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
]]>Google and the World Brain, co-produced by the BBC and initially broadcasted as part of their Storyville strand in 2013. Played to a typically crowded Frontline Club on Tuesday 27th August, as part of this summer’s season exploring how technological changes shape the way we view and document the world.
Setting out at Christmas 2009 to make a “critical film about the internet”, director Ben Lewis joked that the the project soon became “a masochistic exercise to make an interesting film about books and libraries.” Google and the World Brain follows the story of the Google Books project, described early in the film as “the most ambitious ‘World Brain’ scheme.”
Director Ben Lewis. Photo: Pete Ford
Spurred on by Google’s hypocritical refusal to talk about a project whose stated aim was to make knowledge available for all, the documentary charts the project’s early implementation in select American universities, its spread across the Atlantic and the growing hostility it garnered – culminating in Google being sued and the ensuing court case.
The title of the documentary is a direct reference to H.G Wells’ concept of an all knowing world brain, and his ideas feature regularly throughout, providing both the opening and closing sequences.
One argument raised in the documentary is about the project’s overwhelming focus on English language books. Yet Lewis, at least, is not guilty of a similar English interviewee bias, with authors and librarians from China, Japan, Germany and Spain all featuring heavily, and the former director of the French National Library inadvertently providing the film’s comic moments.
The film highlights the ideological differences between Google, authors and librarians. As Lewis noted, while authors and Google aim to make money from books, “a librarian’s role is to give this away to everyone for free.” This naivety comes across clearly – especially the Harvard University Library Director – who seemed to believe in Google’s benevolence and had little knowledge of copyright law.
Director Ben Lewis introduces the screening
The question of copyright features heavily throughout the second half of the documentary and it was the first topic of the lively and humorous Q&A session that followed the screening. When asked about why he made a documentary about copyright, Lewis answered that:
“I initially wanted to make a film called ‘Copy Wrong’ [but] no one really has much sympathy for musicians . . . so I latched onto books, as we know it takes an enormous amount of work and I thought people would sympathise with authors who were having their work taken out of their hands”
Asked what he thought was going through Google’s mind when planning the project, Lewis responded:
“It’s old fashioned vanity really . . . they think they are doing a lot of good for the world – and making a lot of money out of it – and in their own minds they feel they are worth the money they earn, as it’s for the good of the world. Which is not so different from me – I’m just not worth $150 billion.”
Did Lewis believe the internet had been good for libraries?
“I think the internet can be wonderful for libraries . . . the internet by definition is a library . . . but certain taboos, such a charging micro-payments for taking out books, will need to be broken in the future if libraries are to continue.”
Is there a right way for Google to do the project?
“It’s easy. Ring up the publishers and ask for permission”
And Google’s opinion of the documentary?
“They wrote me a letter saying they were disappointed by the overwhelming negative tone of the film.”
Not that that seemed to concern Lewis, who suggested his next documentary might investigate Google further, premised on the “mythologies that Silicon Valley have of their own effectiveness.”
A DVD is in the works, and to find out more information visit benlewis.tv. Or, by his own admission, “just google me”.
More information about the film can be found here – http://www.worldbrainthefilm.com/
]]>Tuesday 30 July 2013, 7:00 PM – Side by Side
For almost one hundred years there was only one way to make a movie: photochemical film. Over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge this initial form of filmmaking. At a moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, Side by Side explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.
Tuesday 6 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Pirate Bay: Away from Keyboard
The largest and most famous torrent website in the world, The Pirate Bay, quickly became one of many antagonists of the entertainment industry. The three Swedish founders face $13 million in damage claims by the media establishment. TPB-AFK chronicles a historic drama beyond the copyright debate and tells a human story torn by cyberwar.
Tuesday 20 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Human Scale FULLY BOOKED
The Human Scale: it’s a ticking time bomb. In the next 40 years the number of people living in cities will nearly double. There is not enough time to build the necessary infrastructure to accomodate all of us. According to revolutionary Danish city planner Jan Gehl, even the largest of megacities must be re-thought, re-designed and re-sized to the human scale.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Andreas M. Dalsgaard
Tuesday 27 August 2013, 7:00 PM – Google and the World Brain FULLY BOOKED
Google and the World Brain connects the central story of Google Books with fundamental issues related to the Internet – privacy, copyright, data-mining, downloading and surveillance. Through interviews with experts from across the world we learn about the implications of one of the most ambitious and simultaneously controversial projects ever conceived on the Internet.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Ben Lewis.
Tuesday 3 September 2013, 7:00 PM – Rewind This! BOOK NOW
Home video changed the way the world consumed films. Low cost equipment and the rise of VHS created unprecedented opportunities for the film industry. Rewind This! looks at media consumption, zero budget filmmaking, unchecked global piracy and an exploding film industry, through the rise and fall of VHS. Developments that laid the foundation for today’s digital culture.
Tuesday 30 July 2013, 7:00 PM – Side by Side
Tuesday 6 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Pirate Bay: Away from Keyboard
Tuesday 20 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Human Scale BOOK NOW
[vimeo clip_id=”67638874″ width=”400″ height=”225″]
Tuesday 27 August 2013, 7:00 PM – Google and the World Brain BOOK NOW
Tuesday 3 September 2013, 7:00 PM – Preview: Rewind This! BOOK NOW
]]>The world is coming to grips with the depth and scale of government surveillance following revelations, released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, about the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) Prism program. On 9 July a panel of experts convened at the Frontline Club to debate the balance between personal privacy and national security.
Mark Urban (left), Sir Malcolm Rifkind (centre), John Kampfner (right), Photo: Jim Treadway
“Balance does not exist,” argued author and commentator John Kampfner, who advises Google on free expression. Kampfner said that because citizens demand total security, governments simply “cannot allow for balance.”
A deeper question than balance seemed to emerge in the debate, however – that of trust. Can governments and corporations be trusted to wield the deeply penetrative surveillance technology that has so recently arrived in their hands?`
Sir Malcolm Rifkind believes they can. The Chairman of the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee and a former Foreign and Defence Secretary, opened his remarks by saying:
“Let’s start from the presumption that the people who run GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 are decent, responsible people, with high levels of integrity. I think it’s a reasonable assumption.”
The Director of Oxford’s Internet Institute, Helen Margetts pointed out:
“PRISM is [said] to have cost $20 million, which is completely and utterly ludicrous. As one tech blog put it, most security consultants ‘won’t get out of bed for less than $100 million’. The actual cost is probably billions.”
Academic and journalist John Naughton disagreed with Rifkind:
“What comes out [from authorities] is, ‘Trust Us.’ And the trouble with that is that, in recent decades at least, our political masters haven’t deserved our trust…”
The big problem is that the technology operates outside of the laws. . . . Without a warrant – in this country – GCHQ can scoop up all of our email metadata [and] all of our mobile phone metadata, and . . . all of your click streams are collected. In other words, every website we’ve ever visited. . . . You have an amazingly detailed picture of everybody. My question is: in the long run, can you actually square this with liberal democracy?
John Naughton (left), Helen Margetts (right); Photo: Jim Treadway
Rifkind offered a powerful counterpoint:
“Ask yourself . . . why in America, since 9/11, there’s not been a single further example of that kind of a mass atrocity, or why in this country, apart from the 7/7 bombings, not a single person has been killed – since Lee Rigby, a few weeks ago. In each and every year since 7/7 – or since 9/11, whichever you prefer – there have been at least one and sometimes two terrorist plots – in this country – that have been uncovered. . . . I know for a fact that in each of these terrorist plots that were disrupted, it was metadata [that] was a substantial part of the evidence…”
In that light, the chair Mark Urban, an author and an diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight, asked:
“To what extent do we as citizens . . . with a phone and a computer, give our consent to the companies? Is it possible to live a modern, networked life, without giving that consent?”
To which Naughton answered:
“Our futures are bounded by the nightmares of two old Etonian writers. One of them is George Orwell, who thought we’d be destroyed by the things we fear. And one of them is Aldous Huxley, who thought we’d be destroyed by the things we love – things that delight us [iPhones and Google etc]. We’re sleepwalking into a nightmare. . . . We are sleepwalking into this amazing, dystopian world, and we love it.”
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-trade-off-individual
]]>In 1937 H.G. Wells predicted the creation of the “World Brain” – a giant global library that contained all human knowledge, which would lead to a new form of higher intelligence. Seventy years later the realisation of this dream seemed to be underway, as Google started scanning millions and millions of books for its Google Books website. With over half these books still in copyright, authors and publishers across the world launched a campaign to stop Google. Climaxing in a New York courtroom in 2011.
In Google and the World Brain, director Ben Lewis connects the central story of Google Books with fundamental issues related to the Internet – privacy, copyright, data-mining, downloading and surveillance. Through interviews with experts from across the world, we learn about the implications of one of the most ambitious and simultaneously controversial projects ever conceived on the Internet.
Directed by Ben Lewis
Duration:
89′
Year: 2013
For more information about the film you can go to the official website or like the facebook page.
This screening is part of a summer season looking at the way technological changes are shaping the way we document the world and interact with it. See the full programme here.
]]>https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-trade-off-individual
Privacy of the individual, secrecy of the state and national security have been in sharp focus in past weeks due to the leak of material from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA).
It has been revealed that under the so-called Prism programme millions of phone calls have been gathered and Internet use has been monitored on a massive scale. In the UK there are suggestions that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has also accessed the material.
The chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Conservative MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “in order to protect the public that does require, as President Obama said in Washington, some intrusion on privacy in certain circumstances”. The murder on 22 May of Drummer Lee Rigby reignited calls for the draft communications data bill to be re-examined.
As the debate about individual privacy, state secrecy and national security continues, we will be joined by a panel of experts to ask whether it is possible to strike a balance. Are we moving towards a surveillance state or is the idea of online privacy a myth?
Chaired by Mark Urban, diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight. He is the author of several books including Big Boys’ Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA, The Tank War and Task Force Black: The explosive true story of the SAS and the secret war in Iraq.
The panel:
Sir Malcolm Rifkind is MP for Kensington and chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. In 1990 he became Secretary of State for Transport and in 1992 Secretary of State for Defence. From 1995-97 he was Foreign Secretary. He was re-elected as a Member of Parliament in May 2005 for Kensington and Chelsea. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Kensington in May 2010. He served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform until December 2005.
John Kampfner is adviser to Google on freedom of expression and culture. He is an author, broadcaster and commentator specialising in UK politics, international affairs, media and human rights issues. Previously he served as chief executive of Index on Censorship from Sept 2008 until March 2012 and was editor of the New Statesman from 2005-2008. He is the author of a number of books including, most recently, Freedom For Sale.
John Naughton is a senior research fellow at CRASSH, emeritus professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, vice-president of Wolfson College, Cambridge and an adjunct professor at University College Cork. He is director of the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme and a well-known newspaper columnist, writing the Observer’s Networker column. He is author of a well-known history of the Internet A Brief History of the Future and most recently From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: what you really need to know about the Internet.
Helen Margetts is the director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a department of the University of Oxford investigating individual, collective and organisational behaviour online. Her research focuses on digital governance and politics, investigating the dynamics of online relationships between governments and citizens, and collective action on the Internet. She is the co-author of Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform; The Tools of Government in the Digital Age; and Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and e-Government. She currently holds an ESRC professorial fellowship entitled The Internet, Political Science and Public Policy, is editor-in-chief of the journal Policy and Internet and sits on the Advisory Board of the Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office.
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In Iran it is reported that the government are building a national intranet that adheres to Islamic values and is isolated from the World Wide Web, in the UK the government is proposing a communications bill that will see an increase in monitoring of emails and social media by the police and intelligence agencies'.
With companies' interests lying in the commercial gains of data and governments' in the ability to monitor populations, join us as we ask to whose hands internet governance should be entrusted.
]]>
In Iran it is reported that the government are building a national intranet that adheres to Islamic values and is isolated from the World Wide Web, in the UK the government is proposing a communications bill that will see an increase in monitoring of emails and social media by the police and intelligence agencies’.
Authoritarian states have long seen the freedom of the internet as a threat and have tried to restrict it, but recent develops suggest a move towards increased tracking and control of what the public do and see online across the world.
With companies’ interests lying in the commercial gains of data and governments’ in the ability to monitor populations, join us as we ask to whose hands internet governance should be entrusted.
Chaired by Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – an international freedom of expression non-governmental organisation. Previously she has worked at Chatham House, IPPR, the European Commission and most recently she was head of Global Public Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam and Senior Associate Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. Twitter: @IndexCensorship
With:
Birgitta Jónsdóttir MP, a member of the Icelandic Parliament for The Movement and chairperson of the International Modern Media Institution. She has worked as a volunteer for various organisations including WikiLeaks, Saving Iceland and Friends of Tibet in Iceland. Prior to becoming an MP she has been an activist, writer, first icelandic woman to work as web developer and publisher. Twitter: @birgittaj
Jacob Appelbaum, an accomplished photographer, software hacker and world traveler. He works as a developer for The Tor Project and trains interested parties globally on how to effectively use and contribute to the Tor network. He is a founding member of the hacklab Noisebridge in San Francisco where he indulges his interests in magnetics, cryptography and consensus based governance. He was a driving force in the team behind the creation of the Cold Boot Attacks; winning both the Pwnie for Most Innovative Research award and the Usenix Security best student paper award in 2008. Additionally, he was part of the MD5 Collisions Inc. team that created a rogue CA certificate by using a cluster of 200 PlayStations funded by the Swiss taxpayers. The “MD5 considered harmful today” research was awarded the best paper award at CRYPTO 2009. Twitter: @ioerror
Karl Kathuria, an independent media technology consultant, specialising in Internet distribution and streaming media. Prior to this, he spent over 10 years at the BBC, managing the distribution of World Service Internet content to a global audience. In this role, he faced the challenge of delivering news content into countries where censorship is prevalent. As a result of these efforts, he was invited to the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto to work with the Citizen Lab team in 2011 on an independent research project. During this period, he studied the effects of the BBC’s content distribution strategies in China and Iran, and made recommendations for the propagation of circumvention software into these markets. His current projects include working with Psiphon Inc., the Canadian provider of network software aimed at preserving security, privacy, and access to content that may otherwise be blocked.
Dr Ian Brown, associate Director at the Cyber Security Centre and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Internet Institute (OII). His work focuses on public policy issues around information and the Internet, particularly privacy, copyright and e-democracy. He also works in the more technical fields of information security, networking and healthcare informatics. He has consulted for the US Department of Homeland Security, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Allianz, McAfee, BT, the BBC, the European Commission, the Cabinet Office, Ofcom, the National Audit Office and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
]]>Social media. Free speech. Democracy. These were the buzzwords of 2011, where international movements like the Arab Spring were said to have been fuelled by the power to communicate with one another without hindrance.
The year of unrest has put the spotlight on the role of the internet and social media in challenging power elites and their capacity to control what the outside world sees. But while the West praises ‘pro-democracy’ movements in Arab countries and their use of social media, Westerners face greater surveillance in the name of security, including threats of increased controls in the wake of the London riots.
“We’re becoming neighbours with each other,” said Timothy Garton Ash, director of the Free Speech Debate, a multi-lingual online platform for discussing freedom of expression which was launched in January 2012:
“The old ways of thinking about free speech – when in Rome, do as the Romans do – breaks down. But China and Iran do try to reassert their control over the internet, over the control of ideas."
“We have to have a global conversation about what should be the norms for freedom of expression.”
He was joined by Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology at The Open University and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change; Khaled Fahmy, professor and chair of the American University in Cairo’s Department of History; Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of freedom of expression NGO Index on Censorship; to discuss what the historian and commentator has set out as the first principle of free speech: That all human beings must be free and able to express themselves, and to receive and impart information and ideas, regardless of frontiers:
“In this brave new world, private powers are at least as important as public powers. Facebook as a country would be the third largest country in the world. What Google does is more important than what Germany does.
“But they set rules without any democratic process. The internet also allows for new self-governing communities” said Garton Ash.
The highly academic debate – which some members of the audience dubbed “far too academic” and “Western” to be applied in actuality across the world – explored the pros and cons of Garton Ash’s ideal, outlined in ten draft principles supposed to be the ‘rules of thumb’ of free speech.
But Fahmy emphasised that the Egyptian revolution had “open access to information” at its core:
“It definitely isn’t a revolution of the poor and hungry – that might be just one dimension,” he said. “The need to inform was central in the revolution. We are in the middle of it.”
“It is not Islamists that pose the most serious threats to freedom of information. It is the military and all that is attached to it. It is the military we are fighting and the national security we are trying to challenge.”
But the ideals of equality and freedom of expression were brought into question by Gillespie, whose research suggested that structures of inequality found in reality are replicated in the media:
“Are we really all neighbours? The structure of inequalities that exist in the world are replicated and intensified online. It is important to think about who is talking and who, most importantly, is listening.”
Another blow to Garton Ash’s project was dealt by Hughes, who said that a global code as is outlined in the Free Speech Debate project could open up freedom of expression to government interference and top down control – which would undermine the idea completely:
“Do we need a global code? No, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Codes open up government interference and topdown control. It can lead to self-censorship.”
“But we still need to fight for freedom of expression,” she added. “Let’s have a conversation but not a code.”
Diverse voices explored and expressed the pros and cons of working towards such an ideal – and so in a sense, demonstrated Garton Ash’s project in action.
“We have to move from purely western universalism to a more universal universalism,” said Garton Ash:
]]>“The only way to do that is to put your own propositions on the table and be genuinely open to what someone in China, or Egypt, would say in response.”
By Nicole Hunt
All eyes will be on newly-elected French President François Hollande and the euro zone this week, kicking off with a meeting of euro group finance ministers in Brussels on Monday ahead of a wider ECOFIN meeting on Tuesday. Hollande has previously talked about renegotiating the EU stability treaty, but with his government not quite officially in office yet, the mood at the meetings is likely to be somewhat uncertain.
Gulf leaders gather in Riyadh for the annual Gulf Cooperation Council summit on Monday, with Syria and Iran likely to feature prominently on the agenda. The leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also expected to discuss proposals for a political federation that would see the group share foreign and defence policies, according to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal.
In Vienna, Iran begins two days of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The talks follow IAEA visits to Iran in January and February this year, and come ahead of the resumption of P5+1 discussions in Baghdad on 23 May.
Tuesday is the big day! Hollande is sworn in as President at the Elysée Palace in Paris in the morning, and one of his first orders of business will be to fly to Berlin to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Meanwhile, France’s national statistics institute releases preliminary figures for quarterly growth, job creation and labour activity, which will give the new president a better idea of the current state of the economy. On top of that, Greek, German and euro zone first quarter GDP figures are also out.
If anyone doesn’t feel like discussing European economic prospects, they might be interested to know that Germany’s other favourite subject is also in the news, as the Kiev Court of Appeal holds a hearing for jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of abuse of power in October; she also faces a separate trial for embezzlement, which resumes in Kharkiv on 21 May. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, meanwhile, is expected to be in Moscow to attend an informal meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States, hosted by new President Vladimir Putin.
In Nairobi, United Nations Development Programme administrator Helen Clark launches the first African Human Development Report, which focuses on food security on the continent.
Wednesday’s Hollande-story-of-the-day: the new President chairs his first cabinet meeting, at which he’s expected to announce a cut in his own salary, as well as those of his ministers. The cabinet won’t be the only ones earning less money in France, as Hollande is expected to work quickly to introduce one of his most popular election pledges: a 75% tax on earnings over €1 million.
Aside from that, there’s a lot happening in Dutch courts. The Assen District Court is due to rule on a petition filed by the public prosecutor to dissolve and ban the Martijn organisation, which lobbies for the social acceptance of sexual relationships between adults and children.
At the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, former Bosnian Serb Army Commander Ratko Mladic goes on trial facing 11 counts of criminal responsibility and superior criminal responsibility for genocide, complicity in genocide, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, inflicting terror upon civilians, cruel treatment, attacks on civilians and taking hostages.
Over at The Hague’s special trial chamber for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (which otherwise sits in Freetown), a sentencing hearing takes place for former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was convicted of crimes against humanity on 26 April. Following submissions from both sides, Taylor will be sentenced on 30 May.
Thursday is looking relatively quiet, so far. The official Handover Ceremony for the Olympic Torch takes place at the Panatheanic Stadium in Athens, following an eight-day torch relay around Greece, with Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Princess Anne among those in attendance.
In Chicago, NATO spokesman James Appathurai is due to participate in a debate with Andy Thayer of the Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda. The debate is part of NATO’s efforts to ‘reach out’ and ‘exchange views’ with activists, who have planned a week of protest events ahead of the weekend summit.
The two-day G8 Summit begins at Camp David on Friday, with US President Barack Obama playing host. The meeting is Hollande’s big international debut, but one person he won’t be meeting there is Putin, who has opted to skip the summit and send Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.
Facebook is widely expected to launch its stock flotation on Friday, following a cross-country roadshow to drum up interest – which has been either weaker or stronger than expected, according to various sources. The company has been valued at up to $100 billion, and is reportedly making around $11 billion in shares available in its first offering.
The Queen is hosting a jubilee lunch for other sovereign monarchs, which normally wouldn’t be notable to anyone besides royal-watchers, but the potential guest list has come under scrutiny as of late. King Hamad of Bahrain is rumoured to be among the invitees, despite ongoing human rights and security issues in the country, which have been criticised by the Foreign Office.
The G8 Summit continues on Saturday, when we can expect the final communiqué to be released , but otherwise it’s looking like another quiet day. Baby Milk Action holds its annual Boycott Nestlé demonstration at the company’s Croydon headquarters, protesting against ‘aggressive’ and ‘unethical’ marketing of baby milk formula in developing countries.
Most of the G8 leaders will make their way from Camp David to Chicago on Sunday for another two days of meetings, this time to discuss NATO. Since the G8 Summit was moved from Chicago, preventing any large protests from getting near the meeting, the biggest demonstrations are also scheduled for Sunday.
Three elections taking place on Sunday: a presidential vote in the Dominican Republic, where Danilo Medina and Hipolito Meja are vying to replace Leonel Fernandez Reyna, who is stepping down; a runoff in the Serbian presidential election, which saw incumbent Boris Tadic narrowly beat his main challenger Tomislav Nikolic on 6 May; and the runoff votes for the municipal elections in Italy, following the first round of voting on 6-7 May.
Finally, Google’s annual top-secret Zeitgeist Conference takes place in London. According to a leaked schedule obtained by Forbes in April, speakers include former US President Bill Clinton, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Independent chairman Evgeny Lebedev, former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow, BBC’s Paul Mason, and, er, Annie Lennox and Arsène Wenger.
]]>The former Google executive will be talking to Ben Hammersley, Wired UK's, editor at large about the revolution and the role of technology in mobilising people to take to the streets. He will also be bringing us up to date with what's been happening since the jubilant celebrations a year ago and his work since he left Google in April this year.
]]>The ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page that he created after the young man’s brutal murder and torture by police in Alexandria became such a focal point of the uprising that Ghonim was imprisoned for 11 days.
The former Google executive will be talking to Ben Hammersley, Wired UK‘s, editor at large about the revolution and the role of technology in mobilising people to take to the streets. He will also be bringing us up to date with what’s been happening since the jubilant celebrations a year ago and his work since he left Google in April this year.
Wael Ghonim’s new book Revolution 2.0 is published by Fourth Estate on 17 January.
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