Hot off the creative drawing board, this latest and updated generation of our acclaimed play will hit the stage when Bradley Manning’s court martial will be in full swing: July 10-13 (at St Luke’s Hall in Enmore).

The Sydney Peace Foundation supports this gritty doco-drama written and created by Kinetic Energy Theatre Company’s co-directors Graham Jones & Jepke Goudsmit, and performed by their twelve member troupe of actors and musicians: Drew Bourgeois, Frank Dasent, Angela Fieldhouse, Jepke Goudsmit, Robert Gray, Jola Jones, Graham Jones, Saha Jones, Lilli Pearse, Floyd Robinson, Roberto Quintarelli, Billy Ward.

Empire tackles the questions arising from the leak of the Collateral Murder video and hundreds of thousands of secret US State Department cables by whistle-blower Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. The play draws an arch right from the birth of the “Idea of America” to the US Empire’s present day excesses.

To address these issues Kinetic Energy have gone to two of the most eminent and elegant critics of the Empire – the writer activists Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky. Two of Roy’s recent political essays are the starting point: “The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky”, and: “Confronting Empire”. Kinetic Energy adapted these essays for the stage and have laced them with Chomsky’s commentaries on the subject of Empire. Using contemporary documentary film technique, we have woven dramatic reenactment together with narration, video & audio footage, and live music.

The play demonstrates the company’s unique style once described by Richard Glover in the SMH as: “Different to anything you’ll see elsewhere.” And by Paul McGillick in the Australian Financial Review as: ”Work with the kind of conviction and focus which fists you right between the eyes.”

We live in an Orwellian world. And yet, despite the most heinous crimes against nature and humanity, hope that another world is possible springs eternal. Alternatives are being created, and all around the globe people are uniting in their demand for justice and peace.

Kinetic Energy take the audience on a trip across American history. From early colonists like the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay (later Boston), and the preachings of founding father John Winthrop, to the post World War II period and the establishment of the US hegemony.

This timeline is punctuated by scenes on the golf course, where president George W. Bush makes some of his most famous statements on foreign policy, revealing the debt he owes to his Texan religious upbringing and American mythology like the Battle of the Alamo.

A third timeline follows the internet conversations between Bradley Manning from his work station in Baghdad, and ex-hacker Adrian Lamo. Kinetic Energy reproduce an edited version live on stage, based on the logs of these talks. Ultimately, these chats led to Lamo turning Manning in to the US military.

While Bradley Manning’s court martial is in full swing, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is sheltering in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly the USA, and all efforts are being made by the powers that be to shut down WikiLeaks.

On opening night (10/7) Em.Prof. Stuart Rees (chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation) will be a special guest opening the show.

Ticket Information:

• General Admission: $20.00
• Concession (low waged, pensioners)): $15.00
• Concession (students): $10.00

SPECIAL GUESTS

In answer to Arundhati Roy’s call for resistance to the current Empire, we have invited a range of guests, with strong links to the subject matter, to respond to the show in their own special way.

10th: Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees
A champion of social justice and human rights, Professor Rees is also Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation. Stuart presided over the awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to both Arundhati Roy (in 2004) and Noam Chomsky (in 2011).

11th: Darrio Phillips & Angela Canalese
Darrio is a pioneer of street dancing and Krump in Australia. Angela is a free styling dance nomad. For them, dance is all about freedom.

12th: Fightin’ Father Dave
As minister of the Anglican Holy Trinity Church in Dulwich Hill, Fr Dave Smith is renowned for his social justice work, particularly the rehabilitation of youths off the streets. And dancers Darrio Phillips & Angela Canalese will appear once more.

13th: Dirty Voodoo Blues Band
Young musicians from our Kinetic Jazz family: Frank Dasent, Michael Gordon, Novak Manojlovik, Shota Matsamura, Axel Powrie & Finn Ryan.

Box Office & Kinetic Café open from 7pm (NB on Thursday from 9pm)

The Café will be serving yummy winter food, drinks and other delights

The post EMPIRE in Enmore appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The far larger governments, of the UK, Sweden and the USA should be castigated for their refusal to guarantee any safe passage for Julian Assange if he was extradited to Sweden.

At this point I’ll give the government of Australia the benefit of the doubt over their attitude to the Ecuadorian decision but we should ask whether they will find the courage to insist that the human rights of vulnerable people should override the potentially bullying power of large governments? Here is a chance to break with years of unquestioning alliance with mother and father.

It is actually a mistake to say ‘potentially’ because large governments have a tradition of doing what they like irrespective of the rules of international law. US politicians’ violent reactions to the Wikileaks / Assange revelations about the US military’s murder of civilians in Iraq, show how great is a powerful country’s desire for revenge when their secrecy and illegalities are challenged. The bullying behaviour of the UK government in threatening to invade the Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest Mr. Assange is merely the latest example of a powerful country believing that it can do what it likes despite it’s associated pious utterances about respect for the law. To add insult to injury, the government of Sweden then calls in the Ecuadorian Ambassador to reprimand his government for being such an outspoken defender of human rights.

Bullying as a form of diplomacy? When will they ever learn?

For centuries, governments have behaved as though they needed to maintain secrecy and should prosecute anyone – Daniel Defoe, Tom Paine, Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning,Julian Assange – who challenges their use of force to get their way. For centuries governments have insisted that the practice of government was so mysterious that members of the general public could not possibly understand.

The government of Ecuador has shared their understanding.The elegant, philsosophically and legally sophisticated arguments of the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister have shown a world wide public which range of statutes and treaties in international law helped his government to decide to give asylum to Assange. The world does understand, even if politicians do not or continue to wish that decisions had been kept secret, that the Ecuadorians had not shared their beliefs and their values with the rest of us.

Cowardice as well as courage has entered the Assange/UK/Sweden equation. Three powerful governments -UK, Sweden and the USA refused to give assurances about Assange’s safety if he was extradited to Sweden to be interviewed (not charged) with alleged sexual offense. The smell of collusion between such governments wafts across the oceans and through the Internet.

In the above comments, it should be obvious that the notion of Justice depends on a combination of historical, social and political precedents and calculations. Such precedents – such as a love of secrecy and brute force to ‘solve’ problems merit as much consideration as the views of those lawyers who love to have 50 cents each way on the question of justice: ‘yes the UK and the USA could ignore sovereign territory, no perhaps they should not.’ Please, no more quibbling from lawyers who in the last few hours have suggested that the UK’s threats to invade could be legitimate despite the protests of the ‘fanatics’ who are Assange supporters.

The issue of justice is the property of everyone. Every citizen has a right to stand up for universal human rights and to support the years of ground breaking revelations by WikiLeaks. Such commentary and advocacy is not the preserve of politicians and their legal advisers. If we allow that secret, privileged and often destructive preserve and practice to be maintained, nothing will have been learned from the Ecuadorians’ brave and principled stand.

First published on Monday, 20 August 2012: ON LINE  opinion  – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate.

P.S. Julian Assange first public statement since entering Ecuador’s London embassy on 19th August followed by statements of support from around the world:

The post Brave and principled Ecuador: Protection of an Australian citizen appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

Professor Stuart Rees, chair of the Foundation says, ‘ Ecuador understands the nature of justice, but it seems that in failing to give assurances about Assange’s safety,the  governments of the the UK, Sweden and the USA only draw on their assumptions about force to solve problems; and will the Australian government find the courage to thank Ecuador, or will they side with the big battalions ?’

In terms of justice for Julian Assange and for any other advocates of free speech and freedom of the press, the following issues need to be aired by the media.

1. Assange has provided a  massive public service by, among other things, revealing truths about murders by US military. His challenge to governments’  secrecy explains their desire for revenge.

2. So called British justice put Assange under house arrest for almost two years when he had been charged with no offence. No other defendant suspected of alleged similar offences has been treated in this way.  Cowardly governments have made the alleged sex offences in Sweden into a major issue, not Assange.

3. For centuries, powerful governments have behaved as though they can do what they like, even if they call this ‘ the rule of law.’ In this watershed case, a small government Ecuador has challenged the bully boy tactics  – witness the UK threats – that have lasted for so long but now should end.

4. All citizens who believe in freedom of the press, freedom of speech and the values associated with diplomatic immunity, can insist that the Ecuadorian decision to give asylum to Assange should override any other consideration and no amount of quibbling by so called legal experts to support the governments of the UK, Sweden and the USA should be heeded.

5. Here is a massive opportunity for the Australian government to show its determination to stand up for the right of an Australian citizen.

Media Enquiries:

Melissa McCullough

Media and Publicity Officer | Sydney Peace Foundation

0432 861 653

melissa.mccullough@sydney.edu.au

The post Brave and Principled Ecuador appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The Sydney Peace Foundation continues to support Julian Assange and Wikileaks unequivocally. In 2011, Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation’s Gold medal for “exceptional courage in the pursuit of human rights.” In presenting the award to Assange at London’s Frontline Club Mary Kostakidis, a former member of the Australian Human Rights Consultation Committee, praised WikLeaks as an “ingenious and heroic website that has shifted the power balance between citizen and the state by exposing what governments really get up to in our name”. Kostakidis thanked Assange for his “heroic courage” as a whistleblower to take “great risks for our benefit”.

Today Mary Kostakidis commented, “Julian Assange had no choice but to seek political asylum given the failure of the Australian government to provide adequate assistance”.

But the real issue here is not about passing a character assessment on Julian Assange or debating the merits of WikiLeaks. It has taken on much greater significance to us all, and we should all be concerned. The real issue is what happens to an Australian citizen when your government has, in effect, decided that you’re on your own. We’ve seen this play out already with David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

Julian Assange has unwittingly become a test case of the Australian government’s rhetoric that it is not simply operating under the thumb of the US. The Sydney Peace Foundation urges the Australian Government to stand up for the rights of Julian Assange, thereby showing its independence and willingness to protect the interests of any Australian citizen.

This time, the test of character is on our government and we should all be hoping that it acts in the interests of its people, and not in that of its “big brother”.

The post How Julian Assange is putting the Australian Government’s character to the test appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

There are a few days left to appeal the British High Court’s five to two ruling that Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden to be interviewed about alleged sexual assault. Regarding that appeal, almost all the commentary since the Court announced its decision has revolved around legal nit picking on issues such as whether the Swedish prosecutor is a recognised judicial authority. Assange’s lawyers can’t be faulted for their focus on such technicalities but other issues will stand the test of time long after this extradition paraphernalia has been resolved.

These ‘other issues’ concern the WikiLeaks-Assange challenge to governments’ secrecy, the barely concealed violence, which characterises American policy in regard to whistleblowers, the cowardice of leading Australian politicians over the Assange controversy and, finally, the implications of the Assange-Bradley Manning cases for any future conception of justice.

As the project for democracy evolved over many centuries, secrecy became a key means of governance. Rulers assumed, ironically, that not only was this a key means of sustaining open government, but that citizens who challenged such notions threatened the very viability of a State. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange follow a tradition of highly significant dissenters to whom we owe gratitude for key freedoms, of speech, of the press and of association. Those WikiLeaks forerunners include the 18th century English satirist Daniel Defoe who, in 1702, was imprisoned for challenging the power of Church and State but who wrote in the famous Hymn to the Pillory, ‘Tell them I stand exalted there for speaking what they would not hear.’ Ninety years later, in 1792, Tom Paine, author of The Rights of Man was charged with sedition for questioning the secret manner in which State authority was maintained and false claims made about citizens, who dared to say that human rights represented a much higher authority than governments.

At a time when the Nixon Administration in the U.S. attempted to cover up details of the conduct of the Vietnam War and the extent of the casualties resulting from it, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg revealed truths about government policies and in his own recent words, did no more then than Bradley Manning is alleged to have done now. In his revelations in the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg provided a key service to democracy little different in principle from that which Assange and Manning have given. If those two citizens – one in a U.S. jail awaiting trial, another about to be extradited to Sweden – could be judged, as Ellsberg was, according to the historical value of their actions, the world’s media would be concerned with human rights issues. In 1971 Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy and espionage but all charges were subsequently dropped and a U.S. Supreme Court, in covert praise for Ellsberg’s courage insisted, ‘Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.’

There is justifiable fear that so great is the U.S. government’s desire for revenge against anyone who dares to challenge their authority, that the utterances of US leaders should be listened to very carefully. We might begin by comparing U.S. Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich’s comments last week that his government was not interested in Assange with the anger of other U.S. leaders and commentators. The latter includes a Presidential hopeful Mike Huckerbee who said, ‘Whoever leaked that (Wikileaks based) information is guilty of treason and I think that anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.’ Republican Sara Palin wanted Assange ‘Hunted down like Bin Laden’ and a Fox News anchorman commented, ‘It may be illegal but I encourage any concerned U.S. citizen to get their gun and shoot the son of a bitch.’

The idea that violence of almost any kind is the best response to dissenters like citizen Assange should make Australian leaders repudiate the U.S. ‘revenge is sweet’ culture. There has been ample opportunity for the Australian government to ask whether a grand jury in Virginia was attempting to concoct charges against Assange and to insist that it would use every means to prevent such a citizen being extradited to the U.S.

The Australian Prime Minister at first inferred that Assange had committed an offence, a claim subsequently disproved by the Australian Federal Police. Subsequently the Attorney General said that he’d need to consider confiscating Assange’s passport, even though no charges had been laid, let alone any conviction recorded. It’s as though the mantra about the value of secrecy in a war against terrorism ensured that leaders of an important democracy too easily forgot their responsibilities to sustain openness, to demystify the games played by secret agents of a State, and did not consider whether the best service they could provide to their ally the U.S. was to say that violence or threats of violence have no place in government.

A lesson from the Assange controversy is what we may learn about the nature of justice.

Regarding the value of various Wikileaks revelations about the conduct of governments, such as the diplomatic cables about the conduct of the Afghan war and the collateral damage video showing U.S. marines 2007 murder of eleven civilians including children in a Baghdad street, the Australian Prime Minister confessed in an ABC Q & A program, ‘I don’t get it.’

The people protesting on behalf of Julian Assange on Sydney and Melbourne streets last week do ‘get’ the value of Wikileaks releases, they do understand that a superpower has no more entitlement to seek revenge than ordinary citizens. Those protesters’ conception of justice includes an insistence on the right to protest and a demand that powerful institutions and individuals should be held accountable irrespective of governments’ claims about a need to protect national sovereignty

Professor Noam Chomsky knows the significance of Julian Assange’s actions. On my way to London last year, to award Assange the Sydney Peace Foundation’s ‘occasional gold medal for human rights’, Noam Chomsky penned the following message to Julian. ‘I would like to thank you for fulfilling your responsibilities as a member of free societies whose citizens have every right to know what their government is doing.’

When the dust has settled on the legal technicalities and the political inanities, the real issues of openness and accountability as the cornerstone of democracy will remain. Assange needs to be supported because of the service he does to the presentation of human rights and democratic governance.

This article was first published by Online Opinion, 7  June 2012

The post Julian Assange: the freedom of free speech appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The prospect of US charges against Julian Assange will be a test of the Australian government’s courage in standing up to big brother America, thereby showing its independence and willingness to protect the interests of any Australian citizen (”Revealed: US plans to charge Assange”, February 29).

For centuries, governments and other powerful interests have behaved as though secrecy was a necessary form of governance. Since the introduction of the war on terror, civil liberties have been further eroded by the multiplication of public and private intelligence and counter terrorism agencies such as this Texas outfit, Stratfor, whose employees are invisible and not accountable.

That the WikiLeaks/Assange cables have told us something about the clandestine and sometimes criminal activities of governments and their sub-contracted intelligence collaborators is a public service not a crime.

A grand jury in Virginia has been struggling for months to concoct a charge against Julian Assange. This demonstrates not only the flimsy nature of evidence but also America’s usual bullying desire for revenge against someone who has merely revealed what has been going on.

This article first appeared in the the Sydney Morning Herald, Letters to the Editor, 1 March 2012

The post US bullies have no respect for liberties appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

Stuart Rees Feb 2011_ New Matilda

Stuart Rees Oct 2011_Online Opinion

WikiLeaks March 2011_Crikey

WikiLeaks March 2011_Ninemsn

WikiLeaks March 2011_SMH

The post WikiLeaks and Human Rights appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.