Barnaby Joyce and Monique Ryan may not have much in common — but at the end of September they’ll be checking in at the same hotel in Washington DC for a trip to lobby US politicians on behalf of Julian Assange.
Crikey has confirmed that most of the motley crew of Australian politicians that will be travelling to the US capital will be flying there together, and that they’ll all stay at the same hotel.
The trip is being paid for by the Assange campaign and five out of six Aussies will fly together from Sydney. The sixth one — and it’s not immediately clear who — will be flying from Melbourne.
“Hopefully they’ll all be friends by the time they get there,” Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton told Crikey.
Joyce, the former Nationals leader, and Ryan, an independent MP, will be joined by Liberal Senator Alex Antic, Labor MP Tony Zappia, and Greens senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson.
Shipton said it was too early to reveal which US politicians would be meeting with the Aussies during the September 20-21 trip, but said the campaign is seeking to line up talks with US senators and representatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
“The aim of the delegation is to secure the release of Julian Assange, and I think how they go about that is taking the concern of the Australian people to Washington,” he said.
“Speaking to the State Department, speaking to the Department of Justice, congresspeople and senators, communicating to them that this vengeful prosecution — or persecution — of Julian isn’t doing them any favours abroad. Particularly in Australia which is one of their closest allies.”
The visit will happen in the weeks before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first prime ministerial trip to Washington, scheduled for the end of October.
Assange, who founded the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, is being held in London’s Belmarsh prison and risks being extradited to the US, where he’s facing 18 counts, including a spying allegation.
The US says the Australian endangered lives when WikiLeaks published leaked documents in 2010 and 2011 related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Assange’s supporters say the publications were legitimate works of journalism and that Assange shouldn’t be punished for them.
The 52-year-old has spent more than a decade indoors, including more than four years in Belmarsh. He was detained by UK police in 2019 after having spent the previous seven years inside an Ecuadorian embassy apartment in London.
Which member of this unlikely alliance is likely to best serve Assange’s case? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
A complete waste of time and money……………..
……..all that is required too ensure Assange’s immediate release is to send our Ambassador in to see uncle Joe with a note saying
“You can have Assange ,
or you can have Pine Gap.
You cannot have both.
I expect him to be on a plane to Australia within 24 hours.
Regards Albo”
To which the reply would be “We’re keeping both and you are a goner.”
So we give one of our recently acquired Tomahawks a test run on Pine Gap……………
………it means bugger-all to us other than being the first nuclear target if the Yankees ever do manage to provoke China too much.
(With the added bonus of getting us out of the AUKUS fiasco)
I’d love to call their bluff and make a big show that the rest of the world could not ignore. Not sure that it works so easily because you have to take into account Rupert’s spin. Not sure that the rest of Australia would be with us regarding this move, once they’d had the Murdoch make-over. Worth trying nonetheless.
Don’t see Albo or Dutton doing anything to get Assange free.
Hey Albo why don’t you make Aukus conditional on Assange’s immediate release. If that doesn’t work close down America’s Pine Gap.
Yes – ” soft diplomacy ; behind closed doors” …. More impotence from careerists
“Soft” being the operative word………………
……..although I think it applies to something other than Diplomacy.
Dutton and the LNP had years to work on this, but is being used to beat Labor over the head, ditto Democrats in the US; bit suspicious of the right wing types.
At best he will have to face the music like others, but hope that he can serve any hopefully commuted sentence in Oz.
However, local narratives use an earlier time when Wikileaks was on piste, to avoid allegations around Assange, Wikileaks, Roger Stone, stolen DNC emails, Russian and Trump campaign, to get at Clinton campaign and have the GOP win around 2015-16; very unethical and vengeful behaviour as explained in US centre left media, e.g. see Corn in Mother Jones (17 Dec ’21) ‘Denounce Julian Assange. Don’t Extradite Him’.
Think he has been used to deflect from the GOP/Trump, no pressure on the UK Tory govt., but blame PM/ALP and Biden-Democrats by Koch linked (Heritage’s The Daily Signal) and other fringe RW MSM outlets (inc. the Russian linked Zero Hedge); along with other conspiracies e.g desperately trying to reboot the hunter Biden laptop narratives.
Never thought I’d find myself rooting for Barnaby Joyce and Alex Antic. (That’s rooting in the American sense of the word).
Thanks for clarifying that, Frank…
I think they’d both benefit from a rigorous application of the Australian interpretation………………
…………..preferably with the rough end of a pineapple.
Disagree, Joyce has a close relationship with a mining magnate allegedly funding the IPA (according to DeSmog), they along with Abbott , Downer, Sheridan et al. not only share pro fossil fuel and anti-EU views, but the latter cohort have been visiting and presenting at entities in Budapest & London funded by govt. of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban, and one entity is linked directly to Koch’s US flagship Heritage Foundation (= IPA).
Not only did US conservative writer Anne Applebaum call out their favourite entity in Budapest after Russia’s invasion (Abbott’s advisor & alleged spy was a fellow and did a reverse ferret), Heritage has started messaging against support for Ukraine & anti-NATO, while Antic made negative comments about Ukraine’s Zelensky (none about Putin?); whiff of Assnage being used to run protection for shared fossil fuel, anti-EU, anti-NATO and anti-liberal democracy interests e.g. Brexit.
More noise https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/07/barnaby-joyce-net-zero-untenable-coalition-rift-climate
?
Did the journalists who published the Pentagon Papers go to jail? After all they actually did that within the US borders.
Nobody went to gaol. It’s always mystified me why Assange’s revelations are regarded as more affronting than Daniel Ellsberg’s.
Ellsberg was about as big an insider as you could get (Rand Corp) and had actually written part of the report himself – so much harder to demonize, and no-one knew how many other skeletons he was holding……………..
…………initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, theft of government property but the charges were dropped when prosecutors investigating Watergate discovered that Nixon had ordered the break-in (which kind of proved his case).
There is a very good docudrama on the Pentagon Papers on SBS On Demand:
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/the-most-dangerous-man-in-america/1183105091718
Thanks, have seen it. Highly recommended.
They weren’t even his revelations. He just provided whistleblower protection. Which the Albanese government should take second and third looks at. Even the Yanks let their whistleblowers out after a few years – many years fewer than Assange has suffered.
Lest we forget what was exposed – the ‘collateral damage’ lie.
He is no saint. His later ‘revelations’ were DNC emails stolen via Russian ‘phishing’, handed over via Trump’s Stone, used by Wikileaks to denigrate or upend the Clinton-Dems campaign then conspired to falsely blame DNC staffer Seth Rich and claim Democrat conspiracy to murder the latter.
Wikileaks described Clinton as ‘sadistic sociopath’ and ‘“We believe it would be much better for [the] GOP to win,” WikiLeaks had tweeted.’ (Corn/Mother Jones).
Nice one?
No doubt Assange is hard to like. And best not to have casual sexual encounter with him, because he thinks saying yes once is giving implied consent for ever after. He probably helped defeat Clinton, allowing Obama to win, thus stirring up the good ole boys and their women. Might help explain Trump’s win. Doesn’t explain why USA is still after Assange.
Think I can guess why, and he is useful to nefarious forces while in US, and UK reporting and/or action on same Russian influence, has been buried &/or egregiously ignored e.g. Johnson attending a Lebedev party in Italy when FM, privy to a previous NATO analysis/intelligence briefing and no security detail (!!).
Assange saga has been presented locally on the basis of early on piste years of Wikileaks, i.e. via framing, but ignores 2015-16 period leading up to Trump election; Kremlin does the same on claims of saving Europe in WWII, bypassing the inconvenient truth of Molotov-Rippentrop Pact ’38-41.
Related to the US, Trump, his crew of grifters, fossil fuel operators or oligarch donors and many in or around the GOP & media infrastructure, seem desperate to avoid scrutiny on well documented Russian links over many years (outside of the US); Trump from the same Mother Jones reporting:
‘weeks later the Trump administration further indicted Assange under the Espionage Act for having publicly posted the material WikiLeaks received from Manning. For that, he faces up to 170 years in prison.’
One would suggest maybe a fear of Assange spilling more beans that may embarrass some oligarchs and plutocrats too….. like the U.K.’s Russian influence issues still unresolved….
Something in my yet to appear reply triggered a review.
My first effort was parked, but part of here:
Assange saga has been presented locally on the basis of early on piste years of Wikileaks’ journalism, i.e. via framing, but ignores 2015-16 period leading up to Trump election; Kremlin does the same framing on claims of saving Europe in WWII, bypassing the inconvenient truth of Molotov-Rippentrop Pact ’38-41.
They tried to shut them down…………..
……….as fast as one paper published excerpts, the government slapped them with a law suit.
Then another one published (and got slapped)………….
Then another one, then another one…………..
…..until it became too whack-a-mole to keep up with and the government gave up.
Can you imagine that happening today?……………
The sooner Assange is relist the better he has been locked up for far too long over this…I think the US are using him as a pawn somehow!!
Agree – let him go.
But US citizens are such flag-the-front yard patriots, they and their politicians will not tolerate anyone threatening their marines. That’s the sentiment. They won’t say this, of course, but we only have to look back and see what happened to people and countries they perceive have threatened them in the past.
He is a pawn. It’s disgusting to see.
No, not just the US, but GOP, Russian and Koch linked entities, as he was naive, desperate, made suboptimal choices of RW allies and was used, then thrown back under a bus.
David Corn, like other centre left outfits in the US explain well, in Mother Jones, the issues that emerged around 2015-16, that are not spoken of locally, because evidence suggests spite and vengeance?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/12/denounce-julian-assange-dont-extradite-him/
And much Russian influence related to the GOP……
Interesting link thks.
So, thanks for that link, interesting reading and if true, Assange is toast.
Can observe desperation to reboot the Biden laptop conspiracy & impeach Biden by Koch outlets e.g Senate ‘Freedom Caucus’ (also defund Ukraine’s war effort), their Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal, and a dual citizen RW MSM proprietor’s outlets, Russian linked Zero Hedge etc.
Seems to be an attempt to not just mask Trump related shenanigans (in the UK with a Tory govt & same proprietor, nada?), with Assange being used, but who is manipulating whom or was compromised without realising at the time eg. fossil fuels links in the background between Russia and the US eg. former Trump administration’s ‘Tex Drillerson’ of Exxon, not a peep?
Here’s another from the investigative ByLine Time sin the UK:
‘Mueller Report – Assange Spread Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory to Cover for Russia. Assange and the “radical transparency” organisation he founded wittingly waged a disinformation campaign to provide cover for themselves — and they used a dead man’s name to do it.’
In turn being manipulated by Trump’s GOP campaign vs. Clinton & Democrats, then being thrown under a bus?
https://bylinetimes.com/2019/04/20/mueller-report-assange-spread-seth-rich-conspiracy-theory-to-cover-for-russia/
Not just toast, but well burnt. I suppose Barry Jones is aware of these reports? Anyway Jones is free to support who he wants. However, if these reports are accurate, no wonder Assange locked himself up in that embassy. Other really interesting (to me) thought is Assange dealing with the discovery that he is not the smartest personality in the room. I imagine it’d be very difficult knowing you’d been used and manipulated; the only possible way out would be to go deep throat, which would be signing up for VAD.
I see that some of Trump’s co-charged are reportedly starting to sing. Maybe Assange should consider joining the choir, he’s nothing to lose.