Delighted to be at this festival. Currently hearing from New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager, who has made a vital distinction btw justified & unjustified leaking, & is stressing the importance of collective defence of whistle-blowers facing oppression/legal action. https://twitter.com/deepa_driver/status/1390690776997416963

He has stressed the importance of the inspiration of new leakers/whistleblowers by existing ones - for example, many leakers with whom he has worked have been inspired by the example of Edward Snowden. @deepa_driver @greekemmy

There is in response a concerted effort to turn such people into negative role models, through tactics such as character assassination and the imposition of heavy legal penalties. And yet the power of positive role models continues nonetheless.

Meanwhile the digital information age has on the one hand reduced individual privacy, but has on the other hand made technically possible large-scale, world-changing leaks such as those of the Panama Papers, and those published by Julian Assange.

Others can help not just by *defending* whistleblowers/justified leakers, but by demonstrating that there is an *appetite* out there for the contents of their revelations.

Meanwhile journalists who publish the revelations of whistleblowers/leakers have a responsibility to ascertain precisely the number of people in possession of their information, & the individual's appetite for risk/willingness to take penalties, before deciding whether to publish

'For us [journalists] it's a question of another story or another book. For them [whistleblowers] it is their lives. Therefore - put the whistleblowers first, and we will continue to have whistleblowers'.

Hager has restated the importance of distinguishing btw information in which the public is interested (eg personal information), & information that's in the public interest. See my talk of last September on the contrast between Assange & News of the World:
https://catherinebrown.org/imperialism-on-trial-8th-september-2020-the-phone-hacking-scandal-and-the-case-of-assange-a-comparison/

Journalists who publish the revelations of whistleblowers/leakers need to work hard to make sure they are not manipulated, and that their own credibility is not undermined by over-credulity - since that would undermine their work as a whole.

Now Suelette Dreyfus, lecturer in Dept of Computing & Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, is making clear that it would be naive to see the level of electronic surveillance used by the Chinese gvt as irrelevant to possibilities that exist in the Western world.

Though at present it would seem that much surveillance - eg through cameras embedded in aeroplane seats, or in advertising posters (to see how long what kind of person - as determined by algorithm - looks at what kind of content) is used for commercial purposes.

Fred Turnheim has stressed importance of independent journalists scrupulously fact-checking, to which Isi Wasilewski & Moritz Mueller have responded that the same equally applies to mainstream journalists, who have notably failed eg in reporting of the Assange & Skripal cases.

Indeed, as Moritz Müller has said, independent journalists who are not beholden to employers, and may not live from their journalism, are in those senses *freer* to be independent, empirical, and scrupulous with regards to the truth.

In a panel on war crimes, rapper Lowkey points out that the War in Terror has in fact been ongoing for 2 decades, and continues to kill and displace people. Blair & Assange - respectively perpetrator & revealer of war crimes - are respectively rehabilitated & imprisoned.

Halliburton collected $18 million from the Iraqi government to compensate for profits lost under the government of Saddam Hussein; many other foreign companies have been similarly compensated. When people - sometimes riskily - reveal such facts, others should act on that them.

Lawyer Franck Magennis reminds us that there was an attempt to bring a private prosecution v Blair, Straw and Goldsmith for the crime of war of aggression, but they were denied a warrant, because the crime of aggression is unknown to the law of England & Wales.

The ICC is unlikely to intervene, because the Chilcot Inquiry has taken place within the UK. The other possibility is a prosecution for misfeasance in public office, from which expulsion from the Labour Party and Bar could conceivably follow.

Corbyn is considered responsible for no crime; Blair is widely considered responsible for a war of aggression; but the former & not the latter has been expelled from the Parliamentary Labour Party. Therefore there needs to be a wider coalition of people holding Blair to account.

David McBride, Australian lawyer & (former) Sandhurst-trained soldier, has exposed crimes by the Australian military in Afghanistan. Like Chelsea Manning he started out as a strong believer in the rightness of W gvts' military causes, but first began to dissent in Afghanistan.

He discovered how the West supported Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan even before the Soviets invaded; and, despite the lesson to be learned from supporting Osama bin Laden, a similar tactic is now being deployed in Syria.

In Afghanistan he saw fellow soldiers being awarded bravery medals for murder (the awarding of such medals being necessary for propaganda purposes). When news nonetheless leaked out about 'war crimes', innocent soldiers were used as scapegoats.

David McBride is currently awaiting trial for his whistleblowing. He is prepared to go to jail for the sake of his day in court, when he will be able to present his evidence, & question those whom he is accusing; he would be disappointed were the charges v him now to be dropped.

John Rees, co-founder of Stop the War & activist in @DEAcampaign, is pointing out that in the next 3 wks we'll hear whether the US appeal against UK's refusal to extradite Assange - & Assange's cross-appeal against the grounds for the existing judgment - are successful.

He stressed the necessary nexus btw whistleblowers & those who protest on the basis of their evidence. Katharine Gun, subject of the 2019 film Official Secrets, gave her GCHQ leaks to a Stop the War activist who gave them to @ObserverUK, & then attended the 2003 anti-War march.

David McBride is pointing out how far the Australian government has been led by the Americans in antagonising China, despite this being decisively against its own interests with regard to trade.
But talk of war, unfortunately, is electorally successful, as Barack Obama learned.

Irish MEP Clare Daly is stressing the importance of today's festival in *celebrating* whistleblowers, in counterpoise to the character assassination of which they are frequently victims. She herself was silenced in the European parliament for speaking up for OPCW whistleblowers.

Justin Schlosberg, Sr Lecturer @BirkbeckUoL, is pointing out that Corbyn did more than not just only any other Labour leader, but any other political leader, to try to address the anti-Semitism in his Party. Those people *thwarting* his attempts accused him of a-S on @BBCPanorama

@OborneTweets is recalling his book 'The Rise of Political Lying' which argued that around the Iraq War there was an upsurge in political lying. His latest book, 'The Assault on Truth', concerns Johnson, & the complicity of the UK media in his lies & in those told against Corbyn.

Piers Robinson, who runs the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, is pointing out how successfully Western governments & MSM have suppressed the voices of the OPCW whistleblowers who have contradicted certain crucial facts on which the interventionist Western narrative is based.

He adds that the MSM's proximity to Western states is currently at unprecedented levels in recent times; & the same problem is being played out in academia, where there is fear about questioning sensitive political narratives, & which is therefore not functioning as it should.

The higher levels of suppression of dissent, & of censorship, that exist now, have considerable responsibility for the weakness of the anti-war movement today compared to that which existed and was successful during the Vietnam War.

Michel Collon, a political analyst and co-editor of 'La gauche et la guerre', is pointing out that those launching voluntary wars use propaganda to reverse the statuses of aggressors and aggressed, and, accordingly, to demonise those opposing those wars.

He is now observing that the large social media and tech companies - Google, Facebook etc. - algorithmically manipulate the spread of information in order to suppress voices that are pointing out the abuses of Western powers.

Dr Alan MacLeod, who works at @MintPressNews, is arguing that the most dangerous #fakenews is that emanating from the mainstream media, such as the Iraq WMD hoax. Journalists who countered it, eg @ChrisLynnHedges, suffered penalties including losing their jobs.

The NATO-aligned neocon thinktank @AtlanticCouncil now runs Facebook's news stream and influences its censorship strategy. It has also been a major source of #fakenews, for example in its promulgation of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories within the narrative of Russiagate.

George Galloway, campaigner, broadcaster & former MP, has just completed 'Killing Kelly', a film on the death of Dr David Kelly, due out soon. He is arguing that the best propaganda contains a kernel of truth, & that those fighting that propaganda must acknowledge that truth.

He is arguing that modern technology, for all its manipulation by politicised censorship, offers unprecedented means for people to politically organise & mutually inform - as exemplified in events such as today's.

I'm taking a break. Thank you @deepa_driver for organising this important event, which is bringing together so many people with distinguished track records in combatting injustice - and so many people of goodwill from around the world. @greekemmy

Andy Worthington @GuantanamoAndy is a freelance journalist who has been working full-time on Guantanamo Bay for the last 15 years. He has discovered that most of the prisoners were not captured on the battlefield, as the US claimed; he now campaigns to close the prison.

Forty prisoners remain there. 'Torture is intimately part of Guantanamo's story'. In 2003, when it had been open for under 3 years, the Red Cross voiced its concerns for the mental health of those being held there indefinitely. Such concerns are all the more valid in 2021.

Guantanamo was a parallel system to the CIA network of black sites. In the early days a prison guard estimated that 1/6 of prisoners were deprived of sleep (moved cells every few hours for weeks or months). Prisoners were also physically tortured and sexually humiliated.

That torture programme lasted around 2 years, until US law pronounced against it. But abusive conditions have persisted - for example the forced feeding of hunger strikers. It is now under its fourth president. See Andy's campaign at http://www.andyworthington.co.uk .

Mohamedou Ould Slahi grew up in W Africa. After winning a scholarship he studied in Germany. In 2000, having been wrongly suspected of conspiracy against the US, he was kidnapped in Senegal; after 9/11 he was rendited to Jordan via Cyprus; then to Guantanamo for 14 yrs.

His ribs were broken. He nearly died in a cold room (in which others did die). He was sexually assaulted. He was held for years after it was known that he was innocent, as documents prove. Many of those currently in Guantanamo have been cleared for release, but are still held.

He said that he forgave everyone - those who kidnapped him, those who imprisoned him, those who tortured him - because he believes that we are all brothers and sisters, and that we must work together in looking after the world.

Mads Andenas for 6 years chaired the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. He inspected prisons all over the world, and tried to give the legal language that outlaws torture some practical purchase. The psychological torture used at Guantanamo was extremely sophisticated.

He said that Nilz Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has well described psychological torture, of which new forms are being developed all the time. To combat it an international system is needed. UN systems failed in the War on Terror; they need to be strengthened.

Marjorie Cohn is a past President of the National Lawyers' Guild in the US. She has done much research on torture, in which the US government has a sordid history - from slavery through the Jim Crow era through training Latin American torturers through to the War on Terror.

The US convicted and hanged Japanese military leaders for torture after WWII. The War Crimes Act in the US punishes torture as a war crime, and the US has ratified the Geneva Conventions and international anti-torture conventions. Obama declined to prosecute Bush-era torturers.

Assange and Wikileaks revealed war crimes that included torture at US detention centres in Iraq. For such revelations Assange is currently in detention; and were he extradited to the US he would himself be held in torturous conditions.

Craig Murray, historian, campaigner, and former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, is revisiting his actions as a whistleblower on the collaboration of the UK government with governmental torture in Uzbekistan. That country was used for air bases for raids on neighbouring Afghanistan.

The Uzbek government widely used extreme torture. The CIA intelligence reports being shared with MI6 were, Craig realised, coming from the country's torture chambers. But Whitehall told Craig that there was no problem with this, since the gloves were off in the War on Terror.

After raising his concerns he was recalled to London, where he was told that it was not illegal to receive information produced under torture if it had not been explicitly commissioned - even if the receipt of such information was a settled arrangement, and its nature was known.

He then learned that people were being extraordinarily rendited by the US to Uzbekistan *in order to be tortured*. Craig protested again to the Foreign Office, and he was told that this was either career-ending, or he could be posted to Copenhagen.

Upon refusing to resign as Ambassador of Uzbekistan he was immediately the subject of multiple disciplinary charges - including driving a Land Rover down a flight of stairs (due to eye sight problems he has never been able to drive).

Many of those subjecting Craig to disciplinary procedures knew him well, having worked together closely with him. He is certain that they knew that the charges against him were false, and that his allegations were correct, and that torture was wrong.

Such individuals, trapped by mortgages, school fees, etc., are afraid to loose their jobs. They also have institutional loyalty, and see themselves as obedient instruments of a democratic government. Nonetheless, Craig is still bewildered that he ended up standing alone.