Thoughts and Opinions
By Max Atkinson – posted Tuesday, 15 May 2012
According to Geoffrey Robertson QC, human rights lawyer and adviser to Julian Assange, the British Supreme Court is likely to rule on his appeal against extradition this month. The personal consequences for Assange are grave, and unlikely to end in Sweden: the U.S. has now arranged a secret grand jury indictment to deport him for trial in America for crimes yet to be clarified but which, if proved, may see him imprisoned for many years.
Those who follow the case will know the sole issue is whether a Swedish prosecutor is a ‘judicial authority’ able to issue an arrest warrant under the Extradition Act. They may also know, through widely publicised remarks by his legal advisers, that English law sees this as an abuse of rights, contrary to ideals implicit in the separation of powers. The Supreme Court has granted an appeal because this issue has ‘great public importance’. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday 14th of May 2012
Published by Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/14/noam_chomsky_on_wikileaks_obamas_targeted
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview with Noam Chomsky. I spoke with him last week in the courtyard of the King Juan Carlos I Center at New York University. I asked him about WikiLeaks.
May 9, 2012 – Sao Paulo, Brazil
When most people think of Brazil, it’s the incredible beaches that come to mind. Or the crazy parties of Carnival. Or the spectacular vistas and great weather. Or how indescribably gorgeous (and welcoming) the locals are.
But here’s a little known fact, and it’s something that sets Brazil apart from most other places: Brazil’s constitution prohibits the extradition of Brazilian citizens to other countries. This is a rare gem in the world… I’ll explain.
Believe it or not, most countries are happy to sell their citizens down the river to another government. If you have been charged with a crime in another country, or are even simply ‘wanted for questioning’, your home government in all likelihood will comply with the request to round you up and ship you off.
For example, only 7% of all extradition requests that the US government made to the British government between 1 January 2004 and 31 July 2009 were denied. The US government denied ZERO extradition requests from the British government over the same period.
You may also be familiar the ongoing case of Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for “questioning” related to bizarre sex case.
The British government approved Sweden’s extradition request, though Assange has appealed the decision numerous times. He’s lost every appeal so far, and in all likelihood he’ll be on a plane bound for Sweden in the near future.
Assange is an Australian citizen, and his government has completely abandoned him.
You may also remember the more recent case of Kim Dotcom, the German founder of MegaUpload.com who was arrested in New Zealand as part of a US operation to shut down his file-sharing site. Like Assange, the German government has been silent.
This is ironic because most people are brought up to believe that their governments will protect them… that if you get into a jam overseas, they’ll send the military to rescue you. Read the rest of this entry »
Socialist Alliance gay and lesbian rights spokesperson Rachel Evans spoke in Sydney on April 24 at a rally calling to free accused WikiLeaks’ source Private Bradley Manning from prison in the US, where he is being held in solitary confinement. The protest was part of an international day of protest for Manning, who faces a court martial and possible life in prison if convicted. Evans’ speech is below.
* * *
We are one of the many groups across 14 countries around the world taking action today because Bradley Manning is, once again, being subjected to a kangaroo court — a military “pre-trial” in Fort Meade.
Twenty-four-year-old Bradley Manning is a hero to us. But he frightens the US. The most powerful nation in the world — with its war drones, nuclear arsenal, its military bases, its air force, and all its soldiers, has decided Bradley Manning is a threat.
As a soldier in the US army, stationed in Iraq from October 2010 onwards, Manning dealt with data that showed the US and their allies are war criminals and are robbing the resources of the global South. Manning is alleged to be the source of the biggest leak of US secrets in history. It is alleged he leaked this evidence to WikiLeaks.
He faces a potential life sentence.
Manning served in the US military when you could not be openly gay. Manning defied this homophobic policy — showing the same moral determination that would later assist the people of the Middle East dying under US occupation and war. In his own way, Manning rebelled against the homophobia of the US army.
It is just one reason why we salute Manning. He is a hero to all for standing up against homophobia. A prejudice that causes high rates of suicide among queer youth and should be relegated to the dustbin of history. Manning is a role model for young people standing up against bigotry.
Recently, US President Barack Obama ended the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy — finally allowing working class and poor queers — many of whom join the army simply for a chance to get an education — to be out of the closet.
But Obama has not changed the core nature of that army, which has brought so much horror, war and terror to Afghanistan and Iraq, so the US can cement its economic and strategic dominance in the region.
Manning is also gender queer. From the emails between himself and the man who sold him out to the FBI, Adrian Lamo, it is evident that Manning was trying to work out if he wanted to be a woman.
Manning was stationed in eastern Baghdad from October 2009, where he accessed thousands of files which showed the US imposing its will on people all over the global South. Acccessing these files for up to 14 hours a day, he questioned the role of US power in the world as he questioned his own identity.
That Manning was gay and potentially transitioning to become a woman is important. He knew what it was to be bullied. To be ridiculed. To be denied dignity. Knowing this, he also had empathy for the Iraqi people who were also being denied dignity and a normal life.
The US-led occupation, which includes Australian soldiers, has killed more than 1 million people in Iraq over 20 years of occupation. Women, children, men: all have lost their lives.
The invasion of Iraq has not brought democracy, women’s rights or freedom. The war was always about control of Iraq’s resources.
This was best articulated by an Iraqi high school student I saw speak at a Melbourne rally against the Gulf War in 1991. She said: “If my people’s blood was made of oil, you would not have come to kill us.”
Manning showed human sympathy with the victims of US power in the global south. In the chatlog transcript with Lamo, Manning said he has access to “260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective”.
He also said he felt he had to take action because “it might actually change something”.
If Manning is indeed the source of leaks to WikiLeaks, then he is a hero who has helped change the world. The world will never be the same after WikiLeaks’ releases.
WikiLeaks has helped provide the anti-war movement, and democracy movements throughout the world, with the arguments and the confidence they need.
We need to continue to build such movements that challenge the US and Australian occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Australian government says they will leave Afghanistan. This is a victory for the movement and mass opposition to the occupation. But they also say they will leave special forces in the country.
But Australia and other occupiers must take all the troops out. They should leave Afghanistan, pay war reparations and rebuild what they have destroyed.
And they should pull all the troops from Iraq. The US’s so-called withdrawal from Iraq has left thousands of soldiers and private US paid mercenaries stationed in the country.
Like Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is also facing persecution because he dared to reveal the truth. Assange has been held under house arrest without charge in Britain for more than 500 days.
Defending Manning and defending Assange and WikiLeaks is part of building the anti-war movement today.
This means we also need to turn the heat up on the Australian government, which has happily sacrificed human lives to secure the profits and power of the 1%.
By The Sail, on May 3, 2012
Source from onlineopinion, 24 April 2012
If he doesn’t win it means that anyone can be extradited from the UK, be arrested and put into detention at the behest of any prosecutor anywhere in Europe without having to show any evidence, without being charged and without proper judicial oversight. So I have faith that the British justice system should not and cannot stand for this sort of precedent.
(Jennifer Robinson, legal adviser to Julian Assange, speaking to Chris Uhlmann, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 2nd Feb, 2012.)
On 2nd November the Queen’s Bench division of the High Court dismissed an appeal by the founder of Wikileaks against extradition to Sweden to face trial for rape and related crimes. It rejected each of four grounds of appeal. On December 16th the Supreme Court ruled that the most important of these, a claim that the Swedish Prosecution Authority was not a valid ‘judicial authority’ to issue an arrest warrant, was of such public importance as to justify a hearing before seven judges. The outcome of this hearing, argued on 1st and 2nd February, will confirm whether Ms. Robinson’s faith in the British system of justice is well-founded.
The question has aroused widespread concern, with rallies scheduled in major cities around the world, to be held when the decision is announced in May. So what is this case about, why have the Justices granted an appeal, and what might Assange reasonably expect?
The outstanding feature of the High Court’s judgment was its reluctance to acknowledge incompatible aims in the 2003 Act. The government’s aim was to facilitate extradition, primarily by the mutual recognition of the arrest practices of member states; but the Court also affirmed the scheme’s aim to respect the basic rights of those deported, which include a right to due process. This aim was explicit in the European Framework Decision, a pre-legislative treaty setting out the essentials of the scheme; the Court affirmed that, although this Framework Decision was not referred to in the British Act, it must govern its interpretation.
The Court explained that constitutional principles supporting basic rights were so important that they must be upheld even if Member States chose to ignore them; accordingly, while it was a matter for each State to designate its own warrant issuing authority, this would not apply ‘if the authority were self-evidently not a judicial authority’; thus,
… if a warrant was issued by a Ministry of Justice which the Member State had designated as an authority … it would not … be a valid EAW under the Framework Decision … it would self-evidently not have been issued by a body which, on principles universally accepted in Europe, was judicial.
Surprisingly, after this promising start the Court ignored these principles. It made no attempt to clarify them; nor did it explain why, if a minister’s warrant is a ‘self-evident’ violation, this is not true of arrest warrants issued by lesser officials, such as a police officer, customs official or public prosecutor. Why did the principles universally accepted in Europe not exclude them, given they might likewise rest on executive policy or administrative convenience? This is just as clear as in the hypothetical case of a justice minister. Read the rest of this entry »
by Gene Healy
This article appeared in The DC Examiner on December 14, 2010.
What’s surprising about Washington’s ongoing anti-WikiLeaks conniption isn’t what the purloined cables disclose about American foreign policy. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates admits that, despite a few “awkward” exposures, the consequences for U.S. national security will be “fairly modest.”
No, what’s really telling is how Washington’s political class has reacted to WikiLeaks. As they see it, anyone who threatens to undermine government secrecy is morally equivalent to Osama bin Laden.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says that if existing laws can’t stop WikiLeaks, “we need to change the law,” dammit, because the organization’s founder, international man of mystery Julian Assange, is a “high-tech terrorist.”
“Terrorism ain’t what it used to be. Apparently, today you can qualify just for embarrassing Secretary of State”. Hillary Clinton.
Terrorism ain’t what it used to be. Apparently, today you can qualify just for embarrassing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
True, some secrecy is necessary, in business, war and diplomacy. And Congress and the Obama administration should take a close look at the vulnerabilities Assange has exposed. Why did an Army private have access to such a broad range of diplomatic cables, anyway?
Anyone who values the First Amendment ought to oppose the campaign to “get” Assange by any means necessary. In a free society, you can’t just “change the law” to persecute someone you don’t like, and you can’t abuse your position to silence speech you oppose. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday, April 23, 2012
Julian Assange, The Professors, and The Taxi Driver
Scientific epidemiology meets Göran Rudling
Prologue
Julian Assange might go down in History – specifically the History of Democracy – not only as the WikiLeaks founder that tried to rescue the historical record, but also, perhaps mainly, as one of the principle contributors to world peace.
In true and unaffectedly, while I watched the first episode of Julian Assange’s interview-series The World Tomorrow I was all the time reflecting on many of my generation – who rotted in both nations of the Third World and Europe – and on the valuable role that OlofPalme played internationally, to which I can give testimony: Olof Palme did much for constructing peace because he was trusted broadly by people around the Third Wold and by many in Europe, and he also had a significant influence in the international scene.
Journalist and publisher Julian Assange
In times when journalism is extremely biased towards the establishment, would Hassan Nasrallah have accepted to have been interviewed by any other than Assange who has demonstrated such an uncompromising activist position in dealing with world powers? Obviously not: the Hezbollah leader waited six years to find a worthy interlocutor. Is it important for the possibilities of peace in the region – for finding new strategies to solve military deadlocks or political stalemates – that such stigmatized voices be also heard? The answer to this was loud and clear in the interview, as BBC announced afterwards, “Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah chief, offers Syria mediation”.
In my opinion, advocating for Neutrality in geopolitics does not mean the opportunism of positioning oneself, or pretended positioning oneself as been “neutral” between two belligerent factions or powers. That it was what Sweden perhaps did in the past (before openly becoming full NATO vassal state), but not what Palme did as a statesman, or even Carl Bildt did in his older role as peace mediator in the Balkan wars.
Heroes of the world tomorrow will be those few that audaciously and creatively today put their position at stake in the line of political fire, to call or enable negotiations for peace, for that tomorrow shall be true for many.
By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday April 17, 2012
The show opens with an introduction where WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange says WikiLeaks has exposed the “world’s secrets.” A shot of Assange on TIME magazine covers appears. Then, a snippet from the “Collateral Murder” video is shown. Screen shots of the document releases, which WikiLeaks is responsible for quickly appear as Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell interjects, “These documents belong to the United States government.” And, Assange says WikiLeaks has been attacked by the powerful.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen condemning WikiLeaks for the release of US State Embassy cables. Fox News pundit Bob Beckel calls on the US government to “illegally shoot the son of a bitch”—Assange. Then, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks says he has been detained without charge for 500 days but that hasn’t stopped WikiLeaks. A shot of the “Spy Files” pops up and then a clip of Assange speaking to Occupy London is shown. Video from the Arab Spring appears as well. The montage suggests WikiLeaks is part of the Arab Spring or Occupy movement or has played some role in fueling these popular uprisings. Finally, the tagline for the show is spoken: “Today we’re on a quest for revolutionary ideas that can change the world tomorrow,” and the title of the show, “World Tomorrow,” appears next to a cavalier Assange.
The guest on the show’s first episode is Sayyid Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah. He has not given an interview for six years, since the Israel-Lebanon conflict erupted in 2006. Assange says he is currently caught in the violent conflict in Syria and describes him as a man who has fought many battles against Israel. Nasrallah is also recognized as the leader of a party in Lebanon, making it clear this is no CNN interview.
Rather than announce Hezbollah as an organization designated by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, a more complex and nuanced description of Hezbollah is offered. Yet, Assange declares the purpose of the interview is to ask Nasrallah to address why he is a “freedom fighter” to millions and at the same time a “terrorist” to millions of others, indicating Assange has no intention to simply prove critics of Hezbollah wrong. He wishes to objectively explore both issues that have earned mainstream attention and issues that have been overlooked because they clash with mainstream understanding of Hezbollah.
The first questions from Assange involve the vision of Hezbollah for Israel and Palestine. He asks what the organization would consider “victory” and whether or not the organization would “disarm” if “victory” was achieved. His next question is why Hezbollah has launched rocket attacks on civilians. Then, he asks if a move into Lebanese electoral politics has corrupted Hezbollah, because in diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks he is described as shocked by members who are “driving around in SUVs, wearing silk robes, buying takeaway food.” The first questions are really based on conventional wisdom that Hezbollah is just a terrorist organization. If any US pundit had the guts to put Nasrallah on a TV show and grill him, these would be the first questions – what will it take for you to disarm and why do you launch rockets at civilians. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Renai LeMay on Tuesday, April 17, 2012
news The Australian Government’s hands are currently tied when it comes to the fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said last night, with the maverick Internet publisher’s Australian citizenship mattering little in the scheme of Swedish legal process unless a formal extradition request was made to shift him out of the European Union.
Assange is currently being held in the UK under a mild form of house arrest relating to alleged sexual offences in Sweden, where he is likely to be extradited under common European law. However, there are concerns Assange, who achieved global notoriety through his founding of the libertarian Wikileaks organisation, could be extradited from Sweden to the US to face prosecution over his organisations’ publication of classified material such as US diplomatic cables.
Assange is being represented by Australian-born human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who took live questions on the matter flanked by Roxon and a number of other commentators on the ABC’s Q&A television program last night (click here to watch the full program — it made for fascinating viewing).
The Wikileaks activist, Robertson said, wanted to “come back to Australia”, to contest a Senate seat in the next Federal Election likely to be held in 2013. However, Robertson said, the problem was that Assange would be liable to be extradited from Sweden to the US, which has reportedly set up a grand jury to try Assange under charges secretly drawn up more than a year ago.
“Sweden has a terrible reputation of rendering people straight to the CIA and that is his concern,” Robertson told the audience. “There has been a grand jury sitting in Virginia for 18 months. A grand jury is a medieval American procedure … they say that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Well, they may well indict Julian, because, after all, Sarah Palin said “We have to hunt him down like Bin Laden”.”
Robertson said that if Assange was taken to Sweden, the Australian Government could intervene at that point from having the activist extradited to the US, echoing comments by the Greens, which has demanded that the Government intervene in Assange’s case. Greens Communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam (who has visited Assange in the UK) stated in the Senate in March this year that a series of Freedom of Information requests he had filed with the Government regarding Assange’s fate had been stonewalled and blocked. The Greens view Assange as a journalist, and have requested that the Government support Assange as such and protect his rights.
However, last night on Q&A, Roxon said that the Australian Government was already doing all it could with respect to the Wikileaks founder. She said the Australian Federal Police had investigated Assange, and determined he had not broken any Australian law.
“What that means is that he is treated in exactly the same way as every other Australian,” Roxon said. “If he commits an offence in another country, that country’s laws obviously will apply … I don’t think anyone can suggest the UK doesn’t have a strong legal system. What we do then is provide consular support. As soon as the courts make their decision, he is free to come back to Australia. He hasn’t had his passport cancelled or any of those sorts of things.”
According to Roxon, if an extradition request was filed to shift Assange to the US, Australia would be notified and have the opportunity to challenge the issue. However, the Attorney-General said she would not pre-make a decision on what the Government would do in that case, as the issue would include a variety of factors such as what the request was about, what penalties might apply and so on.
“But no request has been made to us,” Roxon said.
Roxon did say that the Australian Government had made representations in Assange’s case that the proper legal process had been followed, including to representatives of the US Government. And she denied that recent changes to the way Australia handles extradition requests would have any impact on Assange. “I just think people have to understand we have to step through each of the legal processes,” said Roxon. “So far, all we have is assertions.”
Despite Roxon’s statements, a vote taken during the program showed that 78 percent of several thousand respondents did not believe the Australian Government had done enough to support Assange. In addition, a series of protests in Australian capital cities in late 2010 saw thousands of Australians organise to demand the Federal Government do more to support Assange. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Joe Wolverton, Friday, 13 April 2012
“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” — Washington Irving
By Julie Hyland – 12 April 2012
The decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that five men detained on terror-related charges can be extradited to the United States is a major assault on democratic rights.
The ECHR is the final court of appeal against violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted by the 47-member state Council of Europe.
Tuesday’s hearing concerned six men—Abu Hamza, Adel Abdul Bary, Khaled al-Fawwaz, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan and Haroon Rashid Aswat. All are currently held in the UK under US extradition warrants. Read the rest of this entry »
April 6, 2012
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A public figure receives a cache of leaked government documents whose contents is so explosive that it will embarrass the government, incite insurgents and encourage them to attack government officials. It could even bring on a war. The person leaking these documents is quickly identified and dealt with by authorities, but more of this later.
Who could I be writing about? Perhaps Bradley Manning, the US army soldier, who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed on restricted material? Or it could be Julian Assange, who published over 250,000 on his website Wikileaks of US diplomatic cables, the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public? And when might I be writing about? Possibly April 5, 2010, when WikiLeaks posted on its site the Iraq video, titled ‘Collateral Murder’. It showed U.S. Army Apache helicopter air strikes in an eastern district of Baghdad in July 2007, which killed two staffers for Reuters and a dozen or more others. This was followed by a flood of classified documents from diplomatic and military sources that has rocked the US Administration, embarrassed it allies and encouraged the enemies of the US. And finally, what about holding those responsible for the leaks to account? Well, Bradley Manning is in a military jail awaiting court-martial proceedings. He faces 22 charges including “aiding the enemy,” which can carry the death sentence. Julian Assange is holed up in England, fighting the Swedish government, who are trying to extradite him so they question him about a sexual assault. At the same time, the US government has convened a Grand Jury, which has met in secret to determine whether the leaks have breached the Espionage Act of 1917. There is every reason to believe that Grand Jury has prepared charges against Assange, and the US government will start extradition proceeding as soon as he arrives in Sweden, where they judge they have a better chance of success than in Great Britain. If convinced, Assange could be executed.
The case I’m referring to has nothing to do with WikiLeaks, Assange or Manning. Called the Hutchinson Letters Affair, it began in December, 1772 when Benjamin Franklin, who was in England at the time, anonymously received a packet of thirteen letters. They were reports by Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Thomas Whately, a leading member of the British government. In the letters, Hutchinson made some damning comments about colonial rights. Even more provocative, Hutchinson recommended that popular government be taken away from the colonists “by degrees”, and that there should be “abridgement of what are called English liberties”. Specifically, he argued that all colonial government posts should be made independent of the provincial assemblies. Finally, he urged his superiors to send more troops to Boston to keep American rebels under control. Read the rest of this entry »
Elizabeth Farrelly – April 12, 2012
I’m not given to conspiracy theories, incompetence being so much easier to imagine, but one thing gives credibility to Clive Palmer’s otherwise nutty CIA phantasm about US influence in Australia.
It is Julian Assange, a story that hinges on the uncomfortable relationship between truth and power.
We expect truth-telling from our four-year-olds but not from our politicians. In the case of Assange, truth is actively and repeatedly punished.
This implies that, as you move up through society’s power strata, there’s a point where morality flips.
A sort of moral inversion layer, beneath which the rules apply but above which they’re reversed.
The modern Labor Party seems to illustrate this as well as anyone.
It seemed rather a giggle last year when, after their electoral drubbing, NSW Labor felt the need for ethics classes to learn how to be “honest with ourselves and … the people we represent”. But prolonged electroconvulsive therapy might have been more in order, for whichever thread you pull, the last decade of Labor emerges like an episode of the Jason Bourne film franchise.
Start anywhere. Say, at Mark Arbib. Arbib, then a Labor senator crucial in deposing a first-term prime minister and crowning Julia Gillard, was later revealed as a secret US government source. He also owned a beachfront apartment in Maroubra, built by a Labor donor developer, as did Labor’s former NSW treasurer Eric Roozendaal, both in the very same block where Moses Obeid, son of Labor MLC Eddie, also resided. Read the rest of this entry »
Ma Internet non è rimasto in silenzio e ha reagito. Ha reagito nell’unico modo che conosce: con petizioni, diffondendo informazioni e con attacchi DDoS. Il risultato è stato che PayPal, MasterCard, PostFinance e Visa sono collassati per un periodo di tempo sotto l’attacco di Anonymous e che PayPal ha deciso di scongelare i fondi di Julian e di Wikileaks. Il risultato è che, a ora, ci sono quasi 1400 mirror di Wikileaks. È possibile che Julian e Wikileaks affondino, ma la censura si dimostrerà un fallimento. Se vi sentite coraggiosi potete mettere su un mirror anche voi: dalle istruzioni non sembra una cosa difficile.
Ma il vero scandalo è l’ipocrisia che circonda questo caso.
Mentre Amazon Web Services caccia Wikileaks dai propri server, Amazon vende i documenti di Wikileaks. Confusi? Anch’io!
Mentre il governo americano fa di tutto per zittire Wikileaks, il Dipartimento di Stato Americano ospita la manifestazione a favore della libertà di stampa. Confusi? Anch’io! Read the rest of this entry »
April 4, 2012
By Kellie Tranter, Lawyer and Human Rights activist
Politics at the club, Newcastle Panthers, 4 April 2012
Good evening Newcastle.
Firstly, I’d like to thank the organisers of this important event for their hard work and for the invitation to speak tonight. Secondly, I’d like to thank each of you for being concerned and for taking the time to hear more about the plight of Julian Assange. And thirdly, I would like to thank WikiLeaks, its courageous sources and Julian Assange for risking it all to publish information that is clearly in the public interest.
I hope Julian will soon return home to the loving arms of his staunchest and most fearless ally, his mother Christine. And may I say how honoured I am to be in the company of such a distinguished panel.
So much has been written and said about Julian, both good and bad, that I thought it would be better for me simply to focus on areas that I believe require particular emphasis.
Allow me to begin by saying that in order to enhance our understanding of the modus operandi of WikiLeaks and/or Julian, it seems to me to be necessary to look at the organisation’s main objective, the theoretical framework and the raw ingredients that underpin both his thinking and the organisation itself. And I should emphasise that this is my take on the organisation, not any officially endorsed view.
The objective is reform
It seems clear to me that the primary objective – the central motivation of Julian and WikiLeaks – is reform. Pushing towards the way things should be. For example, a politician should behave in a way that is consistent with public morality or the common thread of decent behaviour. Julian himself said in 2009 that WikiLeaks chooses to spend its limited resources on the cases that are most likely to achieve just reform. Provided information has been withheld from the public and is of diplomatic, ethical and historical significance, he says, they will release it. They might engage in some harm minimisation, but WikiLeaks promises its sources the maximum impact.
