Interview with Gabrial Shipton Julian Assange’s brother reveals the movement to free Julian is growing, and this is being helped by the Australia cross-party delegation of members of the federal parliament, which has gone to Washinton to put to their American counterparts, Australia’s call to stop the persecution of the award-winning journalist and publisher. Nine in 10 Australians support Assange, and support is growing in the United States.
Australia’s support is so strong that the prime minister and the leader of the opposition agree that “enough is enough.”
Gabrial suggests that perhaps those in Washington who value the Alliance the United States has with Australia might to consider this. He finishes by paying tribute to his brother’s courage, standing up in difficult situation marked by years of unjust imprisonment.
Civil libertarians have always argued that Australia’s anti-terrorist laws pose a major threat to democratic rights. They provide government with the means to punish those who criticise what it does. There is concern that the introduction of these laws has been accompanied by an increasing militarisation of Australia’s police forces.
Protests are rocking France again. This time it’s over the police shooting and killing of a 17-year-old at a traffic stop. Being of Algerian descent, he was not white, and like in the United States, racial killing of black and Brown skinned people by police is commonplace. Continue reading France erupts after police killing of a teenager→
New Parliamentary Budget Office costings on the Stage Three Tax Cuts, which had been requested by the Greens, has revealed that the cost is rising and now sits at $20 billion for the first year (2024), and will increase each financial year to $42 billion in 2033-34. This is a total of $313 billion, and it is likely to end up costing even more.
Any decent and caring human being should be moved to anger and turn their back on anyone who promotes this obscenity.
The numbers speak for themselves. They reveal how much that small group at the top of the income pyramid is taking, and how little everyone else is getting in the face of an ongoing rise in the cost of living. Those in the middle get small shift in the tax margins, and what they gain is a sop that will soon be taken over by inflation. The share of national income will keep on flowing outwards. Those on annual incomes less than $45,000 get nothing. The screws will continue to tighten on government expenditure on services that benefit the majority.
Pocketing the money are those with incomes over $180,000 a year. Most of this will go to a much smaller group of billionaires. The much larger group in the middle-income range will be given a sop through modest marginal tax bracket adjustments. Not big enough to deliver any real change, and this will soon be eaten away by inflation. Those with an income below 45,000 a year will get absolutely nothing.
It’s those down the pyramid who will be paying the cost to line the pockets of those at the top of it, through the taxes they pay, and in the absence of services that could otherwise have been provided with this money.
For example, the money could have been used to lift those living below the poverty line and for the creation of affordable housing to address the rising cost of living crisis. Everyone should be up in arms over this failure.
While there is discontent over it, the lid has till now stopped this form boiling over. This lid is the political bipartisanship pushing it through.
The Coalition parties are supposed to stand up for the wealthy and Labor for working class Australians. It’s not quite like this in the real world. Political life within the framework of the existing political institutions demands those who seek to be the government to seek patronage in terms of dollar donations, entry into networks of power, and a positive media profile. There is always a price to be paid for patronage.
Labor differs with its base in the unions and community sector. It is from here that internal pressure to change direction is coming from and lining up with the rising expectations of Australia.
Working the other way are the realities of the political system and its associated bipartisanship on this question.
Political expediency and the unquestioning ideological hold of neoliberalism provides the rational that insists responsible government is about looking after the wealthiest to keep the economy sound, despite of its ongoing failure in practice. If it had worked, we wouldn’t have the problems that we have. The other part of this ideology is that any other approach is delegitimised. The neoliberal ideology must go.
Last but not least is the ethical question. In a caring society we look after each other. Each contributes according to their own capacity in return for benefits. There is nothing wrong with suggesting that those who are in the best position should contribute a little more. The choice is tied to whether we strive towards to be a caring society or continue on the same path.
As for the claim that moving in the opposite direction will hurt the economy. This is rubbish. Action that will facilitate participation and increase activity, means a far better chance of investment where it’s needed, and more likely to create jobs boost the economy.
Daniel Duggan is an Australian citizen who migrated here from the United States years ago. He made a home here with his wife Saffrine and their six children, aged from 5 to 18. On 21 October last year, where he had gone after dropping his children at school in Orange (NSW) and then going to a local supermarket, he was grabbed by federal police inside and subsequently taken to Sydney and locked in a cell at Silverwater prison. Continue reading An Australian is being held to be illegally extradited from Australia to the United States→
The Belmarsh Tribunal begun a hearing on 20 January 2023, at the National Press Club at Washington DC. Testimony was heard from to hear expert testimony from journalists, whistleblowers, lawyers, publishers and parliamentarians, on assaults to press freedom and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with special attention paid to the case faced by Julian Assange
Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Srecko Horvat, the co-founder of DiEM25, chair the event, organized by Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation.
Members of the tribunal include Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. Parliament and founder of the Peace and Justice Project, and many more.
Julian Assange’s family has gone to Mexico on the invitation of the country’s President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. While there they attended a rally in support of Julian.
Xana Gusmao, the leader of the battle of Timor-Leste from Indonesian occupation spoke out on 6 July, about the welcome decision of the Australian government to stop lawyer Bernard Collaery’s persecution, for acting on behalf of whistleblower witness K. His statement is reproduced below in full.
