Julian Assange’s Belmarsh prison blues

STELLA SUPPORT

The treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “inhuman and cruel”, according to his wife Stella, as the Australian continues to languish in a UK maximum-security prison. The New Daily reports he spends most of his time in his cell in Belmarsh prison in London, and has done so for more than four years since he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy. Stella says her husband has seen criminals convicted for armed crimes come and go from the prison during his time there, described as one of the longest stint of any inmate. Adviser to the Assange campaign Greg Barns SC told Crikey last week that it was dismal the government condemns Russia for detaining Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich (more on this via CNN) without taking strident action to get our own journalist home.

Quick reminder of the Assange facts: in 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 750,000 classified US military documents, including nearly 400,000 US army-filed reports, dubbed the Iraq War Logs, which detailed 66,000 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths during the Iraq War, as Oxford student paper Cherwell reminds us. In 2012, Assange moved into the Ecuadorian embassy, but after WikiLeaks reported on the alleged corruption of then-Ecuadorian president Lenìn Moreno, as Reuters delves into, the Met police were invited in. Assange was charged with breaching bail in the UK, and espionage in the US. The Americans have been trying to extradite him ever since. Stella told the student paper the case was “99% politics and 1% law”, adding that her surveillance camera catches people sitting in cars in civilian clothing with their headlights on all night, leafing through reports about her husband.

RICH MAN’S WORLD

More than half of greater Sydney saw an increase in poverty rates between 2016 and 2021, Guardian Australia reports. Now a quarter (25%) of parts of Bankstown, Liverpool and Fairfield in Sydney’s south and west are living in poverty, the highest in the state. Compare that with the statewide poverty rate of 13.2%. The place with the largest increase of those plunged into poverty, however, was Newcastle — a suburb called Cooks Hill. So what is the poverty line? It’s defined as half the median household income, the NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) says, and is adjusted for the number and age of people living in a home. It comes as the government is mulling over paying single parents extra welfare until their youngest turns at least 13, the AFR ($) reports. It used to be 16, but the Howard and Gillard governments rewound it back to eight. I tells ya, Worm reader, that policy turned out to be a real albatross around Gillard’s neck.

Meanwhile students and former students are about to be hard-hit by a mammoth 7.1% indexation on their HECS debt on June 1. On the average student loan of $24,771 you can expect to be slogged an extra $1760, the SMH ($) reports, but half a million graduates have debts of $40,000 or more. Why is this happening? Inflation. Staying on brand, Greens Leader Adam Bandt says Labor should tax gas corporations, not students. If your balance isn’t too high and you have some savings, the ABC has a great explainer that delves into whether you should just bite the bullet and pay it off. For those who aren’t in a position to do that, former RBA governor Bernie Fraser is in your corner, as Guardian Australia reports, this morning barracking for the Albanese government to use “its power for the people like it promised it would” and raise JobSeeker.

DEFENCE AND ATTACK

The former head of the US Navy was paid $7560 a day for his expertise at the Department of Defence, one of several revelations about high-paying contracts, the ABC reports. The Pentagon has for the first time revealed how ex-military figures scored lucrative work with foreign governments like ours. The broadcaster also reports that one of America’s top spooks, James Clapper, worked for an Australian intelligence agency just a year after resigning as US director of National Intelligence, when Donald Trump became president.

Meanwhile, our Defence Strategic Review was a “damn squib” and “very disappointing” because it didn’t have enough detail, according to former Labor MP Michael Danby, as Sky News reports. But that’s not deterring Defence Minister Richard Marles, who says we’ll have guided missile production within the next two years, The Australian ($) reports. All we gotta do is work out how to produce rocket fuel ingredient ammonium perchlorate in bulk, which we can’t do right now. It comes as past and present ADF personnel will have their submissions to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide shielded from public view for 99 years in a bid to encourage them to come forward about “abuse, bullying, or about incidents that involve certain places or people”, lawyer Rachael Vincent told the NT News ($).

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

An 11-year-old boy named Brock Keena was staring out the window on a bus to Newcastle when an irate grown-up barrelled up to the driver. The woman was yelling to the high heavens about someone purportedly “smoking” on the bus, as Yahoo tells it, and bus driver Sanjay Patel tried to placate the woman the best he could while keeping his eyes on the road. She stormed off the bus at the next stop, swerving around to yell “Why don’t you go back to where you came from, Africa!” before departing the scene. Looking back at the road, Sanjay was stung. This sort of thing is hurtful and upsetting, he told 2GB. At his stop, little Brock swung his legs off the seat and walked up to the driver. “You shouldn’t be treated that way,” the 11-year-old told Sanjay. “I hope you’re OK.” Watch it here.

Sanjay was touched by Brock’s “beautiful words”, shaking his hand gratefully before the kid alighted the bus. “I felt like he applied some first aid to my hurt,” Sanjay says. After he recounted the story to his managers, they used CCTV to track down Brock’s school to report the good deed. When the principal identified themselves on a call, Brock’s mum Melissa braced, but she was quickly “blown away” by the story. Brock hadn’t mentioned a thing. Parents often wonder if they’re doing an OK job, Melissa says, but hearing about her son’s random act of kindness made her think “maybe we’re not doing so bad after all”. The single mum, who says money is a bit tight, set up a GoFundMe to reward Brock with a new gaming setup. As for Sanjay, he visited the school with some chocolates to say thanks. His takeaway? “Be like Brock,” Sanjay says warmly.

Hope you can be like Brock today.

SAY WHAT?

So what's it to be: pride in our country or shame? … It's hard to be optimistic about getting this balance right in an era so given to fretting about toxic masculinity (even though it's strong men who have kept us safe in the past and likely will again in the future).

Peta Credlin

Aside from the fact that almost 50,000 Australian women served in the military in 1944,
while nearly 3000 served in WWI,
the Sky News complainer — excuse us, commentator — seems to think toxic masculinity and strength in men are the same thing. We would also kindly suggest she read a history book to see how many female leaders have started wars in the first place.

CRIKEY RECAP

Daily Mail reporter secretly ran a popular racist, anti-Semitic Twitter account

CAM WILSON

“The article was written by Sam Duncan. Crikey can reveal that he is also the person behind the @patrickbasedmn account, the handle of which is wordplay that combines the name of the sociopathic central character of American Psycho character Patrick Bateman and an alt-right internet slang term ‘based’.

“He joins a number of far-right individuals exposed by Crikey as writing in mainstream publications such as Spectator Australia. The @patrickbasedmn account regularly tweeted racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigration and anti-vaccine content to its 32,000 followers. This includes criticising people for their ‘Naziphobia’ and commending countries for expelling Muslims and Jewish residents.”

Tucker Carlson out, deals done: what’s behind the Fox spring clean?

CHRISTOPHER WARREN

“In late 2020, getting that balance meant tipping to the Trumpian conspiracy worldview. Post-Dominion, it means tipping back to a ‘news’ schtick, even if that means tossing a few personalities overboard. If it pulls it off, Fox Corp can be expected to be at peak value. It’s not certain it’s got it right: the reaction to the sacking from the conspiracist right and the US$700 million share slump when the news broke will be giving it pause. The cable companies will be worried about being seen to reward the behaviour exposed in the Dominion case.

“Meanwhile (spoiler alert), the latest Succession plot line suggests another danger: when, in the recent third episode of season four, shares in Waystar Royco crash upon reports of Logan Roy’s death, Roman stares at the falling red line on his phone and says mournfully: ‘There he is. That is dad’. Right now, Fox Corp is close to peak value. Maybe all this spring-cleaning is about getting the company in shape to cash in on the value that dad brings to the company while he’s still alive.”

Barry Humphries was no genius, he was a comedian. Therein lay his genius

GUY RUNDLE

“The death of Barry Humphries, it Mak U think. He lived long enough for many of the people honouring him from the right to be largely indifferent to his comedy at its most uproarious and genuinely anarchic, and for those praising him from the entertainment world to hate his politics and his views of Australia. But the politics was something he wasn’t joking about, and it fuelled all the jokes he made about everything else.

“The Melbourne Grammar boy, bookish, sensitive and intelligent, was a right-wing elitist from an early age and to the end. He would have seen in the rise of Dan Andrews and Anthony Albanese, two authors of glowing tributes, the triumph of two working-class yobs, and their municipal politics of concrete pours and inclusive voices, to be the great onslaught of barbarism he had always feared and expected in this country.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Ex-Brazil president Bolsonaro appears before police in riot probe (Al Jazeera)

Disney sues Florida’s DeSantis over efforts to ‘weaponise’ government over free speech (Reuters)

Spain pleads for aid from EU after historic drought devastates its farmers (euronews)

Xi holds first talks with Zelenskyy since Russian invasion (Al Jazeera)

[Canadian] striking federal union wants PM involved in talks as government digs in (CBC)

Former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern is heading to Harvard (CNN)

Microsoft’s $75 billion deal for Activision Blizzard in peril (The Wall Street Journal) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

[The film] Ghosted is not romantic — it’s a walking red flag — Jess Bacon (The Guardian): “Cole is on cloud nine after a spontaneous and fun-filled night together, but plummets to earth when she never contacts him. A common, yet brutal, part of modern dating that Cole does not accept. He sends her 11 texts in two days, before he remembers that he left his inhaler (with a tracker on) in her bag, and locates her 5000 miles away in London. The small-town farmer ignores his sister (the voice of reason), who tells him it is ‘psycho’ behaviour to violate her privacy and follow her to another country. Instead, he must accept the painful reality that she ghosted him. After 48 hours, Cole is angry and, still convinced he doesn’t have the wrong end of the stick, decides to hell with it! It’s big romantic gesture time, he’ll fly out and surprise her …

“What’s sold as a love story, based on following your heart, presents us instead an entitled man who won’t take no for an answer. Sadly, this is nothing new. Love Actually’s iconic sign scene is Andrew Lincoln’s Mark declaring to his best friend’s wife, that he has always harboured a secret love for her, and has that tape of her from the wedding where he cut out the groom. Meanwhile, young Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cameron in 10 Things I Hate About You, pays a man to date his crush’s sister, and proceeds to pretend to know French to tutor Bianca to get close to her. Nor an Edward Cullen in Twilight, sneaking in at night, watching Bella while she sleeps, tracking her movements and becoming possessive about who she sees. What’s worse, these men are rewarded for their so-called actions of love, and get the girl, as Cole does in Ghosted.”

Indigenous voice to Parliament will shatter spirit and progress of 1967 — Nyunggai Warren Mundine (The Australian) ($): “The government made a last-ditch effort to frame the Voice as more limited in the second reading speech of the bill, which will function as an explanatory document to aid future constitutional interpretation. But the devil is in the detail. For example, the second reading speech lists two types of matters the Voice may make representations on — those specific to Indigenous people and those affecting all Australians but which affect Indigenous people differently. These are set out very prominently in bullet points, so you might miss the word ‘include’ that comes before them. It’s no limitation. And it’s no accident that ­Albanese wants you to think it’s a limitation.

“Unless they want to risk their decisions or policies being overturned by the courts, or at least years of litigation, every Commonwealth minister, public servant and agency will need to worry about what a group of unelected people think. Not elected by the Australian people. And not even elected by Aboriginal people; but appointed by consensus of local Aboriginal community groups whose memberships make up a tiny, tiny fraction of Aborigines. It’s very clear the Voice will be a radical, powerful body that the full apparatus of the Commonwealth government will need to cower to, be engaged with or worry about before doing anything. What’s not been made clear are the details of the Voice’s design and operations. Albanese doesn’t want to reveal this until after Australians have agreed to it in the first place.”

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WHAT’S ON TODAY

Online

• Fifteen Times Better chief executive Topaz McAuliffe will speak about cultural awareness in organisations via a webinar held by CEDA.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• CEDA’s Cassandra Winzar and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh will speak at the launch of CEDA’s report ‘Disrupting Disadvantage through Policy Evaluation’, held at Hotel Realm.

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Author Ellen van Neerven will talk about their new book, Personal Score, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Bianca Caruana will talk about her new book, Soul Truth, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

• Author Rachael Mogan McIntosh will talk about her new book, Pardon My French, at Glee Books.