AFP emails shed new light on media investigations, show officers were armed during raids, SMH, By Kylar Loussikian and Bevan Shields, July 5, 2019 The Australian Federal Police initially classified its investigation into a high-profile national security leak as “routine” and of “low value”, according to a cache of documents that also reveals police were armed when they launched two recent raids on the media.
Emails obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age under freedom of information laws also offer fresh evidence that Annika Smethurst, a senior member of the Canberra press gallery, could be prosecuted for publishing secret government information.
The AFP is expected to be called before a parliamentary inquiry to explain the chain of events leading to raids in early June on Smethurst’s Canberra home and the Sydney headquarters of the ABC over separate stories based on sensitive and secret government information.
The nuclear energy option A new paper undermines the claim it’s more about culture wars than electricity generation. THE AUSTRALIAN , By GRAHAM LLOYD , 4 July 19, “……….. A discussion paper prepared for the union-backed Industry Super Australia provides a blueprint for patient capital in the energy sector.
……….The view globally is that nuclear power provides the best emissions-free hedge against a failure of renewables to satisfy more than about one-third of a nation’s energy requirements.
Ed. the view globally – whose view exactly?
The Prime Minister is being urged to give his blessing to a review of the potential for nuclear energy in Australia.
Queensland MPs Keith Pitt and James McGrath have proposed terms of reference for an inquiry that will review advances in nuclear energy including small nuclear reactors and thorium.
The NSW parliament will conduct its own review.
One Nation MLC Mark Latham has legislation before parliament to legalise uranium mining and nuclear facilities.
“The climate change challenge is real but a renewables fetish can’t solve it,” he says.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has called for a national vote to end the ban and says the northern cities of Tamworth or Armidale could be the site of a new nuclear power station.
Scott Morrison says he won’t oppose nuclear if the economics stack up but no one is offering to build a reactor in Australia.
Advocates of the nuclear option are playing a long-term game.
In April, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency director general William Magwood made his first official visit to Australia. He met the energy ministry, the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Energy Policy Institute of Australia……
Magwood’s discussions highlighted uranium resource issues but also focused on NEA analyses related to the decarbonisation of electricity systems and radioactive waste management.
While Australia has no plans to build nuclear plants, in 2016 the country joined the Generation IV International Forum, for which the Nuclear Energy Agency acts as technical secretariat.
Ed note: Let us not forget that nuclear industry law-unto-himself Dr Adi Paterson signed Australia up to this with no Parliamentary discussion and no government authorisation . A month later a senate committee ratified this – still no parliamentary discussion, despite the fact that Australa has laws against constructing nuclear reactors.
Magwood’s talks with Australian authorities included the latest research and development on advanced nuclear systems………
One of the themes of the discussion paper is that mainstream thinking on the energy market may be misleading in many areas…….Ultimately, there is the prospect that some wind and solar projects themselves may become stranded assets.
The problems of intermittency are at the heart of global concerns. Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor is trying to address the issue with a reliability obligation for generators………
nuclear has advantages that intermittent sources of energy cannot provide.
And a recent OECD report assesses the levelised cost using a 3 per cent interest rate at $US100 per megawatt hour for commercial solar, $US70 per megawatt hour for onshore wind and $US50 a megawatt for nuclear………..
Ed. note. Really – source?
Australia lagging
It was noted that Australia is one of the few First World economies without nuclear power and experience in managing a nuclear plant…….
Ed note. Along with Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, and Portugal. Belgium, Germany, Spain and Switzerland are phasing-out nuclear power
Not considering nuclear puts Australia in the minority of First World economies. It is also lagging several Second and Third World economies in our region and elsewhere such as Argentina, Mexico, Bangladesh and Turkey and geographical neighbours such as Indonesia and Vietnam…….
Based on the Tesla battery in Adelaide, achieving 1½ days’ energy storage would cost $6.5 trillion, enough to build about 1000 nuclear reactors.
For household batteries, it would cost about $US7000 per household every 10 years to provide back-up for 36 hours……..
One important step would be to build some capacity to operate a nuclear facility.
This would provide insurance against failure in alternative options or rapid change in technology.
It says a single reactor would be a relatively small investment.
Extinction Nation: Four Corners program raises environmental questions, Independent Australia, By Sue Arnold | 28 June 2019 A recent Four Corners interview with Environment Minister Sussan Ley failed to ask some of the more critical questions, writes Sue Arnold.
FOUR CORNERS:Extinction Nation portrayed a vivid picture of outrageous environmental damage in Victoria and Tasmania — a timely program which barely touched the critical issues.
Of particular concern was the failure of reporter Stephanie March to ask the new Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, the most relevant questions in relation to Australia’s ongoing appalling loss of biodiversity and wildlife. Why she allowed Ley to get away with blaming the states is more than curious.
A Powerful Depiction’: Chernobyl Workers Reflect On HBO Series
ABC’s Media Watch takes aim at nuclear misinformation and bias
The ABC’s Media Watch program last night took aim at Australia’s pro-nuclear propagandists and the extreme bias of Australia’s nuclear ‘debate’.
Media Watch discussed HBO’s hit miniseries ‘Chernobyl’, which tops IMDB’s list of the greatest TV shows of all time, and took aim at Andrew Bolt and others for trivialising the death toll (discussed here) and for ignoring the broader impacts of the disaster such as the permanent relocation of 350,000 people and the thousands of children who suffered thyroid cancer due to exposure to radioactive fallout.
Dr Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, said: “Nuclear lobbyists argued that Chernobyl was a result of the dysfunctional Soviet system and that a similar disaster couldn’t happen in Western countries. That argument collapsed with the March 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. Nuclear disasters can happen anywhere and a nuclear disaster anywhere is a nuclear disaster everywhere due to the spread of radioactive fallout. Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout contaminated the whole of Europe and Fukushima fallout reached northern Australia.”
“In addition to their other devastating impacts, nuclear disasters greatly increase the overall cost of nuclear power. The cost of the Chernobyl disaster is estimated at over one trillion dollars [US$700 billion] and the Fukushima disaster could prove to be just as expensive.”
Citing a recent expert analysis, Media Watch noted that nuclear power “doesn’t even get to first base on cost” and took nuclear lobbyists to task for failing to acknowledge the extraordinarily high cost of nuclear power (all reactors under construction in western Europe and north America are estimated to cost $14‒24 billion each while the South Carolina reactor project was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$12.9 billion).
Dr Green said: “Dr Ziggy Switkowski used to be Australia’s most prominent supporter of nuclear power and he led the Howard government’s nuclear review in 2006. But nuclear costs have increased four-fold since then and Dr Switkowski has acknowledged that the window for large-scale nuclear power in Australia has closed as renewables are clearly cheaper.“
“John Howard was no anti-nuclear ideologue yet he had the good sense to ban nuclear power. Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to state unambiguously that the legislation banning nuclear power in Australia will remain in place,” Dr Green concluded.
Contact: Dr Jim Green 0417 318 368 More information: Last night’s Media Watch segment on nuclear power (video and transcript) A recent detailed article by Dr Green, cited by Media Watch.
Adani is not about jobs, and never really was, https://www.smh.com.au/national/adani-is-not-about-jobs-and-never-really-was-20190614-p51xu0.html, By Matt Holden June 16, 2019So Adani gets its final environmental approval from the Queensland government, and central Queensland gets the jobs it voted for in the federal election: “an enormous win for regional jobs”, according to Queensland LNP Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington.What that amounts to is about 1500 jobs in the construction phase – which at two years won’t even get us to the next federal election – and maybe 100 when the mine is operating, at least according to University of Queensland economist Professor John Quiggin.
It feels like you can believe whatever you want about Adani, or at least whatever suits your world view.
But Adani was never really about jobs. “Adani” is a litmus test in Australian politics: you are either for Adani, which means you are for economic prosperity and development of Australia’s regions, or you are against Adani, in which case you are against prosperity, against people who need jobs, even against central Queensland itself.
The simplistic dualism suits politicians whose business it is to squabble over political power and to mediate that squabble through culture wars (this one over coal, the next one over religious freedom, who knows what after that) rather than the work of making real policy.
It also suits the interests that will benefit from Adani – mining companies, fossil-fuel investors, construction and mining unions.
Adani has become more than a coal mine (although it’s not even that yet, and maybe never will be). It’s part of a narrative in Australian politics that poses a false choice between jobs and the environment, framed as the difference between living in the real world and living in the inner-city bubble, Continue reading →
It sends shockwaves through your life’: how the media raids will silence whistleblowers, Guardian Christopher Knaus@knausc 9 Jun 2019
Whistleblowers who revealed government wrongdoing already face jail. This week’s raids will only deter others from coming forward “……… The warrant listed David McBride as the police’s first subject of interest. McBride unleashed powerful forces when he decided to go public years ago with what he discovered as a military lawyer serving in Afghanistan.
Those forces have already exacted a crippling toll.
“[My ex-wife] would probably say – and I think there’s an element of truth in it – it killed David McBride,” he says. “The man that she married was killed by the defence force, and I’m someone who’s different.
“Doing something like this, taking on the whole government, it sends shockwaves through your life, and not much survives, really.”
Wednesday’s raid on the ABC prompted outrage among civil rights groups, transparency campaigners, journalists and unions. It came just a day after federal police searched the home of the News Corp reporter Annika Smethurst, searching for documents related to her coverage of proposed new surveillance powers for the Australian Signals Directorate. 2GB host Ben Fordham’s revelation about asylum seeker boats attempting to reach Australia from Sri Lanka is also the subject of a home affairs investigation, as the department attempts to identify his source.
The raids have not occurred in isolation. Multiple whistleblowers who revealed government wrongdoing are currently being pursued through the courts with alarming vigour.
The government is prosecuting Witness K and Bernard Collaery, who revealed an unlawful spy operation against Timor-Leste during oil negotiations. Richard Boyle, the tax office worker who revealed the government’s heavy-handed approach to recovering debts, faces a long stint in jail if convicted.
Assoc Prof Joseph Fernandez, a journalism lecturer at Curtin University, has spent years studying source protection and the Australian media. He says the consequences of this week’s raids are clear, regardless of whether journalists are charged.
“Such raids, regardless of what happens here to journalists or to others, will have an immeasurable censoring effect on contact people have with journalists,” Fernandez says.
“In my research in this area over the years, it was clear that even senior public servants are apprehensive about having contact with journalists, even about mundane things, in the wake of laws that enable the authorities to track down sources.”
The McBride matter had been bubbling away for some time before Wednesday’s raid. Guardian Australia understands police have been talking to the ABC since at least September, trying to find a way to access the documents without resorting to a very public raid. …….
7th June 2019 On behalf of the ABC, I have registered with the Federal Government my grave concern over this week’s raid by the federal police on the national broadcaster.
An untrammelled media is important to the public discourse and to democracy. It is the way in which Australian citizens are kept informed about the world and its impact on their daily lives.
Observance of this basic tenet of the community’s right to know has driven my involvement in public life and my career in journalism for almost five decades.
The raid is unprecedented – both to the ABC and to me.
In a frank conversation with the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Paul Fletcher, yesterday, I said the raid, in its very public form and in the sweeping nature of the information sought, was clearly designed to intimidate.
It is impossible to ignore the seismic nature of this week’s events: raids on two separate media outfits on consecutive days is a blunt signal of adverse consequences for news organisations who make life uncomfortable for policy makers and regulators by shining lights in dark corners and holding the powerful to account.
I also asked for assurances that the ABC not be subject to future raids of this sort. Mr Fletcher declined to provide such assurances, while noting the “substantial concern” registered by the Corporation.
There has been much reference in recent days to the need to observe the rule of law.
While there are legitimate matters of national security that the ABC will always respect, the ABC Act and Charter are explicit about the importance of an independent public broadcaster to Australian culture and democracy.
Public interest is best served by the ABC doing its job, asking difficult questions and dealing with genuine whistle-blowers who risk their livelihoods and reputations to bring matters of grave import to the surface. Neither the journalists nor their sources should be treated as criminals.
In my view, legitimate journalistic endeavours that expose flawed decision-making or matters that policy makers and public servants would simply prefer were secret, should not automatically and conveniently be classed as issues of national security.
The onus must always be on the public’s right to know. If that is not reflected sufficiently in current law, then it must be corrected.
As ABC Chair, I will fight any attempts to muzzle the national broadcaster or interfere with its obligations to the Australian public. Independence is not exercised by degrees. It is absolute.
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, Steve Dale 20 May 19, I listened to that Alan Jones, Morrison interview (that Wong’s press release references) – Jones was rabidly pro-nuclear (as usual) and Morrison was trying to point out that nuclear is not cost effective. When Alan Jones goes, I wonder how many pollies will drop their support for nuclear power – I think many say they support it just to get on the right side of him.
“Mr Morrison told broadcaster Alan Jones that he would do whatever it takes to bring electricity prices down but when it came to nuclear power, “I don’t have any issues” but the “investment doesn’t stack up”.
He compared nuclear power unfavourably with Hydro Tasmania’s Battery of the nation – a proposal to develop thousands of megawatts of pumped hydro capacity in addition to the island state’s existing hydro capacity to back up rapidly expanding solar and wind power.” https://www.afr.com/…/scott-morrison-no-issue-with…
When it was founded in 1923, News Limited concealed its mining company connections at the same time it promised the public that its news would be “independent” and “impartial”.
Lip service or not, notions of balance and the public interest were important then. This was because News Limited’s founders knew that respect was an important precondition for influence, and that newspapers had to be responsive to the communities they served in order to attract a wide audience and prosper.
News Corp’s recent behaviour suggests it now sees such notions as quaint.
Professor, University of Melbourne, May 16, 2019, News Corp must have been startled to find itself becoming one of the major issues in this election campaign. But this is just another sign that, in recent years, the company’s ability to read the public mood has gone wildly off-kilter.
From attacking the decision of the jury in the sexual assault trial of Cardinal George Pell to last week’s Daily Telegraph attack on Bill Shorten using his deceased mother as ammunition, there are mounting signs of panic and folly at one of Australia’s largest media companies.
With the media and political landscape shifting rapidly around the company, there is a feeling akin to the last days of the Roman Empire.
Rupert Murdoch is winding back after six decades building up an Australian, and then global, media empire. The Murdoch family has retreated from buying up assets and instead become a seller, offloading, for instance, 21st Century Fox to Disney last year.
If the next generation of Murdochs starts looking to sell unprofitable assets, the Australian newspapers have reason to be concerned. Because they are no longer financially valuable to the newly slimmed down company, the Australian papers seem to be trying to prove their worth by being politically useful while they still can.
Since 2013, the News Corp papers have become more politically aggressive, with some adopting the shrill, cartoonish and openly-partisan approach of British “red top” tabloids. During the 2019 election, News Corp journalists – past and present – have spoken out against the company’s determined barracking for the return of the Coalition government.
Academic Denis Muller recently called News Corp a “propaganda operation masquerading as a news service”. Remarkably, this statement neatly encapsulates how News Corp actually began.
South Australia’s “The Advertiser” can be depended upon to regurgitate nuclear lobby propaganda. Yesterday’s offering was ” Nuclear-powered desalination for SA?
Some people were impelled to write to the paper. Here are a couple of answers:
from Renfrey Clark: Nuclear-powered desalination for SA? B.W. Foster (The Advertiser, April …) has a vision of nuclear power in South Australia providing abundant desalinated water for domestic use and irrigation. But price considerations, alone, show that nuclear is the wrong choice.
In the most advanced desalination plants, which use reverse osmosis technology, the key price factor is the cost of electrical energy. Here, renewable energy sources have a dramatic and quickly increasing advantage.
Research at the Australian National University concludes that in future decades a 100 per cent renewable energy system, “balanced” by pumped hydropower or batteries to make supplies fully dispatchable, would have a “levelised cost” of A$75-80 per megawatt-hour.[1]
Comparable studies for nuclear power in the US suggest prices well above A$100 per megawatt-hour.[2]
That’s not taking into account the massive additional problems ‒ and real dangers ‒ of the nuclear industry. In 2016 the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission recommended firmly against developing almost all aspects of the industry in South Australia.
In coming years advances in desalination, along with further steep drops in the cost of renewable energy, will likely make desalinated water affordable for various kinds of high-value agriculture.
Nuclear power, however, will not be part of the picture. (picture below is of MIT’s small portable system)
from Robyn Wood : Yet again we hear the same tired old calls for Australia to adopt nuclear power (The Advertiser 22.4.19). We recently had a Nuclear Royal Commission that found that nuclear power is uneconomic. Quite apart from the safety risks and lack of a permanent high level reactor waste disposal system, the costs of building nuclear power plants around the world are skyrocketing, and the costs of building renewables is rapidly coming down. Building renewables with energy storage such as big batteries and pumped hydro makes far more sense than wasting our money on nuclear power.
Former Greens leader describes Murdoch media headlines as ‘a disgrace to journalism’ The conservationist and former federal Greens leader Bob Brown delivered a broadside at “disgraceful” coverage in News Corp newspapers as his Stop Adani convoy arrived in Queensland to fervour among activists and stoushes in the local press.About 5,000 people joined Brown at a rally in the Brisbane central business district on Wednesday afternoon, protesting against the proposed Carmichael coalmine.
But Brown, whose Stop Adani convoy resembles its own mini election campaign, has attracted the ire of News Corp’s Brisbane masthead, the Courier-Mail……..
Brown, who rose to prominence because of his opposition to the Franklin Dam project in the 1980s, was asked why the Carmichael mine, and not other proposals, have become the focus of environmental and climate activism.
Julian Assange: Within Washington’s grasp? | The Listening Post (Full)
Debunking All The Assange Smears, by Caitlin Johnstone , Robert Gore, STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC,21Apr19
This is the definitive and comprehensive source for anyone who wants to defend Julian Assange in an argument and win. From Caitlin Johnstone at theburningplatform.com:
Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us know how evil and disgusting that person is? It’s true of the leader of every nation which refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it’s true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it’s true of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its political and media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they’ll be far less likely to take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they’ll be far more likely to consent to Assange’s imprisonment, thereby establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you’re suspicious of him you won’t believe anything he’s saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it’s as good as putting a bullet in his head.
Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they appear. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any kind of centralized source of information which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help of hundreds of tips from my readers and social media followers I’m going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.
This article is an ongoing project which will be updated regularly where it appears on Medium and caitlinjohnstone.com as new information comes in and new smears spring up in need of refutation.
Here’s a numbered list of each subject I’ll be covering in this article for ease of reference:
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must be opposed,Owen Jones, Guardian, 12 Apr 19, States that commit crimes in foreign lands depend on at least passive acquiescence. This is achieved in a number of ways. One is the “othering” of the victims: the stripping away of their humanity, because if you imagined them to be people like your own children or your neighbours, their suffering and deaths would be intolerable. Another approach is to portray opponents of foreign aggression as traitors, or in league with hostile powers. And another strategy is to cover up the consequences of foreign wars, to ensure that the populace is kept intentionally unaware of the acts committed in their name.
It is Manning who is the true hero of this story: last month, she was arrested for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, placed in solitary confinement for four weeks, and now remains imprisoned. We must demand her freedom.
These leaks revealed some of the horrors of the post-9/11 wars. One showed a US aircrew laughing after slaughtering a dozen innocent people, including two Iraqi employees of Reuters, after dishonestly alleging to have encountered a firefight. Other files revealed how US-led forces killedhundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, their deaths otherwise airbrushed out of existence. Another cable, which exposed corruption and scandals in the court of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the western-backed then-dictator of Tunisia, helped fuel protests, which toppled him……..
Assange must answer the allegations of sexual assault in Sweden without the threat of extradition to the US………. That Swedish case must be entirely disentangled from the US extradition attempt. And while opposing Assange’s rightwing libertarian politics is perfectly reasonable, it is utterly irrelevant to the basic issue here of justice. ………
Assange’s extradition to the US must be passionately opposed. It is notable that Obama’s administration itself concluded that to prosecute Assange for publishing documents would gravely imperil press freedom. Yes, this is a defence of journalism and media freedom. But it is also about the attempt to intimidate those who expose crimes committed by the world’s last remaining superpower. The US wishes to hide its crimes so it can continue to commit them with impunity: that’s why, last month, Trump signed an executive order to cover up civilian deaths from drones, the use of which has hugely escalated in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan.
Snowden points out that the WikiLeaks team has won many awards for its reporting. These include:
The Economist New Media Award (2008)
The Amnesty New Media Award (2009)
The Sam Adams Award for Integrity (2010)
The National Union of Journalists Journalist of the Year (Hrafnsson) (2011)
The Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal (2011)
The Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011)
The Voltaire Award for Free Speech (2011)
The International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011)
The Privacy International Hero of Privacy (2012)
The Global Exchange Human Rights People’s Choice Award (2013)
The Brazilian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013)
The Kazakhstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014) https://www.facebook.com/dunrenard?__tn__=%2CdC-R-R&eid=ARDsY6zh-XW-n6LQ3xBNitIkpLlrj2d_EY3QVMtZpkpIpUitBAOcbg-Jneyv9V0sBuUmUzP8kTPjKdaJ&hc_ref=ART42xFstjUK2mNP1sgOwKX9KXHTBaFbBxJ3FqA5K4sDWZN1J_D46gCLZpRG74XZMjc&fref=nf
This prospect prompted the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and 33 EU parliamentarians to issue strongly worded statements to both the UK and Ecuadorian governments in December last year, warning against facilitating the prosecution of a journalist, editor and publisher for “publishing the truth”. The statements demanded Assange’s “immediate release, together with his safe passage to a safe country”, and reminded the UK of its “binding” legal obligations to secure freedom for Assange.
A critical task for propagandists such as those waging a psychological war on Wilkileaks, then, is to feed audiences material that supports official narratives and exclude that which does not. Since its inception, the smear campaign against Julian Assange and Wikileaks has been remarkably concerted and consistent in that regard.
With the new year, however, news broke that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had offered Ecuador a $10 billion bailout in return for handing Julian Assange over to the United States. This bounty came on top of earlier US pressures and inducements, reportedly including increased oil exports, military co-operation and another $1.1 billion in IMF loans, with the US representative of the IMF instructing Ecuador that it must “resolve” its relationship with Julian Assange in order to receive the IMF money.
Australian Barrister Greg Barns has called it the blackmailing of a nation. News website 21st Century Wirecalled it “one of the biggest international bribery (or extortion) cases in history.”
While there is “not a single shred of evidence that any of [Wikileaks’] disclosures caused anyone harm”, writes journalist and author Nozomi Hayase, what Wikileaks did do in 2010 was expose thousands of previously unreported civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. These deaths included the nonchalant gunning down of children, journalists and their rescuers, and other “indiscriminate violence… torture, lies [and]bribery”, writes Chris Hedges. According to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Elsberg, the leaks exposed “a massive cover-up over a number of years by the American authorities”.
Julian in ‘critical danger’, new rules ‘torture’ – Assange mother *AUDIO*
The Psychology Of Getting Julian Assange, Part 2: The Court Of Public Opinion And The Blood-Curdling Untold Story, New Matilda, By Dr Lissa JohnsonFebruary 25, 2019In her ongoing special investigation into the detention of Julian Assange, Dr Lissa Johnson turns to the art of smear, and how to corrupt a judicial system.
On Friday 14th February, the Editor in Chief of news website Consortium News, Joe Lauria, visited Sydney to host a ‘Politics in the Pub’ event: Whistleblowing, Wikileaks and the Future of Democracy. The event took place in anticipation of upcoming rallies to free Assange…….
. It is imperative that we pressure the Australian government to make sure its citizen, Julian Assange, is protected from the lawlessness of the American Empire.” Continue reading →
