Stand with WikiLeaks (again)

As I suspected and hoped, GetUp have also now launched their own WikiLeaks campaign to print the following letter in full page ads in the Washington Post and New York Times with as many signatures as possible:

Dear President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:

We, as Australians, condemn calls for violence, including assassination, against Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, or for him to be labeled a terrorist, enemy combatant or be treated outside the ordinary course of justice in any way.

As Thomas Jefferson said, "information is the currency of democracy." Publishing leaked information in collaboration with major news outlets, as Wikileaks and Mr. Assange have done, is not a terrorist act.

Australia and the United States are the strongest of allies. Our soldiers serve side by side and we’ve experienced, and condemned, the consequences of terrorism together. To label Wikileaks a terrorist organisation is an insult to those Australians and Americans who have lost their lives to acts of terrorism and to terrorist forces.

If Wikileaks or their staff have broken international or national laws, let that case be heard in a just and fair court of law. At the moment, no such charges have been brought.

We are writing as Australians to say what our Government should have: all Australian citizens deserve to be free from persecution, threats of violence and detention without charge, especially from our friend and ally, the United States.

We call upon you to stand up for our shared democratic principles of the presumption of innocence and freedom of information.

You can add your signature here.

It may have been more strategic to have directed this campaign within Australia at the prime minister and attorney general, though perhaps they felt this had already been done. Then again, this campaign is somewhat similar to one by their sister organisation Avaaz.

UPDATE: It appears that this campaign is doing very well. Indeed, it seems like it might be the largest and fastest fundraising campaign GetUp have ever run, so they are (happily) extending it to publishing a similar message in the Australian (modified to be relevant of course). GetUp are also attracting some attention in the US, where the media have got wind of the ad and are running stories on it ahead of time.

Stand with WikiLeaks

The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a chill through free media advocates everywhere.

Top US politicians have called WikiLeaks a terrorist organization and suggested assassination of its staff, and the organization has come under intense government and corporate attack. But WikiLeaks is only publishing information passed to it by a whistle-blower. And it has partnered with the world's leading newspapers to vet the information it publishes.

If WikiLeaks has broken laws, it should face legal action. But the immense extra-judicial intimidation is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for freedom of the press and expression. Sign the petition to stop the crackdown and forward this email to everyone -- let's get 1 million voices this week!

WikiLeaks isn't acting alone -- it has partnered with the top newspapers in the world (The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc.) to carefully review 250,000 US diplomatic cables and remove any information that it is irresponsible to publish. Only 800 cables have been published so far. Past WikiLeaks publications have exposed government-backed torture, the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and corporate corruption [plus government corruption and abuses of power in various places around the world].

The US government is currently pursuing all legal avenues to stop WikiLeaks from publishing more cables, but the laws of democracies protect freedom of the press. The US and other governments may not like the laws that protect our freedom of expression, but that's exactly why it's so important that we have them, and why only a democratic process can change them.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether WikiLeaks is releasing more information than the public should see, whether it undermines diplomatic confidentiality and whether that's a good thing, whether its founder Julian Assange has the personal character of a hero or a villain. But none of this justifies a vicious campaign of intimidation to silence a legal media outlet by governments and corporations. Click to join the call to stop the crackdown.

Ever wonder why the media so rarely gives the full story of what happens behind the scenes? This is why - because when they do, governments [and corporations] can be vicious in their response. And when that happens, it's up to the public to stand up for our democratic rights to a free press and freedom of expression. Never has there been a more vital time for us to do so.

- Avaaz.org.

I think this is a well-worded petition. There is no need to agree with WikiLeak's tactics or its specific judgements on some cables to be disgusted with or at least disturbed by elements of the official response.
PS Hooray for Rudd: "Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that. [...] I think there are real questions to be asked about the adequacy of [the US] security systems and the level of access that people have had to that material. [...] The core responsibility, and therefore legal liability, goes to those individuals responsible for that initial unauthorised release."

Kudos too to the hundreds of academics, writers, editors, lawyers, journalists, politicians and other Australian figures who have sent this open letter to PM Gillard, calling for her to uphold the rule of law. I have written to her about this as well, which you can do here.

And Malcolm Turnbull talks a great deal of sense.

As does Frank La Rue, the UN representative for freedom of opinion and expression.

And, of course, Assange himself deserves to be heard.

Copenhagen petition

Already 13 million people have signed a petition to the 110 presidents and prime ministers currently arriving in Copenhagen saying:

We call on each one of you to make the concessions necessary to meet your historic responsibility in this crisis. Rich countries must offer fair funding, and all countries must set ambitious targets on emissions. Do not leave Copenhagen without a fair, ambitious and binding deal that keeps the world safe from catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees.

You can add your voice here.

Global Wake-Up Call

As a follow up to my recent post about flashmobs, here is some footage of these events:

Flashmobs for climate action

Next Monday at 1pm, I'm joining a climate change wake-up call flashmob event in Edinburgh. It’s organised by Avaaz and is one of almost two thousand events taking place on September 21st all across the world to demand a strong global climate treaty.

Here is the Avaaz description of the idea:

Flashmobs are fun, peaceful demonstrations in which participants assemble suddenly in a public place, blending in with the crowd, perform an unusual action simultaneously for a few minutes, and then quickly disperse.

On the morning of September 21, everyone participating will set our alarms and gather together a few minutes before the assigned time, at locations chosen by the hosts in our local area. When our alarms go off, we'll hold up our mobile phones and find each other, and then, as a group, call our leaders to urge them to go to Copenhagen and sign a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty this year. We'll make as much noise as we can, while recording videos and photos for the UN presentation -- then head back to work, school, or home to upload the results!

Want to join me? Here's the link. And here are the details:

When: 21st September, 2009 at 1:00pm
Where: St Andrews Square, Gardens -- Edinburgh, Edinburgh, SCT

Not in Edniburgh? Find one near you.

By themselves, protests like this might not change much. And personally, I'm fairly downbeat about the likelihood of Copenhagen resulting in an agreement over ambitious global targets. I'm also not persuaded that carbon trading is some kind of magic bullet or even the best way forward. Nonetheless, the size and success of symbolic actions like this help to keep ecological issues on the political agenda, which is one small good thing.

Sooner than you think...

... the Arctic may be free of ice. Last year I remember hearing reports that by 2070, the Arctic ocean may have warmed enough to be ice-free in summer. More recently, I was shocked to hear that on new data, estimates had been moved forward to 2030. The IPCC bases its estimations on an averaged group of models, yet actual observed ice loss in the last few years has been outstripping even the most dire of predictions. In the last week, a report has come out arguing the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in five and a half years: the summer of 2013.

This report doesn't even take into account the data from 2007, which has smashed all previous records.

Of course, the situation is very complex and of course this is only one of a number of different models and of course modelling climate is very difficult. But if you're still not convinced about the reality, importance or likely implications of climate change, I'm curious: what would it take to convince you?

Some world leaders are still not getting the message. Recent reports from the Bali conference (FAQ on Bali conference) indicate that the US, Canada and Japan are all blocking moves to include references to binding targets from the framework document that will guide the post-Kyoto emissions strategy. Here is a global petition, already at 55,000 in just 12 hours, to be delivered on Friday to delegates at the conference.
Fifteen points for correctly naming the body of water in the image above. Hint: I have never been to the Arctic Ocean.