Secret US embassy cables have criticised the handling of asylum seekers by former prime minister Kevin Rudd.

A cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Fairfax says an unnamed "key Liberal Party strategist" told US diplomats in November last year that the issue of asylum seekers was "fantastic" for the coalition and "the more boats that come the better".

The cables also revealed federal Labor MP Michael Danby told embassy officers that Mr Rudd had "played the politics badly" and "completely misread" the issue, while coalition strategists were reported as saying the issue was "significant because it was the first time Rudd had been exposed for a lack of leadership and for 'trying to be all things to all people'."

Secret US cables criticise Rudd on boats

It's one thing for the government to have to deal with the cynical machinations of an unprincipled & cowardly Opposition, but entirely another to have to put-up with interference from 'rats in its own ranks'.

It wasn't that many years ago that Labor Prince, David Coombe, was publicly cu-down & his career destroyed because of a personal friendship he had with a Soviet diplomat. How times have changed ....

In recent weeks, courtesy of Wikileaks, we have learnt of the treacherous activities of Labor Senator, Mark Arbib, & his secret double-dealing with the Americans, aimed at bringing down then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

But Arbib is not alone ... Michael Danby is seen to be busy in the same shameful & disloyal manner, seeking to undermine Rudd because of his perceived failure to be sufficiently pro-zionist (Rudd had earlier expelled the Israeli Ambassador for Israel's use of false Australian Passports) ...

These people are not worthy to sit in our Parliament, let alone hold membership of the Australian Labor Party.

That Gillard, Howes & the rest of the 'political pygmies' currently fronting for Labor are prepared to tolerate these 'rats in the ranks', the sovereign independence & interests of our country are at risk.

Give me Kevin Rudd any day.

The most surprising aspect of Julia Gillard's first day of facing parliamentary questioning as the newly elected Prime Minister was her demeanour. Gone was the woman who had made an art of confidence, even mockery, during question time. On this day, September 29, she was pale and nervous. She even said the government's home insulation program ''was beset by problems. It became a mess''.

Australia's first woman Prime Minister was clearly shaken from having just emerged from a terrible election campaign. She had lost the election. More members sat opposite her, and on the crossbenches, than sat with her government. That she was still Prime Minister was due only to a political fluke, a statistical improbability, and the moral gymnastics of two rank opportunists, the independent MPs Robert Oakeshott and Tony Windsor. This pair managed to turn the lowest combined vote in the entire nation for Labor and the Greens into a mandate for a Labor government, propped up by the Greens.

Three months on from her near-death experience, Gillard has still not grown into her new role. Never did this seem more evident than in the aftermath of the tragedy at Christmas Island with asylum seekers dying in the surf. What did she do in this moment of crisis? She called for a committee.

Gillard Struggles As PM

from Crikey .....

Proof that Prime Minister Julia Gillard has misjudged the public mood on WikiLeaks: today's Essential Report found more than half of voters approve of the release of diplomatic cables (33% approve; 20% strongly approve), compared to a quarter who expressed concern (14% disapprove; 11% strongly disapprove).

Support for WikiLeaks was, not surprisingly, highest among Greens voters (80% total approval) but still strong across party lines - 55% of Labor voters approve in total compared to 51% of Liberal/National supporters. Disapproval ratings were the same (30% in total) across both sides of politics.

Had Gillard been talking to a US audience, she would've been on safer ground. In a Washington Post poll conducted on December 9-12, 68% of those polled - say the WikiLeaks' exposure of government documents about the State Department and US diplomacy harms the public interest. Nearly as many - 59% - say the US government should arrest Julian Assange and charge him with a crime for releasing the diplomatic cables. Nearly a third of those aged 18 to 29 say the release of the US diplomatic cables serves the public interest, double the proportion of those older than 50 saying so.

In the UK, a Guardian poll asked "Should WikiLeaks' Julian Assange be tried for espionage?" 87.9% of respondents said no.

A CNN poll of British opinion found that more people agree than disagree that WikiLeaks was right to release the cables, by 42% to 33%. The remainder, 25%, don't have a position.

As for Gillard's initial response to the WikiLeaks cable dump - she used the word illegal - the Australian Federal Police announced on Friday:

"The AFP has completed its evaluation of the material available and has not established the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction ..."

When Essential Research respondents were asked about the government's response, 46% were critical (27% disapprove; 19% strongly disapprove) compared to 32% who approve of Gillard's rhetoric.

Looks like Gillard should leave the overblown hyperbole to that master of outlandish statements - US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Another government, post Wikileaks, shown to have lied post 9/11:

Slowly but surely the entire shameful truth is coming out about Shannon airport, CIA renditions, and the lengths the Irish government went to avoid the evidence. One of the first Dublin embassy cables from Wikileaks confirmed that the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern knew about the CIA's use of Shannon for its renditions.

The latest Dublin cable (full text below) shows that they knew this meant they were in violation of torture conventions. Yet they did nothing to uphold their legal and moral responsibilities, preferring instead to avoid political difficulty.

According to a cable released by Wikileaks on 14 January, an unnamed individual who met with the U.S. embassy's deputy chief of mission (DCM) in Dublin told the embassy "were a plane to include Shannon in an itinerary that also included transporting prisoners, GOI [government of Ireland] lawyers might be forced to conclude that the GOI itself was in violation of torture conventions".

So an Irish government minister was quite convinced that at least three flights involving renditions had refueled at Shannon Airport before or after conducting renditions. The government's lawyers were telling them they were likely to be in violation of the legally binding Convention Against Torture.

But what did our government do? They vehemently denied any involvement of Shannon in the CIA's renditions programme, and they went to the U.S. embassy to make sure they were not found out. Or as the cable puts it, their main concern was that what they were saying would not be found "to have holes in it".

from Crikey .....

Rundle: full Swedish police report of accusations against Assange

Guy Rundle writes from London:

JULIAN ASSANGE, SWEDISH AUTHORITIES, SWEDISH COURTS, SWEDISH POLICE REPORT, THE GUARDIAN, WIKILEAKS

With five days to go until WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange appears in a UK court for a hearing on extradition to Sweden, Crikey has obtained a copy of the full police report of the allegations against him.

The report, which goes into extensive detail concerning the events surrounding the allegations, includes detailed witness statements by both women involved in the case, as well as a number of witnesses and an interview with Assange himself.

The report has been circulating in Stockholm for some time, and is likely to be widely distributed on the internet soon.

It paints a far more complex picture of the accounts given to police of the incidents in question than have appeared either in the Swedish prosecution service's statements on the case - or, more significantly, than a report in The Guardian by Nick Davies, which drew on a copy of the report he had obtained separately.

At time of going to press, we're still wading through the report, both the Swedish and partial English versions, with a full report to come later. However, the report changes the nature of the received story dramatically.

As readers may by now recall, Assange has been accused (though not charged) with four incidents by two women. Three relate to the first, Anna Bernardin*, the organiser of his speaking tour, and allege one count of 'sexual coercion' (a specifically Swedish charge) regarding non-condom use, and two misconduct accusations for unsafe sex and unwanted sexual advances. The fourth accusation is by the second complainant Sofia Wilen** alleging third degree rape, for unsafe sex while sleeping.

Among the details of the story:

Assange had been warned by journalist Johannes Wahlstrom that his flirtatious manner with women - which Wahlstrom had observed in the UK - would get him into trouble in Sweden, both because of its different sexual character and the possibility of a 'honeytrap' being set by security services.

• Assange's two accusers, who claimed not to have known each other at the time of their intitial contact with the police and the media, had met at Assange's lecture on August 14 and had been in touch throughout the week, leading up to their report to the police.
• Bernardin, who had complained that Assange would not move out of her apartment after their initial sexual encounter, rejected other offers of accommodation for Assange, on Assange's behalf.
• Bernardin told friends during the week that she was being Assange's 'mother', and joked that one way to guarantee his Swedish residency would be for her to adopt him.
• Intermediaries had urged Assange to take an STI test as Wilen requested in order to avert the possibility of police involvement.
• Bernardin expressed more anger and rage with Wilen than with Assange when she found out that Assange had been having a relationship with both of them.
• Contrary to other reports, neither woman described feeling unsafe around Assange, or threatened by him, at the time when the alleged incidents occurred.

All that and more. Film at eleven.

*           Bernardin is also known as Anna Ardin.

**         the possible complainants names are so well known - googling 'assange rape accusers' produces them immediately - that pseudonyms serve no purpose

In the estimation of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands alongside the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.

As he outrages and embarrasses world leaders by leaking secret US diplomatic cables - and continues to face down allegations of sex offences - Mr Assange has been chosen by the foundation to receive a rare gold medal for peace with justice.

The honour, previously given only to the Dalai Lama, Mr Mandela and Japanese lay Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda in the foundation's 14-year history, has been bestowed for Mr Assange's "exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights".

Foundation director Stuart Rees said today the Australian's work had challenged the old order of power in politics and journalism.

"Peace from our point of view is really about justice, fairness and the attainment of human rights," Professor Rees said.

"Assange has championed people's right to know and has challenged the centuries-old tradition that governments are entitled to keep the public in a state of ignorance."

Mr Assange was informed of the award last month and said it would be an "enormous pleasure and honour" to receive it, Professor Rees said.

The gold medal is distinct from the annual Sydney Peace Prize awarded by the foundation.

By leaking thousands of US diplomatic cables, Mr Assange had made a historically significant contribution to the operation of democracy, the Sydney Peace Foundation's executive decided.

"WikiLeaks has exposed the extent to which governments, the military and business all over the world have used secrecy to cloak their real intentions and activities," it said.

Professor Rees said Mr Assange's work was in the tradition of Tom Paine's Rights of Man and Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers - "challenging the old order of power in politics and in journalism".

"In the Paine, Ellsberg and Assange cases, those in power moved quickly to silence their critics even by perverting the course of justice," he said in a statement.

Mr Assange remains in Britain on bail and under house arrest awaiting a court decision on whether he should be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.

The foundation said the award would be presented to him in Sydney in mid-May or at a ceremony in London later in the year, depending on his whereabouts.

Antony Loewenstein

Julian Assange's Swedish lawyer was shown scores of text messages sent by the two women who accuse him of rape and sexual assault, in which they speak of "revenge" and extracting money from him, an extradition hearing was told.

Björn Hurtig, who represents the WikiLeaks founder in Sweden, told Belmarsh magistrates court that he had been shown "about 100" messages sent between the women and their friends while supervised by a Swedish police officer, but had not been permitted to make notes or share the contents with his client.

"I consider this to be contrary to the rules of a fair trial," he said. A number of the messages "go against what the claimants have said", he told the court.

Outside court, Assange tried to put the spotlight on the Swedish prosecutor: "She has refused to come to these hearings. Our witnesses were brought from Sweden, my lawyer was brought from Sweden and expensively cross-examined.

"Where is the equality in this case? There is not an equality. Rather, we see an unlimited budget of Sweden and the UK being spent on this matter and my rather limited budget being spent in response."

His lawyer, Mark Stephens, said: "We have seen Hamlet without the princess. We have seen a prosecutor who has been ready to feed the media with information but has been unprepared to come here and subject herself to the cross-examination she knows she cannot withstand."

Julian Assange's accusers sent texts discussing revenge, court hears

We are led by cowards and fools, governments and oppositions afraid to treat asylum seekers as human beings. Instead of processing the relatively few people quickly and carefully, they are housed away in privatised prisons run by a British multinational, Serco, with no accountability.

Today over 6000 asylum seekers are held in Australia's overcrowded detention facilities - close to a postwar record. They wait in places such as Curtin, Darwin and Christmas Island to have their claims for refugee status assessed, reassessed and, where necessary, appealed through the courts.

It is a process that can take several years because of the huge backlog of cases created by the Rudd Government's bungled six-month moratorium on refugee processing.

"We could easily end up with 10,000 in detention because people-smuggling pipelines through Indonesia are so well established they cannot be closed," a well-placed federal government source told The Age.

"Canberra is the second-biggest jailer in the land and the cost is blowing budgets out of the water. The present position is unsustainable."

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimates that it costs up to $150,000 a year to house a detainee (or close to $1 billion annually for all detainees) and that figure does not include numerous ancillary costs. "We are rapidly approaching a situation where we not only have nowhere to put people, but it is prohibitively expensive to go on locking people up while their claims for asylum are tested."

So who are those in detention? Some employees of Serco, the private company running the detention centres, provided the following sketchy profile. Among the Afghans, they say, are significant numbers of young men of Hazara ethnicity from remote rural areas where they often worked on the land tending herds and crops. Some may be related to Afghans already living in Australia and go to great lengths to avoid being identified.

No Vacancy

The Australian ambassador to Sweden has written to the country's justice minister seeking assurances that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, would be treated justly under Swedish and international law, should he be extradited there.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is currently fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden over allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual molestation made by two women in August last year, which he denies. He will learn within days whether his attempt to resist the European arrest warrant has been successful.

His letter to Sweden's minister for justice, Beatrice Ask, ambassador Paul Stephens writes, is to convey the Australian government's "expectation that, should Mr Assange be brought into Swedish jurisdiction, his case would proceed in accordance with due process and the provisions prescribed under Swedish law, as well as applicable European and international laws, including relevant human rights norms".

He does not state what reasons, if any, Australia might have for seeking such assurances.

Swedish justice questioned as Julian Assange awaits Extradition Ruling