The Frontline Club

After seven years, billions of dollars, as many as 100,000 civilian deaths and more than 4,000 US troops killed – President Barack Obama is finally pulling US troops out of Iraq. Following Barack Obama’s recent statement confirming the end of US combat operations in Iraq, we will be debating the implications for the Iraqi people and the soldiers that serve there.

A distinguished panel will be at the Frontline Club to discuss the real legacy of the western-led coalition’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. What does the future hold for the Iraqi people and what are the lessons to be learned?

Chaired by Tim Lambon, assistant foreign editor for Channel 4 News.

With:

Jim Frederick, managing editor of Time.com and author of a new book Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, which investigates how one US army platoon indulged in substance abuse and brutality and committed one of the worst war crimes of the conflict;

Sir Hilary Synnott, Coalition Provisional Authority Regional Coordinator for Southern Iraq, 2003-2004 and author of Bad Days in Basra;

Haifa Zangana, Iraqi author of City of widows: An Iraqi woman account of war an resistance and co – author of The Torturer in the Mirror, to be released next month;

John Sloboda, co-founder of the Iraq Body Count project, which tracks deaths during the conflict.

Can everyday people change the world? With conflicts raging across the world and European governments imposing stringent austerity measures, people are wondering more and more how they can play a role in shaping their future.

Steve Crawshaw, author of a new book to be published in September entitled Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World, will be discussing the potential for individuals to take on injustice and oppression in the world today.

Looking at current examples including Iran and Burma we will be discussing what people are able to achieve in the face of the powerful who have armies and police on their side. Are we powerless to change anything or are there acts of defiance, some of which are so small they are missed by the mainstream media, that can make a big difference?

Charied by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.

With:

Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director Amnesty International;

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Iranian journalist who writes frequently for the Guardian;

Tin Htar Swe, head of the BBC Burmese Service;

Alice Ukoko, founder and CEO of Women Of Africa working for gender transformation for Africa’s reform.

The controversy surrounding WikiLeaks’ historic release of more than 70,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan has not died down.

But one thing is certain: online data and its dissemination is changing journalism and the relationship betwen public and power.

In this special event, we ask:

— How are organisations like WikiLeaks changing the way public data is released?

— What do the Afghan War Logs mean for the mainstream media and government media relations?

— What are the legal implications of the War Logs files’ release?

Joining us on this panel are: Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief (via online link up); journalist, academic and freedom of expression activist Heather Brooke, whose successful campaigning led to the full release of MPs’ expenses files; media lawyer Mark Stephens of Finers, Stephens Innocent and Simon Rogers, editor of The Guardian’s Datablog.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

There’s no doubting the power of Google: having re-written the online advertising rule-book, publishers around the world now use its AdSense system to make money and rely on its search algorithm to drive traffic.

The company’s motto is "don’t be evil" – but is it a malign influence on the UK and world’s news publishing? Or, as it claims, does Google simply enable publishers to reach bigger audiences than ever before, at no cost?

Rupert Murdoch described Google as a parasite and has taken the news, paid-for The Times papers away from its index. But is dealing with Google and search engines an inevitability, or do SEO techniques cheapen journalism?

Our panelists are:

Peter Barron, head of PR and communications for Google UK and a former editor of Newsnight;

Matt Kelly, digital content director for Mirror Group Newspapers;

Wired and Press Gazette columnist Peter Kirwan and

Patrick Barwise, emeritus professor of management and marketing at the London Business School. More to be confirmed soon.

Chaired by Torin Douglas, the BBC’s media correspondent.

Social media has opened up new ways for people to communicate, organise and campaign.

But in what ways are people using social media for political ends? Looking at examples from around the world we will be examining the ways in which new tools are being used and the ways they have been used to challenge authority.

What can we learn about both the potential of web and phone technology and what are their limitations. Can online buzz be translated into tangible effects? Or has as been claimed with the case of the Green protests in Iran, has the role played by social media been hyped by an over-excited mainstream media?

Join us for a discussion at the Frontline Club that will also discuss the impact of social media on journalism. From monitoring Twitter to Wikileaks, how is social media changing the activity of journalism?

Chaired by Deborah Bonello, founder of mexicoreporter.com and FT video journalist.

With:

Benjamin Chesterton, radio documentary and photofilm producer, co-founder of the production company duckrabbit and the website A Developing Story;

Mike Harris, public affairs manager of Index on Censorship and manager of Libel Reform Campaign;

Sina Motalebi, BBC Persian TV head of output and author of one of Iran’s first blogs Rooznegar who was detained for 23 days in solitary confinement as a result of his work;

Sunny Hundal, editor of the left-wing blog Liberal Conspiracy.

Can Israelis and Palestinians work together for peace? Four people who believe that they can will be at the Frontline Club to describe their journeys from division and violence towards non-violence.

Idan Meir, Muneer Hamdan, Malaka Samara and Neta Osnat, all members of Combatants for Peace will be discussing how, after years of violence they decided to put down their guns and fight together for peace.

The Combatants for Peace movement was started in 2005 by Palestinians who had been part of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and Israelis who had fought in the Israeli army.

Having put down their guns, Combatants for Peace are committed to using dialogue and reconciliation as the only way to end the Israeli occupation, to halt the settlement project and to establish a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, alongside the State of Israel.

Chaired by Ian Black, the Guardian’s Middle East editor

Following the release of more than 90,000 classified military documents on whistle-blowing site Wikileaks on Sunday, founder Julian Assange takes part in a special event at the Frontline Club.

Assange will be talking about the impact of the documents that were released in partnership with The Guardian, the New York Times and German paper Der Spiegel which chronicle in minute detail US military operations in the country between 2004 and 2010.

He will also discuss the journalistic implications of the way the information has been released as well as talking through the possibilities for journalists and citizens using the vast amount of data available online.

The event is chaired by regular Frontline moderator Paddy O’Connell, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks is holding a press conference at noon today at the Frontline Club following the release yesterday of a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, described by the Guardian as the biggest intelligence leak in history.

On 10 February 2005 BBC journalist Kate Peyton was murdered in Mogadishu, Somalia. For several days afterwards, her death dominated the international press. But within less than a week Kate Peyton’s name was out of the headlines and almost forgotten; just another tragic victim of the journalistic struggle to report from the world’s battlegrounds.

Kate Peyton’s younger sister Rebecca Peyton will be at the Frontline Club to perform her one-woman show, directed by Martin M Bartelt, which invites us into her post-Kate world: Rebecca’s life goes on, changed forever, but it goes on.

A story about politics, journalists and death, told through the eyes of Rebecca. It features racism, press freedom and human rights, and introduces the new etiquette which consists of discussing death at dinner parties, suffering at soirees and grief at gatherings.

Iran recently announced that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani would not be put to death by stoning. But the fate of the Iranian woman accused of adultery remains uncertain.

During this discussion we will be looking not at the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, which has provoked an outcry from the international community, but also asking how many cases go unnoticed? And should the international community be doing more?

We will be joined by: Cindy Hickey, the mother of freelance journalist Shane Bauer who has been held without charge in Iran’s Evin prison since July last year, while his girlfriend Sarah Shourd has been locked in solitary confinement; Sina Motallebi, BBC Persian TV head of output and author of one of Iran’s first blogs Rooznegar who was detained for 23 days in solitary confinement as a result of his work; Drewery Dyke, Amnesty International’s Iran researcher and Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran last year.

Chaired by William Maclean, Thomson Reuters security specialist correspondent