On July 10, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Australia held a well-attended online meeting demanding freedom for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The meeting was called after British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that she had approved Assanges extradition to the US, where he faces life imprisonment for exposing American war crimes, pending a final possible legal appeal.

The speakers, SEP (Australia) National Secretary Cheryl Crisp, WSWS writer Oscar Grenfell and Eric London, a leading member of the SEP in the US, indicted all the governments involved in Assanges decade-long persecution. They placed the attacks against him in the context of the new wars against Russia and China being hatched by the US and its allies and the deepening crisis of global capitalism.

Each explained that Assanges liberty requires the development of a movement of the working class as the only constituency that defends democratic rights and can end imperialist war. In that context, the meeting, attended by more than 200 people, passed the following resolution:

This meeting condemns the persecution of Julian Assange by the American, British, Australian and Swedish governments for exposing the war crimes of the US and its allies. We demand that the Australian government end its collaboration with the legal travesty to railroad Assange into the US courts and instead use all its diplomatic and other powers to secure his immediate and unconditional release.

The meeting can be watched in full here.

Several attendees spoke to the WSWS.

Josh, a Masters student in Melbourne, raised the broader situation within which Assange is under attack: Facing the immense global problems of our current age necessitates a coordinated global response, he said. These global problems are the result of strong capitalist and imperialist institutional structures that have pillaged global resources at the expense of working people, indigenous sovereignty, and future generations.

Socialist Equality pursues the mechanisms to fight these problems and it cannot be achieved without the radical journalism of organisations such as WikiLeaks. The persecution of Julian Assange is a threat against all journalists and the future of proper investigative journalism.

Assange has received minimal support relative to other journalists who have been imprisoned abroad. His treatment over the last 12 years speaks volumes to the ongoing capitulation of these Western powers to the imperialist USA agenda. Assange's work with Wikileaks exposed a plethora of systemic war crimes committed by the USA and its allies.

The conversation of whether Assange and his team at Wikileaks followed 'proper' journalistic protocols purposefully deflects from the content that was contained within. The entire process is planned inertia and supportive of the western war industrial complex and USA-focused geopolitical aims.

Wikileaks' reports on these global atrocities were a watershed moment. These reports have changed the world, emboldened people to come together and oppose injustice and question power and our place in it. Our support of Julian Assange is also a means of supporting those journalists of the future, to give them the knowledge and security that their work critiquing powerful institutions holds real material value in creating a better world for all.

Neil, the former owner of a transport and car repair business in Melbourne, attended his first SEP meeting.

He explained: 'If people found out the truth then the war in Ukraine could have been avoided altogether, but America wants to fight Russia. If Ukraine joins NATO you can kiss Russia goodbye. Now they have the Swiss on the other side, plus Ukraine would make Russia pretty much surrounded.

'What if Russia goes to Cuba and puts nuclear weapons there? The US wouldn't be happy, but that's what the US is doing to Russia. Not saying Putin is a nice guy but the US doesn't want this war to stop. They see him and China as a threat. The US government love the Ukrainians? I don't believe that, they don't love anyone except themselves.

'America is spending trillions on war, yet their people are homeless in their own country. The war in Ukraine was all America's fault, but who is suffering? The Ukrainians and Russians. America aren't putting troops there but they are giving them weapons and making money from it.

'Labor and Liberal are the same, I used to believe in Labor more but now I don't believe in them whatsoever because they both just follow America's footsteps.

'Assange exposed a lot of governments, and it's not just America who is worried about him, so is England, and Australia. That's why they are keeping him in, because if he's out he will keep exposing. The mainstream media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is hiding a lot; they only tell us what they want to.

'Democracy has gone out the door. If there was democracy Assange would never have gone to jail. England is killing him slowly.'

Rosie, a health worker from rural Western Australia, stated: Ive always felt that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange were scapegoats. To prevent the populace from having a certain idea of what things are really like, they have to shut these people up.

I think the way forward is about trying to find justice for Julian, who told the truth even when nobody could hear what the real truth is.

The things that he has printed and laid out in Wikileaks,I think we have a right to know, by the way.

The picture Im getting is that whichever side get into power, they have been trying to condemn Julian Assange. Why even now, look at Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Oh sure, Labor got in. But Albanese is doing the same thing as the former Liberal government. Hes going, Oh well, you know were just going to wash our hands of it. Im thinking, Assange is an Australian citizen, what are you doing?

Christopher, who works in Road Traffic Management in Melbourne, said: It was a privilege to attend the meeting you held. Way back when Julian Assange first started up WikiLeaks, the fact that he was trying to raise awareness of what is going on in the world: wars, corruption, drew me to support him. If people dont stand up against tyranny they could be seen to be supporting it. The US has been embarrassed by the war crimes that he exposed. They dont want their dirty laundry aired.

This is an attack on Julian Assange but its also an attack on free speech. The US has refused to sign the Geneva Convention which would make it liable to be prosecuted for war crimes. The attack on Assange is being used as a warning against any journalist, including future journalists, to be careful as to what they bring to the attention of the general public. I am disappointed at the almost deafening silence of fellow journalists and governments, including the Australian government, over Assanges persecution.

Speakers had outlined the recent attack on Dr David Berger by the Australia Health Practitioners Regulatory Authority. Berger has been censured, instructed that he must undertake a special education program and threatened with deregistration.

These attacks have been levelled because the widely-respected doctor has condemned the let it rip COVID policies of Australian governments and championed the scientifically-based policies required to eliminate transmission and end the pandemic.

Christopher said: In the meeting, when the topic turned to Dr Berger, I did for a minute think, where is this headed, are we going off track? Are we here to discuss Assange or COVID? But I stuck with it and then it became very apparent, very clear the connection between silencing Assange and the silencing of Dr Berger. Information is power. There does need to be a campaign of information.

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Australian workers and youth speak out: If there was democracy Assange would never have gone to jail - WSWS

Photograph Source: Shona/Reikilass CC BY 2.0

Ive been in England since late June, taking part in a variety of events, including a commemoration of Julian Assanges 51st birthday,in front of Belmarsh Prisonin London, where he is held in a cage.

From some vantage points, there may be little relationship between the commemoration of a labor struggle involving farmworkers in 1830s Dorset that I sang at last weekend, and the imprisonment of a journalist in present-day London. But for all of the folks I know who have had their eyes on this connection for one reason or other, the parallels are veritably shouting for our attention.

In 1834, six hungry farmworkers who became known as theTolpuddle Martyrs swore a secret oath, that they would organize nonviolently to better the conditions of the farmworkers of Dorset, who lived wretched lives under the thumb of the Squire, the landowner, who was also the judge for the sham trial the men were subjected to. They were sentenced to transportation to the miserable, 111-day journey to the other side of the world, to split rocks beneath the blazing sun in Australia for seven years, a form of torture that many did not survive.

By 1834, forming a union had been legal under British law for a few years. But swearing a secret oath was another matter entirely, at least according to the Squires court.

Around the country back then, people mobilized, seeing the stark injustice in the case of these farmworkers in Tolpuddle, and further seeing that if they could be charged with swearing a secret oath and sent to Australia, then this could potentially happen to anyone trying to form a union anywhere in the country. Although the families of the transported farmworkers were denied assistance from the state, supporters around the country looked after them well, and due to their ongoing mobilization the men were eventually pardoned, and brought back to England at the states expense in 1836.

In 2019, an award-winning journalist and editor named Julian Assange was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy by British police and taken to the supermaximum Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London, to be held without bail in solitary confinement, prevented from almost all communication with the outside world, to face extradition to the United States, whose Justice Department is pursuing charges against Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, for exposing US war crimes in Iraq which had been classified, of course, and so Assange was thus exposing state secrets, punishable under the long-ignored Espionage Act with decades and centuries in prison.

In recent years, since all of Assanges worst predictions about the intents of the US government in his case have been proven accurate, support for his freedom and against his extradition to the US has been growing everywhere, including all over the UK. More and more people are realizing that if Assange can be silenced and put away for the rest of his life for the laws he has ostensibly broken, then the same thing could be done to any other journalist who does their job well. Journalists work with confidential sources and expose state secrets all the time, and are frequently awarded for this sort of thing including recently, with journalists in Russia and the Philippines receiving the Nobel.

The notion of continuing to imprison Julian Assange because he exposed state secrets illegal under this draconian law that hasnt been used in a century, that is blatantly in contradiction with all notions of press freedom increasingly terrifies journalists and anyone else who may currently be waking up to the fact that if they can prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act then they could just as easily prosecute the editor of the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais, or any number of other journalistic outlets that have undoubtedly violated all of the same laws Assange has allegedly violated.

Saying that its legal to form a union, but its illegal to take a secret oath declaring that you have done so, is obviously troubling, and people up and down this island could see that back in 1834.

Saying its OK to be a journalist, but if you do any investigations that turn up secret information and you publish any of it anywhere you may face the rest of your life in a supermax prison somewhere in the United States, is similarly contradictory, and increasing numbers of people can clearly see that today.

If those attending the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival last weekend might be a bit of a bellwether of progressive opinion in Britain today, which I think they very well could be, then the circumstantial evidence was everywhere. The table for the Julian Assange Defense Committee always had people at it, buying books and talking with those of us behind the table. Marching through town with the Free Julian Assange banner elicited nothing but supportive chants, shouts, and applause along with Jeremy Corbyn joining us to hold the banner and march with us for a couple minutes. (Though apparently not long enough for anyone to take a decent picture.)

As a microcosm of the British left, those involved with this very labor movement-oriented festival are a collection of people with much that both unites and divides them. The evidence of the ongoing rift within the left around what I would emphatically characterize as completely false accusations of antisemitism of various Labor Party members is not hard to find. Neither is it hard to find the divide around how to react to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But wherever someone stands on these matters, at least in these circles, support for Assanges freedom and opposition to his extradition to the US seems universal.

So broad is the support for Julian Assange, in fact, that for some it can be challenging, because his support does not come only from well-behaved leftists, but from lots of other folks as well, such as the folks who were putting me up in Dorset for the weekend, who I first came into contact with because of our mutual support for Assange. As the former treasurer for the Libertarian Party, my host and I have lots of political differences, but none when it comes to press freedom or Assanges freedom.

A groundswell of support for the wrongly-accused Tolpuddle Martyrs got them pardoned and returned to England within two years. A similar groundswell of support for this wrongly accused, imprisoned journalist over the past few years has so far not achieved his freedom. But the injustice involved in both cases could not be more outrageous, or obvious.

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Singing in the Shadow of Belmarsh - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Australias COVID-19 crisis passed another terrible milestone last week: over 11,000 people have now died, up from just 2,200 at the end of 2021.

An inverse political law has emerged. The more catastrophic the pandemicas a direct result of the profit-driven live with the virus campaignthe more the Australian capitalist class demands the ending of public health precautions. And the more the trade unions enforce this deadly offensive.

So too, the greater become efforts to silence denunciations of the let it rip disaster. That is demonstrated by Twitters locking of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia)s account over a video defending Dr David Berger and two other victimised zero-COVID campaigners, Lisa Dias and David OSullivan, as well as Julian Assange, persecuted for exposing US and allied war crimes.

This pattern has become more blatant in recent days as the Labor government presides over a mounting wave of infections, hospitalisations, deaths and long-COVID affliction.

Because of the axing of virtually all safety measures by governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, since the end of last year, total cases have soared from 400,000 to a staggering nine million, and the highly transmissible BA.4 and BA.5 variants are now fuelling a new Omicron tsunami.

More than 324,000 new infections were reported last week and 450 deaths. Daily death and hospitalisation numbers are reaching the record highs suffered in January. On Saturday, the daily number of deaths hit 102.

Public hospitals are being overwhelmed. Their workers are under intolerable strain and patients are in great danger. The number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients has almost doubled from fewer than 3,000 in June to 5,437, above the previous peak of 5,390 on January 25.

At a press conference last week, Health Minister Mark Butler and the countrys Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly admitted that millions more Australians would be infected over the coming weeks. Yet they opposed the reintroduction of any public safety measures.

As far as the ruling class and its political servants are concerned, nothing must be done to protect the population, especially working-class households, that will in any way affect the full reopening of workplaces and business operations in order to drive up profits.

That message was spelt out most vehemently by the Australian in an editorial on July 20. Governments must stand firm against any push for a return to mandatory Covid-19 controls on schools and workplaces, it declared.

This was another test for Prime Minister Anthony Albaneses government. In fact, the Murdoch medias national flagship berated the government for backing down on terminating the small one-off $750 payments to infected workers who have to take time off work.

Citizens must be allowed to determine their own level of risk, the editorial demanded. This invocation of individual responsibility not only denies the necessity for a societal response to the COVID disaster. People are systematically being kept in the dark about the level of risk. Governments and the media are burying the infection toll, scrapping testing and tracing, covering up the serious effects of the coronavirus and trying to silence health experts.

The editorial even denounced the state Labor government in Victoria for recommending, but not requiring, that schoolchildren wear masks in classrooms. This was a backward step. It was all the more reprehensible because the government had revived the excuse of following health advice after flatly rejecting it earlier.

That was a reference to Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas boasting the previous week that following the opportunity to consult with business leaders, she dismissed the state chief health officers recommendation to reintroduce an indoor mask mandate.

The Australian Financial Reviews July 23 editorial reinforced the dictates of business. It insisted there was no caseand no supportfor a return to lockdowns. Even this omicron resurgence simply does not warrant it.

Blithely, the financial newspaper claimed: The health system is not collapsing. In reality, more than 10,000 health workers are isolating because of infection. There are massive staff shortages and exhausting extended shifts and workloads. Patients face life-threatening delays in treatment.

The stench of eugenics wafted from the editorial. COVID-19 has become a silent killer that largely stalks the old, like the heart disease thats all around us, it stated. In other words, the deaths of older peopleno longer wanted as workers and a burden on the health and pensions systemsare of little or no concern.

Above all, there must be no going back to working from home, because fragmented and atomised workforces are not effective in the long run.

Cynically, the AFR noted: The current daily average virus death toll of 60 would have caused waves of panicback in the time of daily press conferences by premiers. Now these individual tragedies pass with little public notice or drama.

What the AFR derides as panic, is the widespread, continuing and absolutely justified popular concern over all the unnecessary deaths throughout the pandemic. What has changed this year is that the governments and the corporate media have deliberately shut down reporting on the deaths.

Previous official pretences of condolences have been dropped. Hundreds of loved ones now die every week without even a mention, let alone any acknowledgement of their lives. They have been made nameless and invisible.

On cue, the Labor government has followed its instructions. Asked last Thursday why he opposed reintroducing mask mandates, Albanese alleged there were low levels of compliance with existing mandates, including on public transport, where no enforcement is occurring.

His government, like its Liberal-National predecessor, is trying to blame working people for the disastrous conditions that governments, the media and the corporate elite have consciously created.

The unions are helping Labor suppress workers demands for protection. Having enforced returns to workplaces and schools throughout the pandemic, they moved last week to stifle opposition to employers threats of disciplinary action or dismissal against workers who want to work from home for their safety.

Health Services Union national president Gerard Hayes sided openly with Albanese, who said last week that working from home was a decision for employers, not workers or public health orders. Working from home would damage the economy, Hayes declared, while claiming, without evidence, that it would hurt mental health and the vaccination program.

That is in line with the role of all the health unions. They have confined their members to one-off strikes and protests despite the refusal of the state and federal governments to meet their crucial demands for more staff, safe patient-to-staff ratios and wage rises to cope with the cost of living crisis.

Hayes opposed a suggestion from the Finance Sector Union (FSU) that industrial agreements should allow workers to negotiate work from home arrangements with their bosses. This suggestion itself left the issue up to the requirements of the management, while offering a safety valve to head off the hostility of workers to being exposed to unsafe offices and other workplaces.

Supporting the FSU call, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus underscored the unions pro-business agenda. She said working from home would boost productivity, while reducing stress and living expenses, such as petrol. At the same time, she backed employer objections that face-to-face contact was important for their operations. I dont think its good to have a one-size fits all (approach) there should be options for it, McManus said.

Workers and young people cannot leave their health and lives in the hands of the ruling class, its governments and the unions, which are all intent on protecting corporate profits, regardless of the human cost.

To oppose this policy of mass infection, and fight for the measures that can eliminate COVID-19, they need to form rank-and-file committees in workplaces, schools and neighbourhoods, to take matters into their own hands. This struggle requires a socialist perspective, based on the defence of lives and livelihoods, not the fortunes of the super-rich.

Join the SEP campaign against anti-democratic electoral laws!

The working class must have a political voice, which the Australian ruling class is seeking to stifle with this legislation.

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Australian ruling class demands governments stand firm against safety measures as COVID-19 toll explodes - WSWS

Roger Waters, the renowned musician and activist, co-founder of the group Pink Floyd and its creative driving force from 1968 to 1984, is currently touring his concert and multimedia installation This Is Not a Drill across North America. At least one million people are expected to attend the performances.

The tour, which made a stop in Detroit on July 23, uses Waters extensive artistic catalog to condemn the ruthlessness of the ruling elite in the US and around the world. Virtually every song is directed toward pressing issues of our time: imperialist war, fascism, the poison of nationalism, the plight of refugees, the victims of state oppression, global poverty, social inequality, the attack on democratic rights and the danger of nuclear annihilation.

Such an event, so unusual and important, demands special consideration, above all, because it raises to a high and pressing level, in the actual experience of large numbers of people, the issue of the problem between art and politics in a period of unprecedented crisis.

The concert in Detroit was a remarkable musical, visual and intellectual experience. This Is Not a Drill incorporates many of the memorable songs from Pink Floyds catalog while Waters was still at the helm but never becomes a nostalgia tour. Waters, in fact, does not want anyone to forget about their troubles for a while. His main concern throughout the evening was ensuring that the songs corresponded to ongoing social and political developments.

A lesser-known song from Waters solo work, The Powers That Be (1987), is performed in thunderous fashion against footage of police shootings and military bombings. The imagery culminates in a textual memorial to nearly two dozen victims of police violence in the US and other countries. The angry protests of the audience increased with each death notice.

On the searing 1992 anti-war song The Bravery of Being Out of Range, Waters incorporates images of each US president since Ronald Reagan with descriptions of their murderous foreign policies and superimposes the words War Criminal on every one. As for Joe Biden, Waters notes that he is Just Getting Started. At the crescendo of the songwhich has the memorable refrain Old timer, who are you gonna kill next?a sudden red audio-visual blast envelops the audience, intended to provide a sense of what it must be like to be shot at by a military drone or aircraft.

At the end of the nightmarish 1972 song Run Like Hell, the animated imagery transforms into video footage of a US military helicopter firing missiles on a residential neighborhood. The text explains this was actual footage of 10 civilians and journalists killed in Iraq in 2007. It adds that the video was courageously leaked by Chelsea Manning and courageously published by Julian Assange. The installation is then emblazoned with the words Free Julian Assange and Lock Up The Killers, generating some of the loudest cheers of the evening.

The performance ends on a high and disturbing note, richly drawn out. Waters band first performs a medley of songs from the legendary 1972 Dark Side of the Moon albumUs and Them, Any Colour You Like and Brain Damage. The steadily rising chorus of each is set to gradually multiplying images, eventually hundreds of them, of people from around the world. These are portraits of a wide range of human beings adolescent victims of wars, industrial workers, mothers, sick children, the homeless. It is a humane and unifying imagery, which climaxes in a giant panorama at the conclusion of Brain Damage. It is a reminder from Waters of how much there is to lose in the world.

This medley was immediately followed by the lesser-known but powerful Two Suns in the Sunset (1983). Waters introduces the song with references to the current dangers of nuclear war, clearly pointing to the US-NATO instigated war against Russia in Ukraine, involving the worlds largest nuclear-armed powers. The initial pastoral and brightly animated imagery of an individual driving in the countryside frighteningly changes character. We realize that the brightness emanates from a nuclear bombs mushroom cloud, which incinerates large masses of people in the visuals.

The conventional wisdom, pumped out by innumerable literary and music journals, taught at every art and drama college, has it that art and politics, like oil and water, had better not be mixed. Various cautionary examples from the past are regularly produced to intimidate young artists, to impress upon them the folly of social engagement. But, even more generally, the prevailing notion is that the aesthetic element is a thing existing in and of itself, a value that has little or nothing to do with the lives and concerns of the great masses of people, as though the artist who creates an aesthetic form and the audience who enjoys it are empty machines, one for creating form and the other for appreciating it.

If the artist, the official version goes, has strong views, he or she had better keep them to him or herself. And many artists and musicians, sadly, live up to these notions. But Waters is not one of them. The entire concert tour is a deliberate and conscious refutation of such ideas. An opening message on the multimedia installation spells this out: If youre one of those I love Pink Floyd, but I cant stand Rogers politics people, you might do well to fuck off to the bar right now. How appropriate and eloquent! In reality, how could art in our time of unparalleled turmoil and suffering be significant if it did not possess the element of protest? What would it be saying to its audience? The artist who accepts the false dichotomy between art and politics, who knows his or her proper place, will end up not meaning much to anyone and will certainly not endure.

The powers that be recognize the danger. Though This Is Not a Drill has received some favorable news coverage, there is an obvious lack of reporting on it in the mainstream press. Waters recently denounced the Toronto media, after it refused to provide any significant coverage of his two-night performance in that city. The critics prefer their music without the angry unpleasantness.

The decision to ignore Waters performances in Toronto has to be connected with his opposition to the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. The musician has taken a principled stand on the conflict. While firmly opposing the reactionary Russian invasion, Waters commented that a long drawn-out insurgency in Ukraine would be great for the gangster hawks in Washington. Its what they dream of.

It is impossible not to be moved by Waters socially engaged, historically informed musical performance, by the fusion of serious art work and incisive political analysis. Waters is not presenting a systematically-developed political perspective, much less the program of a particular tendency. What finds expression in This is Not a Drill is deep outrage against injustice, against war, against official hypocrisy and lies.

Waters at 78, possessing the energy and spirit of an individual half his age, is not conducting a nostalgia tour. Other performers his age continue to travel and play their old hits, presumably earning a living. The vast majority of themparticularly those whose art was rooted in the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights struggles of the 1960slost their anger decades ago. They made their social and artistic peace with society. They have to continue performing their original material, because they have nothing new and important to say. Worst of all, they may even have a Kennedy Center Honor, that wide rainbow-colored ribbon of shame, hung around their necks by US presidents whose hands are drenched with blood.

Waters, on the other hand, is not a legend, i.e., a relic. He remains a living, working, thinking artist. He is still engaged, still pressing forward. His work is a response of a serious artist to the conditions of his time.

The three-hour performance was a tour de force, which involves the participation of master musicians. Waters proves in practice at every performance on this tour the truth of Leon Trotskys proposition that a protest against reality always forms part of a really creative piece of work and that every new tendency in artand such an installation-concert must be considered a new tendencyhas begun with rebellion.

Waters is a serious and, therefore, unflinchingly honest artist, bold in his conceptions about the world. His striking artistry and his opposition to the existing social system are interwoven, they nourish one another. This is not an artificial leftism grafted on a contrived and superficial radicalism that is careful to avoid stepping over the accepted limits. Waters absorbed rebellion into his bone and marrow a very long time ago, and he continues to live and breathe it. He inspires the audience to think critically, to feel outrage against that which exists, and to believe that a new and better world can and must be brought into being.

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Roger Waters in concert: Art and politics in a time of crisis - WSWS