Digital Resistance

where have we all landed

our society is so divided at the moment

the other day my aunt called me

and she told me that she

saw something on whatsapp that she

believes now

she said that bill gates is financing

the vho

and is on his own and that they are

following his agenda

and that he wants more money and more

power

by vaccinating us all

and then my neighbor called me he even

claims

that bill gates has been planning and

orchestrating the corona pandemic for

years just to ultimately install a new

world order

where will all of us become his robots

and slaves

okay all of this

has a little bit a little spark of truth

in it

but over time it has grown like a

malignant cancer on the internet

twitter became an information war zone

we are constantly bombarded by fake news

so why is this so and to whom

does the narrative belong

in whom do i place my trust do i place

my trust

to the vho virologist or do i

believe my brother who introduced me to

a doctor

who said that the coronavirus

is just another harmless flu

and how do i treat the scientists who

tell me

a truth that i don’t want to hear that

contradicts my own narrative

how do we treat people who bring us a

truth that

challenges our narrative and our beliefs

my name is angela richter i’m a director

and an author and over the last 10 years

i have worked with many people

who have brought us many unpleasant

truths

and the the risk of their own life

and knowing that nobody likes what they

are going to tell us

these people are whistleblowers like

chelsea manning

who revealed war crimes in afghanistan

and iraq

including the famous collateral murder

video

where american soldiers from a

helicopter kill

civilians while enjoying themselves like

they are playing a video game

but what the fewest know manning’s

revelations

have provided evidence that these wars

have been great failures and not only

that

but that also have delivered proof in

courts

that have ultimately stopped drone

strikes in pakistan for example

there was no drone stark in pakistan in

the year 2019

i have also worked with edward snowden

who revealed the mass digital

surveillance by the nsa

and this has led to the fact that we can

now protect our privacy much better than

before

before snowden there was neither signal

nor threama no telegram

also with his evidence we can now hold

the ones in power

legally accountable

and last but not least i spent

10 years working with the wikileaks

founder julian assange

who is not a whistleblower but who is a

publisher

and an advocate for whistleblowers he

published manning’s leaks

and helped save snowden to flee from

hong kong

he hosts wikileaks an open platform

who leaks whose leaks are visible for

everyone

everyone can take a look at it there is

no

limit so far

they made no mistakes their file is

flawless

whether they reveal ugly truths about

either the military the cia

the democrats scientology the left the

right

the front center famous or not

it doesn’t matter who it’s about whether

you have power

and whether you abuse it

total transparency as a default

sunlight is the best disinfectant

not only for corona but also

for wrong information so how did the

world react to

his revelations for a short time

he was celebrated as a hero but soon

enough

he was sharply attacked by those whose

wrongdoings he had

revealed

he himself described it as character

assassination

the most damaging defamation was that he

was suspected of rape in sweden

i first met him in 2011 while

researching for a theater play about

wikileaks

in a way i won him on ebay because at

that time

paypal and mastercard had stopped taking

donations for wikileaks so they needed

money they put up an auction where you

can

win a lunch with him and for 2600 euro

i won of one of the places yeah that’s

what

what was a little bit bizarre how we

first met

but after that

[Music]

we became friends and he helped me do

the play

um i visited him dozens of times and we

became friends

all that happened in the ecuadorian

embassy where he was granted asylum

over the years i was witnessing how his

life became

more and more like a roller coaster

with all ups and downs

between hope and despair

the last time i saw him was before

christmas 2018

they had turned off the heating in the

embassy

and he was sitting in front of me in a

down jacket

he told me that it was only a question

of time because

before he will be violently taken out

actually at that point i was hoping that

he was wrong

but four months later he was dragged out

by force arrested and put in a

high-security prison outside of london

once again who owns the narrative

the rape narrative has been debunked in

the meantime

the united nations declared him innocent

a victim of a failure of justice

and press and demanded his immediate

release

but unfortunately he is still imprisoned

the u.s government demands his

extradition

and this is being fought in court

but the public is not very welcome at

least that’s what i realized

the corona pandemic is a useful excuse

to reduce the already tight press space

to a minimum

only five or six journalists are allowed

into the courtroom

another 15 have got an accreditation for

a video link

for me it seems a little bit absurd

because the virtual space

is endless and not affected by corona at

all in fact it’s the most

sanitized based it’s so sterile

but who knows they might have their

reasons

i’m reporting about it for the new

german newspaper

divelt

so i sat in front of my laptop

and watched the trial via video link i

was very lucky to get an accreditation

less fortunate where 14 human rights

organizations

and ngos from whom accreditation was

withdrawn

on the first day of the trial so they

couldn’t even

complain up front i suppose that i was

granted access

because my newspaper was assumed to be

pleasing their narrative

that’s what i assume so here we go

10 years after revealing war crimes and

being a hero for 15 minutes

a journalist is sitting behind

bulletproof glass

hidden from the public who will most

likely be extradited to the united

states

where he faces up to 175 years in prison

the first journalist in the history to

be prosecuted under the espionage act

and today at a time when the struggle

for narrative has escalated due to the

corona

uh virus and the consequences out of it

there is also the shift

to the extreme right the filter bubbles

where we all

sit and we are just hearing our own

opinions echoing

there is we argue about

who owns the truth who is good who is

the bad

who lies and who’s not sadly

you can be sure that julian assange is

not the last one to be prosecuted

everyone who will piss off powerful

people

who want their own narrative

they will want to see us gone

but how can we get out of this narrative

war zone

the answer is radical but

really simple transparency is a default

for

all public institutions

that means governments military

powerful organizations of all kinds and

all

structurally relevant institutions

that are vulnerable to corruption

that means the default of the world we

live in

has to be transparency and i really mean

it

transparency but as much as we

need the institutions to be naked we

want the citizens privacy to be hundred

percent

protected with the same radicalism

for transparency we demand the

protection

of the individual of every one of us

so what can we do about it how can we

detect

fake news and disinformation

no matter what theory you hear approach

the matter with a serious doubt

for example how credible

is the big corona fraud okay let’s

summarize

it would be the first time in history

that all governments

of the whole world even enemies

have joined forces together

with the majority of scientists

and they all together accept to ruin the

entire

world economy in order to stage a

pandemic

and then yeah

then what what is their goal from here

everything gets crazy so

always go with a fat big

doubt

the people who have sacrificed

themselves for total transparency

are either in jail or under fire

but we are many and this is not about

something trivial

but about the future of our democracy

and our freedom demand transparency

from your local governments and support

independent journalism

who stands up for transparency and stand

up for the brave individuals

who stood up to bring us transparency

and truth

because if you want to speak

truth to power you better be sure

that it is really the truth

you