Full coverage of the event can be found here. Video can be watched here and you can read our live blog of the event here.
]]>House refused to testify last month in Alexandria, Virginia, before a grand jury hearing on WikiLeaks and the disclosure of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables. Democracy Now! spoke to House at the Frontline Club about the significance of WikiLeaks, how he helped found the Bradley Manning Support Network, his visits with Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, the federal surveillance he and his associates have come under, and his experience before the grand jury.
"In my mind, this reeks of the Pentagon Papers investigation," says House. "Richard Nixon's [Department of Justice] 40 years ago attempted to curtail the freedoms of the press and politically regulate the press through the use of policy created around the espionage investigation of the New York Times. I feel the WikiLeaks case we have going on now provides Obama's DOJ ample opportunity to continue this attempt to politically regulate the U.S. media."
The full transcript of the interview can be found here. ]]>
Full coverage of the event can be found here. Video can be watched here and you can read our live blog of the event here.
]]>Speaking at a special Frontline Club event on Saturday alongside renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek and investigative journalist Amy Goodman, Assange claimed a Cablegate was needed not only for US and Russian intelligence services but for the American daily which first published in 1851.
"It would reveal the extent to which stories have been suppressed and how they have been managed,” said Assange, who told the audience that Daniel Ellsberg claimed the New York Times had been in possession of 1000 Pentagon Papers before he passed them onto the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers in1971.
Only when it realised its rivals had the papers did the New York Times begin publishing the documents on 13 June of that year, Assange claimed.
Since he was propelled “inside the centre of the storm” by the publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the Embassy Cables last year, Assange said he had learnt the extent to which history “is shaped and distorted by the media.”
Contrasting Fox News' decision, on account of its "hunger" for ratings, to show more of the July 2010 Collateral Murder video than its rival CNN had "under the pretext of sensitivity", Assange said:
"The truth that we got out of Fox was greater than we did out of CNN and similarly for many institutions in the media that we think are liberal."
The 400,000 Iraq War Logs documents, which were published in October 2010, were "the most detailed, significant history of a war to be published," said Assange. Among them were details of some 15,000 hitherto unrecorded civilian deaths:
"Just think about that 15,000 people whose deaths were recorded by the US military but were completely unknown to the rest of the world, that’s a very significant thing."
Responding to claims that have been made that WikiLeaks has not told us anything we didn't already know, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said WikiLeaks worked in the same way as "that beautiful old fairy tale" the Emperor’s Clothes. He added:
"WikiLeaks is not simply telling the truth. You are telling the truth in a very precise way of confronting explicit lines of justification, rationalisation of the public discourse."
Asked about his decision to collaborate with more than 80 media organisations, Assange said it was necessary in order to "maximise the impact" of the material.
"If you want to have an impact and you are an organisation that is very small then you have to coopt or leverage the mainstream press," he said, raising the question of what what impact a new "internet educated" generation working in News Corp and other big corportations might have.
Discussing the impact of WikiLeaks in the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt this year, Assange said it was "hard to disentangle". He described how a number of factors, including the rise of staellite TV, and Al Jazeera’s decision to film protests in the street, had meant the regime could no uphold its claim that opposition was merely "an outcast voice".
"What the media does is censor those voices and prevents people from understanding that actually what the state is saying is the minority is in the majority," said Assange.
"Once people realised their view was in the majority then they understand that they physically have numbers," said Assange, adding that it also became impossible for US to support the regime in Tunisia after Embassy Cables likened President Ben Ali's family to a Mafia elite.
Žižek said it was significant that WikiLeaks publication of material meant that politicians could no longer operate on the basis of 'I know that you know but we can still play the cynical game of pretending that we don’t know'.
He added: "The function of WikiLeaks more than to tell us something that we don’t know, is to push us to the point when you cannot pretend you don’t know."
Full coverage of the event can be found here. Video can be watched here and you can read our live blog of the event here.
]]>Speaking at a special Frontline Club event on Saturday alongside renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek and investigative journalist Amy Goodman, Assange spoke at length about the pressures faced by WikiLeaks amid a political backlash.
He dismissed threats of assassination made against him by prominent commentators and politicians as “wrong and outrageous”, but admitted documents reportedly obtained by WikiLeaks about the Bank of America – who stopped processing payments to the organisation in 2010 – had not yet been released due to a complication.
“We are under a kind of blackmail in relation to those documents that will be dealt with over time,” he said, though did not divulge the kind of blackmail the organisation was facing or from whom, saying only that “there are a range of possibilities.”
The event, held at the Troxy in East London, was attended by almost 2000 people and streamed live across the internet by independent US broadcaster Democracy Now! It was originally set to be held at the University of London’s Institute of Education (IOE), but was moved after the IOE raised concerns over potential controversy.
Discussing the ethics, philosophy and implications of WikiLeaks – particularly in relation to the Afgahanistan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs and Cablegate – Assange said that “what advances us as a civilisation is the entirety of our intellectual record.”
He added: “If we are to make rational policies, in so far as any decision can be rational, then we have to have information that is drawn from the real world.”
The 40-year-old Australian, who has been on strict bail conditions at the Norkolk home of Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith for over six months, stated his belief that a pervasive element of the mainstream media is “our single greatest impediment to advancement”.
“History is shaped and distorted by the media,” he said. “The journalists themselves having read our material and having been forced to go through it have themselves become educated and radicalised. And that is an ideological penetration of the truth in to all these mainstream media organisations.”
Assange is set to appear at the High Court in London on 12 July over sex-crime allegations made against him in Sweden. His greatest hope for the future, he said, was to see a more civilised world and to change the author George Orwell’s dictum that ‘he who controls the present controls the past.’
“By civilised I mean people collaborating to not do the dumb thing,” he added. “To instead learn from previous experiences ... to pull with eachother, together, in order to get through the life that we live in a less adverse way.”
Žižek, who has authored over 50 books and is widely held as one of the most influential living philosophers, spoke passionately about the impact of WikiLeaks on global politics.
“You are not just violating the rules, you are changing the very rules [and] how we are allowed to violate them,” he said. “We may all know that the emperor is naked, but the moment somebody says the emperor is naked, everything changes.”
Part I and II of our reports on the event can be found here and here. Full video can be watched here and you can read our live blog of the event here.
]]>Speaking at a Frontline Club event in East London, alongside renowned Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and investigative journalist Amy Goodman, Assange said he had lived in Egypt in 2007 and was familiar with Mubarak regime.
“The economic basis and the technological basis of Cairo seems pretty much the same as London," he said. "If we say that it is democracy that rules and manages the United States, or it is electoral democracy that rules and manages London, then this is completely ridiculous. Because when we look at countries that are dictatorships - or soft dictatorships - the day to day life for most people is exactly the same."
Assange also claimed that the Tunisian government had blocked the website of Lebanese news organisation Al-Akhbar website shortly after prohibiting access to Wikileaks.
“Tahrir square was important because people could see many others had similar views while the media suggested they were a minority,” Assange said.
Talking about his recent decision to sue Mastercard and Visa after they had cut off services to the secret-spreading website last December, Assange dubbed the two companies as “instruments of
Washington’s patronage policy”.
He also claimed that Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg had told him the New York Times had 1,000 pages of the Papers for one month before Ellsberg gave them to the American newspaper.
The Australian publisher also conversed candidly about Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was arrested in 2010 in Iraq over allegations of leaking secreted material to WikiLeaks.
“When people of high moral character like Bradley Manning are pressured by power, they
become stronger,” he said, adding that between 19 to 23 people are on the Wikileaks Grand Jury in Virginia.
“If there’s anybody who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it’s Bradley Manning,” said Žižek to applause.
“I call this an ethical miracle: there are people who still care. We should not leave dignifying morality to agencies like the Catholic Chruch.”
Later, the Slovenian philosopher spoke about human rights, claiming that torture “even if
conducted out of despair” should never be “legalistic and therefore normalised”. The truth, according
to Žižek, needs to be “contextualized, rationalised and confronted”.
“WikiLeaks is not only telling the truth, but telling it in a precise way,” he said. “You’re here because you think change is possible, and probably you’re right. Most internet-educated young people see new values of spread of new information and get their hands on the machinery.”
Referring to the fact that the original venue had cancelled the booking because WikiLeaks was deemed 'too controversial', Assange said that there wouldn't have been such problems five years ago, but it was unlikely also that 2000 people would be prepared to pay £25 to attend.
When asked about the allegations of rape made against him and the possibility that he could face extradition to Sweden, Assange was critical of the European Arrest Warrant system.
“Extradition without charge is Kafkaesque,” agreed Žižek, who concluded that WikiLeaks “pushes us to the point that we can no longer pretend not to know.
“Even if you ignore WikiLeaks, it has changed the field,” he said. “Nobody can pretend that WikiLeaks didn’t happen.”
Part I of our reports on the event can be found here. Full video of the event can be watched here and read our live blog of the event here.
]]>A "new McCarthyism" has emerged in response to WikiLeaks and is evidenced in the calls for assassination by US politicians, the site’s editor-in-chief said today.
Julian Assange, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! shared a stage at a packed Frontline Club event at the Troxy in London's east end to discuss the impact of WikiLeaks.
Goodman read the statements made against him by US politicians, including Sarah Palin who said he had "blood on his hands" and asked the Australian, who is 40 tomorrow (3 July), to respond.
"Obviously they are wrong and outrageous," he said, referring to calls for his assassination made by the likes of Tom Flanagan, a former aide to the Canadian prime minister. "It is worrying that a new Mccarthyism can come up so quickly."
Focusing on 2007 footage released by WikiLeaks last year showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, Goodman said: "Information is a matter of life or death... If more people had seen the videos before they might have asked for an investigation. This is why information is so powerful and important."
Assange said that the Iraq War Logs provided insight into the "everyday squalor of war" and were the only account of the thousands of Iraqis killed.
"It is of course controversial, but the result was finally that we were the only ones in the world to report that story," he said.
The impact of WikiLeaks was emphasised by Žižek during the first part of the debate.
"If you give me a couple of hours I will explain it properly," he joked. "First of all we need to consider the context where the leaks acted. We need to consider the way ideology works today. Let's not be naieve, people knew about the things that were revealed even before, the point is that now they are not allowed anymore to ignore them."
Pointing out the essential difference between abstract and concrete knowledge, Žižek, who is famous for his temperament, said: "Isn't it different if you know that your wife is cheating on you and if you actually see her while doing so!
"WikiLeaks has not simply changed the rules,” he said to Assange, "it changed the way we violate the rules, the rules of bourgeois media."
Focusing on the mainstream media, Assange credited the US channel Fox News for showing more of the Iraq video and ultimately reporting more of the story than CNN had.
Žižek said that Assange was "a terrorist" in the same way that Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was. "As he tried to subvert the British colonial system, Assange is trying to interrupt the normal flow of information. This is a real revolution."
Part II of our reports on the event will soon follow. Full video of the event can be watched here and read our live blog of the event here. Photo by Charlotte Cook.
A series of reports, essays and videos related to the event can be found here. ]]>
On this page we will be blogging updates live from the Troxy in East London, with updates from behind the scenes, pictures and whatever else we can find to post...
11:30am: Lots of people are tweeting already on the hashtag for the event, #FCwiki. @Owl_Food says: "have mixed views & hoping to develop some clarity on them.What better way than direct insight into #Assange #WikiLeaks #Zizek".
12:00pm: We will be live streaming the event from 4pm on frontlineclub.com. Link to follow.
12:37pm: Twitter users @KaiWargalla and @m_cetera have tickets going spare.
13:24pm: Anyone looking for directions to the Troxy can find them here.
15:03pm: Photo of the stage being set up: click here.
15:19pm: Assange, Žižek and Goodman take to the stage for a soundcheck. See photo here.
15:29pm: Crowd gathers patiently outside the Troxy. Photo here.
15:34pm: Another soundcheck photo: click here.
15:44pm: The crowd is slowly filtering in. @thisisnotariot tweets: "I feel like I'm at a gig. Should academics/whatever Assange is be elevated to superstar status? It's not undeserved, granted..."
15:47pm: "Another Assange love-in or can we expect some robust questioning of Assange concerning Wikileaks, and its future direction?" asks @PGPBOARD.
16:00pm: Picture of the audience. See here.
16:04pm: Word is the event should be starting in approx ten mins from now.
16:19pm: Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith just gave his introduction speech. Amy Goodman, Julian Assange and Slavoj Žižek now on stage. Goodman says: "Information is powerful, it is a matter of life and death."
16:23pm: Goodman discusses the WikiLeaks 'Collateral Murder' video. "That is important we know what is done in our name," she says, describing Julian Assange as "the most widely published person on Earth".
16:28pm: "What advances us as a civilisation is the entirety of our knowledge," says Assange, explaining his motivation for starting WikiLeaks.
16:39pm: "We all know that the emperor is naked, but the moment somebody says the emperor is dead: everything changes," says Žižek. "You [Julian] are not only violating the rules, you are changing the very rules that we violate."
16:47pm: Žižek is making an analogy about the TV series 24. "We can often learn more from honest conservatives than liberals," he says. "They are more likely to tell you the truth than bullshit."
16:50pm: Goodman asks Assange about the calls for his assasination. "Obviously they are wrong and outrageous," he says. "It is worrying that a new Mccarthyism can come up so quickly."
16:55pm: Assange: "We shouldn't always see censorship as a bad thing. It shows society is not yet completely sown up, but still has some political dimension to it."
16:59pm: Žižek on his alleged friendship with Lady Gaga: "Absolute denial. I didn't even listen to one of her songs."
17:00pm: Another photo of the stage as Žižek tells Assange: "You are a terrorist but if you are a terrorist my God what are they who say you are."
17:07pm: Assange says alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning is of "high moral character" and adds that there are 19-23 people on the WikiLeaks grand jury in Virginia, US.
17:10pm: Assange says there is another grand jury looking in to anti-war activists in the US. Describes it as "another witchhunt".
17:20pm: "If there's anybody who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it's Bradley Manning,' says Žižek to applause.
17:26pm: Assange: "You're here because you think that change is possible, and you're probably right."
17:32pm: Photo's from Frontline's Charlotte Cook: here, here, here and here.
17:37pm: Žižek says "Truth must be contextualised... and you [WikiLeaks] are not just telling the truth."
17:41pm: Assange says he stayed in Egypt through 2007 at Miss Egypt's house. "The technological basis to Cairo is pretty much the same as London," he says. "When we look at countries that are soft-dictatorships, the patterns of behaviour for most people are the same..."
17:45pm: Discussing Egyptian unrest, Assange says Tahir Square was important because people could see many others had similar views while media always suggest they are a minority.
17:50pm: Assange heaps praise on Lebanese news organisation al-Akhbar.
17:56pm: Assange says Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg told him the New York Times had the Papers for a full month before publishing.
17:57pm: Assange explains WikiLeaks' decision to sue Visa and Mastercard over blocking payments to the organisation. "[It has been an] extra judicial, economic blockade that has occured without any due process whatsoever."
18:02pm: Lots of great live tweeting going on over at Twitter.com on the #FCwiki hashtag. See here.
18:10pm: Žižek: "WikiLeaks pushes us to the point that we can no longer pretend not to know."
18:13pm: Žižek: "Even if you ignore WikiLeaks, it has changed the field. Nobody can pretend that WikiLeaks didn't happen."
18:17pm: Goodman asks Assange his hopes for the future are, given that it is his 40th birthday tomorrow (3 July). "I want to move away from the Orwellian 'he who controls the present controls the past'," he says.
18:18pm: The event concludes with massive applause. It can be watched again in full here.
]]>As part of the build up to the event, which will focus on the ethics and philosophy behind WIkiLeaks, Frontline Club has this week been publishing a series of blog posts, including extracts from essays written by both Assange and Žižek around WikiLeaks-related issues.
Today we are pleased to be posting an edited extract of an essay from the paperback editon of Žižek's Living in the End Times (Verso), titled the The Corprate Rule of Cyberspace.
In it, Žižek discusses "cloud computing", which he says could be a dangerous step towards the "privatisation of global cyberspace"...
Corporate rule of cyberspace
By Slavoj Žižek
Part of the global push towards the privatisation of the "general intellect" is the recent trend in the organisation of cyberspace towards so-called "cloud computing." Little more than a decade ago, a computer was a big box on one's desk, and downloading was done with floppy disks and USB sticks. Today, we no longer need such cumbersome individual computers, since cloud computing is Internet-based, i.e., software and information are provided to computers or smartphones on demand, in the guise of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer. In this way, we can access information from wherever we are in the world, on any computer, with smartphones literally putting this access into our pocket.
We already participate in cloud computing when we run searches and get millions of results in a fraction of a second — the search process is performed by thousands of connected computers sharing resources in the cloud. Similarly, Google Books makes millions of digitised works available any time, anywhere around the world. Not to mention the new level of socialisation opened up by smartphones: today a smartphone will typically include a more powerful processor than that of the standard big box PC of only a couple of years ago. Plus it is connected to the Internet, so that I can not only access multiple programs and immense amounts of data, but also instantly exchange voice messages or video clips, and coordinate collective decisions, etc.
This wonderful new world, however, represents only one side of the story, which as a whole reads like the well-known doctor joke: "first the good news, then the bad news." Users today access programs and software maintained far away in climate-controlled rooms housing thousands of computers. To quote from a propaganda-text on cloud computing: "Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure 'in the cloud' that supports them."
There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalised, easy to use, "transparent" in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalised or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.
This, of course, holds for any complex technology: a TV viewer typically will have no idea how his remote control works, for example. However, the additional twist here is that it is not just the core technology, but also the choice and accessibility of content which are now controlled. That is to say, the formation of "clouds" is accompanied by a process of vertical integration: a single company or corporation will increasingly have a stake at all levels of the cyberworld, from individual machines (PCs, iPhones, etc.) and the "cloud" hardware for program and data storage, to software in all its forms (audio, video, etc.).
Everything thus becomes accessible, but only as mediated through a company which owns it all — software and hardware, content and computers. To take one obvious example, Apple doesn’t only sell iPhones and iPads, it also owns iTunes. It also recently made a deal with Rupert Murdoch allowing the news on the Apple cloud to be supplied by Murdoch’s media empire. To put it simply, Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates: whether it be Apple or Microsoft, global access is increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatisation of the cloud which provides this access. The more an individual user is given access to universal public space, the more that space is privatised.
Apologists present cloud computing as the next logical step in the "natural evolution" of the Internet, and while in an abstract-technological way this is true, there is nothing "natural" in the progressive privatisation of global cyberspace. There is nothing "natural" in the fact that two or three companies in a quasi-monopolistic position can not only set prices at will but also filter the software they provide to give its "universality" a particular twist depending on commercial and ideological interests.
True, cloud computing offers individual users an unprecedented wealth of choice — but is this freedom of choice not sustained by the initial choice of a provider, in respect to which we have less and less freedom? Partisans of openness like to criticise China for its attempt to control internet access — but are we not all becoming involved in something comparable, insofar as our “cloud” functions in a way not dissimilar to the Chinese state?
Reproduced by kind permission of the publisher.
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, will take place on 2 July at the Troxy In East London. More information and tickets for the event can be found here.
]]>In this May 2011 interview with Russia Today, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange discusses change taking place in Egypt and explains why he believes Facebook is "the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented".
Assange, who will be appearing this Satuday at a Frontline Club "in conversation" event (details below), also explains during the interview why WikiLeaks' biggest enemy is ignorance, and accuses media organisations the Guardian and the New York Times of "cable cooking" in the way they handled the leaked US diplomatic cables obtained and released by WikiLeaks in 2010.
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, will take place on 2 July at the Troxy In East London. More information and tickets for the event can be found here.
]]>Widely held as one of the most influential living philosophers – and once described as “the Elvis of cultural theory” – Žižek will discuss with Assange and Goodman the ethics and philosophy behind WikiLeaks.
No stranger to the WikiLeaks debate, Žižek has wrote extensively on the issues surrounding the whistleblower organisation in the past.
In his book, Living in the End Times, he argues that new ways of using and sharing information -- in particular WikiLeaks -- are one of the factors heralding the end of global capitalism as we know it.
And in an essay written exclusively for the Yaroslavl Initiative in 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks began releasing a tranche of classified US Diplomatic Cables, Žižek wrote:
What WikiLeaks threatens is the formal mode of functioning of power: the innermost logic of diplomatic activity was in a way delegitimized. The true target were not just dirty details and individuals responsible for them (to be eventually replaced by others, more honest), or, more succinctly, not those in power, but power itself, its structure. We should not forget that power comprises not only its institutions and rules, but also legitimate (‘normal’) ways of challenging it (independent press, NGOs, etc.) – and, as Saroj Giri put it succinctly, Wikileaks activists ‘challenged power by challenging the normal channels of challenging power and revealing the truth.’
WikiLeaks exposures do not address us, citizens, merely as dissatisfied individuals hungry for dirty secrets of what happens behind the closed doors in the corridors of power; their aim was not just to embarrass those in power. Wikileaks exposures bring with themselves a call to mobilize ourselves in a long struggle to bring about a different functioning of power which reaches beyond the limits of representative democracy.
In another essay, entitled Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks, published by the London Review of Books in 2011, Žižek suggests Assange is “a real-life counterpart to the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight”.
“The film’s take-home message is that lying is necessary to sustain public morale: only a lie can redeem us,” he writes of the film. “No wonder the only figure of truth in the film is the Joker, its supreme villain.”
Žižek goes on to ask a series of crucial questions about the implications WikiLeaks, many of which will no doubt be addressed on 2 July, when he meets with Assange in person:
The WikiLeaks story has been represented as a struggle between WikiLeaks and the US empire: is the publishing of confidential US state documents an act in support of the freedom of information, of the people’s right to know, or is it a terrorist act that poses a threat to stable international relations? But what if this isn’t the real issue?
What if the crucial ideological and political battle is going on within WikiLeaks itself: between the radical act of publishing secret state documents and the way this act has been reinscribed into the hegemonic ideologico-political field by, among others, WikiLeaks itself?
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, will take place on 2 July at the Troxy In East London. More information and tickets for the event can be found here.
]]>In this 2008 interview, renowned Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek shares his thoughts on the legacy of 1968 and the state of US politics with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman.
He also discusses Barack Obama, and explains why he believes America would be better off if Americans could not vote in their own elections.
Žižek will appear alongside Goodman and WikiLeaks editor-and-chief Julian Assange at a Frontline Club event this Saturday (2 July) at the Troxy in East London. More information and tickets for the event can be found here.
]]>The event, which will take place on 2 July at the Troxy in East London, had originally been tentatively scheduled to take place at Logan Hall, a 900-capacity auditorium hired out by the IOE.
But after expressing strong interest in hosting the event, arranging logistics, and giving Frontline Club staff a tour of the venue, the Institute’s management performed a sudden about turn.
An email sent on 16 May from Michael Walker, the IOE’s Head of Conferences, Catering and Operations, informed Frontline: “There are ongoing issues concerning wi-fi access and the provision of a bar for your visitors, the first of which I feel may be too difficult to resolve at our end.
“This – and the fact that the meeting’s subject is of a nature which may attract considerable controversy – obliges me to inform you at this stage in the proceedings that we cannot offer hire of the Logan Hall on this occasion.”
Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith was puzzled by the decision.
In an email sent on 17 May, he responded: “We do not feel that the issues with wi-fi and bar would prevent us from using your venue.
“However we are shocked that the Institute of Education would have difficulty accepting our event on the basis of a feeling that it may be controversial.
“The speakers have all spoken in London before several times and both generate significant interest and support from within the public. Neither generate any risk of violence at the event.”
Smith pointed to the IOE’s Research and Governance Policy, which states as part of its mission that it will be “guided by a concern for truth and justice, and make a positive contribution to the development of individuals, institutions and societies facing the challenges of change.”
But in a reply, Walker claimed that it was not the subject matter alone that was the reason for refusal.
“It seems I have mistakenly conveyed the impression that the nature of the event’s subject matter was in itself enough for us to decline to host it,” he wrote.
"This is not the case – and the concerns which have informed the decision centre around our ability to cope with the booking in the event that negative issues (including those connected to public order) are raised by it.”
He added: “The Institute reserves the right to withhold hire of its facilities and although I will certainly refer this matter to the Director of Administration here there will be no change in the position should the decision be ratified.”
Assange, who has been on strict bail conditions at the Norfolk home of Smith for over six months, was informed that the IOE had declined to hire the Logan Hall for the 2 July event on the grounds that it “may attract considerable controversy“.
He said in response: "This is how everyday political censorship works in the United Kingdom, not jackboots at the door, but through tawdry institutional pandering."
Chaired by award-winning investigative journalist Amy Goodman, the event will see Assange and Žižek discuss the “ethics and philosophy“ behind WikiLeaks. It will be broadcast live across the internet by independent US news broadcaster, Democracy Now!
On the same day, the IOE's Jeffery Hall will host the Association of Church Accountants and Treasurers’ Summer Conference, which will feature a talk from Gareth Morgan, a senior leader at Everyday Champions Church, Newark. Morgan will discuss “the challenges of being an effective church in the 21st century.”
The IOE was founded in 1902 as a teacher training college in London, and says its “history and current mission are rooted in a commitment to social justice.”
It is part of the University of London: a publicly funded institution which was established in 1836, making it one of the oldest universities in England.
A spokesperson for the IOE denied that the event had been turned down because of controversy surrounding WikiLeaks, and stated the decision was taken due to concerns about public safety and ease of access for students and visitors.
"It is true that Mr Assange is a controversial figure at the moment, because of WikiLeaks but also because of attempts to extradite him to face criminal charges," the spokesperson said.
"As such, and given the proximity to Mr Assange's next court hearing [on 12 July], it was felt that this event was likely to attract a significant amount of external interest from both the media and the broader public.
“While we can understand Frontline's disappointment at not being able to host this event at the IOE, we must always put the welfare of our students, staff and guests first and we judged that we would not have the resources to safely steward an event of this kind without our students and other visitors having their access to facilities disrupted.”
On Saturday, 2 July Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of whistleblower website WikiLeaks will be "in conversation" with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and award-winning investigative journalist Amy Goodman.
In the build up to what should be a fascinating event, focusing on the ethics and philosophy behind WIkiLeaks, Frontline Club is posting a series of blogs giving an insight into the thinking of Assange and Žižek.
Here is a round up blog post by Will Spens, published in December last year, of the talks and discussions Assange took part in at the Frontline Club:
26 July 2010
WikiLeaks: Afghan War Logs – Julian Assange holds press conference at Frontline Club.
Subsequent to the previous evening’s release of 90,000 classified US military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan between 2004-2010, Julian Assange gave a press conference at the Frontline Club in front of many British and international journalists.
You can read a summary of the event and watch the video here.
Further links to media coverage of this press conference can be accessed here.
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27 July 2010
Special event: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Frontline Club.
Julian Assange was joined by the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell to engage the audience on the impact of the leaked classified documents which chronicle in detail US military operations in Afghanistan between 2004-2010.
A video and audio podcast of the event can be accessed here.
An interview with Julian Assange about the best and worse case scenarios for WikiLeaks can be found here, along with more analysis of the evening.
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12 August 2010
The data revolution: How WikiLeaks is changing journalism.
The controversy surrounding WikiLeaks' historic release of more than 70,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan has not died down. But one thing is certain: online data and its dissemination is changing journalism and the relationship between the public and those in power. In this special event, we asked:
You can read a summary of the event and watch the video here.
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25 October 2010
WikiLeaks: Iraq War Logs - Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg in conversation.
Following the leak by WikiLeaks of almost 400,000 secret US army field reports from the Iraq war between 2004 and 2009, Julian Assange was at the Frontline Club in conversation with one of the most famous whistle blowers in history, Daniel Ellsberg, who was responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
The event was chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.
A summary and a video of the event can be found here.
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1 December 2010
WikiLeaks: The US embassy cables
Following the release of of 251,287 confidential United States embassy cables, December’s First Wednesday debate focused on the revelations of this latest leak from whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
You can read a summary of the evening here and access a video here.
]]>As part of the build up to the event, which will focus on the ethics and philosophy behind WIkiLeaks, Frontline Club will this week be posting a series of blogs including extracts from essays written by both Assange and Žižek .
Today we are pleased to be posting an edited extract of Assange's 2006 essay, Conspiracy as Governance. The essay gives an insight in to Assange's thinking around the time that he founded WikiLeaks alongside others late the same year.
In it, he outlines the problem of authoritarian conspiracies and explains how technology may be able to help create a more humane form of governance...
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Conspiracy as Governance
By Julian Assange
To radically shift regime behaviour we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.
We must understand the key generative structure of bad governance.
We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position of clarity.
Most importantly, we must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling and effective action to replace the structures that lead to bad governance with something better.
Conspiracy as governance in authoritarian regimes
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite, not merely for preferment or favour within the regime, but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.
Authoritarian regimes create forces which oppose them by pushing against a people’s will to truth, love and self-realisation. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce further resistance. Hence such schemes are concealed by successful authoritarian powers until resistance is futile or outweighed by the efficiencies of naked power. This collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population, is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow until everyone can recognise them, there is no longer any remedy to be found.
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])
Traditional vs. modern conspiracies
Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination, cut many high weight links. The act of assassination — the targeting of visible individuals — is the result of mental inclinations honed for the pre-literate societies in which our species evolved.
Literacy and the communications revolution have empowered conspirators with new means to conspire, increasing the speed of accuracy of the their interactions and thereby the maximum size a conspiracy may achieve before it breaks down.
Conspirators who have this technology are able to out conspire conspirators without it. For the same costs they are able to achieve a higher total conspiratorial power. That is why they adopt it.
For example, remembering Lord Halifax’s words, let us consider two closely balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings, the US Democratic and Republican parties.
Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which manage their subscribes, donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail campaigns?
They would immediately fall into an organisational stupor and lose to the other.
An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces
When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment.
Later we will see how new technology and insights into the psychological motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for more humane forms of governance.
Reproduced with permission of the author.
The essay, which is in two parts, can be read in full here.
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, will take place on 2 July at the Troxy In East London. More information and tickets for the event can be found here.
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