Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of government buildings in three Australian cities to protest their government’s indifference to the fate of Australian-born WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 10 December. The protests in Australia began after Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said 7 December: “We have the Australian Federal Police (AFP) looking to see whether Australian laws have been broken and then we’ve got the gross irresponsibility of this conduct.” Her foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, publicly supported Assange a day later.
Reaction to the leaked cables varies around the world, with many governments upset about the frank nature of the revelations and others criticising the US government’s reaction to the leaks, according to the Guardian. Some politicians in the USA have called for Assange to be killed.
Assange is in custody in London awaiting extradition to Sweden for sexual offenses unrelated to the release of hundreds of thousands of secret US embassy cables.
Links to other sites: ABC News, Boston Globe, Herald Sun,
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has said that the ultimate blame for the leak of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables lies with the USA, not WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorized release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that,” Rudd said in an interview with Reuters 8 December.
Rudd, the former prime minister, came in for criticism in the cables by US diplomats in Australia, excerpts of which are being published by the Sydney Morning Herald. The then prime minister was seen as being “a mistake-prone control-freak.” Rudd says he expects worse things will be written of him in the future and he does not “give a damn”. Prominent Australians have written to Prime Minister Julia Gillard asking the government to stand up for Assange.
The Australian government has said it wants to hold a referendum on a constitutional change that would specifically recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Monday, 8 November that there was a “once in a 50-year opportunity” to make the change. She said “recognition will demonstrate that we are a country that is united in acknowledging the unique and special place of our first peoples.” The vote might take place sometime in 2013.
Australia’s Aborigines suffer disproportionately from unemployment, disease, and alcoholism. The announcement comes almost three years after former PM Kevin Rudd’s historic apology to Aborigines. In 1967, Australians voted overwhelmingly to allow Aborigines to be counted in a census.
Links to other sites: AFP, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
Julia Gillard is the new prime minister of Australia, after Kevin Rudd stepped down in a last-minute shuffle of the Labor Party, ending Rudd’s two-and-a-half years at the helm.
She is the first woman to serve in the role. Gillard, a lawyer, says she will call for a general election in coming months, but did not give a date.
The Prime Minister elected praised Rudd but says she opposed him in the end because the party was losing its way.
Links to other sites: CNN, Sydney Morning Herald
An estimated 1,000 people known as Forgotten Australians were part of a large crowd that attended a ceremony in Canberra, Australia Sunday 15 November where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the estimated 70,000 people who were abused in state care from about 1930-1970, many of them part of a group of British children forced to migrate to Australia and work as forced labour on farms, some of them sexually abused as children. The British prime minister will also formally apologize in 2010 for the British forced migration policy, his office has announced.
Links to other sites: ABC, Australia, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
Davos, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an invitation-only gathering of high level leaders from the political, corporate and non-profit worlds, opens officially Wednesday 28 January but it is already gathering steam. The number of heads of companies, some 1,400, is the highest the forum has ever seen. US President Barack Obama and his team are not on the guest list, but the list of “public figures” is a mix that includes Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, former US President Bill Clinton, Nobel laureate Al Gore, former UK Prime Ministser Tony Blair, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the governor of New York, David Patterson, who leaves behind him at home outcries at his anti-gun control appointment to fill Hillary Clinton’s US Senate seat. Former UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan of Geneva is one of the co-hosts.
