Assange Handed Sydney Peace Medal

hihihihi writes "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation's Gold Medal for 'exceptional courage in the pursuit of human rights.' It is only the fourth time in the organization's 14-year history that the prize for extraordinary achievement in promoting peace with justice has been given out. Previous winners are Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda. Foundation director Professor Stuart Rees accused the Australian government of demonizing Mr Assange and aiding US efforts to behave like a totalitarian state."

Comments

yes

[unity100]

contrary to what you arrogant and self-centered right wingers in america tend to think, the people around the world think good of assange since he is exposing the SHIT that u.s. perpetrates around the world, ranging from bullying germany to prevent prosecution of the cia agents who kidnapped german citizens and tortured them in syria, to bullying spanish government to put out 3 strikes law to censor people for american copyright interests.

i find your disgust at exposition of such information, disgusting.

now scram.

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because whilst America screams about free speech, justice, liberty and so forth the only thing America really actually stands for is hypocrisy.

- Condemning countries who torture whilst torturing

- Screaming about justice and liberty whilst performing detention without trial, extraordinary rendition, and having a long history of assassinations

- Fining foreign firms for dodgy dealings whilst turning a blind eye to it's own

- Touting the importants of the WTO and how everyone should join it and adhere to it's rulings whilst ignoring rulings by the WTO against it

- Putting free speech at the centre of everything America claims to be about, whilst trying to silence the likes of Wikileaks

- Talking about peace, whilst being the largest warmonger of the last 50 years

- Complaining about terrorism whilst having a long history of having funded terrorists

- Patriotic talk of how their military is the greatest, and making fun of countries like France for their military history, whilst having lost or at least definitely failed to win pretty almost every major war or military incursion they've been involved in since World War II (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq x2, Afghanistan)

- Talk about how China should stop polluting despite the fact China has far more investment, a far bigger programme, and a far better ratio of renewable energy use than the US and a third of oil use despite having over 4 times the population

Really, the list goes on, the case with Assange and American attempts to supress Wikileaks is just one of many examples of American hypocrisy lost in a sea of such problems. Americans fear the rise of China, India and so forth and talk of how dangerous the rise of these countries are, when really, the only thing that's causing the decline of the US is it's own complete and utter hypocrisy and the knock on effects of that.

Articles about revelations

[traindirector]

what has been released that has been worth all the hub-bub?

Here's an article listing some of the revelations from 2010.

The real question is -

[Black Parrot]

Did he know before they announced it?

Sydney says: Me too!

[donscarletti]

So it's been around 14 years, so basically before Assange it has only awarded one prize to someone who did not already have a nobel peace prize at the time of the award. Having grown up in Sydney I have got to say I am pretty uninterested in this me-too institution. Since I doubt many Australians will do anything worthy of the attention of the Norweigian government or whoever awards these things, maybe starting with Assange they can make it a sort of domestic competition with lesser criteria.

Re:Awarding the idea

[mykos]

And if you think every other government doesn't do exactly the same thing, then you're a fucking retard.

Everyone hiding secrets doesn't make hiding secrets the right thing to do, so you gotta start somewhere. Also, I don't think he claimed that nobody else was doing it.

Re:Awarding the idea

[phantomfive]

Wait, what? What propaganda haven't they lived up to that was revealed by Wikileaks? As far as I can tell, the worst thing the military has done in the current campaigns was the Abu Ghraib scandal. I like reading Wikileaks stuff, but it seems to me that anyone who pays attention to the news and such will have a good idea of what the US military is capable of, and what it is doing. Some people were surprised by the Wikileaks releases, but that's because they don't pay attention.

That said, I really liked reading about US diplomats opinions of French racial issues. Or Yemen's attempts to take credit for US actions. Stuff like that is really fun to read.

Re:Awarding the idea

[AGMW]

What about them?

Maybe I got it all wrong, but in amongst all the info exposed, didn't US forces kill a couple of Reuters reporters? Didn't they lie about it? Didn't they say there wasn't any film of the incident when approached (FOI request) for the footage? Didn't that footage then miraculously appear? Ditto for a number of 'friendly fire' incidents?

Accidents happen, and when you're at war they can be bad, but you don't lie and cover it up or it's far more difficult to work out what happened to try and stop it happening again! It's like a four year old saying "it wasn't me", then wikileaks pointing out the chocolate all around your mouth!

Now the US (and others!) are trying to make Wikileaks out to be the bad guy - continuing the analogy, the US is saying "yer, but Wikileaks smells of wee!".

Re:Manning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assange won't even go to Sweden to face the charges for sex-crimes (not even after being assured he will not be sent to any other country without britains concent (sic) ).

There are no charges.

Re:Awarding the idea

[metacell]

The Iraq war documents exposed that the number of civilians killed had been downplayed by the US military. If we are going to safeguard human rights, we first need to know the truth.

The "Cablegate" documents showed that my own country's toughened copyright legislation was due to pressures from the USA.

One of Wikileaks' most recent leaks exposed child slavery and prostitution in Saudi Arabia, which the Saudian government denies exists.

Swedish Court System - A medieval political circus

[FriendlyLurker]

The Sweden "court system" for this issue is almost a regular medieval political circus. Look at what Sweden has all but promised Assange in his "fair" trial: Solitary confinement before trial without access to his lawyers. Closed door secret court - no one will hear let alone be able to refute any testimonies. Three of the four judges to be (or appointed by) politicians! Not to forget that the case was closed before being reopened by, you guessed it, a politician - apparently because they say the girls did not know they were being raped at the time and it is up-to their court of laypersons to decide (I kid you not, crazy system Sweden has, huh). The rabbit hole of deceit by Swedish authorities goes way deeper than most would like to see however - in this case starting with the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, lawyer Mr Claes Borgström and their relationship with the Swedish Democrat party which stands to gain from this circus.

Who in the right mind would not try to fight for a fairer trial than this? I don't care if it is Assange or anyone else, Sweden should be ashamed of these "courts", if you can even call them that.

The only good thing coming out of this abuse is the increased scrutiny on the very broken European extradition laws - and perhaps some Swedish rethinking their leaders (although the last election shows this to be unlikely).

Re:Swedish Court System - A medieval political cir

[Co0Ps]

I'm Swedish and this is 100% accurate, +100 Insightful. The Swedish justice system is a huge embarrassment and completely broken. Hopefully this case will shed some light on it so it can be fixed.

You also forgot to mention two other interesting facts of Claes Borgström, both of which you can find in his Wikipedia article. First of all he was the attorney of Thomas Quick, a case that is one of the biggest scandals in Swedish justice history. Basically Quick was mental and admitted to a whole bunch of murders he never committed and was sentenced guilty without a shred of evidence. Secondly Claes Borgström is an extreme left wing feminist nutjob that thinks men has a "collective guilt" against women and should pay a special tax for being men.