APIs Against the Cuts: calling techies and activists
The Tory cuts won’t just affect the economy and people’s lives, they represent a mountain of information. What sectors are being cut and how? How does it affect your area? What are the figures involved?
More specifically, what can be done with this information? There is a tidal wave of information and data that everyone is struggling to process and make use of.
But we need more collaboration between technically minded people and those collecting this information. So Netroots is organising a mini-event called ‘APIs Against the Cuts’.
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WikiLeaks responds to Private Eye story on LC
WikiLeaks have just sent out an extended tweet to respond to the story we published earlier, from Private Eye magazine.
Because WikiLeaks has some Jewish staff and enjoys wide spread Jewish support, its staff have frequently been smeared by its opponents, political or competitive, as being agents of the Mossad or of George Soros. These smears are completely false. A good overview of some of the allegations can be here: http://humanityinchaos.com/MediaSpam.html
A Washington intelligence firm was recently exposed as being behind a $2M plan to destroy WikiLeaks reputation and target supportive journalists:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.htmlThe intelligence firm was referred by the US Department of Justice.
But smears against WikiLeaks cross the geopolitical spectrum. Ian Hislop, editor of the weekly satirical current affairs magazine Private Eye, recently wrote an article “as much as he could remember”, about an off the record conversation with Julian Assange who complained that a previous article, appearing in Private Eye, was based on falsehoods spread by opponents and calculated to undermine WikiLeaks strong Jewish support.
The problems stem from a November the 1st, 2010 legal dispute with the Guardian, which were trigged by the actions of one particular journalist, David Leigh. Leigh deliberately, and secretly, broke an agreement signed by the Guardian’s editor-in-chief stating that 1. the Guardian was not to publish WikiLeaks cables 2. the Guardian was to keep them confidential. 3. the Guardian was to not store them on an internet connected computer system. Leigh had previously shown himself to be a competent journalist, but secretly broke all elements of the contract.
On being notified that the German news weekly Der Spiegel was writing a book (in German) that would expose this breach, Leigh attempted to cover his actions, first by laundering an distorted version of the events through a friend at Vanity Fair then by writing his own book, which he had published through the Guardian. WikiLeaks has not previously covered this or many other process and reputational issues, due to the opportunity cost of removing writers from our core mission which has never been more important.
Mr. Leigh has since continued to shore up his own power position by spreading malicious libels, targeted at WikiLeaks principle support bases. A brief look through the focus of David Leigh’s Twitter account http://twitter.com/davidleigh3 shows the sort of game in play. Although the damage done to the Guardian’s reputation by these actions is an ongoing concern to many Guardian staff, Mr. Leigh is perceived, by them, wrongly or rightly, to be protected through his marriage to the sister of the editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger.
Assange said “Hislop has distorted, invented or misremembered almost every significant claim and phrase. In particular, ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is false, in spirit and in word. It is serious and upsetting. Rather than correct a smear, Mr. Hislop has tried to justify one smear with another. That he has a reputation for this, and is famed to have received more libel suits in the UK than any other journalist as a result, does not mean that it is right. WikiLeaks promotes the ideal of “scientific journalism” – where the underlaying evidence of all articles is available to the reader precisely inorder to avoid these type of distortions. We treasure our strong Jewish support and staff, just as we treasure the support from pan-Arab democracy activists and others who share our hope for a just world.”
I don’t think Julian Assange can get away that easily. Raising people’s ethnicity or religion in such stories is always viewed with suspicion.
Assange should step away from WikiLeaks and stop doing the much-needed project any more damage.
Update: Wikileaks has sent out another Tweet clarifying their relationship with Israel Shamir
Assange goes off deep end – blaming Jews and Guardian in Private Eye
This is published in the latest edition of Private Eye (buy a copy!).
The article is titled, ‘A Curious Conversation With Mr Assange’ – and it is the phone version of a horrible car crash. (hat-tip @jamesrbuk)
While I support WikiLeaks as an entity and an idea, Julian Assange seems to have gone off the deep end.
I’ve managed to scan the article.
.
Update: The second half of the article can be read in the latest edition of Private Eye; we’ve taken it off for copyright reasons. It will be back on here in a few days time.
In the second half Assange mentions how Guardian journalists “failed my masculinity test”!
Update 2: WikiLeaks has now responded with an extended tweet.
Barclays paid a billion quid in tax – but not to us
It’s become a well-reported trope over the course of a weekend that Barclays only paid GBP113m in UK corporation tax in 2009.
Various people of various ideologies have reacted to this disclosure, some by blockading Barclays branches, some by making fairly irrelevant points about tax losses.
But the truth, found in Barclay’s 2009 annual report – is a bit more complicated.
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What Ken said about Labour council cuts
Ken Livingstone, addressing the debate on local council cuts and Labour said this at Progressive London recently:
Are Councillors who make these cuts – Labour Councillors – complicit? Thirty years ago, Councillors who made cuts, as Thatcher pushed them down, arguably were complicit because there was an alternative – to increase the rates…the rating system itself was fairly re-distributive, with the richest homes paying very much more than the poorest.
It was crude, but the best strategy was to increase the rates to preserve services. Labour Councils had great debates about that, but largely that’s what they did. The worst of the cuts were blunted and that is why the Tories abolished the rates and took away the business rate and created first the poll tax and then the Council Tax, which is not redistributive, leaving Councillors with the choice [of saying] “do we cut services or do we bang up the Council Tax, which would actually hurt poor people more?”
There they [Labour Councillors] don’t have the choice that we had a generation ago for fighting those cuts. What is important is that those Councils have to carry their communities with them.
They have to engage the communities and their trade unions in how they manage the devastating cut in the grant that they’ve got and to do it in a way that preserves the most of our services and protects the most vulnerable. It will not be easy, it will not be pleasant, but you don’t have the option of walking away.
via Dave Hill.
Here’s the video of the speech (via @BenSoffa)
Can we stop talking nonsense about breast-milk?
If you don’t want to spend £15 on an ice cream made with human milk, that’s A-OK with me. I don’t want to spend £15 on that either. You may have concerns about the commodification of people; I can understand that. You may dislike political posturing; that’s fine.
But if you espouse any of the following points of view, I may well get my leaky friend to squirt you in the eye with some of her finest breast-juice. (It’s great for conjunctivitis!)
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Electoral Commission respond to #No2AV ad
Remember my complaint regarding the £250m claim by the No2AV camp?
I wrote an article for the Guardian saying the Electoral Commission washed their hands off the issue too, referring people back to the ASA.
The ERS Electoral Commission have sent me a statement.
Dear Sunny
I read your recent article on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website entitled ‘No to AV baby ad is in dire need of reform’. I wanted to clarify the Electoral Commission position on this issue of political advertising content. Your article states:
“When I filed my complaint, I was told by the ASA that it can’t interfere and that it’s a matter for the Electoral Commission. The latter, however, now says it’s a matter for the ASA, as it only deals with political parties.”
In fact, we recognise that the content of political advertising is not a matter for the Advertising Standards Authority. Our role is also more complex than ‘only dealing with political parties’. We provide candidates, agents, parties and referendum campaigners with guidance on the rules relating to campaign materials (the legal requirement for an ‘imprint’ for example) as well as on rules relating to campaign spending. We do not, however, regulate the wording or other content of political advertising.
Kind regards,
But that still means there is a clear loophole around the content or wording of political advertising.
No2AV can carry on making this dishonest claim and no one pulls them up on it.
* * * * * * * *
Incidently, the No camp have also urged the authorities to investigate the role of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), following claims in the Spectator that it faces a conflict of interest over the referendum.
The ERS told the BBC
But the organisation said it should be “no surprise” that it was supporting a Yes vote given its “longstanding commitment” to changing the voting system.
“The Society has openly declared the financial support we have provided to the Yes campaign – in sharp contrast to the No campaign who have so far refused to declare their financial backers,” said its operations director Kate West.
So when are the No2AV campaign going to reveal how many Tory donors are backing them?
George Osborne’s four claims in the Guardian rebutted
George Osborne is in the Guardian today – trying to turn the tables on Ed Balls and deflect attention from their own lack of a growth plan.
I guess the aim here is to give BBC journalists something to read from when they interview Ed Balls, but most of the points are easily rebutted as they’re fairly dishonest.
continue reading… »
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