Go to the URL for the full interview which is too long. Two audio clips at bottom of interview:
Audio clip one: Chris Hedges talks with Julian Assange about his opponents' legal strategies.
(Transcript)
Audio clip two: Julian Assange shares his thoughts on the Bradley Manning Case.
(Transcript)
Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
"If fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag."
"Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!" - Huey Long, assassinated in 1935 for his anti-fascist stance.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Go to the URL for the full interview which is too long. Two audio clips at bottom of interview:
Audio clip one: Chris Hedges talks with Julian Assange about his opponents' legal strategies.
(Transcript)
Audio clip two: Julian Assange shares his thoughts on the Bradley Manning Case.
(Transcript)
Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
Adele
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Some back ground on Julian Burnside for the non-Australians. He is a very conservative lawyer and purely dedicated to The Law. Privileged family back ground, private schools etc. For most of his working life he worked for the big end of town in commercial law. In more recent times he has become known for his advocacy work for refugees and humna rights matters.
Does anyone seriously think this is about a broken condom?'
7 May, 2013Leanne Mezranihttp://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/Wig-Cham...qus_thread comments
High-profile QC Julian Burnside has said the Swedish government has given away its true motivation for seeking to extradite Julian Assange.
Burnside told Lawyers Weekly that it is important to expose the illogical steps being taken by Sweden to get the WikiLeaks founder into custody.
"I do not believe that all of this fuss and bother is about an arguably broken condom ... it is impossible to believe ... the point of the whole exercise is to get Assange to America," he said.
"An immense amount of trouble has been taken to get [Assange] to Sweden, ostensibly to ask him some questions about what is a low level offence ... when they could achieve their purpose by accepting his invitation to speak to him where he is."
Burnside explained that the Swedish prosecutor visited England in December to obtain the European Arrest Warrant seeking Assange's extradition to Sweden, but chose not to question him at that time, even though questioning was the sole purpose of the warrant.
The Australian Government should persuade Swedish authorities to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, said Burnside, claiming it is "a perfectly reasonable way to resolve the impasse ... you really have to wonder why they don't do the sensible thing".
But, he added, the Government has abandoned the WikiLeaks founder and described as "bullshit" claims by Foreign Minister Bob Carr that Australia is doing all it can to assist Assange.
"Australia needs to rouse itself out of its slumber and make a diplomatic effort," he said. "They know it's shameful, they know it's a breach of their duty to him as an Australian citizen."
Last year, Burnside wrote a letter to the then federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon asking, among other questions, if Australia had enquired whether US authorities are investigating Assange. It also detailed the reasons why Assange feared extradition to Sweden would result in his removal to America, including the fact that prominent Americans have called for Assange to be assassinated or tried for espionage, and Sweden has a witness surrender agreement with the US.
Burnside said he was "completely unsatisfied" with the Attorney-General's response, which led him to believe that either Australia was aware of American plans from which Assange needed protection, or had suspicions about American plans and preferred to turn a blind eye.
He added that the law relating to treason is the counterpart of the Government's obligation to protect its citizens, a duty it has blatantly failed to meet in Assange's case.
Last month, Swedish Supreme Court Judge Stefan Lindskog described the case against Assange as "a mess" in a public lecture held at Adelaide University. The speech attracted extensive media attention, but Burnside warned it gave cause for optimism when Assange is still very much at risk of being extradited to the US.
guardian.co.uk[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/], Monday 20 May 2013 01.05 BST
Julian Assange has obtained unclassified instant messages from GCHQ discussing his situation. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA
Wasn't it The Guardian who initially presented the Wikileaks stories as the UK exclusive and then backed off and became totally, utterly, silent when real pressure was exerted by the USA? Nice going if I remember this accurately? I always like to see courageous journalism in action.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Julian Assange Says UK Government Messages Include Speculation He Was Framed
By UPI
The messages, included discussions by the government eavesdropping agency that
speculated he was being framed by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition for
questioning on rape allegations.
Julian Assange Says UK Government Messages Include Speculation He Was Framed
By UPI
May 21, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"UPI" - Julian Assange said messages he got from a British agency included speculation he was framed by Swedish officials seeking his extradition.
The messages from the Government Communications Headquarters, obtained through an official request for information, included discussions by the government eavesdropping agency that speculated he was being framed by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition for questioning on rape allegations, The Guardian reported Sunday.
Assange spoke about the messages Sunday night during an interview with the Spanish television program, "Salvados."
The instant messages to which Assange had access remained unclassified by GCHQ.
Assange has spent the past 11 months in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden. He has maintained his innocence and said he feared he would be extradited to the United States. WikiLeaks posted millions of sensitive military and diplomatic documents and communiques
A GCHQ message from September 2012, read by Assange, allegedly said: "They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ. ... It is definitely a fit-up. ... Their timings are too convenient."
Assange provided little explanation about exactly who wrote the messages, The Guardian said.
Assange said GCHQ was unaware it may have anything on him that wasn't classified, The Guardian said.
"It won't hand over any of the classified information," he said. "But, much to its surprise, it has some unclassified information on us."
Another instant message conversation, as read by Assange, from August 2012 called the WikiLeaks founder a "fool" if he thought he could wait out Sweden's attempt to extradite him.
The agency confirmed it "responded formally to the subject who made the request. The disclosed material includes personal comments between some members of staff and do not reflect GCHQ's policies or views in any way."
ssange: U.S. Probe of WikiLeaks & "Show Trial" of Bradley Manning Aims to Scare Whistleblowers Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of disclosing a trove of government documents and cables to WikiLeaks, is set to go on trial next week. Manning has already pleaded guilty to misusing classified material he felt "should become public," but has denied the top charge of aiding the enemy. Speaking from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange calls Manning's case "a show trial ... to terrorize people from communicating with journalists and communicating with the public." Assange also discusses his own legal status as he continues to evade extradition to Sweden. Assange fears that returning to Sweden would result in him being sent to the United States, where he fears a grand jury has secretly indicted him for publishing the diplomatic cables leaked by Manning.
[h=2]Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Julian Assange for the hour. He is in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. If he steps foot outside, the British government says they'll arrest him and extradite him to Sweden. If you could just for a moment, Julian, describe your situation right now, physically where you areyou're standing in front of an image. Describe what that image is and, well, the fact of how long you have been inside that embassy. JULIAN ASSANGE: Right now I am inside the embassy, as I have been for 11 months. Before that, I was under house arrest for approximately 590 days, and before that, I was in solitary confinement for 10 days. The image that you see behind you is a frame from "Collateral Murder," a famous release by WikiLeaks, which displays the murder of two Reuters staff and a number of others in Baghdad in 2007, which was then subsequently covered up by the U.S. military. Bradley Manning has been charged with supplying that video to us and has himself said that he did so. You will see a cannon shell through the front of the van and some dead bodies lying around. One of them is Namir Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, the two Reuters staff. This video we had as a background frame for a talk that I did at Oxford, similar to the way I'm conducting this one now, beaming into the Oxford Union. And the Oxford Union redacted the whole background by hand. Even the little monitors that were in the audience, that the audience could see, footage of those monitors they redacted by hand and put that out on the Internet. You can google for "Assange censored Oxford." So, partly to pay tribute to the people who died in this incident, but also to Bradley Manning, and to take a stand against the censorship of Oxford, we have presented this background. AMY GOODMAN: A quick question. Since we last spoke to you, again holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy, in November, Bradley Manning has pled guilty. Bradley Manning pled guilty to misusing classified material that he felt, quote, "should become public," but denied the top charge against him, aiding the enemy. He acknowledged he gave the classified documents, among them the video that you're describing, what you've called "Collateral Murder," that shows the journalists and the men in New Baghdad blown up by an Apache helicopter, and it's footage from the Apache helicopter, and then the subsequent exploding of the van that had two children in it. But he has pled guilty to doing this and to giving these documents to WikiLeaks, to you. You have always said you will not reveal your sources, but since he has pled guilty to this, can you talk about the significance of what Bradley Manning gave to WikiLeaks and what you published? JULIAN ASSANGE: Bradley Manning is making his statements under duress, presently. He is facing a capital offense, which Barack Obama would have to sign, so politically there is possibly only a 3 percent, say, chance that Barack Obama would sign a death certificate or that the judge would decide to promote a death certificate. But if there was a 3 percent chance of you crossing the road, you wouldn't do so. He's also facing a quite decent chance of life imprisonment. And the life imprisonment charge comes from a very new ambit claim of the Pentagon, that isand the Department of Justice, that is, communicating with a journalist is communicating to the public, is communicating to al-Qaeda. And there's no allegation that Bradley Manning intended to communicate to al-Qaeda. The only allegation is that he indirectly did so as a result of communicating with journalists, who communicated to the public. If that precedent is allowed to be erected, it will do two things. Firstly, it means it's a potential death penalty for any person in the military speaking to a journalist about a sensitive matter. Secondly, it also embroils the journalist and the publication in that chain of communicating, they would say, to the enemy, and therefore making them susceptible, as well, to the Espionage Act, which also has capital offenses. And that is part of the U.S.that latter part is part of the U.S. attack on WikiLeaks, including myself. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Julian Assange, there are about 150 witnesses who are set to testify against Manning at the trial. Among those witnesses, The Washington Post reports, is a person they have called a DOD operator, whose name they have not revealed, who is likely to say that Osama bin Laden received access to some of the WikiLeaks material through an associate because of what Manning revealed. JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, the latest information I have is that there are, in fact, four of those people involved in the Osama bin Laden raid who will be testifying in one way or another. This is, of course, part of the show trial. The alleged actions here are a communication between a source and a journalist. There's no allegation anyone else was present in the room. So, 141 prosecution witnesses, 31 of them are giving secret testimony, in part, or behind a screen or something like this. This is a show trial. The trial is meant to go for 14 to 16 weeks, And the prosecution, the Pentagon and possibly White House is hungry for this. This is their big Broadway musical moment, and they have their star divas, from the SEALs and elsewhere, that they intend to put up in order to terrorize people from communicating with journalists and communicating with the public. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Julian Assange, what do you think the significance is of the fact that over two dozen witnesses will partially testify in secret? JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, it's a furtherance of what we've been seeing, as this new political structure of centralized intelligence and military power continues to gain financial and political capital. It is advancing the frontiers to the degree where it is now conducting extensive secret trials. The same thing has been introduced here in the U.K. But we all know that without open justice, there is no justice at all. Justice must be seen to be done. Judges must themselves be on trial before the public as they conduct trials. We are all aware of the terrible abuses in the past that have come about as a result of secret star chambers. But nonetheless, the neo-military-industrial complex has gained enough political power where it is able toor at least it thinks that it is able to go back to this earlier depraved time. NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to recent comments made by the Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr. He was speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and was asked specifically about the threat of your possible extradition to the U.S. in the event that you're taken to Sweden.
BOB CARR: Julian Assange could have been the subject of extradition action by the United States any time in the last two years, when he's been residing in the U.K. He wasn't. To suggest that the Swedes are after him, as a CIA conspiracy, to get him to Stockholm and allowingallowing him to be bundled off to Langley, Virginia, is sheer fantasy. The Swedes have won in the U.K. courts. It's nothing to do with WikiLeaks. It's about a criminal allegation made in Sweden. And that's why he is in the Ecuadorean embassy. In this, Australia has precisely no status. We've got no standing in the courts on this in the United Kingdom. We've made representations to the Swedes about him being treated with due process. We've done that three times this month. We've made every effort
TONY JONES: And, by the way, just on that score, have you got some sort of assurance from the Swedes he would never be
BOB CARR: Oh, yes, yes. Well, the Swedes
TONY JONES: extradited to the United States?
BOB CARR: The Swedes say, "It is our policy, and it's been our policy for decades, that we never extradite someone on a matter related to military or intelligence." They just don't do it.
Julian Assange on Meeting with Google, Responds to Anti-WikiLeaks Attacks from New Film to Finances[/h]
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy last year to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sex assault and rape allegations. He fears that Sweden will agree to extradite him to the United States. On Tuesday, Ecuador's foreign minister accused the British government of trampling on Assange's rights by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political asylum almost a year ago. Joining us from the embassy, Assange addresses what he calls "attacks on all fronts against WikiLeaks," from a monetary embargo involving some of the world's largest financial firms to a new Hollywood documentary on WikiLeaks, "We Steal Secrets." Assange also discusses a little-known meeting he held in June 2011 with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. We air an excerpt of audio recording from that meeting. Check back soon for our extended interview with Assange.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are speaking today with Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, granted political asylum by Ecuador last year, sought refuge almost a year ago at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, because the British government promises to arrest him if he steps foot outside. Julian Assange is also author of Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet. I wanted to ask you quickly, Julian, about the Icelandic Supreme Court decision around Visa and theand the whole issue of how the money supply to WikiLeaks has been cut off online, if you can explain this latest development. JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, Amy, first let me contextualize it. There's attacks on all fronts against WikiLeakscriminal, reputational, financial, in many different countries. There's also counterattacks that we have been making. And in relation to this Visa blockade, back inback in late 2010, U.S. right-wing politicians, like Senator Lieberman, contacted a number of different financial institutions in the United States and encouraged them to cut off WikiLeaks as a recipient of Visa donations, our donations but by Visa. Now, as a result, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Moneybookers, Western Union, Diners Club, Discover, JCB and the Bank of America and Swiss Post Financethat's 10 different financial organizationsas a result of that pressure, engaged in extrajudicial financial blockade against us and our donors, much the same as they do to Cuba, but without any legislative backing, without any administrative backing. Even the U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner investigated whether we should be formally added to a U.S. blacklist, and found that there was no legal basis to do so.
In response, WikiLeaks, for the past year and a half or so, has been engaged in litigating some of these giant financial services companies that are influenced by Washington power brokers. And we won in the lower courts in Iceland, and we have won in the Supreme Court in Iceland just a few weeks ago. Now, that victory in the Supreme Court stated that Visa must open up the gateway and its subcontractor Valitor in Iceland must open up the gateway. Visa has relented and has opened up the gateway. However, it has also activated what it says is another clause in the contract to shut it back down again on midnight June 30. So, between now and midnight June 30, people can donate directly to WikiLeaks; otherwise, they have tocome midnight June 30, they will have to engage in indirect mechanisms. But they are there. For example, Daniel Ellsberg, John Cusack, John Perry Barlow and some others set up the Free Press Foundation in the United States precisely to deal with some of these economic blockades. But if you go to WikiLeaks.org/donate, you will see that there's different ways that we have constructed to work around this economic blockade. Unfortunately, they're all a little bit indirect, so it's a little bit of an extra burden for donors and a reputational burden, because you don't see that you are donating directly to WikiLeaks; you see that you're donating to the Free Press Foundation or the Wau Holland Foundation in Germany or a number of others. But donations now to WikiLeaks via the Free Press Foundation in the United States are tax-deductible. We've also had a major victory in Europe in relation to the German tax authorities, which also were politically pressured, and that has come out and been admitted, to remove our tax deductibility in Europe. That's now back. We've won against that. So, the position of my asylum here is such that we've been able to concentrate more of our resources on counterattack and have been successfully engaged in that battle. AMY GOODMAN: We wanted to turnswitch gears right now. The CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, has come out with a new book called The New Digital Age. And we wanted to ask you about a meeting you had. On June 23rd, 2011, Julian Assange, you had a secret five-hour meeting with the Google CEO Eric Schmidt. At the time, you were under house arrest in rural England. Also in attendance Jared Cohen, former adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Scott Malcomson, director of speech writing for Ambassador Susan Rice at the State Department and current communications director of the International Crisis Group; and Lisa Shields, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schmidt and Cohen requested the meeting to discuss their ideas for this book that has just come out, The New Digital World. We want to go to a part of your conversation with Schmidt and Malcomson. This is a recording you made of that meeting, first time being played in a national broadcast, where you talk about the PATRIOT Act.
JULIAN ASSANGE: We wouldn't mind a leak from Google, which would be, I think, probably all the PATRIOT Act requests.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Yeah, which would be illegal.
JULIAN ASSANGE: There's no jurisdiction, da-da-da-da-da.
ERIC SCHMIDT: We are a U.S.
JULIAN ASSANGE: There's higher laws. There's higher laws, First Amendment, you know.
ERIC SCHMIDT: No, no. I've actually spent quite a bit of time on this question, because I amI am in great trouble because I have given a series of criticisms about PATRIOT I and PATRIOT II, because
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah.
ERIC SCHMIDT: which I think arebecause they're nontransparent, you know, because the judge's orders are hidden, and so forth and so on. And the answerthe answer is that the laws are quite clear about Google in the U.S., that we couldn't do it. It would be illegal.
JULIAN ASSANGE: We're fighting this case now with Twitter, that we've done three court hearings now, trying to get the names of the other companies that fulfilled the subpoenas to the grand jury in the U.S. Twitter resisted, and so that's how some of us became aware. They argued that we should be told that there was a subpoena. I wasn't told, but
ERIC SCHMIDT: And this isand this is concerning you, concerning WikiLeaks?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, me personally, yeah. But three other people were told, but we know it is at least four other companies.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I can certainly pass on your request to our general counsel.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Tell them to argue that we should be told.
ERIC SCHMIDT: So, your specific request is that Google argue legally
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah.
ERIC SCHMIDT: that WikiLeaks, as an organization, should be informed
JULIAN ASSANGE: Or any of the individuals.
ERIC SCHMIDT: or the individuals, if they are named in a FISA.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah.
ERIC SCHMIDT: OK.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I will pass that along.
AMY GOODMAN: That is a part of this five-hour conversation that you had with the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, and Scott Malcomson, director of speech writing for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. Can you talk about the circumstances of this meeting, how you made this recording, and then talk about the substance of what we just heard? JULIAN ASSANGE: It's quite interesting to speculate as to the surface excuse for the meeting being about a book versus was there another side to it, as well. If we look at the way that Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have been going to North Korea and meeting with some other thieves, and how that information very rapidly goes back to the State Departmentwe know that the results of that meeting with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen went very, very quickly back to the top levels of the State Departmentthat they're, in some ways, becoming informal, deniable foreign ministers for a section of U.S. power. That's a very interesting thing to see Google resting so heavily on the U.S. State Department. NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to an excerpt from the book by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen called The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. In it, the authors suggest WikiLeaks has endangered lives. They write, quote, "Neither WikiLeaks nor groups like Anonymous are terrorist organizations, although some might claim that hackers who engage in activities like stealing and publishing personal and classified information online might as well be. The information released on WikiLeaks put lives at risk and inflicted serious diplomatic damage," end-quote. The authors don't cite evidence for their claim, but they do put an asterisk next to the statement saying, quote, "At a minimum, platforms like WikiLeaks and hacker collectives that traffic in stolen classified material from governments enable or encourage espionage." Julian Assange, your comments on that quote taken from Eric Schmidt's book? JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, it's absurd. States that engage in espionage want to keep the information that they gain to themselves in order to get competitive knowledge advantage over other states, and also simply to protect their sourcing operations. There's a reason why that claim, like all such claims, remains uncited: because it is false. Not even the Pentagon, in fact, no government organization, claims that the activities of WikiLeaks have led even to the loss of life for a single person anywhere in the world. And if we want to speculate about speculative risks, as opposed to talk about the hundreds of thousands of cases ofhundreds and thousands of deaths that WikiLeaks documented, the U.S. military being involved in one way or the other, then we can go to a statement made by NATO in Kabul, reported by CNN, that NATO could not see a single case of an Afghan needing protection or needing to be moved as a result of our publication of the Afghan War Diaries, and that it was the Afghan War Diaries that led to all these rhetorical flourishes by the Pentagon and by the establishment media in the United Kingdom, led by Murdoch, and in the United States. AMY GOODMAN: Let me end with your response to Alex Gibney's recently released documentary. We interviewed him at Sundance, the documentary called We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. This is Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, or NSA.
MICHAEL HAYDEN: Everyone has secrets. Some of the activities that nation states conduct in order to keep their people safe and free need to be secret in order to be successful. If they are broadly known, you cannot accomplish your work. Now look, I'm going to be very candid, alright? We steal secrets. We steal other nations' secrets. One cannot do that above board and be very successful for a very long period of time.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, or NSA, his statement, "We steal secrets," the one that Alex Gibney used for the title of his documentary. Your response, Julian Assange? And have you gotten to see this documentary? JULIAN ASSANGE: [inaudible] at best. The claim in the title is simply false. It has spread everywhere, of course, because it's in all the promotional literature. I assume very few people will go actually to see that film. That the promotion has been done by Universal. That's a $2.5 million hit job on my reputation, the reputation of the organization. What's the equivalent title? I Make Fictitious, Fraudulent Films: The Story of Alex Gibney. In response, we have published the full transcript, ahead of publicahead of the film's release, with line-by-line detail showing exactly how Alex Gibney edited statements, stitched them together, etc., and didn't engage indidn't engage, it seems, in any fact checking of the statements that the people he was interviewing. You know, for an example, I make some statement that begins with, "Well, what they say is," and then I quote it. Alex Gibney cuts off the "What they say," so in order to put someone else's words into my mouth. And that's present throughout the film. This is not a serious work. AMY GOODMAN: We have just 10 seconds in this part of the interview, Julian. JULIAN ASSANGE: This is not a serious work, and this is not a seriousnot a serious filmmaker.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Bob Carr says Hezbollah's involvement in Syria conflict is hugely significant, and also warns that the Coalition is on thin ice with Indonesia by promising to "turn back the boats" without a formal agreement.
The Australian government has washed its hands of Julian Assange as prosecutors at the trial of US soldier Bradley Manning have openly targeted the WikiLeaks publisher as a conspirator engaged in espionage.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has told a Senate budget estimates committee that the government would make no more representations to the US on Assange's circumstances because his case "doesn't affect Australian interests".
Senator Carr's declaration that he would not "over-service" Assange's consular needs came after US military prosecutors left no doubt that they regard the WikiLeaks chief not as a journalist dealing with sources but as a conspirator in the theft of classified information.
US prosecutors made repeated references to Assange this week, alleging at the opening of Private Manning's trial that the WikiLeaks publisher had directly encouraged and aided the soldier's massive leaks of classified documents.
The US has alleged that Assange conspired with Manning in the theft of classified information, including advising the soldier on "finding ways to browse SIPRNET [a secure database] anonymously".
Fairfax Media has also learnt that Assange has been prevented by one of the largest banks in the US from making a donation to his own political party.
Julian Assange looks out from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy. Photo: AFP
The Bank of America blocked the transfer to the new WikiLeaks Party of a $25,000 prize awarded to Assange by the Japanese musician, artist and philanthropist Yoko Ono.
News of the funding block against the WikiLeaks Party comes as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade acknowledged to the Senate estimates hearing that WikiLeaks, and by implication Assange, continued to be under investigation by the US Justice Department.
However, when asked by Greens senator Scott Ludlam whether the Australian government would raise the question of Assange's free-speech protection as a journalist under the First Amendment to the US constitution, Senator Carr said that "it wouldn't be a matter of concern to Australia to make a case for him. No, why would we do that?" Illustration: Ron Tandberg.
Asked whether the government would inquire whether a US grand jury investigation of Assange was ongoing, Senator Carr said no further inquiries would be made because "it doesn't affect Australian interests".
"I'm not going to have resources allocated to it," he said. "There's been enough investment of [department] resources in looking after Mr Assange's interests. This is an over-servicing of a consular case."
He added: "When information emerges from the American system it can be looked at with interest. It's not a focus of our diplomacy. Why would it be?"
Ms Ono honoured Assange with her annual Courage Award for the Arts in New York in February for his "courageous step" in "returning what belongs to the public domain".
Assange asked that the $25,000 award be sent to the WikiLeaks Party, a separate legal entity to WikiLeaks. However, in April Ms Ono's office said the Bank of America had refused to wire the money to the party's account. Her office then paid the award to the US-based Freedom of the Press Foundation, which in turn passed it on to WikiLeaks.
The Bank of America is one of a number of major financial institutions including Visa, American Express, Mastercard and Western Union that since December 2010 have refused to transfer funds to WikiLeaks. Transfers have been allowed to WikiLeaks-related entities, including Assange's legal defence fund.
WikiLeaks Party president John Shipton said the party had not experienced problems with other financial institutions.
Assange is subject to a Swedish extradition warrant concerning sexual assault allegations and has been granted diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
![[Image: art353-tandberg-7613-300x0.jpg]](http://images.theage.com.au/2013/06/06/4469990/art353-tandberg-7613-300x0.jpg)
Illustration: Ron Tandberg.