Assange: Free at last!

Written by: Nick G. on 25 June 2024

 

(Above: Rally in London in February 2024 demands Assange's release)

Imprisoned Australian journalist Julian Assange is free - bar the formality of an appearance before a US court in the US Marianas Islands tomorrow.

In a plea deal struck with the US authorities, Assange has agreed to plead guilty to one charge under the US Espionage Act. His sentencing is likely to include a jail term which will be subsumed within the time he has already spent in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison.

Assange’s release is a victory for the many people here and abroad who have campaigned for his release and for the dropping of US charges against him.

Though some might see his release as a victory for Albanese and Wong’s “quiet diplomacy”, it rather reflects their abject failure to stand up to the US and secure Assange’s unconditional release.

Worse, by making it a condition of his release by pleading guilty to a crime of which he is innocent, the US imperialists have created a precedent for the citizen of any foreign country to be charged, tried and convicted under US laws. 

This is a threat to political activists and journalists of all countries who use US sources to expose US crimes.

This is not to criticise Assange. He has been held hostage by the British inside a jail designed to house murderers and terrorists, and subjected to inhuman conditions, pending a threatened extradition to the US.

Our Party has supported Assange since he first faced charges.  In 2012, we wrote:

HANDS OFF ASSANGE!

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have performed a huge service to the people of the world by providing a platform for the publication of information that our rulers want kept from us.

Information released to date substantiates US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the existence of death squads and corruption in Kenya, of crony capitalism and speculative manipulation behind the financial collapse of Iceland and of unethical behaviour on the part of Sarah Palin.

Closer to home, Kevin Rudd has been outed as a cheerleader for the use of force by the US against China. In his March 24, 2009 advice to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the then Prime Minister called for a readiness to “deploy force” unless China “integrated itself effectively into the international community”. This is tantamount to declaring that China’s diplomatic pursuit of its own national interests, particularly if they challenge US global leadership, is the action of a rogue state that must be dealt with militarily.

Agents of imperialism

Wikileaks has revealed the existence of senior Labor politicians who report to the US embassy on matters that they are not even prepared to share with the Australian public. It is a master-servant relationship that stinks to high Heaven.

Julia Gillard’s condemnation of Assange represents the sacrificing of yet another Australian civilian to the interests of the US imperialists. 

We remain of the view that Assange has performed a huge service to the people of the world, and that if anyone should be in the dock, then it should be the US imperialist warmongers and assassins and those who collaborate with them.  

It now remains for Albanese and Attorney-General Dreyfus to turn their attention to Dan Duggan, the US-born Australian citizen who has been locked in solitary confinement for 20 months in Australian jails despite facing no charges in Australia while the US attempts to have him extradited to face charges in the US.

Assange is out, now let us get Duggan out. 

Bring Assange Home!

Written by: Nick G. on 20 June 2022

In less than a fortnight’s time, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited from Belmarsh Prison in England to the United States.

There he will face charges that together could result in a 175-year prison sentence.

Chelsea Manning, the US Army Intelligence analyst who provided Wikileaks with confidential files, was sentenced in 2010, but had her sentence commuted in 2017. She is a free citizen, while Assange, has effectively been a prisoner since taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is reported to have sympathised with Assange, yet the government he leads has not demanded Assange’s release.

It has merely communicated that Assange “is entitled to due process, humane and fair treatment”, none of which he has so far experienced, and stated that his “case has dragged on for too long and that it should be brought to a close”. 

“Bringing it to a close” simply means hurrying up the US prosecution, not withdrawing and ending it.

Our Party has supported Assange since he first faced charges.  In 2012, we wrote:

HANDS OFF ASSANGE!

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have performed a huge service to the people of the world by providing a platform for the publication of information that our rulers want kept from us.

Information released to date substantiates US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the existence of death squads and corruption in Kenya, of crony capitalism and speculative manipulation behind the financial collapse of Iceland and of unethical behaviour on the part of Sarah Palin.

Closer to home, Kevin Rudd has been outed as a cheerleader for the use of force by the US against China. In his March 24, 2009 advice to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the then Prime Minister called for a readiness to “deploy force” unless China “integrated itself effectively into the international community”. This is tantamount to declaring that China’s diplomatic pursuit of its own national interests, particularly if they challenge US global leadership, is the action of a rogue state that must be dealt with militarily.

Agents of imperialism

Wikileaks has revealed the existence of senior Labor politicians who report to the US embassy on matters that they are not even prepared to share with the Australian public. It is a master-servant relationship that stinks to high Heaven.

Julia Gillard’s condemnation of Assange represents the sacrificing of yet another Australian civilian to the interests of the US imperialists. 

We remain of the view that Assange has performed a huge service to the people of the world, and that if anyone should be in the dock, then it should be the US imperialist warmongers and assassins and those who collaborate with them.

Prime Minister Albanese, please immediately convey to US President Biden that Australia wants all charges against Assange dropped, the extradition proceedings to be cancelled, and Assange returned immediately to Australia as a free citizen.

 

AFP raid on journalist: Stand up to state intimidation

Nick G.                           4 June 2019

The Australian Federal Police earlier today raided the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst.

Smethurst’s “crime” was to have reported on plans to allow spy organisation the Australian Signals Directorate to conduct cyber surveillance on Australian citizens. Her report also included images of documents relevant to her disclosures.

Her report was carried in the Daily Telegraph over a year ago, on April 28, 2018. The same day, the Defence Department referred the leak of the documents to the AFP.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union that represents journalists, described the raid as an "outrageous attack on press freedom".

"It is an outrage that more than a year after the story was reported in April, 2018, but just days after the federal election result, the Federal Police are now raiding a journalist's home in order to seize documents, computers and a mobile phone in order to track down the source," MEAA media president Marcus Strom said.

A spokesperson for Smethurst’s employer, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, said "This raid demonstrates a dangerous act of intimidation towards those committed to telling uncomfortable truths."

Perhaps for the first time in the history of our Party, we find ourselves in agreement with News Corp.

“Freedom of the press” for whom?

We have long argued, however, that under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the concept of “press freedom” is quite illusory.  The capitalist press is largely filled with inconsequential rubbish designed to distract people from probing the reasons for the inequality and injustice embedded in capitalist class relations.  Only a few multi-billionaires like Murdoch cam aspire to have ownership of mass media such as newspapers, radio networks and TV stations.

Nevertheless, it serves the people’s interests to have journalists courageous enough to stand up to both private and state media owners.  Social and political contradictions can sometimes be allowed to surface under the protection of the bourgeois notion of a “free press”. 

The illusory “independence” of the ABC

T

he government-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation does not have to cull content to the commercial imperative of delivering its audience to powerful advertisers.  But its content does play a part in ensuring the level of funding that comes from the government.  When Emma Alberici ran a few stories that put the government and the multinationals it serves in a bad light, ABC Chairman Justin Milne sent an email to managing director Michelle Guthrie demanding that Alboreci be sacked. The email was sent on May 8, 2018, one day after former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull sent a list of grievances about Alberici’s reporting to the ABC. Milne may not have needed to be prompted: he was at the time the chairman of MYOB, one of the companies criticised in her corporate tax story on big corporations that paid no tax on their earnings in Australia.

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also called for the sacking of ABC political editor Andrew Probyn.  Justin Milne allegedly told Ms Guthrie “you just have to shoot him’’ and said refusing the then-prime minister’s wishes would put half a billion dollars of project funding and “the future of the ABC at risk”.

Yesterday, the ABC’s Media Watch program reported that the producer of Saturday AM, Thomas Oriti, had killed a story by journalist Isobel Roe that questioned the economic viability of the Adani coal mine.  Adani had threatened litigation against the ABC through ABC News boss Gaven Morris even before having previewed the story.

Limitations of “press freedom”

Whilst the Daily Telegraph is striking an heroic pose in defending the integrity of its journalist, neither it nor any of the garbage in the Murdoch stable, or the capitalist press more widely, has taken a stand in defence of people like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange. Petty arguments about whether or not Assange is a journalist and therefore entitled to defence under the “press freedom” umbrella, are beside the point. Assange and the others broke the imperialists’ monopoly on knowledge and information.

Nor have they defended Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery , both charged with leaking details of Australian espionage against the government of Timor-Leste during negotiations over oil and gas drilling proposals from prosecution and the deliberate drawing out of the case against them. 

So, while we do support News Corp and its defence of journalist Smethurst, we call for a much broader campaign against all forms of state intimidation of journalists and whistle-blowers.

Intimidation by the state reveals a steady slide towards the adoption of fascist measures against anyone who questions imperialism and its supine lackeys within parliament and the state apparatus.

The latter have all the backbone of dead jellyfish on an abandoned beach.  The people alone have the backbone to stand up against intimidation.

Wikileaks and the exposure of imperialism

Vanguard September 2013 p. 11
Jim H.

As Julian Assange continues to be holed up in a London embassy fighting attempts to have him finally extradited to the United States, he and his many supporters continue their work to expose the activities of imperialism against the peoples of the world.

WikiLeaks may not consciously be in the business of targeting the imperialist powers and their key servants. Even so, WikiLeaks’ actions serve this role anyway. And this is a very good thing.

The damning evidence concerning the utter subservience of leading Labor politicians and figures reporting to the US Embassy in Canberra, and the relationships between their  counterparts in the Liberal and National Parties and the US imperialists, helped to expose the real nature of parliamentary politics in Australia and confirmed what many Australians already suspected about our so-called politicians.

It brought to light the high level of dishonesty and the anti-people nature of the practice of misnamed capitalist democracy. In reality it is no more than a fig leaf to cover the essential dictatorship of a few that is the underlying reality: the Australian people do not have political power in their hands.

Further than this, WikiLeaks has shown the extent to which Australian sovereignty and independence has been sacrificed to American control.

For these reasons the ongoing activities of this group deserve serious support.

The WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance has been set up to continue the exposure work.

The WikiLeaks Party was officially registered on July 6 and this will field candidates for the Senate in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia.

At the time of writing, the Wikileaks Party was going through the usual internal disruptions that parliamentary elections seem to trigger over the allocation of preferences.

This participation in the electoral process will not bring about any major change. The staged political system will remain.  This does not mean that there is not a good side to it. There is. It is that there is an opportunity to use the electoral process as a platform to expose the politicians and political institutions of the system; assist Australia’s working people to deepen their understanding and prepare them to take on the urgent task of working out an alternative. WikiLeaks can be part of this.

At the same time, the longer term need to organise the fighting capacity of the Australian people on the ground, under working class leadership, remains the most important task by far.

This takes us past any immediate election process and focusses instead on the real politics that is outside parliament, where power largely resides in the networks embracing the big, mainly multinational corporations (including the capitalist media), and the leading circles in the military and diplomatic spheres.

Hands off Assange!

Vanguard September 2012 p. 10
Nick G.

British threats to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to seize Julian Assange reveal the hypocrisy of the imperialists.

The heart of the issue is Assange’s challenge to the imperialists’ control of information.  His responsibility for publishing leaked documents makes him a criminal in their eyes.

It seems that the imperialists will grant refuge in their embassies to people who serve their interests in one way or another, but deny the sanctity of the embassies of other countries to people who oppose their interests.

When British oil and tobacco companies were seeking to extend their interests in Iran in the early 1900s the British Legation in Teheran sheltered opponents of the Shah.  During three weeks in 1906 some 12,000 – 16,000 constitutional activists and demonstrators sheltered in its grounds.

The leader of the Democratic Party of Iran took refuge in the British Legation in 1908 and eventually fled to London.

US Embassies a haven for anti-communists

US embassies provided warmth during the Cold War to opponents of the Soviet Union. Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Hungary took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest for 15 years whilst a Soviet Lieutenant-Colonel who defected in France was sheltered for 6 months in the US embassy in Paris and was then granted asylum in the USA.

Seven Siberian Pentecostals were given refuge in the US embassy in Moscow from June 27, 1978 to June 27, 1983.  Their case was resolved by the being allowed to emigrate to Israel from where they moved to the USA.

The US now claims that it doesn’t grant political asylum in its embassies abroad, but as recently as last May it gave refuge in its embassy in Beijing to Chen Guancheng who then ended up in the USA.

It also sheltered the counter-revolutionary Fang Lizhi from June 5, 1989 until June 25, 1990 before granting him asylum in the USA.

Australia no less hypocritical

The Australian Embassy in Beijing also gave refuge to the Taiwanese singer Hou Dejian for several months following the latter’s participation in the events at Tiananmen Square.  Hou, whose eye-witness accounts later confirmed that there had been no massacre in the Square, left the embassy on August 16 and was sent back to Taiwan.

The protection afforded to Hou Dejian arose from the perception of his leading role in challenging the Communist Party of China.  It contrasts markedly with the fate of those Australians -  Wilfred Burchett, David Hicks and Assange – who are thrown to the wolves because they have challenged the real rulers in Australia, the US imperialists.

The British and US imperialists must not be allowed to get their hands on Assange.

The British must not be allowed to storm the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange must have safe passage to Ecuador.

..........................

Further reading: 

Comment by Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

Assange's speech from the Ecuadorian Embassy balcony:

“Can you hear me?

“I am here today because I cannot be there with you today. But thank you for coming. Thank you for your resolve and your generosity of spirit.

“On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it and you brought the world’s eyes with you.

“Inside this embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire escape. But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you.

“If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.

“So, the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador.

“Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.

And so, to those brave people. I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.

“And I also thank the government, and in particular Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who upheld the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration of my asylum. And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.

“And I also have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have shown me the hospitality and kindness despite the threats we all received.

“This Friday, there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington DC to address this very situation.

“And so, I am grateful to those people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and to all other Latin American countries who have come out to defend the right to asylum.

“And to the people of the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia who have supported me in strength, even when their governments have not. And to those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice. Your day will come.

“To the staff, supporters and sources of Wikileaks, whose courage and commitment and loyalty has seen no equal.

“To my family and to my children who have been denied their father. Forgive me, we will be reunited soon.

“As Wikileaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America.

“Will it return to and reaffirm the values, the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world, in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?

“I say it must turn back. I ask President Obama to do the right thing. The United States must renounce its witch-hunts against Wikileaks. The United States must dissolve its FBI investigation.

“The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters. The United States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

“There must be no more foolish talk about prosecuting any media organisation; be it Wikileaks, or be it the New York Times.

“The US administration’s war on whistleblowers must end.

“Thomas Drake, William Binney and John Kirakou and the other heroic whistleblowers must – they must – be pardoned or compensated for the hardships they have endured as servants of the public record.

“And to the Army Private who remains in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who was found by the United Nations to have endured months of torturous detention in Quantico, Virginia and who has yet – after two years in prison – to see a trial: he must be released.

“Bradley Manning must be released.

“And if Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and an example to us all and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.

“Bradley Manning must be released.

“On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial. The legal maximum is 120 days.

“On Thursday, my friend Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Human Rights Centre, was sentenced to three years in prison for a tweet. On Friday, a Russian band were sentenced to two years in jail for a political performance.

“There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.

“Thank you.”