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.

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…