ASSANGE’S FIRST NIGHT HOME
The media is swarming around Julian Assange after his return to Australia last night, back home after 14 years in exile. Assange raised his fist to photographers as he stepped out of Canberra airport, with his wife and furious advocate Stella pleading for privacy as he adjusts to his newfound freedom, reports the SMH. “I ask you — please — to give us space, to give us privacy. To find our place. To let our family be a family before he can speak again at a time of his choosing,” she said to reporters.
The Australian is doing its best to cast Assange’s release in a negative light, labelling him a “convicted felon” and “Australia’s highest profile fugitive” who “dumped files on the internet”. But the paper can’t deny that Assange’s return is a boon for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “quiet diplomacy”: “The diplomatic and legal systems clicked into gear. They were now acting with the clear imprimatur of the prime minister.”
Internationally, The New York Times reports that “Broad support for his release seems to have grown more out of resentment of his treatment by the US justice system than concerns about press protections”, pointing out Australia is hardly a bastion of press freedoms, writing that our “own espionage laws are some of the toughest in the democratic world, with punishments stretching to 25 years in prison and weak protections for journalism”. It remains unclear what either Australia or the US has learnt from the Assange saga — but regardless of your opinion of him, it’s difficult to argue that stronger protections for journalists can only result in our institutions being held to a higher standard.
ABORTION SERVICES DESERT
As the abortion debate rages on in America, where it’s set to be one of the defining topics of the 2024 presidential election, services in regional Australia are coming under the microscope, with the ABC reporting “service deserts” in Western Victoria. According to a new regional healthcare report, women and gender-diverse people are struggling to schedule medical abortions (being left only with surgical options), having to seek services away from home at a huge personal cost, and dealing with some regional doctors not knowing how to administer contraceptive alternatives like IUDs. Timeliness is one of the biggest complications, with wait times for services creating real problems for even basic reproductive health issues. “If that means that your contraceptive pill script is due for renewal, that gap of two weeks can create a bit of problem for you,” said Women’s Health Grampians sexual health adviser Shannon Hill.
In the US, the Supreme Court appears poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho after accidentally leaking a court document to their website, CNN reports via Bloomberg. The decision “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman’s health”. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urged a speedy resolution to the issue, saying “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
It comes as infant mortality rates in Texas have increased by 8% after abortion was made illegal in the state, reports the Associated Press. Deaths due to birth defects increased by 23%, compared to a decrease of about 3% in the rest of the US. “The Texas law blocks abortions after the detection of cardiac activity, usually five or six weeks into pregnancy, well before tests are done to detect fetal abnormalities,” the article states. Fertility researcher Suzanne Bell argues “these findings make clear the potentially devastating consequences that abortion bans can have”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Where did music come from?
I don’t mean styles like rock or jazz, or instruments or musical trends — I’m talking music itself: rhythm, cadence, melody… the desire to sing and share that song, to be heard. If a recent University of Warwick study is to be believed, it may have come from lemurs. The indris, or “singing lemurs”, have been “observed to sing when they lose sight of each other in the dense forests, in the early morning to advertise their presence as a family group and to threaten other family groups”.
Apparently, the primates have the highest number of common vocalisations with human beings out of any animal. “The findings highlight the evolutionary roots of musical rhythm, demonstrating that the foundational elements of human music can be traced back to early primate communication systems,” said Daria Valente, co-author of the study.
Have a listen, it’s eerie and quite beautiful.
Say What?
Julian Assange was not wrongfully detained like Cheng Lei, Sean Turnell or Kylie Moore-Gilbert. For 12 years Assange chose to avoid facing justice in countries with fair judicial systems. He is underserving of this treatment.
Simon Birmingham
The Liberal Senate leader tweeted an attempt to burst Albanese’s bubble after the prime minister posted a definitely real picture of himself on the phone to Julian Assange.
CRIKEY RECAP
“The corporate media, which purports to hold the powerful to account, never really forgave Assange, even as it scrambled to work with him to access the material he had — even now the resentment towards Assange is on display from outlets who see their role as propping up, not exposing, power.
The spate of revelations from WikiLeaks — not merely from the US but also from other countries and corporations — seemed to promise a new era of enforced transparency as government struggled to cope with the sudden slipperiness of information in the digital age. It was, we realised, far easier to move large volumes of information when it was zeroes and ones and not paper.”
“God knows politics is a thing for the professionals these days. So I presume that Labor’s response to Peter Dutton’s announcement of seven state-funded nuclear power plants was a finely crafted exposition of meme warfare, avoiding taking the thing head on, talking to slivers of voters and the kidz, etc.
Because from the cheap seats, well, it looked like a huge disaster, in which a government utterly unprepared for an initiative they knew for months was coming, scrambled to pull a response together and made Dutton look like the prime minister in exile.
By this account, Labor and the union movement had defaulted to a natural opposition status, allowing the ‘natural party of government’ to re-assert itself, and its chorus in News Corpse to sing its praises. Its meme war — the unions’ ‘this will be your dog’ tardigrade picture; the snow white and the seven reactors — were funny but flippant, guerilla war, instead of a frontal assault.”
“Imagine a public servant concerned that their manager, who they work alongside every day, has been acting corruptly — and they have a document which offers evidence. The public servant might want to blow the whistle to the ombudsman, or the National Anti-Corruption Commission. They might take the document home given their supervisor is over their shoulder all day, every day — solely for the purpose of attaching it to their public interest disclosure. Following the judgment in Boyle’s case, such an act would expose the would-be whistleblower to criminal charges for theft and a possible code of conduct investigation.
Whistleblowing laws also explicitly allow whistleblowers to speak up to journalists and MPs in certain circumstances. But now they cannot provide any documents or information that is not already in their lawful possession. The protection is only to tell a journalist about allegations of corruption, not provide any evidence. How many journalists and MPs will take a whistleblower’s word for it?”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Heatwaves do discriminate: This new map shows who is most at risk when hot weather strikes Europe (euronews)
Kenya’s Ruto says finance bill to be withdrawn after deadly protests (Al Jazeera)
Starmer brands Sunak ‘out of touch’ as shouting Gaza protest heard outside (The Independent)
French elections seen from Germany: Outcome could cause an ‘extremely serious crisis’ (Le Monde)
The Trump and Biden economies by the numbers (Reuters)
THE COMMENTARIAT
As the Coalition goes nuclear, Labor is free to ensure fossil fuels are burned with abandon and little scrutiny — Greg Jericho (Guardian Australia): “The ‘future gas strategy’ released by the resources minister, Madeleine King, in the week before the budget made it clear that the government was committed to more gas. Not so much for us as for others, such as Japan.
To justify this the government has come up with a nonsensical line that gas exports are crucial for national security because Japan needs them and otherwise it would become reliant upon Russia. Except Japan on-sells more gas to other countries than it imports from Australia. Yes, more!
The Australian Financial Review, bless its corporate soul, argues that this demonstrates just how vital LNG exports are for security because ‘Japan is using Australian LNG to pursue regional strategic energy security’. Please. At this point you also have to ask: is it really ‘Australian LNG’?”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is back in Australia and for Anthony Albanese the job is done — David Speers (the ABC): “While noting the ‘independence’ of the US Justice Department and the ‘separation’ of the political and judicial arms of American democracy, the prime minister didn’t want anyone doubting the influence he brought to bear.
He’s simultaneously arguing justice was blind to the building pressure from Australia, while also claiming credit for that pressure succeeding. He wants to show respect for the justice system of Australia’s most important ally, while also banking the political capital of securing this outcome. Indeed, Assange, his family, supporters, and legal team openly acknowledge it would not have been achieved without the work of Albanese and his government.”
