Glenys Haren writes: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s response to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong on Julian Assange is worse than a snub (“No progress on Assange no surprise when Marles is outsourcing defence to the US”). It displays a total surrender of independence and autonomy of the Australian government on behalf of us, the Australian people, to the bullying of our great “friend”, the US.
Our temerity in questioning our esteemed overlord and the humiliation we may potentially inflict by asking “Please sir, may we have some morsels of sovereignty for ourselves, even over our own citizens?” was sickening to watch. Defence Minister Richard Marles is a complete sell-out.
Our sovereignty is in tatters, shredded on the citadel of the Morrison-Dutton leaderships. It’s time the Albanese government took a step back, shouted, debated in Parliament, gave itself some leeway to move and got out of this stinking AUKUS nuclear mess. The Assange rebuff has shown us what the US really thinks of us — no respect for our citizenry, our sensibilities, just a huge bloody-minded wank by our “esteemed” friends.
We are chewing gum on America’s shoes.
Jennifer Lean writes: I love everything about Crikey except its support for Assange. He conspired to steal US national secrets. He is not a journalist. He’s a publisher of hacked information, which in this case he helped steal.
But more than that, what I will never forgive him for is his conspiracy with the Russians and Republicans to dump Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails when Donald Trump was under pressure for the “grab ’em by the pussy” tapes, helping to swing the election to Trump. Assange preferred a Trump win. He did this for vanity reasons (Clinton was mean to him). He’s a narcissist, just like Trump. I’m happy to see him rot in jail.
Kay Matthiesson writes: It looks simple enough: we have what the US wants, and it has what we want. Surely it’s possible to do a deal?
Melody Kemp writes: I agree that the imprisonment of Assange is a form of political dog-whistling that should not be accepted — unless of course the dog in question has been desexed, and it appears that might be the issue with Marles. He knows of his extreme limitations and snarls rather than leads.
As a lifetime Labor voter I am relieved to say that last election I voted Green. I think we have to accelerate action on climate chaos, and defence globally is irrefutably a major source of greenhouse gases. Most reporters stay clear of making that plain, including my own organisation: the Society of Environment Journalists. Every time I have raised the environmental cost of our paranoia and volatile climate-blasting paybacks, it has ignored my comments.
But it’s not just the US. Every time I see North Korean rockets, Ukrainian blasts, China exercises, Israeli retaliation and the smaller internecine battles in Myanmar and recently Africa, I shiver. What Assange did was expose the truth. A minor one at that, taking into account the scale of wars globally and the number of “accidental” deaths.
Terence Mills writes: There is more than one irony in the Assange saga. The extradition treaty between the UK and the US does not recognise extradition if the request was politically motivated — as it is becoming increasingly obvious is the case here.
The First Amendment of the US constitution guarantees the freedom of the press:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Pentagon Papers case confirmed this guarantee but while the US wishes to take Assange to trial in the US it will not extend to him the protections of the First Amendment because he is not a US citizen.
The person who actually leaked the confidential (embarrassing may be a better word) information, Chelsea Manning, had her 35-year sentence commuted by former US president Barack Obama. Clearly he didn’t see the leak as a big deal.
This whole thing has become a political nightmare and the UK should, as originally determined by the court, reject the extradition application and release Assange.
Glenn Jones writes: The response from the US should be challenged from our top office, the prime minister. We need to remind the Americans that we are allies, but that does not mean we will lie down and take kicks. We should also put pressure on England to release Assange to Australia — which is part of the so-called Commonwealth. It should be looking after what could be described as one of its own. Freedom for Assange is long overdue.
John Peel writes: What is it about Australia — and Marles in particular — that is so pathetically wet when it comes to standing up to America? Manning, the original leaker, had her sentence commuted. Not one single American has been harmed as a result of the release of those WikiLeaks files. And yet it still pursues Assange. Why? Because he has embarrassed our US overlords with clear evidence of their war crimes.
I’m not an Assange admirer, but four years in Belmarsh prison is surely punishment enough for a crime only Blinken and his cohorts believe is worth pursuing.
Loretta Little writes: I find Julian to be a narcissistic individual whose behaviour has created many enemies. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with the appalling treatment he has been subjected to in England, with solitary confinement in Belmarsh high-security prison.
The intent of the US government is obviously to punish Assange for the embarrassment it suffered with the revelations of war crimes committed by American troops in Iraq — for which there has been no investigation. The papers which published the revelations have suffered no legal consequence.
Marles is prostrating himself to the great and mighty US — we are a sovereign nation, but he appears to be weak and pliable and does not have the best interests of Australia at heart. It seems what the US wants Marles will ensure it gets. Instead, we must work to free Assange. Enough is enough. I am ashamed of the weak behaviour of our government despite totally backing the ascendancy of the Labor Party when it won the election.
