Sir Roger is really glad that GetUp has is taking some action on Wikileaks and Assange. You can be part of that action if you wish by going to the GetUp website.

GetUp is emailing its hundreds of thousands of members here is most of that email:

Sarah Palin wants Julian Assange hunted as a terrorist. She’s among a swelling chorus of American politicians calling for the arrest – and even the death – of the Australian citizen who runs Wikileaks. It’s a shame that real terrorists, of the kind that we should be focusing our attention, don’t show up at British Police stations with their lawyers, as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange did yesterday.

We’re printing a huge ad in prominent American newspapers with the statement our Government should have made – signed by as many Australians as possible. Will you add your name to the signatories, and invite your friends to join too?

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/mediafreedom

The statement:

Dear President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:

We, as Australians, condemn calls for violence, including assassination, against Australian citizen, Julian Assange, or for him to be labeled a terrorist, enemy combatant or be treated outside the ordinary course of justice in any way.

Australia and the United States are the strongest of allies. Our soldiers serve side by side to this day. We’ve experienced, and condemned, the consequences of terrorism together. To label Wikileaks a terrorist organisation is an insult to those Australians and Americans who have lost their lives to acts of terrorism and to terrorist forces.

As Thomas Jefferson said, “information is the currency of democracy”. Publishing leaked information in collaboration with major news outlets, as Wikileaks and Mr. Assange have done, is not a terrorist act.

If Wikileaks or their staff have broken international or national laws, let that case be heard in a just and fair court of law. At the moment, no such charges have been brought. We are writing as Australians to say what our Government should have: all Australian citizens deserve to be free from persecution, threats of violence and detention without charge, especially from our friend and ally, the United States.

We’re printing this statement in the Washington Times and New York Times early next week – and the more Australians sign, the more powerful the message will be. Please add your name by clicking below, and forward this message to friends and family:

For us in this case this is not as much about the content of the Wikileaked documents, nor even quite as much about the American response. It is about freedom of speech of course but in this case for us it is mostly about the unconscionable failure of the Australian government to treat an Australian citizen fairly, to pre-emptively declare him guilty and its seeming willingness to deliver Assange over to the Americans with unseemly alacrity because the Australian government apparently feels more allegiance to the US than to its own people. It is an awful and chilling reminder of the injustice of the David Hicks affair and probably shows that the difference between Labor and Liberal is thinner than a cigarette paper. They are all, in fact, in the same club. We deserve better than these awful, ignorant stupid, fawning fools. We are better than that and we are better than them.

[tags]GetUp, Assange, Wikileaks, Rudd, Gillard, McClelland, John Howard, Hicks, politics, diplomacy, US politics, Australian politics, political values, internet, democracy, freedom of speech, Amazon, law, Australian values, law, rule of law[/tags]