Malcolm Evans – Assange Scales of Justice

1. Come on little man, have your say, but at the end of the day we’ll show you who is boss.

   Heard of the ‘Grumble Motion’ in connection with Chelsea Manning?
   https://theintercept.com/2020/02/19/chelsea-manning-free-prison-grumbles-motion/
   28/2/2020 On Wednesday, Manning’s legal team filed what’s known as a Grumbles motion in court, asserting that Manning has proven herself incoercible and so must, according to legal statute, be released from her incarceration.

   How come that Julian Assange is being persecuted to the extent we see? Why aren’t the Australian government ‘Grumbling’ too? They need to gird up their ethical values and with true grit and principles, and say to the USA that they cannot go ahead and continue with this hard line approach.
   There is a 14-strong parliamentary group called Bring Assange Home and two MPs from it [Australian MPs Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) and George Christensen (Queensland, National)] visited Assange recently in jail.
   This from 18 Feb 2020. The 48-year-old is fighting extradition to the US, where he faces 18 charges including conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law, and Mr Wilkie said if Assange is found guilty it would almost amount to a death sentence.
   “If he is convicted of those charges he faces up to 175 years in a US federal prison,” he said.
   “It’s a life sentence and it could be said to almost a death sentence.”…
   Mr Christensen said he believes information that will come to light during the extradition hearing may change people’s views on Assange and he called on the Australian government to do more to bring him home.
   “I think now is a time that the Government that I am a part of needs to be standing up and saying to both the UK and the US, ‘Enough is enough, leave our bloke alone and let him come home’.”
   https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-health-improving-in-prison/11978336

   It appears that it is known that Julian did not release unredacted content from his archive and that it was in information that The Guardian journalists released.
   However, a password that allowed access to the full unredacted material on WikiLeaks’ servers was published in a book by Guardian reporters about WikiLeaks in February 2011.
   A spokesman for the Guardian said the authors were told the password was temporary and the book contained no details about the whereabouts of the files.
   Dated? – says updated Thursday at 8.36pm – google 6 days ago (have to work it out yourself!)
   https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-26/julian-assange-called-hillary-clinton-white-house-wikileaks-dump/12001286

   * 22 February 2020
   https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/celebs-march-in-support-of-assange-ahead-of-extradition-hearing/
   * 25 February 2020
   https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/conflicting-portraits-assange-extradition-hearing-opens-200224211627686.html
   * 27 February 2020
   https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/27/prosecution-assange-extradition-hearing-us-uk-treaty-does-not-apply-wikileaks
   * 27 February 2020 (Thursday last)
   https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/29/live-updates-from-london-assange-extradition-hearing-adjourned-until-may-18/

   Looking back to events concerning Edward Snowden, whistleblower:
   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/sep/13/edward-snowden-interview-whistleblowing-russia-ai-permanent-record

2. Open letter from leading ethical members of society to Australian Pm Scott Morrison. Will they have any impact on the rancid compost heap that is the long-term Australian government.
   https://asiapacificreport.nz/2020/03/04/defend-beleagured-rights-of-wikileaks-founder-assange-call-to-morrison/

   The USA has no rules for itself governing good conduct; why should Assange be treated inhumanly in this witchhunt for not following the rules of utter secrecy of what that country has been up to. They would no doubt like to deliver him to their penal system of – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition.
   https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/wilkie-says-assange-extradition-efforts-should-be-dropped-after-us-spying-revelations-20200223-p543j3.html
   24 Feb 2020 The revelation Julian Assange’s confidential conversations with his Australian lawyers were secretly recorded should force the British courts to throw out attempts to extradite him to the United States, independent MP Andrew Wilkie says.
   Mr Wilkie has again called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to lobby the British government to reject the United States attempts to extradite Australian-born WikiLeaks founder who faces several espionage charges over the publication of hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents.

   (Interesting that the vote split for the aAustralian Liberal/National government over Labour is very close. This is an example of the way we run our democracies needing to be severely overhauled. The Brits in the rambling Brexit debacle showed how stupid it is to consider a simple majority an adequate mandate for the complexities of government. And I noted on listening again to Pythons Anarchist Commune skit, that their rules required a two-thirds majority for affairs that were not just simple internal matters. Frankly I think that Monty Python members would make a better job of running the UK; their work shows them to be really astute. You have to understand a system well to satirise it so effectively. Once it got going over there we would have some leverage to follow it here. Or could that thing about us being small and eager to be the first and biggest – with Trump-like narcissism enable us to do the break-through.)

   Note the make-up of government from last election in Australia: Liberal/National – Last election 76 seats, 50.36% to Labour 69 seats, 49.64%.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Australian_federal_election
   Our democratic political systems are so shonky at present, they are ruining the countries they are used in. In fact they are kindergarten systems for including all people in decision making, on their last legs, and should have been overhauled decades ago. Attention to improvements should be given as soon as possible, before sterner measures bring in oppressive systems where people are entirely coerced!)

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