Have you read this recent mind-splitting piece on Assange & Wikileaks?
I got caught up in work and some of my other endeavors this past month, so haven’t had time to write follow-on thoughts I’d planned to put out there about Cooperation Jackson and what their example could spark for those of us interested in actually governing ourselves again and not leaving it up to bureaucrats and the oligarchs with whom they collaborate (or for whom they work).
I’m going to get to that in the near future, but in the meantime I wanted to highlight something I think is important:
Suzie Dawson recently published a deeply researched investigative piece on Julian Assange and Wikileaks that is really worth sitting down with for an extended read. In addition to some pretty amazing stuff about what Wikileaks has accomplished and what Assange has endured, she also uncovered eye-opening facts about Aaron Swartz that I was completely ignorant of and found extremely illuminating.
If you’re wondering, “who the hell’s Suzie Dawson?”, she’s a very interesting independent journalist and current head of the fledgling Internet Party in New Zealand. Dawson became known internationally a few years ago when, as a prominent activist and communications person with Occupy, she was targeted in some pretty extreme ways by New Zealand’s main intelligence agency. She made a long-form video about her experiences and let it loose into the public square (which took a lot of guts, in my estimation). The video went semi-viral:
The harassment she experienced got so bad that she pulled up stakes and resettled in Berlin, where the harassment continued, prompting her to relocate again, this time to Moscow. That’s where she’s currently based.
The reaction to her piece on Assange has been significant, particularly among independent journalists, commentators and vloggers (unsurprisingly, the response from corporate media has been crickets). Yet, in the week or two after the piece was published, Dawson was interviewed by Lee Camp on his Redacted Tonight show:
Then by popular vlogger and journalist H.A. Goodman:
These are good interviews for a primer, but going to the source is always preferable, so I urge you to go ahead and read her whole article.
Some extra tidbits:
1. Dawson wrote the piece over many months and was assisted in the editing process by Elizabeth Lea Voss, who runs the political website Disobedient Media. Her publication is well worth your time and it’s taken a prime spot in the newsfeed I curate for myself.
2. Dawson has a YouTube channel in which, accompanied by Voss, she goes through original documents released by Edward Snowden that haven’t gotten as much publicity as the ones released by the Guardian, the Intercept, etc.
3. She also did an extended Q&A with both Voss and Kim Dotcom about the piece that’s an excellent follow-up to the article.
Dawson’s piece is big stuff, check it out and give it some thought.
Thanks.
