Maria Ressa on “The Mother of All Battles”
Plus: The Internet’s Founder Speaks Out
Dear Citizens,
We thought we knew which Broligarchs to look out for! Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and sometimes Tim Cook. But this week we welcomed a new face to this unfortunate Mount Bromore … Marc Benioff, who went wayyyyy off script in a big New York Times interview and praised Trump, then called for an armed force to take over San Francisco, then offered to use his platforms to help ICE. Et tu, Salesforce!?
Here’s what else to read, watch and know this week.
✊ ONE WATCH: The Mother of All Battles ✊
Citizens friend and Board Member Maria Ressa is always a powerful speaker. But she outdid herself at the United Nations 80th Birthday event, declaring that “Information integrity is the mother of all battles.” Ressa began -
“Today, we stand on the rubble of the world that was and the challenge is to rebuild the United Nations for now, for this moment … when similar forces that led to those atrocities 80 years ago are now surging through digital platforms, insidiously manipulating us for power and profit.”
The whole speech is a must-watch:
💾 ONE READ: Can the Internet Still be Free? 💾
It must be weird looking at the world today if you invented the internet. But in this essay for The Guardian, Tim Berners-Lee isn’t backing down from his hope for what technology can accomplish:
“I gave the world wide web away for free because I thought that it would only work if it worked for everyone. Today, I believe that to be truer than ever. Regulation and global governance are technically feasible, but reliant on political willpower. If we are able to muster it, we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders. We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It’s not too late.”
✊ONE ACTION: Save Higher Education ✊
Can we still save American higher education from authoritarianism and autocracy? Friend of the Citizens and Professor Timothy Snyder thinks so. You can watch his call to action here …
Timothy Snyder
… and sign a petition that’s growing by the day here. Also a reminder that we’re running a crowd-funder here to keep fighting for a full public inquiry into Russian interference in UK elections. We’ve taken it all the way to the European Court of Human Rights Grand Chamber.
Carole Cadwalladr explains it all in this excellent interview on LBC watch it here bit.ly/CaroleLBC
That’s it for this week.
Team Citizens
