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