Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 11:30:57 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Re: Thanks for the link
Glenn-
One more thing, if I can take another moment of your time. As per the press release below, I'll be speaking at a rally/press conference in NYC at City Hall on April 7th along with the executive director of the National Lawyer's Guild and various figures from the pro-Wikileaks movement. We would be honored if you would be willing to speak or even just write a message to be read to attendees. Let me know.
Press Release
For Immediate Distribution
January 13th, 2011
An unprecedented coalition of information activists and organizations have come together in an effort to advance the ongoing campaign against the informational tyranny that has been on view as of late in the context of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning. All three of these parties have been subjected to state oppression, without due regard for the alleged "rule of law;" all three have been maligned in dishonest and often bizarre ways; all three have earned such treatment by way of having together ensured that all of humanity may, for the first time in history, together learn how it is that their wealth, loyalty, and lives are being used by those who plead national security while having provided no such thing to their own citizens and even seizing it from those living elsewhere.
In response to these latest outrages against competence and decency, our coalition - comprised of veterans and anti-war groups, a faction of the Anonymous movement, the distributed think-tank Project PM, and a loose network of journalists, media professionals, scientists, former intelligence and government officials, and related organizations - announces a stepped-up campaign of information and direct action that begins tomorrow and which will culminate in a rally and press conference on the steps of New York City Hall on April 7th at 3:00 pm. This event, the Rally for Information Freedom, will be supplemented by a campaign on the part of Anonymous, Project PM, and related entities to bring attention to the dozens of significant stories that have been largely ignored due to the unfortunate dynamics by which too many media have come to operate. The New York conference - conceived by longtime resident activist, Navy veteran, and acclaimed photographer John Penley - will feature about a dozen speakers including Penley, author and Project PM founder Barrett Brown, key Anonymous activist and Chanology co-instigator Gregg Housh, and National Lawyers Guild executive director Heidi Boghosian. Messages from other figures in the pro-transparency movement will also be presented in lieu of their ability to attend.
Never in human history has mankind endured a period in which so much of the terminology employed at its end would have been unrecognizable at its beginning. The last twenty years have changed the landscape in which man operates, expanding the potential for human collaboration in such a way as to eliminate the barriers that rendered the nation-state a viable institution. As those barriers fall, so too does the primacy of the world's governments, which in turn have increasingly found themselves unable to maintain the secrecy through which they have run a great portion human affairs with results that may be politely characterized as mixed. The various states have responded to these developments with a collective message to the effect that such secrecy is necessary if they are to continue operating without the informed consent of their respective populations, though this has generally been expressed in slightly different words. Meanwhile, several such governments have, through their specific conduct in the wake of the last year, provided a timely reminder as to why it is that many of those who truly value liberty and morality have lost faith in those same governments.
This event is part of an effort to counter the dishonesty and injustice of the states which have reacted to such emergent phenomena with censorship and persecution while also forging greater coordination among the various parties that have been fighting on behalf of the cause of informational liberty. To this end, a series of meetings both formal and otherwise will be held throughout the first week of April; further information will be relayed in a second press release in late March.
Confirmed Speakers
John Penley is a Vietnam era Navy vet who was put in solitary confinement in 1984 by the U.S. government for a past protest at the Savannah River Nuclear Weapons Plant. A 59-year-old veteran of New York City housing, anti-war and civil rights activism, Penley is also a longtime photojournalist whose work has been pubilshed by most NYC major media outlets; his photo archive is housed at New York Universitys Tamiment Library.
Barrett Brown is a writer and author as well as the founder of Project PM. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Onion, New York Press, Skeptical Inquirer, American Atheist, and other outlets. He has been active in the Anonymous movement for several years and serves as an advocate for efficient, ethical alternatives to traditional methods of governance.
Gregg Housh is an Internet activist involved with the online non-group Anonymous. His work has included coordinating global demonstrations against human rights abuses in the Church of Scientology and assisting Iranian members of the Green Movement in reaching the global media. Having built a strong sense of trust among several disparate subgroups of Anonymous, Housh now acts as a media interpreter for major online initiatives such as Operation Payback.
Heidi Boghosian is the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association established in 1937. She is co-host of the weekly civil liberties radio program Law and Disorder on WBAI, New York and over 30 national affiliate stations. She has published several articles and reports on policing, protest, and the First Amendment.
Sebastian Gillen is a 21-year-old graduate of Tufts University. When he was eight years old, he was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma, a rare form of pediatric cancer, and given two weeks to live. More than ten years later, he is still cancer-free and an active advocate for childhood cancer research. He has spoken at rallies on Capitol Hill and Greg Norman's Shark Shootout, among other places. He thinks science is totally awesome and runs a blog at Weareinthefuture.com and administrates Project PMs Science Journalism Program.
Faith Laugier is a musician, artist, activist, and New York native whos worked with many of the citys human rights organizations, cultural non-profits, and homeless centers in an effort to advance the inherent right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 6:34 AM, <
ggreenwald@salon.com > wrote:
Thanks Barrett - I well know the vicious mendacity of Charles Johnson, but yeah - even though I tried, there is still lots of commentary around to the effect of "Internet spat between Glenn Greenwald and Wired! Who can figure out what it means???"
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/29/the_curious_case_of_glenn_greenwald_vs_wired_magazine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barrett Brown" <
barriticus@gmail.com >
To:
ggreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 7:53:34 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Re: Thanks for the link
" That's how these disputes often work by design: the party whose conduct is in question (here, Wired ) attacks the critic in order to create the impression that it's all just some sort of screeching personality feud devoid of substance. That, in turn, causes some bystanders to cheer for whichever side they already like and boo the side they already dislike, as though it's some sort of entertaining wrestling match, while everyone else dismisses it all as some sort of trivial Internet catfight not worth sorting out. "
This is exactly the case, as I know from recent experience when Charles Johnson and his people began accusing me of criminal activity and being funded by the Russian mafia because I work with Anonymous figure Gregg Housh and have been raising money for and advocating Wikileaks since the beginning of the year. When I objected, Johnson banned me and began making additional false accusations (while his commenters openly discussed reporting me to the FBI), to which I responded in a short video in an attempt to protect myself and my organization from continued libel. Although a number of people did take my side and actually joined my group, others ridiculed me for caring about "the internet."
Good work on pointing out the dishonesty on the part of Wired while also maintaining the focus on the issue in question. It's a near-impossible juggling act that I can't imagine anyone else handling with the agility you have displayed.
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:23 PM, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com > wrote:
Glenn-
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
The book should be released in the next few months; I was hearing August but I doubt that's possible now. I'll keep you updated.
The project I mentioned involves two networks: the blogger network described below, and another network that will operate in a similar fashion but which will include participants of differing skill sets and backgrounds while serving as a sort of distributed think-tank, but potentially more useful than the average think-tank, which you'd probably agree is not set up in such a way as to take anything close to maximum advantages of its human resources. Our overall intent has been to design a series of related schematics by which to improve upon communication and corroboration while also building up a new sort of entity that would operate under these schematics.
For our blogger network, we've recruited Michael Hastings as well as Juan Cole, Allison Kilkenny, the fellows at Instaputz, E.D. Kain, Charles Johnson, and a number of others, including those specializing in non-political topics such as science. For our other network, we have former Washington Post editorial board member Gina Acosta (who is now a critic of that institution), novelist and former CIA Directorate of Operations operative Barry Eisler (ditto), Case Western University Professor Mano Singham, and dozens of others, all of whom we are working to integrate into a single entity that will eventually be capable of growing perpetually and adding new capabilities while also maintaining operational coherence.
For now, I've pasted a basic description of how the blogger network will operate below; let me know if you'd like to see further materials or have any specific questions at this point.
***
Information flow is fundamental to the success of every manner of human collaboration. Nonetheless, the processes by which information is gathered, handled, transferred, and acted upon receive far less attention than is warranted. The purpose of Project PM is to change this dynamic by developing new techniques with which to more efficiently conduct information.
Because the great preponderance of information crucial to the success of a representative government is transferred through the media, Project PM focuses primarily on media reform. Our first and foremost effort has been to establish a distributed media cartel made up of bloggers as well as journalists who work at least in part through online media. Rather than simply assembling this group of exceptional media professionals into an online outlet similar to those currently in existence, we are instead organizing our participants into a network which itself operates under a unique schematic designed to take best advantage of the internet as a medium while simultaneously avoiding the drawbacks common to even the best online communities.
In order to seed the network, we have recruited around two dozen bloggers and journalists whom we have identified as particularly competent and intellectually honest. Each of these individuals is encouraged to bring other bloggers into the network based on their own judgment; these new participants are then connected to the blogger who has brought them in and may likewise bring others into the network,and so on . As such, the network grows perpetually while maintaining a high average quality in terms of its participants, as is explained further below.
Upon the launch of our network, each of the initial bloggers will be connected to each other via a widget which is embedded on their respective blogs, as well as connected to those whom theyve recruited. When a particular individual composes a piece of work that he considers to be of particular merit, the individual pushes a single button which causes the article in question to be sent to all of the bloggers to whom he is connected. Each of those bloggers in turn then decides whether or not they agree that the article is worthy of greater attention; if so, they push the button and thereby send it along to every blogger to whom they themselves are connected. Thus it is that information deemed worthy of attention by some great number of erudite and honest individuals from a variety of backgrounds will tend to perpetuate through the system and gain a larger audience than they might otherwise receive.
As the network expands by way of the process described above, it is inevitable that there will be failures of judgement on the part of participants when choosing additional bloggers to bring into the network. Let us say that Blogger X, who is rather competent, brings in Blogger Y, who is only moderately so, and who in turn brings in Blogger Z, who is a giant douchebag. Blogger Z begins composing and pushing forward posts to the effect that Barack Obama was born in Tehran or that ethanol subsidies are awesome or some such thing but these posts only initially go to Blogger Y and whatever horrid bloggers Blogger Z has brought in himself, assuming he has brough in any. Blogger Y may or may not be inclined to push forward these nonsense posts, but Blogger X will almost certainly delete them immediately and is quite likely to disolve his connection to Blogger Y for displaying such poor judgement. Thus it is that the system is defended from deterioration by the high competence of the initial round of bloggers and consequently comparable competence of those brought in gradually afterwards, coupled with the nature of the schematic itself. No supervision is necessary for the network to expand while maintaining a high level of quality.
A few other characteristics bear noting. Any participant may connect to any other participant who agrees to the connection, no matter where each participant resides in the network, and thus the network is likely to evolve from the shape of a pyramid to that of a web, which is advantageous in terms of ensuring that good information does not become overly regionalized. All participants are equal regardless of the order in which they joined. Participants are free to bring on as many other bloggers as they would like, although they will find that it is to their own advantage to be selective in this regard.
The system is capped off with another widget distinct from that used by the bloggers the reader widget, a downloadable application which displays those posts which have been pushed forward a certain number of times (as set by the individual reader). The end result should be the best system of news and information filtration that has ever existed.
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:20 AM, <
ggreenwald@salon.com > wrote:
Hi Barrett - Nice to hear from you. Michael emailed me a few weeks ago and we exchanged some thoughts about all of this.
Thanks for sending the transcript, which I will definitely take a look at. I actually thought about doing a book somewhat related awhile ago -- it was going to be America's 10 Worst Pundits, or something like that -- and then get sidetracked on a couple other book projects, so this sounds great. When will it be released? If you want to do something surrounding it like a podcast interview or something, let me know.
And I'd love to hear about the journalism project you're working on. I've actually been working on one myself with Dan Froomkin, Jay Rosen and a couple others about standards for newspapers to release all original source material online, so I'm interesting in hearing what you're doing.
Glenn Greenwald
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barrett Brown" <
barriticus@gmail.com >
To:
GGreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 8:40:16 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Thanks for the link
Mr. Greenwald-
I'm gratified that you appreciated my Vanity Fair piece on Michael Hastings and felt inclined to link to it a few weeks back, most particularly since you happen to be the blogger whom I most often cite as indicative of how the blogosphere allows superior commentators who would otherwise be unlikely to reach a large audience to, uh, reach a large audience. In fact, I mention you twice in my upcoming book on the failed American punditry, along with Juan Cole, who has since joined up with the project that Hastings and I are spearheading in an effort to change the overriding media dynamic by way of a new methodology we have developed for the purpose. Incidentally, Hastings is also very grateful for the support shown by you, Sullivan, and others who have made the obvious case that "access" alone is useless to the body politic, and that the media at large is largely responsible for the events of the past decade.
In case you're interested, I have attached the latest draft of the manuscript, which includes chapters on Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Martin Peretz, William Bennett, and Robert Stacy McCain, while also attempting to make the larger case that in a society marked by accelerating change, the U.S. cannot afford to continue on its present path in terms of information flow. And if you'd like to learn more about our project and its potential viability, feel free to e-mail or call at your convenience.
At any rate, thanks for the work you've been doing over the past several years.
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302