The Wikileaks Party – What’s the real story? cassie — August 5, 2013 By WikiLeaks Party Senate candidate for Victoria Leslie Cannold Why does Australia need WikiLeaks Party members in the Senate? How does the Wikileaks Party differ to the WikiLeaks publishing organisation? What difference can WikiLeaks Senators make to the business as usual approach both major parties take in the Senate, and how will it differ from the sort of representation offered by the Greens? Leslie Cannold Such intelligent questions deserve answers that mainstream media coverage of the WikiLeaks Party (WLP) isn’t offering. Instead, much of the chat focuses on the personal life and locational issues of our first Victorian candidate, Julian Assange, the world’s best known asylum-seeker. The mainstream media’s obsession extends to coverage of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, too. As an exasperated Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology John Naughton wrote recently in The Observer, Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the world’s mainstream media. The mainstream media’s indifference to the risks whistleblowers and publishers take to reveal corruption is a key cause of Australia’s democratic decline. It is this democratic decline that the The Wikileaks Party formed to rectify. As I wrote a few years ago in The Age: There are rules that have long governed the way the democratic game is played…These define what is and isn’t cricket when it comes to how individuals and institutions engage in our democracy. It is these procedures and values, often unarticulated and widely taken for granted, that are under siege now and [are] the cause of Australia’s democratic decline. Continue Reading… In Our Blog corruption, democracy, manning, snowden, whistleblowing Fundraising campaign: the time is now! cassie — August 3, 2013 — 5 Comments Attention all members of The Wikileaks Party. We need your help NOW! YOU can be part of history by raising donations to help us take the fight to Canberra this 2013 election year! Our first ‘bucket brigade’ member Luke Williams, a fellow WLP member braved the journey to Eveleigh Farmer Markets last weekend and rattled the bucket collecting donations from the public. Wearing his new WikiLeaks Party shirt with pride he successfully raised over $200. The general feedback from the public and the overall feel of the day was very positive. There were many that stopped and were curious to find out more. With donating, new WLP stickers were handed out which the little kids loved. The day was full of smiles and great conversations. YOU too can be part of the official WikiLeaks party bucket brigade – it’s very simple and only takes a few steps to get yourself ready to go: Email your full name, post-code, a photocopy of your drivers license or passport with your address covered to Gregory Fisher, our NSW Fundraising Coordinator – [email protected]. Your privacy is important to us, as is our security for each WLP member. Purchase a 2L white bucket from Bunnings or a local hardware store. Download fliers with information about the party, what we stand for and our candidates: wikileaksparty.org.au/resources We’ll give you advice on how to collect your new WLP tshirt, your official ‘Authorised Fundraiser’ sticker and you’re ready to be the newest and coolest WLP party bucket brigade member! Collection locations are in Sydney or Melbourne at present – we hope to add more locations soon. Have fun, talk about why we need the WikiLeaks Party and help our fundraising campaign. Together we can make sure our campaign puts the WikiLeaks Party into the Australian Senate this election! Download the WIKILEAKS PARTY DONATION FUNDRAISING INSTRUCTIONS (PDF, 600kb) In Our Blog, Uncategorized Why Australians should be worried about the TPP cassie — August 2, 2013 — 2 Comments by Ken Sievers, WikiLeaks Party member What is the TPP? The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the so-called “free trade” agreement currently under negotiation between the US, Australia and several other countries. [1] The US hopes to finalize these negotiations by October this year. The goal of the TPP is to make it easier for big business and international corporations to act across borders without interference from states. The TPP will effectively erode state oversight in favour of corporate freedom in areas such as the environment, workers rights, food safety, internet freedom, the costs of medicine, and financial regulation. Probably the most dangerous feature of the agreement as it now stands is the introduction of an Investor State Disputes Settlement (ISDS) system, in which foreign corporations are allowed to sue countries in order to protect the profitability of their investments. The TPP is another step in the direction of total market deregulation in the interests of international big business and is another threat to Australia’s national sovereignty. What is at stake is democratic society’s ability to regulate a market economy in the broad public interest. The TPP would constitute a further shift of power towards corporate rule without the normal means of democratic accountability, such as elections, advocacy and public protest. Continue Reading… In Our Blog TPP, TPPA Assange at Splendour: Can we trust the media? cassie — July 31, 2013 — 4 Comments Transcript of Julian Assange’s remarks in the ‘Can we trust the media?’ debate, Splendour in the Grass 2013 I feel for the other side, I really do. Can we trust the media? That’s the media that has called for me and my staff to be assassinated, droned, rendered and prosecuted? For espionage, for our publications, and our involvement in the Snowden case? Even this year ‘The Wall Street Journal’ and ‘The Washington Post’ have pushed this junk. Noam Chomsky in ‘The Common Good’ wrote that “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…” We live in a media-ocracy. What’s politically possible is defined by the media environment. In Australia, Murdoch’s News Corporation owns 60% of the mainstream media, one of the worst concentrations of media ownership in the world. I started WikiLeaks because I understood this reality; the media frame defines the political possibility. So, to bring about meaningful change, we have to enlarge the media frame. With WikiLeaks we have had significant successes in achieving this in some areas, though more needs to be done. We have to improve the access and quality of media of information to all Australians and to the world. That’s why we’ve set up the WikiLeaks Party, and that’s why I’m running this year for election to the Australian Senate. And that’s why my colleague, human rights lawyer Kellie Tranter, here today, is also running for the Senate for the WikiLeaks Party. Continue Reading… In Our Blog No truly free press with our inadequate shield laws, whistleblower protections cassie — July 29, 2013 — 1 Comment By Gerry Georgatos, investigative journalist, WikiLeaks Party Senate Candidate, Western Australia Transparency, accountability and justice are neither the primary nor default positions of the Australian political landscape and of its news media. Instead it comes down to personal choices by parliamentarians and journalists, indeed with anyone, whether they will be pursuant unfettered of these values. It will take a cultural shift to ensure transparency, accountability and justice as their primary and default positions. Journalist Gerry Georgatos at the January 26, 2012 Lobby Restaurant incident – days later he broke the story that the Prime Minister’s Office was extensively involved in generating the incident despite their claims that it is was the work of a rogue parliamentary staffer. Reporters Without Borders has ranked Australia 26th on the 2013 Free Press Index. This low ranking of Australia bespeaks of a muzzled press and in part this is due to inadequate shield laws for journalists, and repugnant lack of adequate whistleblower protections. Effectively, at any time hired lawyers can commence litigation against journalists and their publishers and without in the first instance having had to substantiate their right to litigate. As a journalist I have often been phoned by lawyers warning me not to publish any further material about their clients while the lawyers who have called have never read a single word of any of the articles I have written about their client! On occasion I have emailed PDFs of the articles that these lawyers should have read. In my experience, truth is not the objective of the majority of lawyers, and especially those who earn their quid from litigation. Continue Reading… In Our Blog, Uncategorized Awaiting Judgment: The Manning Trial Rests cassie — July 29, 2013 — 2 Comments “Moral courage – not afraid to say or do what you believe to be right.” - Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, The Memoirs of Field Marshall Montgomery, 1958 The farce is done, and one might say that the farce has ended – at least for now. An interregnum of unclear and sinister stupidity has descended in Fort Meade, Maryland. Certainly, Rabelais would express considerable disgust at the folly that has been the Manning trial, a show of a state’s indifference to the human credentials of the accused. Draw the curtain, the farce is played. The story of WikiLeaks, the most modern and most daring of journalistic projects, is very much a story of the link with this young man. That is where the farce continues, thudding and pulsating away in the briefs of prosecutors who are desperate to get their mitts on the organisation and supporters. The Manning-WikiLeaks bond is a bond, part holy, part profane, a mix so terrifying to establishment security that it has brought the vulgar and brutish out to play. The target lies well and beyond Manning. Lead prosecutor Major Ashden Fein was clutching at straws in his summing up. Julian Assange, first placed candidate for the WikiLeaks Party for the Australian Senate, potentate of the new publishing, was facilitating perfidy on the part of Manning. Assange was “the enemy” who had been aided by a wobbly anti-patriot. “Your honour, he was not a whistleblower, he was a traitor.” Continue Reading… In Our Blog Join the fiesta! admin — July 29, 2013 Delicious Latin American food & drink Exciting raffle prizes Great Latin fusion music by Broadband, Papalote & Cafe Sur Special guest speakers Support the WikiLeaks Party. Help Julian Assange and our other candidates become Wikileaks Party Senators and bring truth back to politics In partnership with Sydney’s Latin American community SAT 17 AUGUST, 5pm Main Hall, Addison Road Community Centre, 142 Addison Rd, Marrickville Admission: Minium $20 donation Contact: Gregory Phone: 0438 382 436 Email: [email protected] Book now at: trybooking/57081 In Our Blog The diabolical myth-making on asylum seekers cassie — July 28, 2013 — 2 Comments By WikiLeaks Party WA Senate Candidate Gerry Georgatos Gerry Georgatos During each year of the last several years of the 1970s and of the early years of the 1980s up to 30,000 refugees arrived by boat to Australia. There was relatively little public fuss about this as at the time there was bipartisan political support between Fraser and Whitlam. However three decades later hysteria has gripped, generated by the Howard years and all of a sudden we have both the major political parties in bipartisan support of punitive measures to “stem the tide of boat people.” In the late 1970s and early 1980s moral leadership was demonstrated by the then government in assisting Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees. My sister-in-law, just a baby, came from Vietnam on one of those boats, which nearly sank. Children who arrived from these countries without the English language and without possessions came to my school. I became friends with some of them. One of them, a landmine victim, profoundly dragged his right leg. In this period, the Fraser government minister Andrew Peacock led the way, telling the Prime Minister’s Cabinet he would resign if people fleeing Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge killing fields were not assisted. Continue Reading… In Our Blog asylum seekers You can’t trust the media? admin — July 28, 2013 — Leave a comment Remarks at Splendour in the Grass debate by WikiLeaks Party NSW Senate Candidate Kellie Tranter To work out whether or not you can trust the media you need to consider what the media is doing and what it is supposed to do. In 2010 the Director of TED Talk, Chris Anderson, put it to Julian Assange that “WikiLeaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world’s media combined.” Julian replied, “Can it possibly be true, it’s a worry isn’t it, that the rest of the world media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined.” And what about journalists? According to the Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists, “respect for truth and the right of the public to truth is the first duty of the journalist”. In other words, journalists must be servants to truth and they must be able to publish the truth. Their greatest assets must be intelligence, scepticism and determination. Continue Reading… In Our Blog Catching WikiLeaks: Australian Diplomats and the Manning Trial admin — July 23, 2013 — Leave a comment With the Australian election stuttering towards its hideous climax (we hope with a hideousness moderated by the effects of smaller parties), it is worth noting what has been happening in terms of perceptions of the Manning trial. There are, of course, numerous. Within the United States, reports suggest indifferent, tepid reaction, mixed with good doses of hostility. In many countries, sympathy for Manning is warm and engaged. In Australia, the reaction, at least in official circles, is muddled. Continue Reading... In Our Blog dfat, dorling, manning...wikileaksparty.org.au/category/blog/
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 02:58:52 +0000
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