Attack on Wikileaks threatens press freedom everywhere

My inter­view on RT​.com about yet anoth­er attack against Juli­an Assange, edit­or in chief of Wikileaks, that threatens press free­dom everywhere:

Assange under increased threat

Spec­u­la­tion has been rife over the last couple of weeks that Juli­an Assange may be handed over to the Brit­ish by a new and pusil­lan­im­ous Ecuadori­an gov­ern­ment, thereby breach­ing its pledge to grant Assange polit­ic­al asylum and the pro­tec­tion due to a cit­izen of Ecuador. Here’s my take:

Ecuador Pres­id­ent threat­en­ing the polit­ic­al asylum of Assange from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Is the USA Facing a Coup d’Etat?

On 18 Decem­ber last year I wrote an art­icle about the pos­sib­il­ity of a coup d’état in the USA, planned and executed by the CIA and oth­er par­ti­cipants in the Deep State.

At the time I just wanted to high­light the poten­tial prob­lems that were arising from the CIA’s and the Amer­ic­an élite’s objec­tion to a Trump pres­id­ency and fail­ure of the Clin­ton candidacy. 

How­ever, fol­low­ing fake news of the “Ver­mont hack” and the fail­ure of the debunked report on “Rus­si­an hack­ing” of the elec­tion last week, it seems that the CIA and the wider deep state is dra­mat­ic­ally rais­ing the stakes today, with leaks to the media of dubi­ous reports from a cor­por­ate spy com­pany alleging cor­rup­tion and sexu­al devi­ancy.  How low can they go?

I would laugh at this far­rago of non­sense if this escal­a­tion of accus­a­tion did not imply such an increas­ingly deadly course, on the part of the Amer­ic­an estab­lish­ment, to push for a show­down with Rus­sia at any cost in 2017.

First pub­lished on RT:

I fear that soon the cur­tain will finally be brought down on the pup­pet show that passes for demo­cracy in Amer­ica, and those who for dec­ades have been pulling the strings will come raging into the light, red in tooth and claw. The illu­sion that the people really have a choice of pres­id­ent every four years will be irre­par­ably shattered.

The old Brit­ish tru­ism that “it does not mat­ter whom you vote for, the gov­ern­ment always gets in” can also be applied to the US pres­id­ency — usu­ally all can­did­ates are approved and massively fun­ded by the mod­ern incarn­a­tion of Eis­en­hower­’s infam­ous “mil­it­ary-indus­tri­al com­plex” and then assidu­ously sup­por­ted by cheer­lead­ers in the old cor­por­ate media, leav­ing the elect­or­ate with damn little mean­ing­ful choice.

This has been true from Reagan to Bush the First, from Clin­ton the First to Bush the Second and then on to Obama (the First?). It was sup­posed to have been true in the most recent elec­tion, where the élite’s choice poin­ted towards a con­test between Bush the Third or Clin­ton the Second, either one of whom would have worked to the interests of Wall Street and con­tin­ued the increas­ingly dan­ger­ous, inter­ven­tion­ist, and hawk­ish glob­al US for­eign policy.

As a little aside, since when did the USA fall for the concept of inher­ited polit­ic­al power, a de facto new monarchy?

But then an oxy­mor­on­ic bil­lion­aire “man of the people” crow­barred his way into the con­test and slashed all the strings of pup­petry and priv­ilege. Enter, stage left, the bullish, seem­ingly big­oted, and bemus­ingly suc­cess­ful Don­ald Trump.

As a Brit, cur­rently cut adrift in a pre-Brexit Europe, I hold no brief for the dangers he may or may not pose to the much-vaunted Amer­ic­an way of life in the good ol’ home­land.  How­ever, as I have stated before, with The Don­ald’s appar­ent determ­in­a­tion to fol­low a strategy of US isol­a­tion­ism, to cut a deal in Syr­ia, and effect a rap­proche­ment with Rus­sia, the wider world may just have dodged a nuc­le­ar bul­let or at least an era of unend­ing war.

Plus, the Amer­ic­an people appear to have wanted a change, any change, from the hered­it­ary priv­ilege of the Wash­ing­ton élite. That change could well have come from anoth­er out­sider, Bernie Sanders, if he had been giv­en a fair chance.  How­ever, as we know from the leaked Demo­crat­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC) and Podesta emails, the Demo­crat­ic Party would stop at noth­ing to ensure the anoint­ing of the chosen one — Clin­ton the Second

So why do I think that there may be a coup d’état loom­ing in Amer­ica’s near future?

Trump was elec­ted on the prom­ise of “drain­ing the swamp” of the Wash­ing­ton polit­ic­al and cor­por­ate elites — this is deeply threat­en­ing to the ves­ted interests, not least the CIA, whose daily brief­ings have been spurned by Trump, thereby rup­tur­ing the co-depend­ent rela­tion­ship between the pres­id­ent and the polit­icly com­prom­ised intel­li­gence agen­cies that has exis­ted since 9/11 and which has caused so much glob­al harm, start­ing with the ill-informed and illeg­al rush to war in Iraq in 2003. I shall return to the CIA later.

The Amer­ic­an élite is facing the inaug­ur­a­tion of a self-pro­fessed out­sider who is threat­en­ing all their eas­ily-bought priv­ileges, one who seems more inter­ested in cut­ting deals than bomb­ing coun­tries. Nor do they like his nom­in­ees to high office, espe­cially that of Rex Tiller­son, the cur­rent CEO of Exxon­Mobil,  to the post of Sec­ret­ary of State — after all, he has a track record of cut­ting deals too and with the Rus­si­ans no less, and such a per­son as the top US dip­lo­mat might, gasp, help to bring to a close the new not-so-Cold War that is so import­ant to the hawk­ish war­mon­gers and their mas­ters in the thriv­ing US arms and secur­ity industry.

There­fore once Trump had been declared the offi­cial Repub­lic­an nom­in­ee, the estab­lish­ment push-back was all too pre­dict­able. The story of “Rus­si­an hack­ing” was ini­tially trailed merely as media bait to divert the press from the real story — Hil­lary Clin­ton’s poten­tially illeg­al use of a private web serv­er while act­ing as Sec­ret­ary of State.

Then in Novem­ber Wikileaks began to release even more dam­aging emails from the DNC and the Podesta files, which demon­strated quite how the Demo­crats had stitched up the can­did­acy of Bernie Sanders.  The Demo­crats imme­di­ately cried foul — it must indeed be the Rus­si­ans hack­ing their files and hand­ing the inform­a­tion to Wikileaks (now cast as a Rus­si­an stooge — a move extremely use­ful in Amer­ica’s ongo­ing attempts to frame the pro­sec­u­tion of Wikileaks edit­or Juli­an Assange as “espi­on­age”, even though he is an Aus­trali­an pub­lish­er stuck in Europe).

Unusu­ally Assange went on the record to say the emails Wikileaks pub­lished did not come from the Rus­si­ans: Wikileaks tra­di­tion­ally refuses to dis­cuss its sources.

Then former UK Ambas­sad­or and Wikileaks ally, Craig Mur­ray, went pub­lic by say­ing that, while he was in Wash­ing­ton earli­er this year, he was giv­en files that were then pub­lished on Wikileaks. His view is that the inform­a­tion came from a Demo­crat whis­tleblower with leg­al access — it was a leak by an insider, not a hack by an outsider.

Also earli­er this week a group of former seni­or US intel­li­gence offi­cials, includ­ing the former Tech­nic­al Dir­ect­or of the NSA, wrote an open let­ter to Con­gress explain­ing that, if indeed the Rus­si­ans had hacked the DNC, the NSA would have been able to provide evid­ence to to prove this.  Yet, at such a time of poten­tial con­sti­tu­tion­al crisis, none has been forth­com­ing, either dir­ectly or via the CIA, even in the face of calls for the usu­al con­gres­sion­al hear­ings and spe­cial investigations.

So there is appar­ently no sub­stant­ive evid­ence of Rus­si­an hack­ing dur­ing the elec­tion.  How­ever, there does appear to be some evid­ence around the issue of Clin­ton’s illeg­al server.

Elev­en days before the Amer­ic­an elec­tion the Dir­ect­or of the FBI, in the wake of the Anthony Wein­er sex­ting case, reopened the invest­ig­a­tion into the Clin­ton serv­er scan­dal and pub­lished the fact, as he said, in the nation­al interest. This caused howls of rage from the Demo­crats, and again “Rus­si­an hack­ing” was hyped in the media, thereby eas­ily con­flat­ing the concept of the illeg­al serv­er, the alleged hacks, the Rus­si­ans, into one big lump of geek-speak that most people would not have the will to dis­en­tangle.  Two days before the elec­tion, James Comey backed down, but the hack­ing seed had germinated.

Now it is com­ing into bloom — last week the CIA re-entered the fray, with reports about Rus­si­an hack­ing leaked to both the Wash­ing­ton Post and the New York Times. Since then, name­less “intel­li­gence sources” and grand­stand­ing politi­cians have been fall­ing over them­selves to speak to this sub­ject, but it all remains very evidence-lite.

Plus there is appar­ently by no means a con­sensus amongst all sev­en­teen of the US intel­li­gence agen­cies with regards to the CIA’s claims.  Indeed, until recently the FBI has dir­ectly con­tra­dicted them, and the FBI is in the busi­ness of pulling togeth­er evid­ence to pro­sec­ute a case under law.

That, now, is all chan­ging. Only recently it was repor­ted that the FBI is now sup­port­ing the CIA’s “beliefs”.  I was puzzled about this volte face until I read this prom­in­ent op-ed by Clin­ton cam­paign man­ager, John Podesta, in the Wash­ing­ton Post where, in addi­tion to blam­ing the Rus­si­ans for “hack­ing the elec­tion” (note, no longer just the DNC emails and his own), he is attack­ing the FBI and its head, James Comey, and sug­gest­ing that the organ­isa­tion is broken and “what’s broken in the FBI must be fixed and quickly”. Per­haps, for whatever reas­on, Comey can see the over­turn­ing of the elec­tion res­ult as a real pos­sib­il­ity now and is des­per­ately row­ing back.

In par­al­lel, it seems that the CIA is fear­ful of retali­ation if, against all their endeav­ours, Don­ald Trump does indeed get sworn in as the 45th pres­id­ent of the USA on 20th Janu­ary next year.  That goes some way to explain­ing why they are chal­len­ging the elec­tion res­ult by push­ing this line that the Rus­si­ans “hacked the elec­tion”, the new head­line that has morph­ed through the glob­al MSM over the last couple of days from belief to estab­lished fact, with no evid­ence produced.

The CIA claims that Rus­si­an “hack­ers” were delving around in the emails of both the Demo­crat­ic Nation­al Con­gress as well as the Repub­lic­an equi­val­ent for months before the Novem­ber elec­tion.  And yet only the Demo­crat emails were, the CIA asserts, passed on to Wikileaks and thereby pub­lished to order to sway the elec­tion res­ult. Where is the proof? They have pro­duced no evid­ence, in the face of of expert testi­mony from former seni­or intel­li­gence officers as well as dir­ect asser­tions from Wikileaks about the source of the DNC leaks. Indeed, the Dir­ect­or of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, James Clap­per, is refus­ing to brief the Con­gres­sion­al intel­li­gence com­mit­tees’ repeated requests to give a briefing.

That has not stopped the glob­al main­stream media from whip­ping up an ima­gined new truth: that the Rus­si­ans “hacked the elec­tion”. And the media frenzy has grown expo­nen­tially over the last few days.

This is why I fear an Amer­ic­an coup d’état, pos­sibly start­ing as soon as 19th Decem­ber, the date when the Elect­or­al Col­lege meets to rat­i­fy the elec­tion of Trump.  All this Cold-War, anti-Rus­si­an hys­teria is being used as a stick to beat the Elect­or­al Col­lege mem­bers into ignor­ing their duty and vote in the way dir­ec­ted by the major­ity of the people of their state whom they are pledged to rep­res­ent. Plus, who knows what juicy car­rots may also have been offered?

If enough prove faith­less to the elect­or­ate, then the elec­tion res­ult will be over­turned and Clin­ton the Second could ascend to the Amer­ic­an throne. Even if the Elect­or­al Col­lege does its sworn duty to the people, I fear that the CIA anti-Trump cam­paign may now have gathered so much momentum that the estab­lish­ment may still find a way, any way pos­sible, to stop Trump’s inaug­ur­a­tion as pres­id­ent — after all we still have five weeks to get through before 20th January.

Trump is a known unknown and retains poten­tial pos­sib­il­it­ies intriguing to the wider world.  How­ever, if the Elect­or­al Col­lege starts a coup d’état on Monday and against all con­sti­tu­tion­al norms the coron­a­tion of Clin­ton pro­ceeds, we know all too well what lies ahead: war.

Perils of Censorship in the Digital Age

First pub­lished on RT OP-Edge.

The ripple effects of the Don­ald Trump elec­tion vic­tory in Amer­ica con­tin­ue to wash over many dif­fer­ent shorelines of pub­lic opin­ion, like so many mini-tsuna­mis hit­ting the Pacific rim over the last few last weeks.  The seis­mic changes have indeed been glob­al, and not least in Europe.

First up, the Euro­crats have been get­ting in a bit of a flap about the future of NATO, as I recently wrote.  In the past I have also writ­ten about the per­ceived “insider threat” - in oth­er words, whis­tleblowers — that has been wor­ry­ing gov­ern­ments and intel­li­gence agen­cies across the West­ern world.

Cur­rently the Twit­ter­sphere is light­ing up around the issue of “fake news”, with West­ern main­stream media (news pur­vey­ors of the utmost unsul­lied prob­ity, nat­ur­ally) blam­ing Trump’s unex­pec­ted vic­tory vari­ously on the US alt-media shock jocks, fake news trolls and bots, and sov­er­eign-state media out­lets such as the Rus­si­an RT and Sput­nik.

In the wake of US Demo­crat claims that Rus­sia was inter­fer­ing in the elec­tion pro­cess (not a prac­tice that the USA has ever engaged in in any oth­er coun­try around the world what­so­ever), we now have the US Green Party pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate appar­ently spon­tan­eously call­ing for recounts in three key swing-states in the USA.

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment has already expressed con­cern that such “fake” news might adversely influ­ence the almost inev­it­able re-elec­tion for a fourth term as Chan­cel­lor, Angela Merkel.  Des­pite hav­ing been pro­claimed the closest part­ner of the USA by Pres­id­ent Obama on his recent speed-dat­ing vis­it to Europe, and per­haps wary of the rising nation­al­ist anger (I hes­it­ate to write nation­al social­ist anger, but cer­tainly its ugly face is there too in the Ger­man crowd) Merkal is get­ting in an elect­or­al first strike.

At a slightly more wor­ry­ing level, the European Par­lia­ment on 23 Novem­ber voted for a res­ol­u­tion to counter “pro­pa­ganda” from Rus­sia — and incred­ibly equated that coun­try’s media with ter­ror­ist groups such as ISIS — the very organ­isa­tion that Rus­sia is cur­rently try­ing to help crush in Syr­ia and which the West and NATO are at least offi­cially opposed to.

Equat­ing the con­tent of licensed and net­worked media out­lets — how­ever much they may chal­lenge West­ern ortho­dox­ies — to the hor­rors of ISIS snuff videos seems to me to be wil­fully blind if not down­right and dan­ger­ously delu­sion­al. Or per­haps we should just call it pro­pa­ganda too?

Whatever happened to the rights of free­dom of expres­sion enshrined in the European Con­ven­tion of Human Rights? Or the concept that a plur­al­ity of opin­ion encour­ages a healthy democracy?

In Amer­ica too, we have had reports this week that Google and Face­book are cen­sor­ing alleged “fake” news.  This is the start of a very slip­pery slope. Soon any­one who dis­sents from the ortho­doxy will be deemed fake and dis­ap­pear into the cor­por­ate memory black hole.  Google in 2014 sug­ges­ted a pre­curs­or to this, the Know­ledge Vault, a search sys­tem that would pro­mote approved web­sites and dis­ap­pear those deemed inac­cur­ate at least by Google algorithms. But who con­trols those?

Once again our cor­por­ate over­lords seem to be march­ing remark­ably in time — almost a lock step — with the mood of the polit­ic­al establishment.

So how did this all kick off? With remark­ably pres­ci­ent tim­ing, in Octo­ber the arch-neo­con­ser­vat­ive UK-based think tank, the Henry Jack­son Soci­ety, pub­lished a report entitled “Putin’s Use­ful Idi­ots: Bri­tain’s Right, Left and Rus­sia”. Well, at least it got its apo­strophes right, but much of the rest is just so much hate-filled bile against those who call out the failed Wash­ing­ton Consensus.

The Henry Jack­son Soci­ety is an odi­ous organ­isa­tion that was foun­ded in Cam­bridge elev­en years ago. One of its ini­tial sig­nat­or­ies was Sir Richard Dear­love, former head of the UK’s for­eign intel­li­gence agency MI6, and of some per­son­al notori­ety for ped­dling the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion that took the UK into the dis­astrous and illeg­al Iraq war in 2003, as well as feed­ing in the fake intel­li­gence about Iraq try­ing to acquire urani­um from Niger that US Sec­ret­ary of State Colin Pow­ell used as a jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the same war at the United Nations.

Des­pite all this, he remains hap­pily retired, bloated with hon­ours, while at the same time threat­en­ing the Brit­ish estab­lish­ment with his full mem­oirs to posthum­ously pre­serve his repu­ta­tion and avoid pro­sec­u­tion for a breach of the Offi­cial Secrets Act, as I have writ­ten before.

The Henry Jack­son Soci­ety has also fol­ded into itself an organ­isa­tion called the Centre for Social Cohe­sion — appar­ently estab­lished to build bet­ter integ­ra­tion for the Muslim com­munity in the UK, but which for the last dec­ade has done noth­ing but stir up Islamo­pho­bia. As oth­ers have writ­ten, the phrase “mod­ern McCarthy­ites” might not be stretch­ing this concept too far. And now it seems to be turn­ing its ire against Rus­sia.

Its emphas­is has been unre­lent­ingly anti-Islam for many years, so it was inter­est­ing that this estab­lish­ment-embed­ded Soci­ety had a fully-formed report about the renewed Red Men­ace sub­vert­ing our West­ern media just ready and wait­ing to be pub­lished ahead of the US elections.

So where does this all leave us?

It may well be that Face­book will begin to dis­ap­pear so-called fake news — which could have reper­cus­sions for all the act­iv­ist groups that, against all advice and com­mon sense, con­tin­ue to offer up their plans/organise events on that medium.

We may see the same cen­sor­ship on Google, as well as dis­sid­ent web­sites dis­ap­pear­ing down the pro­posed memory-hole of the Know­ledge Vault. Sure, such pages may be recor­ded on sites like the Way­Back Machine et al, but who really searches through that reflex­ively? Most us us don’t even get through the first page of Google hits any­way. In our digit­al age, this will make the 20th cen­tury prac­tice of your ana­logue dic­tat­or — the air­brush­ing of polit­ic­al oppon­ents out of his­tory — look pos­it­ively quaint.

But, just as the Guten­berg Press was a rad­ic­al innov­a­tion in the 15th cen­tury that led to a rap­id spread of writ­ten ideas and the res­ult­ing cen­sor­ship, repres­sion and a thriv­ing under­ground media, so the the cur­rent crack­down will lead to the same push-back.

Then we have to con­sider the poten­tial cen­sor­ship of state-owned news out­lets such as RT, the Chinese CCTV, and the Ira­ni­an Press TV. Where will that leave oth­er state-owned organ­isa­tions such as the BBC, RAI and oth­er inter­na­tion­al Euro-broad­casters? Oh, of course, they are part of the West­ern media club, so it’s all hun­key-dorey and busi­ness as usual.

But this can be a two-sided fight — only two months ago RT’s UK bankers, the state-owned Nat West Bank, announced that they were going to shut down the chan­nel’s UK accounts, with no reas­on or redress. I gath­er that a sim­il­ar threat was then issued against the BBC in Rus­sia, and the case was quietly dropped.

Over the last 20 years I have been inter­viewed by hun­dreds of major media out­lets across Europe, many of them state-owned.  How­ever, it is only when I appear on RT​.com that I am accused of sup­port­ing a state-pro­pa­ganda out­let, of being a use­ful idi­ot — and this has become increas­ingly marked over the last couple of years.

All these meas­ures smack of an ill-informed and out-of-touch pan­ic reac­tion by a hitherto com­pla­cent estab­lish­ment. Before they attempt to air­brush his­tory, we need to remem­ber that his­tory teaches some use­ful les­sons about such elit­ist crack­downs: they nev­er end well for anyone.

Exile — ExBerliner Article

My most recent art­icle for the ExBer­liner magazine:

What is exile? Oth­er than a term much used and abused by many new expats arriv­ing in Ber­lin, dic­tion­ary defin­i­tions point towards someone who is kept away from their home coun­try for polit­ic­al reas­ons, either by regal decree in the past or now more prob­ably self-imposed. But there are many oth­er ways to feel exiled – from main­stream soci­ety, from your fam­ily, faith, pro­fes­sion, polit­ics, and Ber­lin is now regarded as a haven.

How­ever, let’s focus on the clas­sic defin­i­tion and a noble tra­di­tion. Every coun­try, no mat­ter how appar­ently enlightened, can become a tyr­ant to its own cit­izens if they chal­lenge abuses of power. Voltaire was exiled in Eng­land for three years and soon after Tom Paine, a former excise man facing charges for sedi­tious libel, sought refuge in France. More recent fam­ous exiles include Dav­id Shayler, the MI5 whis­tleblower of the 1990s who fol­lowed in Paine’s foot­steps pretty much for the same fun­da­ment­al reas­ons, yet Alex­an­der Litv­inen­ko, the KBG whis­tleblower of the same era, iron­ic­ally found safe haven in exile in the UK.

So, being an exile effect­ively means that you have angered the power struc­tures of your home coun­try to such an extent that oth­er coun­tries feel com­pelled to give you refuge, partly for leg­al or prin­cipled reas­ons, but also for polit­ic­al expedi­ency. The cur­rent most fam­ous exile in the world is, of course, Edward Snowden, stran­ded by chance in Rus­sia en route to polit­ic­al asylum in Ecuador.

What does the act of flee­ing into exile actu­ally feel like? It is a wild leap into an unknown and pre­cari­ous future, with great risk and few fore­see­able rewards. At the same time, as you leave the shores of the per­se­cut­ing coun­try, evad­ing the author­it­ies, avoid­ing arrest and going on the run, there is an exhil­ar­at­ing, intense feel­ing of free­dom – a sense that the die has very much been cast. Your old way of life is irre­voc­ably at an end and the future is a blank slate on which you can write anything.

After Shayler and I fled to France in 1997, for the first year of the three we lived in exile we hid in a remote French farm­house just north of Limoges – the nearest vil­lage was 2 kilo­metres away, and the nearest town a dis­tant thirty. We lived in con­stant dread of that knock on the door and the ensu­ing arrest. And that, indeed, even­tu­ally did catch up with him.

As a res­ult, for Shayler it meant the world grew increas­ingly small, increas­ingly con­fined. Ini­tially, when we went on the run, we were free to roam across Europe – any­where but the UK. Then, after the French courts refused to extra­dite him to Bri­tain in 1998 to face tri­al for a breach of the dra­coni­an UK Offi­cial Secrets Act, France became the only place he could live freely. If he had then traveled to any oth­er European coun­try, the Brit­ish would have again attemp­ted to extra­dite him, prob­ably suc­cess­fully, so he was trapped.

How­ever, there are worse places than France in which to find your­self stran­ded. As well as being one of the most beau­ti­ful and var­ied coun­tries in the world it felt par­tic­u­larly poignant to end up exiled in Par­is for a fur­ther two years.

It was also con­veni­ently close to the UK, so friends, fam­ily, sup­port­ers and journ­al­ists could vis­it us reg­u­larly and bring Shayler sup­plies of such vital Brit­ish staples as bacon and HP source. But he still missed the simple pleas­ures in life, such as being free to watch his beloved foot­ball team, or being able to watch the crappy late night com­edy shows that the Brit­ish end­lessly churn out. Des­pite these small lacks, I shall always remem­ber those years in France fondly, as a place of great­er safety, a lit­er­al haven from persecution.

Of course, all this was in the era before the stand­ard­ised European Arrest war­rant, when nation­al sov­er­eignty and nation­al laws actu­ally coun­ted for some­thing. Find­ing a secure place of exile now would be almost an impossib­il­ity in Europe if you home coun­try really wanted to pro­sec­ute you.

Many West­ern expats now talk of being “exiled in Ber­lin”, and they may indeed be self-exiled in search of a more sym­patico life style, a buzzy group of like-minded peers, work oppor­tun­it­ies or whatever. But until they have felt the full force of an extra­di­tion war­rant, before the fuzz has actu­ally felt their col­lars, this is real­ist­ic­ally exile as a life­style choice, rather than exile as a des­per­ate polit­ic­al neces­sity or, in Edward Snowden’s case, a poten­tially exist­en­tial requirement.

German Netzpolitik journalists investigated for treason

Press free­dom is under threat in Ger­many — two journ­al­ists and their alleged source are under invest­ig­a­tion for poten­tial treas­on for dis­clos­ing and report­ing what appears to be an illeg­al and secret plan to spy on Ger­man cit­izens. Here’s the inter­view I did for RT​.com about this yesterday:

Ger­man Net­zpolitik journ­al­ists face treas­on charges from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Anything to Say? unveiled in Berlin

Last week artist Dav­ide Dormino unveiled his sculp­ture cel­eb­rat­ing whis­tleblowers in Alex­an­der­platz, Berlin.

Called “Any­thing to Say?”, the sculp­ture depicts Chelsea Man­ning, Edward Snowden and Juli­an Assange stand­ing on three chairs, with an empty fourth chair beside them, upon which we are all encour­aged to stand up on and speak our truth.

Dav­ide invited me to do just that for the unveil­ing cere­mony, along with Ger­man MP for the Green Party and whis­tleblower sup­port­er, Hans Chris­ti­an Stroebele and Wikileaks’ Sarah Har­ris­on. Here’s a report:

Anything_to_Say?_sculpture_unveiled_in_Berlin from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Code Red Media Launch in Perugia

I am very happy to announce a new ini­ti­at­ive, Code Red,  that Simon Dav­ies (the founder of Pri­vacy Inter­na­tion­al and The Big Broth­er Awards) and I have been organ­ising over the last few months.  In fact, not just us, but a panoply of glob­al pri­vacy and anti-sur­veil­lance cam­paign­ers from many areas of expertise.

Simon and I have known each oth­er for years, way back to 2002, when he gave one of the earli­est Win­ston Awards to Dav­id Shayler, in recog­ni­tion of his work towards try­ing to expose sur­veil­lance and pro­tect pri­vacy. That award cere­mony, hos­ted by comedi­an and act­iv­ist Mark Thomas, was one of the few bright points in that year for Dav­id and me — which included my nearly dying of men­ingit­is in Par­is and Dav­id’s vol­un­tary return to the UK to “face the music”; face the inev­it­able arrest, tri­al and con­vic­tion for a breach of the Offi­cial Secrets Act that fol­lowed on from his dis­clos­ures about spy criminality.

Any­way, enough of a detour down memory lane — back to Code Red. Reg­u­lar read­ers of this web­site will know that I have some slight interest in the need to pro­tect our pri­vacy for both per­son­al reas­ons and soci­et­al good. Over the last 18 years since help­ing to expose the crimes of the Brit­ish spies, I have worked with the media, law­yers, cam­paign­ers, hack­ers, NGOs, politi­cians, wonks, geeks, whis­tleblowers, and won­der­fully con­cerned cit­izens around the world — all the time arguing against the encroach­ing and stealthy powers of the deep, secret state and beyond.

While many people are con­cerned about this threat to a demo­crat­ic way of life, and in fact so many people try to push back, I know from exper­i­ence the dif­fer­ent pres­sures that can be exer­ted against each com­munity, and the lack of aware­ness and mean­ing­ful com­mu­nic­a­tion that can often occur between such groups.

So when Simon pos­ited the idea of Code Red — an organ­isa­tion that can func­tion­ally bring all these dis­par­ate groups togeth­er, to learn from each oth­er, gain strength and thereby work more effect­ively, it seemed an obvi­ous next step.

Some pro­gress has already been make in this dir­ec­tion, with inter­na­tion­al whis­tleblower con­fer­ences, crypto­parties, train­ing for journ­al­ists about how to pro­tect their sources, cam­paigns to pro­tect whis­tleblowers, act­iv­ist and media col­lect­ives, and much more.  We in Code Red recog­nise all this amaz­ing work and are not try­ing to rep­lic­ate it.

But we do want to do is improve the flow of com­mu­nic­a­tion — would it not be great to have a glob­al clear­ing house, a record, of what works, what does not, a repos­it­ory of expert­ise from all these inter-related dis­cip­lines from a round the world that we can all learn from?

This is one of the goals of Code Red, which launched to the media at the Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al­ism Fest­iv­al in Per­u­gia a few weeks ago.  We were then lucky enough to also hold a launch to the tech/hacktivist com­munity in Ber­lin a few days after at C Base — the moth­er-ship of hackers.

Here is the film of the Per­u­gia launch:

Code Red — launched in Per­u­gia, April 2015 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

AcTVism film trailer

The AcTV­ism Munich media col­lect­ive is releas­ing a film on 19th April fea­tur­ing Noam Chom­sky, The Real News Net­work’s Paul Jay and  myself.

Filmed last Janu­ary, we dis­cussed the old and new media, act­iv­ism, and much more.

Here’s the trailer:

AcTV­ism Trail­er — Chom­sky, Machon and Jay from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Holistic security for journalists and sources — Logan Symposium

Here is a short talk I gave at the recent Logan Sym­posi­um in Lon­don, where I dis­cussed a more hol­ist­ic approach for both journ­al­ists and their sources:

The Logan Sym­posi­um — Dec 6th — Annie Machon from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

BM Foreign Affairs — Role of Intelligence Agencies in the Modern World

I will be speak­ing at BM For­eign Affairs in Ber­lin on 24 Septem­ber at 19:00, about my assess­ment of the intel­li­gence activ­it­ies and inside chances. Some of the top­ics dur­ing this talk include:BM Foreign Affairs

  • The role of mod­ern intel­li­gence agencies?
  • What it’s like to blow the whistle and go on the run?
  • Over­sight and pro­por­tion­al­ity of intel­li­gence agen­cies with­in a democracy.
  • The role and con­trol of the media.
  • The way forward?

It’s at BM — Ber­lin Moscow, Unter den Linden 52, 10117 Ber­lin. Look­ing for­ward to see­ing you there!

Invit­a­tion (PDF)

New v old media — RT Crosstalk debate

I recently took part in a debate about the old versus the new “altern­at­ive” media and their rel­at­ive mer­its on RT’s Crosstalk with Peter Lavelle:

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Whistleblowers deserve full coverage

Here is my recent RT inter­view about the recent dis­pute between Wikileaks and Glenn Gre­en­wald on what exactly the para­met­ers should be in media report­ing of whis­tleblower disclosures:

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Whis­tleblowers deserve full cov­er­age — RT inter­view from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Of course, thanks to Wikileaks this even­ing, we now know the coun­try that Glenn Gre­en­wald redac­ted from his ori­gin­al report was Afghanistan.

Why on earth should the Afgh­anis not be allowed to know the sheer scale of sur­veil­lance they live under? In fact, would many be sur­prised? This is an excel­lent related art­icle, do read.

International Journalism Festival, Perugia

Here is a pan­el dis­cus­sion I did at the Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al­ism Fest­iv­al in Per­u­gia, Italy, in May 2014:

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