Speeches by Tony

First Speech by Tony on 23.4.21.

We now have the support of the Australian Labor Party and the Catholic Church.  The end of this intolerable situation is very close  folks, but we need a final push, so I’d like to encourage you all to Google “petition Assange,” two words in your search engine.  The first entry will be a petition with [more than] 600,000 signatures, so folks I urge you to add your names to that petition and those of your loved ones.

There’s clear support from the Australian Labor Party, so if we’ve got an up-coming federal election, don’t forget how to vote folks.

Second speech by Tony on 23.4.21

As you are aware folks Sunday is Anzac Day and I think it’s appropriate to discuss Anzac spirit – spirit, which was forged on the battlefields of World War 1, when wars were fought by two opposing sides – between soldiers who laid down their weapons on Christmas Day and met each other in the middle for a Christmas lunch.  Since then, wars have become somewhat less honourable and more recently it would appear that wars [were] fought for dishonourable reasons.

As a result of this, we see that the deaths of the veterans are many more times at their own hands, than at the hands of the so-called enemy.  Some statistics I read recently indicated that for every soldier [who died] on the battlefield, 25 soldiers [took] their own lives.

In Australia, it was announced the other day that there [was to] be a Royal Commission into veteran suicides and the figure I heard was that it’s [more than] 10 suicides for every battlefield casualty.

This surely says something says something to us about the honour on the battlefield – that the veterans come home and cannot live with themselves.  These young men who we send off – some of them still teenagers and they’re told to return to normal civilian life.  They’re given very little support.  The veterans are in fact, victims of this situation.

First speech by Tony on 30.4.21.

[There has been]… early identification of the crimes being perpetrated against Julian Assange in Her Majesty’s Prison, Belmarsh, where he’s been held for [More than] two years in solitary confinement,  described by the UN Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Nils Meltzer, as psychological torture.  He’s been there for more than two years.  That’s nearly 800 days now that he’s been solitary confinement.  It’s an absolute travesty of the British Westminster legal system, which founded common law rights back in eight hundred and something AD – almost 1200 years ago.  More than a millennia ago, the common law rights were established.

These common law rights are currently being trashed by the current government in the UK – an absolute abomination. They have destroyed their credibility and we call on our Australian Government to speak-up on behalf of Julian Assange – an Australian citizen – a multi-award winning journalist. A Walkley   Award. Ironically he won a Walkley Award for the piece of journalism for which the Americans are trying to find him guilty of Espionage – the collateral murder video.  If you haven’t seen it, it explains why the Americans wanted it hidden and why we, who are paying for the war, should see it.

These wars have been fought, not only in our name, but they’re being fought using our tax dollars.  It’s lining the pockets of the Military Industrial Complex [which] is pursuing this injustice against Julian Assange.

So we call on fair-minded people to stand up for Julian Assange and if you say “no more,” get the phone out of your pocket and Google “Assange petition,” you’ll see a petition with approximately  600,000 signatures on it and if you put your signature on that and join those 600,000 odd people and get your loved ones and families to put their names to that, you’re doing a great service, not only to Julian Assange, not only repaying the debt to Julian Assange, but you’re doing a great favour to yourself, your Children and your Grand Children, so please join that petition and let’s get that petition up to a million signatures and we’ll see if Scomo can ignore it then and there’s a rumour going around that we’re going to have an early federal election this year and as the Australian Labor Party has come out in support of Julian Assange, I urge you to think twice before voting for the Liberal Party.  I would urge you strongly to vote for the Labor Party, [which] now [wants] to bring Julian home.

Second speech by Tony, 30.4.21

We’re going to hold a vigil outside both Channel 7 in Sydney and the ABC offices in Harris Street, Ultimo at 7.30 on Monday morning.  That’s Monday the 3rd – Press Freedom Day, to remind both the Commercial media and our own ABC that they’re not doing their job.  They are not reporting this injustice against one of their own.

Without an effective media, without unbiased, uninhibited press, our democracy withers and dies.  The press is a healthy ingredient in a healthy democracy.  Our democracy is sick and dying and with it, our [freedom] is dying. 

So I urge you to come along before work on Monday morning, to either Channel 7 in Martin Place or the ABC down at Ultimo in Harris Street and join us in demanding that our media “step-up to the plate” and report the truth about one of their own – a Walkley Award winning, one-time nominated Nobel Peace Prize journalist- Australian – Australian- a fellow Australian.  He’s one of ours.  We should be proud of him.  Come on guys.  Let’s stand up and say something for this man.  We need to free the truth and end these endless wars, which are costing us more than the money, which our tax dollars are spent on.  They’re destroying the people.  They’re destroying countries.  They’re destroying countless millions of families and lives and we’re not just killing people, we’re destroying their infrastructure and their cities and their hospitals and schools.  We need to stop this and we can only do it if the press reports the truth about these war crimes.

Third speech by Tony, 30.4.21

Ok, I’d just like to repeat what I just said about a free, unbiased, uninhibited media.  It’s absolutely essential.  The media is known as the Fourth Estate and its job is to make those in power accountable for their actions, to make sure they do what we want them to do.  That’s what a democracy is all about.  Those in power must respect our wishes and the Fourth Estate’s job – the media’s job is to report when they deviate off track, so a weak media – a sick media leads to a sick democracy and we have both a weak and sick media in this country and in fact, around the World, except I will not include Wikileaks in that description, as Wikileaks shines a guiding light on what media should be, but the mainstream media is weak and sick and we are getting a weak and sick democracy, so folks, it’s time to stand up before our media dies, because if our media dies, our democracy  dies and we don’t have to look back too far in history to know what happens when our media dies, so please folks, get the phone out of your pocket, Google “Assange petition” and join 600,000 others in demanding that both the International Criminal Court in the Hague and the Australian Federal Parliament in Canberra act now to correct this injustice that’s been perpetrated now for almost 11 years.  This situation must end.  Julian’s freedom and the freedom and liberty of journalists world-wide, must be restored if we are to have a working democracy.  Thank you.

Fourth speech by Tony, 30.421

The war on journalism is by no way confined to Julian Assange.  There’s a are five other Australians, including the former Army lawyer David McBride, who attempted to go through the right channels, when he found out about criminal activity in Afghanistan.  He tried to go through, for a long time, what he believed, were the correct channels and in fact… he finally blew the whistle and now he faces  criminal charges and a lengthy jail sentence, as does Julian Assange for exposing illegal wars and illegal activities within these wars.

We’ve also got Bernard Collaery and Witness K, who are facing similar charges and Bernard Collaery was the Attorney General for the ACT, so these are not radical people, whom we are talking about.  These are mainstream… figures.  These are establishment figures, who have just been unable to carry this criminal behaviour and in fact, if you don’t report a crime, if you become aware of a crime and don’t report it, even as an ordinary citizen, if you don’t report a crime, you become an accessory to that crime and you in fact become a criminal.  So what these five folks have done is obey the law and report this criminal behaviour and in doing so, they maintain their innocent status.  If they kept their mouth closed, they would have joined that criminal class, but maintained their freedom, so they’ve done a very brave thing and they’ve done it for no other reason, than for your sake.  They’ve done it for you.  They’re languishing in jail and they’ve got lengthy sentences hanging over their heads. Their lives have been destroyed.  They’ve lost their jobs.  They’ve lost their families.  They’ve lost their liberty and they’ve done it for you, so please Google Assange petition and the first thing, which comes up is a 600,000 signature petition,  which is currently before the International Criminal Court in the Hague and before our federal parliamentarians  all 226 of them, demanding that they act, but they refuse to act.  They’re silently complicit with the criminals, who are persecuting Julian Assange, and let me remind you, it’s not Assange.  Assange himself has said it’s not Assange they’re after, who they’re really after is you.  Assange just gets in the way.  Julian Assange is just getting in the way and they’re not really so interested in locking him up and silencing him, as they are in intimidating any other journalist who speaks the truth about their criminal behaviour, so just ponder that for a moment folks, the basic theme is silencing all journalists and journalism dies, our Fourth Estate, as they call it, dies.

Our Fourth Estate is the most important element of a healthy democracy.  So guess what dies?  Our democracy dies and then we are all controlled by a handful of corrupt individuals.  You need to do no more than read George Orwell’s 1984 or study the history of World War 2 and the rise of the Third Reich to know what happened when they controlled the media.  When they control the media, they control our minds.  They control what we believe and to some extent, they have character assassinated Julian Assange.  They have got everybody to believe that this man, for a start is a narcissist.  I mean this is the most ridiculous [scenario].  I mean why would a narcissist spend [more than] 10 years of his life, sticking to his morals and not revealing his sources, because Donald Trump was willing to let him go if he ratted on his sources, but being the honourable journalist that Julian Assange is – a journalist committed to his job in the Fourth Estate of keeping those in power honest and to account, is not the actions of a narcissist, so that smear is completely [inane].  I mean you don’t need to do a lot of critical thinking to see that the concept of Julian Assange as a narcissist is a complete nonsense and also, on the rest of the smears, always suffice (it) to say is that everything you think you know about Julian Assange, you’ve learnt through the mainstream media and let me tell you, as somebody whose studied this 10 years of smear campaigns, perpetrated by the Pentagon – 10 years of lies.  They are completely false and further, they have infected our government and they have infected our national broadcaster.  The Australian Broadcasting corporation did a (4 Corners) two part series on Julian Assange.  Some of you may have seen it… They discussed Julian Assange’s character at great length.  They didn’t discuss the crimes he revealed or the effects of the revelation of these crimes or the fact that nobody has been charged for these crimes.  Instead they perpetrated the Pentagon smear campaign against Julian Assange. So just because you’re watching the ABC, don’t think that you’re not getting propaganda.  Don’t think George Orwell’s version of society isn’t in place right now and [don’t think] the ABC isn’t complicit with our Government in the character assassination of this fine journalist, who, by the way, won a Walkley Award for the very piece of journalism for which the Pentagon wants him charged with espionage.  There’s a lot of dichotomy there, isn’t there? A piece of journalism, which won a Walkley Award, is being used to charge a journalist for espionage.  I might remind you that espionage involves stealing secrets secretly for money – for gain to a foreign power, to benefit them.

First speech by Tony on 7 May 2021.

The 90 percent of politicians who are not in the Friends of Julian Assange will be on the wrong side of history and will go down with the criminals, who are persecuting Julian Assange.

I’d also like to mention a few former politicians, who’ve expressed very strong support for Julian Assange’s bid for freedom and they are Bob Carr, former NSW Premier and former Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2012, I believe.  He’s been a very strong and vocal supporter, speaking out against the atrocities being carried out against Julian Assange and the other one is Dr Karyn Phelps, former Federal Member for Wentworth, out here in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, and I’ve just been reminded of Scott Ludlum too, and Kevin Rudd – Kevin Rudd also.  Let’s not forget Kevin Rudd.  Yeah, let’s hear it for Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.  One would hope that maybe he would come back into Federal politics and run against: I won’t mention his name, but the other bloke, whose about to get shunted out of the way and we can look forward to a bright future under the leadership of a man who represents the majority of us who believe that Julian Assange needs to be given a fair go.   We’re Australians.  He’s Australian and we Australians like to, not only receive a fair go, but give another bloke a fair go.  That’s certainly the case for Julian Assange.  I think most fair minded Australians would agree with me that what’s been done to Julian is: it leaves me speechless, but I’ll summarise it as they started 10 years ago by character assassination, perpetrated by 90 per cent of the World’s media, to dehumanize the man.  They then followed with arbitrary detention for the last 10 and a half years,  followed by the last two years of that arbitrary detention, which has been in solitary confinement maximum security barbaric conditions, criticised by Professor Nils Meltzer, the UN Rapporteur on torture and cruel and other inhumane treatment, as total barbarism, medieval in nature.  It simply must end now. 

First  speech by Tony on 14 May 2011.

Our own Mary Kostakidis, a very well known journalist, has this to say: “Julian is in great danger now.  We cannot stand back and let this happen.  They talk about bracket creep.  This is human rights creep.  It’s going to get worse and worse for us – the citizens boy this country”. 

Another famous Australian journalist Andrew Fowler, who did a very good 4 Corners report back in 2012, on Julian Assange.  Mr Fowler said: “Mr Assange is being prosecuted, not for what he did, but for what he stands for and what he stands against – the rise of authoritarianism. Under authoritarian government’s, there will be no dissent.  That is why Assange is in the dock at the Old Bailey”. 

This next quote is from Eva Jolie – a magistrate- “If Julian Assange is extradited, it’s the end of the rule about of it law in the West”. 

The next one is from the coordinator of Julian’s legal team: “The political nature of Julian Assange’s extradition process to the United States can be proven beyond any reasonable doubt as it involves alleged  large scale espionage operations,  allegations of attorney client is privilege and cross-Atlantic ocean legal pressures”.

The next one is from the Musician Brian Eno: “Julian Assange is a threat to power because he exposes an illusion that we are genuinely being told to support and that illusion is that we live in a democracy”. 

The next one is from Scott Ludlum, the former Australian Greens Senator and he says: “In this mockery of due process, endless delay is the point.  Our friend is already serving jail time for charges under US espionage law, that may never even be heard in an open court”.

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