Berkeley,
CA
June 11, 2013 - 7:30pm - 9:30pm
Birgitta Jonsdottir (Member of Icelandic Parliament, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning supporter, and poet) joins Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers whistleblower) and Nadia Kayyali (Bil of Rights Defense Committee) discussing how our civil liberties are vanishing. Topics include indefinite detention, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), militarization of the police, and prosecution of whistleblowers.
1 comment:
Great talk! So much content I cant pick out the most prescient points. You are practicing true journalism by recording these illuminating exchanges. This is probably the most constructive thing to come out of our blogging project. Though I'm sure you would be attending these events regardless, taking the extra steps of recording and sharing them with a wider audience is huge.
These are the new heroes. Boldly speaking the truth in the face of a menacing behemoth. The point was made that we are not living in a police state yet, for this talk would never have taken place, yet the mechanisms are in place to transform society in an instant. I heard some hissing when Obama and Feinstein were criticized from, i assume, hardline Democrat ideologues unwilling to face their own hypocrisy. Though it was also repeated that we must not focus on our divisions if we are to continue. And the question was again raised, how can we transform the gathering of like-minded individuals into a mass movement taking direct action. We have reached a plateau. We already know everything that is being said, whether intuitively or through research. These events seem more for our own benefit in that they show us that there are indeed others, many others, but the attendance is squandered talking in circles as we often do, save for the compiling of email lists for more armchair activism. When will they whip an audience into such a frenzy that they march out of the lecture hall and raise hell?
it is true that the crux of the issue is in the congress but it was acknowledged that the necessary impeachments were almost unfathomable. We should strive to use public shaming and paparazzi tactics to drive out and banish our so-called representatives. But the ensuing elections will be purchased in the same way. Perhaps after many cycles of this it will be found that subverting democracy is no longer profitable but that seems a long way off. But real solutions are again found lacking save the same little acts that any truly committed to the cause have been perpetrating since the beginning. Also, it seems we are on the razor's edge of total acceptance of the surveillance state even as we cry out against it, it is quickly becoming just another discussion topic rather than the death knell of a free society that it is. As yet, the only compelling vision offered is one of a beseiged resistance clinging to our remaining rights as they are stripped out from under us, with no hope save to maintain the struggle. To paraphrase Captain Picard fighting the Borg: They quash our protests and we fall back, they wage new wars and we fall back, they expand spying and we fall back, they force us into free speech zones and we fall back, they prosecute whistleblowers and journalists and we fall back, they privatize and outsource and dismantle regulations and we fall back. The line must be drawn here!
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