US ambassador Jeff Bleich and Foreign Minister Bob Carr
AUSTRALIA IS LUMBERED with a Foreign Minister who is indeed foreign to we Australians.
We didn’t vote for him. We didn’t even vote against him.
He was supplanted to minister over us at the insistence of the ‘faceless men,’ the coven of drone bees and their appointed proxy Queen, one Julia Eileen Gillard; thereby signifying that the Prime Minister acknowledged that not a single person within her trembling cabinet or festering on the backbench had her trust and/or the capacity to be Foreign Minister.
Years ago, when Bob Carr seemed the media valet, gatekeeper, chief shoe and ego polisher to then NSW Premier Neville Wran, I rang Carr to arrange an interview with “Nifty”.
I have never forgotten Carr’s response:
“What’s in it for Neville?”
I cannot countenance such arrogance and contempt for The Great Unwashed, in whose embrace I seek refuge. I have a pedestrian mind that supposes politicians are the servants of the people.
I withdrew my request to interview Neville Wran and this piqued the reptilian Bob Carr.
Like many politicians, he has a list of priors of political expediency, but his latest act of treachery against civil society reflects the moral bankruptcy and political cowardice that has diseased our Parliament and parliamentarians and now infects their daily decision-making.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr promised to discuss the ‘Assange case’ with his Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt when they meet in Canberra today (Thursday, February 27).
But now, Carr has reneged on this promise.
On November 28 last year, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam sent a finely crafted fact-crammed dossier to Senator Carr, providing a number of salient links substantiating the fact that despite disingenuous claims to the contrary, the United States is readying a Grand Jury (criminal) to bring charges against Julian Assange and the organisation he founded, WikiLeaks.
We publish the full text here to counteract US, Swedish,UK and Australian propaganda and denials that America has no interest in extraditing Assange to the States …
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At the very least, keep repeating untruths in the hope they morph into the truth. Consider the outrageous untruth uttered by US Ambassador Jeff Bleich on Monday’s (February 25) ABC TV program, Q&A. [IA emphasis]:
“This is a very simple matter. There’s an individual who has been charged with a crime in Sweden. The UK courts were prepared to extradite him. He didn’t want to face extradition so he sought asylum somewhere else. The United States has nothing to do with it.”
Did you spot the biggest untruth? To make it easier for the Q&A team, we’ve emphasised it in bold type. They clearly missed it the first time.
You have to wonder why Ambassador Bleich, indisputably a crash hot ‘super-lawyer’ (Q&A blurb no doubt provided by the Ambassador’s minders) and expert on international human rights would say such a thing. And you have to wonder why Tony Jones did not see fit to challenge the Ambassador on his egregious and defamatory slur on Assange’s reputation.
Such is the confidence of American government representatives overseas that they continue to ply propaganda and arrant nonsense with impunity.
Why did our obsequious Foreign Minister just sit there like a drongo and not correct the Ambassador? So what that he’s Barack Obama’s buddy? Why didn’t Carr come to Assange’s defence insofar as this important material fact is concerned?
Now hear this Mr Ambassador Bleich: Julian Assange has NOT been charged with ANYTHING.
There is no question that both Bleich and Carr know this. Moreover, after being extensively questioned about his sexual activities with two separate women, Assange was allowed to leave Sweden freely and without impediment.
Foreign Minister Carr should demand a retraction and apology from the US Ambassador.
And Julian Assange should receive the same.
Why didn’t host Tony Jones ask Bob Carr if he would be discussing the Assange matter today with Carl Bildt?
Why didn’t Bob Carr himself raise the subject of the meeting on Q&A? Was there a tacit agreement to remain silent between Carr and Bleich? We are entitled to think so.
Carr must have been praying that no-one would ask him about Phil Dorling’s article in Monday’s The Age that referred to Carr’s writings last year. How’s this:
Writing in his Thoughtlines political blog in February last year, then retired former New South Wales premier Carr was highly critical of the Swedish prosecutorial process levied against Mr Assange.
”The Swedish judge is prosecutor . . . yes, the two roles in the one officer, an outrage by Australian standards,” Mr Carr wrote. ”The charge includes rape but the sex was consensual. The victims have exchanged emails talking revenge and money.”
Senator Carr promptly distanced himself from these and other comments once he was appointed Foreign Minister, saying that they were the views of a private individual and did not necessarily reflect the positions he would adopt as a member of the Federal Labor Government.
It was disappointing that Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband Malcolm Turnbull, a former lawyer, also said nothing despite telling the Q&A audience of his own intercedence:
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For the text, and the fullarticle, with full links, go to Independent Australia, HERE
— Tess Lawrence
