Why Wikileaks is critical to Democracy

JULIAN ASSANGE:

Well, WikiLeaks has become the rebel library of Alexandria. It is the single most significant collection of information that doesn’t exist elsewhere, in a searchable, accessible, citable form, about how modern institutions actually behave. And it’s gone on to set people free from prison, where documents have been used in their court cases; hold the CIA accountable for renditions programs; feed into election cycles, which have resulted in the termination of, in some case—or contributed to the termination of governments, in some cases, taken the heads of intelligence agencies, ministers of defense and so on. So, you know, our civilizations can only be as good as our knowledge of what our civilisation is. We can’t possibly hope to reform that which we do not understand.

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FBI continues to target journalists and their sources

In 1990, I was fired for being a whistle-blower by the Missouri Attorney General, who subsequently spent time in prison. Therefore, the topic of this post is an issue that speaks loudly to me. If you believe in participatory democracy, it should speak loudly to you too. If you are wondering why there is very little investigative journalism anymore, the attached article lays out one of the big reasons. If you were a whistle-blower trying to get important information to the public regarding government corruption or wrongdoing, you can now be easily identified by government spying without any need for a search warrant and without probably cause, at the un-monitored and unlimited discretion of "law enforcement" agencies including the NSA and the FBI that have repeatedly trampled on your constitutional rights. [More . . . ]

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Disenfranchised Americans

Matt Taibbi sums it up:

Voters in America not only aren't over-empowered, they've for decades now been almost totally disenfranchised, subjects of one of the more brilliant change-suppressing systems ever invented. We have periodic elections, which leave citizens with the feeling of self-rule. But in reality people are only allowed to choose between candidates carefully screened by wealthy donors. Nobody without a billion dollars and the approval of a half-dozen giant media companies has any chance at high office.

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Republicans and big corporations take over the Democratic Convention

From Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani of The Intercept:

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S 2012 platform pledged to “curb the influence of lobbyists and special interests.” But the 2016 convention in Philadelphia will be officially hosted by lobbyists and corporate executives, a number of whom are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality. Some of the members of the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee, whose job is to organize the logistics and events for the convention, are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts, given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican presidential and congressional candidates this cycle. The composition of the 15-member Host Committee may appear out of sync with the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but the reality is that the party, in the form of the Democratic National Committee, has moved decisively to embrace the lobbying industry.

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Bernie Sanders sticks to the issues

It's extraordinary the extent to which "news" personalities are trying to bait Bernie Sanders to abandon the issues and engage in personal attacks or horse-race politics.   This recent interview with Andrea Mitchell is a good example of this approach by a interviewer and Bernie Sanders' approach to bringing the discussion back to concrete issues.

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