habib. He’d lost both his legs at the age of 10 – to a cluster bomb. We heard from John Ramstedt, Nobel Peace laureate and photo journalist; of Australia’s unconscionable behind-the-scenes lobbying for the US, encouraging (or probably pressuring) other countries not to sign the convention. To their shame, Vietnam was one of these countries. This was known because of Wikileaks.

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Last week, I took part in what now has become Global Days of Listening – a monthly occurrence – and I spoke with Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness and Dr Hakim, the mentor of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. We spoke of the Occupy movement and the phone link-up from Melbourne Occupy with the Afghan Youth, who are very pro-Occupy… I spoke with them of attending the rally in Canberra with Christine Assange to protest the incredible position Julian Assange has found himself in because of the machinations of the US government.

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Hakim told me a story of one of his boys. He said he asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. The boy replied: “A journalist”, and Hakim asked him: “What type of journalist?.” “A journalist like Julian Assange!”, he replied. Hakim wanted me to let Christine know.

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We all need to work any way we know how, to save Julian Assange. It is now or never for Julian. History will judge him far more kindly than it judges our government.

“Thin air” thick with political intent?

CaTⓋ — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:26:56 +0000

Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesman for Wikileaks, has recently offered a statement to Australia’s Green Left Weekly, entitled: “The real story of WikiLeaks and Sweden”. In it he details how the tabloid newspaper Expressen claimed WikiLeaks was preparing a “smear campaign” against Sweden, citing as sources both a WikiLeaks ’insider’ and WikiLeaks “internal memo”.

Hrafnsson challenges the newspaper to publish the cited memo, since he asserts that it does not exist, and that the reporting of Wikileaks’ intended attack on Sweden is grounded on nothing more than “thin air”.

Assange and Hrafnsson exit Supreme Court hearing, Feb 2, 2012 - photo Cathy Vogan

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I draw attention to what would seem to be another, somewhat related fabrication by Expressen, in conjunction with three other tabloid newspapers, as scrutinised by Professor Marcello de Noli in the following article. It’s curiously a very long story, that dates back to at least 1993 for Expressen:

http://ferrada-noli.blogspot.se/2012/03/throw-them-all.html

<< THROW THEM OUT! >> "What Swedish people think of immigrants and refugees". Expressen’s Front-page 1993

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It would appear that a “wide-spread” problem of honour-related violence and killings in Sweden has been INVENTED by these newspapers to persecute immigrants and particularly Muslims. Between 1986 and 2010, so-called honour-related killings among the Muslim population in Sweden amounted to only 0,0001 percent, yet Expressen, along with Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, and Svenska Dagblade have published over 1000 articles on the issue of “honour-related” killings.

Since one of the most serious of these groundless, racist attacks preceded Sweden’s involvement in the Afghan war, and since the author also details collaboration in the myth from certain politicians and government agencies, one might conclude that this air is not thin, but thick with political intent! One might also see, thanks to de Noli’s closer analysis, a mesh of corroboration rather than just the fabulist reporting of one single newspaper…

De Noli cites for example, the Development Centre of Gothenburg, an institution of the Swedish Prosecution Authority led by none other than Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny, which has issued a public document entitled “Honour-related Violence Manual”, containing “explanations” for such criminal behaviour, which allude to a “patriarchal universal structure”, and “culture-specific behaviour” (“hedersrelaterat våld som en kulturspecifik företeelse”). How this material manages to make its way to the public domain is beyond the author’s comprehension. It is after all illegal to publicly vilify men on the basis of their ethnicity, with no regard for the data that proves you wrong.

Illustration from the "Honour-related Violence Manual" by Gothenberg Development Centre (Dir. Marianne Ny)

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De Noli also cites a “research” project (equally unsupported by statistical analysis) which concludes: “Therefore we see a need to critically question also the presence in Sweden of conservative men as for instance from the Middle-East”. It is signed by Jur dr Jenny Westerstrand, research partner of Theology Dr and Professor Eva Lundgren, and approved by the Theology Association of Uppsala, despite violations of the guidelines for research and ethics with humans in Sweden.

“A particular flagrant propagation of cultural-racist notions is the one popping up in an official site by the Government of Sweden. The site “Men’s violence against women” (Mäns våld mot kvinnor) focuses in describing the government program set up to deal with that problem.”

It’s a small world Kristinn, and I couldn’t join the dots better for you than Noli:

“At the end the gender ideology of Christian brotherhoods, of the Bodströms & Borgströms and Assange accusers by proxy, of radical feminist politicians like Margareta Winberg and associate von Wachenfeldt, of their Christian theology doctors and demon exorcists Eva Lundgren and associate Jenny Westerstrand, all of their fantasy was finally made Swedish State-feminist law with the help of falsified data. [12]

And when their victory relaxed and the secret no longer was held, it confessed that gender perspective meant only feminist perspective. And then [it was empirically] revealed that feminist perspective meant gender supremacy. And finally, when truth spoke through reality, it demonstrated that Swedish state-feminism had evolved into purely cultural-racist, anti-Muslim propaganda. And it showed that one of its results was the linking of “honour-violence” – ascribed with unrepresentative data to Muslim immigrant men – to the “terrorist war”. But this will not help legitimise the Swedish vassal military occupation of Muslim Afghanistan on behalf of the US and Lundin oil.

No wonder they fear WikiLeaks; no wonder they attack Julian Assange.”

Should we conclude that Julian Assange and Muslim men resident in Sweden are but collateral damage, and that the more slippery target is oil? It’s clear Wikileaks are not attacking Sweden or the Swedish people, but someone ought to look into assuring that journalism and “research ethics reviews” in Sweden are both based on fact and compatible with scientific research, lest the world be spun off its axis…

DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? with John PENLEY

CaTⓋ — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:12:15 +0000

So how does it look at your end John?

I'm just saying, if that were me...

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE & DEMOCRACY – Don’t Shoot the Messenger !

CaTⓋ — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:23:55 +0000

More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology on February 17 to attend a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. It was organised by the newly formed Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition, with the support of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, T2T and the Stop the War Coalition, Sydney

John Pilger speaks from London - photo Peter Boyle

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Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange.

Veteran journalist and former SBS broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the meeting. She told the audience WikiLeaks had won several prestigious awards for excellence in journalism. She said the US government is persecuting WikiLeaks for publishing material that other media outlets have also published. The difference was that WikiLeaks has done it better, she said.

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE & DEMOCRACY with Humphrey McQueen from CaTV on Vimeo.

“… all of human history the 1% have struggled to make sure that the 99% couldn’t read or write at all, let alone read what WikiLeaks has revealed.

The Church used Latin. The Russian Tsarists used French against their own population. When John Wycliffe tried to translate the Bible into English he managed to die before they got to him, but they dug his bones up and burnt them anyway. They were probably pretty convinced that he was in hell, but they thought they’d do the little bit extra that they could.

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Slaves in America were flogged if they tried to learn to read. But the important thing is that the slaves resisted. They used what was available to them — which was the Old Testament — to write hymns of protest.

But it wasn’t only the Holy Inquisition that tried to stop people knowing what was going on in their world.

No less than the president of the Royal Society, the chief scientist in England, announced in the 18th century: “Giving education to the labouring classes of the poor will be prejudicial to their morals and happiness. It would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society has destined them.

“Instead of teaching them subordination, it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets and render them insolent to their superiors.” This is the voice of science speaking, not the inquisition.”

Full transcript at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50092

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE & DEMOCRACY – with Scott Ludlam from CaTV on Vimeo.

“We hauled this poor fellow from Mastercard in to Parliament House the other day and asked him what the hell they were doing with this financial blockade on a publisher, more than a year after this blockade came down. That was a really interesting conversation; I can’t disclose what he said… [laughter] So why don’t YOU ask him?”

Full transcript at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50091

“I wanted to start this evening with a Jewish curse that someone told me recently: “May you be involved in a lawsuit in which you know you are right.” [laughter]

No one knows the meaning of this curse any better than Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks. Assange has been accused of many, many things. Everything from being anti-Semitic to being a Mossad agent – ” how you could be the two at the same time I don’t know.

US presidential candidates in the current presidential race in the US have called for his assassination.

The current US vice-president has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. Can you imagine inserting into that sentence [Guardian editor] Alan Rusbridger is a “high-tech terrorist”? [New York Times editor] Bill Keller is a “high-tech terrorist”?

Our own prime minister [Julia Gillard] has accused him of illegal conduct, prematurely, prejudicially and prior to announcing a full-scale criminal investigation, which of course resulted in the outcome that the Australian Federal Police disagreed with her.

US government propaganda, shamefully echoed by our own prime minister, accused WikiLeaks of publishing in breach of US law. But they are wrong.

What Julian does with WikiLeaks is not only right, it is morally right, it is ethically right and, as I’ll explain this evening, it is legally right.”

Full transcript at http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50090

“Here are the facts:

Both women involved in this “sex scandal” never alleged rape, but insisted that the sex was consensual and not violent.

Woman SW has actually complained about being railroaded and was so upset that Julian was charged with rape that she refused to sign her statement.

Woman AA, who took a condom to the police saying that Julian had deliberately torn a condom during sex – forensic examination proved there was not DNA from either her or Julian in it.”

Christine Assange

Full transcript at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50089

All the Facts – by Christine Assange
wlcentral.org/node/2486

DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? – with Nozomi HAYASE / RAP NEWS

CaTⓋ — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:08:16 +0000

We Are All We Need by Nozomi Hayase

My name is Nozomi Hayase. I am a writer at World Beyond Borders and WikiLeaks Central. I am one of those ordinary people whose life was changed by the Collateral Murder video.
This film shot WikiLeaks into public awareness and I think in a way, its release embodies what the organization is really about. It was an invitation, a call to participate in the unfolding of history. I remember how I discovered RapNews around that time with their creative effort to combat the US propaganda on WikiLeaks. I was struck by their statement: “History is happening” I thought -Yes, history is not just something to study at school. We can actively engage in its making.

It is clear that Collateral Murder helped reveal to the world the true face of modern war. But, I say the real significance of this video lies in the impulse behind putting it out into the world. It was like a small sliver of light shining through a blanket of darkness.
We live in a corporate state, and are implicitly told who to be and how to think. Our own views don’t count. Justice and politics have become the territory of professionals. The corporate media has become the gatekeeper of power and privilege. Western society worships expert knowledge of lawyers, journalists and academia, while discrediting individual knowing based on one’s own experience. WikiLeaks shook up the shield of professionalism by revealing the false authority of governance. This act ripped open the veil of secrecy. They reminded us of our dignity and the ability to take charge of our own lives.

I am sure I am not the only one that has felt this way. The Collateral Murder release was like an invitation. Like someone was asking; “What do you think? I want your opinion.” The message was that we really do matter. We are worthy of real dialogue and making important decisions that effect the course of our lives. One could say the bold actions of WikiLeaks revealed simple faith in ordinary people. I go further to say this is love; simple love for ones fellow human beings. I see this faith in people as the engine for Wikileaks. And since then, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement people are awakening to their own significance.

I believe the success of WikiLeaks has a lot to do with the kind of person Julian Assange is, especially in his tenacity and commitment to justice. While most people grow up corporate and give up virtues such as compassion, creativity and conscience along the way, Assange never compromised his courage and conviction that ordinary people are the source of all power.

For many around the world, this made him a kind of hero. At the same time he has been called an enemy of the State by the power. It seems that now an enemy of the corporate state is any person who strives to be free from an imposed identity from outside, to freely speak and associate with others of like mind, especially if they appear to question the current structure of power.

The US government’s attacks on Assange and WikiLeaks supporters are really an assault on all people’s exercise of freedom, something that is fundamental for any real democracy. The extradition of Assange is a subversion of criminal process for desperate political aims. What is happening to Julian can happen to any one of us.

“First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

If standing up for justice makes a person an enemy of the State, a traitor or terrorist, I say so be it. But, I will not support a society that outlaws the very thing that makes us human.
First they came for WikiLeaks, and Anonymous stood up because WikiLeaks stood for freedom of speech. Then they came for Bradley Manning and around the world people stood up because whistle blowing is a heroic deed. Then they came for Julian Assange and I am standing up because he stood up for all of us. Now, it’s time to stand up for one another. When people are truly united, there is no need for anyone else to stand up for us.

We are all we need.

Nozomi Hayase is a writer at WL Central and World Without Borders

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Image – Cathy Vogan
Music – Orlando Harrison, Cathy Vogan
Thanks to Juice Media Rap News and Nozomi Hayase.

Links

Essays by Nozomi Hayase
http://aworldbeyondborders.com/author/opensourcetruth/
http://aworldbeyondborders.com/wikileaks/

Juice Media Rap News
http://www.youtube.com/user/thejuicemedia
http://thejuicemedia.com/