Europe's top-selling newspaper, the German daily Bild, has made it into the record books for its 60th anniversary edition, of which 41 million copies were distributed, the paper said yesterday.

A special, free-of-charge edition of the paper was produced and sent to 41 million German households on Saturday, setting the record for "the biggest distribution of a free special edition of a newspaper".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/41m-copies-in-a-day-newspaper-sets-record-20120624-20vym.html#ixzz1ygKia3Yd

As the newsstands, Internet columns and blogs have chronicled, Assange has been camping out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since Tuesday in an effort to gain political asylum and avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces sex crime allegations. If he loses that bid, he could eventually be extradited to the United States, where it’s a virtual certainty that officials would prosecute him for his work with WikiLeaks. Through that organization, Assange has published thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents.

On the basis of one such document, it is understood that the Justice Department already has a sealed indictment on Assange. Experts assume the government would prosecute him in accordance with the 1917 Espionage Act, which equates interference with government operations with support of America’s enemies. Over the past decade, U.S. officials have made it clear that anyone who can even be suspected of having a connection to terrorism is an enemy of the United States. In the eyes of the government, Assange may as well have ordered the deaths of American civilians or soldiers himself, even though no evidence has been produced to support the claim that the work WikiLeaks does has harmed Americans.

Given that the U.S. Justice Department has become what constitutional lawyer and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald calls a travesty of law, Assange has every reason to fear extradition to the States. Assange’s attorney, Michael Ratner, confirms what seems obvious: The treatment given to accused WikiLeaks informant Bradley Manning—an extended, isolated imprisonment that a U.N. investigation deemed“cruel, inhuman and degrading”—is what Assange could expect as well. And as Greenwald writes: “The Obama administration’s unprecedented obsession with persecuting whistle-blowers and preventing transparency—what even generally supportive liberal magazines call ‘Obama’s war on whistle-blowers’—makes those concerns all the more valid.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_julian_assange_20120622/

An Australian citizen is in real trouble abroad. Julian Assange faces decades in prison in the US, which has an atrocious record for grabbing foreign suspects and holding them long years without trial.

That Assange mistakes himself for an oracle when he’s just a rooster is irrelevant. Australia’s lack of support for him is total. It carries hints of payback and moralistic exulting.

Assange believes he’s been abandoned by Australia, which says it has no place to interfere in extradition hearings between other countries.

That is no doubt legally correct, but the Australian spokespeople on this matter, Julia Gillard, Bob Carr and Nicola Roxon, know Assange is facing the most ruthless prosecutorial office on earth: the US District Attorney, likely overseen in this case by its Southern District office in Manhattan.

This is the group that convenes grand juries in the absence of the suspect, parades unchallenged “evidence” before jurors, always wins indictments, and then sends its agents abroad to drag home Colombian drug lords or 9/11 terror suspects such as Khalid Shiekh Mohammad.

The US ranks Assange in this class. Waterboarding is nowadays off the menu in the US, but a foreigner such as Assange could easily disappear into a federal prison for years.

This is not the kind of justice that Australia, let alone America, should support.

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Assange-is-no-hero-but-he-deserves-better-from-our-govt/

I can say one thing, two actually... First... I don't know what heroes are. Second, I know that Assange is far more than a "rooster" who has let us see the truth as closely as possible, while the Merdoch-cracy (crappy)  press from which this article comes from, has been fudging it and destroying it for yonks... Thus, the question is: should the populace, in a democracy, be entitled to know where the bad smells are coming from?... Or should we be protected from knowing that our designated elected heroes — our politicians (including overseas presidents) — are doing some really crook immoral stuff while claiming to be angels of virtue?...

We need to know. And this is not a vicarious pleasure.

Hi Gus,

It's simple really.....

The criticism of Julian Assange & WikiLeaks by the awstraylen government & our american-bought & paid for politicians is that the "release a whole batch of secret material without assessment & without justification raises profound moral questions'' (‘Assange wants Gillard to guarantee his safety’, SMH, June 25).

What a lot of phooey!!

Is our government pretending to be unaware of the investigation conducted by the US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (Oncix) into the damage caused by the Wikileaks disclosures which reportedly concluded that its impact had been more ‘embarrassing than harmful’?

The only ‘moral’ issue that our government should be concerned about is the continuation of our intimate relationship with an ‘ally’ that practices & promotes torture & murder, & is actively & knowingly engaged in the commission of war crimes.

Like it or not, we are a knowing accomplice to this behaviour: not something that our government is keen to acknowledge at all.

The US government is deliberately attempting to prevent Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of state secrets, from receiving a fair trial, the soldier's lawyer alleges in new court documents.

David Coombs, Manning's civilian lawyer, has made his strongest accusations yet about the conduct of the military prosecutors. In motions filed with the military court ahead of a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, on Monday, he goes so far as to accuse the government in essence of lying to the court.

Coombs charges the prosecutors with making "an outright misrepresentation" to the court over evidence the defence has been trying for months to gain access to through disclosure.

The dispute relates to an investigation by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Oncix, into the damage caused by the WikiLeaks disclosures of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents.

Reports by the Associated Press, Reuters and other news outlets have suggested that official inquiries into the impact of WikiLeaks concluded that the leaks caused some "pockets" of short-term damage around the world, but that generally its impact had been embarrassing rather than harmful.

Such a finding could prove invaluable to the defence in fighting some of the charges facing Manning or, should he be found guilty, reducing his sentence.

Yet Coombs says the army prosecutors have consistently kept him, and the court, in the dark, thwarting his legal rights to see the evidence.

"It was abundantly clear that Oncix had some form of inquiry into the harm from the leaks - but the government switched definitions around arbitrarily so as to avoid disclosing this discovery to the defence."

On 21 March, the prosecutors told the court that "Oncix has not produced any interim or final damage assessment" into WikiLeaks.

Coombs alleges that this statement was inaccurate - and the government knew it to be inaccurate at the time it made it.

"The defense submits [this] was an outright misrepresentation," he writes.

On 20 April, the government told the court that "Oncix does not have any forensic results or investigative files". Yet a week before that, the prosecutors had handed to the defence documents that clearly showed Oncix had begun to investigate WikiLeaks almost 18 months previously.

"Oncix was collecting information from various agencies in late 2010 to assess what damage, if any, was occasioned by the leaks. So how could it be that Oncix neither had an investigation nor a damage assessment?" Coombs writes.

The alleged efforts by the US government to avoid fulfilling its obligations to hand over evidence, Coombs says, has had the effect of rendering it impossible for the defence to prepare for the trial which is scheduled to begin in September.

Without access to the information, they cannot identify witnesses, develop questions for those witnesses, prepare a cross-examination strategy and so on.

"There is no way that the defense can adequately prepare its case," Coombs complains.

Most damningly, he alleges that is precisely the army's intention. "The government should not be able to circumvent its discovery obligations for two years, then dump discovery on the defense last-minute, and expect that there will be a fair battle," he says.

"Indeed, the defense believes that this was the intention of the government - to defeat its adversary by adopting untenable litigation positions designed to frustrate discovery."

Manning will make his fourth court appearance at Fort Meade on Monday. If convicted of the 22 counts, which include "aiding the enemy", he could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in military custody.

Bradley Manning Lawyers Accuse Prosecutors Of Misleading Judge

The acting national president of the Health Services Union (HSU), Chris Brown, believes police should investigate masses of internal documents which raise "disturbing" allegations of financial mismanagement at the union.

Pages of credit card statements have been uploaded to public website Independent Australia and detail a series of questionable payments in two union branches separately led by HSU national secretary Kathy Jackson and her then husband Jeff Jackson.

It shows a HSU Victoria Number 1 branch credit card was used at a Sydney-based brothel, on international travel, pay-TV, clothes and alcohol.

Mr Jackson was the president of the branch at the time of the transactions. The ABC has tried to contact Mr Jackson for comment.

Speaking on the ABC's 7:30 program in May, Ms Jackson said she was not aware of any union official consorting with prostitutes, apart from the allegations against former HSU national secretary Craig Thomson, which he denies.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-26/simon-cullen-hsu/4093190?WT.svl=news1

Good on you Independent Australia!.... Getting the scoops on the majors!!!!... because they are too focused on Lady Gaga's bum or their own foot caught in their own door... I am waiting in anticipation for Media Watch to tear you down or praise you with envy... But that would be publicity for you, and media Watch these days is a dead duck....

The plot thickens in Jacksonville as the bank trace on the $22,000 meant to have be transferred to Wai Quen Chan in Hong Kong for legal fees comes back - and points to an Australian car dealer’s account. Peter Wicks reports …..

Today it seems the Independent Australia site is not working... Hopefully it's only a temporary computer glitch, not an assault from hacker or nor due to the result of a law suit... Independent Australia is a very relevant site to help give new perspectives and real information on the travails of those who try to sink democracy... 

Back online... phew...

From David Donovan

I am proud of the publication Independent Australia has become. However, IA has been run on a shoestring, supported by me, some donations and a dedicated and talented editorial team of mostly unpaid volunteers. To continue, the time has come for IA to be run on a much more solid basis. It is the only way we will able to continue making a difference — to keep on being a strong, sane, progressive voice in Australian public life.

To do this, for the next month, up until March 15, we will be on a membership/fundraising drive. Note: there will never be a paywall on IA – so you will always be able to read IA online for free – however we are now offering daily and weekly newsletters, as well as a range of extras, including an annual magazine and exclusive merchandise, through paid subscriptions.

https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/australias-progressive-voice,7386

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Happy to promote Independent Australia but Gus cannot give cash... He does not exists... And I believe this site, yourdemocracy, runs on the smell of a red rag...