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If the contest is between US's and UN's stewardship of the
Internet (only to the extent that any minimal law giving and
enforcing stewardship is absolutely necessary) one only needs to
hear Assange's speech on who between the two has shown greater
commitment to freedom of expression..... that one rallying cry
that is employed by US apologists.... and here we do not even
begin to speak that there are other rights beyond FoE, especially
of economic and social variety where US would not be able to even
fake any kind of honourable association.....<br>
<br>
</font>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Thursday 27 September 2012 01:34 PM,
Riaz K Tayob wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:50640878.3070105@gmail.com" type="cite">
<br>
<br>
(The best use of time spent at the UN in my memory...)
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-of-Julian-Assange.html">http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-of-Julian-Assange.html</a>
<br>
<br>
Transcript of Julian Assange Address to the UN
<br>
<br>
Published: Thursday 27 September 3am BST
<br>
<br>
Transcript of Julian Assange’s Address to the UN on Human Rights -
given
<br>
on Wednesday 26th September - Proofed from live speech
<br>
<br>
Foreign Minister Patino, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
<br>
<br>
I speak to you today as a free man, because despite having been
detained
<br>
for 659 days without charge, I am free in the most basic and
important
<br>
sense. I am free to speak my mind.
<br>
<br>
This freedom exists because the nation of Ecuador has granted me
<br>
political asylum and other nations have rallied to support its
decision.
<br>
<br>
And it is because of Article 19 of the United Nations Universal
<br>
Declaration of Human Rights that WikiLeaks is able to "receive and
<br>
impart information... through any media, and any medium and
regardless
<br>
of frontiers". And it is because of Article 14.1 of the Universal
<br>
Declaration of Human Rights which enshrines the right to seek
asylum
<br>
from persecution, and the 1951 Refugee Convention and other
conventions
<br>
produced by the United Nations that I am able to be protected
along with
<br>
others from political persecution.
<br>
<br>
It is thanks to the United Nations that I am able to exercise my
<br>
inalienable right to seek protection from the arbitrary and
excessive
<br>
actions taken by governments against me and the staff and
supporters of
<br>
my organisation. It is because of the absolute prohibition on
torture
<br>
enshrined in customary international law and the UN Convention
Against
<br>
Torture that we stand firmly to denounce torture and war crimes,
as an
<br>
organisation, regardless of who the perpetrators are.
<br>
<br>
I would like to thank the courtesy afforded to me by the
Government of
<br>
Ecuador in providing me with the space here today speak once again
at
<br>
the UN, in circumstances very different to my intervention in the
<br>
Universal Periodic Review in Geneva.
<br>
<br>
Almost two years ago today, I spoke there about our work
uncovering the
<br>
torture and killing of over 100,000 Iraqi citizens.
<br>
<br>
But today I want to tell you an American story.
<br>
<br>
I want to tell you the story of a young American soldier in Iraq.
<br>
<br>
The soldier was born in Cresent Oaklahoma to a Welsh mother and US
Navy
<br>
father. His parents fell in love. His father was stationed at a US
<br>
military base in Wales.
<br>
<br>
The soldier showed early promise as a boy, winning top prize at
science
<br>
fairs 3 years in a row.
<br>
<br>
He believed in the truth, and like all of us, hated hypocrisy.
<br>
<br>
He believed in liberty and the right for all of us to pursue
happiness.
<br>
He believed in the values that founded an independent United
States. He
<br>
believed in Madison, he believed in Jefferson and he believed in
Paine.
<br>
Like many teenagers, he was unsure what to do with his life, but
he knew
<br>
he wanted to defend his country and he knew he wanted to learn
about the
<br>
world. He entered the US military and, like his father, trained as
an
<br>
intelligence analyst.
<br>
<br>
In late 2009, aged 21, he was deployed to Iraq.
<br>
<br>
There, it is alleged, he saw a US military that often did not
follow the
<br>
rule of law, and in fact, engaged in murder and supported
political
<br>
corruption.
<br>
<br>
It is alleged, it was there, in Baghdad, in 2010 that he gave to
<br>
WikiLeaks, and to the world, details that exposed the torture of
Iraqis,
<br>
the murder of journalists and the detailed records of over 120,000
<br>
civilian killings in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He is also alleged
to have
<br>
given WikiLeaks 251,000 US diplomatic cables, which then went on
to help
<br>
trigger the Arab Spring. This young soldier’s name is Bradley
Manning.
<br>
<br>
Allegedly betrayed by an informer, he was then imprisoned in
Baghdad,
<br>
imprisoned in Kuwait, and imprisoned in Virginia, where he was
kept for
<br>
9 months in isolation and subject to severe abuse. The UN Special
<br>
Rapporteur for Torture, Juan Mendez, investigated and formally
found
<br>
against the United States.
<br>
<br>
Hillary Clinton’s spokesman resigned. Bradley Manning, science
fair
<br>
all-star, soldier and patriot was degraded, abused and
psychologically
<br>
tortured by his own government. He was charged with a death
penalty
<br>
offence. These things happened to him, as the US government tried
to
<br>
break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.
<br>
<br>
As of today Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for
856 days.
<br>
<br>
The legal maximum in the US military is 120 days.
<br>
<br>
The US administration is trying to erect a national regime of
secrecy. A
<br>
national regime of obfuscation.
<br>
<br>
A regime where any government employee revealing sensitive
information
<br>
to a media organization can be sentenced to death, life
imprisonment or
<br>
for espionage and journalists from a media organization with them.
<br>
<br>
We should not underestimate the scale of the investigation which
has
<br>
happened into WikiLeaks. I only wish I could say that Bradley
Manning
<br>
was the only victim of the situation. But the assault on WikiLeaks
in
<br>
relation to that matter and others has produced an investigation
that
<br>
Australian diplomats say is without precedent in its scale and
nature.
<br>
That the US government called a "whole of government
investigation."
<br>
Those government agencies identified so far as a matter of public
record
<br>
having been involved in this investigation include: the Department
of
<br>
Defense, Centcom, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the US Army
Criminal
<br>
Investigation Division, the United States Forces in Iraq, the
First Army
<br>
Division, The US Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit, the
CCIU, the
<br>
Second Army Cyber-Command. And within those three separate
intelligence
<br>
investigations, the Department of Justice, most significantly, and
its
<br>
US Grand Jury in Alexandria Virginia, the Federal Bureau of
<br>
Investigation, which now has, according to court testimony early
this
<br>
year produced a file of 42,135 pages into WikiLeaks, of which less
than
<br>
8000 concern Bradley Manning. The Department of State, the
Department of
<br>
State’s Diplomatic Security Services. In addition we have been
<br>
investigated by the Office of the Director General of National
<br>
Intelligence, the ODNI, the Director of National
Counterintelligence
<br>
Executive, the Central Intelligence Agency, the House Oversight
<br>
Committee, the National Security Staff Interagency Committee, and
the
<br>
PIAB - the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
<br>
<br>
The Department of Justice spokesperson Dean Boyd confirmed in July
2012
<br>
that the Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks is
ongoing.
<br>
<br>
For all Barack Obama’s fine words yesterday, and there were many
of
<br>
them, fine words, it is his administration that boasts on his
campaign
<br>
website of criminalizing more speech that all previous US
presidents
<br>
combined.
<br>
<br>
I am reminded of the phrase: "the audacity of hope."
<br>
<br>
Who can say that the President of the United States is not
audacious?
<br>
<br>
Was it not audacity for the United States government to take
credit for
<br>
the last two years’ avalanche of progress?
<br>
<br>
Was it not audacious to say, on Tuesday, that the "United States
<br>
supported the forces of change" in the Arab Spring?
<br>
<br>
Tunisian history did not begin in December 2010.
<br>
<br>
And Mohammed Bouazizi did not set himself on fire so that Barack
Obama
<br>
could be reelected.
<br>
<br>
His death was an emblem of the despair he had to endure under the
Ben
<br>
Ali regime.
<br>
<br>
The world knew, after reading WikiLeaks publications, that the Ben
Ali
<br>
regime and its government had for long years enjoyed the
indifference,
<br>
if not the support, of the United States - in full knowledge of
its
<br>
excesses and its crimes.
<br>
<br>
So it must come as a surprise to Tunisians that the United States
<br>
supported the forces of change in their country.
<br>
<br>
It must come as a surprise to the Egyptian teenagers who washed
American
<br>
teargas out of their eyes that the US administration supported
change in
<br>
Egypt.
<br>
<br>
It must come as a surprise to those who heard Hillary Clinton
insist
<br>
that Mubarak’s regime was "stable," and when it was clear to
everyone
<br>
that it was not, that its hated intelligence chief, Sueilman, who
we
<br>
proved the US knew was a torturer, should take the realm.
<br>
<br>
It must come as a surprise to all those Egyptians who heard Vice
<br>
President Joseph Biden declare that Hosni Mubarak was a democrat
and
<br>
that Julian Assange was a high tech terrorist.
<br>
<br>
It is disrespectful to the dead and incarcerated of the Bahrain
uprising
<br>
to claim that the United States "supported the forces of change."
<br>
<br>
This is indeed audacity.
<br>
<br>
Who can say that it is not audacious that the President -
concerned to
<br>
appear leaderly - looks back on this sea change - the people’s
change -
<br>
and calls it his own?
<br>
<br>
But we can take heart here too, because it means that the White
House
<br>
has seen that this progress is inevitable.
<br>
<br>
In this "season of progress" the president has seen which way the
wind
<br>
is blowing.
<br>
<br>
And he must now pretend that it is his adminstration that made it
blow.
<br>
<br>
Very well. This is better than the alternative - to drift into
<br>
irrelevance as the world moves on.
<br>
<br>
We must be clear here.
<br>
<br>
The United States is not the enemy.
<br>
<br>
Its government is not uniform. In some cases good people in the
United
<br>
States supported the forces of change. And perhaps Barack Obama
<br>
personally was one of them.
<br>
<br>
But in others, and en masse, early on, it actively opposed them.
<br>
<br>
This is a matter of historical record.
<br>
<br>
And it is not fair and it is not appropriate for the President to
<br>
distort that record for political gain, or for the sake of
uttering fine
<br>
words.
<br>
<br>
Credit should be given where it is due, but it should be withheld
where
<br>
it is not.
<br>
<br>
And as for the fine words.
<br>
<br>
They are fine words.
<br>
<br>
And we commend and agree with these fine words.
<br>
<br>
We agree when President Obama said yesterday that people can
resolve
<br>
their differences peacefully.
<br>
<br>
We agree that diplomacy can take the place of war.
<br>
<br>
And we agree that this is an interdependent world, that all of us
have a
<br>
stake in.
<br>
<br>
We agree that freedom and self-determination are not merely
American or
<br>
Western values, but universal values.
<br>
<br>
And we agree with the President when he says that we must speak
honestly
<br>
if we are serious about these ideals.
<br>
<br>
But fine words languish without commensurate actions.
<br>
<br>
President Obama spoke out strongly in favour of the freedom of
expression.
<br>
<br>
"Those in power," he said, "have to resist the temptation to crack
down
<br>
on dissent."
<br>
<br>
There are times for words and there are times for action. The time
for
<br>
words has run out.
<br>
<br>
It is time for the US to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks, to
cease
<br>
its persecution of our people, and to cease its persecution of our
<br>
alleged sources.
<br>
<br>
It is time for President Obama do the right thing, and join the
forces
<br>
of change, not in fine words but in fine deeds.
<br>
_______________________________________________
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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