Over the past five decades, drug policy in Australia has been contested between two main groups: the prohibitionists, who aim to ban social drugs by criminalising users and consumers, and the Harm-Reductionists, practitioners in the field who take a less censorious line on drug use and aim to educate users on how to minimise the harms associated with drug use. (more…)
John Jiggens
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Reclaiming the radical spirit of the Eureka Rebellion
At 4am in the morning, Ballarat was dark and dismal. Nonetheless, about forty people, suitable dressed for the cold and the light drizzle, assembled at the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park to commemorate the 170th anniversary of the 1854 Eureka rebellion. The sky was clouded, and the Southern Cross was shrouded, but it was present in abundance on the flags, banners and clothing. The flag we should have had! The symbol of an independent Australia. (more…)
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Will Joe Biden pardon Julian Assange?
Julian Assange may no longer be behind bars, but his conviction casts a shadow over press freedom and the safety of journalists everywhere—a wrong Assange and his supporters world-wide are determined to set right by overturning his wrongful conviction via a presidential pardon from Joe Biden. (more…)
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The Queensland elections and the youth crime crisis
“The basic facts about youth crime in Australia, including Queensland, is that the number of young people getting into trouble with police has been going down every year.” – Ross Homel, Foundation Professor in Criminology, Griffith University. (more…)
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Julian Assange’s fifty-third birthday party
A week after Julian Assange’s release from Belmarsh prison, a boisterous gathering of 200 very happy Assange supporters packed the St Kilda Bowls Club in Melbourne to celebrate Julian Assange’s 53 birthday on July 3. Assange, who was in seclusion still recovering from his ordeal, did not attend. (more…)
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The legacy media hate Julian Assange
It is often said that the reason the legacy media hate Julian Assange so much is that they are jealous of Assange’s rock star status. But it is much more than that. Not only did Assange make the MSM look dishonest; by reinventing Fourth Estate journalism with WikiLeaks, Julian Assange challenged the control of the narrative that is the source of the power of the legacy media. (more…)
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UK’s legal process a form of ‘psychological torture’, as Assange battles US
John Shipton has been in London, observing his son Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States. (more…)
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World War III and The Grand Chessboard
Imagine being Tony Blinken, and facing the arduous responsibility as US Secretary of State to rule the globe! This seems a daunting task, but fortunately, Blinken doesn’t have to strain his brain too much because he has a manual already written to instruct him.
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David McBride versus Four Corners
On Easter Saturday, a friend and I drove down to Mullumbimby to hear Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride speaking at the Mullumbimby RSL. The previous Monday, I had watched the Four Corners program about David McBride, called Rules of Engagement. My friend hadn’t seen it, so we listened to it on the iPhone as we drove along. There was one heavily ironic moment in Rules of Engagement when ABC journalist Dan Oates says he hates it when journalists make themselves the centre of the story. (more…)
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Extradition looms for Julian Assange
The UK High Court has delayed the extradition of Julian Assange to the US for a further three weeks, requesting the United States give assurances that Assange will be protected by First Amendment free speech rights, that he won’t be discriminated against as an Australian citizen, and that he will not face the death penalty. The High Court judgment said that if those assurances were not given by the United States, leave to appeal will be given to Assange, and there will then be an appeal hearing. (more…)
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The persecution of Julian Assange
I see in the persecution of Julian Assange, a parallel with a technique put together by the United States in the destruction of Iraq that they called shock and awe, wherein all of the institutions of state were destroyed and plundered, with the exception of the department concerning itself with the production of oil. Now the parallel in publishing, in journalism, is Julian Assange. Every aspect of his life is absolutely destroyed. His family, facing bankruptcy in pursuit of some sort of freedom or justice for Julian, and intimidation and crushing, absolute crushing of the courage. There’s just no chance now that anybody will take upon themselves the work of Julian Assange, knowing that the United States will just simply destroy you, John Shipton says in an interview with John Jiggens. (more…)
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Night Falls in the Evening Lands: The extradition of Julian Assange
As we await the UK High Court decision on Julian Assange’s extradition to the US, the implications of Assange’s persecution and the repercussions for human rights, journalism, peace and justice will be explored at the conference Night Falls in the Evening Lands: the Assange epic, which will be held in Melbourne on March 9. (more…)
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USUKA: The hidden history of AUKUS
The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) have written to the National Anti- Corruption Commission (NACC), asking them to investigate former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to join private companies who will profit from the massive defence expenditure resulting from Morrison’s decision to establish AUKUS — a decision the ACP characterised as “extraordinary, unilateral and secretive”. Dr John Jiggens details the hidden back story of AUKUS. (more…)
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Andrew Wilkie: Assange must be allowed to return to Australia
“The majority of the Australian parliament, including the Australian government and the Prime Minister are of the view that regardless of what you think about Julian Assange, the fact is he’s been incarcerated in one way or another for twelve years or so. The matter has gone on long enough that the extradition should be dropped and he should be allowed to return to Australia.” Says Andrew Wilkie in an interview with Dr John Jiggens. (more…)
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Historic vote in Australian parliament on Julian Assange
Wednesday, February 14, turned out to be an unanticipated Happy Valentine’s Day for Julian Assange supporters. The Australian House of Representatives passed a motion introduced by Tasmanian Independent, Andrew Wilkie on behalf of the Parliamentary Friends of Julian Assange, urging the US and the UK to bring their prosecution of Julian Assange to a close, and allow him to return to his family and home in Australia. (more…)
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The ghost of Julian Assange
Despite being detained, silenced, and hidden from public view in the maximum security Belmarsh prison for the past five years, as the day of his extradition draws near, the spectre of Julian Assange looms ever larger over the politics of the AUKUS lands. (more…)
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John Pilger, maverick journalist (1939-2023)
In a speech he made in Sydney in 2011, defending Julian Assange, John Pilger recalled how it was always impressed upon him when he was young that Australia was a brave country: that we stood up to authority, and we stood up for justice. Such national myths were at best half-truths, Pilger said, but in our political life, there was scant evidence of this. But now and then, an Australian came along who made such myths seem true. Julian Assange was such an Australian, he said. (more…)
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Crown successfully overturns Nuremberg war crimes principles in Australian court
In direct contradiction to the 1945 Nuremberg trials, the Crown successfully argued in the prosecution of Afghan Files military whistleblower David McBride for breaching the Defence Forces Act that the sole duty of an Australian soldier is to follow orders. An Australian soldier does not serve Australia, or the Australian people or the public interest. The final blow for McBride fell last Thursday, when the court was closed down under Australia’s National Security Act, and a large contingent of men in suits confiscated all the files that the Defence had planned to use to argue McBride’s public interest defence. (more…)
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Who do you serve? The non-trial of David McBride
“Today I serve my country. And the question I have for you, Anthony Albanese is, ‘Who do you serve?’” – David McBride (more…)
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John Mearsheimer and the decline of US hegemony
“It’s very important to understand that what’s happened is that the unipolar moment is in the rearview mirror. It’s gone. We are now in a multipolar world”
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David McBride and the Afghan files trial
Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride is facing a secret trial on November 13 that could result in him serving a life sentence for leaking classified information that formed the basis of ‘The Afghan Files’, a 2017 ABC exposé revealing allegations of misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. (more…)
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Assange extradition: “something you might expect from a totalitarian regime”
Julian Assange may be only weeks away from being extradited to the US where he will face prosecution under the US Espionage Act that could see him imprisoned for 175 years, even though he is an Australian citizen, not a US citizen! With extradition so near, the campaign to save Assange has reached its highest pitch. (more…)
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Opposing US-led wars: can Australia become independent and peaceful?
The narrative about the inevitability of a war with China began to dominate US strategic thinking in the second decade of the twenty-first century. (more…)
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Are we on a path to war with China? An interview with David Shoebridge
“One of the most extraordinary moments in politics in the last five years has been watching Anthony Albanese, notionally from the left of Labour, adopt, without any internal democracy within the Labor Party, without any public investigation of it, adopt wholeheartedly Scott Morrison’s AUKUS plans… It’s perhaps one of the most extraordinary betrayals of the public interest and Labor’s historic anti-nuclear platform that I can recall… it’s deeply dangerous, and it is leading us down a pathway to war. ” (more…)
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Bring Julian home
Over the past month, Australian pressure on the Biden administration to drop the charges against Julian Assange has grown significantly. (more…)
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A revolution in Journalism: WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
Speech at The Persecution of Truth conference (more…)
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The Persecution of Truth
The war on whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and truth will be examined at a conference called The Persecution of Truth at the State Library of Queensland on Sunday April 30th. (more…)
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The AUKUS orchestra, Julian Assange and Iraq
On Saturday, March 18, a small rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War gathered in a park outside the Lismore Memorial Baths. (more…)
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Championing war with China
In an extraordinary editorial that was labelled as warmongering by former prime minister Paul Keating, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) called for China to be labelled a clear and present threat, argued for the reintroduction of conscription and for long range missiles armed with nuclear weapons, and urged Australia to prepare for war with China in three years. (more…)
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Freeing Assange?
On New Year’s Day 2023, John Lyons, the Global Affairs Editor of the ABC, made the extraordinary prediction that within the next two months Julian Assange would be released. (more…)