On August 9th, Sydney beamed out strong support for Julian Assange with a live-to-air event: ‘THE GAGGING OF JULIAN ASSANGE’. The venue, with live audience, was Politics in the Pub at the Sydney Gaelic Club. Thanks goes to the #Unity4J movement and particularly its ‘Stream Team’, for their invaluable technical support.

The remote guest speakers were Julian’s mother, Christine Assange, and the President of the New Zealand Internet Party, Suzie Dawson, who spoke to the audience live from Moscow.

In Sydney, the speakers were Cathy Vogan, Professor Stuart Rees and Mike Head. Christine was interviewed two days earlier by Cathy Vogan, and this was pre-loaded to the stream. There had been ‘mysterious problems’, in getting her connected to the live monthly VIGILS that #Unity4J have been running, so no risks were taken…

Here is the entire show, as broadcast on August 9th, with a direct link to Suzie Dawson’s talk. As viewers will see from the opening remarks by Vogan, there was a power failure (and internet lockout) while Christine’s interview was playing. Dawson focuses on the #Unity4J movement to save Julian – now 2700 people strong, and comprised of artists, writers, techs and speakers. She addresses the idea of bringing together people with different political opinions, who have one common aim, and how that’s been panning out.

Big shout-out to Gard Lord, @Jarraparilla, for this list of the main points made by Christine Assange:

*** “UK extradition does not require a prima facie case… There is absolutely no proper legal process for my son. The US Grand Jury is in secret… it has no defence allowed and it has no judge…”

*** “If UK get him on the [bail] warrant, which should be defunct, they can then drop that [and] serve the Grand Jury indictment with no proper legal process. Then they can extradite Julian to the US, again without legal process because you don’t have to present a prima facie case…”

*** “And then, when he gets to USA, under the National Defence Authorisation Act, he can be detained indefinitely without trial and face the death penalty, or 45 years in jail, if we see him at all for trial. It’s horrific.”

*** “And the Australian government has done NOTHING. Julian has tried to renew his passport but the computer won’t allow him to do that, which means that the government is not allowing him to do it.”

*** Christine suggests that UK govt did not extradite Gary McKinnon or @FreeLauriLove because they were UK citizens and the groundswell of outrage would have made it harder for them to extradite her son @JulianAssange.

*** Christine believes the #Russiavape collusion narrative is designed to make it easier to charge Julian with espionage and avoid First Amendment protections. She notes how @SamAdamsAward US intel veterans have defended @JulianAssange and don’t believe Russia was @wikileaks source.

*** Christine notes a former CIA officer claiming infiltration of international state media. She says @abcnews “are the worst” & wonders if they are infiltrated. “I have had to pull them up on calling Julian a hacker. Constantly. They will not refer to him as a journalist.”

*** “Australia has to stand up. Why do we want to be a Republic? Because we want to be a sovereign nation. But if you are not going to stand up for your citizen when a big bully superpower is threatening & torturing them, then you are not a sovereign nation.”

*** “Julian is dying. He is being slowly murdered. And this is the really disgusting thing: they’ve got nothing to charge him with. Because he’s done nothing wrong.”

*** “So they have chosen deliberately not to go to court, to keep him detained, to refuse him the normal requirements of life – fresh air, exercise, sunshine, medical care – so that he will gradually die.”

*** “His doctors are saying that if he is not gotten out of there, that’s exactly what will happen: he will die. He has irreversible damage to his mind and body now. He has been in chronic pain for 2 years. And UK refuses safe passage to go to a hospital.”

*** “I could never be as brave as Julian. Most people couldn’t. But what we can do for people in his situation is stand up for them. We can stand up to our governments and say No! Evil is not going to flourish because good men are going to do something.”

“Don’t we tell our children to stand up to bullying? Well I’m asking the Australian people to stand up & say NO. We’re better than this. We’re not gonna let this happen. If you don’t have the guts to do it, Malcolm Turnbull, we’re going to make you do it.”

*** “I want to say thank you to everyone who has stood up and is standing up. It does make a difference. You mightn’t think anything is being stopped but I think it is.. It’s not only boosting @JulianAssange’s morale but also his family’s morale, for us to keep going.”

*** “My son hasn’t felt the grass on his feet for six years. His eyesight is failing because he can’t look into the distance. If this was going on in a Third World country, or Russia, they would all be screaming at the top of their lungs.”

*** “They did more for one of the worst pedophiles the world has ever seen, Peter Scully, who was raping & killing babies. The Australian govt offered Consular Support and $500K! They go & bail out people who have been CHARGED with smuggling drugs!”

*** Christine notes @wikileaks revealed Hillary’s cynical plot to overthrow Gaddafi as a prelude to her run for President. Libya’s collapse has now triggered waves of refugees. “I see a lot of people protesting… Where are they for my son? He is a political refugee!”

*** “Liberty isn’t something that we just attain. We’ve got to continually fight for it. Because there are always people trying to take it away. Never has liberty been more under threat than right now, because of the technology [that Julian helped expose].”

*** “Both Left and Right can abuse power. Within the #Unity4J movement I am working with all sorts of people. What they all have in common is support for democracy and free speech, a free press, fair legal process and human rights. We can all come together on that.”

Christine Assange speaks out for her son Julian. Sydney, August 9 2018

Daniel Ellsberg was the first person with this level of privilege to expose (via the Pentagon Papers) the catastrophic public harm his government’s lies were causing. Shortly thereafter, the Vietnam War ended, President Nixon was impeached and the extraordinary charge of espionage laid on Ellsberg, along with theft and conspiracy (a total maximum sentence of 115 years) were dismissed.

I recall Julian Assange saying some years back, that his mother Christine had told him about Daniel Ellsberg when he was a little boy. Wow. I’ve met a lot of adults recently who haven’t heard of him – nor of Sir Tim Berner’s Lee for that matter, who gave us the world wide web, for free, and enabled one and all to take that quantum leap in human communication we call the digital age.

The point of Wikileaks, which Assange would go on to create as a young adult, was to offer whistleblowers like Ellsberg a safe way to continue exposing facts that were in the public interest, but which were being misrepresented or withheld from public debate.

Assange got a lot of support and participation in that endeavour: from citizens, who most crucially disseminated the facts; from many academics; from journalists and politicians; and from the legal community. For the latter, I suppose it sounded very much like “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. We should applaud the organisation’s outstanding diligence in fact-checking the information it received. After 10 years, its reliability still stands at 100% and despite the 2011 claims by US politicians, of Wikileaks having “blood on their hands”, no blood has been sacrificed for the delivery of this free public service.

I have no doubt that Wikileaks will survive, but it’s really looking like curtains for the founder and editor-in-chief. Assange has not been charged with any crime in relation to his work with Wikileaks, but it seems an espionage charge is pending, should he walk out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, and straight into a British prison, for the minor offence of breaching bail when he sought, and obtained political asylum.

Assange’s departure from the embassy is unlikely to happen by choice, even though all communications and contact with friends and family have been terminated for the last 10 weeks. There would be no point, if it were to be taken from this solitary confinement to another, where he would not be able to resume his work. What seems more likely now is that he will be evicted, for breach of an agreement he signed last year, when (only) his internet was cut off, to not say anything of a political nature on Twitter that “put at risk the good relations [Ecuador] has with the UK, the rest of the states of the EU, and other countries”.

Indeed, we the people have the right to do that, and truth protects that right, but not Assange. He knows too much, and he won’t keep his mouth shut. What was once political asylum has now has become solitary confinement. It is a flagrant example of the enforcement of public ignorance.

Berners Lee, Assange and Ellsberg: friends of democracy

Berners Lee, Assange and Ellsberg monumentally facilitated our access to information, for no personal gain and in two of the three cases, at great personal risk. Berners Lee appeared to be politically neutral, and was knighted, but he too is a believer in true democracy. In recent times, he has been explicitly warning us about another quantum leap: in mass surveillance.

We are all being watched, listened to and recorded; both in our homes and workplaces. It chills our free speech, jams our moral compass and – latest phase – is being used in a very targeted way to manipulate our political opinion with false information. Berners Lee is particularly concerned about how AI is being used to analyse our data and profile us for specific messaging that may or may not be truthful. He states:

“Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?”

Sir Tim Berners Lee

If you recall, the dissemination of false information, that would in turn be relayed by the people, was the modus operandi described by the Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower, Chris Wylie, in relation to their management of the Trump campaign and involvement in Brexit. Even the heads of “the firm”, Alexander Nix and Mark Turnbull, smugly admitted this in the Channel 4 sting video. Nix described how his company injects information “into the bloodstream of the internet”, disguises its origin and then sits back, to watch their ‘virus’ infect the minds of the populace.

What we’re seeing now is the use of military-grade information operations that were previously used to manipulate other populations, deployed on a country’s own citizens. What they know, it has been realised, can either make of them an ‘enemy’ (speaking truth to power), or an army of unwittingly mendacious sock-puppets.

The problem with Wikileaks was that it was not just a small organisation; its life’s blood was the long chains of citizens, “passing along buckets to put out the fire”, as Assange once put it. That couldn’t be stopped, but it could be perverted. The model could be used even more effectively to spread lies, with the right team of data scientists, spooks, marketing experts, creatives and ‘recruits’. Add to that a comparatively massive budget of a political party, to offer the gate-keepers of social media, and it was only too easy to poison the grass roots.

Moving forward through the 21st century, we need to protect truth like never before. That starts with opposing the fragmentation of the political message via our social networks. There can be no public scrutiny if there is no consensus on what is real in the political offer, and some would argue that the behavioural micro-targeting of voters has already “high-jacked” two democracies.

Hell, we didn’t see that coming, but we must realise now that the facilitator of this dystopian manipulation in the digital-age is mass surveillance, which is largely being used to limit free speech, democracy and even human rights. We must therefore respect and protect whistleblowers, who provide us with a much-needed ‘herd inoculation’ against the lies and deceit that divide us. And finally, we must applaud the generosity and vigilance of Wikileaks, for “keeping the bastards honest”, and all who struggled against corruption alongside them.

click on image to view Facebook event page

I fully endorse the rally on June 17th to protect Julian Assange, and call on our government to negotiate his home-coming to Australia. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, as the lawyer Greg Barnes said: “There is an opportunity…”, and since he is an award-winning journalist, the US must abide by the First Amendment of their Constitution.

Cassie Findlay, spokeswoman for the National Council of the newly-formed Australian Wikileaks Party, delivered a moving introductory address this week to a capacity crowd at Sydney’s Chauvel Cinema. The occasion was part of a national tour of Robert Connolly’s film “Underground”, which tells the story of teenage Julian Assange, and his roller-coaster beginnings as an online activist.

L to R: Rob Connolly, Christine Assange, Alex Williams & Cassie Findlay

Christine Assange, Robert Connolly, actor Alex Williams and SBS journalist Mark Davis were onstage afterwards for a Q & A with the audience. They were later joined by Linda Pearson from the Support Assange and Wikileaks Coalition (SAWC), who called for strong action to repatriate Julian Assange, now entering his tenth month of refuge at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy.

Tour organisers Kaz Cochrane and Samantha Castro, who founded the Wikileaks Australian Citizens Alliance (WACA), and who are co-members of the Party’s National Council, will also deliver personalised speeches during the film’s nationwide tour.

Alex Williams plays the young Julian Assange in "UNDERGROUND"

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Of particular note was the solidarity expressed by the filmmakers and cast with their subject. No surprise, given the track record of award-winning director, Rob Connolly, in making politically conscious films, such as ‘Balibo’, and ‘The Bank’, where the gap between art and life has merely been widened to protect the innocent. Rob muses as I quote Alexa O’Brian’s fleeting tweet: “We don’t need any more Hollywood film scripts. We need transcripts of what’s actually happening in the court room”, and we are both reminded of Assange’s recent gripes regarding the proposed opening scenes of ‘The Fifth Estate’. A sequel to ‘Underground’ is apparently not out of the question… “Watch this space”, he says, and we really do hope he fills it.

In the more immediate future, the ‘Underground’ Party Tour will continue throughout Australia. These legendary events have had a tendency so far to play to packed houses, so it’s probably best to buy tickets in advance. Go to the WACA website to (check the dates) and your closest cinema. And to everyone’s great surprise, ‘Underground’ has been selected to open the Washington DC International Film Festival – “in the cradle of American government!” in just two weeks time.

Film critic Eddie Cockrell, our moderator for the Sydney event, Variety and SBS columnist, and the man who just happens to have written catalogues for the Washington Film Festival for decades… reckons it will solicit “A very good reaction!”. . Watch this space, one more time…

Cassie Findlay speaks on behalf of the Australian Wikileaks Party

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Cassie Findlay’s speech:

“It’s been an interesting process. Especially for someone like me who comes from a background of being archivist and not involved in political campaigning before. And indeed a lot of the members of the National Council of the WikiLeaks Party come from really interesting and diverse backgrounds that bring a certain humanity, I think, to our endeavour. So, we have a physicist, we have activists, we have mothers, we have young people, we have people of an older generation. And we’ve been working very hard since, well, certainly some members of the Council since last year. And in earnest this year to put together a Party which I think is about addressing what is missing in Australian politics at the moment which is truth, transparency, a sense of standing up to power. A sense of understanding for yourself what’s actually going on and if we look at, you know, the major parties that are going to be contesting the next election in September, is there much choice? Both of them are sitting mainly on the right. Of course, we have the Australian Greens it’s true. But what we’re doing is putting a candidate up for the Senate who has the most amazing track record of actually scrutinising and understanding information about what’s happening politically, what’s happening across the world and in Australia, and who certainly demonstrated an ability to stand up for what’s right. So, one of our National Council members, Greg Barnes spoke last week in Melbourne about the Party and about putting a candidate up for the Senate where, what we’ve seen rather than a house of review it’s become a house of deals. Well, the WikiLeaks Party and Julian in the Senate will be against that, we’ll be standing up for the Australian people.”

“The Wikileaks Tapes” is a labour of love and it was a very unexpected adventure which began the day I met Christine Assange. She had been consulting my blog at thing2thing.com and I guess she trusted that I was willing and able to do something strong for Julian. So she asked people to give me the time of day… and I gave it my 110%.

Special thanks to #colmirgo for the interview…

Would this be the first Australian citizen ever to need political asylum? We go to press in haste and would invite correction. A shame though, if Julian can not come home any more, or at least any time soon. His Senator polls were soaring…

We invite readers to make their own decision on whether asylum was his only option.
As a simple, clear overview of the situation:
OPEN LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE from Christine Assange
wlcentral.org/node/2632

LEGAL BRIEF TO AUSTRALIAN MPs by Jennifer Robinson (Julian’ s lawyer)
wlcentral.org/node/1418
This is a factual chronology of what Ms Robinson deems to be abuse of legal process on Sweden’s behalf.

DIPLOMATIC BRIEF TO AUSTRALIAN MPs by Tony Kevin
wlcentral.org/node/1414
Tony is an ex Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade Diplomat and Ambassador over 30 years

CHRONOLOGY
wlcentral.org/node/2486
Case details and incidents of alleged abuse of legal process with political interference

EXTENSIVE DATA BASE & DOCUMENTS
justice4assange.com
Swedish Extradition, US Extradition & UK Hearings

We spoke to former MP John Hatton AO a few days ago about the situation Assange found himself in after the Supreme Court denied Dinah Rose’s application to re-open the appeal. It would come as no surprise to many Australians that Hatton was quite an expert on Sweden. Thanks to him, it once served for us as a model of healthy transparency and justice. Hatton is one of our greatest Australian watchdogs. He used his parliamentary privilege, not only to take on an entire police force, but other members of parliament, to beat corruption.

His landmark “Churchill Report”, which fully documented Canada and Sweden’s systems of governance and justice, was held high as an example from the late 80s; at which time Sweden’s JO (Justice Ombudsman) had full view, even over Secret Service operations.

What happened?

Is John Hatton right? Is our democracy a myth? Is there indifference to corruption? Is it acceptable that an Australian citizen feels compelled to seek political asylum in Ecuador?

THE SWEDISH OUBLIETTE & THE FRENCH LETTER (la capote anglaise)

Julian Assange was NOT facing charges in Sweden. Since the latest Supreme Court decision, he was facing immediate imprisonment with NO CHARGES for an indefinite period – in solitary confinement, and visible to no one but a lawyer and a priest. Gud är god!

Swedish remand prisons were described by Birgitta Winberg, the President of International Prison Chaplains’ Association Worldwide, as ’the worst in Europe’:
“In no other country are people in isolation before they are charged”, said Winberg.

A supporting article stated: “A high proportion of prisoners – as much as 70 per cent at Kronoberg, in Stockholm – are placed under restrictions that may see them in their cells for 23 hours a day. Only visits from a lawyer and priest are allowed.”

That may seem unjust to many Australian, British and Swedish citizens, and shocking to former champions of Swedish justice, such as John Hatton AO, but it is now “due process” in Sweden, for foreigners and suspects in sexual misconduct allegations, even when they have not been charged with any crime. They may not apply for bail while awaiting questioning or trial, and for whatever reason Sweden finds it just, not even their families have visiting rights.

One might reasonably ask, why such treatment simply because one is a foreigner, when Swedish Nationals are treated like other Europeans – as if innocent until proven guilty – but who will?

Fair Trails International and British MPs are struggling to assure this fundamental right, but only for their own citizens, while the Australian government, who should be concerned that the anomaly is affecting one of its citizens, is insisting on “due process” (whatever that might be), and claims it would support this treatment for “any other Australian”.

The British Supreme Court would obviously have more difficulty with the Australian’s prolonged pre-charge detention, but it seems now to be out of their hands. With their refusal to re-open the appeal, Julian Assange defaulted to going “directly to jail” in Sweden, because prosecutor Marianne Ny’s status as a judicial authority, though “not cricket”, has been awkwardly deemed acceptable at European level, and her brand of “due process” – arguably relentless persecution – has been tolerated, if not ignored. It was not deemed sufficiently abusive of process to issue a European Arrest Warrant and Interpol Red Notice in the first place, against a previously co-operative party, to whom she had just given permission to leave the country… What?

Assange and Hrafnsson come out of one more court battle - photo Cathy Vogan

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Nor was it considered abusively disproportionate that Ms Ny insisted Mr Assange be imprisoned in the UK rather than under house arrest. Not here! the UK judges said. We don’t imprison people pre-charge and pre-trail. But eventually, and at enormous expense to Mr Assange and his supporters, they said OK, we’ll extradite, so you can do it over there. The law lord’s summing up attempted to blind us with bilingual etymology, but those who spoke French were already summing up more patly:

Ce n’est pas un cas de faux amis, mais de la mauvaise foi.

[It's not about words that look, but don't mean the same in two different languages, but the adoption of false values under societal pressure.]

If Ny had had her initial wishes granted on British soil, Assange would have already spent over a year and a half in prison awaiting questioning, or for an end to her vexatious extradition request; already disproportionate by Swedish standards. Ms Ny’s misleading statements to the public, regarding her delay in questioning Assange over that time – refusing all normal avenues, such as Mutual Legal Assistance at the Swedish Embassy or Scotland Yard – were also conveniently overlooked.

Justly so, the defence team objected with strict attention to detail, respect for the rule of law, and guidance from expert witnesses, many of whom were Swedish… for almost two years, but to apparently deaf ears.

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Among the many valid points they made…

Marianne Ny has misled the public by stating that Swedish and UK law do not permit her to question Julian Assange in the UK.

Three days after Marianne Ny had issued the EAW for Julian Assange (5 Dec 2010) Ny falsely stated: “Both British and Swedish law prevent me from questioning Assange in London.”

[sic] Prosecutor Marianne Ny has also claimed that questioning in the UK was illegal in a Time interview on 3 December 2010. This is false. Mutual Legal Assistance is clearly permitted by both Swedish and UK law. There is also a legal precedent from the Swedish Supreme Court from 2007, which acknowledges questioning via video link as proportionate when the subject is abroad. The same ruling (NJA (2007) 337) finds that it is disproportionate to issue an arrest warrant for a person who is cooperating with the judicial authorities at the preliminary investigation stage, before a decision has been made whether to prosecute.

But they may as well, as the French would say, have been pissing into a violin… That the tactic of delaying questioning, and the subsequent obligation to rescind the warrant or issue charges, also permitted Ny to withhold evidence from Mr Assange’s defence lawyers, thus impeding the course of justice for all parties, went largely unchallenged, besides a suggestion from Lady Hale that some kinds of prosecutors were not the same as others…

“… a principled distinction could be drawn between a prosecutor who is independent of the prosecution in the particular case and a prosecutor who is in fact a party to the case in question. The Framework Decision defines a European Arrest Warrant as a “judicial decision” and by no stretch of language could a decision taken by a party to the case be termed “judicial”.” Lady Hale

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[sic] One example is the evidence submitted by Göran Rudling, who discovered complainant AA’s deleted tweets (see Evidence Destroyed). Rudling submitted these to the investigating authorities on 15 September 2010. The prosecution never informed the defence lawyer of the existence of this evidence, “despite the fact that it revealed evidence of obvious and crucial significance to the defence, namely that one complainant had acted entirely inconsistently with her story the very day after the alleged assault and then tried to destroy the evidence”.

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In the end, every effort was made to get the problem of Assange’s detention, guilty or innocent, after almost 2 years without charges, out of a respectable place like England!

“… the obligation ceases when national law cannot be applied compatibly with the result envisaged by the framework decision. In other words, the principle cannot serve as the basis for an interpretation of national law contra legem…” Lady Hale

It may be fair to assume that Ny would neither have been in a hurry to question Assange when dispatched “at her pleasure” to the horrendous Gothenberg Prison. Her case has grown weak over time; depending now on only one signed statement, and what is almost certainly false evidence.

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For those who haven’t read or been told about the lab report, no chromosomal DNA was detected on the famous ripped condom. Concurring statements by Assange and the remaining accuser AA, assert that the condom had been used for several hours during sexual contact, and for that reason, forensic experts said it must be expected to be covered with chromosomal DNA from both parties. With a 2% error margin in the reliability of observations, none whatsoever was detected.

The significance of this item is paramount. Not only did it fuel countless weird and salacious stories in the press world-wide; it was also used as material evidence to re-open investigations into the affair; which had already been closed by a second, more senior prosecutor, Eva Finné, on the basis of the other woman’s testimony, strangely enough.

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It was made clear that the two women came to the police station to make an enquiry, not a complaint; that no statements had been initially recorded, and that Assange had definitely NOT committed a crime. Surely a lab report which negated the very reason for the re-opening of this case would matter to an impartial authorité judiciaire in any country, but Marianne Ny did not let up.

Ny has seemed determined, vexatious and inordinately unaccommodating; the veritable attack dog of Lady Hale’s worst nightmares.

It seems unlikely, but if Ny did manage to mount a case, then Assange would be subjected to another indefinite and incommunicado pre-trail detention, and who would be optimistic in that case, irrespective of whether America exercise their right to “Temporary” Surrender before, during or AFTER this ordeal, which the defence estimate could take up to a year? Even if Assange walked an innocent man after 3 years of house arrest and imprisonment, the whole process would be likely to start all over again, take a life-time, and eventually entail his execution for the sought-after conviction of espionage.

What’s clear is that from Sweden onwards, no one would know what’s going on in the courtroom, because the doors would be closed. While they were open, it was obvious that the facts of the case, especially the lab report, became of little interest; neither to the High nor Supreme Courts; and neither to the press, who have only just learned not to copy/paste the word “charges”, lest they be sued. And unless a miracle happened, Julian was going to Sweden very soon.

Yesterday Julian’s father, John Shipton explained why:

“He can put in an application to the European Court of Human Rights, but there’s a three year waiting period. It will not prevent his immediate extradition and imprisonment – for God knows how long… What good is it if they decide in three years time that it was in violation of his human rights?

Hmmm… that is about as backed into a corner as one can get.

Mr Shipton joins Julian’s mother in recommending some enlightening reading. He’s very much a Rixstep man http://rixstep.com/0/jawl.shtml
“…to learn everything about the case in Sweden, and for reference to other unfortunates, already held at a prosecutor’s “pleasure”; incommunicado and without time limits.”

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Ecuadorians welcome Julian Assange on Facebook - click to go to the page

T2T also thanks Bob Carr for wasting Christine Assange’s precious time on 2UE with copious information about what happens where there are “charges”.

The Hon Julia Gillard MP

Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600                                                                                    4 June 2012

Dear Prime Minister,

RE: JULIAN ASSANGE

Regrettably we feel compelled to write to you about the plight of Mr Assange.

You will know that many Australians are angry, disappointed and even confused about your government’s response to Mr Assange’s situation.  They feel that way because they care:  they care about civil liberties, they care about freedom of speech, they care about truth and they care about democracy.

Many people fear that Mr Assange’s greatest enemy may not be the United States or Sweden but rather the indifference demonstrated by his own Government, our Government.

Many are wondering why your only contribution to the debate has been initial accusations of illegal conduct followed by muted silence. Why?

As you know, there is currently a 14 day stay on the UK Supreme Court judgment but it is very likely that Mr Assange, an online publisher and journalist, will be extradited to Sweden.  We think that the letter from Mr Assange’s lawyer , Gareth Peirce, to the then Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd dated 25 October 2011; the detailed brief provided to several members of the Australian Parliament by Finers Stephens Innocent in March 2011; the recent article by the Australian Centre of Independent Journalism; and the Fair Trials International note which explains what will happen to Mr Assange once he is taken to Sweden, highlight the reasons for our Government to be concerned.

The Government has said that it has and will continue to provide the same consular assistance offered to any Australian caught up in a legal matter overseas.  That ignores the facts (raised by Mr Tony Kevin, now retired from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) that not only is this not a standard consular issue, but that “David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib received similarly worthless consular access from Howard and Ruddock at the times they were rendered with Australian Government consent to years of torture in Guantanamo. Both men were being abusively treated in Pakistan and Egypt while on their way to Guantanamo, as Australian consular officers looked on impotently.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Carr asserts that no Australian has received more consular support in a comparable period than Mr Assange.  You need only refer the Government to assistance provided to one Mr Thompson (just one week after he was detained in Baghdad, in May 2006, with a cache of arms) to see that the assertion is wrong. It is perhaps also worth mentioning the assistance provided to those caught up in drug cases in Bali.

We understand that Mr Assange asked for assistance from the Ambassador while in Sweden, which wasn’t forthcoming, and that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade later denied that any request had been made.  In any case, no consular assistance was offered while he was in Sweden.

The Senate Official Committee Hansard report of February 24, 2011 shows that Mr Assange was provided with a copy of the Consular Services Charter on December 7, 2010. Of how much use was that?

In November 2011 Mr Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, confirmed that the Australian Ambassador in Sweden had agreed to convey questions from Mr Assange’s defence team to the Swedish prosecutor’s office, but said they offered little more. She pointed out that “correspondence was limited to requests to arrange seating in court and requests for briefings on case progress. There was little contact.”

It was only after The Age newspaper approached the Foreign Affairs Department on 25 October 2011 that a response was sent to Mr Assange’s British lawyer, Gareth Peirce, in response to a letter of concern Mr Turnbull had hand delivered to Mr Rudd’s office on 22 September 2011.

We understand that up until November 2011 the High Commission’s help in the United Kingdom was confined to calls to Mr Assange’s lawyers requesting ‘tickets’ to the court hearings. No real and practical help was ever offered.  That same month the Consul-General in the United Kingdom, Mr Pascoe, finally requested a briefing on the case.

We are unable to ascertain whether or not a letter from prominent expatriates handed to the High Commission in December 2011 was responded to. Perhaps you would kindly confirm that it was?

Despite the fact that the Government asserts that it has no information from the United States to indicate that it has laid, or is about to lay, any charges against Mr Assange, or evidence that a sealed indictment already exists, we are kept in the dark about exactly what questions our Government has asked, what assurances have been sought and what information our officials have received.

Various Freedom of Information requests have revealed:

• that the Australian embassy in Washington knew of an “active and vigorous inquiry into whether  Julian Assange can be charged under US law, most likely the 1917 Espionage Act” and that the “WikiLeaks case was unprecedented both in its scale and nature”;
• that Australian diplomats have requested “advanced warning of any public announcement of the results of US investigations or proposed actions”, but have raised no concerns about the Australian journalist being pursued by US prosecutors on charges of espionage and conspiracy;
• that Washington provided Canberra with regular updates, including reporting on the issuing of subpoeanas to compel WikiLeaks associates to appear before a grand jury in Virginia, and US State Department efforts to access Twitter and other internet accounts; and
• that the Australian embassy has obtained “confidential or legal commentary“ from private law firms “on aspects surrounding WikiLeaks and/or the positions of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.”

Washington embassy cables sent to Canberra between 1 November 2010 and 31 January 2012 do not contain any references to representations made by Australian diplomats to US officials concerning proper extradition processes, even though we were assured by Attorney-General Nicola Roxon in April this year that they had.  We note the timing of Ms Roxon’s representations to Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich, US Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and US Deputy Attorney-General James Cole.

We understand that the Australian Government has made representations to the Swedish Government about due process being applied to Mr Assange, and that assurances to that effect have been given by the Swedish Government.  But again, we are kept in the dark about exactly what questions were asked and the terms of the assurances received.

We don’t even know whether the Government has expressed any concerns – and there should be deep concerns – about the way in which charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor; about how Mr Assange’s police interview turned up in the tabloid Expressen the day after he was interviewed on 30 August 2010; why the Swedish Prosecutor, Ms Marianne Ny refused to accept Mr Assange’s offer to return to Sweden for interview on 9^th and 10^th of October 2010 and his offer to be interviewed at the Swedish Embassy in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance scheme between Sweden and the United Kingdom; about a contentious Swedish action having an Australian citizen electronically tagged and under house arrest without charge for 545 days, or about a Swedish prosecutor authorising an Interpol Red Notice for Mr Assange when he was required merely for questioning.

We find it disturbing that Mr Assange’s mother, Christine, felt compelled to respond on Twitter to recent government assurances about consular support provided to Mr Assange, as follows:

“Julian asked Aust Govt 2 ask US not 2 put him under “Special Administrative Measures” in prison (no touch torture). Request denied.

Julian asked Aust Govt 2 ask US 2 ask those who had publicly incited murder against him 2 retract statements. Request denied.

Julian asked Aust Govt 2 ask Sweden under Prisoner Transfer Program that any sentence B served in Australia.  Request denied.

Julian asked Aust Govt 2 grant him safe passage home from the UK & Sweden at end of proceedings.  Request denied.

Julian asked Aust Govt 2 ask Sweden 2 grant bail (unquestioned, uncharged, didn’t breach UK bail conditions). Request denied.

Julian asked Aust Gov 2 ask Swedish PM, AG, FM, 2 stop misleading public re: case FACTS, & smearing him in public. Request denied.”

It is very difficult to accept that, and we fail to see how the Government’s actions to date in relation to Mr Assange’s plight or the level of consular support he allegedly received are “something to be proud of“.

Mr Assange’s case obviously is politically charged.  Governments may not be able to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but there are plenty of precedents where governments have acted diplomatically to prevent legal processes from being invoked or continued.  The Australian Government clearly has that capacity and should exercise it.

Mr Assange and WikiLeaks have given people all over the world, including the Australian people, a glimpse of the truth behind the spin, of the grubby guile behind the veneer of smooth diplomacy, and of the appalling disdain that people in power have for human life, let alone human rights.  We have a right and a need to know these truths, and all Mr Assange and WikiLeaks have done is give us some scope to exercise those rights.

We call on the Australian Government to take all steps it can to assist Mr Assange, both by providing direct real assistance to him, including any necessary financial support for his legal representation and family support, and by exploring and utilising all diplomatic channels that may be available to obviate his further persecution through formal legal channels.

Yours faithfully

Gary Kennedy

Secretary

Newcastle Trades Hall Council

Gary Kennedy, Secretary NTHC

The Newcastle Trades Hall Council (NTHC) currently has 22 Unions affiliated which cover most work areas and job designations in the Hunter. The Newcastle Trades Hall Council is the peak Union body in the Hunter and works closely with Unions NSW and the Australian Council of Trade Unions ( A.C.T.U. )

This co-operation means that State and National campaigns are co-ordinated and run on behalf of Unions by the NTHC.

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It will be interesting to see how PM Gillard responds…

*Open Letter to the Australian People* - Christine Assange - click here

More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology on February 17 to attend a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. It was organised by the newly formed Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition, with the support of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, T2T and the Stop the War Coalition, Sydney

John Pilger speaks from London - photo Peter Boyle

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Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange.

Veteran journalist and former SBS broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the meeting. She told the audience WikiLeaks had won several prestigious awards for excellence in journalism. She said the US government is persecuting WikiLeaks for publishing material that other media outlets have also published. The difference was that WikiLeaks has done it better, she said.

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE & DEMOCRACY with Humphrey McQueen from CaTV on Vimeo.

“… all of human history the 1% have struggled to make sure that the 99% couldn’t read or write at all, let alone read what WikiLeaks has revealed.

The Church used Latin. The Russian Tsarists used French against their own population. When John Wycliffe tried to translate the Bible into English he managed to die before they got to him, but they dug his bones up and burnt them anyway. They were probably pretty convinced that he was in hell, but they thought they’d do the little bit extra that they could.

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Slaves in America were flogged if they tried to learn to read. But the important thing is that the slaves resisted. They used what was available to them — which was the Old Testament — to write hymns of protest.

But it wasn’t only the Holy Inquisition that tried to stop people knowing what was going on in their world.

No less than the president of the Royal Society, the chief scientist in England, announced in the 18th century: “Giving education to the labouring classes of the poor will be prejudicial to their morals and happiness. It would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society has destined them.

“Instead of teaching them subordination, it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets and render them insolent to their superiors.” This is the voice of science speaking, not the inquisition.”

Full transcript at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50092

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE & DEMOCRACY – with Scott Ludlam from CaTV on Vimeo.

“We hauled this poor fellow from Mastercard in to Parliament House the other day and asked him what the hell they were doing with this financial blockade on a publisher, more than a year after this blockade came down. That was a really interesting conversation; I can’t disclose what he said… [laughter] So why don’t YOU ask him?”

Full transcript at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50091

“I wanted to start this evening with a Jewish curse that someone told me recently: “May you be involved in a lawsuit in which you know you are right.” [laughter]

No one knows the meaning of this curse any better than Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks. Assange has been accused of many, many things. Everything from being anti-Semitic to being a Mossad agent – ” how you could be the two at the same time I don’t know.

US presidential candidates in the current presidential race in the US have called for his assassination.

The current US vice-president has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. Can you imagine inserting into that sentence [Guardian editor] Alan Rusbridger is a “high-tech terrorist”? [New York Times editor] Bill Keller is a “high-tech terrorist”?

Our own prime minister [Julia Gillard] has accused him of illegal conduct, prematurely, prejudicially and prior to announcing a full-scale criminal investigation, which of course resulted in the outcome that the Australian Federal Police disagreed with her.

US government propaganda, shamefully echoed by our own prime minister, accused WikiLeaks of publishing in breach of US law. But they are wrong.

What Julian does with WikiLeaks is not only right, it is morally right, it is ethically right and, as I’ll explain this evening, it is legally right.”

Full transcript at http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50090

“Here are the facts:

Both women involved in this “sex scandal” never alleged rape, but insisted that the sex was consensual and not violent.

Woman SW has actually complained about being railroaded and was so upset that Julian was charged with rape that she refused to sign her statement.

Woman AA, who took a condom to the police saying that Julian had deliberately torn a condom during sex – forensic examination proved there was not DNA from either her or Julian in it.”

Christine Assange

Full transcript at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50089

All the Facts – by Christine Assange
wlcentral.org/node/2486