Thursday, May 23, 2013

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

Wisdom Quarterly;  David Rooney (The Hollywood Reporter, May 23, 2013) via Boston.com
NIGHTMARE: Imagine living in a world where Mark Zuckerberg with the FBI (Facebook) sells our information to corporations and gets "Man of the Year" but Julian Assange with Bradley Manning (WikiLeaks) releases it free and gets arrested.
 

Prolific documentary-maker Alex Gibney delivers a gripping account of the wins and losses of hard-charging idealism on the front lines of the information wars in ‘‘We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.’’
Exhaustively researched and balanced in its view of the controversial key player, the film slips in ahead of DreamWorks’ dramatic take on the exploits of Julian Assange, ‘‘The Fifth Estate,’’ which is currently shooting.
 
Unfolding like an espionage thriller but with a methodical journalistic skill at organizing a mountain of facts, the film raises stimulating questions about transparency and freedom of information in a world in which governments and corporations have plenty to hide. It should be a magnet for op-ed coverage.

"Exposing war crimes is exemplary"! "Thank you Pfc. Manning"! "The war's criminal"! "Killing civilians is a war crime"! "Free Bradley Manning"! - American demonstrators (Al Jazeera)
 
Julian Assange on RT.com
In addition to WikiLeaks founder Assange, Gibney devotes almost equal time to the fascinating figure of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, allegedly the source of the largest volume of classified military documents leaked by Assange. 

It’s an awkward irony that one of WikiLeaks’ first major coups was a 2007 video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter mowing down unarmed civilians in Baghdad, released under the title ‘‘Collateral Murder.’’
 
Equality (bradleymanning.org)
Manning in a sense was also collateral damage. A brilliant but lonely tech geek from Bible-Belt Oklahoma struggling with gender-identity issues, he enlisted to get a government-funded college education. But his homosexuality made him a target for sergeants determined to ‘‘beat [or rape] the macho into him.’’ More

Hope? Nope! Obama really lets us down (CPA)
CODE PINK put the "Great Orator," Pres. B.S. Obama, off his "script," which is what he called it, during a major address at the Nat'l Defense Univ. He was defending drones, endless warfare, offensive attacks, targeted killing of anyone unilaterally designated an "enemy" or combatant or simply a "suspect," be it an American citizen in Denver or a child in a faraway land.

Manning for Nobel Peace Prize 2013

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