WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent four years mostly inside his UK maximum-security prison cell for a case his wife Stella describes as ‘99% politics and 1% law’, and the divide between the rich and poor in Sydney grows ever wider.
STELLA SUPPORT
The treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “inhuman and cruel”, according to his wife Stella, as the Australian continues to languish in a UK maximum-security prison. The New Daily reports he spends most of his time in his cell in Belmarsh prison in London, and has done so for more than four years since he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy. Stella says her husband has seen criminals convicted for armed crimes come and go from the prison during his time there, described as one of the longest stint of any inmate. Adviser to the Assange campaign Greg Barns SC told Crikey last week that it was dismal the government condemns Russia for detaining Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich (more on this via CNN) without taking strident action to get our own journalist home.
Quick reminder of the Assange facts: in 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 750,000 classified US military documents, including nearly 400,000 US army-filed reports, dubbed the Iraq War Logs, which detailed 66,000 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths during the Iraq War, as Oxford student paper Cherwell reminds us. In 2012, Assange moved into the Ecuadorian embassy, but after WikiLeaks reported on the alleged corruption of then-Ecuadorian president Lenìn Moreno, as Reuters delves into, the Met police were invited in. Assange was charged with breaching bail in the UK, and espionage in the US. The Americans have been trying to extradite him ever since. Stella told the student paper the case was “99% politics and 1% law”, adding that her surveillance camera catches people sitting in cars in civilian clothing with their headlights on all night, leafing through reports about her husband.
RICH MAN’S WORLD
More than half of greater Sydney saw an increase in poverty rates between 2016 and 2021, Guardian Australia reports. Now a quarter (25%) of parts of Bankstown, Liverpool and Fairfield in Sydney’s south and west are living in poverty, the highest in the state. Compare that with the statewide poverty rate of 13.2%. The place with the largest increase of those plunged into poverty, however, was Newcastle — a suburb called Cooks Hill. So what is the poverty line? It’s defined as half the median household income, the NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) says, and is adjusted for the number and age of people living in a home. It comes as the government is mulling over paying single parents extra welfare until their youngest turns at least 13, the AFR ($) reports. It used to be 16, but the Howard and Gillard governments rewound it back to eight. I tells ya, Worm reader, that policy turned out to be a real albatross around Gillard’s neck.
Meanwhile students and former students are about to be hard-hit by a mammoth 7.1% indexation on their HECS debt on June 1. On the average student loan of $24,771 you can expect to be slogged an extra $1760, the SMH ($) reports, but half a million graduates have debts of $40,000 or more. Why is this happening? Inflation. Staying on brand, Greens Leader Adam Bandt says Labor should tax gas corporations, not students. If your balance isn’t too high and you have some savings, the ABC has a great explainer that delves into whether you should just bite the bullet and pay it off. For those who aren’t in a position to do that, former RBA governor Bernie Fraser is in your corner, as Guardian Australia reports, this morning barracking for the Albanese government to use “its power for the people like it promised it would” and raise JobSeeker.
DEFENCE AND ATTACK
The former head of the US Navy was paid $7560 a day for his expertise at the Department of Defence, one of several revelations about high-paying contracts, the ABC reports. The Pentagon has for the first time revealed how ex-military figures scored lucrative work with foreign governments like ours. The broadcaster also reports that one of America’s top spooks, James Clapper, worked for an Australian intelligence agency just a year after resigning as US director of National Intelligence, when Donald Trump became president.
Meanwhile, our Defence Strategic Review was a “damn squib” and “very disappointing” because it didn’t have enough detail, according to former Labor MP Michael Danby, as Sky News reports. But that’s not deterring Defence Minister Richard Marles, who says we’ll have guided missile production within the next two years, The Australian ($) reports. All we gotta do is work out how to produce rocket fuel ingredient ammonium perchlorate in bulk, which we can’t do right now. It comes as past and present ADF personnel will have their submissions to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide shielded from public view for 99 years in a bid to encourage them to come forward about “abuse, bullying, or about incidents that involve certain places or people”, lawyer Rachael Vincent told the NT News ($).
Source – https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/04/27/julian-assange-belmarsh-prison-inhuman-cruel-wife/