Whatever your choice of political party for government in the House of Representatives, you can still vote for the Wikileaks Party in the Senate.

Go The Leeks! - Click to enlarge

The WikiLeaks Party stands for unswerving commitment to the core principles of civic courage nourished by understanding and truthfulness and the free flow of information. It is a party that will practise in politics what WikiLeaks has done in the field of information by standing up to the powerful and shining a light on injustice and corruption.

The Constitution of the WikiLeaks Party lists its objectives which include the protection of human rights and freedoms; transparency of governmental and corporate action, policy and information; recognition of the need for equality between generations; and support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination.

Julian Assange: Wikileaks Party Candidate for Victoria

The Wikileaks Party’s most prominent candidate, running in the State of Victoria, is Julian Assange, the founder and editor in chief of WikiLeaks. He states:

“The values of transparency and accountability and resistance under pressure that I have developed through hard experience with WikiLeaks, that is what we intend to take to Canberra.”

Running in New South Wales is lawyer and Human Rights activist Kellie Tranter, who has delivered addresses, chaired workshops and participated in public debates on issues like climate change, human rights and gender equality at local, national and international conferences, including speeches opposing unjustified wars and economic exploitation.

Kellie Tranter: Wikileaks Party Candidate for NSW

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For Western Australia the lead candidate is Gerry Georgatos, a life-long human rights and social justice campaigner, investigative journalist and PhD researcher in Australian Custodial Systems and Deaths in Custody. He founded Students Without Borders, with one of its initiatives recycling and refurbishing computers, becoming the largest computer recycling program in Australia. Gerry has travelled widely among remote Aboriginal communities and extensively researched Aboriginal homelessness, poverty, imprisonment and suicide rates. He has been a long-time staunch refugee rights advocate, visiting immigration detention centres, an anti-drugs campaigner working alongside the vulnerable and a life-long freedom of speech campaigner. His advocacy in fighting racism has been longstanding and he has completed two Masters topically covering racism and the ways forward.

Gerry Georgatos: Wikileaks Party Candidate for WA

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For a complete overview of the other Candidates, the Wikileaks Party National Council, its Constitution and Policies, and information on how to become a Member and DONATE! please visit the Party’s website at wikileaksparty.org.au.

Most importantly, if you would like “The Leeks” to receive a STRONG primary vote:

…… VOTE 1 WIKILEAKS PARTY, ABOVE THE LINE

If you don’t live in Australia, there is unfortunately no Wikileaks Party in your country, yet…

Wikileaks Party Artwork by Mark Rastrick- click to enlarge

Kellie Tranter, lawyer and human rights activist “clears the air” on Assange’s legal situation, and calls for ordinary people to join the free speech and transparency movement. “Politics in the Pub”, September 21, 2012.

It is said that “one way to limit free speech is by the chilling effect of monitoring it”, and those in power are trying to do plenty of chilling.
To those who may feel disempowered, or suffering from a little grassroots wilt, or reluctant to join this or any movement, I leave you with this gem, one of many from the interviews of Studs Terkel, when he interviewed the great philosopher Bertrand Russell:

BERTRAND RUSSELL: That’s just [inaudible]. They can. I mean, an individual, if he has the pluck and the independence of mind, can do a very great deal. Actually, here we sit, no organisation, none whatever, and simply by expressing an opinion which is known to be unbiased, an individual can effect a very great deal. And this powerlessness of the individual is a form of cowardice; it’s a pretence, an alibi for doing nothing.
So let’s drop the pretence and forsake the alibi. We are individuals but we’re part of a society. We aren’t ineffectual if only we do something. Now is the time to do it.”
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KELLIE TRANTER, lawyer and human rights activist

Lawyer and human rights activist Kellie Tranter delivers a breath-taking speech at Parliament House, Sydney on September 12th, 2012 for the “Assange, WikiLeaks & the Law in a Post 9/11 World” conference.

Transcript with links:

I’d like to thank the NSW Greens for hosting this forum and may I say how honoured I am to be a part of such a distinguished panel.

The tragic events of September 11 created an atmosphere that our government, and the United States government it followed, could do no wrong in their response. One courageous voice of reason following September 11 came from Arundhati Roy. She immediately saw what was coming and wrote a lengthy article in September 2001, challenging the instinct for retribution.

But it was too late.

Vengeance and fear and self-interested opportunism spread like weaponised anthrax through the blood and organs of Western liberal democracies. Now, more than a decade later, what remains of them is little more than a shell.

Too many of us had – and sadly, too many still have – blind faith that our political institutions would act in our best interests, so we were prepared to permit intrusions upon our civil liberties, justice and freedom of speech. We gullibly swallowed the lies and half-truths spouted by our politicians and officialdom which were reliably parroted in mainstream media.

On average a new anti-terror statute was passed every 6.7 weeks during the post 9/11 life of the Howard government. Experts say that represents a higher level of legislative output than that of nations facing much greater threats from terrorism.

Our capitulation to fear, to the “be alert, but not alarmed” phenomenon, provided a fertile field for our government to enhance and expand the use of state power.

All citizens became potential suspects and victims, with laws restricting freedom of speech through sedition offences; detention and questioning for up to a week by ASIO of citizens not suspected of any crime; the banning of organisations by executive decision; control orders enabling house arrest for up to a year, detention without charge or trial for up to 14 days and warrantless searches of private property by police officers; warrants able to be issued against family members, journalists, children under 18 and innocent bystanders; and more recently powers to carry out surveillance offshore in relation to Australia’s economic interests, and to spy on people and organisations overseas, all with a thirst for data retention.

It’s no quantum leap to look towards the future and see how these instruments of control have the capacity to be misused and abused, particularly where Australia is the only democratic nation in the world without a national human rights law or bill of rights.

Governments and security apparatuses – perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not – shepherded a feeding frenzy of suspicion by individuals towards one another, towards minority groups, towards people of different ethnic backgrounds and religions in the name of national security.

While we were busy parting the curtains and holding a prying eye on our suspicious looking neighbour, some of the real criminals and perpetrators of violence were slipping out the back door, dressed in their business suits, ready to commit their own “officially sanctioned” crimes. It’s crimes of that sort which have been revealed by WikiLeaks, thanks to its sources.

For far too long, particularly now that we have the means of gathering and disseminating information almost immediately, there has been far too little awareness, discussion or accountability. And it was the focus on informing quickly rather than on informing well that prepared the ground for WikiLeaks.

A global political and economic landscape with the powerful and the strong seeking to eliminate government as a buffer between the powerful and the weak, and many governments like our own fawning to superpowers, was the perfect climate in which Julian Assange and WikiLeaks could flourish. The search for truth by people everywhere created their market. And learning the truth created the push for political reform for the oppressed, the deceived, the disenfranchised and the marginalised.

The late Donella Meadows, a famous systems theorist, captured the landscape this way: “If you see behaviour that persists over time, there is likely a mechanism creating that consistent behaviour (ie feedback loop) … Using accumulated wealth, privilege, special access, or inside information to create more wealth, privilege, special access or inside information are examples of the archetype called ‘success to the successful’. This system trap is found wherever the winners of a competition receive as part of the reward, the means to compete even more efficiently in the future (reinforcing feedback loop). Everything the winner wins is extracted from the loser.”

Julian Assange made similar points at a conference in Malaysia in 2009.

Looking at just a few of the documents released by WikiLeaks shows “success to the successful” at play. There are documents that reveal threats to nations who oppose Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) crops, with military-style trade wars; the Ministry of Defence telling the US that Britain had ‘put measures in place’ to protect American interests during the Chilcot inquiry; troops being sent in to protect New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra’s lucrative United Nations contract to supply Iraq. And of course, there are the many documents revealing endemic corruption in Afghanistan, India, Croatia, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Uganda, Saudi Arabia and so on.

Other WikiLeaks documents include or address kill and capture lists; assassination squads; US soldiers handcuffing and executing children as young as five months of age, and ordering an air strike aimed at covering up their crime; “hundreds” of former employees of Blackwater, barred from Iraq over a deadly 2007 shooting, later working with other firms guarding US diplomats there; and the Australian government, to avoid a stoush with US and Singapore, secretly winding back a critical environmental protection for the Great Barrier Reef against shipping accidents.

Fortunately all systems, whether economic or political, contain within them balancing loops that ultimately constrain them. The work of WikiLeaks represents a critical balancing feedback loop because it gives the public high quality information on matters of public interest that has the capacity to generate political reform. That’s probably what most scares the successful; it certainly helps to explain the efforts to purge it from the system.

The purging process has been relentless.

For WikiLeaks the organisation: financial blockades by Paypal, Mastercard and Visa. Apple removing its application from its Apps store. Swiss bank freezing assets. Amazon severing its ties. From government, a 32 page Pentagon report outlining recommendations to damage or destroy WikiLeaks and deter others. From the private sector, Palantir Technologies suggesting discrediting WikiLeaks by spreading disinformation and developing a media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities.

For Assange the person: throw a Red Interpol notice on a person not charged with any crime in any country and combine it with a secret grand jury and an espionage investigation of “unprecedented scale and nature”; ensure that no government will provide an assurance against onward extradition to the United States; make sure no official categorises him as an online publisher and journalist; cajole his own country into sitting on its diplomatic hands; subject his alleged source to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment; intimidate lawyers and associates at airports and at home; introduce laws which attempt to cast a net over his operations, and even threaten to storm an embassy in flagrant disregard for the Vienna Convention. It’s easy to get a sense of the desired objectives and the reasons for the methods.

As some say, the elephant has taken a run up to squash an ant.

Still, government representatives try earnestly to sound convincing when they tell us this case is not political.

Julian Assange, like Manning, deserves equal treatment before the law. The presumption of innocence has long been lost through incessant media commentary both here and abroad, and it doesn’t help when our Prime Minister peremptorily declares the actions of Julian Assange to be illegal or when the President of the United States declares that Bradley Manning had broken the law. You’ll still note that there’s no evidence linking the leaks to anyone’s death or harm, or of any specific charge against Assange.

US national security officials allege Bradley Manning aided Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leaking documents to WikiLeaks. Prosecutors allude to evidence including an AQAP magazine and a video featuring an English-language spokesman for the group. An issue of AQAP’s “Inspire” magazine published in late 2010 quoted Assange.

One can only assume that the video in which they refer is that titled “A Message to the Members of the Media” by the late US born Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki (killed by a US drone strike in Yemen along with his teenage son which includes this passage in its narrative: “America struggles to block a website like WikiLeaks for merely quoting the truth about some events of the US war in Iraq and dialogues between American politicians and their lackeys around the world..And today, the owner of WikiLeaks has been accused of the same [immoral crimes], to distract and swerve him from his work of leaking the inner secrets of the rotten White House.”

Julian Assange was quoted in the Inspire magazine but so was Anti-War Campaigner Richard Boyd Barrett. A later edition of Inspire included quotes from respected journalists Robert Fisk and Michael Hastings, from whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and from Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States.

Of course Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is active in Yemen. You’ll recall that WikiLeaks released cables showing that the Yemeni government covered up US drone strikes against Al-Qaeda, claiming the bombs were its own. Only a week ago 13 civilians were killed by drone strikes in a country that has dire water shortages, an impending famine and is the poorest Arab nation in the world.

I’ve written elsewhere on the various indicators that Assange’s extradition to Sweden for questioning obviously is the first step in extraditing him to the United States. Everything points that way. But perhaps what’s most telling is that every country in the chain has refused to give a diplomatic assurance that Assange will not be extradited to the United States. They wouldn’t give that assurance to Assange and they wouldn’t give it to Ecuador. If there was no intention to extradite him to the United States why wouldn’t the assurances readily have been given.

What faces Assange if he is extradited to the United States is, at the very least, inhumane treatment of the kind presently being doled out to Bradley Manning. It’s abundantly clear that the purpose of incarcerating and mistreating these people is not just personal punishment but demonstration by example of what happens to any person who dares to cross the powers that be. In jurisprudential jargon, it’s the twin purposes of punishment and deterrence.

I’ve also voiced my criticism of the stance taken by the Australian government since Assange surrendered himself in England. Not only has our government done nothing to protect him, it’s done nothing even to assist him. Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s assurances otherwise are contradicted by the assistance offered to the Australian lawyer recently imprisoned in Libya and more recently, to Austin Mackell an independent journalist detained in Egypt. Bob Carr’s assurances really become incredible when you look at the assistance offered to an Australian arms dealer in Iraq, Bradley John Thompson.

I haven’t spoken with or met Julian Assange but I certainly agree with AC Grayling that conformist societies that frown on individuality are not merely repressive and reactionary, but stagnant, and that we must all be hospitable to eccentricity, innovation, experimentation and the abandonment of traditions that have outlived their usefulness and become a barrier to progress.

Grayling’s also right to say: “Consider what is required for people to be able to claim other liberties, or defend them when they are attacked. Consider what is required for a democratic process, which demands the statement and testing of policy proposals and party platforms, and the questioning of governments. Consider what is required for due process at law, in which people can defend themselves against accusation, accuse wrongdoers who have harmed them, collect and examine evidence, make a case or refute one.

“Consider what is required for genuine education and research, enquiry, debate, exchange of information, challenges to falsehood, proposal and examination of opinion. Consider what is required for a free press, which although it always abuses its freedoms in the hunt for profit, is necessary with all its warts as one of the two essential states of a free society (the other being the independent judiciary).”

WikiLeaks and Julian Assange came along at a time of crisis in truth in our political and economic systems. Or perhaps, more accurately, they came along when finally it became possible to expose the lack of truth in our political and economic systems.

WikiLeaks was there to receive that kind of information – information of critical importance to every citizen of the world – and it was prepared to assess, edit and publish that information to enable global citizens to assess the actions of corrupt governments and corporations. Often for the first time, the glaring light of truth burned on what was really happening in places near and far, on what people in a multitude of positions and circumstances were doing to others, and on political and financial arrangements involving corruption, duplicity and inhumanity.

Corporate mainstream media organisations haven’t drilled down in these areas, and they won’t. WikiLeaks will. But if it is to be able to do so we have to do something now to protect this little green shoot of honesty from being trampled by the hobnailed boots of opportunism and expediency. We have to stand up to protect WikiLeaks and to protect Julian Assange.

KELLIE TRANTER delivers a breath-taking speech at the "Assange, Wikileaks & the Law in a post 911 world" conference. Parliament House, Sydney, Sept. 12 2012

Kellie Tranter is an Australian lawyer and human rights activist who stood as an Independent candidate for the NSW Parliament with an unsolicited endorsement of her candidature by anti-corruption fighter John Hatton AO.

She has delivered addresses, chaired workshops and participated in public debates on issues like climate change, human rights and gender equality at local, national and international conferences, including speeches opposing unjustified wars and economic exploitation. She has held office with BPW International and her activism has been acknowledged by the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Kellie regularly contributes political and social commentary to public affairs websites like ABC’s The Drum, National Times and Online Opinion and has written for New Matilda and the Australia Institute.

To the people of the United State of America

In about four months time many of you will cast your vote in the Presidential election. Many Americans – like many Australians – have grown weary of a political system that has allowed two major political parties to hollow out our respective democracies, and then elope with lobbyists, multi–national corporations and corrupt and manipulative financial institutions.

We may delude ourselves that casting a vote will make a difference, but that alone cannot and will not change the mindset of our elected representatives or those who fund and influence them.

When did you last feel that you were helping to determine and shape the laws and the actions of your country? When did you last see your mainstream media fearlessly scrutinising or criticising or investigating the actions of your government and corporations, or holding them to account?

As you struggle to keep your jobs and pay your bills and provide for your families, it may be difficult to understand why citizens in Australia seek your indulgence to make the plight of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning an issue in your forthcoming election.

But if you care about civil liberties, about freedom of speech and the press, and about truth and democracy then I’m afraid that you, like us, have little choice. What is at stake here is democratic freedoms and justice; injustices, left unchecked, have a way of spreading from a few to the many, and the many include the common people of your country as well as mine.

Assange and Manning remind us all of the need to protect individual rights against the weight of a State. They remind us that we have a right to know, and that the means of information must be open and free.

We appreciate that many Americans may have had mixed feelings about Julian Assange following the release of the US diplomatic cables. With the Administration’s immediate outrage and your Vice President calling him a high tech terrorist and your media repeating calls for his assassination, that was perfectly understandable. But now that the dust has settled, let’s take a moment to reflect.

Do you remember, after the release of the Afghan War Diary, being told that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family”? And later finding out that the Pentagon had refused to help WikiLeaks redact the documents for harm minimisation purposes? And later your officials conceding that they had no evidence that the documents led to anyone’s death?

Remember being told that some of the individuals referred to in the cables were subsequently jailed, injured, or killed? And the later acknowledgment that it was often hard to show a direct causal link to the State Department cables, because many of the individuals who suffered were already under foreign government scrutiny?

Remember being told that WikiLeaks cables worsened US relations with Afghan President Karzai? Yet it was recently announced that Afghanistan had become a major non-NATO ally of the United States?

Remember being told that US diplomacy would be harmed? And later hearing the US State Department admit that the release of the cables was embarrassing but not damaging?

Do you remember Assange being accused of giving aid and comfort to terrorists who seek to destroy the United States? It’s not so long ago that thousands of Australian citizens stood here to peacefully protest against joining your government in the invasion of Iraq, only to be accused by our then Prime Minister John Howard of giving comfort to Saddam Hussein.

Accusations like these have plenty of historical precedent: Hermann Goering said at the Nuremburg Trials: “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

All governments have the right to keep legitimate secrets, there’s no question about that. But are drone strikes in Yemen, done in your name, a legitimate secret that should be covered up? Is it legitimate to keep secret, actions in your name that keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour instead of 61 cents? Is it a legitimate secret that your government engaged in a political campaign to block Spanish Courts from securing accountability for torture of its citizens at Guantanamo Bay. You couldn’t even ask these questions – in fact, you’d have little idea of what your government is doing in your name – without the work of Assange, WikiLeaks and its sources.

It was an American revolutionary, Patrick Henry, who said “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks and its sources, have done no more than expose the truth. The truth explains the pain and suffering and misery felt by innocent men, women and children around the world, it explains the antipathy other people in other countries feel towards the United States, and it explains why many American citizens feel betrayed by their own government. Yet these people brave enough to show the world the truth stand condemned, by your government and by mine.

Over the last 30 years particularly, Australia has become the de facto 51st state of your Union. The only matters and issues that receive unquestioning bipartisan support in this country’s parliament are all things Washington. Your Government’s foreign policy wishes become our necessities, and our leaders are too weak to resist. So much so that the cables revealed that our government was prepared to work secretly with your government to weaken a key international treaty to ban cluster bombs. You’ve seen or heard of the damage and injury cluster bombs can inflict; can you imagine the shame and disgust many of us felt upon learning that?

Our politicians tell us that your government is not interested in extraditing Assange to the United States; they say they don’t know what a sealed indictment is, and they deny knowledge of a secret grand jury. But they will never call Assange a journalist, because your Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and many Australian newspaper editors and our Walkley Foundation agree that his work is journalism that invokes First Amendment protection. Our politicians cravenly refuse to stand up for Assange and they try to hide behind carefully chosen words, no doubt partly in deference to your government’s wishes, but no doubt also because our government, like your government, would prefer to keep its grubby secrets from the public gaze.

The people of the United States of America have a proud tradition, shining brightly from the time of its Founding Fathers, of standing up against tyranny and fighting for liberty and justice. The citizens of the world, including the citizens of Australia, need the help of the American people to ensure that no government – including the Australian government and the United States government – tries to punish Assange or WikiLeaks for doing no more than publishing the truth, from lifting the veil of secrecy from sordid narratives and permitting the common person to see what government does in his or her name. We all have to stand up against this, and the principles can hardly be better expressed than they were by two of your own Presidents: John Adams, your second President, warned us that “The jaws of power always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing”, and Abraham Lincoln later marked our obligation: “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

I sincerely hope that all Americans will heed those great voices and not sin by silence, but stand in protest against this threat to our freedom.

Thank you