Tag: Julian Assange

Julian Assange, “The World Tomorrow (Episode 11: Anwar Ibrahim)” (Russia Today, 3 July 2012)

In this final installment in his interview series, Assange goes over to Malaysia by video link-up to speak to Anwar Ibrahim, the major personality and leader of the political opposition in Malaysia. A former student activist and member of Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammed’s government in the 1990s, Ibrahim fell out of favour and was thrown out of political life on corruption and sodomy charges, and spent several years in prison. Returning to politics in 2008, he was hit with fresh sodomy and pedophilia charges which he fought through the courts for four years until January 2012, when all charges against him were dropped.

The interview starts with a discussion of Ibrahim’s imprisonment, how he came to be jailed and the reasons for that, and how he coped with the confinement and being separated from his wife and young children. Reading famous Russian writers like Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Shakespeare’s plays helped him to construct an inner life otherwise devoid of social contact and external stimulation. Ibrahim was acquitted of charges in 2004 and released from jail; he then lived in the US and the UK for a time. The interview segues into a comparison of Malaysian-style democracy (or whatever passes as such) with regional countries such as Burma / Myanmar, the security situation in Southeast Asia and whether Malaysia and Indonesia should form a security pact with Australia, and the history of ethnic relations among the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians in Malaysia and how inter-ethnic frictions among these groups and others are exploited by the Malaysian government, political elites and their lackeys.

There’s a sidestep into discussing the application of Islamic Shari’a law in Malaysia and Ibrahim makes the point that his concern is about corruption in the country’s law courts regardless of whether they apply Western laws or Shari’a laws. He also makes a plea for religious tolerance and points out that most people in Malaysia, and in Penang in particular where he hails from, practise such tolerance in their daily lives and during public holidays or important social events such as weddings.

The formal interview concludes with a talk on what the future holds for Malaysia and what Ibrahim plans to do should his opposition party win power in the mid-year 2012 general elections. At the point when Assange would normally say his goodbyes, Ibrahim drags him back for a few minutes to talk about Saudi Arabian investment in Malaysia and Assange’s own unhappy circumstances in which the US has filed a secret indictment against him which it intends to use to pressure Sweden to extradite him to US shores after the UK has dumped him with the Swedes to answer allegations of having raped two women, one of whom (Anna Ardin) apparently has ties to anti-Castro Cuban charity funded by the CIA and supported by Luis Posada Carriles who is wanted by both Cuba and Venezuela for having blown up an airliner in 1976. Ibrahim brings up the interesting point that because the US, the UK and Sweden are now seen to be acting as the bullies they have always been, other countries now feel entitled to act the same way; Assange agrees and cites the case of two Swedish journalists detained by the Zenawi government in Ethiopia which felt justified in doing so since it had noted Sweden’s earlier detention of Assange.

Of all Assange’s interview subjects in the series, Ibrahim is one of the more articulate ones though the majority of interviewees have been very impressive in this respect with Noam Chomsky and David Horowitz the big surprise losers. I’d have preferred Assange to have interviewed people with more radical ideas – the kind of interviewee whom Robert Stark in his weekly “The Stark Report” radio interview series takes on – as the choice of people he has had on “The World Tomorrow” was predictable to say the least.  Assange himself has improved as an interviewer as the series progressed and shows himself to be well informed about the politics and history of many different countries. He is passionate about particular issues such as democracy and equality and at the same time is respectful of his interviewees’ opinions.

If more journalists were like Assange in their conduct and in the questions they ask of their subjects, journalism would be much improved in reputation across the world and in English-speaking countries especially. As the situation presently stands, Assange is getting no support from the very people in his profession who should be helping him; this is deplorable and we should hang our heads in shame that we are not holding our media to task over its betrayal of its supposed ethics for allowing him to be thrown by politicians to the wolves in the US government.

This review is based mostly on the transcript of the interview which can be found at this link.

Julian Assange, “The World Tomorrow (Episode 10: Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali)” (Russia Today, 26 June 2012)

Here is a really disappointing choice of interviewees: Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali are already well-known, Chomsky is arguably past his best as both linguist and political activist and there are many people Assange could have spoken to who are better choices as people likely to influence the world’s future with fresh and innovative ideas and strategies for change. US radio journalist Robert Stark, some of whose Stark Truth interviews I have been following, finds from the land called Out-of-the-Blue interesting interviewees whose ideas, unorthodox and controversial though they might be, at least are stimulating intellectual pabulum. In this penultimate episode, Assange ploughs over familiar territory with Chomsky and Ali: democracy, protests and how First World countries were caught on the hop by the Arab Spring even though early signs, such as demonstrations over escalating food prices and severe food shortages, were apparent.

Ali is an articulate and knowledgeable speaker while Chomsky is his usual monotone scratched-record self. They basically describe what’s been happening in the world from a “leftist” point of view but are unable to go beyond the current situation and say what they believe should be done or what they would like to see occur. The emptiness of the interview is illustrated in the response Ali gives to Assange as to what a new generation of activists can take from the previous generation: Ali simply says, don’t give up, have hope, remain skeptical, criticise The Man and sooner or later “things” will change; Chomsky for his part notes that “a lot of things have changed over the years … often to the better”, that changes are afoot and people “can do something about them” before he compares humans to lemmings charging over a cliff over issues like fossil fuel use and climate change. (Obviously Chomsky has never watched Disneyland documentaries.) Quite a banal message to send to youth from these supposed giants of the Left!

Topics covered include the role of the political centre (that is, the middle ground between so-called “right-wing” and “left-wing” parties) in advancing the agenda of “right-wing” or corporatist interests, South America as a beacon of freedom and independence, the state of democracy under siege from corporatism and state capitalism as practised in the US.

It really should have been apparent to all participants in the interview that the dichotomy between “right-wing” and “left-wing” beliefs and ideologies is an arbitrary one that obscures the real division between those who would concentrate power in a small elite that controls the rest of the world through layers of bureaucrats and/or technology on one hand and on the other those who would decentralise power and spread it to all, confident in the belief that all humans can be trusted to govern themselves and do not need a nanny state to push them along; certainly Chomsky and Ali know enough of the world and what goes on in it to gently yet firmly tell Assange that things aren’t so black-and-white or right-versus-left and that the issue is about power and how it’s wielded, to what purpose and who benefits.

One consolation here is that I have never seen Assange so animated and forthright about his views on democracy, capitalism and industrialisation as he is here; something of the old Wikileaks maverick is coming to the fore at last!

Julian Assange, “The World Tomorrow (Episode 9: Imran Khan)” (Russia Today, 19 June 2012)

For his next episode, Julian Assange springs a real surprise by interviewing famous former sports celebrity turned politician Imran Khan – yes, that Imran Khan the former Pakistani cricket team captain / all-rounder and former hand-bag to UK socialite Jemima Goldsmith. The interview takes place over a satellite link between Assange in home detention in the UK and Khan at home and it so happens that the acoustics in Khan’s lounge-room are too good so there is a lot of echo coming through in the film clip when he speaks. Fortunately a transcript can be downloaded here.

Assange starts with a brief survey of how Khan’s political began slowly and then suddenly took off after Wikileaks’ release of US embassy cables which revealed the extent of corruption within Pakistan’s government and among the country’s political elite and parties. The interesting thing about the cables is that they show Khan as clean compared to the rest of Pakistan’s political elite. Khan then lays out the territory for Assange, detailing the breadth and depth of criminality in Pakistan’s major institutions, principally the political structure and the military and the people at the top levels in those institutions, and explaining how the country’s huge accumulated debt keeps its people poor and entrenches the corruption.

The issue of Osama bin Laden’s death and the effect that his “assassination” might have had on Pakistan’s relationship with the US are brought up. (My personal view is that bin Laden died in Afghanistan in December 2001 which is why I used quotation marks around THAT word.) Khan expresses the view that the assassination humiliated Pakistan after all the country had done FOR the US in the so-called War on Terror, having lost about 40,000 dead and put in huge amounts of resources in fighting al Qa’ida and accommodating huge waves of refugees fleeing Afghanistan. He is fearful that the War on Terror will not only radicalise Afghanistan even more against the US but will completely devastate Pakistan financially and politically. The country’s political elite will benefit from the increased corruption while ordinary Pakistanis continue to pay for their leaders’ sins with their lives. Khan suggests that Pakistan’s relationship with the US must be realigned on the basis of mutual respect and dignity, and self-respect on Pakistan’s part.

It’s not all doom and gloom … Khan mentions Turkey and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan as role models for Pakistani economic and political development and views the country’s youth, its natural resources and the Pakistani diaspora around the world as assets the country could capitalise on. Hmm, doesn’t Khan know that having valuable natural resources wanted by everyone around the world isn’t necessarily a good thing and that some of the richest countries in the world – Japan, South Korea and Sweden come to mind – actually don’t have much in the way of valuable “natural resources” and their wealth derives from their human capital instead? And that countries rolling in energy and mineral wealth tend to squander the income derived from those?

Khan comes across as a persuasive and passionate speaker and for his age is still quite good-looking. Unfortunately Assange doesn’t press Khan on what political and economic reforms he’d undertake if he were PM so his views on politics and economics remain unknown. A squiz at Khan’s Wikipedia entry reveals that Khan ‘s political platform is a mish-mash of Islamic values, democracy, decreased bureaucracy, liberal (sort of) economics with an emphasis both on deregulation and maintaining a welfare state, an independent judiciary, reform in the army and police force and decentralising and returning political power to the people. In that list one can discern a revulsion against centralised government power and one hopes also that Khan can see that centralised power in private corporations is just as bad as it would be in government, especially if private power is linked to government power.

Overall this is an interesting if not really informative interview: Khan appears genuine enough but his political platform is idealistic and as the cliché goes, only time will tell if he can translate his ideals into reality. A great deal is riding on his shoulders as well.

Julian Assange, “The World Tomorrow (Episode 8: Cypherpunks – Part 2)” (Russia Today, 12 June 2012)

Continuing his discussion with Cypherpunks Andy Müller-Maguhn, Jérémie Zimmermann and Jakob Applebaum, Julian Assange plays devil’s advocate over a range of Internet-related issues such as personal privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of economic interactions, copyright issues and “stealing” versus “sharing” music and other cultural items. Assange generally sets the direction of the discussion and the others follow, often spiritedly but always in a friendly manner.

Interesting issues that pop up include a discussion of the systems of cyber-organisation that enable governments to spy on citizens and others and to introduce and use laws that back them up against citizens. The architecture of IT technologies that support communications networks and databases can be used by governments and their agencies to do things that are anti-democratic. Laws themselves may be organised or delineated in such a way as to incriminate innocent people in “wrong-doing”. Economic systems as they are, are discussed with the use of Socratic dialogue (with Assange explaining a scenario and the Cypherpunks guys taking it apart) to explore particular ideas and real-life problems and expose the inequalities that might exist behind them. Another subject is pornography, specifically child pornography, and whether censorship of child pornography on the Internet might actually be doing exploited children a disservice: by seeing child pornography on the Internet, people learn the extent and the scale of the problem, why it is such a problem and, because the problem is out in the open, be able to sympathise with victims and work out ways of overcoming the problem and caring for the victims.

Perhaps because filming four people sitting on sofas around a coffee table just talking about topics that can often appear abstract to most people can be a little boring, the camera crew sometimes focus on Assange eating snacks and puffing on a cigar which can detract a little from the seriousness of the issues under discussion. The filming is done well with appropriate close-ups done where you’d expect them and the camera sometimes taking a bird’s-eye view of proceedings at particular points in the film. Topics flow from one to the other quickly so sometimes it’s difficult to know when discussion of one topic has ended and when another topic is being investigated.

The discussion ends on an uplifting note (and Assange with fat cigar between fingers) with Zimmerman emphasising the importance of the Internet as the one major tool for global democracy that we have and with Applebaum stressing that people wanting to make a difference in the world can build alternative paths towards democracy on the Internet.

Julian Assange, “The World Tomorrow (Episode 8: Cypherpunks – Part 1)” (Russia Today, 5 June 2012)

Yes, you read that right and it’s not a typo: Cypherpunks is a movement that originated in the late 1980s by activists aiming to improve individuals’ privacy and security and to act for social change through the proactive use of cryptography and who set up the Cypherpunks’ Electronic Mailing List to achieve those ends. In this discussion which spans two episodes, Assange shoots the breeze with Jacob Applebaum, a staff research scientist at the University of Washington and developer and advocate for the Tor Project, an online anonymity system to fight government and corporate surveillance and Internet censorship; Andy Mueller-Maguhn of the Chaos Computer Club in Germany who also runs a company called Cryptophone; and Jeremie Zimmermann of the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net which is a European organisation defending online anonymity rights and encouraging awareness of government regulatory attacks on Internet freedoms. The episode available on Youtube.com and the Russia Today website lasts about 27 minutes but a transcript of the 90 minutes of the first part of the interview is available online.

The discussion ranges from obvious topics like Facebook and its role in facilitating government, corporate and military access to people’s privacy and personal information to the extent that Andy says, quite justifiably in a way, that Facebook users are the product and the client base is the advertising companies and other agencies interesting in using the information Facebook users post to their accounts with the network; to the changing role of computer hackers in the online world and their responsibility in creating online tools and encouraging their use for democracy and open exchange of information, and for fighting surveillance, invasion of privacy and repression through the violation of privacy and use and manipulation of personal information. Issues that arise include the increasing complexity of information technology and companies’ deliberate attempts to make understanding this technology difficult by designing IT hardware in such a way that people will have problems opening it to look at the components and see how they all fit together, among other things; the militarisation of cyber-space, IT hardware and even the language used in describing IT concepts and cyber-systems and structures; and how people might win back online freedoms, rights and privileges. Online surveillance of people’s activities and information by governments and other agencies arises again and again to the extent that as a theme it completely dominates the conversation.

More conversational than a formal discussion or interview, the foursome are chatty and meander from one topic to the next so that viewers really have to concentrate hard to follow the direction of talk among the quartet of hackers and media activists. The Cypherpunks guys mention Wikileaks and Assange’s previous work as a hacker in the 1980s quite a bit in a slightly fawning way.

It’s a pity that the episode doesn’t show or have Assange asking Applebaum, Zimmermann or Mueller-Maguhn what they recommend people should do to reduce their online exposure to government, corporate, military and other surveillance, and to resist attempts from those agencies to control their activities or capture information about them. Zimmermann’s admission that he doesn’t use Facebook points to one way people can reduce their online vulnerability to privacy violation. Twitter and Google are mentioned as enabling surveillance and encouraging people to surrender their privacy and information to unknown agents and so avoidance of both, where possible, should be considered.

The discussion ends on the participants more or less agreeing that decentralisation of power and control and people reclaiming that power and control and creating their own information networks are best though no ideas or suggestions are thrown about as to how such decentralisation and reclamation might proceed.

Julian Assange, “The World Tomorrow (Episode 7: Occupy Movement)” (Russia Today, 29 May 2012)

Unfortunately the transcript of this episode is unavailable so this review is based on the half-hour video clip made of the interview which was filmed in the former Deutsche Bank building in London, due to the number of people who turned up to make this episode. Here, Assange interviews the leaders and organisers of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London movements. The program splits into two parts: the first part looks at how the Occupy movement arose and the second part attempts to chart out a likely future path for the movement.

The leaders of the Occupy movement link it to the Arab Spring uprisings that originated in Tunisia and spread to Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. Issues that arise during the activists’ conversation include the role of social media in the spread and maintenance of the Occupy movement and people’s realisation that the role of the nation-state in the early 21st century has changed radically from what’s usually taken for granted – a political, social and economic entity that expresses the culture, beliefs, hopes and identity of the people who inhabit its space – and that public policy in nations is not necessarily determined by their politicians on behalf of the electorates who vote for or support them. Several streams of influence have fed into the Occupy movement so it is a multi-cephalic hydra that responds to different political and economic environments in many ways yet whether in London, New York or elsewhere, the movement’s strands have some values and goals in common. The movement is particularly grounded in a historical and economic context: among other things, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 exposed some of the workings and the agenda of the global banking industry and enlightened many people as to the true nature of capitalist society and its institutions.

One diversion from the discussion of the nature of the Occupy movement  comes halfway in the film where Assange mentions Bradley Manning, the US military whistleblower who supplied thousands of US cables to Wikileaks and stresses the way in which US authorities have used him to warn people of the consequences if they follow his rebellious example. The topic isn’t dealt with in much detail but segues into a talk about how Occupy has developed its own forms of media to bypass the official mainstream news media.

An interesting topic Assange raises is Occupy’s preference for using public space instead of underground cyber-networks to spread its message and agenda. This issue continues for several minutes and the activists explain why they prefer to use and dominate public spaces and land. Conflicts that arise between groups within Occupy and between Occupy and the police are dealt with in different ways by the movement in London and New York, depending on the severity of the reaction towards Occupy from the authorities.

The video cuts out before Assange and his guests can discuss the future of Occupy which is a blow. Generally though the conversation meandered quite a lot and some issues were dealt with in considerable depth and others only sparingly. The Occupy activists spoke well and were sincere and passionate about their cause. Had I had access to the transcript, I’d have been able to judge whether this is one of the better episodes in “The World Tomorrow” series but the conversation was quite lively and convivial.