August Bank Holiday Weekend
Pippingford Park, East Sussex, UK
Join us at Byline – the world’s first festival for independent journalism and freedom of speech – to debate, discuss, dance, laugh, and change the world.
Throughout the festival Frontline will be running a curated series of talks and documentary screenings exploring two of this year’s festival themes: Defending Democracy and The Power of Journalism.
Frontline Events include:
DEBATE: The Extradition of Julian Assange – Friday 23 August, 3pm
We’ll be hearing from journalist Nick Davies, politician and activist Birgitta Jonsdottir and Frontline’s Vaughan Smith as they debate the legacy and the future for Assange, as the likelihood of his extradition to the USA looms.
TALK: The Parallel state: Truth, Lies & Political Fiction in Contemporary Turkey – Friday 23 August, 4.30pm
What began as a project about Turkish soap operas for award-winning photographer Guy Martin soon turned into a photographic exploration of the fault lines of truth, power and politics in Turkey. Chaired by journalist Jo Glanville.
FILM: Under the Wire – Saturday 26 August, 3pm
On 13 February 2012, war-correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy entered war-ravaged Syria to cover the plight of civilians trapped in the besieged Homs, under attack by the Syrian army. Only one of them returned. This is their story.
FILM: White Right: Meeting the Enemy – Sunday 25 August, 10.30am
Filmmaker Deeyah Khan meets U.S. neo-Nazis and white nationalists face to face and attends the now-infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as she seeks to understand the personal and political motivations behind the resurgence of far-right extremism in the U.S. Won 2018 Emmy for best international current affairs documentary.
FILM: Unquiet Graves – Sunday 25 August, 3pm
Sean Murray‘s powerful film tells the story of how members of the RUC and UDR (a British Army Regiment) were involved in the murder of 120 innocent civilians in the targeted terrorising of the most vulnerable members of society during “the Troubles” conflict in Northern Ireland.
FILM: When Lambs Become Lions – Sunday 25 August, 6.20pm
In the Kenyan bush, a small-time ivory dealer fights to stay on top while forces mobilize to destroy his trade. When he turns to his younger cousin, a conflicted wildlife ranger who hasn’t been paid in months, they both see a possible lifeline.
TALK: The Price of Paradise – Monday 26 August, 1.10pm
Investigative journalist and author Iain Overton will be in conversation about his latest book, which looks at the influence of the suicide bomber on modern society from pre-revolutionary Russia to the present day.
The Frontline Cub Tent can be your base between events: take refreshment from our bar, try our delicious Norfolk mezze of food, and enjoy some laid-back entertainment including music, poetry and games.
Travel is just over an hour from London by train so bring your friends, colleagues and family. The festival is family friendly with lots of activities for children of all ages.
Tickets: Day and weekend tickets are available with a specially-discounted weekend rate for Frontline Club friends and members.
Links:
- For more information about the festival, visit the Byline website.
- To keep up to date with news about Frontline events at Byline, sign up to our newsletter.
Watch the video stream of George Soros : Saint or Sinner]]>To many of his detractors, Soros is an unelected force who uses his vast wealth to pursue an agenda that leaders such as Viktor Orban in Hungary argue undermine their policies and programmes.
To his supporters, Soros is a global champion of democracy and human rights; an example of how philanthropy can lead the fight against authoritarianism, intolerance and racism. To them, ‘Soros Hatred’ is a global sickness and tainted with festering anti-semitism.
Chair:
Jonathan Dimbleby is a broadcaster, programme-maker and historian. Over the last 45 years he travelled extensively reporting from conflicts and crises in Europe, The Middle East, Africa and the Americas for ITV. Between 1987 and 2006 he presented weekly political debate programmes for both BBC TV and ITV, anchoring election night programmes on ITV in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Since 1987 he has chaired BBC Radio Four’s weekly ‘Any Questions’ programme and, over the last three years, a monthly debate programme for the BBC World Service, ‘World Questions’. Among countries in Africa, Central America and Europe, this has taken him to Poland and Hungary, the country of George Soros’ birth.
Speakers:
Roula Khalaf is Deputy Editor of the Financial Times. She has worked for the FT since 1995, first as north Africa correspondent, then Middle East correspondent and most recently as Middle East editor. Before joining the FT, she was a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York. Roula oversees the FT’s network of foreign correspondents and bureaus. She writes regularly on global politics and business.
Patrick Gaspard is president of the Open Society Foundations. He joined the Foundations as vice president in 2017.Prior to joining Open Society, Gaspard served as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa from 2013 to 2016. Gaspard has extensive experience in presidential and congressional campaigns. Most recently, he served as a senior aide to President Barack Obama, as the executive director of the Democratic National Committee, and as an assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Political Affairs. He was the national political director for Obama for America in 2008.
James Kirchick is a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe and Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. A widely published journalist, he is author of “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age” (Yale, 2017), and a frequent contributor to a wide array of publications including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Politico.
Dr. Frank Furedi is an author and social commentator and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England and Visiting Professor, Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction, at University College London. His study, ‘Populism And The Culture Wars In Europe: the conflict of values between Hungary and the EU’, discusses the sociological implications of the tension between populists and anti-populist political currents.
]]>It’s easy to blame Russian trolls, Facebook news feeds, or the sinister manipulation of ‘big data’ — but these are all symptoms of an abusive thirty-year relationship between politics, the media, and a new information age.
Interviewing everyone from Tony Blair to Michael Gove, top journalists to Russian bloggers, and tech giant execs to online activists, Tom Baldwin describes a vicious battle for control of the news agenda, at the expense of public trust and the value of truth. He talks with Sky News Editor-at-large and former Political Editor Adam Boulton to show how technological change has hollowed out space for virulent new populist alternatives, including the so-called ‘alt-right’ and ‘alt-left’. And he warns that not only extremists, but also the progressive centre, may now decide to press ‘delete’ on liberal democracy altogether.
Ctrl Alt Delete is a brutally honest and sometimes funny account of how our democracy was crashed — and whether we can still re-boot it.
Tom Baldwin
Tom Baldwin has spent the best part of three decades in the thick of politics and the media. He has worked as communications director for the Labour Party, political editor of The Sunday Telegraph, assistant editor of The Times, and The Times’ Washington bureau chief
Adam Boulton
Adam Boulton is currently the Editor-at-large of Sky News, and presenter of All Out Politics & Week In Review. He is also the former political editor of Sky News. He was previously the political editor of TV-am, an ITV early-morning broadcasting franchise holder. He held the post of Sky’s Political Editor since being asked to establish its politics team for the launch of the channel in 1989. He is the former presenter of Sky News’ Sunday Live with Adam Boulton, and presented a regular weekday news and political programme on Sky News, entitled Boulton and Co from 2011 to 2014.
]]>A Byline Event – join us for a screening of a unique film which explores the role of Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump, followed by an update on recent developments with the pioneering Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, since her story broke two months ago. We are also joined by director Thomas Huchon and CEO of Byline Peter Jukes.
Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States by winning three key states, a victory engineered by an ultra-conservative faction that quietly mapped its way to power using fake news, lies and psychometrics.
This explosive documentary follows the money to the reclusive multi-billionaire Robert Mercer, who bought Breitbart News and funded the effort while inserting Steve Bannon into the presidential campaign as its manager. Using data of millions of Americans acquired from Facebook, Google, banks, credit companies, social security and more, Cambridge Analytica, another Mercer-owned company, used tactics honed during the UK’s Brexit campaign to identify voters deemed “most neurotic or worried,” whom they believed could swing for Trump. In the days before the election, using “dark posts,” a little-known Facebook feature, they deployed highly manipulative and personalized messages that could be seen only by the user before disappearing.
In the darkness of the web, democracy was trumped by data.
As this is a third party event, tickets available through EventBrite
Run Time: 1 hr 15 mins
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L to R: Richard Cockett, Hkanhpa Sadan, Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, Robert Cooper, Paul French
Meanwhile certain regions of Burma are about to learn how to cast a ballot on November 8, ethnic minorities in rural areas are fleeing their homes that are being burnt by the military forces.
On Tuesday September 22, a panel of experts and activists discussed the uncertain future of the country that has been suffering the longest ongoing civil war.
Shortly after Paul French, commentator on Asia chairing the panel, invited the speakers to make their pitch about the current situation, it became clear that opinions about the value of recent reforms value immensely.
Meanwhile general secretary of the Kachin National Council Hkanhpa Sadan and campaigns officer at Burma Campaign UK Wai Hnin Pwint Thon said they can be hardly excited about the election, The Economist correspondent Richard Cockett and adviser to EU representatives Robert Cooper sustained that the progress has been palpable.
“What western community did was they gave us furniture so far and television, but we still don’t have a roof to live under. They gave us the furniture, because they want the garden,” Mr Sadan outlined the perspective of the Burmese.
Ms Pwint Thon criticised the constitution introduced in 2008, which in her view gives a fake illusion of a legal state. “The aim of the constitutions is to create an appearance of change while still holding on to military power and while giving the military the power to decide on economy and politics of the country,” she said.
Mr Cockett underlined that the reforms should be considered in a relevant context. “You should judge Burma against the standards of the region, not against standards of western democracy or British parliamentary democracy,” he said numbering increasingly oppressive countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia.
According to him, the idea of restoring order in the country is inaccurate. “This country has never experienced order. It’s never experienced peace. Indeed, it’s never experienced an existence as a coherent country at all,” Mr Cockett said referring to the conflict ongoing since 1948.
Mr Cooper reckoned that the upcoming election might become the fairest that the country will have witnessed. “It’s been contested by a large number of parties. It’s got a large number of observers, very large number of local monitors and a large number of international observers there. And it’s not happened before,” he said.
Nevertheless, all the speakers concluded that the way towards genuine democracy, peace with ethnic minorities and complete freedom of expression will be long and bumpy.
Ms Pwint Thon criticised the western “wait and see” approach and Mr Cockett admitted that the economic withdrawal from Myanmar didn’t help the situation either. “It meant that the best practices left the country and they were left with Chinese companies who didn’t care or ever thought about human rights,” he said.
The panel also agreed that the anticipated election might not be that key in the transition. One of the root causes of the conflict is oppression of the country’s minorities.
Mr Sadan underlined that Myanmar has introduced one of the most discriminative religious laws in the world. Ms Pwint Thon added it is not only Muslims, but also women who are not treated equally.
Mr Cockett spoke about a “very poisonous sectarian atmosphere” that he considers one of the real dangers of the election. “It could be a real flashpoint that they exploit all this in the run-up to the election and even after the election. It’ll be extremely explosive in Rakhine state itself where the Rohingya have been entirely disenfrenchised and the buddhist Rakhine nationalists will use this to rally opinion and if the attack Muslims,” he said.
]]>In this multi-award winning companion piece to The Act of Killing, filmed before its release, Joshua Oppenheimer further explores the terrible legacy of the Indonesian genocide fifty years ago, this time through the lens of one family.
Adi was born in 1968, two years after his brother Ramli was slaughtered in front of many eyewitnesses. Now an optometrist, Adi lives with his elderly parents and his children. Not only does he live under the ongoing rule of his brother’s killers, but he must listen to his children regurgitate the propaganda that instigated the killing, and is still being perpetuated in schools.
Adi decides to confront some of the perpetrators of the genocide, who are surprised when his questions are more probing than Oppenheimer‘s. His breaking of the silence leads to some electrifying scenes, in a film where the beauty of the Indonesian landscape belies the bone-chilling horrors carried out there in the name of democracy.
Radically different to Oppenheimer’s previous film, The Look of Silence is equally shocking and keenly observed. Filmed in his characteristic visual style, the film bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.
“One of the greatest and most powerful documentaries ever made. A profound comment on the human condition.” – Errol Morris
“Profound, visionary, stunning.” – Werner Herzog
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Producer: Signe Byrge Sørensen
Year: 2014
Runtime: 103′
Distributor: Dogwoof UK
www.thelookofsilence.co.uk
On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in a room occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB), is a box the size of a VHS player marked SORM. The Russian government’s front line in the battle for the future of the Internet, SORM is the world’s most intrusive listening device – monitoring e-mails, Internet usage, Skype, and all social networks.
In a new book The Red Web, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan peel back the history of advanced surveillance systems in Russia. They will be joining us to discuss what they found and to reveal how a free global exchange can be coerced into becoming a tool of repression and geopolitical warfare.
Having conducted interviews with numerous prominent officials in the Ministry of Communications and web-savvy activists challenging the state, the picture they paint sees dissidents, oligarchs, and some of the world’s most dangerous hackers collide in the uniquely Russian virtual world.
This event will be moderated by the BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent, Daniel Sandford. Sandford was the BBC’s Moscow Correspondent from 2010-2014, and covered the annexation of Crimea, the war in Eastern Ukraine, the downing of MH17, the anti-Putin protests, and the detention of Pussy Riot.
The panel:
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are cofounders of Agentura.Ru and authors of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. Soldatov worked for Novaya Gazeta from 2006 to 2008. Agentura.Ru and its reporting have been featured in The New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Federation of American Scientists, and the BBC.
Edin Omanovic is a Researcher at Privacy International, a London based NGO which investigates state surveillance and the industry which enables it. Omanovic advocates for greater transparency and accountability over the trade and use of surveillance technology, and has published several investigative reports and policy analyses on limiting the trade in surveillance technologies and protecting human rights from unlawful surveillance practices. Omanovic led research on Privacy International’s recent report on the use of Israeli, Russian, and European surveillance technology in Central Asia, Private Interests: Monitoring Central Asia, and was previously a Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute where he focused on the arms trade and illicit trafficking.
Tonia Samsonova is foreign correspondent for Echo Moskvy. She is also founder of TheQuestion.ru – a popular service that aims to connect people who have questions with those who are able to find answers, and through that interaction create and spread the culture of consciousness.
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
]]>On 8 November, the people of Myanmar will go to the polls in an election that is being seen as a step towards full democracy after nearly half a century of military rule.
Myanmar has seen reforms come into effect since 2010, when military rule was replaced by a military-backed civilian government, but how far have these reforms gone and what more needs to be done?
One of the largest and once one of the richest countries in Southeast Asia, what impact have successive military regimes had on Myanmar?
With a panel of experts we will explore what life is like in Myanmar, the political and ethical divisions, and what change the election will bring.
Chaired by Paul French, an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
The panel:
Hkanhpa Sadan is general secretary of the Kachin National Council, Kachin National Organisation. He is one of the founding members of the exile Kachin political movement based in the UK with branches across Europe, the US and Asia.
Dr Richard Cockett is editor and correspondent at The Economist. He is the author of several books, including Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African state and Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma.
Robert Cooper worked for ten years for the European Union High Representative, Javier Solana and later Catherine Ashton. From 2012 he served a further year as a special adviser on Myanmar. He served as a diplomat from 1970 to 2002, his posts included Tokyo, Brussels, Bonn, head of the policy planning staff and Asia director.
Wai Hnin Pwint Thon is a campaigns officer at Burma Campaign UK. She is the daughter of Mya Aye, one of the leaders of the 88-generation Students Group. Born in Rangoon – because of her father’s activities she faced harassment and discrimination and left the country in 2006 to continue her studies.
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Photo: Htoo Tay Zar. Aung San Suu Kyi greeting supporters from Bago State in 2011.
]]>In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, saw its population of 24 grow by one. Trouble had come to town. The newcomer was Craig Cobb, a notorious white supremacist. Quietly snapping up plots of land, he planned to take over the town government and establish Cobbsville, a haven for white separatists. In organising a rally of supremacists and neo-Nazis and courting them to take up residence, Cobb does not endear himself to Leith. Tensions soar as his behaviour becomes increasingly more threatening, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbour.
Welcome to Leith is a fascinating and suspenseful story about race, civil liberties and freedom in the United States, playing out in the shadow of the biggest oil boom in North Dakota’s history. Underpinning this stranger-than-fiction documentary is the question of how we wrestle with our democratic principles when they’re pushed to the limit.
Welcome to Leith received the Filmmaker to Filmmaker Award at the 2015 HotDocs International Film Festival.
Directed by Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker
Produced by No Weather Productions
Duration: 86′
Year: 2015
www.facebook.com/welcometoleithfilm
In nearly four years, Egypt has seen a revolution, the fall of a dictator, its first democratically elected president ousted by the military and the rise of a new leader. All this has been captured in the weekly columns of novelist Alaa Al Aswany for the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm. He had for years been a critic of the Mubarak regime and was among the first in Tahrir Square, calling for democratic reform and demanding that Hosni Mubarak stand down.
In a new book Democracy is the Answer: Egypt’s Years of Revolution, Al Aswany brings together his newspaper columns to give a picture of Egypt’s recent history. He will be joining us in conversation with BBC Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, to reflect on events of the past four years, the divisions that they have created and the hope for the future.
Alaa Al Aswany originally trained as a dentist, and still has his own dental practice in Cairo. He worked for many years in the Yacoubian Building in Cairo, which gave its name to his debut novel. The Yacoubian Building was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006, has sold over one million copies worldwide and was the bestselling novel in the Arab world for over five years. He is also the author of Chicago and Friendly Fire.
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
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