Democracy

Supporters of whistleblowing website Wikileaks rallied in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide on December 14, as Wikileaks editor-in chief Julian Assange faced a bail hearing at Westminster magistrates court in London that day. Protesters opposed attempts by governments and corporations to shut down and harrass the site. About 800 people gathered in Sydney to call for Assange to be granted a fair trial and to defend Wikileaks. About 1000 marched in Melbourne and 300 in Adelaide.

Members from a variety of community and solidarity groups campaigning for human rights in Australia and overseas came together on December 11 to mark International Human Rights Day in Sydney.

Wikileaks is Democracy, a political and defense mobilization group that supports Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, democracy and transparency in government, is promoting an open letter printed below. The letter was started by Linda Schade and Kevin Zeese, past and current executive directors of Voters For Peace.

More than 1000 people rallied at Sydney’s Town Hall at 1pm on December 10 to show their support for Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange. Rallies also occurred in Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of rock star John Lennon’s assassination. Lennon was also an anti-war activist and, in the most radical period of his life in the early 1970s, an unashamed socialist. (You can read an interview given by Lennon and his partner Yoko Ono to British revolutionary socialist magazine Red Mole in 1971 here.)

In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a “war of perception... conducted continuously using the news media”. What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where “the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences”. Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. “We had a secret weapon,” he boasted. “We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media.”

Noam Chomsky, renowned academic, author and critic of US imperialism, has offered his support to protesters across Australia planning to take to the streets in defence of Wikileaks.

Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera has posted all US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that pertain to Bolivia on his official website, the Associated Press said on December 8.

Statement released by organisers of the Sydney rally to defend Wikileaks on December 10 at Sydney Town Hall.

The open letter below was originally published at the ABC's The Drum Unleashed.

John Pilger was interviewed by ABC Radio Australia on December 3 & 6. December 3 interview December 6 interview Pilger’s latest documentary The War You Don’T See, on the role of the media to be released soon, will also feature an interview with Assange. Visit www.johnpilger.com for more information.

Socialist Alliance statement, December 7. Defend Wikileaks and Julian Assange! Australia should break the military alliance with US! “The Australian government should defend and support Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, and their efforts to expose the lies, duplicities and outright crimes of the US government and its allies”, said Peter Boyle, national convener of the Socialist Alliance. “We condemn the Australian government for collaborating with the American government in hunting Julian Assange down.